Musical Practice as a Form of Life: How Making Music Can be Meaningful and Real 9783839445730

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Eva-Maria Houben Musical Practice as a Form of Life

Music and Sound Culture  | Volume 32

Eva-Maria Houben (Prof. Dr. phil.), born in 1955, teaches musicology with a focus on musical theory at TU Dortmund, Germany. She is also a composer, organist and pianist.

Eva-Maria Houben

Musical Practice as a Form of Life How Making Music Can be Meaningful and Real

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de © 2019 transcript Verlag, Bielefeld All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Cover concept: Kordula Röckenhaus, Bielefeld Cover illustration: mekcar / fotolia.com Translated by Eva-Maria Houben, Evan Soni, Jennie Gottschalk Typeset by Justine Buri, Bielefeld Printed by Majuskel Medienproduktion GmbH, Wetzlar Print-ISBN 978-3-8376-4573-6 PDF-ISBN 978-3-8394-4573-0 https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839445730

Table of Contents Preface | 9

F irst P art 1. Access to the Topic | 15 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5

A Musical Situation: To do and to let go | 15 Music: To what end is it good? – Faced with… | 16 Inventing/Finding Practices | 19 Exercises | 26 Useful? Notation and the Reality of the Performance | 31

2. Musical Practice | 35 2.1 Approach to the Term. Focal Points, Intersections | 35 2.2 “Sense?” “Meaning?” | 44 2.3 Realities? Worlds? | 57 2.4 Speaking, Speech | 62

3. Finding Speech | 69 3.1 Intersubjectivity – Multiple Realities (Alfred Schutz) | 69 3.2 Everyday Life-World and Musical Practice: A first discussion of the threshold | 81 3.3 Embodying, Showing (Simone Mahrenholz) | 82 3.4 Borders, Thresholds – and Transitions | 92

S econd P art 1. Keys | 103 1.1 Ludwig van Beethoven: Piano Sonata no. 32 in C Minor op. 111, 1st movement (Maestoso. Allegro con brio ed appassionato) (1821/22) Single Events – Disorientation. Reorientation? | 104

1.2 Johann Sebastian Bach: Fantasia in G Minor for organ BWV 542 (about 1720) Determination of Positions in History – A Physical Expression | 108 1.3 Frédéric Chopin: Prélude no. 2 in A Minor (24 Préludes op. 28; publ. 1839) Tender Connections in a Disturbing Context: The pianist with two hands | 115 1.4 Aurèle Stroë: 3ème Sonate pour Piano (en palimpseste) (1947/1957/1990-1991) Breaks – The piano as a drum. Space-filling movements | 117 1.5 Robert Schumann: Kreisleriana. Fantasien für Piano-Forte op. 16 (1838; rev. 1850) Becoming Physically Evident: All-at-once | 124 1.6 Luigi Nono: …..sofferte onde serene... for piano and magnetic tape (1976) Pulsations: Signs of life. Keys as extensions of the body, of the fingers | 128

2. Many Performers | 131 2.1 Anton Webern: Fünf Stücke für Orchester op. 10, I (1911-1913) – Christian Wolff: For 1, 2 or 3 people (1964) Alone, in Twos, with Several Co-performers within the Group (1) | 131 2.2 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Serenade in B Flat Major (“Gran Partita”) (KV 361), Largo/Molto allegro – Adagio (presumably 1783-84) Alone, in Twos, with Several Co-performers within the Group (2) | 136 2.3 Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphonie no. 5 in C Minor op. 67 (UA 22.12.1808) Individual and Group Network: The “right to appear” – The Promise and the Challenge of the “We” | 141 2.4 John Cage: Music for (1984-87) Coincidence. Shared Experience of a “We” – Being There as Well | 150

3. Solo | 155 3.1 Claude Debussy: Syrinx pour flûte seule (1913) – Anastassis Philippakopoulos: song 6 for bass flute or alto flute or flute (2010) Listening to Oneself – Breaths – The Absent You | 156 3.2 Johann Jacob Froberger: Lamentation (Partita in C; FbWV 612) (1654) – Meditation (Partita in D; FbWV 620) (1660) Listening to the Decaying Sound – “avec discretion” | 160

3.3 Istvàn Zelenka: “The trumpet shall sound!” – “Stillstück” (a silent piece) for a cellist, with simultaneous environmental sounds and without an audience (1990) An Activity “per se” in an Open Space | 166 3.4 Antoine Beuger: pour être seul(e), sans réserve for piano (2009) Being Alone: Losing oneself, giving oneself up for lost | 169

4. Duo | 171 4.1 Federico Mompou: Cantar del Alma. Pour Piano et Chant (1951). Text: Saint Jean of the Cross Being Separated in Love | 172 4.2 Jürg Frey: Buch der Räume und Zeiten for two performers (1999) – Jürg Frey: Ohne Titel (two violins) (1995/96) Being There as Well – Unidentifiable Difference | 175 4.3 Ludwig van Beethoven: Violin Sonata no. 10 in G Major op. 96, 2nd movement (Adagio espressivo) (1812) Approaching One Another | 181

5. Trio | 185 5.1 Franz Schubert: Trio no. 2 in E Flat Major D 929 op. 100, 2nd movement (Andante con moto) (1827) Different Fates – Experienced Together | 185 5.2 Arnold Schoenberg: String Trio op. 45 (1946) The Trio-Body in Pulsation: Being three bodies – becoming one body. Remaining only one body? | 190 5.3 Mathias Spahlinger: 128 erfüllte augenblicke. systematisch geordnet, variabel zu spielen. for voice, clarinet and cello (1975) Continuity as Utopia. Emergence of (One’s Own) Systems | 192

6. Quartet | 197 6.1 Ludwig van Beethoven: String Quartet no. 10 in E Flat Major op. 74 (“The Harp”), 1st movement, Introduction Poco Adagio (1809) Being Reliant on One Another in Freedom | 198 6.2 Helmut Lachenmann: Gran Torso. Musik für Streichquartett (Music for String Quartet) (1971/72; rev. 1978) The “right to appear” – Appearing in the Open Space | 202

7. Beyond Borders | 207 7.1 Risk? Hans-Joachim Hespos: seiltanz. szenisches abenteuer (1982) | 208 7.2 Virtuosity? Franz Liszt: Etudes d’exécution transcendante (1826, 1838, 1851) | 210

7.3 Unpredictability? Karlheinz Stockhausen: Spiral für einen Solisten/ for a Soloist (1968) | 214

8. In the “Ark of the Moment” | 217 List of Works | 219 Bibliography | 225

Preface What do we need music for in our lives? “Sound is given. There is sound, there are sounds. It becomes still and quiet. That’s all I know when asked about the nature of composition.”1

Are musical practices forms of life? This question shifts the emphasis from the structure of a composition to the activity of the performers. To a lesser degree the composers and listeners, and to a greater degree the performers, find themselves in a listening situation of doing something and letting something happen. As a performer I am also a listener at the same time. Listening can be an active process, but it also can happen to you—it also can hit you. When talking about performance we focus on the performers’ activities. As soon as silence comes into play (and not only in this case, but in quiet moments it may become more obvious), the situation of being together or of being alone with oneself (for example during the performance of a solo piece) becomes acute, too. As a performer I can drift between activity and letting loose. I can experience that I cannot control everything. The situation opens the door to events and participation. The performers do not only play an instrument or sing, but they also find themselves in a certain situation and expose themselves to this situation. They develop relationships to other players, to people who are present or might even be absent. Istvàn Zelenka, a Suisse composer and performer of Hungarian and Austrian descent, points out a certain attitude of the performers: “The ‘musician’ should, with equal intensity, bring his instrument to life and listen to his environment, or look at it. This sequence of actions (called composition) is intended to promote peacefully attentive viewing, intense listening and reflection as a process of tirelessly asking questions.”2

1 |  E.-M. Houben: Hector Berlioz, 188. 2 |  E.-M. Houben/I. Zelenka: 1 Milieu, 216.

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Therefore, performance includes many types of activity. But it might also include inactivity. This situation becomes just as important as audible and/or visible activities. Let it happen in silence! And during silence let the disappearing sound happen! This attitude means exposing oneself to that which can happen and come to pass in this situation. Antoine Beuger emphasizes the connection between silence and event and considers silence as the calm before the storm or even after the storm.3 He insists on a clear distinction between “being” and “taking place”. An event takes place and afterwards things are different than before: “such a difference can be life changing or of historical significance.”4 This difference can trigger great resonances, it can change an individual life or be of historical significance. “there is silence: speechlessness; absence of images; vanishing of any representations, that might have been effective before, but suddenly obsolete now; loss of concept.”5 In silence we experience our physicality. This is true as well when playing the instrument and when singing, but it is perhaps even more evident in silence. Here everyone is completely present in their own physical existence. Everyone who performs has this existential experience of disappearance firsthand whilst performing. Performing, listening and composing consume time in one’s life. In one’s own life, everyone experiences how they are not alone, but rather how they are always present in the world simultaneously with others. Every musical practice means the experience of a “We”. Even the practice of being on one’s own performing a solo composition (per se) is embedded in commonality. What do we need music for in our lives? When I ask this question, an existential experience is at stake. When Beuger considers silence and events, he does not only refer to long pauses within a piece, but also to the silence before and after the performance. As soon as I leave the concert hall, I walk back into the daily life step by step. When does a musical situation come to an end? This question is not easily to discuss. It is perhaps as complex as the questions: Where is music? Where does sound go to? Anyone who wants to get involved in music can come across the piece; but an encounter only happens temporarily. We can bring the experiences made in musical practice into life and we can be so deeply touched by experiences made in musical practice that these experiences continue to echo in life. Where, then, is the threshold between musical practice and (everyday) life? What do we need music for in our lives? Maybe the question can be refined: Why do we think of the musical practice as a form of life? Together or alone, we do something meaningful for ourselves with sounds; we would like to repeat the actions or the activity. A meaning arises 3 |  A. Beuger/S. Vriezen: Asking questions, trying answers, 36. 4 |  Ibid. 5 |  Ibid.

Preface

for us through the activities and events in their corporeality and sensuality; this meaning does not need to be verbalized. We understand the world and understand each other in non-verbal communication, in meaningful activities focused on repetition. What do we need music for? In posing this question, we can trust in the transparency between music and life. Music could become a form of life and give us something to know about life. We understand something through meaningful performance. How real are musical activities and musical events? Are there two worlds—a world of everyday life and a world of art, of music? Does musical performance take place in a closed-off aesthetic area? Or—looking at the possibility of an “artistic form of life” 6 —do we act once on this side, then once beyond a border between music and life? How real is music? What do we need music for? This question perhaps leads to music figured as “music itself”7 that does not create meaning by signs or concrete sounds, neither by material or structures, nor programmatic and verbal references, but by the presence of people, things and sounds – by relationships and events in a certain situation, in a specific place, at a specific time. * The chapters in Part I follow the paths that lead me to the topic and the investigations. Can we consider composing as composing practices? Can we consider making music as a perception of a practice that transforms a composition into an offer? Following these questions, we can try to encircle the term musical practice. Which overlaps, which focal points would be worth mentioning? How can we discuss the question concerning the border between the world of music and the world of everyday life? How can we talk about experiences, memories and hopes, about encounters and relationships that arise while performing, while dwelling in a special place? Do you have to speak at all? A way to find a common language emerges. The question of intersubjective interpretation leads Alfred Schutz to his portrayals of the lifeworld and meaningful experience as well as to his distinction of “sub-universes”—ideas which open up possibilities of bridging the worlds, especially as Schutz has dedicated himself as a philosopher and sociologist to the subject of “Making Music together”. In view of Simone Mahrenholz’s approach metaphorical speech is presented and reflected. Mahrenholz does not explicitly look at the performers. Nevertheless, her approach contributes to a kind of transparency between the world of music and the (everyday) life world. 6 |  K. Stockhausen: SPIRAL, 136. 7 |  W. Rihm: … zu wissen, 147.

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The chapter “Keys” at the beginning of Part II leads to a description of the physical access to the instrument in order to differentiate heterogeneous playing situations. The following chapters present different constellations of players and different sizes of ensemble: solo, duo, trio, quartet, ensemble of several players or many players, and an orchestra. Here we can find various situations. The concluding two chapters (“Beyond Borders” as well as “In the ‘Ark of the Moment’”8) are intended as overviews. They once again show us specific situations that can arise while performers are making music. * This book was the result of year-long discussions with friends. I would like to thank all of you for your suggestions and ideas. I also want to thank the contributors at the TU Dortmund (Institute of Music and Musicology), who have read the manuscript and contributed to the creation of the illustrations: Andreas Feilen, Gabriel Vishchers and Lucas Badouin. Antoine Beuger and Istvàn Zelenka are among the circle of friends who encouraged me. Antoine Beuger supported me with critical inquiries, discussions and valuable references to literature and music; Istvàn Zelenka participated at the study during many years of exchanging ideas and as co-author of the publications “1 Milieu – ein Buch nicht nur zum Lesen” and “und/oder. 1 Sammlung”. Above all, I want to thank Evan Soni and Jennie Gottschalk for their support. They corrected my translation from German into English, and they helped me with valuable clues. In addition, Evan Soni lent his assistance for the translation of quotes from books in German language.

8 |  “In der Arche des Augenblicks”; see N. Sachs: Fahrt ins Staublose, 50.

F irst Part

1. Access to the Topic 1.1 A M usical S ituation : To do and to le t go The performance of Stones (1968) (from Prose Collection) by Christian Wolff might evoke a situation such as that in a quiet library. Everyone works alone— quiet, busy, absorbed in action: „Make sounds with stones, draw sounds out of stones, using a number of sizes and kinds (and colors); for the most part discretely; sometimes in rapid sequences. For the most part striking stones with stones, but also stones on other surfaces (inside the open head of a drum, for instance) or other than struck (bowed, for instance, or amplified). Do not break anything.”1

Every single performer is on their own and currently amidst all the other performers. The place: a place where you reside. A place to act—but also a place inviting you to be there, to become quiet and silent. The participants find themselves in a specific situation and process, live together for a certain time. They devote themselves to a practice in which they experience meaning, and they want to repeat it. They live in this place within the heart of the whole group, and they express this life amidst all the others by performing. More than communication, this situation is characterized by coincidence. The performers leave space for each other and do not look for a contact. They surrender to a quiet activity and become sensitive to the quiet situation. They perform in the middle of (many) others who are engaged in a similar activity. It is not just the activity “making sounds with stones, out of stones” that characterizes this situation and this togetherness of the participants, but also their being still. Those who are not doing anything are involved in their bodily existence. Interaction processes are not suggested by the score. The lack of a binding communication structure characterizes this special practice. The collection of verbal performance instructions Prose Collection, to which Stones belongs, was written in the years 1968 to 1974. In 1969 Cornelius 1 |  Chr. Wolff: Stones (Prose Collection), in: Cues, 464-81, 470.

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Cardew, Howard Skempton and Michael Parsons initiated the Scratch Orchestra, an orchestra made up of composers and artists of different genres, including amateurs and laymen. The ensemble initially had the purpose that even people without special training could participate in a performance.2 “They [the participants] were musical ‘fringe figures’, so to speak (I do not like to use that term), exceptional people who did not fit in the so-called normal music life; for them this was not the most important thing.”3 Wolff had the idea for Stones on a beach walk: “The origins of Stones, though, was simply this: a day at a stony beach during which I tried out the sounds different stones make struck against one another, and found them (the sounds) surprisingly various, distinctive (and beautiful) in the qualities of their resonances. With that memory I wrote the piece half a year later, and, showed it to Cornelius Cardew, who, smiling, showed me Paragraph 1 of The Great Learning, which he was just working on, and which includes the chorus members’ use of stones to improvise sound gestures guided by the shapes of Chinese characters, from the Confucian text his piece was setting. He had gotten the idea from the use of tuned stone slabs in classical Chinese music.”4

A performance of Stones can give the performer the experience of being one of many, one of many others. The practice is characterized by a place of common action and a time spent together; experiences are made that interconnect with the life experiences of each individual participant. In a musical situation like this, one will create a world that belongs to us and can become part of our life. Thus, not one or the other interpretation of a composition is worked out, but—addressing a composition—the question must be asked: Which practice do you provide?

1.2 M usic : To what end is it good? — F aced with … WARUM AUCH? Als nun ein solcher klarer Tag hastig wieder kam, sprach er voll ruhiger, wahrer Entschlossenheit langsam: Nun soll es anders sein, 2 |  Chr. Wolff: Stones (1968), Program Note, in: Cues, 494-97, 494. 3 |  Chr. Wolff, in: E.-M. Houben: immer wieder anders, 27. 4 |  Chr. Wolff: Stones (1968), Program Note, 494, 496; see Chr. Wolff: What Is Our Work? On experimental music now, in: Cues, 210-31, 212.

1. Access to the Topic ich stürze mich in den Kampf hinein; ich will gleich so vielen andern aus der Welt tragen helfen das Leid, will leiden und wandern, bis das Volk befreit. Will nie mehr müde mich niederlegen; es soll etwas geschehen; da überkam ihn ein Erwägen, ein Schlummer: ach, laß doch das.

Robert Walser’s poem5 shows the pain in view of the suffering in the world —and the slowly arising decision to finally get over injustice and suffering. “And it must occur …” But considering the struggle and pain this decision is disturbed by a sudden slumber: “Oh, just stop that!” Why should there be music? This question determines the starting point of all subsequent considerations. “Warum auch?” “Why at all?” Robert Walser’s poem relates to an interest in the question of the status and character of musical practice if I like to read it in this way. In addition to the openness of the conclusion, an extension of the last sentence is conceivable: “Oh, stop that.” “Oh, let it be.” “Oh, let it happen.”6 The word “geschehen”, “to happen” (“something should happen”), is isolated and placed as the first word in the penultimate line. There is always reason enough to intervene, to do something with “firm resolve” – and there is always the chance for letting it happen. The poem is fluctuating between two standpoints. A self-moderation is to be heard, a common modesty. The poem is not a call to do nothing, it does not say to stop doing anything. Rather, it is situated between a will to change and a longing that does not express passivity but carries on a yearning and a hope—hope that a practice could bring change. The poem is moving between the desire for something to happen (in the face of the suffering, of the injustice in the world) and the hope for change. Thus, the poem traverses the threshold between actively doing something and letting it be. When faced with what simply just happens, the practitioners are driven to action. They say: We follow practices when faced with existential situations and feelings, when faced with the state of the world, with wars and famines, with concrete fears. What happened in the past? We look at a field of disasters. Walter Benjamin, inspired by a picture of Paul Klee (Angelus Novus), described the “angel of history”, who walks backwards and, facing the past, looks at a story

5 |  R. Walser: Die Gedichte, 9. 6 |  See E.-M. Houben/I. Zelenka: und/oder – 1 Sammlung, 118.

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full of disasters. The angel cannot put together the ruins, he cannot heal the wounds. A storm blows from Paradise and drives him inexorably: “There is a picture by Klee called Angelus Novus. It shows an angel who seems about to move away from something he stares at. His eyes are wide, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how the angel of history must look. His face is turned toward the past. Where a chain of events appears before us, he sees one single catastrophe, which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it at his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken from the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise and has got caught in his wings; it is so strong that the angel can no longer close them. This storm drives him irresistibly into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows towards the sky. What we call progress is this storm.”7

Why should there be music? Walser’s poem inspires those who look at the musical practice to ask more questions. Questions concerning the structure of a composition or the quality of a specific interpretation do not go far enough when speaking about musical practice. Music as an Existential Experience8 stimulates questions concerning the musical practice, which could make us sensitive to longings and hopes, to all the precious moments in which the gaze into realities and opportunities may occur: That’s how we are, how we could be, too. Life could be like that. Helmut Lachenmann traces the meaning of music to the power of pointing out further realities and possibilities: “Music only gains meaning by pointing beyond its own (musical) structure to structures and contexts, that is to say, to realities and possibilities around us and in ourselves.”9 “I cannot see any other meaning of music than to point beyond the experience of listening and beyond the own structure to structures, that is, to realities, and that is, to possibilities around us and in ourselves.”10 But—thinking of uprisings against dictatorships, revolutions, global climate protection, curbing hunger in the world, sensitization to injustice: Which 7 |  W. Benjamin: On the Concept of History, 392; emphasis in original. “The reference is to Paul Klee’s ink-wash drawing Angelus Novus (1920), which Benjamin owned for a time.” Ibid., 399 (note 13). 8 |  See H. Lachenmann: Musik als existentielle Erfahrung. “Musik als existentielle Erfahrung – Music as an Existential Experience – is the title of his collected writings (1996) and may be regarded as Lachenmann’s artistic principle”. Helmut Lachenmann’s 80th Birthday. Nothing is given; emphasis in original. https://www.goethe.de/en/kul/ mus/20657996.html; 15.03.2018. 9 |  H. Lachenmann: Vier Grundbestimmungen des Musikhörens, 62. 10 |  H. Lachenmann: Nono, Webern, Mozart, Boulez, 278.

1. Access to the Topic

power, which social energy could musical practice have? Lachenmann warns of the confidence in one’s own strength and power; he warns for a relapse into the 19th century, where one saw the artist as a kind of prophet in the sense of the Wagnerian genius and expression cult.11 And he adds: “Karl Kraus, who understood this, called such undertakings in relation to Hitler’s seizure of power ‘spitting into the crater’.”12 Perhaps we could ask in a different way: What is the meaning of a musical practice for us in view of a certain world situation? Can we find inspiration by musical practice? Do we find affirmation by musical practice? Musical practice wants to inspire people – to do what? For what do we stand up? What do we affirm? Of what do we want to remind each other? What are we hoping for? In his confrontation with John Cage concerning Cage’s idea of “art identified with life”, Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht writes: “Isn’t art precisely art because it is allowed to be itself? On the other hand, isn’t the utopian idea of art-identifiedwith-life separate from life precisely because life has yet to change?”13 Music! To what end is it good? This question implies the idea of a relationship between the everyday life world (including world events) and the world of musical practice and does not exclude the discussion about power and impotence of musical practice. Is it possible to consider the world of everyday life and the world of musical practice separately from each other? How are they connected to each other? Can we observe mutual relations? These questions will accompany the study of musical practice. At this point, however, it becomes clear that the question of the purpose of a musical practice cannot be the question of its expediency. Musical practice is not an activity to achieve or to create something, but an activity that remains without a definitive conclusion, that remains open to the future.

1.3 I nventing /F inding P r actices Cornelius Cardew: Sextet — The Tiger’s Mind (1967) Cornelius Cardew is interested in social situations and in pursuing the following questions: What happens among people? What is being done? What is to be done? He tells a story that picks up on different roles; the performers can take on roles that they feel comfortable with and that fit into certain social structures. With this composition Cardew invites us to develop the plot in different possible directions.

11 |  H. Lachenmann: Komponieren am Krater, 3. 12 |  Ibid.; see K. Kraus: Die Dritte Walpurgisnacht, 10. 13 |  H. H. Eggebrecht: Understanding Music, 130.

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Musical Practice as a Form of Life “Daypiece The tiger fights the mind that loves the circle that traps the tiger. The circle is perfect and outside time. The wind blows dust in tiger’s eyes. Amy reflects, relaxes with her mind, which puts out buds (emulates the tree). Amy jumps through the circle and comforts the tiger. The tiger sleeps in the tree. High wind. Amy climbs the tree, which groans in the wind and succumbs. The tiger burns. Nightpiece The tiger burns and sniffs the wind for news. He storms at the circle; if inside to get out, if outside to get in. Amy sleeps while the tiger hunts. She dreams of the wind, which then comes and wakes her. The tree trips Amy in the dark and in her fall, she recognizes her mind. The mind, rocked by the wind tittering in the leaves of the tree, and strangled by the circle, goes on the nod. The circle is trying to teach its secrets to the tree. The tree laughs at the mind and at the tiger fighting it.”14

The score carries the hope of execution as a “continuous process”: “Interpretation of this piece is to be viewed hopefully as a continuous process.”15 This focuses on the practice of the performers who expose themselves to different situations. A transparency between the aesthetic world and the everyday world has also come into view. Further notes: The two parts “Daypiece” and “Nightpiece” should be performed on varying occasions, and the performer is recommended to memorize the text; new actions and situations not explicitly mentioned may be added; even new texts could – after some experience with the performance – arise; even the number of participants (in the sextet it is Amy as a person, the tiger as an animal, the tree, the wind, the circle and the mind) can increase or decrease. The notes regarding the characteristics of the six are to be understood according to the score as follows: “The following notes on the six characters are not limiting or definitive. They are intended primarily to encourage and assist prospective performers in the assumption of their roles.”16 So, this is a composition which defines itself as unfinished and wants to inspire processes; which encourages people to develop relationships and to realize those relationships during a performance.17 One of Cardew’s most well-known compositions is The Great Learning, the seven “paragraphs” that originated between 1968 and 1970. Each one is written for a specific cast; it is always a relatively large group of performers, and some of them are untrained musicians. The piece of music and social processes mingle.

14 |  C. Cardew: Sextet – The Tiger’s Mind, score, 1. © Peters Edition Ltd, London. With kind permission of C. F. Peters Ltd & Co. KG, Leipzig. 15 |  Ibid., 2. 16 |  Ibid. 17 |  See Beatrice Gibson’s film project.

1. Access to the Topic

Istvàn Zelenka: “und an 5 frei gewählten aufeinander folgenden Tagen” — für 1 Pianistinten 18 (2008) Istvàn Zelenka proposes a specific practice with each new composition. With the following composition the performance is completely merged with the everyday life of the performer.19 The full-length title is: “und an 5 frei gewählten aufeinander folgenden Tagen, zu 5 unterschiedlichen, eigenständig bestimmten Tageszeiten zwischen Frühmorgen und Spätabend, spielen Sie per se pro Tag je eine der 5 Sequenzen dieser Komposition mit beliebiger Reihenfolge der einzelnen Seiten” [and on 5 freely selected consecutive days, at 5 different, independently determined times of the day between early morning and late evening, you play per se per day one of the 5 sequences of this composition – with the single pages in no particular order]. Fig. 01: Istvàn Zelenka: “und an 5 frei gewählten aufeinander folgenden Tagen…” für 1 Pianistinten (2008) (one sequence)

© Istvàn Zelenka. Manuscript. With kind permission of Istvàn Zelenka.

18 |  Istvàn Zelenka invented this word that combines (in German) the male and female form (for 1 pianist). 19 |  See E.-M. Houben/I. Zelenka: 1 Milieu, 125-30.

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The five sequences, which can be played in free order over the course of five days, last 20 minutes and 20 seconds respectively, and they are played with a stopwatch. The number of sounds varies considerably: one sequence consists of seven sounds, one of five sounds, one of three sounds, one of two sounds, and one consists only of a single sound (see Fig. 01). Anyone who performs this composition falls into a special activity. The performer does not have rehearsals, does not aim at a performance. The repetition belongs to the performance, and this practice is inscribed in the title. You maintain this practice during “5 freely selected consecutive days, at 5 different, independently determined times of the day between early morning and late evening”. The repetition creates continuity. The performance of this composition is interrupted by all kinds of (everyday) business, but not disturbed or even stopped. The everyday life and the musical practice form a unity. Each time you play on your own; you abandon yourself to the performance of the selected sequence.

Antoine Beuger: gentle traces of transient being for 10 players (2016) Antoine Beuger has, so far, written four compositions accompanied by a text which describes in each case a practice. The author of these texts is a fictional person named RN. These texts are intended for the performers; an audience is not necessarily acquainted. The four pieces in chronological order are desert into dwelling place for seven players (2014), modes of dispossession, levels of affinity for string quartet (2014), … of being numerous for a number of players (2015), and gentle traces of transient being for 10 players (2016). The score of gentle traces of transient being also refers to the fictional source: “this piece is strongly inspired by (if not an attempt to reconstruct) a musical practice called GENTLE TRACES OF TRANSIENT BEING, hitherto unknown, but documented in ‘The memories of RN’.”20 “The memories of RN” is a text that belongs to the score and that gives the performer references for performance practice. It can hardly be accommodated in a conventional performance instruction because still more attitudes of playing and hearing, situations, and interactions are described. In gentle traces of transient being the practice of playing and singing small, inconspicuous phrases is followed. At the beginning there were – according to the fictitious text from “The memories of RN” – only a few who joined in (three of them are mentioned). Over time more and more people (up to ten) took part. “Our phrases were nothing special, not at all meant to be surprising or impressive. Just a few tones, just occurring, just little moments, disappearing as gently as they appeared. 20 |  A. Beuger: gentle traces, score.

1. Access to the Topic Humble phrases, nothing grand or deliberately novel. The charm, the beauty, the grace of these ephemeral moments, of these modest phrases, was only in their transient being, in their passing. Their beauty was in their humility: the less they would insist on permanence, the more their passing would be touching. A non-insisting, short-lived existence, diffusing grace, bestowing beauty, only by passing through our garden.”21

The performers, dwelling in a quiet room, are silent most of the time and become listeners: “Each of us would most of the time just be silent and listen.”22 The score contains several pages that can be played in freely chosen amounts. Each page consists of five phrases, each phrase giving either one or two or three players the opportunity to sing or to play one or two or three or four notes, but no more. The pitches and durations are free; all sounds enter freely. For ten performers who sing or play an instrument, seven, eight or nine remain silent per phrase. Fig. 02: Antoine Beuger: gentle traces of transient being for 10 players (2016), 5

© edition wandelweiser. ew01.177. With kind permission of edition wandelweiser, Haan 2016.

21 |  Ibid. 22 |  Ibid.

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The illustration shows that the first phrase gives player 5 an opportunity to play a tone; in the second phrase, player 1 takes three tones, player 2 one tone, player 3 four tones; in the third phrase, players 6, 9 and 10 play: one tone, one tone, three tones – and so on (see Fig. 02). This composition is an exercise in attention for the transitory and inconspicuous things—a peace practice, as Gisela Nauck describes: “Music on the edges of perception shows the value of such small, inconspicuous humble things [...]. Such fundamentally different compositional approaches and modes of action decisively change what music can be – and affect. Gestures of aggression, threat, violence or domination are not possible at all.”23

A performance of gentle traces of transient being becomes a reality in which “small, inconspicuous humble things” may have their place (“Just a few tones, just occurring, just little moments” – as it is described in the “memories of RN”). This musical reality can arise again and again – because practice means to do something repeatedly. The repetition develops a practice.

Brian Ferneyhough: Time and Motion Study II for Solo ’Cello and Electronics (1973-1976) The decision to play this composition is the decision for a very specific practice. The performer knows that he wants to drive himself into a corner in which a profit, a surplus is to be achieved. He sets himself apart from this process— with the desire to build up a subjectivity that meets the demands of the piece, withstands the requirements of the piece. Ferneyhough points out the importance of the title of a composition.24 Here the title refers to research on the efficiency of factory work. Work processes were examined to increase efficiency and to optimize work processes. Detailed studies of production processes to optimize production go back to Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856-1915) (Taylorism). “Electric chair music”: The unofficial subtitle of the composition is a first indication of the extraordinary pressure to which the performer is exposed. The player is surrounded by microphones, and one is even attached to a band around the neck. There is a detailed plan for the installation of electronic devices (“Electronic Circuit Plan”): “At least two assis-

23 |  G. Nauck: „Es darf keine Siege mehr geben…“, 118. 24 |  Optic Nerve_Music_Ferneyhough_2 Electric Chair Music. A documentary on Brian Ferneyhough’s avant-garde composition ‘Time & Motion Study II’ for cello & electronics. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sykB4znEk2Q; 21.11.2016.

1. Access to the Topic

tants are required for the electronics, preferably in the direct field of vision of soloist. A third assistant could be useful for the regulation of overall balance.”25 The score is intentionally overloaded with instructions that can never be completely followed. Verbal hints make an additional offer: “schizophrenic: L. H. [left hand] hysterical. R. H. [right hand] as though sleepwalking”, “suddenly withdrawn, childlike: becoming increasingly reflective”, “like exploding fireworks”, “suddenly extremely aggressive”, “like machine-gun fire”. Towards the end (see Fig. 03): “with the utmost imaginable degree of violence”.26 Fig. 03: Brian Ferneyhough: Time and Motion Study II for Solo ’Cello and Electronics (1973-1976), 19

© Peters Edition Ltd, London. With kind permission of C.F. Peters Ltd & Co. KG, Leipzig.

At the end the player collapses: “After suddenly ceasing his frenetic playing activity the cellist should ‘freeze’ – completely motionless – in his final playing position. This is held for the entire length of the pause. In a live performance the electronic equipment is turned off at the end of the pause with an audible ‘click’ in the loudspeakers. This is the signal for the cellist to ‘collapse’ from his rigid posture, as though also ‘switched off’. In a recorded performance the 8’’-pause is retained, but the click omitted.”27

The performer is said to collapse after audibly turning off the electronic devices – “as though he had been ‘turned off’”. Is this an “Etude d’exécution transcendante”28, so as an execution? Is this a collapse – as-if? – or a real one? After the execution, the player will leave the podium without any damage to himself. What happened? 25 |  B. Ferneyhough, Time and Motion Study II, score. 26 |  Ibid., 4, 7, 8, 9, 16, 19. 27 |  Ibid., 19. 28 |  Etudes d’exécution transcendante: Title of one of Liszt’s piano works.

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And why at all? In the last quarter, for example, there is a wide-ranging adagio: “Gran’ adagio: passionate dedication and self-transcendence.”29 This indication of “self-transgression” stands for many actions and indicates their ultimate direction. Nearly all of Ferneyhough’s compositions suggest practices that may lead to transgression (of one’s own limits, the possibilities known to date). They are invitations to transcend.30 The notation is a “labyrinth”, an “area of ​​struggle”; the composition wants to be an “enormous challenge”. The performer is asked “to work harder”.31 Ferneyhough even speaks in the documentary of “a sort of exhilarating emersion in total negation which produces a sort of sublimity”32. If this “total negation” does not really take place, but apparently less seriously takes place only in the music, if the call to almost unimaginable “violence” (“with the utmost imaginable degree of violence”) is not real, but (unfortunately and rather ironically) is meant only musically, if this death on the stage (“as though also ‘switched off’”) does not really happen, but is mimicked, is then a transgression, in case it might happen, not real as well? Just music?

1.4 E xercises What could “music as an existential experience” (Helmut Lachenmann) mean? As the main idea for the attempt to describe this, the musical “structure” could be identified. The musical structure encourages one to discover realities and possibilities in our everyday life; we gain a perspective which looks beyond the musical structure itself. Using musical examples of different cultural and historical contexts, Lachenmann explains what he means with “musical structure”, “structure sound”, and “sound structure”. The “structure” unfolds as a sound process during a certain period of time, in which even a whole composition or a whole movement could be perceived. This structure—while unfolding—is “scanned” by the listener while listening. Lachenmann uses the metaphor “scanning” with one’s ear; during this process sound and form are conveyed.33 While explaining several scores, Lachenmann also gets into the first movement of Beethoven’s String Quartet no. 10 in E Flat Major op. 74, the so-called

29 |  B. Ferneyhough, Time and Motion Study II, score, 16. 30 |  The title of Ferneyhough’s composition Etudes Transcendantales for soprano and chamber ensemble (1982-1985) already reflects a practice like this. 31 |  Optic Nerve_Music_Ferneyhough_2 Electric Chair Music. 32 |  Ibid. 33 |  H. Lachenmann: Klangtypen der Neuen Musik, 123.

1. Access to the Topic

“Harp Quartet”.34 He begins with the Allegro (bars 25 et seq.), and points out a familiar perspective, which sheds a new light on the quartet movement. Sounds redefine themselves in perception through the context in which they are posed. Lachenmann emphasizes the importance of the “context” and the “relationships” between the sounds.35 In this way, he traces the structures of music as reflected in a score and as “scanned” by the listener. Another view on the same piece becomes possible if we look at the performers’ activities. After all, it is the performer who develops relationships, transforming the musical context into something resounding. Correlation arises —transient though resonant. Music becomes “existential experience” first for the players. Fig. 04a: Ludwig van Beethoven: String Quartet no. 10 in E Flat Major op. 74, 1st movement, bars 125-38

34 |  H. Lachenmann: Hören ist wehrlos – ohne Hören, 118-21. 35 |  Ibid., 118.

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In Beethoven’s quartet many places of interaction and activities can be discovered. Different places in the quartet could be assigned special exercises from the “Exercises for String Quartet” by Mogens Heimann. Heimann focuses on the string quartet in this book of exercises, and his training suggestions are regarding intonation (in interplay with chords, with leading tones, in modulations), rhythmic precision, dynamic gradations, rhythm in relation to the notation of the durations, phrasing, intonation, and tempo. From this point of view, the transition into the recapitulation in Beethoven’s “Harp Quartet” (see Fig. 04a) could be an exercise in interplay for violin 1, viola and cello—as if one single instrument were playing (see Fig. 04b) (“Unity of Execution“): “no break, should be played as one instrument“36, “Continuity“37. Fig. 04b: Mogens Heimann: Exercises for String Quartet, 16

You can find another place corresponding to Heimann’s book of exercises in the development. The accents (sforzato; sf) of the 2nd violin, viola, and cello are complementary to the accents of the 1st violin (see Fig. 05a). Heimann’s “Exercises” offer a practice whereby individual sounds emerge dynamically (see Fig. 05b).

36 |  M. Heimann: Exercises for String Quartet, 16-7. 37 |  Ibid., 18.

1. Access to the Topic

Fig. 05a: Ludwig van Beethoven: String Quartet no. 10 in E Flat Major op. 74, 1st movement, bars 94-5

Fig. 05b: Mogens Heimann: Exercises for String Quartet, 23

Another exercise could be the tonal repetition with augmented durations at the end of the exposition (see Fig. 06a). We found a quarter pulse at the beginning in the main theme; here we have the slowing of the repetition figure into half and whole pulse. Heimann also offers exercises for such and for similar forms of coordination, for example a repetition, exercised first with a metronome, then without (see Fig. 06b): Fig. 06a: Ludwig van Beethoven: String Quartet no. 10 in E Flat Major op. 74, 1st movement, bars 74-7

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Fig. 06b: Mogens Heimann: Exercises for String Quartet, 24

Could every exercise be a composition? Conversely, it may be worth considering Beethoven’s composition a compilation of subtle exercises. Mogens Heimann’s book of exercises was edited by Hans Erik Deckert, who, himself a cellist, promotes the performance of chamber music and accordingly offers seminars for the study of chamber music literature (from the duo to the larger ensemble). These seminars address not only professional musicians but also lay people and students; listeners are welcome. Deckert’s “Mensch und Musik” contains essays and lectures (1981-2015), gives an insight into the author’s work and shows how the author regards chamber music as “teamwork on a musical basis”38. Deckert managed music workshops in business enterprises for interested musical laymen who wanted to carry their experiences—gained during musical performances—into everyday working life. The octet in F major D 803 op. posthumously 166 (1824) by Franz Schubert for example offers different ways of interaction: “What has to be understood to be the chamber music processes? Is there someone around taking over leadership? Who is communicating the impact for jointly making music? Does playing in a group lead to become anonymous? The answer is that each member in a group is in charge of the same responsibility. Each member has permanently to be prepared to either take over leadership and to be led. It is the art of a permanent give and take. When is it a give, when is it a take? It is solely the musical conditions that decide on the distribution of the roles and the permanent change of the roles. It is my role as a music instructor to prove these conditions in music using the 1 st movement of the Schubert octet as an example.”39

Deckert describes the beginning of the Allegro movement (bars 19-31): “A give and take within a continuous stream—a ‘pingpong’ on a musical level is es38 |  H. E. Deckert: Mensch und Musik, 109-17. The chapter “Teamwork on a Musical Basis” has been published separately. 39 |  H. E. Deckert: Teamwork on a Musical Basis, 1.

1. Access to the Topic

tablished! This is again a reflection of human cooperation.”40 He is interested in the fact that performers and participants can experience the emergence of social relationships; the listeners are also involved as participants, they can also experience the “social dimension”41 of music. Communities do not arise despite, but precisely because of the diversity of all individuals: “experienced differentiation within the development of communities!”42 In view of this idea and looking back on Heimann’s “Exercises”, again and somewhat pointed, we ask the question of this approach: Could Beethoven’s Quartet, as a collection of various exercises, provide us with opportunities for a promising practice?

1.5 U seful? N otation and the R e alit y of the P erformance To which practice does a composition open? Does this practice provide us with certain opportunities, occasions? Music, for example the Aria “Be Silent to the Lord” from Felix Mendelssohn’s Oratorio Elijah, may become less a concert performance, but rather part of a practice of faith, may become a thoughtful, humble, singing prayer. A certain practice can change; a comparison of different practices can show this. As exercises may provide the performers with opportunities for a musical practice, the musical practice and the exercises are closely connected. But it seems to be necessary to make distinctions between the musical practice and the exercise. The musical practice does not mean rehearsal (as exercises do)— aiming at a final product. The musical practice means (regular) exertion as an exercise that insists on repetition. The musical practice is part of the everyday life. The musical practice must be distinguished from the interpretation. You can hear the phrase “Dona nobis pacem” (Missa per Pace) by Wojciech Kilar. The choir OMNIA & Žilina Mixed Choir will sing under the direction of Monika Bažíková.43 The performance creates a special situation; the type of attention is changing on the part of the listeners. What is happening now in the prayer for peace? This practice affects everyone, regardless of personal attitudes 40 |  Ibid., 2. 41 |  Ibid. 42 |  Ibid. 43 |  Doctorate Concert of Monika Bažíková. 3th March 2011, Bytča - Wedding Palace. Choir: OMNIA & Žilina Mixed Choir. Conductor: Monika Bažíková. Camera: Pavol Sestrenek, Branislav Valko. Sound: Miroslav Valovič. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=tCD5xaIfEvQ; 03.11.2016.

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to questions of faith. They are not negotiated here, nor the quality, complexity or modernity of the composition, nor the nature or quality of the interpretation. What matters? The request for peace shows the yearning of a “needy community”44 – and everyone is equally in need. In the process of performing, the participants and the performers as well as the listeners change. They become more thoughtful, quieter. A change can be observed. This process of change is not the result of a special interpretation of the composition, but part of the musical practice. The notation is not the music: This phrase can often be heard. But even the performance alone may not (yet) be the music. Maybe the music becomes the practice to which a piece of music invites us. A performance becomes an advocacy for this practice. Does it make a difference for the audience when the accent is so decidedly shifted to the performers? An audience can be present, but not be the addressee. Practice has no addressee, but participants. The perspective from the field of practice develops a completely different assessment of listeners, of audience. Not an audience is addressed, but a participant; this community is also present when a composition is performed. It can be clearly seen and felt whether and how a performer or several performers turn to an audience. The musical negotiation without turning to an audience sounds quite different, as if an audience is made the addressee. Listeners can become participants through empathy; they take part in posing questions: What do we confirm by this practice? What do we advocate for by this practice? Why is this practice important to us? Questions like these transform composers, performers and listeners; they evoke a conspired community. The “usefulness”45 (Jürg Frey: “Brauchbarkeit”) of a composition is discussed. This “usefulness” proves to be the potential of a composition. In the sense of musical practice, this potential is activated during the performance. Jürg Frey’s piano piece 2 (2001) for example requires the courage to do something without knowing exactly what will come out of it. The notation and the sound reality cannot be reconciled easily. Uncertainty about the tempo at the beginning might create disorientation. The thirds in the second tempo section are hardly recognizable. These very low sounds take a long time to fade away. For the performer the question arises: How tender and soft or how strong can the attack be in order to sustain the sound until the next one has to be played? It is extremely difficult to match the exact strength of the attack; it is questionable whether this accuracy exists at all (see Fig. 07).

44 |  See R. Wagner: Oper und Drama. Dritter Theil, 103. 45 |  Jürg Frey, Krefeld, 10.10.2001.

1. Access to the Topic

Fig. 07: Jürg Frey: klavierstück 2, beginning

© edition wandelweiser. ew02.069. With kind permission of edition wandelweiser, Haan 2001.

The result is different from the notation. The performers follow a practice of asking questions, exposing themselves to the decay of the sounds. The performance of music becomes a celebration of ephemerality. A paradoxical situation: I intend to play a certain sound but cannot decide if the resulting sound will be the one that I intend to play. The inherent possibility for this existential situation is one of the various moments that constitute the usefulness of this piano piece. Beethoven’s or Schubert’s piano sonatas may also provide us with the opportunity for a special practice, perhaps even specifically for the practice of questioning. They may also show their usefulness in the sense that has evolved here. Epochal boundaries, or cultural differences lose importance in this issue. The subject now is all about offers for a practice. A composition is not (only) examined by questions like the following: Which structure can be found? Which culturalhistorical context can be important? Which reception can be noticed? Which interpretation seems to be appropriate? But we ask: In what kind of situations do the performers find themselves? Which processes are they exposed to? Which relationships do they develop with each other? Performers and listeners indulge in a practice in which they trust, finding something that can explain the meaning of their lives. The essence of the music becomes what happens to and between the performers. This, in turn, can arouse empathy in the listeners, who then allow themselves to be touched by the event and to be drawn into it.

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2. Musical Practice 2.1 A pproach to the Term . F ocal P oints , I ntersections “Magical transaction”! (Vladimir Jankélévitch) Vladimir Jankélévitch compares “Saying” and “Doing” as two different kinds of an approach to music. The act of “Doing” can include many things: composing, interpreting, performing, staging, playing, singing as well as listening. When Jankélévitch speaks of “Saying,” he considers the message of music (for example a certain program), but also the talk about music. In speechlessness —while simply “Doing”—the magic of making music and listening unfolds. The processualism of music is important to him: Music always arises only in the process of music making. The ephemeral nature of music makes up the essence of music, recreating its ephemeral existence during the “magical transaction” of performance: “The Charm’s artwork — the ‚inexpressive Espressivo’ — is not an act of Saying. Rather, it is an act of Doing […], and in this regard, music is similar to the poetic act. […] Making is of an entirely different order from Saying. Composing music, playing it, and singing it; or even hearing it in recreating it — are these not three modes of doing, three attitudes that are drastic, not gnostic, not of the hermeneutic order of knowledge? The composer, the performer as active re-creator, and the listener as fictive re-creator all participate together in a sort of magical transaction. The performer works with the first member of this trio, causing the work to come into being as vibrating air during a certain elapsed time; the listener, the tertiary re-creator, works in imagination with the first two, making half-sketched gestures.”1

Jankélévitch includes composers, performers and listeners who engage in the “magic transaction”. He creates the image of a conspiratorial community, and calls the participants, who are involved in the process, “re-creators”2 . 1 | V. Jankélévitch: music and the ineffable, 77. 2 | Ibid.

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The essence of music is less a “Saying”, but a “Doing”: “Music has this in common with poetry, and love, and even with duty: music is not made to be spoken of, but for one to do; it is not made to be said, but to be ‘played.’ No. Music was not invented to be talked about.”3

“Musicking”? (Christopher Small) What is music? If you follow Christopher Small’s journey through his inspiring book “Musicking”, this question can be answered in the following way: “There is no such thing as music. Music is not a thing at all but an activity, something that people do.”4 Music only exists as an activity. Small explains that a one-sided view of Western art music, in conjunction with the development of the musical work, led to equating the composition with music and asking about its meaning.5 Especially in the context of historians and musicologists of the 80s (here Small is definitely referring to Carl Dahlhaus6), the performance became only a “medium”, transporting the musical work to the listeners: “The more transparent the medium the better.”7 Some even considered the notation to be the truly important part, since any performance could only achieve an approximation of the written notation anyway. According to people of this school of thought, the attribution of a special function alters the character of performance. At this point, the distinction between interpretation and practice becomes evident: “[P]erformance does not exist in order to present musical works, but rather, musical works exist in order to give performers something to perform.”8 The question of the significance of music is linked to the concept of the work and the associated notation of music. In musical activity this question is a wasted one, since no object (work) is up for discussion, but a meaningful activity is exercised: “The fundamental nature and meaning of music lie not in objects, not in musical works at all, but in action, in what people do. It is only by understanding what people do as they take part in a musical act that we can hope to understand its nature and the function it fulfills in human life. Whatever that function may be, I am certain, first, that to take part in a music act is of central importance to our very humaneness, as important as 3 | Ibid., 78-9; emphasis in original. 4 | Chr. Small: Musicking, 2. 5 | Ibid., 3. 6 | C. Dahlhaus: Foundations of Music History. Translated by J. B. Robinson, Cambridge and London: Cambridge University Press 1983. 7 | Chr. Small: Musicking, 4 et seq. 8 | Ibid., 8.

2. Musical Practice taking part in the act of speech, which it so resembles (but from which it also differs in important ways), and second, that everyone, every normally endowed human being, is born with the gift of music no less than with the gift of speech.”9

According to Small, participation becomes vitally important—it is very closely linked to human life, indeed part of our humanity. Originating from the noun “music” Small goes so far as to prefer the verb “to music”, which is possible in English, but generally too weak for him. The verb then leads him to the participle or gerund form: “musicking”. The verb “to music” also expresses more to him than making music – it offers a comprehensive context: “To music is to take part, in any capacity, in a musical performance, whether by performing, by listening, by rehearsing or practicing, by providing material for performance (what is called composing), or by dancing.”10

Small expands the community of people involved in “musicking” (composers, performers, listeners) to many more people who participate in a performance. He includes ticket vendors, door openers, cleaning crews. In this sense “Musicking” becomes a political issue as a public event.11 Place, time, circumstances of performance become important for the activities of the people: “What does it mean when this performance (of this work) takes place at this time, in this place, with these participants? Or to put it more simply, we can ask of the performance, any performance anywhere and at any time: What’s really going on here?”12

Referring to performance at a certain place, at a certain time, with these and no other participants, Small implicitly mentions the special kind of physicality associated with the practice. “What’s really going on here?” What is actually happening here? Another important aspect might be that each participant is not only active, but is also involved in an event, even being merely present and contributing (almost) nothing (externally visible or audible). To do and to be, to do and to let things be—activity and apparent inactivity—permeate one another and thus they can only be insufficiently described by a dualistic concept (activity–passivity).

9 | Ibid. 10 | Ibid., 9. 11 | See P. Uhden: Musik als Praxis, 94. 12 | Chr. Small: Musicking, 10; emphasis in original.

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“Realness” (Erika Fischer-Lichte) — “Materializing of Possibilities” (Judith Butler) Erika Fischer-Lichte emphasizes the reference to reality produced by performative acts: “In the 1990s, a shift in focus occurred, favoring the – hitherto largely ignored – performative traits of culture. Cultural studies increasingly employed this independent (practical) frame of reference for the analysis of existing or potential realities and acknowledged the specific ‘realness’ of cultural activities and events, which lay beyond the grasp of traditional text models.”13

“Analysis of existing or potential realities”? “Realness of cultural activities and events”? Fischer-Lichte does not aim to replace popular aesthetics but tries to add the “aesthetics of the performative” for the purpose of unfolding a wide space of possibilities for all the arts.14 Due to the discussion of musical practice in particular it seems to be important that Fischer-Lichte emphasizes “the constantly shifting relationship between the aesthetic and the non-aesthetic, art and non-art”.15 Judith Butler’s essay “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution” (1988) offered a new perspective on the genesis of identity emerging in processes of embodiment. It focuses on gender research: “My task, then, is to examine in what ways gender is constructed through specific corporeal acts, and what possibilities exist for the cultural transformation of gender through such acts.”16

Acts themselves and “possibilities for transformation” are bound to specific historical situations, to “historical conventions”. Butler distinguishes between being and doing: “One is not simply a body, but, in some very key sense, one does one’s body […]. As an intentionally organized materiality, the body is always an embodying of possibilities both conditioned and circumscribed by historical convention. In other words, the body is a historical situation, as Beauvoir has claimed, and is a manner of doing, dramatizing, and reproducing a historical situation.”17 13 | E. Fischer-Lichte: The Transformative Power of Performance, 26. 14 | Ibid., 181. 15 | Ibid., 182. 16 | J. Butler: Performative Acts and Gender Constitution, 272. 17 | Ibid.; emphasis in original. See E. Fischer-Lichte: The Transformative Power, 27.

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Therefore, the embodiment is determined by historical situations and conventions; on the other hand, these situations and conventions can, by means of repetitions of specific acts, be reproduced or transformed. Transparency between art and life, between musical performance and performative act in everyday life comes into the focus in a new way. Jennifer Gebske identifies differences and commonalities in Fischer-Lichte’s and Butler’s “performativity concepts”. According to Gebske, Butler puts an emphasis on the “social process of gender performance”18 outside of aesthetic acts. However, she also uses the “concepts of execution, performance, production and action in conjunction with performativity.”19 Further parallels seem to be: “Both [FischerLichte and Butler] are based on collaboratively produced processes. They do not consider states, but developments. It is not about ‘being’ but rather ‘becoming’.”20 It should be added that Fischer-Lichte also exemplifies the processes of individual performers, while Butler is perhaps even more decisively oriented towards collaborative actions in everyday life. Most differentiating seems to be that “Fischer-Lichte, in contrast to Butler, is not mainly concerned with everyday social processes [...], but with performances that can be characterized as aesthetic and creative processes. [...] This is a point of friction.”21 Perhaps this “point of friction” could revive again the discussion of the relationship between art and everyday life.

Physical E xperience (Wolfgang Rüdiger) The peculiarity of time and place, the relation to specific processes and situations, as well as the close relationship between doing and simply letting things happen, refer to a kind of physicality as it occurs in Cage’s composition 4’33’’.22 Wolfgang Rüdiger describes 4’33’’ as “a piece of the most intense body music” when he mentions the intensity of the physical experience—the experience of one’s own body and the awareness of one’s surroundings.23 At the same time, we can observe a blurring of the line between performers and listeners. They all become participants who form a group while they breathe together. They grow older together. They find themselves in this situation at this special time and at this special location. This existential experience is singular and yet oriented towards repetition.

18 | J. Gebske: Performativität zwischen Zitation und Ereignis, 48. 19 | Ibid., 49. 20 | Ibid. 21 | Ibid. 22 | See M. Zenck/T. Fichte/K.-U. Kirchert: Gestisches Tempo, 353 et seq. 23 | W. Rüdiger: organische identität? 30.

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The presence as well as the absence of a participant determines the practice.24 A performance of Cage’s 4’33’’ also modifies the character of relationships between the participants. Relationship is not only reflected in activities. It can also be experienced in silence without visible or audible action – within the group of the participants who give and take25 at the same time. One possible answer to the question of what communication could be in musical practice is: Each individual participant, alone or in the community of performers, is connected to the world and to all the others.

Practice as a Form of Life? (John Cage, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Istvàn Zelenka) Repetitive structures seem to develop time horizons with differentiated fields of realities and possibilities—in everyday life, but also in musical practice. Can, in turn, musical practice, through its repetitive structure, become a form of life? With John Cage, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Istvàn Zelenka composers speak about musical practice as an activity that is completely involved in everyday life. Cage even speaks about art as “a way of life”: “Art is a way of life. It is for all the world like taking a bus, picking flowers, making love, sweeping the floor, getting bitten by a monkey, reading a book, etc., ad infinitum (business may also provide a way of life, but in that case, it has nothing to do with profit and loss). […] Art when it is art as Satie lived it and made it is not separate from life (nor is dishwashing when it is done in this spirit).”26

Karlheinz Stockhausen mentions the possibility of an “artistic form of life” regarding the performance practice of Spiral for a soloist (1968): “Wouldn’t it be an artistic form of life for everyone to transform the unpredictable – transmitted by a short-wave radio – into new music, that is to say, into a specifically designed sound process awakening and stimulating creative spirits to develop all intuitive, intellectual, sensitive and creative abilities, so that this awareness and these abilities could spiral up to a climax?”27

With this question Stockhausen blurs the boundaries between the world of everyday life and the world of musical practice. Repeated performances, per24 | See E. Fischer-Lichte: The Transformative Power of Performance, 58 et seq. 25 | See H. E. Deckert: Mensch und Musik, 93 et seq.; H. E. Deckert: Giving and Taking. 26 | R. Kostelanetz: More Satie, 93; emphasis in original. 27 | K. Stockhausen: SPIRAL, 136.

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formed several times a day in the Osaka spherical auditorium, integrate this practice into the everyday life of the performers. This practice becomes a form of life. The reproducible process, the character of the activity, and the openness become obvious. István Zelenka does not explicitly refer to the term “Form of Life”. But all his compositions are practices that are to be integrated into everyday life. They invite musicians and laymen to participate, to meet, and to fall peacefully into a special activity. The compositions become a form of life when they are involved in everyday life. Often the performance activity can extend over several days, even weeks, without aiming at a result: “Perfection, the ideal of a classical tradition, corresponds to an ‘action’ that is described as incomparable, the very best, actually the only one. Nothing can be changed without violating perfection, transforming it into primus inter pares, degrading it.”28

Practice as it is described here preserves the open time horizon of the future, while in perfection the perfect is put to rest as complete. An ideal of perfection would destroy the liberating openness.

“Borders”? — “Thresholds”? (Erika Fischer-Lichte) The “aesthetics of the performative” (Fischer-Lichte) will not be limited to actions, performances, happenings, or stages. It always finds its way into musical practice when we ask: Which kind of activity does this composition suggest? Which opportunities does it open up? Which occasions could we find? These considerations do not only concern compositions of contemporary music; they do not exclude works. The questions, which emanate from the practice, belong to the composition itself: What do we do when studying, practicing, performing? How do we do it—and especially why? The score is not in the first place the subject of contemplation, but the practice of the participants, who deal with the special offer of the score, allows various experiences. Reflections on the “aesthetics of the performative” may be included in these considerations. The performer’s practice while performing a composition carries performative traits and can be regarded as performative. Musical practice can explore a composition of any historical period: Which opportunity for a specific activity do you open for us? Thus, any composition can be catapulted to immediate contemporaneity—with questions such as: Why do we want to cultivate this practice (the performance of this piece)? What sense do we find when we bring this piece into our lives and meet again and again, for the sake

28 | I. Zelenka, in E.-M. Houben/I. Zelenka: und/oder, 283.

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of this practice? The questions of musical practice touch upon the “aesthetics of the performative”. Musical practice and performative acts have the transparency between art and life in common. Fischer-Lichte prefers to speak of “thresholds” instead of “borders”: “The border turns into a frontier and a threshold, which does not separate but connects. In the place of unbridgeable oppositions we find gradual differences.”29 “Borders” and “thresholds” can be clearly distinguished: “While borders create clear divisions, thresholds mark a space of possibilities, empowerment, and metamorphosis.”30 Talking of a “reenchantment of the world”31, which might happen due to the transparency between art and everyday life, Fischer-Lichte refers to this very characteristic moment of musical practice. This idea could perhaps be considered by means of metaphors around the keyword “magic”—could perhaps lead to the (musical) ritual. Ritual and musical practice probably have a lot in common.

Once again: Magic. – Ritual? (Helmut Lachenmann, Christopher Small) “Somewhere in Adorno’s ‘Minima Moralia’ we find the definition: ‘Art is magic, freed of the lie of being truth.’ What is the sense of art today?” Helmut Lachenmann answers Heinz-Klaus Metzger’s key question: “Maybe to remind the human being of themselves, of the forces within themselves that are largely unused while the human being is worn out.”32 The sense of musical practice is hard to rewrite. Lachenmann tries to trace art back to an evocation of realities and possibilities—by means of activities that may be reminiscent of a magical ritual due to their repetitive structures. He gives several examples of moments of a standstill in different compositions—moments that he also describes as a “magical state”.33 Small finds other words, when he describes the ritual as a social event and a behavior: “Ritual is a form of organized behavior in which humans use the language of gesture, or paralanguage, to affirm, to explore and to celebrate their ideas of how the relationships of the cosmos (or of a part of it), operate, and thus of how they themselves should relate to it and to one another. Through their gestures, those taking part in the ritual act ar29 | E. Fischer-Lichte: The Transformative Power of Performance, 204. 30 | Ibid., 205. 31 | Ibid., 181 et seq. 32 | H. Lachenmann: Fragen – Antworten, 201. 33 | Ibid., 199.

2. Musical Practice ticulate relationships among themselves that model the relationships of their world as they imagine them to be and as they think (or feel) that they ought to be. As the anthropologist Clifford Geerts (1973) puts it in a resounding formulation, when we take part in a ritual act ‘the lived-in order merges with the dreamed-of order.’”34

Utopian power seems to emerge in rituals as soon as the borders between “the relationships of [our] world as [we] imagine them to be and as we think (or feel) that they ought to be”, between the “lived-in order” and the “dreamed-of order” transform into “thresholds” (Fischer-Lichte). “Relationships” (Small) between people involve all dimensions: “[Those relationships] may involve only one or two people, as in the rituals of courtship and lovemaking; a small and possibly exclusive group, as in rituals of family and of clubs and associations; or entire nations and even empires and major religious and secular faiths spanning or claiming to span the whole globe.”35

Music can be politically effective in a musical way, and even without words. For Small, physical experience is crucial; the special kind of physicality that enables a performer to learn and to make experiences, frees them of verbalization. In the ritual, relationships are confirmed, researched and celebrated—in a way that does not need to be verbalized. “Musicking” means “learning about relationships” and “experiencing them”: “In this way the participants not only learn about those relationships but actually experience them in their bodies. They explore the relationships, they affirm, and they celebrate them, without having to articulate them in words; indeed, no words can adequately express the relationships as they are felt at that time.”36

Erika Fischer-Lichte speaks of a memorable performance of the play Elektra by Gertrud Eysoldt (Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Elektra, staging by Max Reinhardt, Kleines Theater Berlin, October 30, 1903): The “border” [between the “semiotic body” and the “phenomenal body”] remained, but “Eysold’s use of the body oscillated between the semiotic body and its phenomenal body, so that one could not be differentiated from the other.” The consequence of this kind of depiction was a loss of distance, so that “the audience would no longer imagine an illusion”.37 Fischer-Lichte presents three “phases” that allow border crossings: the “separation phase” (detachment from everyday life, from habitual patterns), 34 | Chr. Small: Musicking, 95. 35 | Ibid. 36 | Ibid., 96; emphasis in original. 37 | E. Fischer-Lichte: Ritualität und Grenze, 14.

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the “threshold or transformation phase” (enabling new experiences), and the “incorporation phase” (return to the first step but transformed). “In all three phases, borders—the crossing of existing borders and the drawing of new borders—are obviously of great importance.”38 These remarks about the ritual are transferable to musical practice. Cornelius Cardew’s composition The Great Learning for example can be regarded as a composed ritual, a ritualized composition. During the rehearsals, which are performances as well, the performers learn and have experiences. They celebrate this activity—but do not necessarily speak. Not (only) a performance as a conclusion of a certain phase of the work, but every phase of the debate itself is “learning”, even and especially when it does not aim at a (perfect) result. In dealing with the piece, we leave the familiar world as a musician, and we dive into a very different world that enables us to have varying experiences. At some point we will reappear in everyday life—transformed? The idea of ritualized activities helps to discuss musical practice by means of useful metaphors. During the performance of a solo piece, or a work for a duo, a trio, a quartet, for smaller and larger ensembles, or finally for an orchestra, the performers can learn something about different relationships to the world and to other human beings and can experience this. Political realities and possibilities can be discovered by way of musical activity. In musical practice we share our memories and hopes, invoking them again and again, rediscovering our hidden forces. With dreamy certainty Dieter Schnebel regards every kind of music as a ritual: “Ritual [...] is evocative. In fact, music […] is a ritual, of course an abstract one.”39

2.2 “S ense ?” “M e aning ?” A brief over view In 1892, Gottlob Frege’s treatise “On Sense and Reference” (“Über Sinn und Bedeutung”) made an important distinction that changed the linguistics of future generations: Vladimir Karbusicky mentions the “barely comprehensible terminological chaos” that emerged subsequently due to the definition of this difference. In addition, the English term “meaning” does not facilitate a terminological clarification. The term “meaning”, according to Karbusicky, corresponds to Frege’s “sense”, but is translated into German as “Bedeutung”.40

38 | Ibid., 17. 39 | D. Schnebel: Ritual – Musik, 17. 40 | V. Karbusicky, in: P. Faltin: Musikalische Syntax, 152, note 1.

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Karbusicky’s proposal to correlate the terms (“Sinn” and “Bedeutung” in German language) could be suitable to explain Carl Dahlhaus’s and Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht’s ideas. The term “Sinn” would then refer to the structural level of a composition. “Sinn” of musical structures appears in formal processes, relationships, thematic-motivic cross-references, harmonious developments. The term “Bedeutung”, on the other hand, would be bound to a “reference system referring to something”41. Karbusicky chooses as an example the Prelude no. 1 in C Major (Well-Tempered Clavier I) by Johann Sebastian Bach. It gains “Sinn” as a structure, as a relational structure of harmonic details and motivic correspondences; it barely shows what we would call “Bedeutung” (in German) in case we connect the term “Bedeutung” to a referential system. Charles Gounod’s melody, based on this prelude, has narrowed the structural level, but—at the same time adding the title “Meditation”—gained “Bedeutung”. Karbusicky suggests a “complementary” relationship of the terms. Therefore, the weightings of the two terms (“Sinn” and “Bedeutung”) can be highly differentiated in each composition.42 Carl Dahlhaus points out the relationships of “all parts” of a work “to each other and to the whole”.43 He insists on transparency between the part and the whole. Musical structure appears in relationships between motifs, thematic-motivic references, and developments. Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht’s distinction between „understanding […] in respect of form-sense” and “understanding meaning”44 takes into account the aforementioned complementarity. John Blacking, working on anthropological studies, does not argue in this way; he is interested in musical “occasions”. Why do we need music at all? Blacking does not speak of sense structures and meaning, but of making music for the purposes of survival in “a world such as ours”45. Lawrence Kramer uses the terms “sense” and “meaning” in musical contexts as well as referring to everyday life, while he puts all activities into their special context. Nicholas Cook prefers the term “meaning” when he speaks about the process, how “meaning” could “emerge” “beyond the score”—during musical performances. Dieter Mersch does not pose the question of sense or meaning. His study focuses on that which exposes itself.

41 | V. Karbusicky: Einleitung: Sinn und Bedeutung in der Musik, 13. 42 | Ibid. 43 | C. Dahlhaus: Plea for a Romantic category, 218. 44 | H. H. Eggebrecht: Understanding Music, 77. 45 | J. Blacking: How musical is man? 116.

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Meaningful Relationships of “all parts […] to each other and to the whole” (Carl Dahlhaus) Carl Dahlhaus, one of the most prominent scholars in the field of musicology, wrote his famous essay “Plea for a Romantic category: The Concept of the Work of Art in the Newest Music” in 1969. This study was a plea for analysis as a corresponding agreement to the thought processes46 of a composer. The musical quality of a composition depends on meaningful relationships in the score: “Analysis is an attempt, which never quite succeeds, to understand and demonstrate that all parts of the work relate in a meaningful way to each other and to the whole, and that each one is subsumed in the function it performs. The triumph of analysis consists in demonstrating that a workcat least, a successful work – cannot be other than it is. Where a composer sees possibilities, both realized and suppressed, the analyst is trying to discover necessity. He speaks of chance or of what is not essential only with reluctance.”47

The “successful work” gains meaning through the relationships of all parts of a work to each other. Therefore, the structure of the composition is examined and disclosed. In “Analysis and Value Judgment”, Dahlhaus’s analysis therefore is focused on the score again. “The traditions of genre and form, from which a work springs, belong to its substance, to the issue itself”.48 Unity and „integration” are important categories of thinking. It is not surprising that he has some very harsh words to say about Franz Schubert’s Piano Sonata no. 19 in C Minor D 958 (1828): “The first movement of the C-minor sonata is in itself ambiguous. Traits reminiscent of Beethoven are interwoven with Schubert’s own without a completely successful integration.”49 The discussion insists on “successful integration”. A similar category of thinking is that of unity or of the concept of the whole. Dahlhaus’s analysis is committed to the ideal of aesthetic autonomy combined with the idea of the work. The discovery of meaningful relationships between the individual “parts of the work […] to each other and to the whole”50 refers to a thought process, which is recorded in the score, and in turn represents a thought process. Both thought processes are not congruent 46 | This term refers to Wolfgang Rihm’s idea that the place of a sound within the score immediately belongs to this sound: An order of sounds does not only reflect a more or less intellectual thought process; sounds can originate to speak for themselves (per se) – distinctive, non-removable. See W. Rihm: Spur, Faden, 74. 47 | C. Dahlhaus: Plea for a Romantic category, 218. 48 | C. Dahlhaus: Analysis and Value Judgment, 82. 49 | Ibid., 72. 50 | C. Dahlhaus: Plea for a Romantic category, 218.

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but can reach comparable levels. Dahlhaus regards understanding music as a recreation of musical substance by listening and reading the score.51 Analysis, in successful cases (Dahlhaus), follows the thought processes of the composer and reveals the structures of relationships produced by thought processes. There is no need to discuss how to talk about the details that could be revealed. The analysis, on one hand, is subject to the high demand of an appropriate (here reflexive) recreation, but on the other hand suits itself as well. Meaning is recognized as a network of relationships (of composed details such as motifs and themes), in which the parts are assigned to each other and to the whole.

“Sense-bearing Structure” — “Content” (Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht) Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht speaks of a musical „sense-bearing structure”, which invites the listener to open himself to the aesthetic experience that leads to an understanding of the music: “We hear, for example, some music by Bach. It is quite clear that this music makes sense; it can be demonstrated analytically by finding and naming the constituent elements which make it a sense-bearing structure intended to be perceived and understood in this way. And we as listeners are predisposed to do so: primarily as a result of our accumulating aesthetic experience, we have acquired the ability to understand Bach’s music, to grasp it as a sense-bearing structure, even if we do not make this sense explicit to ourselves and remain unaware of the underlying process of comprehension.”52

The process of “understanding music” is not dependent on knowledge of musical theory. The listener may proceed to a wide understanding without any technical terminology, even without verbal descriptions. The understanding is based on experience. “How, then, does sense come to exist in music?”53 “[M]usic’s sense is contained in its form. By form I mean the formal properties of the music as a whole, the structure generated by its musical materials, from the initial sounds to the form in toto. […] The music’s sense-bearing structure is its formal structure and vice versa.”54

51 | C. Dahlhaus: Das “Verstehen” von Musik, 46. 52 | H. H. Eggebrecht: Understanding Music, 10. 53 | Ibid. 54 | Ibid., 11.

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The “sense-bearing structure” can be recognized by revealing the formal developments, the relationships between sounds, motifs, and themes, that is to say by describing the coherence of the whole work. The musicologist can explain this structure; the listeners come to understand the structure even without using a specific terminology. They understand unconsciously. “Sense”, hidden in the “sense-bearing structure”, is recognizable in transparent form processes, whereas “meaning” aims at an extra-musical reference system. The understanding of the structure can be regarded as the first step, followed by the interpretation of the “content”. Regarding Schumann’s piano piece Träumerei, for example, Eggebrecht explains the difference between “sense structure” and “meaning” (= “content”): “It remains open, however, as to how complete aesthetic understanding is in respect of form-sense, and the possibilities of understanding meaning dependent on this are wide-ranging, given the involvement of the listener’s subjective disposition.”55 “With an eye to the notation and an ear to its sounds we will now transform the music […] into descriptive terms, observing how the description renders aesthetic understanding in language which apprehends and makes us conscious of the sense structure […]. At the same time our analytical description of the form-sense will bring the music’s inherent meaning to the fore (its content)”. 56

“Form-sense” and “inherent meaning”/“content” are clearly distinguished. One of the “Twelve Recommendations for Musical Analysis” calls for a clear distinction between “sense and content”. Content must not be discussed in each case; “analysis of form alone” may be sufficient at first and may lead later to an interpretation that is always based on an analysis of the formal structure.57 In “What is Music?” Dahlhaus and Eggebrecht discuss various topics, sometimes in alternating contributions, sometimes in the form of a dialogue. In the dialogue referring to “musical content”, Eggebrecht’s distinction between form, connected with musical “sense”, and musical “content” is clearly discussed. Eggebrecht explains how he always tries to combine the exploration of the form with an interpretation of the content at the same time. The musical sense is hidden in the form processes and only exists as music, nowhere else, while the content expands out to the extra-musical and is inherent in the musical sense without being identical with it.58 Dahlhaus avoids a confrontation of form and “content”, and rather wants to free himself from dichotomies such as 55 | Ibid., 78. 56 | Ibid., 77-8. 57 | Ibid., 80. 58 | C. Dahlhaus/H. H. Eggebrecht: Was ist Musik? 139.

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form and content. He supports the work that claims aesthetic autonomy – concerning both form and content.59 For him the “musical logic”, which is realized for example by a string quartet (Brahms), can claim the same legitimation of the autonomy postulate as Liszt’s ambition to continue world literature by composing a symphonic poem.60 These discussions in the 60s, 70s and 80s of the past centuries must be seen in the context of a very specific aesthetic and orientation towards the autonomous work. “The Idea of Absolute ​​ Music”61 determined musical-philosophical and aesthetic thinking with and since the Romantic aesthetic of music. This special orientation has a strong power to develop a specific view on music, but it can easily lead to the suppression of other perspectives.

Forms of Life — Forms of Sur vival (John Blacking) At about the same time as Dahlhaus’s study “Analysis and Value Judgment” or his essay “Plea for a Romantic Category: the concept of the work of art in the newest music” were published, studies such as Allan P. Merriam’s “The Anthropology of Music” or John Blacking’s “How musical is man?” also appeared as follow-ups to recent research in social anthropology or ethnology. “How musical is man?” In this study, published in 1973, Blacking also deals with Western concert music, for example with works by Gustav Mahler and Benjamin Britten (War Requiem). Because he does not draw a distinct line between “Art Music” and “Folk Music”, he gains his own view on works of European art music and dedicates his research to the emergence of social forces in music making. What does Blacking regard as “sense” or “meaning” of music? Against the background of his own classical musical education, his occupation with the music of the Venda in South Africa brought him to a new understanding of the music of Africa.62 For him, the contrast between “folk and art music” does not exist at all; all kinds of music are for him “folk music, in the sense that music cannot be transmitted or have meaning without associations between people.”63 “Meaning” therefore arises by common musical activity. This insight implies for him a completely new assessment of his own western music. “Meaning” always relates to interpersonal encounters. Blacking talks about music as “Humanly Organized Sound” (the title of the first of the four chapters). What is music? This question is answered differently by different cultures and different social groups: “More important than any 59 | Ibid., 145 et seq. 60 | Ibid., 150. 61 | See C. Dahlhaus: Die Idee der absoluten Musik. 62 | J. Blacking: How musical is man? IX. 63 | Ibid., X

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arbitrary, ethnocentric divisions between Music and Ethnic Music, or between Art Music and Folk Music, are the distinctions that different cultures and social groups make between music and nonmusic.”64 It is not a juxtaposition of art and folk music that is therefore decisive for him; rather, he relies on distinctions that different cultures and social groups make “between music and nonmusic”. It depends on the doing, on the musical activity of the musicians: “[I]t is the activities of Man the Music Maker that are of more interest and consequence to humanity than the particular musical achievements of Western man.”65 These activities are related to a musical “situation” or to a musical “occasion”: “[I]f we take a world view of music, and if we consider social situations in musical traditions that have no notation, it is clear that the creation and performance of most music is generated first and foremost by the human capacity to discover patterns of sound and to identify them on subsequent occasions.”66

Blacking speaks several times of this musical “occasion”, by which the action is integrated directly into processes of everyday life: “Much Venda music is occasional, and its performance is a sign of the activity of social groups.”67 “(Musical) situation” and “(Musical) occasion” are terms that can be transferred into the discussion of musical practice. Finally, the question, which Blacking poses on the nature of musical activity (fourth and final chapter), is essential for musical practice. In the second chapter “Music in Society and Culture”, Blacking shows different functions of making music in different situations and on different occasions, whereas in the third one (“Culture and Society in Music”) he uses musical analysis to come to statements concerning musical practice. The last chapter addresses the essence of the discussion about musical practice: “In a world in which authoritarian power is maintained by means of superior technology, and the superior technology is supposed to indicate a monopoly of intellect, it is necessary to show that the real sources of technology, of all culture, are to be found in the human body and in cooperative interaction between human bodies.”68

In a world of superior, dominant technology, it is necessary to uncover the true sources of technology and culture in the corporeality and relationships between people. Musical practice becomes a form of survival:

64 | Ibid., 3 et seq. 65 | Ibid., 9. 66 | Ibid. 67 | Ibid., 38. 68 | Ibid., 116.

2. Musical Practice “In a world such as ours, in this world of cruelty and exploitation in which the tawdry and the mediocre are proliferated endlessly for the sake of financial profit, it is necessary to understand why a madrigal by Gesualdo or a Bach Passion, a sitar melody from India or a song from Africa, Berg’s Wozzeck or Britten’s War Requiem, a Balinese gamelan or a Cantonese opera, or a symphony by Mozart, Beethoven, or Mahler, may be profoundly necessary for human survival, quite apart from any merit they may have as examples of creativity and technical progress.”69

What is the meaning of music? Music is “necessary for human survival”. We find meaning in encouragements to survive, in suggestions to find relationships, in invitations to encounter other human beings. In musical practice, we act as bodies—and we act together. We are also connected to others when we are performing a solo piece. “In a world such as ours”—as Blacking says —we want to do something. And our activities in musical practice draw us into processes that touch the future; we might gain hope. Blacking addresses this potential (from an anthropological, ethno-scientific perspective) and thus allows free entrance into a new and different concept of “meaning” that can nevertheless be applied to works of the European tradition. In the following paragraphs, I present the approaches of Lawrence Kramer and Nicholas Cook. Both dedicate themselves to the activities and corporeality of the performers, both of them examine the relation between score and performance, and both work on their exploration of musical practice. The subsequent digression on “Sichzeigen” (Presenting oneself) (Dieter Mersch) may be read as an impetus for finding a way to speak about practice.

“Text” and “Contexture of Interpretation” (Lawrence Kramer) “Meaning, whether in music, image, or text, is a product of action rather than of structure.”70 Meaning is not given but arises in the “contexts” of an interpretation. It is the result of a “negotiation” between “text” and “context” of interpretation. In “Interpreting Music”, Lawrence Kramer explores the question of how the performance of music influences its meaning—beyond the score. Meaning is not given from the beginning, is not coded in the score, which would then be decoded accordingly, but appears with the interpretation, with its “context”: “It thrives, or not, on what might be termed the contexture of interpretation.”71 The recourse to musical practice and the discussion of situation, environment, social context, and audience contributing to the interpretation of music lead Kramer to special studies. Meaning arises as it does in everyday life: 69 | Ibid.; emphasis in original. 70 | L. Kramer: Interpreting Music, 68. 71 | Ibid.; emphasis in original.

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Musical Practice as a Form of Life “The best justification for the critical interpretation of music is that music simply does make sense in this way as a practical fact. It is widely felt to be integrated with, not remote from, the general atmosphere of meaning in daily life.”72

The “meaning” of musical practice and the “meaning” of processes in everyday life merge. Kramer insists on a wide variety of musical experiences that are attached to a composition and its performances. His research is therefore based on a close relationship between “musical meaning” and “musical performance”. The performance is associated with life situations—with our lifeworld. This is also mentioned in “Why Classical Music Still Matters”, especially in the third chapter “Score and Performance”. Kramer reports on a fundamental experience during a performance of Beethoven’s String Quartet no. 12 in E-Flat Major op. 127 by the Juilliard String Quartet. He describes all he heard in the music, then he confesses: “I heard all this in the music; I still do. But in later years, after hearing the same music often, performed by many other groups, I came to realize that I heard these things not in the music alone but in that single and singular performance of it”.73

And he concludes: “So what touched me more, the music or the performance?”74 Kramer tells us about situational, personal-individual contexts that fundamentally shape, influence and change the meaning of a composition for the individual. In “Musical Meaning. Toward a Critical History” he discusses meaning in cultural-historical contexts, moving between theoretical explanations and case studies. The collection of examples deals with compositions from the 19th century; it includes music by the Marx Brothers, “Jazz and the Blues in Modern Concert Music”, compositions by Weill and Shostakovich, and finally music of the 20th century (John Coltrane). Kramer’s study “The ‘Moonlight’ Sonata and the Birth of Sex at the Piano” shows exemplarily how he takes the performers into account. Above the first movement of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata no. 14 in C Sharp Minor op. 27, 2 (Sonata quasi una fantasia) (1801) we find a remarkable performance note in the score: “delicatissimamente e senza sordino”; very delicate and without damper, with pedal. Kramer associates this clue with the corporeality of the performer:

72 | Ibid. 73 | L. Kramer: Why Classical Music Still Matters, 73. 74 | Ibid.

2. Musical Practice “He [Beethoven] adds a headnote stating that the Adagio must be played throughout with the greatest delicacy and ‘without dampers’, that is, with the pedal in continuous use. (Performers on modern pianos cannot take this instruction literally, but the spirit is clear: sustain with the pedal.) The result is to foreground the sensibility of the performer’s body, its receptiveness to the slightest sensation. The instruction combines delicacy, which must be produced by touch, with the continuity of sound produced by piano technology. The player’s body becomes perceptible as the medium, a kind of rising channel from foot (or, with a fortepiano, knee) to hand, in which mechanically produced sound becomes feeling. To give this process both a tactile and a visual focal point, Beethoven sets the upper and middle voices within the compass of a ninth in the right hand, so that they emerge continuously from a kind of intimate, delicate touch. The hand moves in fluid, rhythmic strokes as if it were caressing the keys. It is at least possible that this way of engaging the body links the Adagio with the expressivity of the lover’s serenade, and more generally with the sensitivity of the romantic body. The pianistic effects involved would have been reasonably apparent in an era that knew the music as much, if not more, by playing as by hearing it.”75

Significantly, Kramer attributes this kind of physicality, which is reflected in feeling and touching, to an epoch whose contemporaries became acquainted with music while practicing rather than listening. Case studies like these ask what performers do and why they do it. Kramer does not describe structural aspects of the score, but his description answers the question of what has been revealed to him by means of observing a performance (or while performing himself). It is not surprising that in Kramer’s studies “sense” and “meaning” in music are connected without any detour to “sense” and “meaning” in everyday life. The threshold between music and life can be crossed light-footedly. “We make sense of music as we make sense of life. And since we make sense of life only amid a dense network of social, cultural, and historical forces, musical meaning inevitably bears the traces, and sometimes the blazons, of those forces.”76

We therefore find musical meaning as we find meaning in life. And since all implications of life are embedded in social, cultural and historical contexts, our experiences of musical meaning bear those traces. Music and life form(s) are located very close to each other. Meaning in music and meaning in life are related to each other. Both worlds are linked together.

75 | L. Kramer: Musical Meaning, 48. 76 | Ibid., 163.

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“Beyond the Score” (Nicholas Cook) The consideration of music “as” execution itself adds momentum to the debate. Nicholas Cook delicately selects the title of one of his contributions “Music as Performance”—with great emphasis on the word “as”. In case we speak of performance, we usually mean “to perform something”, “to perform music”. This implies, more or less intentionally, the idea of the ​​ two components performance on the one hand, music on the other hand. “You can ‘just play,’ but it’s odd to speak of ‘just performing,’ because the basic grammar of performance is that you perform something, you give a performance ‘of’ something. In other words, language — and especially musicological language — leads us to construct the process of performance as supplementary to the product that occasions it, and it is this that leads us to talk quite naturally about music ‘and’ its performance”.77

Thus, Cook’s interest is not the music and its performance, but music “as” performance. He accentuates the question of the social relations, which develop between the performers, and summarizes music as a “social phenomenon”: “To understand music as performance, then, means to see it as an irreducibly social phenomenon, even when only a single individual is involved.”78 Not surprisingly, he mentions the proximity to the ritual. A conceptual differentiation seems to be important. The score as a “text” emphasizes, according to Cook, the structural dimension of the composition that is waiting for its realization, whereas the score as a “script” (as a kind of “choreography”) already hints at the interactions of the performers: “Thinking of music as ‘script’ rather than ‘text’ implies a reorientation of the relationship between notation and performance.”79 One of the key questions remains the possibility of analytically decoding social interaction (= social meaning). “Music […] becomes a resource for understanding society.”80 But how can we talk about it? “[T]he problem disappears if instead of seeing musical works as texts within which social structures are encoded, we see them as scripts in response to which social relationships are enacted: The object of analysis is now present and self-evident in the interactions between performers, and in the acoustic trace that they leave. To call music a performing art, then, is not just to say that we perform it; it is to say that through it we perform social meaning.”81 77 | N. Cook: Music as Performance, 204; emphasis in original. 78 | Ibid., 206. 79 | Ibid. 80 | Ibid., 213. 81 | Ibid.

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Instead of attempts to decode scores as texts, the necessity of decoding the interactions of the performers, who leave “acoustic traces”, occurs. “Meaning” is revealed as “social meaning” by means of an analysis of the interactions. “Beyond the score. Music as Performance” (2013) is arguably the most extensive in a series of publications that represent Cook’s research: turning away from text-centered research, turning to analysis of performance. Meaning is created during the performance; it comes into being during the musical process. Cook wants to describe “how performances afford the production of meaning”.82 “Beyond the Score” deals with the analysis of sound recordings (to a greater part of piano music). Performances are compared and subjected to a cultural-historical investigation, and then the already mentioned question about the performers’ social interactions is brought into the foreground. The question is “how scores serve to script them”83, namely these interactions. The research covers the role of the body and aims to focus on body gesture. Cook does not give up the connection to the score, but he redefines its role. He does not seek “meaning” in the score as a text, but in the “real-time activity”: “a realtime activity through which meanings emerge that are not already deposited in the score”.84 Meanings are not encoded in a score in order to be detected and understood as such, but they appear in the performance process (live): they appear, emerge and stand out. A process can be observed. Cook’s essay “Theorizing Musical Meaning” explicitly explores the process of creating meaning and uses the metaphor of a series of “tracks” that are inscribed on the score to make its speech more vivid: “[W]hat we think of as ‘a piece’ of music should really be conceived as an indefinitely extended series of traces”.85 Meanings “emerge”: “As constructed in performance […] meaning is emergent: it is not reproduced in but created through the act of performance. And it is this emergent quality, together with the idea of a bundle or cluster of semiotic potential, that I want to invoke in the analysis of musical meaning.”86

Meaning cannot be clearly specified. It changes, it depends on the historical context, different traditions, or performance conditions: “In this way it is wrong to speak of music having particular meanings; rather it has the potential for specific meanings to emerge under specific circumstances.”87 This new form 82 | N. Cook: Beyond the Score, 1. 83 | Ibid., 6. 84 | Ibid., 23. 85 | N. Cook: Theorizing Musical Meaning, 179. 86 | Ibid. 87 | Ibid., 180; emphasis in original.

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of including a musical potential, inherent in the performance itself (and in the score as a “script”), frees from unequivocal assignment of meanings. Cook’s distinction between “potential” and “actualized” meaning gives a revealing insight into his idea of meaning. He describes musical works as “unstable aggregates of potential signification”.88 The “interpretation” of music “means transforming potential meaning into actualized meaning”.89 Therefore, “potential” meaning should be preserved as a utopian outlook. Cook manages to save the romantic idea of the ineffable.90 “Actualized” meaning is less strong, but variable, depending on the context. The interpretation can discover “actual” meaning, which may be verbalized. Is that then a compromise? Meaning, however, is not given, but exists in the process of appearance.

“Sichzeigen” (Dieter Mersch) Dieter Mersch distances himself from the problems of “sense” and “meaning”. He aims to focus on something that manifests itself in order to appear or to become audible.91 This idea seems to be a kind of liberation and could refer to musical practice immediately; it is not even necessary to show something. Mersch focuses on speaking about “what is shown”, in a way that showing something is no longer understood as pointing at something, but as “showing/manifesting itself”.92 This overcomes a dichotomy between speaking and showing, for “showing/manifesting itself” does not compete with speaking. Manifesting itself gains an added value that cannot be described in words. In the first part of his study “Was sich zeigt”, Mersch deals with body language, art, performativity of the voice, and in the following one with different sign theories. Key concepts are event, materiality, presence. Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language, as presented in the “Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus”, is mentioned as a basis for this approach. Furthermore, the term “event” is unfolded. “But how can one talk about this at all?”93 Mersch finds a path in “answering” to that which “happens”: “Thinking means neither to designate nor to distinguish or to determine, but to ‘answer’.”94 Speaking changes into answering the address, which starts from

88 | Ibid., 188. 89 | Ibid., 186. 90 | See chapter “Rehabilitating the Ineffable”, ibid., 184-8. 91 | D. Mersch: Was sich zeigt, 16. 92 | See D. Mersch: Körper zeigen, 85 et seq. 93 | D. Mersch: Was sich zeigt, 24. 94 | Ibid., 38.

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what is just appearing. In metaphorical speech we can find the chance to speak: “Metaphors are pathways; they describe approaches”.95

2.3 R e alities ? W orlds ? “The Two-World Model” (Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht) Is music unfortunately (or luckily?) ‘just’ music? Does it refer to existential questions? Or does music comfort us? Does it help to survive as a consolation? In “Understanding Music”96 Hans-Heinrich Eggebrecht introduces the reader to a controversial debate. The starting point of the discussion is a talk between John Cage and Richard Kostelanetz. Cage says: “The notion of escape seems pointless to me, just as the notion of an art which would be an escape from life would seem pointless to me. This I learned years ago from the I Ching, where art is viewed, in the hexagram on Grace, as a light shining on top of a mountain penetrating to a certain extent the surrounding darkness. Therefore, art can’t answer the important questions, for those important questions will be asked in the darkness where art does not penetrate.”97

At this point Kostelanetz interjects: “Does this mean that you are trying to get away from art?” Cage replies: “No, this means we are trying to identify life with art, and we begin in the darkness.”98 John Cage’s view challenges Eggebrecht’s veto, namely his “notion of making life and art ‘identical’, ‘blurring’ the distinction between them, and ‘not isolating’ art from life”99: “This dictum strikes at the heart of what I have elsewhere called the two-world-model. What is meant with this conceptual model is that the real world we live in is in antithetical opposition to art, and music in particular. In it the world of reality is a place of negativity and thus requires and produces a haven, an outlet, an opportunity for survival and redemption in an opposing world of art. Art has functioned prominently in this way since the time of Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder and German Romanticism but its sig-

95 | Ibid., 40. 96 | H. H. Eggebrecht: Understanding Music, 113-31. 97 | R. Kostelanetz: Conversation with John Cage, 14. 98 | Ibid. 99 | H. H. Eggebrecht: Understanding Music, 127.

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Musical Practice as a Form of Life nificance for the relationship between art and life is fundamental and goes well beyond this historical context.”100

Eggebrecht insists on a strict distinction between the worlds. He finds on the one hand the “world of reality”, and on the other hand the “opposing world of art”, especially music. Music enables survival. In “Silence” Cage asks: “And what, precisely, does this, this beautiful profound object, this masterpiece, have to do with Life? It has this to do with Life: that it is separate from it. Now we see it and now we don’t. When we see it we feel better, and when we are away from it, we don’t feel so good. Life seems shabby and chaotic, disordered, ugly in contrast.”101

Not surprisingly, Eggebrecht criticizes especially this notion.102 He presents the world of everyday life in contrast to the world of art and emphasizes this antithetical relationship. Cage distrusts the great work, the masterpiece, and refers to Buddhist thought (I-Ching). Eggebrecht’s plea for a “two-world model” is confusing in that he renders this idea in absolute terms. He does not only refer to the romantic idea of opposing worlds (world of reality – world of art, especially music), but aims for the general validity of the “two-world-model” out of its historical context: “[The] relationship between art and life is fundamental and goes well beyond this historical context”.103 In “Die Musik und das Schöne” Eggebrecht describes, based on Schubert’s and Mahler’s songs, the romantic aesthetics as aesthetics of antithesis. The reality of life and the beautiful world of art, dream, and fantasy are irreconcilably opposed: German Romanticism is characterized by the idea of a dualistically structured world.104 The “two-world model” finds its expression in duality, division, separation. Eggebrecht contrasts this concept of two opposing worlds with the Christian point of view. Here, too, we find two worlds, the earthly and the heavenly world, but they are not irreconcilably opposed, but, as Johann Sebastian Bach’s cantata [Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen Zagen] for example shows, reconciled in Christ’s peace.105 The integration of the “two-world model” into a historical context would define it as an explanatory model for a certain aesthetic orientation in a particular historical epoch. Absolutizing the “two-world model” as a model with everlasting and general validity is all the more incomprehensible. However, as 100 | Ibid., 128. 101 | J. Cage: Silence, 130. 102 | See H. H. Eggebrecht: Understanding Music, 128. 103 | Ibid., 128. 104 | H. H. Eggebrecht: Die Musik und das Schöne, 162. 105 | Ibid., 168 et seq.

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soon as the performers set foot onto the stage, the border between the two opposing worlds allows a reinterpretation that in turn could allow the transfer of the “two-world model” into contemporaneity. Eggebrecht traces his emphatic separation of the worlds back to the playing character of the music; composers, players and listeners can “enjoy being involved in this game by performing, being freed of their reality world.”106 He explicitly sticks to the border between the two worlds, noting the need of a “framework” for performance, namely “room, wardrobe and program booklet, going in and out, and so on”.107 His attitude appears plausible regarding the necessary transition from one world to the other and back again. However, the question arises whether the counter world of music in this model also has the character of reality. Again, the other questions are posed whether and to what extent both worlds encounter each other, and what kind of cooperation or relationship could be possible that could go beyond mere separation.

Performativity (Erika Fischer-Lichte) The term “performative” seems to describe how activities can create realities. Accordingly, Erika Fischer-Lichte defines the “concept of the performative” as follows: “The term designates certain symbolic actions that do not express or represent something predestined, but produce the reality to which they refer. It arises when the action is performed. A performative act is exclusively imagined as an embodied one.”108

The term performance, derived from the English verb “to perform”, appears in a differentiated way: as “performance” or as “execution/achievement”: FischerLichte distinguishes between “performance” (as for example stage performance or musical performance) and “performance” in the sense of achievement. Additionally, the term “execution” arises. She defines stage performance or musical performance stronger than “execution”: The term performance would then represent a generic term. “Performances are always performative while not everything that we perceive as performative has to appear in a performance.”109 Fischer-Lichte mentions aspects of the performative against the background of developments that began in 1900 with “ritual research” and “theater science”. During the transition from the 19th to the 20th centuries there was a turning away in the cultural sciences from the “text” and a turning towards 106 | Ibid., 205. 107 | Ibid., 207. 108 | E. Fischer-Lichte: Performativität, 44. 109 | Ibid., 53.

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the body, embodiment, and reality on the stage itself (instead of an as-if-reality challenging the imaginations of the audience).110 The aspects of performativity, as described by Fischer-Lichte, are also constitutive for musical practice: a) “Physical co-presence”: performance arises from an “encounter or confrontation between the participants”; essential is the process character.111 b) “Spatiality”: this means less the architectural space, but an ephemeral spatiality, which is first “produced by the performance”, “produced performatively”.112 c) “Corporeality”: Here Fischer-Lichte emphasizes the becoming, accentuates the becoming much stronger than the being, because the human body “continuously lives in the process of becoming, in the process of a permanent transformation”, and becoming opposes “vehemently to any idea of a work”.113 d) “Sonority/Vocality”: “paradigmatic for the ephemerality of performances”, generating a kind of “sense of space”.114 e) “Rhythm”: not understood as a measure or beat, but as a “dynamic principle that is and remains on the way”.115 f) “Perception/generation of meaning”: meaning arises; perception itself seems to be “a performative process”.116 g) “Event-like nature of performances”: The performance is essentially singular and unrepeatable. The performance is characterized by a “union of opposites”. “Dichotomous conceptual pairs” are suspended; “One as well as the other” takes the place of an “Either/or”.117 Above all, the last-named aspect could appear as a characterization of a situation of musical practice. Performers find themselves between doing and letting go, and they decide for themselves how to proceed; on the other hand, something also could happen to them. What about the aspects of uniqueness and specificity? The musical practice is designed for repetition; however, it is unrepeatable in its respective singular form. At this point a new comparison between Butler’s and Fischer-Lichte’s performativity concepts presents itself. According to Gebske, Butler’s concept is based on “citation”, which characterizes everyday life and everyday social processes. The repetition of certain “conventions”118 confirm or even destabilize them. The repetition process is inexhaustible and infinite: “The ongoing process of citation, which Butler calls

110 | Ibid., 13. 111 | Ibid., 54. 112 | Ibid., 58 113 | Ibid., 60. 114 | Ibid., 62. 115 | Ibid., 64; emphasis in original. 116 | Ibid., 65-7. 117 | Ibid., 67-8. 118 | J. Gebske: Performativität, 52.

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performative, has no beginning and will never be completed.”119 Fischer-Lichte, on the contrary, connects performativity to “ephemerality” and “eventfulness”.120 Musical practice preserves the incompleteness of repetitive actions and at the same time—and perhaps because of it—exposes itself to the ephemeral character of actions and activities. Repetition shows in numerous ways that there can be no repetition. Fischer-Lichte’s conclusions on the ephemeral nature of the performance, its process character, and the oscillation between doing and letting things happen seems to be important for a study on musical practice. Furthermore, one aspect should not be left unmentioned, namely the orientation towards the future: “[P]erformative processes [are] by definition related to the future […] From them the future emerges, which is often neither intended nor planned nor completely left to chance.”121 Joerg Volbers utters skepticism about the “minimal definition”122 of the performative, namely, that “actions that do not express or represent something predicated [...] produce the reality to which they refer”123: “What does the term ‘produce’ mean? What does ‘reality’ mean here? And how do acts relate? These are three questions that raise fundamental problems of the philosophy of language, ontology and metaphysics.”124 Volbers refuses the idea of a re-creation of reality, or the emergence of a parallel reality. Notice at this point his reference to the character of the performative as a “change”: “The realities created by [performative acts] – or, to put it more succinctly: the new interpretations they produce – cannot be fully explained by existing structures, principles or actors. The executions themselves, the concrete events and actions, remain indispensable in explaining the phenomenon sought. The ‘performative’ in this way stands for the idea of ​​a productive change that cannot simply be summarized by general principles. It also always requires the individual, concrete action that creates for itself the reality to which it refers.”125

Could this perspective be transferred into musical practice? Does a violin sonata by Beethoven, or a piano trio by Schubert also reveal hope for “change”? The idea of “change” could free us from dichotomous structures. 119 | Ibid., 53. 120 | Ibid., 54. 121 | E. Fischer-Lichte: Performativität, 85; emphasis in original. 122 | J. Volbers, Performative Kultur, 1. 123 | E. Fischer-Lichte, Performativität, 44. 124 | J. Volbers, Performative Kultur, 1. 125 | Ibid., 2 et seq.; emphasis in original.

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Different formulations are conceivable according to Fischer-Lichte’s and Volbers’s remarks: a. A study of musical practice finds itself in the middle: between a reality created by the performers’ actions and a “transcendence of thresholds on to realities and possibilities”126. b. A study of musical practice gets right into the realities and possibilities created by the performers’ actions. Do we have to make a decision?

2.4 S pe aking , S peech Borrowings Enchantment has to do with transformation, as well as with mystery, inexplicability, magic, and speechlessness. What does it mean when there is an encounter (in musical practice) that, as love does, overnight turns one’s personal life upside down: “Being so deeply touched by the other person, that it changes one’s life forever”?127 What does it mean when a “reminder of unused forces in us”128 appears, if individual and political transformations and transitions become possible? We then perhaps depart from a practice of “learning and experiencing”129 as another person; we have become entirely different people compared to the way we were when entering the situation. There was transformation affecting all involved participants, both performers and listeners. A magician bestows his touch – and something becomes different. We are deeply touched, and a kind of magic effect may be observed. Being touched, we feel that our experiences have something to do with our lives. But we can hardly find the words to describe this. We remain speechless. It is precisely this crossing of the “thresholds” (Fischer-Lichte) between art and life and this speechlessness, that invite Jankélévitch to point to the “Charm’s artwork – the ‘inexpressive Espressivo’”130, that encourage Erika Fischer-Lichte to mention a “reenchantment of the world”131, and that might be experienced through a magic encounter between art and life. 126 | See H. Lachenmann: Vier Grundbestimmungen des Musikhörens, 62. 127 | A. Beuger/S. Vriezen: Asking questions, trying answers, 37. 128 | See H. Lachenmann: Fragen – Antworten, 201. 129 | See Chr. Small: Musicking, 96. 130 | V. Jankélévitch: music and the ineffable, 77. 131 | E. Fischer-Lichte: The Transformative Power of Performance, 181 et seq.

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One way to approach this magic is metaphorical speech. Musicians can enter the path to language by use of metaphors. They are always asking the same questions, which arise in the same way: What are the participants doing now? How do they act, participate? Why all these activities? These questions about concrete activities lead away from thinking in purely structural contexts. The courage to drop into speechlessness seems to be necessary. Then, after this, we try to continue, to find new speech again—by means of the metaphor and perhaps by means of the speech of others. “Warum auch?” Robert Walser’s poem presents the opportunity to rethink developments that simply happen, but also to rethink the becoming of new and unimagined things. The metaphor “Ark of the Moment” (“Arche des Augenblicks”, Nelly Sachs132) encourages one to accept farewells and (always new and provisional, that is, future-oriented) salvations. I cannot find a more amazing word and shall borrow it. Ways to describe a practice are often transferred from publications that prove to be useful for speaking and writing. Thus, the notion of public appearance (“In-Erscheinung-Treten”) is taken from Judith Butler’s “Notes toward a performative theory of assembly”, as well as the notion of being dependent on each other. By means of the metaphor “temporary paradises”133 Helmut Lachenmann describes situations of stagnation, namely of “non-music”134 in his works. I am trying to capture this metaphor. I am borrowing words: Erika Fischer-Lichte’s term “threshold”135, and Mogens Heimann’s term “exercise”. Alfred Schutz offers the pronoun “we” transformed into the noun “We”136. John Blacking presents the noun “(musical) occasion”137. Jürg Frey speaks of “usefulness” of a composition and creates a new perspective regarding musical activity. Hans-Joachim Hespos invents the word combination “SO IST” – “SO GESCHIEHT”138: “It is the way it is” – “That is what happens”. Such borrowings help one to speak.

Searching for Places Instead of studying the structure of a composition, the musicians go to single, individual places in a score and stay there. They read the score as a “script” (Cook), not as a structural context, not as a reflection of “thought processes”.

132 | N. Sachs: Fahrt ins Staublose, 50-1. 133 | H. Lachenmann: Paradiese auf Zeit, 205 et seq. 134 | H. Lachenmann: Musik als existentielle Erfahrung, 205 et seq. 135 | E. Fischer-Lichte: The Transformative Power of Performance, 205. 136 | A. Schutz: Mozart and the philosophers, 199. 137 | J. Blacking: How musical is man? 9. 138 | H.-J. Hespos: AUGEN DER WÖRTER, score.

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The comparison of individual places in the score of Beethoven’s “Harp Quartet” with some of Heimann’s “Exercises” displays this approach. The musicians go to several locations in the concert hall. During the performance a string trio, for example, may find stability in the performers’ positions. The conditions for stability are changing together with the positions. It is worth considering how the performers are mapped in relation to each other for the performance, for example, of a certain string quartet. An arrangement reminiscent of a four-leaf clover allows for entirely different gestures, postures, positions, and connections between the performers than a seating arrangement that traces a curved line. A performance of Beethoven’s Symphony no. 5 in C Minor while standing is an activity quite different from one in ordinary seating arrangements. (Perhaps the public may be also standing.) Christopher Small’s study “Musicking” also opens new perspectives on musical structures. He connects structures in the score to relationships between the performers, and tries to find correspondences. From the analysis of a score, this idea leads to the discovery of sound contexts, of practices, and of relationships between participants who create these sounds. On stage we find places in an experienced relationship. Small has confidence in “musicking”, that it is able to design “ideal relationships” and enable a recognition of the world139 —a good reason for analyzing the score as well. The starting point for his studies is “a set of relationships”, that is a series of relationships experienced, tested, and celebrated through musical activity—realities and possibilities being recognized.140 Music appears as knowledge about things that are, that have been, and that could be. Small’s differentiation of relationships between the musicians themselves and the sounds played by them is helpful in finding relationships in the score and observing those connections in musical practice. This “spiral” of relationships (in scores and in practice) is too complex to put into words: “The relationships that are created in a musical performance are of two kinds: first, those among the sounds that the musicians are making, whether on their own initiative or following directions, and second, those among the people who are taking part. As we shall see, these two sets of relationships themselves relate in an ever more complex spiral of relationships, which become too complex for words to articulate but which the musical performance itself is able to articulate clearly and precisely.”141

139 | See P. Uhden: Musik als Praxis, 94. 140 | Chr. Small: Musicking, 50. 141 | Ibid., 184.

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In case speech fails to grasp the complexity of the relationship structure, the performance itself, according to Small, can clearly articulate these relationships, that is to say allow them to take place. Musical practice as an “artistic form of life” (Stockhausen) evokes meaning, builds on experiences and is designed for repetition. Sounds transport this practice, thus transporting certain forms of life, forms of activities of individuals, forms of interaction, and forms of living together. They carry the means of their own production, speak about the sense that performers could gain during the practice, about the situation of the exercise, and about the special cooperation of the performers. The sounds inform one in a non-verbal manner. Therefore, an underlying practice can be experienced by a listener who is touched while listening – without knowing the score, and without knowing the performance modalities.

Once again: Usefulness While crossing a “threshold that does not separate but connects”142, musical practice and life become transparent. Could a musical practice integrated into everyday life create something like a permeable membrane between musical activity and everyday activity? Might such a view on these activities only be possible regarding compositions that have abandoned the concept of the work, or compositions that have emerged in time after the formulation of an aesthetic of the performative in the broadest sense? The present study negates both questions and asks about the usefulness of Froberger’s partita, of Beethoven’s symphony and of many other compositions. The given examples of music can be described as compositions oriented towards the traditional concept of the work, or as compositions that do not even ask the question of the concept of the work. Even epochal boundaries do not hinder one. A traditional work can be studied regarding its usefulness for us as performers today; thus, it may step directly into contemporaneity. The questions raised here are therefore quite different. If it is worthwhile to perform Mozart’s “Gran Partita”, why do we do that? Which invitations to which practice does this score or another offer? What can we do with a special score? How do we act as a group in the concert hall? For what occasion could we do that? Why does a certain manner of performing gain meaning for us? Why do we want to repeat these activities? Could such an activity slip across the threshold into our lives – could the musical practice therefore be included in everyday life?

142 | E. Fischer-Lichte: The Transformative Power of Performance, 204.

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Multiple Realities (Alfred Schutz) After gliding over the “threshold”, leaving everyday life and entering musical practice: In what kind of reality do I find myself? One perspective is developed by Alfred Schutz, who, in close dialogue with Max Weber, takes up and continues the thoughts on social action, and turns to the emergence of intersubjectivity in everyday action. His study on “Multiple Realities” invites us to abandon ontological questions. The priority area of ​​meaning is the everyday life-world. In addition, other areas of meaning can temporarily gain priority and open up different worlds. Following William James, who distinguished “sub-universes of reality”, Schutz prefers to speak of “finite provinces of meaning”143. Starting from our “experiences” in the “taken-for-granted frame” of our “everyday lifeworld”144 he finds different “Provinces of Reality with Finite Meaning-Structure”145. The musical practice can be considered one of them. It is no surprise that Schutz dedicates himself to the topic of “Making Music Together”146.

Theor y of Metaphor (Simone Mahrenholz) The present study does not deal with the musical practice of improvisation; it also excludes vocal music apart from Federico Mompou’s composition Cantar del Alma. Also absent are examples from popular music (Jazz, Rock, Pop). The concentration on instrumental music allows one to leave fields of meaning presented in terms of language, and offers the opportunity to observe – with a broad distribution of examples that are taken from different historical epochs, even different genres – how and to what extent the study of the musical practice could generally change perspectives on compositions. The question of a possible reference of a composition (like a prelude and fugue by Johann Sebastian Bach or a sonata by Mozart) to the life-world (to everyday life) can perhaps come to a head in the temporary abandonment of text, program or quotation. Simone Mahrenholz extends the possibilities of reference (based on Nelson Goodman’s symbol theory) by mentioning “exemplification”. She puts exactly this question up for discussion: “Beethoven is quoted as having said that ‘music is higher revelation than any wisdom and philosophy.’ How is that possible, and what could be the meaning of such a phrase?”147 Her approach offers perspectives on metaphorical speech.

143 | A. Schutz: On Multiple Realities, 230. 144 | See A. Schutz: The Structures of the Life-World, 3-4 et seq. 145 | Ibid., 22 et seq. 146 | See A. Schutz: Making Music Together, 159 et seq. 147 | S. Mahrenholz: Music and Cognition, 72.

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It is no wonder that the physicality of the performers, as well as the corporeality of a trio, quartet, or ensemble placed in the concert hall are generally important for these questions. The chapter “Keys” of this study for example shows how the fingers and fingertips, hands and arms can be considered as extensions of the body while playing piano; the direct contact with the instrument by touching it becomes important. The description of the drumming on the piano (in a piano sonata of Aurèle Stroë) as a “limping” of a “rescued” human being148 borrows a metaphor from the literature, that is, as Mahrenholz would say, “fragile” and implies a lot of “alternative” terms.149 But the use of metaphors in such a manner helps to speak and to rewrite a musical practice. Thus, talking is about using metaphors to come up with linguistic phrases that are useful in specific contexts, and may be more or less accurate.

Preliminar y Conclusion In this study I try • to abandon the established sense of music as a “consecrated sequence of thought processes”150, and yet to keep it in mind; • to take music as an “existential experience” (Lachenmann), as an encounter, and participation seriously, but without necessarily giving away the work; • to understand the speechlessness of music as a potential, and to rely on the strength of music to be effective individually as well as socio-politically – in a musical manner; • to accept traditional as well as new music as a comprehensive invitation to musical practice, and, at the same time, to insist on contemporaneity—understood as participation in a meaningful activity; • to get involved with what music shows us – and to take the chance to remain silent: “speechlessness; absence of images, vanishing of any representations”151.

148 | U. Bail: Die verzogene Sehnsucht hinkt an ihren Ort, 136. 149 | S. Mahrenholz: Musik-Verstehen jenseits der Sprache, 219. 150 | W. Rihm: Offene Enden, 81. 151 | A. Beuger/S. Vriezen: Asking questions, trying answers, 36.

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3. Finding Speech 3.1 I ntersubjectivit y — M ultiple R e alities (A lfred S chut z) “Together as a Community, as a We” In the famous first finale (second act) of Mozart’s opera Le nozze di Figaro (Opera buffa in four acts, KV 492) the count and the countess find themselves in a specific situation. They meet each other in the highest excitement. In response to the countess’s confession, the count orders Cherubino to step out of the cabinet so that the truth might be revealed. As the door opens, Susanna appears— much to the surprise of countess and count. Now there are three people on the stage. Figaro appears onstage and reports that the wedding guests have gathered. He hassles the count to give his consent for the wedding, and four people are on the stage. Immediately the gardener Antonio appears, indignant at the broken flowers in front of the window, and five people meet each other. Lastly Marcellina, Bartolo and Basilio rush in to file an objection to the wedding. Eight people are involved in the process. As Alfred Schutz describes it, these different persons act on the stage “as a We”: “[Mozart] uses this specific device of the art form of opera [simultaneity] in order to present in immediacy the intersubjective relations in which his characters are involved. In spite of their diversified reaction to the common situation, in spite of their individual characteristics, they act together, feel together, will together as a community, as a We. This does not mean, of course, that they act, feel, or will the same, or with equal intensity. On the contrary, ensembles such as the admired first Finale of Figaro clearly show many groupings of the personae involved, both in cooperation and in antagonism. Nevertheless, even in antagonism they are bound together in an intersubjective situation of a community, in a We.”1

1 | A. Schutz: Mozart and the Philosophers, 198-9; emphasis in original.

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Alfred Schutz (born 1899 in Vienna, died 1959 in New York) moved as a scientist “on the frontier between philosophy and social science”.2 His first major work was “Der sinnhafte Auf bau der sozialen Welt” (1932) (literally, “The Meaningful Structure of the Social World”). This publication appeared in English as  “The Phenomenology of the Social World”. He was no longer able to complete “The Structures of the Life-World” (two volumes); the work was continued and completed by Thomas Luckmann. After the publication of his first book, he met Edmund Husserl, whose work had a strong influence in his future life. Schutz emigrated to the USA in 1939, and he began to teach in New York, at the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research, where he held a professorship since 1952. In 1959 Schutz died in New York City. Of great influence on Schutz besides Husserl was Max Weber’s work. Schutz’s research concerning “Provinces of Reality with Finite Meaning-Structure”3 and the studies “Making Music Together” as well as “Mozart and the Philosophers” are particularly relevant to the discussion of musical practice. In addition, the terms meaning, experience, activity, and reality recur in the discussion of musical practice and allow a transfer to descriptions of musical practice.

Sense and E xperience Schutz’s initial question is the question of the “Everyday Life-World”: “By the everyday life-world is to be understood that province of reality which the wideawake and normal adult simply takes for granted in the attitude of common sense. By this taken-for-grantedness, we designate everything which we experience as unquestionable; every state of affairs is for us unproblematic until further notice.”4

He does not negate the problem that “what has up until now been taken for granted can be brought into question”; but before going on he sticks to what he calls the “natural attitude”: “In the natural attitude, I always find myself in a world which is for me taken for granted and self-evidently ‘real’.”5 In this world there are problems to be solved, other people live here—“endowed with a consciousness that is essentially the same as mine. Thus, from the onset, my life-world is not my private world but, rather, is intersubjective; the fundamental structure of its reality is 2 | The short biographical notice here is based on Thomas Luckmann’s preface, in: A. Schutz/Th. Luckmann: The Structures of the Life-World, xi-x; the quote ibid., xii. 3 | A. Schutz/Th. Luckmann: The Structures of the Life-World, 22 et seq. 4 | Ibid., 3-4. 5 | Ibid., 4.

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that it is shared by us.”6 From here, Schutz moves on to the question of intersubjectivity, which he does not base on phenomenology but on the “natural attitude of everyday life”. “Nature” as well as “social” and “cultural” experiences are included in the “everyday reality of the life-world”7: “Since we cannot here enter into the phenomenological problem of the constitution of intersubjectivity, we must be content with the statement that in the natural attitude of everyday life the following is taken for granted without question: (a) the corporeal existence of other men; (b) that these bodies are endowed with consciousness essentially similar to my own; (c) that the things in the outer world included in my environs and that of my fellow-men are the same for us and have fundamentally the same meaning; (d) that I can enter into interrelations and reciprocal actions with my fellow-men; (e) that I can make myself understood to them (which follows from the preceding assumptions); (f) that a stratified social and cultural world is historically pregiven as a frame of reference for me and my fellow-men, indeed in a manner as taken for granted as the ‘natural world’; (g) that therefore the situation in which I find myself at any moment is only to a small extent purely created by me.”8

In the lifeworld, understood as a natural and social world, people act, but they also experience the failure or the limits of their actions. Therefore, they do not only act “within” the lifeworld, but they also change it (they act “upon” it, as Schutz describes it). The relation of man to the lifeworld can be considered a reciprocal one. People change the reality of the lifeworld and this in turn changes the actions of the people: “The life-world, understood in its totality as natural and social world, is the arena, as well as what sets the limits, of my and our reciprocal action.”9 Schutz points out a significant distinction between episodes, which do not attract our interest or attention, and which seem to be less relevant10, and other experiences “to which the individual turns their attention”: “Such events, in which the individual is committed, […] we want to call experiences. In short: experiences stand out in the stream of consciousness; experiences are outstanding due to the individual’s attention.”11 “Meaning” arises by subsequent achievements of consciousness, when the individual “grasps well-defined experiences”:

6 | Ibid. 7 | Ibid., 5. 8 | Ibid. 9 | Ibid, 6. 10 | A. Schütz: Strukturen der Lebenswelt II, 12. 11 | Ibid., 13.

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Musical Practice as a Form of Life “Only when I consciously grasp well-defined experiences beyond their actuality do they become memorable, meaningful and sensible in regards to their constitution. When the individual looks on their own experiences, or rather more precisely looks back, it lifts them out of the simple actuality of the original course of experience and places them in a context beyond this process. This context necessarily points beyond the simple involvement of the ego in its experiences. Such a connection is a meaning context; sense is a reference value created in the consciousness, not a special experience or a characteristic inherent in the experience itself. It is more about the relationship between an experience and something else. In the simplest case, this ‘something else’ might be an experience different from the current one: a remembered experience.”12

Schutz’s concept of experience will be the basis for his development of different realms of reality. He also speaks of “provinces of reality”13, which do not only include the priority of the everyday world, but also the reality of aesthetic experience.

The Paramount Reality Schutz also calls the “everyday life-world” a “pre-eminent reality”14; with regard to William James he brings into the discussion the term “paramount reality”.15 It is the world of the “taken-for-grantedness”: “[W]e designate everything which we experience as unquestionable”.16 What does “taken-for-grantedness” mean? This view of the everyday life-world attributes to the common corporeality of human beings, who share this world, and to the common consciousness connected with this corporeality.17 In addition: People share “meaning” of external things. They are able to get involved in interactions and to understand each other. They share a common “social and cultural world” as a kind of “frame of reference” as well as the (common) existential experience that people find themselves in situations they did not “create”.18 In “Symbol, Reality, and Society” Schutz summarizes the character of the “paramount reality”:

12 | Ibid. 13 | A. Schutz/Th. Luckmann: The Structures of the Life-World, 22 et seq. 14 | Ibid., 6. 15 | Ibid, 5-6: “William James [in “Principles of Psychology”] does call the subuniverse of the sensorily perceivable, physical world the ‘paramount reality’.” 16 | Ibid., 3-4. 17 | Ibid., 5. 18 | Ibid.

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“The outer world of everyday life is a paramount reality: a. because we always participate in it, even during our dreams, by means of our bodies, which are themselves things in the outer world; b. because the outer objects delimit our free possibilities of action by offering resistance which can only be overcome through effort if it can be overcome at all; c. because it is that realm into which we can gear by our bodily activities and, hence, which we can change or transform; d. because—and this is just a corollary to the preceding points—within this realm, and only within this realm, we can communicate with our fellow-men and thus establish a ‘common comprehensive environment’ in the sense of Husserl.”19 In addition to this “paramount reality”, Schutz recognizes a wealth of other realms of reality, including the realm of making music. We find worlds and realities besides the everyday life- world.

“On Multiple Realities” Schutz’s concept of multiple realities is based on William James’s idea of several orders of reality, which James calls “subuniverses”. Each “subuniverse” has its own characteristics and “style of existence”: “the world of senses or physical things (as the paramount reality), the world of science, the world of ideal relations, the worlds of mythology and religion” and more.20 For James, as Schutz points out, “[r]eality means simply relation to our emotional and active life; whatever excites and stimulates our interest is real.” An object in the outer world becomes real by the interest an individual or a group of individuals shows.21 Schutz illustrates the fantasy world in his essay “Don Quixote and the Problem of Reality”. Against this background, he examines the adventures of Don Quixote, who was dreaming himself away into a world of Middle Ages—accompanied by kings, knights and their ladies: “a sub-universe of reality incompatible with the paramount reality of daily life”.22 In this realm of reality, Don Quixote constantly comes into conflict with the reality of everyday life. Don Quixote gives the fantasy world (and not just the everyday world) the “accent

19 | A. Schutz: Symbol, Reality and Society, 342. 20 | Ibid., 340. 21 | Ibid. 22 | A. Schutz: Don Quixote and the Problem of Reality, 136.

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of reality”23, so that the reality of the imagination gains the upper hand, which leads to the well-known confusions. Schutz prefers to speak of “finite provinces of meaning” instead of “sub-universes”: “By this change of terminology, we emphasize that it is the meaning of our experiences, and not the ontological structure of the objects, which constitutes reality. Each province of meaning—the paramount world of real objects and events into which we can gear by our actions, the world of imaginings and fantasms, such as the play world of the child, the world of the insane, but also the world of art, the world of dreams, the world of scientific contemplation—has its particular cognitive style. It is this particular style of a set of our experiences which constitutes them as a finite province of meaning.”24

The everyday life-world is the paramount reality. Other “finite provinces of meaning” include the different worlds of fantastic imaginations, the world of dreams, the world of science, the world of art and play, and the world of theatre. Each of these provinces of meaning has its own very special “style” of experience25: “The finite character of a province of meaning (of the every-day life-world, of the world of dreams, of the world of science, of the world of religious experience) rests upon the character of the unity of its own peculiar lived experience—viz., its cognitive style. Harmony and compatibility, with regard to this style, are consequently restricted to a given province of meaning.”26

We experience a transition from the everyday life-world to another “finite province of meaning” as a “shock”: “[T]his reality seems to us to be the natural one, and we are not ready to abandon our attitude toward it without having experienced a specific shock which compels us to break through the limits of this ‘finite’ province of meaning and to shift the accent of reality to another one.”27

Returning to the everyday world is a similar experience. A shock can be experienced, for example, when we return from the dream into the everyday world and then, after a nightmare, we feel relief in the recognition that we have dreamed. 23 | Ibid.; see A. Schutz: The Structures of the Life-World, 22 et seq. 24 | A. Schutz: Symbol, Reality and Society, 341. 25 | A. Schutz: On Multiple Realities, 229-59. 26 | A. Schutz: The Structures of the Life-World, 23-4. 27 | A. Schutz: On Multiple Realities, 231.

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In addition, the “province of meaning” joke can invite us to fall from the everyday world into the reality of wit and released laughter until everyday life shockingly asserts itself again. Using the example of the joke, Peter Berger explains how boundaries between “realms of reality” are crossed. If a joke was hurtful and hit the person, who then reacts with outrage, the admission that it was just fun shows that said person crossed a threshold into the everyday world. Berger mentions the well-known excuse notes: “But it was only a joke!” “This was not meant seriously!”28 “Those to whom this explanation is made—that is, those who were the butts of the joke—are then expected to acknowledge that no offense was intended and that none is taken. If they make this concession grudgingly, they implicitly testify to the fact that the conventional line between serious and unserious discourse is not as clear as is generally assumed. In other words, they are probably correct in suspecting that the joke that ‘went too far’ touched a raw reality and therefore is much more than only a joke.”29

It is only music! What does—against this background— the assertion that a musical performance finally is “only music”, express after all?

E xcursus: William James’s “sub-universes” “Any object which remains uncontradicted is ipso facto believed and posited as absolute reality.”30 Even the winged horse in a dream has legitimacy in a dream reality until it provokes contradiction. William James starts from the point of a distinction of spaces. An object in the same room as other realities must face the test of whether it can find its place here. He distinguishes sub-universes, which make up their own realms of reality or space and create their own style of existence (“each with its own special and separate style of existence”): the world of the senses, the physical things (with certain qualities such as heat, color, etc.), the world of forces (electricity), the world of science, the world of ideal relationships or abstract truths (such as mathematics), the idol of the tribe, illusions and prejudices, the various supernatural worlds, the world of individual opinion (as diverse as humans are), and the world of madness (“sheer madness”).31 James himself does not regard this list as complete and comprehensive. All these “worlds” are “The Many Worlds”. The world of practical concerns is

28 | P. Berger: Redeeming Laughter, 6. 29 | Ibid. 30 | W. James: The Principles of Psychology II, p. 918; emphasis in original. 31 | Ibid., 921-2.

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quite another thing—James speaks of “the world of ‘practical’ realities”.32 In this world, an object acquires the quality of reality by way of its meaning to us, by way of the interest that it sparks in us: “[A]n object must not only appear, but it must appear both interesting and important. The worlds whose objects are neither interesting nor important we treat simply negatively, we brand them as unreal.”33

What is real? We determine this by our interest and attention: “[R]eality means simply relation to our emotional and active life. This is the only sense which the word ever has in the mouths of practical men. In this sense, whatever excites and stimulates our interest is real; whenever an object so appeals to us that we turn to it, accept it, fill our mind with it, or practically take account of it, so far it is real for us, and we believe it.”34

“Making Music Together” The subtitle to Schutz’s essay “Making Music Together” is: “A Study in Social Relationship”. Schutz creates a direct connection to the everyday world with these thoughts: “The chief interest of our analyses consists in the particular character of all social interactions connected with the musical process: they are doubtless meaningful to the actor as well as to the addressee, but this meaning structure is not capable of being expressed in conceptual terms; they are founded upon communication, but not primarily upon a semantic system used by the communicator as a scheme of expression and by his partner as a scheme of interpretation.”35

He refers to Max Weber: “[A]ctions have to be oriented in their course with reference to one another.”36 According to Schutz’s observations on the “social interaction” and “communication”, all communication is founded on “mutual tuning-in relationship”: “It is precisely this mutual tuning-in relationship by which the ‘I’ and the ‘Thou’ are experienced by both participants as a ‘We’ in vivid presence.”37 By mentioning a meaningful action, a “mutual tuning-in re32 | Ibid., 924. 33 | Ibid.; emphasis in original. 34 | Ibid.; emphasis in original. 35 | A. Schutz: Making Music Together, 159; emphasis in original. 36 | Ibid., 160. 37 | Ibid., 161.

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lationship” at a certain place, a creation of relationships and an experience of a common time Schutz characterizes musical practice. A little later, he brings up the point that the performers and the listeners “are ‘tuned-in’ to one another, are living together through the same flux, are growing older together while the music process lasts”.38 The participants form a special community through being together at a certain place and having experiences during a certain time. The connection to the everyday world is not speech, but the “we-relationship” that shapes both the everyday world and the musical situation. With regard to a relationship created by speech, Schutz observes: “Now let us consider that the occurrence in the outer world—the communicator’s speech—is, while it goes on, an element common to his and my vivid present, both of which are, therefore, simultaneous. My participating in simultaneity in the ongoing process of the Other’s communicating establishes therefore a new dimension of time. He and I, we share, while the process lasts, a common vivid present, our vivid present, which enables him and me to say: ‘We experienced this occurrence together.’ By the We-relation, thus established, we both—he, addressing himself to me, and I, listening to him, - are living in our mutual vivid present, directed toward the thought to be realized in and by the communicating process. We grow older together.”39

The shared experience as well as the emerging “We-relation” connect the “everyday life-world” and the world of musical practice. In the everyday life-world, the “We-relation” originates in shared experiences or in common speech (experienced gestures). In the world of musical practice, we find a “We-relation” while producing sounds, performing gestures, posturing ourselves in a certain way, deciding on positions in the space, and finding locations and relationships to each other. In “Making Music Together” Schutz discusses the “web of social relationships”40, including even a lonely musician studying a composition. The musicians can deal with this particular piece of music due to a lot of experiences. They make experiences during a single individual life, and within a particular “musical culture”. Musical “knowledge” (even “prior knowledge”) is “socially derived” like any other knowledge. In addition, it is “socially approved, being regarded as authentic”41. Schutz continues focusing on an analysis of the relationships between performers, listeners and composers. He finds a connection between these participants by observing their “inner time” (Henri Bergson’s “temps durée”). Again, 38 | Ibid., 175. 39 | A. Schutz: On Multiple Realities, 219-20; emphasis in original. 40 | A. Schutz: Making Music Together, 167. 41 | Ibid., 168.

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he refers to the “mutual tuning-in relationship” and to the “experience of the ‘We’”: “It is the thesis of the present paper that this sharing of the other’s flux of experiences in inner time, this living through a vivid present in common, constitutes what we called […] the mutual tuning-in relationship, the experience of the ‘We,’ which is at the foundation of all possible communication.”42

Schutz discovers an extension of each individual performer into the outer space, and an orientation towards the not only audible, but also visible actions of the other players. He calls this relationship a “close face-to-face relationship”.43 At this point, a direct relationship between actions and activities in the everyday life-world and the activities while “making music together” might be established. Corporeality and physical visible activities are events that, like the path of a flying stone, can be measured chronometrically and are subject to so-called objective time. On the other hand, they appear as spontaneous utterances that can be traced back to the flow of “inner time”.44 “In and by our bodily movements we perform the transition from our durée to the spatial or cosmic time, and our working actions partake of both. In simultaneity we experience the working actions as a series of events in outer and in inner time, unifying both dimensions into a single flux which shall be called the vivid present. The vivid present originates, therefore, in an intersection of durée and cosmic time.”45

In musical practice (“Making Music Together”) Schutz observes a similar “intersection of durée and cosmic time”. From here the possibility of a “mutual tuning-in relationship” and the experience of the “We” originate.

Potentiality In addition to Schutz’s ideas on “Making Music together” a further connection between the everyday world and the world of musical practice should be considered, namely the repetitive structure of music making. Musical practice is designed for repetition—without striving for any sort of perfection. The meaningfulness of the practice justifies its call for repetition. It is precisely this repetition structure that makes the everyday world valid for Schutz. He asserts 42 | Ibid., 173. 43 | Ibid., 176. “Any chamber musician knows how disturbing an arrangement that prevents the coperformers from seeing each other can be.” Ibid. 44 | A. Schutz: On Multiple Realities, 215. 45 | Ibid., 216; emphasis in original.

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the repetitive structure for the everyday world, here especially the “world of working”. He calls “the stratum of the world of working, which the individual experiences, as the kernel of his reality the world within his reach”; this world “belongs essentially to the present tense”.46 But there are other worlds with different time horizons, namely worlds with “potentiality”. “To the first [of these other worlds], which refers to the past, belongs what was formerly within my actual reach and what, so I assume, can be brought back into my actual reach again (world within restorable reach).”47 However, this assumption is only justified if one starts from the repeatability of the actions. This is the “first zone of potentiality”: “related to the past”.48 The second zone of potentiality is the “world within attainable reach”: a world oriented towards the future.49 “Within my potential reach is also the world which neither is nor ever has been within my actual reach but which is nevertheless attainable under the idealization of ‘and so on’ (world within attainable reach). The most important instance of this second zone of potentiality is the world within the actual reach of my contemporaneous fellow-man.”50

With reference to Edmund Husserl Schutz mentions the “idealizations of the ‘and so on’ and of the ‘I can do it again’”51: These idealizations open up the worlds of potentiality. However, such “idealizations” are also inscribed in musical practice. The musical practice thus gains life-worldly traits and becomes aware of its potentiality. Above all, when musical practice loosens the exclusive bond with the music-art character and approaches a life practice (becomes a form of life), its repetitive structure becomes an action with certain time horizons. An action that is currently not possible for me, but already for another performer, can still be possible for me if I take the place of the other or if the other performs this for me.

Appresentation “Appresentation” means a kind of co-presence, co-presentation. Schutz finds an explanation for a first approach:

46 | Ibid., 224; emphasis in original. 47 | Ibid.; emphasis in original. 48 | Ibid., 225. 49 | Ibid.; emphasis in original. 50 | Ibid.; emphasis in original. 51 | Ibid., 224.

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Musical Practice as a Form of Life “The most primitive case of a coupling or pairing association is characterized by the fact that two or more data are intuitively given in the unity of consciousness, which, by this very reason, constitutes two distinct phenomena as a unity, regardless of whether or not they are attended to.”52

He tries to illustrate this: We look at an “object of the outer world” but precisely perceive the frontside of this object. This perception “involves an apperception by analogy of the unseen backside”: “[W]e may say that the frontside, which is apperceived in immediacy or given to us in presentation, appresents the unseen backside in an analogical way”.53 In “Structures of the Life-World”, Schutz explains how “marks”, “indications”, “signs” and “symbols” identify messages beyond the borders of immediate experience by appresenting details that are relevant and important for the experience but transcend this experience in any way.54 The “limits of experience” can be exceeded by co-presentation—appresentation. Schutz calls transgressions of borders “transcendences” and distinguishes small, medium-sized and great transcendences. The small ones belong to the everyday life-world and are for example experienced when an object has gone out of reach that already was within reach.55 One example, which Schutz cites, is a forgotten book left on the table at home. You know that you can bring it back into reach, that the experience can be reactivated. The medium-sized transcendences arise in the already mentioned “face-to-face relationship”.56 Experiencing the body of the Other I can transcend his outside that is not a mere outside: “According to [Husserl], the Other is from the outset given to me as both a material object with its position in space and a subject with its psychological life. His body, like all other material objects, is given to my original perception or, as Husserl says, in originary presence. His psychological life, however, is not given to me in originary presence but only in copresence; it is not presented, but appresented. […] So-called ‘empathy’ in the other person is nothing but that form of appresentational apprehension which grasps this meaning.”57

This aspect of the Other’s copresence could become one focal point of the discussion about musical practice.

52 | A. Schutz: Symbol, Reality and Society, 295. 53 | Ibid. 54 | A. Schütz/Th. Luckmann: Strukturen der Lebenswelt II, 178 et seq. 55 | Ibid., 149. 56 | Ibid. 57 | A. Schutz: Symbol, Reality and Society, 314.

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The great transcendences mean transgressions of the boundaries of the everyday life-world into other realities, for example by turning away from everyday life into a dream or a daydream, into ecstasies, into crisis and death.58 Appresentation therefore makes it possible to transcend boundaries within a “finite province of meaning” or even to relate “finite provinces of meaning” to one another.

3.2 E veryday L ife -W orld and M usical P r actice : A first discussion of the threshold Schutz insists on the separation of the “finite provinces of meaning”. His studies suggest respecting the borders between the different “realities”. There are connections between “finite provinces of meaning” as well as shocking transitions from one province to another—for example a bang that can profoundly disturb an observer’s contemplation. Nevertheless, links between the realms exist. The idea of different “provinces of meaning” can open doors to new and enriching possibilities to discover transparencies and transcendences. The parallels between the “finite province” of musical practice and the everyday life-world seem to be important. Let’s take a brief review of the essay “Making Music Together: A Study in Social Relationship”. Interconnecting elements between the musical practice described here and the “Paramount Reality” are: • the orientation towards the actions of the participants; • the need for giving meaning to life and practice; • the development of “intersubjective situations of a community” (“We-relation”); • the experience of a process (of growing older together); • the social structure of experiences; • the derivation of musical “knowledge” from social networks and history; • the participation in a common presence (“mutual tuning-in relationship”); • the orientation towards activities, gestures, and positions of the Other (“face-to-face relationship”); • the intersubjectivity during the process of practice. Beyond these studies, there are further parallels that connect musical practice and the everyday life-world.

58 | A. Schütz/Th. Luckmann: Strukturen der Lebenswelt II, 161 et seq.

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a. Repetitive structures determine everyday life as well as musical practice. In a similar way one more link appears when we look at the “worlds with ‘potentiality’”. The “idealizations of the ‘and so on’ and of the ‘I can do it again’” allow the “world within restorable reach” and the “world within attainable reach” to become reachable. b. The determination of a certain “style” of experiences and the restriction of certain experiences to a given “finite province of meaning” will also lead one step further. Starting from a special horizon of meaning that constitutes reality—or rather a very specific reality among several—it becomes clear why the performance of a sonata can become a reality. The sonata becomes real as soon as it attracts attention and interest. It gains reality when it is performed. c. Finally, the everyday life-world relates to the realm of musical practice as soon as corporeality appears. Our bodies always associate another province of meaning with the outside world of everyday life—even when we “dream”.59 d. “Appresentation”, co-presence, allows for the experience of inner life (“psychological life”) of the Other by appearance, activity, and position of the body. Corporeality on the stage makes “transcendences” possible.

3.3 E mbodying , S howing (S imone M ahrenhol z) Music and Life-World — References via Listening A series of words for what is musically happening now show a large semantic field. Various descriptions are possible, or seem to be more or less useful. But even doubts about the viability of such verbal inventions occur, especially when verbalizing experiences of meaning or of relationships. Simone Mahrenholz dedicates herself in a new way to the problem “of aiming at expressing something in words whose very nature is exactly that it defies words, standing in a kind of logical opposition to them.”60 “Describing music by way of language, by way of words, always means to beat something like a wound, to form a gap. This stems from a loss, from an injury: from the rift that occurs simultaneously with the transition from an embodying system to a system of symbols pointing to something, between a system that shows and one that speaks. 59 | A. Schutz: Symbol, Reality and Society, 342: “The outer world of everyday life is a paramount reality […] because we always participate in it, even during our dreams, by means of our bodies, which are themselves things in the outer world.” 60 | S. Mahrenholz: The Copernican Turn in Musicology, 1.

3. Finding Speech Every connection between this sound structure and that descriptive word is fragile, offering various alternatives.”61

She clearly describes the difference again “in short”: “Music does not (in the first place) denote things outside of itself, as does language. It does not point to something (verweisen). Music’s characteristic form of reference or meaning is ‘vorweisen’, embodying, showing. Music has the features it ‘means to’, it points to. It exhibits, manifests, and features them. Language refers to something beyond itself, music exhibits features by itself. In short, and in simplifying brevity: Music does not denote but exemplifies.”62

Starting from here, Simone Mahrenholz tries to approach Helmut Lachenmann’s thesis that musical structure points to the world—to realities and possibilities that surround us and are hidden within ourselves.63 Therefore, Mahrenholz makes the claim that music can “be applicable to other things than music and thus re-structure, re-organize the world”.64 This approach is worked out by means of the metaphor—according to Nelson Goodman’s symbol theory. Mahrenholz mentions another very important aspect, namely the ephemeral structure of music, and the musical abundance of “nuances in tempo, sound-quality, agogics, intonation, dynamics, etc.”: “[M]usic’s characteristic logical structure is ‘density’, being nuanced, continuousness—despite the distinctness of the scales involved and the metrical organization. It is about transitions, not borders or boundaries.”65 According to Mahrenholz, understanding music can mean understanding “through” music: “a realization, comprehension of the inner or outer world, of reality, of possibility”.66 Thus, she addresses an interaction between musical reality and the everyday life-world, even mentioning George Steiner, who describes how authors like Balzac or Dickens transformed urban surroundings, how van Gogh’s paintings transformed summer nights with bright stars, and how aleatoric or electronic music transforms technical surroundings.67 61 | S. Mahrenholz: Musik-Verstehen jenseits der Sprache, 219; emphasis in original. 62 | S. Mahrenholz: The Copernican Turn in Musicology, 2. 63 | S. Mahrenholz: Musik-Verstehen jenseits der Sprache, 220; see H. Lachenmann: Vier Grundbestimmungen des Musikhörens, 62; H. Lachenmann: Nono, Webern, Mozart, Boulez, 278. 64 | S. Mahrenholz: The Copernican Turn in Musicology, 2. 65 | Ibid. 66 | S. Mahrenholz: Musik-Verstehen, 220. 67 | See G. Steiner: Von realer Gegenwart, 217; see S. Mahrenholz: Musik-Verstehen, 226 et seq.

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Starting from Goodman’s symbol theory, which focuses on painting and musical notation, Mahrenholz is primarily dedicated to the aural labels. She criticizes the one-sided consideration of the notation and advocates a stronger consideration of the sonic appearance of music; the processual character of the musical event cannot be described by an analysis of the score alone.68 In doing so, apart from stating her opinion about the corporeality of composing (and performing)69, she does not explicitly address the musical practice of performance but addresses listening, or rather, the listener: Being touched happens “via listening”.70 Listening to music depends on the performance; even a recorded piece of music must be performed beforehand. Thus, Mahrenholz repeatedly speaks of the necessity of performance but does not address the concrete actions of the performers. Nevertheless, distancing oneself from an exclusive orientation towards the score is important to her. Mahrenholz’s approach broadens the view of musical practice, although such an accentuation of the matter is not ostensibly in the interest of her studies. This research provides a vocabulary and helps in finding language for describing musical practice. It allows greater accuracy of one’s speech, especially in distinguishing metaphorical and literal qualities. Above all, the distinction between “pointing” to something (“verweisen”) and “showing”, “embodying” (“vorweisen”) continues the discussion of the question of what musical practice can be.

E xemplification Mahrenholz addresses the dilemma that, on the one hand, a precise description of musical structures in terms of musicology remains a mere description without approach to what we want to mention as the “meaning”, but, on the other hand, a speech rich in metaphors could be accused of arbitrariness and subjectivity. The question then is, how does one find a way to capture what we regard as the musical meaning without simply listing structural details?71 Mahrenholz’s study initially differs from that of Goodman’s as it relates to music “as a sonic phenomenon”.72 One reason for the reference to Goodman’s theory is Goodman’s “innovation” to extend the “concept of reference” by including the reference by exemplification.73 Two different means of reference must be distinguished: denotation and exemplification. Denotation means a 68 | S. Mahrenholz, Musik und Erkenntnis, 5. 69 | See S. Mahrenholz: Der Körper des Komponisten. 70 | S. Mahrenholz: Musik und Erkenntnis, 169; emphasis in original. 71 | S. Mahrenholz: Musik-Verstehen, 221. 72 | S. Mahrenholz: Musik und Erkenntnis, 5. 73 | Ibid., 6.

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relationship between a sign and a reference object. The “route of reference”74 runs from the sign to the object; the sign “stands for”, “signifies”.75 Forms of denotation are “description” and “representation”. In figurative painting, denotation is the common way of referring to an object, but in music it is only possible in special cases: in “musical citation”, in musical works with “leading motifs”, and in “program music”76. Regarding so-called absolute music, Mahrenholz claims that denotation is not the sole form of reference. At this point Goodman’s extension of reference possibilities or rather his view on exemplification offers a solution to solve the problem mentioned above. “In exemplification—as opposed to denotation—the route of reference runs in the opposite direction: not from the sign but to the sign. Exemplification follows the logics of the sample, the exemplar: what is referred to is not something that exists outside the symbol, but some possessed features of the symbolizing object itself. Exemplification is of labels, features, nonverbal predicates—whereas denotation is usually of objects, events.”77

Mahrenholz takes over the term “label” from Goodman to describe the properties of a medium. These “labels” are exemplified. What exactly can be a label in music? A phrase in music could exemplify its rhythm, its colors, or rather its instrumentation, harmonies, melody, a special structure, and so on. In this case the phrase becomes a “sample”.78 It makes a difference whether a piece of music possesses or just exhibits certain properties. Mahrenholz makes use of Goodman’s example of a fabric sample. Depending on the context, this sample has different properties (such as smell, a certain size); these properties are not exemplified if they are not shown in this context. The property that is shown could be the color. What a label is and what it is not, therefore, cannot be determined in general, but rather depends on the type of reference and the context.79 Regarding the performance situation of music: “The musical performance exemplifies those properties, a) which it possesses as a tonal symbol, and b) to which it refers in an aesthetic context.”80

74 | See S. Mahrenholz: Music and Cognition, 74. 75 | S. Mahrenholz: Musik und Erkenntnis, 40. 76 | Ibid., 41 et seq. 77 | S. Mahrenholz: Music and Cognition, 73-4. 78 | S. Mahrenholz: Musik-Verstehen, 224. 79 | S. Mahrenholz: Musik und Erkenntnis, 49. 80 | Ibid., p. 64.

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E xcursus: Nelson Goodman’s E xemplification “Consider a tailor’s booklet of small swatches of cloth. These function as samples, as symbols exemplifying certain properties. But a swatch does not exemplify all its properties; it is a sample of color, weave, texture, and pattern, but not of size, shape, or absolute weight or value. Nor does it even exemplify all the properties—such as having been finished on a Tuesday—that it shares with the given bolt or run of material. Exemplification is possession plus reference. To have without symbolizing is merely to possess, while to symbolize without having is to refer in some other way than by exemplifying. The swatch exemplifies only those properties that it both has and refers to.”81

Starting with “exemplification”, we can understand what “expression” is, how “expression” comes about. “Not all exemplification is expression, but all expression is exemplification.”82 According to Goodman, expression is a special kind of exemplification; the “metaphorical” exemplification, to be specific.83 This “metaphorical” exemplification differs from the “literal” exemplification, which shows “literal” properties. In the “metaphorical” exemplification, a jump to another level of reference takes place. Goodman chooses as an example a gray, gloomy painting “expressing” sadness.84 This picture cannot be sad but can have the shades of gray. It is gray in the literal sense, but the question arises: “[I]nstead of saying the picture expresses sadness I might have said that it is a sad picture. Is it sad, then, in the same way that it is gray? A notable difference is that since, strictly speaking, only sentient beings or events can be sad, a picture is only figuratively sad. A picture literally possesses a gray color, really belongs to the class of gray things; but only metaphorically does it possess sadness or belong to the class of things that feel sad.”85

In an analogy to Goodman’s example of the fabric sample, Mahrenholz uses a piece of music: Chopin’s Etude no. 7 for Piano op. 25, “a passage in C Sharp Minor with slow, even eighth notes in the middle register, above and below a melody with small intervals falling downwards”.86 It is important to Mahrenholz that the expression is separated from the emotion: “We characterize this music as sad—more precisely: we give it a non-verbal label that is roughly coextensive with ‘sad’—namely regardless of whether the music evokes that feeling in us 81 | N. Goodman: Languages of Art, 53. 82 | Ibid., 52. 83 | See S. Mahrenholz: Music and Cognition, 74. 84 | N. Goodman: Languages of Art, 50. 85 | Ibid., 50-1. 86 | S. Mahrenholz: Musik und Erkenntnis, 85.

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[…] or whether we perceive it as it was in the music.”87 The mentioned passage “possesses” the harmonic, rhythmic and melodic qualities literally, and even shows them; the leap onto the metaphorical level takes place with the attribution of the label “sad”.

Music pointing beyond itself Mahrenholz’s study allows one to regard music as something pointing beyond itself and at the same time participating in that to which it points. It continues the discussion of musical practice, although this is not its subject. It creates transparency between musical pieces and the everyday life-world; it helps to nimbly cross the threshold. By choosing the label “sad” as a description for Chopin’s Etude in C Sharp Minor we do not only learn something about this piece of music but also something about the label “sad”. We learn, very precisely, even more about “sad”, and potentially more about us and the world than about this composition. While the label “sad” is relatively unspecific, the music, on the contrary, is extremely nuanced and differentiated, and characterizes the label “sad” in full breadth, with all shades.88 In this sense, Mahrenholz’s study is about the interactions between a piece of music and the life-world. Music and the outer and inner world influence each other. These influences do not occur one-sidedly, but alternately to one another; there is a kind of fluctuation. With reference to Lachenmann, Mahrenholz considers the idea of “pointing” to structures within ourselves and in our surroundings as important: Music is capable of “opening up” realities and possibilities; at the same time, music can “refer” to them while participating in these inner and outer worlds.89 Transparency between the piece of music and the life-world is created by the listener who becomes the actor. The sounding phenomenon and therefore the nuances of different interpretations are the focus of the study, not the notation. The performer acts as a listener, and “via listening”90 the processes of opening and manifesting structures of our lives become possible. Mahrenholz lists three theses that are fundamental to her research. Her first thesis: “When music is listened to, it points beyond its literally possessed structures; at the same time, this capacity is based on its own structures. Understanding music means […] recognizing its own structures elsewhere or transferring these structures.”91 This could mean firstly the recognition of la87 | Ibid. 88 | Ibid., 88. 89 | S. Mahrenholz: Musik-Verstehen, 220 et seq. 90 | S. Mahrenholz: Musik und Erkenntnis, 169. 91 | S. Mahrenholz: Musik-Verstehen, 221.

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bels within a musical work itself, and secondly the recognition of a certain work in another work, perhaps of quite another period; then this could mean the reference of particular musical properties to extra-musical works of art or to lifeworld (movements, pictures, architecture, etc.). The second thesis is devoted to the possibility of non-verbal metaphorical transference. For the transference in general it makes no difference whether an expression is determined by a word or by a picture: “The understanding of music, as long as it also consists of recognizing and rediscovering musical structures in extra-musical matters, is an act of metaphorical transference. This does not necessarily have to occur in speech.”92 Finally, the third thesis clarifies the reciprocity of the transference process, as well as the potential for transformation inherent in metaphorical transference. The metaphorical transfer of musical to extra-musical structures changes these extra-musical ones, a process which in turn affects the music. Mahrenholz speaks of a process of “re-organizing”: “Musical structures are projected onto others [extra-musical ones]. They re-organize this other one; and this other one potentially re-organizes the music again. The understanding/experience of music is thus partly coincident with the understanding/experience through music.”93

The Process of Speaking about Music: Its Power and Energ y Mahrenholz rejects the renunciation of speech and verbal description. Although every word can be replaced by another equally fitting one, the metaphor still gives us the possibility of a transference. Metaphorical speaking remains necessary for her. The discussion about music should not be exhausted in a mere enumeration of structural details. At this point an example of the linguistic approach to Franz Schubert’s Piano Sonata no. 19 in C Minor D 958 (1828), bars 117-59 (development): Mahrenholz connects the loss of a clear measure, the “orientation towards a non-articulated, dedifferentiated depth and at the same time remote height” with “the threat and the simultaneous maelstrom of death”.94 The subject feels the “gradual dissolution of objective temporality” and at the same time a dissolution of “one’s own temporality”.95 Thus, this “time label” expresses “an experience of world and self” that touches experiences beyond the mere musical sphere—experiences of the inner and outer world of the listener. According to Mahrenholz, this passage articulates an experience that “has reality for everyone at any time” and is “scarcely able of consciousness”. At the same time Mahrenholz relativizes her own words, 92 | Ibid., 223. 93 | Ibid.; emphasis in original. 94 | S. Mahrenholz: Musik und Erkenntnis, 146. 95 | Ibid.

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she knows that she is describing a large field of associations and feelings: “Of course, the passage must not be associated with ‘death’, completely different areas of meaning are possible with the same musical material.”96 Could a description of musical practice by means of the metaphor be a processual “approach”97 to what “is shown” or “manifests itself” in the process of performance? In other words: Which metaphors could relate to a description of what someone is doing while performing the mentioned passage of Schubert’s sonata? While performing I learn how the melody gradually disappears. Some notes of the theme are missing, and phrases are contracted. I feel how I play in different registers of the piano, playing with each hand at quite a different place; a connection becomes difficult. I do something different with my left hand than with the right one, I must deal with different layers of time simultaneously. A kind of “floating” arises in my body. Almut Roeßler describes this “floating” with reference to Olivier Messiaen’s “valeurs irrationelles”, which create for her “a highly dialectical field of tension”, as follows: “The layers of different sequences of time, which I can accurately reproduce, produce in their complexity the impression of an irrational time division, a floating in the space of time.”98 The mentioned passage of Schubert’s sonata creates a situation of disorientation for me as a performer. I am slipping on the ground, and I lose the ground. How can you perform this? At first you might practice it almost mechanically, maybe with both hands apart, until the movements are in head and body, so that you can simply let the performance go. Performing becomes a loss of control. As a performer I enter unsteady ground, a foggy field, and I dwell in twilight and darkness. Mahrenholz’s approach “via listening” opens the space of metaphorical speech. To take one step further with a view to the performers: The speech rich in metaphors helps to describe how we are performing, and how we feel while performing. Both worlds, the musical and the extra-musical one, show the mutual relation.

Embodiments: A Discussion about Wolfgang Rihm’s Oeuvre Mahrenholz highlights the physical, sensual “pre-conceptual” experience of music. Mentioning the Balinese music as an example, she shows the value of bodily sensual existence that is experienced while listening (dancing). But listening alone does not enable us to feel a kind of “physical-intellectual unity”. It is about a special kind of listening involving the whole body and the senses, 96 | Ibid.; emphasis in original. 97 | See D. Mersch: Was sich zeigt, 40. 98 | A. Roeßler: Zur rhythmischen Freiheit, 158.

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a listening as an act of “affirmation”: The music “is not only captured and understood, but also affirmed for the moment. […] Here, too, music allows the cognitive access to a truth of reality and existence that cannot be made accessible through other forms of symbolization”.99 However, such experiences are potentially not only accessible to listeners, but also (perhaps even more) to the performers. As a composer, Wolfgang Rihm has repeatedly commented on the corporeality of composition: “Craft is ‘bodywork’, the self-pressing of the body into another plastic dimension […]. Craft gets outside as an articulation, and there it again puts together the body from which it originates.”100 In his essay “Musikalische Freiheit” (Musical Freedom) he discusses the situation around 1910, when Schoenberg had not yet followed his own “laws”, but worked “in the chromatic total without tonal ties”: “‘Freie Prosa’ means that music renews itself every moment, actually Debussy’s ideal, namely a music whose course is based on its own flow energy that the composer finds in the sonic objects and frees. This was once called ‘Triebleben der Klänge’. You can call it vegetative composing”.101

Mentioning the name of Debussy, Rihm evokes associations not only to nature and physicality or vegetation processes, but also to speech. He describes Claude Debussy is an “explorer” of “speaking”: “For Debussy composing was always the exploration of the musical language itself. Debussy was a pure musician: in the pure correspondence of syntactic constellations, he did not recognize music. For him, language was inseparable from speaking, from uttering, from the tone of voice.”102

The distinction between syntax and “tone” is important. Here, between the search for the “tone” and the event of emergency, the performer’s activity begins. According to Rihm the performer already learns something about the “tone” of the music on the haptic level: “The performers already ‘speak’ in the tone of the music feeling the touch of the music on themselves, responding to this touch with their own hands, transforming their own hands to make them similar, only to elicit speech from the instrument.”103 99 | S. Mahrenholz: Musik und Erkenntnis, 149 et seq. 100 | W. Rihm: Spur, Faden, 71. 101 | W. Rihm: Musikalische Freiheit, 26. 102 | Ibid., 35. 103 | Ibid.

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This contemplation of the “tone” leads to the single musical event, to the single place in the score. The single individual place in the score challenges both parties, the composer and the performer. Rihm starts with a discussion of the single place and tries to describe it as a “cell”, quite in a “double meaning”: as a “closed unity without potential to develop”, and as a “growth center”, or “growth core”.104 The idea of a “cell” allows to characterize the musical “cell” as a free single event without obvious context, being at the same time an entity that provokes development and growth. From here Mahrenholz has a critical look at Wolfgang Rihm’s oeuvre. She observes that Rihm “pleads for a different ‘Logos’ in his work, for other forms of progress or a different structure of the artistic process”.105 Therefore, she speaks of the “logos of the body, the material” unlike the “logos of speech, of causality and consistency”—an affront to the “discursive and mathematical-linear thinking oriented towards logic and consistency”.106 In this sense she compares a “model” that understands music as a language and is interested in logically comprehensible contexts and a “model” that is more in line with “nature metaphors”.107 Dahlhaus’s concept of understanding—based, on the contrary, on a logical progress and on a development—will be undermined here. According to Mahrenholz Dahlhaus attributed the “understanding” of music to the “insight into a connection between sounds”; this topic is negotiated as meaningful relationships within a certain composition.108 But right across this context of meaningful relationships there is a corporeality of the “material”109 with its own claims, whereby understanding is not reduced, but revalued. Following Isabel Mundry’s answer to the question of understanding music, Mundry does not write music “in order to be understood, but to understand.”110 While quoting this statement, Mahrenholz refers again to metaphorical transference. But what about the danger of falling into a so called “private language trap” or entering a “private offside”?111 One possible answer: by turning to music that is not an “image that stands for reality” but that is “reality unto itself”.112 Music itself: What does this mean? Mahrenholz asks this question and cites Rihm: “The relation to the movement is given by the fact that I regard the 104 | Ibid. 105 | S. Mahrenholz: Der Körper des Komponisten, 24. 106 | Ibid. 107 | Ibid., 28. 108 | Ibid., 29 et seq. 109 | Ibid., 30. 110 | I. Mundry, quotation ibid., 30; emphasis in original. 111 | Ibid., 32. 112 | Ibid., 33.

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music as a body whose movements are themselves, so: the music itself.”113 It is about a Self of the body movements, and a Self of the music as a body, too. Music becomes itself through the connection to the body. In this context Schutz recalls that “in the natural attitude of everyday life” I always find other people “endowed with a consciousness that is essentially the same as mine”.114 “Music itself” (Rihm): This term once again raises questions like these: Does music point out realities and possibilities? Can music be regarded as a kind of reality and/or a make-believe? How do borders or thresholds between the world of music and the world of everyday life work? How do transitions become possible?

3.4 B orders , Thresholds — and Tr ansitions The Ever yday Life-World and the World of Music: Separation — Unification Schutz regards the various “finite provinces of meaning” as “worlds”115; he characterizes each one by its own “particular style of lived experience—viz., a cognitive style”.116 The world of music is one of these “finite provinces of meaning”. “Making music together” is an activity that allows for special experiences, special “social relationships”. Every “province of meaning” can gain the “accent of reality”. These “provinces of meaning” are “finite”: “This finiteness implies that there is no possibility of referring one of these provinces to the other by introducing a formula of transformation. The passing from one to the other can only be performed by a ‘leap’, as Kierkegaard calls it, which manifests itself in the subjective experience of a shock.”117

Based on the description of different “finite provinces of meaning” an observer of a musical practice could try to look ahead using metaphors, speaking of a kind of veil between the world of music and the everyday life-world, perhaps of a (transparent?) membrane that simultaneously separates and combines. Erika Fischer-Lichte speaks of “thresholds” rather than “boundaries” between these two worlds—considering, however, especially performative acts.118 113 | Ibid.; see W. Rihm: zu wissen, 147. 114 | A. Schutz: The Structures of the Life-World, 28 et seq. 115 | Ibid. 116 | Ibid., 23. 117 | A. Schutz: On Multiple Realities, 232. 118 | E. Fischer-Lichte: The Transformative Power of Performance, 204.

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“At the coatroom, the audience tidies the ears and turns the auditory sense off.”119 At the coatroom, a division of the two worlds seems to occur. On the one hand, the music world in the concert hall or in the opera, for example, opens up the possibility of leaving the everyday life-world for a certain time. The audience proceeds from one world into the other one, makes itself at home there for a time—and goes back again. This idea corresponds to a “finiteness” (Schutz) of the provinces and strengthens the separation. Johann Jacob Froberger’s Lamentations and Méditations show how the music world can become a kind of refuge or an island of time. The performer enters this intricate world of sounds, explores these landscapes step by step, touches the keys—and can get lost while performing. Every sound could be the last one: That is how it goes on (for a while). At the end, the performer returns to the everyday life, which is determined by the ticking of the clock. And the performer, freed from the clock while playing, accepts the rules of the lifeworld again. The island of time where the players can forget time and where they can lose themselves for a while becomes a secret place. We enter, knowing well that our residence there is limited. The transition occurs: The performers consciously enter the world of musical practice and leave again. Regarding compositions of the 20th and 21st centuries, we can observe transparencies between the world of music and everyday life. Karlheinz Stockhausen wishes the repeated performance of Spiral for a soloist to invite an “artistic way of life”120; Istvàn Zelenka composes practices that the performers can fully integrate into everyday life; Hans-Joachim Hespos regards the ideal of a performance as an “identification” and a “reduction of distance”121. We can include music in everyday life and describe the inclusion in different ways; we can create and observe relationships between music and everyday life. Some compositions seem to be composed for a special natural integration into everyday life. Examples are Cornelius Cardew’s compositions The Tiger’s Mind or The Great Learning, or Istvàn Zelenka’s compositions that are in part primarily conceived for musical laymen. Zelenka compositions are invitations to occupy oneself with the search for sounds, words, postures, positions, places, and occasions. Compositions like these mark thresholds. The transitions, the steps into the other world of musical practice and back again, seem to be necessary for the integration of the world of music into the world of everyday life. The worlds remain separated from each other. The division of the worlds invites one to cross the thresholds.

119 | I. Bachmann: Die wunderliche Musik, 46. 120 | K. Stockhausen: SPIRAL, 136. 121 | H.-J. Hespos: ..redezeichen.., 130.

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Real Occurrences, Real Situations in the World of Music When the thresholds between the “worlds” touch us, when we expose ourselves to the adventure of passing the thresholds from one world into another, we meet each other in the musical situation. We do not simulate this encounter. It takes place in the realm of “Making Music Together” (Schutz), whereby it does not even become constantly clear in which world we are just living, whether it is in the world of music or in the world of everyday life. By way of the transition into the realm of music, in which we all come together in our diversity, we find ourselves indeed in another world. As performers, we enter a different realm that nevertheless offers real occurrences and processes. Schutz confirms ideas like this in his study “Making Music Together”. A key phrase in this text is the idea of a “mutual tuning-in relationship” during the period of making music together. This “tuning-in” occurs at a certain place. Everyone involved in this activity lives together with all the others for a certain time; they all become older together while practicing. This really happens in the world of making music. In this world with its own reality, its own things, places and lifetimes, we do not experience something happening as if it would happen, but as it actually happens. While playing Johann Jacob Froberger’s Méditation “sur ma mort future” (on my future death) I do not pretend to meditate, but I fall into real meditation. While playing Antoine Beuger’s piano piece pour être seul(e) sans reserve I do not pretend that I am losing myself, but I indeed lose myself. I experience that loss, discovering a way I can confidently give myself up. In doing so, while staying in the realm of making music, the other everyday life-world can definitely break in. So, I cannot always be sure in which world I am currently living. Dealing with a variety of “finite provinces of meaning”, the performers negotiate meaning in musical practice because the practice is meaningful but not earmarked. In musical practice, we become free to address the threshold (Fischer-Lichte) or the membrane between the music world and the everyday world. This is the basic question concerning orientation in everyday life and in musical practice: Which game are we actually playing here? In what “province of meaning” are we currently lingering? In musical practice, we can ask questions like these more pointedly, because the practice is about the creation of meaning and not about the achievement of a specific purpose.

Don Quixote What happens when jumping back and forth—between the world of “Making Music Together” and the world of everyday life (Schutz)? Especially the “shock” when changing from one to the other world and back (and again into the other world, etc.) creates potential for conflictual tension. Here, while changing,

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uncertainty provides an important opportunity. We sometimes do not exactly know where we are now. While crossing over thresholds, these thresholds become blurred. What now? Where do I find myself? What is next? Such questions arise out of conflicts of meaning: What is dream? What is everyday life? What is the fantasy world? Where is the world of making music? Am I already there?—Or not yet (completely)? In his study “Don Quixote and the Problem of Reality,” Schutz refers to William James’s “Principles of Psychology”: Each realm of reality has “its own special and separate style of existence”.122 How does “Don Quixote” handle different “provinces of meaning” that James calls “subuniversa”? “The thesis we want to submit is that Cervantes’s novel deals systematically with the very problem of multiple realities stated by William James and that the various phases of Don Quixote’s adventures are carefully elaborated variations of the main theme, viz. how we experience reality.”123

The protagonist fights against the windmills. For his companion Sancho Panza there is no contest against a mighty military threat, but an impotent strike on lifeless material. The protagonist admires the most beautiful of all ladies, whose education exceeds everything experienced so far, while his uncomprehending companion observes a market woman who does her usual job. What does Don Quixote’s form of life (his knighthood undoubtedly is such a form of life) have to do with a musician’s form of life? I would like to reiterate the magic power of music. Don Quixote did not give the “accent of reality” to the world of the senses or physical things (the paramount reality), but to the world of knight errantry. In this world he himself has become a travelling knight. Moreover, this world is ruled by enchanters who even succeed in reconciling different “finite provinces of meaning” and in dissolving contradictions or paradoxes. The enchanters take on a certain task, namely to “fulfill in Don Quixote’s sub-universe the role of causality and motivation”.124 “Thus, it is the function of the enchanters’ activities to guarantee the coexistence and compatibility of several sub-universes of meaning referring to the same matters of fact and to assure the maintenance of the accent of reality bestowed upon any of such sub-universes. Nothing remains unexplained, paradoxical or contradictory as soon as the enchanter’s activities are recognized as a constitutive element of the world.”125

122 | A. Schutz: Don Quixote and the Problem of Reality, 135. 123 | Ibid., 136. 124 | Ibid., 139. 125 | Ibid., 140.

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Here is reconciliation by magic! The conflict between Don Quixote’s “province of meaning” and the everyday life-world of his surroundings comes to a head as the well-wishers of his fellow human beings try to accommodate him by temporarily entering his world. Thus, they enter a make-believe world, but they never would be willing to lend this world the “accent of reality”. However, according to Schutz, they do not succeed in entering into a genuine social relationship with Don Quixote: “[S]ince they [the friends and well-wishers] never bestow upon their make-believe world the accent of reality, they cannot succeed in establishing a universe of discourse with Don Quixote and, consequently, they cannot enter into a true social relationship with him.”126

Another point that aggravates the situation is that over time Don Quixote himself believes less in his world and falls into uncertainty.127 Don Quixote: the epitome of the musician, of all performers! How real is the game that we perform here? Is it only music? Is it ‘just’ a game? In making music together, how seriously do we enter a certain musical practice? Do we believe in this practice? Do we want to believe in this practice? How strong is our faith in the reality of our practice? As it stands now, the answers to these questions are also dependent on the decisions of the individual musician. Therefore, the question is also: Will I, as a performer, allow the radiance of the world of music into the other world of everyday life? Perhaps even more: Will I evoke such radiance? Schutz quotes Don Quixote: “To make an end of the matter, I imagine all I say to be true, neither more nor less.” And he explains: “This is the basic axiom that identifies truth with existence in the particular sub-universe, upon which the accent of reality has been bestowed.”128 According to this line of thinking the musicians are Don Quixotes. They advocate a certain practice, and they mutually encourage each other to give this world of musical practice the “accent of reality”. In doing so they enter into a “truth procedure” (Wahrheitsprozedur”129). They enter into this procedure by way of their actions, their encounters, and their joint appearance. This is simultaneously a substantial and a modest claim. What do we support? Why are we doing this? Touched by the “event” (“Ereignis”) we enter, according to Alain Badiou, into a “truth procedure”: After the “event” there is the opportunity to acknowledge this event, to enter into it; in the case of entering it, this event gains its 126 | Ibid., 146. 127 | Ibid. 128 | A. Schutz: Don Quixote and the Problem of Reality, 146; emphasis in original. 129 | A. Badiou, in: J. de Bloois/E. van den Hemel: Kunst creëert altijd, 50.

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specificity as an “event” for those who stay within it. For those who affirm it, the world has changed afterwards. The philosophers and musicologists do not place the “event” at the beginning of a “truth procedure”, but the artists who stand up for it thus enter the “truth procedure” with their work, with their actions.130For what do we commit by practicing? What do we affirm? Let us try to connect the world of “Making Music Together” with the world of everyday life, whereby each of them is regarded as a “finite province of meaning”: Which opportunities and possibilities arise from the “leaps”, from the “shock” experiences, and from the “transcendences” (Schutz) while crossing the thresholds between the worlds? None of the worlds will get away undisturbed. The traces of the experiences and memories, the hopes and longings follow the performers who have taken the risk of falling into the completely different world. The focus on the future, we live as performers in provisional worlds here and there—in everyday life as well as in the music world. This form of life frees us; we cannot shake it off after passing over the threshold and back again every now and then. Musical practice as a form of life promises change—precisely because the “provinces of meaning” are set in motion.

Disorientation: Jumping into the Other World What happens now? Where do we dwell? What is next? I ask questions like this when I do not know what to do. I am disoriented. What does disorientation in musical practice mean? How do we deal with disorientation here? Disorientation seems to arise from a conflict between different “provinces of meaning”. Disorientation shapes the world of music as well as the everyday world; both worlds meet each other in disorientation. In both worlds you cannot be sure. The philosophical question concerning “orientation”131 is preceded by the experience of disorientation. For the musical situation, it is precisely the disorientation that makes up the specifically musical aspect of this situation. It is not the experience of knowing where we are, but the experience of not knowing, or not precisely knowing, where we are, that characterizes musical practice, as well as the everyday life-world. Precisely the fact that we as musicians do not always know in which “province of meaning” we are in the moment opens the possibility of pointing out of the actual procedure, to gain perspectives on “realities” and “possibilities” (H. Lachenmann). Speaking about orientation, with reference to the world of “Making Music Together”, seems to make sense only

130 | Ibid.; see A. Badiou: Das Sein und das Ereignis; A. Badiou: Paulus. Die Begründung des Universalismus. 131 | See W. Stegmaier: Orientierung.

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by starting from the musical situation of disorientation.132 The musical situation thrives on disorientation. And we achieve disorientation as musicians in a situation that does not tell us where we are in the moment. Then the question of (musical) orientation arises. As soon as we dissolve the situation of disorientation, we find orientation. The process of finding orientation (again and again) is fundamentally different from the process of self-orientation. According to Andreas Luckner, orientation always includes disorientation—and vice-versa. Luckner suggests the question: What are we missing in the moments when we are disoriented? Afterwards, we ask what orientation could change and how orientation could be found.133 Luckner differentiates between “disorientation” and “lack of orientation”: Disorientation has, according to Luckner, different levels.134 Perhaps the relationship between orientation and disorientation can be described even more strongly from the perspective of disorientation, especially when we look at musical practice. We can only find orientation by starting from the experience of disorientation. According to Schutz and to continue his line of research, disorientation can exist in the musical situation as well as in the life-world. There is no certainty as to which “province of meaning” now owns the “reality accent”. How does disorientation dissolve when we find orientation again? Perhaps Schutz could answer this question: For a certain time, we find orientation anew by a clear allocation of the “accent of reality” to a very specific “finite province of meaning”.

Transcending: Entering a world or Finding oneself there The “border” or “threshold” between the musical situation and everyday life, between the music world and the everyday life-world can be transcended. This description of the process suggests a certain doing, a resolute action: I enter a musical situation. Likewise, I decide to leave again. An accentuation of an activity or an action like this does not say anything about the clarity of the threshold. The threshold may remain blurred for a while, but ultimately there is no doubt about it: The game has begun. Jumping from one “province of meaning” into another one, from the respective musical practice into the everyday world and back (and back and forth, etc.), there is also the possibility that I will find myself (rather unexpectedly) in a new situation that I rediscover. Crossing the threshold does not only refer to a conscious action. Transition also happens to me. There are different ways 132 | See another approach to “orientation”: S. Berg: Was heißt: sich in Musik orientieren?; S. Berg: Orientierung in Klangräumen; S. Berg: Spielwerk. 133 | A. Luckner: Drei Arten, nicht weiterzuwissen, 227. 134 | Ibid.

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that the transition from one world into the other can happen—different ways of consciously entering into a “province of meaning”, and various shocking changes that happen to you. As a performer I enter the other realm of making music together, and this conscious access is a necessary step that preserves the transparency of the membrane. Without separation, the other area is not available. Even if the transition happens to me, the separation of the areas remains. Both types of change, the active and the passive, evoke the vivid potential of conflicts. The proximity of musical practice to the ritual suggests speaking of “intermediate spaces” that separate the different worlds from each other and connect them at the same time. Crossing the threshold appears as a process. Klaus-Peter Koepping and Ursula Rao speak about this experience of a processual change between two worlds in regard to the practice of the ritual. The threshold arising by the ritual must not be regarded as a certain moment, neither as a clear division, but as a processual transition between different “spheres”, namely between the everyday life-world and the world of the ritual, and back again.135 We could describe the wanderings between the everyday world and the musical situation (and back again) in a similar way. A specific point in time for the change is hard to make out; the (metaphorical) talk of “gaps” or “spaces” between the worlds emphasizes the spatial blurring during the transitions. The question of the nature of the transparent membrane between the lifeworld and the music world is also a question of the beginning and ending of a piece of music. Karlheinz Stockhausen distinguishes between a) the beginning and the ending of a process that comes into being, arises, appears and then fades out, and b) a start and an end as a break or a precise caesura limiting a certain duration.136 We cannot always clearly define the beginning and the end as precise caesuras. Talking about a certain duration with limitation points might suggest the idea of sharp cuts, but an (imagined) point in the continuum of time always turns out to be a transition during actual change.137 Regarding John Cage’s composition 4’33’’, Herbert Henck spoke of the “framework”138 that the piece needs. The “frame” separates the world of composition from the everyday world of life, and thus enables connection. Transition is accomplished or just happens (perhaps as in a dream). The precise time 4’33’’, which depicts the “frame”, allows a change from the everyday world into the music world and back again, a change that always remains blurred as a transition. Often, disappearances of sounds show the transitions from one world to the next as a process. When the 135 | K.-P. Köpping/U. Rao: Zwischenräume, 248. 136 | K. Stockhausen: Momentform, 207. 137 | See B. A. Zimmermann: Die Notwendigkeit, eine Invektive zu verfassen, 130. 138 | H. Henck: Vom Klang der Stille, 83.

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music has disappeared, perhaps in a long general pause or during the pause between one movement and the next one or after the concert, we experience a situation without music. The vanishing sound evokes this situation.139 When does a piece of music begin, and when does it end? Maybe I will still be listening the morning after the recital. Where do the sounds go? A clear definition of what music is, or what, in contrast, is non-music, may be subject to cultural changes. In musical practice we talk about entering a musical situation as well as about finding oneself in a certain musical situation. The change happens as a transition from one “province of meaning” into the other. Some performances of Cage’s silent piece 4’33’’ highlighted the “frame” in a way that the “frame-work” was abundantly clear; these performances insisted on the caesura. But: “After all, it’s not about marking an exact point (‘now [the performance] starts’), but somehow making transparent that ‘it’s started’. A simple becoming silent in the inner ear is quite enough.”140 To what end is music good? So that it can become silent? Maybe this answer is actually quite enough.

139 | See E.-M. Houben: Hector Berlioz, 123. 140 | Antoine Beuger, quoted after a mail correspondence between Antoine Beuger and Nikolaus Gerszewski, 19.02.2017.

S econd Part

1. Keys In German language there is the homonym “Tasten – tasten”: “Taste” means the key of a keyboard instrument, “tasten” means to touch something carefully, tenderly. The German composer Wolfgang Rihm plays with the double meaning of “Taste” – “tasten” when he tries to explain his kind of composing. The term “Taste” or “tasten” describes—according to Rihm—a special character of composing, namely a kind of attempt. It is about finding something. For Rihm, piano seems to embody exactly this.1 Referring to this idea, Martin Zenck speaks—considering keyboard instruments—of two “bodies” that meet each other, that “touch” each other.2 From this perspective, the keyboard instrument appears like a lover, a mistress. The tenderness of touching and being touched resonates in such speech. The title “L’art de toucher le claveçin” (François Couperin) carries with it the meaning of the “erotic touch”.3 An encounter between two bodies is addressed here. It is not just the keyboard instrument that can become a “body”. However, the keyboard instrument invites us to press keys down, allowing even the slightest “touch”. But other types of instruments allow for an encounter as well. The physical contact of the player to the instrument is perhaps even more direct playing the horn or the trumpet. Here the touch occurs immediately even without a detour to the keyboard. By way of example, the keys should nevertheless be considered here, precisely because of the more complicated transfer of energy from the player’s body to the body of the instrument. The current chapter includes compositions for piano, harpsichord and organ. Piano strings are struck by the attack of the keys, harpsichord strings are plucked. As an organ player you will not forget that the organ is above all a wind instrument. Variable key pressure and variable positions of the stops—very fine, nuanced movements and positions—can release a variety of differently colored air streams. By applying various degrees of pressure of the keys and the various positions of the stops you open the way for the air flow. 1 | W. Rihm: Tasten, 422. 2 | M. Zenck: tasten – tasten, 47. 3 | Ibid.

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The current chapter is about searching, also about “finding” (Rihm), about tender “touch” (Zenck), but also about beating. The piano can even become a drum. The key becomes a kind of antenna when the finest vibrations of the human body are captured, amplified and made audible by the body of the instrument. Touching can also lead to understanding: Again, there is an ambiguous term that Helmut Lachenmann uses. The corporeality of “touching and understanding” appears, for example, in his cycle Ein Kinderspiel for piano (1980). Touching becomes a kind of physical comprehension close to the keys, a scanning, a palpation not only with the ears, but also with the hands, fingers, feet (also the use of the piano pedals is exactly indicated). Lachenmann explains that he often used to describe listening as a process of “scanning” a sound structure. This process might allow for conclusions regarding the structure of the piece or the underlying aesthetic attitude. Lachenmann explains quite literally the idea of scanning the special structure of a composition by listening.4 He uses the German term “Be-Greifen” (comprehending) in the literal sense, calling the piano pieces “models that are easy to touch and to comprehend”.5 Not only the listeners are involved, who “scan” the structure of a composition while listening, but also, and this time above all, the players who feel, touch and comprehend with their hands and feet.

1.1 L udwig van B ee thoven : P iano S onata no . 32 in C M inor op. 111, 1 st movement (M aestoso . A llegro con brio ed appassionato) (1821/22) Single Events – Disorientation. Reorientation? I “Arietta. Adagio molto semplice e cantabile“: Thus, the designation of the character and the expression of the second movement in this two-movement sonata is indicated.6 The note “molto semplice” characterizes the second movement Arietta as an exercise in modesty: Begin this movement modestly and remain modest. Quite different is the first movement: “Maestoso”—followed by “Allegro con brio ed appassionato”. But does this “Maestoso” represent a dignified, majestic performance, perhaps in the style of a pompous march? On the contrary, 4 | H. Lachenmann: Vom Greifen und Begreifen, 164. 5 | Ibid., 163. 6 | See L. Kramer: Music as Cultural Practice, 21 et seq.

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I always find myself at a standstill while playing. There are constantly places and placelessness: And now? What now? Narration is disturbed by caesuras. Many performers neglect the numerous caesuras, probably to preserve the perceived context. But the performers, who let themselves fall into these interruptions, find a new tone. I go to individual places in the score. Right at the beginning there is an open phrase (bars 1-2), which breaks down into individual parts (see Fig. 08). Here, the performer plays sounds that appear “as if they were created for themselves”: “Their place belongs to them” (Wolfgang Rihm); they cannot be replaced.7 Fig. 08: Ludwig van Beethoven: Piano Sonata no. 32 in C Minor op. 111, 1st movement, bars 1-2

I do not reproduce a “given sequence of thought processes”8, but engage in a process of disorientation. The practice challenges me as the performer to find my way in placelessness. The standstill at the beginning of the second bar is not the first one, however it is the first big one. The gripped half-bar (bar 2, on the first beat) is provisional; as if by coincidence, the tonic appears on an unaccented beat, before it is called into question again by an arpeggio—a standstill again. But even beforehand, until I have gotten far enough as a player, the structure breaks beneath my hands. Accents with small grace-notes appear, as well as sound combinations of two sounds that in each case are isolated. I repeat this process, varying with other sounds (bars 3-4), and this could already be a whole composition. I find music that is searching for a way in a series of grace note accents with a concluding arpeggio, in just this sequence of search processes. Another repetition announces itself; it could always go on like this. The third time is followed by another search process, an advance in a small space. The double dotted note and the grace note have been preserved, but now the harmonious colors are gradually changing through the course of this chain of chords. In this exercise you could scan the whole keyboard and discover new colors (see Fig. 09).

7 | W. Rihm: Spur, Faden, 74 (with reference to Claude Debussy). 8 | Ibid.

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Fig. 09: Ludwig van Beethoven: Piano Sonata no. 32 in C Minor op. 111, 1st movement, bars 6-11

While performing, I take part in a process of creation; I am aware of a becoming. I observe an action, not a production. Where are we going? When I play what the music offers here, I take part in a walk to an unknown destination. I must stop again and again and expose myself to the questions: And now? What now? What next? This movement is about asking questions. While asking questions like these I find the chance that the music gives to me. What follows (bars 11-18), until the beginning of the Allegro, is a single standstill. There are variations on a pitch repetition on G; they appear as a kind of fermata. When it is finally supposed to go on, I play a single note (bar 19). A renewed start: and again, I find a standstill under a fermata (bar 20). A third attempt: and again, I find a continuation (see Fig. 10). Fig. 10: Ludwig van Beethoven: Piano Sonata no. 32 in C Minor op. 111, 1st movement, bars 19-21

If I understand the single event as a “cell”9, then it is on the one hand self-contained, standing in its own place; but then it is also capable of initiating something. The performance of such “cells” probably leads to the development of 9 | W. Rihm: Musikalische Freiheit, 35.

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the shapes that arise under the hands. The performer steps from place to place, being involved in a process of a becoming that does not have a clear goal. (see Fig. 11). Fig. 11: Ludwig van Beethoven: Piano Sonata no. 32 in C Minor op. 111, 1st movement, bars 50-5

Here, the player plays interruptions immediately after the resolutions (bar 51). They are only small pauses, of course, but they are weighty enough to isolate sounds. The process repeats itself—and now I perform the small stoppages enlarged in the great Adagio standstill (bar 55), as a kind of looking back. That could not have been everything, though, surely?

II And now? What now? What next? These are questions that I ask in my disorientation. Playing this movement allows me to truly experience disorientation. Disorientation turns out to be the liberating essence of musical practice. It creates an open space of possibilities. The performance of this movement promises loss of orientation, and a search for orientation. As soon as “realities and possibilities” (Helmut Lachenmann) in musical practice are negotiated, the lack of ideas and concepts can become an opportunity, while disorientation becomes an opening towards the unknown. The process of the first movement of Beethoven’s sonata shows the musician’s disorientation. This disorientation is not weakened by quick offers of new orientation or reorientation. While performing you are confronted with surprisingly incipient reorientation. But the disorientation—and even the lack of orientation—has its own power. Disorientation wants to be fully experienced. It is not just an opportunity to regain reorientation, but it asserts itself as its own value.

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Walter Brueggemann depicts the Lament Psalms as “Speeches of Disorientation”10. “The Psalter knows that life is dislocated.”11 “Psalms of lament are powerful expressions of the experience of disorientation.”12 The lament has its place here; and disorientation is continuously experienced as a permanent process. Disorientation is experienced as a strength and as an energy of its own. The sonata movement and the Lament Psalm may have this in common. While playing this sonata movement, I do not pretend that I am disoriented, but I rather enter a real musical process, cross over into the realm of musical practice and learn something about disorientation. I learn how disorientation can really be experienced. The sonata movement invites me to participate in a becoming. This succeeds if I trust in the fact that I can always enter a new situation of disorientation. Perhaps Adorno touched the very core of Beethoven’s music: “The unique nature of music, to be not an image standing for another reality, but a reality sui generis.”13

1.2 J ohann S ebastian B ach : Fantasia in G M inor for organ BWV 542 ( about 1720) Determination of Positions in Histor y — A Physical E xpression I Johann Sebastian Bach’s Clavier-Uebung is a collection of works for keyboard instruments that invites the performer to enter the realm of musical practice. The compositions are exercises. The first part of this collection includes the Six Partitas (BWV 825-830); the second part consists of the Overture in B Minor (BWV 831) and the Concerto in the Italian Style in F Major (BWV 971); the 21 Chorales (BWV 669-689) and the Four Duets (BWV 802-805), framed by Prelude and Fugue in E Flat Major for organ (BWV 552) comprise the third part; and finally in the fourth part are the famous Goldberg Variations for Harpsichord (BWV 988), a cycle of 30 variations. “Exercise” is a component of the title for the entire multipart work. “Exercise” means the exercise in playing techniques, in techniques of variation and arrangement; it also means the reflection on the traditions of making music, the theological reflection, and the meditative attitude while playing.

10 | W. Brueggemann: Praying the Psalms, 20 et seq. 11 | Ibid., 21. 12 | Ibid., 29. 13 | Th. W. Adorno: Beethoven, 163; emphasis in original.

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Bach’s Orgelbuechlein, a collection of organ chorales (BWV 599-644), is also such an exercise in its broadest sense. On the front page of the autograph it says accordingly: “Worinnen einem anfahenden Organisten Anleitung gegeben wird, auff allerhand Arth einen Choral durchzuführen, anbei auch sich im Pedal studio zu habilitiren, indem in solchen darinnen befindlichen Choralen das Pedal gantz obligat tractiret wird. Dem höchsten Gott allein zu Ehren, dem Nächsten, draus sich zu belehren.“14 (“By which an organist as a beginner is instructed to perform a chorale in all possible ways, and to make progress in playing on the pedals, as the pedal is obligatorily used in such chorales. In honor of the highest God alone; for the neighbor, to teach himself.”)

Nearly all of Bach’s compositions are exercises that give the player something to grasp. The first piece, Prelude 1 in C Major (BWV 846; Wohltemperiertes Klavier I), with its figurations of alternating chords and different hand positions, seems almost to be the result of such grasping. The performers also practice music-theoretical knowledge, which they appropriate through the movements of their hands (see Fig. 12). Fig. 12: Johann Sebastian Bach: Prelude 1 in C Major, Wohltemperiertes Klavier I, bars 1-4

The physical access to the instrument in Prelude 12 in F Minor (BWV 881; Wohltemperiertes Klavier II) is quite different. The distance of the two hands from each other as well as the intertwining of the hands creates the effect that the resulting chord becomes a composite chord that is physically experienced. The broken chord shows the anatomy of the chord: Which tones belong to a triad? Which function does the added seventh have? Which chord tone is isolated in 14 | J. S. Bach: Orgel-Büchlein, XXV.

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each case? The performers practice grips, but at the same time they touch the special chords with their hands and perceive the structure of each one (see Fig. 13). Fig. 13: Johann Sebastian Bach: Prelude 12 in F Minor, Wohltemperiertes Klavier II, bars 1-8

But not only the hands touch keys. The organ players also touch keys with their feet; they feel the pedals. Who, if not Bach, would have used this opportunity to experience the work with one’s whole body? Bach, as an outstanding organist, has extensively cultivated this practice of touching keys and comprehending with his hands and feet. And he knew how to provide information and advice to others. The second part of the Toccata in F Major for organ (BWV 540), the part after the drones and the extensive pedal solos, is a good example of an interaction of hands and feet shortly after the performance was characterized by actions of the hands and feet separately. You will find yourself confronted with changing harmonic results while playing. The players may understand how different harmonic turns are possible by touching the keys of manuals and pedal. While performing himself Bach touches the wide range of possible harmonic developments with hands and feet. Thus, he makes clear his position in musical history, searching for a contemporary sound. Composing becomes a search for the contemporary sound through one’s own body (see Fig. 14, 15). The “Doric Toccata” (Toccata et Fuga, BWV 538) for example also shows how to grasp musical (here primarily harmonic) knowledge through physical activity of the hands and the feet (see Fig. 16).

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Fig. 14: Johann Sebastian Bach: Toccata in F Major, bars 188-92

Fig. 15: Johann Sebastian Bach: Toccata in F Major, bars 238-42

Fig. 16: Johann Sebastian Bach: Doric Toccata, bars 7-10

II Here, we have a special place in the Fantasia in G Minor for organ (BWV 542): the long-scale descent that does not come to an end. As a performer you have the feeling: always downhill— “step by step”.15 The keyboard of the pedal is too short for this descent. The octave transpositions, which are always going

15 | G. Staebler: “Um verlorene Schlüssel zu suchen…”, 1.

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upwards, have the purpose of compensating for the too short pedal keyboard and for the too short legs of the player (see Fig. 17). Fig. 17: Johann Sebastian Bach: Fantasia in G Minor, bars 31-6

Let it be supposed that the performer would not play the first descent on 16’base, as would be usual, but one octave higher on 8’-basis: Then they could continue to play after the first octave transposition on 16’-basis, after the second transposition on 32’-basis, after the third one on 64’-basis. But this sounds almost utopian, because an organ with such low basses does not exist. 32’-basses are already very rare.16 This descent is quite an affair. The performer wanders through the scale “step by step”. Without transpositions of the octave we would quickly go beyond the range of human ears; we would reach the Sub-Sub-Contra B Flat. Hands and feet together try out what a movement in descending fifths can mean: D 7 – G Minor – G 7 – C Minor – C 7 – F Minor – F 7 – B Flat Minor – B Flat 7 – E Flat Minor – E Flat 7 – A Flat Minor – A Flat 7 – D Flat Minor – D Flat 7. Now G Flat Minor must occur, with the note B Double-Flat (pedal) and the chord G Flat Minor (manual). With G Flat Minor, nine ♭-accidentals are reached. The player instead takes the diminished seventh chord— and falls into a break that is like a shocking pause.17 In this shocking pause, the emergency brake is pulled. Before this pause, the note F Flat is the minor third of the chord D Flat. After the pause, E is the seventh in the chord F Sharp, then the fourth as the suspended note (later going to D Sharp); the suspended sixth is G (later going to F Sharp). While performing, the player touches the same key F Flat/E. But it becomes possible to feel different notes while touching the same key and to hear them as different notes.

16 | See G. Zacher: Die Form der g-moll-Fantasie, 27. 17 | Ibid.

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Bernhard Haas takes the view that Bach (with his Well-Tempered Clavier) can be regarded as the “gravedigger” of microtonality and that he did not know of microtonal organs.18 Nevertheless, in the 16th and 17th centuries there were many microtonal organs.19 It can be assumed that the organs, which Bach played before composing this Fantasia and after the historical recital in Hamburg, were not microtonal. But the Fantasia itself before and after the “shocking pause” (bar 35) allows one to feel microtonal structures. While touching the keys, a physical activity like this one means at the same time a determination of one’s own position in history.20 What could we find up until this point? What can we find today? What could be imagined? We ask questions like this while searching for realities and possibilities—while performing and being physically involved. Touching becomes a kind of feeling and understanding of one’s own “categories of musical experience”21, integrating the contemporaneity into a historical horizon of experience. Regarding Bach’s memorable two-hour audition concert at the organ in Hamburg’s St. Catherine’s Church, which was also attended by Johann Adam Reincken, Christoph Wolff mentions that Bach did not play the fantasy as an improvisation but as a carefully prepared work (although the fugue “was composed before 1720” anyway).22

III The period when these works were composed was a time of intense discussion and engagement in the world of music theory. Music theory is not only discussed by means of words but also by means of compositions. Around this time, for example, the Well-Tempered Clavier (BWV 846-69) and the Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue in D Minor (BWV 903) were created. Works such as these appear as a compositional response to Johann Mattheson’s complaint that, “‘although all keys can now, per temperament [tuning], be arranged in such a way that they can be used very well, diatonically, chromatically, and enharmonically,’ a true demonstratio was lacking.”23 Johann David Heinichen demonstrates 18 | See B. Haas: Über Mikrotonalität und Vieltönigkeit, 138, 140. Haas explains that Martin Kirnbauer suggested the term “Vieltönigkeit” for the microtonality in the 16th and 17th centuries, while contemporary microtonal compositions are to be distinguished from these compositions; ibid., 136. 19 | See M. Kirnbauer: Vieltönigkeit statt Mikrotonalität. 20 | See E.-M. Houben: Das Alte ist vergangen, 60. 21 | H. Lachenmann: Zum Verhältnis Kompositionstechnik – Gesellschaftlicher Standort, 95. 22 | Chr. Wolff: Johann Sebastian Bach, 213-4. 23 | Johann Mattheson: Das beschützte Orchestre (Hamburg, 1717), 437; in: Chr. Wolff: Johann Sebastian Bach, 229.

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a Circle of Fifths (1711): “Von einem Musicalischen Circul, vermittelst welchen aller Tone Eigenschafft / Verwandtschaft / Ausschweiffung und Veränderung gar leicht zu erkennen / und sonderlich in Clavier und Composition nützlich zu gebrauchen.”24 (The Circle appears as an instruction to perceive the characters of single sounds, their relationships and their transformations.) The usefulness of the Circle has already been validated in musical practice. You gain musical knowledge while touching the keys. You test the usability of this knowledge during daily practice. Wolff appreciates Bach’s fantasy: “[A] fantasy of exceptional rhetorical power and unparalleled harmonic scope, with towering chromatic chords over descending pedal scales that create the illusion of endless space”.25 The performer, however, does not fall into an “illusion”, but gets acquainted with abundance. The experienced space is indeed “endless”. The actual experience while touching the keys with hands and feet and while descending “step by step” is an experience of borders. Without the transpositions of the octaves the audible range is widely exceeded, the limit of audibility is reached and the scale falls below the critical value. The pedal is in fact too short. The player’s legs are too short—and they could not play if the next tones of the scale were not transposed one octave higher. The keys of the manual are not differentiated well enough. You touch all these limits while playing—and this is the way to get acquainted with abundance. The performer recognizes: There is still more—more you can think, more you can touch. The boundaries show the boundlessness. A practice like this is uplifting and takes us far beyond ourselves. It becomes necessary to invite Bach’s Fantasia to become a composition of contemporaneity. But why? After all, we are all used to diatonic, chromatic, enharmonic relationships between sounds. We are used to transformations and modulations because we are familiar with microtonal and polytonal compositions as well as with spectral compositions and much more. So why should we aim at the contemporaneity of a traditional piece? In the performer’s activity, a renewed idea of the conditions and possibilities, which led to this kind of composition, arises again today. The body is involved. Participants can listen to the corporeality of the sounds. They hear the limited body of the instrument and the limited body of the performer if they fall and let themselves descend into the depth. The participants can sympathize with the descent. The performer’s activity shows abundance. The player may recognize this, as well as those who participate and are involved as listeners.

24 | J. D. Heinichen: Neu erfundene und gründliche Anweisung, 261. 25 | Chr. Wolff: Johann Sebastian Bach, 214.

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1.3 F rédéric C hopin : P rélude no . 2 in A M inor (24 P réludes op. 28; publ . 1839) Tender Connections in a Disturbing Context: The pianist with two hands What are you doing as a performer here? You are playing one note—and another one. You find two notes that are not far apart, here and there a secondary note (see Fig. 18). Fig. 18: Frédéric Chopin: Prélude no. 2 in A Minor, bars 1-7

Which inner attitude could relate to the kind of performance we observe here? What kind of physicality do we notice? Why would it make sense to perform perhaps twice or three times a day—alone, without an audience? You play a first note, and then you gently move on to the other one. Two tones are related to each other. As a player I move from tone to tone. I find a pause, and then I move from tone to tone again. The cautiousness that characterizes this activity may be enhanced by the addition of the eighth note. The entire prelude could be understood as a repeated movement between two notes. We do not find a larger distance than a second or a third (see Fig. 19) between the two notes. Fig. 19: From tone to tone—an overview of the entire Prélude

One could regard this kind of performing as an exercise in tenderness. The exercise is as follows: How can I bring two tones into contact with each other? The tone repetition at the end of a phrase creates a character of a cautious arrival. The dotted note does not appear as a kind of march but rather it causes a delay. Also, the coloring of the tone F Sharp, which is transformed into the tone F (bar 16), seems to offer a tender approach. The melody in the right hand allows for the connection, approach, and encounter of two bodies.26 However, the pianist’s left hand creates a disturbing context for this tender and soft action of the right hand. Zielinski even refuses the idea of “accompani-

26 | See M. Zenck: tasten – tasten, 47.

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ment”.27 The action of the left hand produces a pulse that is completely foreign to the melody in the right hand. In addition, the left hand hardly takes the songlike phrases of the right hand into harmonic consideration. Chopin’s Prélude exposes the player to this torn situation. The process in the left hand demands a legato in long phrases that is difficult to accomplish in one hand without breaks. How is it possible to combine one and the other activity at the same time? The composition helps the performer who can use the right hand unsystematically, sometimes on the first beat, sometimes on the third, then on the second. In such a manner, the right hand can reasonably escape the relentlessness of the pulse. While the pulse begins two bars earlier than the melody, the melody continues at the end, while the pulse is first interrupted (bars 17-18), then stops altogether. The cadenza at the end is almost like a citation. The left hand does not offer any protection, but quite the opposite. The pianist’s recital becomes a kind of exercitium. The aim is to stick to the continuation of the melodious phrases in the right hand—despite the adverse effects of the left hand. Then the pianist tries to maintain cautiousness—despite the disability. Our body is split into two, and during the performance we must endure this split. The melody is exceedingly vulnerable. The sounds of the whole note are barely audible at the end. The duration of a dotted half combined with a double dotted half (bars 14-15) is hardly to be noticed because the sound in bar 15 has (nearly) vanished before the rescuing eighth note can be used as a bridge to the next note (see Fig. 20). Fig. 20: Frédéric Chopin: Prélude no. 2 in A Minor, bars 13-6

The figurations mitigate these vulnerabilities. There is an interruption that can hardly be avoided if you do not want to play significantly louder or faster. The brave player takes the risk and enters a realm of action and letting it happen. The inherent dialectic is addressed by Lawrence Kramer who describes the frame of the piano piece (beginning with the heavy accompaniment in the left hand, ending with the melody in the right) as a form of “dialectical reversal”: “Taking this framework as a hermeneutic window, we might try to understand the prelude itself as a study in reversal or, more precisely, as a study in dialectic, conceived of 27 | T. A. Zielinski: Chopin, 586.

1. Keys in nineteenth-century terms as a series of dynamic oppositions that lead to reversals of meaning or value.”28

Following Kramer, the relationship between melody and accompaniment is more than mere “incongruity”, but rather “a many-sided process of dissociation”.29 “Is pure songfulness a consolation or a lie?”30 This question could also be asked during a certain practice: Is the tender, relationship-producing action of the right hand already legitimate given the threat? Should something be opposed to it in the reflection? The performance offers the player the opportunity to endure an activity of tenderness and caution despite all the difficulties—in the face of a threat without negating it. Performance of this piece means risk of disappearance, risk of vulnerability. It also means tenacity if the performer sustains the relationship between two notes.

1.4 A urèle S troë : 3 ème S onate pour P iano (en palimpseste) (1947/1957/1990-1991) Breaks – The piano as a drum. Space-filling movements I Aurèle Stroë is fascinated by the break; he writes about the various interruptions in his first piano sonata: “The first part of the sonata is at a certain level, then it was suddenly broken, and I tried to bring the different influences together. Suddenly there is a break—and it starts again, on a completely different level. A grammar is replaced by a new one. You compose, you come to a new, different element—and you find a third element that unites both.”31

Stroë explicitly uses the term “(aesthetic) break” to talk about his music: “What kind of break occurs? How big should the contrast between the elements to the right of the break and to the left of it be? These are the questions that interest me.”32 Gustav Mahler is for Stroë a composer of the breaks.

28 | L. Kramer: Music as Cultural Practice, 73. 29 | Ibid., 77. 30 | Ibid., 76. 31 | A. Stroë, in: E.-M. Houben: immer wieder anders, 31. 32 | Ibid.

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Musical Practice as a Form of Life “Now I think of the long pause between the first and the second movement in the 2nd Symphony in C Minor: The shock is so great that a tragedy actually takes place. We don’t listen just to a symbol of a tragedy. Not only different styles, but also different kinds of values ​​and evaluations come together. What has value in the first part, has no value in the second—and vice versa. What happens is the tragedy of the form itself. The form dies. The symphony exists. It has its own ontology. Its tragedy is not portrayed, but the tragedy really happens as a tragedy of the form itself.”33

Aurèle Stroë was born in Bucharest in 1932, where he studied composition as well as mathematics. After completing his studies in composition, he first taught orchestration and instrumentation at the Bucharest Conservatory, and then later composition (1974-1985). In the 1960s he was a frequent guest at the Darmstadt Summer Course for New Music and worked in the US for a long time in various centers for electronic music. As a visiting professor, he taught from 1985 to 1986 in Illinois. From 1986 onward, he lived as a freelance composer and musicologist in Mannheim, where he died in 2008.34

II As the 3ème Sonata pour Piano (en palimpseste) (the third piano sonata) is a rather unknown piece, here is a short overview. Stroë specified the pauses exactly in the score: differentiated pauses and exact durations of pauses (in seconds) for the transition from one section to the next one within one movement of the sonata, as well as exact durations for the transition from one movement to the next one. The sonata is divided into three movements. • Scherzando, Schattenhaft – Colinda (1947): Andantino narrante • Tranquillo, (doppio canone) … hommage à Pierre de la Rue – Quasi Colinda (1957): Contemplativo, ma rigorosamente in tempo • Vivace brillante – Allegro – Colinda (1947, rev. 1991): Lo stesso tempo – Développement sur deux accords et un cluster: Allegro con gioia – Coda The dates of origin, which Stroë wrote in the score, indicate that he was busy on this sonata for over 44 years. As Stroë indicates in the note to the score, the sonata is “a palimpsest in three layers”; each layer contains “one or more fragments” of different temporal origin.35 The layers date from different years. The oldest layer is from 1947: These are the two segments entitled “Colinda” (1st and 3rd movement) that Stroë wrote “from memory”:

33 | Ibid., 32 et seq. 34 | The biographic notice ibid., 70. 35 | A. Stroë: 3ème Sonate pour Piano (en palimpseste), score, note.

1. Keys “The manuscript had been lost for a long time; I was forced to write a new record after forty years. The success was only partial: while the first of these miniatures could be almost completely restored (1 st movement, p. 7), the second one (p. 17) could only be completed by 50%.”36

A Colinda is a Christmas carol of old tradition, which can be handed down in several variants. The second layer is the Quasi Colinda from the year 1957 (2nd movement, pp. 14-5) that was composed using the material of the old songs. The third and most recent layer is formed by Scherzando (1st movement), Homage to Pierre de la Rue (Canon) (2nd movement), and Allegro con gioia (3rd movement) and dates from 1990-1991. This layer is the most extensive and takes about three quarters of the total performance time during a performance. Stroë gives the listener a useful hint following the question of what could be meant by breaks: “Non-linear listening is indispensable!”37 Where can we identify breaks as far the entire composition goes (the piano sonata with all three movements and with all sections) and within a single movement, a single section? In the first movement, Scherzando, “Schattenhaft”, belonging to the last layer of 1990/1991, the numerous pauses, but also completely unexpected transitions are noticeable. Pause and sudden contrast can equally break it off, can interrupt it. For example, a sudden “explosion” of great violence is followed by an extremely tender, frequently recurring phrase (“en résonance”) (see Fig. 21). Fig. 21: Aurèle Stroë: 3ème Sonate pour Piano, 1st movement, 3, lines 5-6

© Aurèle Stroë. Manuscript. With kind permission of his daughter, Raluca Brumariu.

36 | Ibid. 37 | Ibid.

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This section of the first movement is followed by the first Colinda (1947), part of the lowest, oldest layer. This “Andantino narrante”, as described in the subtitle and provided with the performance instructions “cantabile”, “un poco marcato”, “espressivo”, has the task of reporting, telling, passing on a secret. The tone repetition underlines this aspect (echoes of a recitation, psalming), at the same time that it refers to the previous section Scherzando, (“Schattenhaft”) that was also noticeably influenced by tone repetitions. The clusters appear as inaccurate, colored and varied repetitions. The first section of the 2nd movement, Tranquillo (doppio canone), is identified as the “…hommage à Pierre de la Rue (Canon), Quasi Colinda” (1957). This 2nd movement appears as a slow one surrounded by two faster movements, referring at the same time to the older layer of songs by the compositional work on the old Colinda. Quite in the footsteps of Pierre de la Rue, several layers are combined in a complex manner: the initial canon, again very vocally (“cantabile”), is joined by further references, first in the form of a distant trumpet voice (“quasi una tromba lontana”, “un poco nervosa”)38 that ties in with the narrative tone of the first Colinda in the 1st movement, then in the form of a Scherzando motif (“f un poco scherzando, moqueur”)39 that points to the first part of the 1st movement Scherzando (“Schattenhaft”). After a break, the Quasi Colinda follows, originating from the middle layer (1957). The very low sustained sounds in the left hand may refer to Pierre de la Rue who preferred low registers. The clusters and the very low registers of the piano are reminiscent of the first section of the 1st movement Scherzando. The first section of the 3rd and last movement is clearly linked to the first part of the 1st movement by the different motifs (clusters, types of quintuplets and sextuplets, theme “resonance”). Immediately the Colinda follows (oldest layer, 1947, but revised 1990/1). The sonata concludes with the Allegro con gioia, specified as the “Développement sur deux accords et un cluster”. Here is a final overview of the types of transitions with pauses between sections and movements: 1st movement Scherzando, “Schattenhaft” 10 sec. pause Colinda (1947): Andantino narrante 10 sec. pause – attacca 2nd movement Tranquillo (doppio canone) (…hommage à Pierre de la Rue) 5 sec. pause Quasi Colinda (1957): Contemplativo, 5 sec. pause ma rigorosamente in tempo

38 | A. Stroë: 3ème Sonate pour Piano (en palimpseste), score, 9. 39 | Ibid., 10.

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3rd movement Vivace brillante Allegro attacca Colinda (1947, rev. 1991): pause “lunga” – attacca Lo stesso tempo Développement sur deux accords et un cluster: Allegro con gioia pause – attacca Coda pause We can find the explicit inclusion of certain pauses by way of special hints in the score not only in Gustav Mahler’s 2nd Symphony (mentioned by Stroë), but also in other works, for example in Arnold Schoenberg’s Pierrot lunaire or in Alban Berg’s 4 pieces for clarinet and piano op. 5. In addition to an explicitly determined duration of a pause, the indeterminate interval between two movements acquires a definite characteristic, its own coloring. Stroë even combines instructions like “5 sec. pause” and “attacca”. The pause therefore belongs to the end of the last section; then, after the pause, the instruction “attacca” is given. Pause in this case means: reverberation, space to listen, waiting for the next movement or section. Both, the sudden transition (attacca), which might surprise one, and the transition during a pause show a very conscious handling of a transition. All elements appear at the same time: The breaks as well as the layerings— while fragments of different shaped parts are superimposed (as for example in “…hommage a Pierre de la Rue”)—create relationships. A palimpsest is an ancient or medieval manuscript page made of parchment that is cleaned by scraping or washing it to make it blank for new writing. The subtitle “en palimpseste” means: Just as a palimpsest can often contain different layers of different inscriptions, which are all simultaneously present, but perhaps not completely legible, this sonata does not only feature heterogeneous musical material, but also different individual phases of a single life (paying attention to it while composing) as well as different traditions (periods/epochs like Colinda, Pierre de la Rue). Stroë’s Piano Sonata shows an all-in-one, a simultaneous existence of heterogeneous materials that originate from different contexts. While the disturbance of a continuous process may be considered an intervention in the horizontal course of the sonata’s time, the layering of different materials shows a “spatialization” in the vertical dimension.40

40 | See Chr. M. Schmidt: Brennpunkte der Neuen Musik, 69-114.

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III How do “break” or “catastrophe” or “tragedy” (Stroë) manifest themselves in the physical practice of the performance? The following studies focus on the third and last movement (conclusion). The “tragedy really takes place”41: Stroë regards the reality of the composition as a reality for itself. How can we discover the transition between the everyday life world and the reality of the composition? How can we describe the link? The final section in the third and last movement after the short musical review of the beginning of the sonata and the last Colinda (beginning of the last movement) is titled: “Développement sur deux accords et un cluster” (Allegro con gioia). The rhythm is not the problem while practicing, but rather the rhythm might occur “with joy” (“con gioia”). You practice a pulsating motion; you move, as you usually do not move in everyday life. “Semper martellato” (an instruction later): hammering, knocking, drumming. The piano becomes a percussion instrument. Here the drumming and hammering are practiced with joy, free of pressure (“con gioia”). The chords are widely spread on the piano. Therefore, the pianist’s movements are quite extensive. The pianist is drumming with both hands, extremely physically involved and performing intensely, almost dancing (see Fig. 22). Fig. 22: Aurèle Stroë: 3ème Sonate pour Piano, 3rd movement, 18, lines 1-2

© Aurèle Stroë. Manuscript. With kind permission of his daughter, Raluca Brumariu.

Breaks interrupt this dance of the two chords again and again. The performer plays as if they were playing a percussion instrument: “f secco, quasi gran casse africane (sans nuances)”.42 The piano becomes an African drum during this drumming without “nuances”, back and forth. In this dance, the cluster interferes at the lower tonal boundary of the piano. The dance becomes wilder and more and more complicated, until it breaks off at the end. A general pause follows (“attacca”) the Coda, which concludes with a break. The single sections of this dance achieve longer and longer durations during the performance. The “Développement” starts with shorter phrases. After a pause (to take a breath), a longer drum section follows. After another break, we 41 | A. Stroë, in: E.-M. Houben: immer wieder anders, 32. 42 | A. Stroë: 3ème Sonate pour Piano (en palimpseste), score, 18.

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find again a longer drum section, and so on. More and more rhythmic elements are added (quarter, eighth note, eighth notes in tone groups, triplets, etc.). The drumming becomes more and more differentiated; the movements become more and more intense. Gradually, the clusters also pile up. Non-systematic elements are added: pauses, clusters, repetitions (see Fig. 23). Fig. 23: Aurèle Stroë: 3ème Sonate pour Piano, 3rd movement, 22, lines 2-3

© Aurèle Stroë. Manuscript. With kind permission of his daughter, Raluca Brumariu.

The music here is initially a pure physical action. The player drums and gains life energy while drumming. In addition to the physical action, a certain mental activity is necessary that is based on the irregular choppy rhythmic movement. The performer finds self-assurance—not in mere motor skills, but in the repeated standstills within the motor skills. Breaks are found everywhere, and while performing you enter a world of breaks. Not only the pauses can be regarded as breaks, but we can also find breaks again and again within a given drum section. The player does not perform uniformly but constantly transforms even the longer sections in a differentiated way. The performer cannot move mechanically. The pianist is involved in a process of continuous action and reaction (see Fig. 24). Fig. 24: Aurèle Stroë: 3ème Sonate pour Piano, 3rd movement, 24, lines 4-5

© Aurèle Stroë. Manuscript. With kind permission of his daughter, Raluca Brumariu.

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Why don’t we believe that only a boisterous dance is being presented here? And how can we describe the function of the breaks? The continuity is constantly disturbed. During the powerful and pleasurable motor skills (“with joy”) we find a sort of limping movement. The listening and watching participant might attempt to approach this corporeality by means of the metaphor: When you practice and perform this piece, you learn to limp. You learn a self-conscious limping. “He who limps cannot walk in military lockstep.”43 In this manner you are limping as one of the survivors who still carries the catastrophe with them. That’s how you limp when the whole sonata lies behind you. “Con gioia”: The catastrophe is still present in the discontinuity. This is a happiness of the survivors. “Développement sur deux accords et un cluster”: Something is developing during the performance “like a piece of nature that is developing”.44 This development gains a life of its own, parallel to the everyday life world.

1.5 R obert S chumann : K reisleriana . F antasien für P iano -F orte op. 16 (1838; re v. 1850) Becoming Physically Evident: All-at-once I These piano pieces are presented as fantasies and thus join many fantasy pieces that Schumann has written throughout his life—not only for piano. In fact, these fantasy pieces appear as improvisations thrown down onto paper. The abundance of ideas, thoughts and pictures, memories and visions has flowed easily and fluidly onto the score sheet. Paradoxically, everything appears at once—as a process with a beginning and an end. In the process of the performance, the composition Kreisleriana becomes a world of its own. “In Schumann’s Kreisleriana, I do not actually hear a single note, no motive, no subject, no grammar, no meaning, nothing that would enable a restoration of any kind of the work’s intelligible structure. No, that what I hear are beatings: I hear a beating within the body, on the body, or—in other words: I hear this body that beats.”45

43 | U. Bail: “Die verzogene Sehnsucht hinkt an ihren Ort”, 136. 44 | Aurèle Stroë, film de Bernard Cavanna et Laurence Pietrzak. Production des Films d’ici. Version allemande sous-titrée. Aurèle Stroë 5e partie (dernière partie). 12:14– 12:40. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4k5S0f6Y7cM; 27.10.2016. 45 | R. Barthes: Rasch, 264.

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Roland Barthes reflects on his own speech; he knows that conventional science ends at this point: “When writing triumphs, it supercedes the science that is incapable of re-inserting the body. Only the metaphor is accurate; and it would be enough to be a writer in order to be able to report on these musical beings, these physical chimeras in a completely scientific way.”46

The “meaning” (Barthes) is revealed by an approach to this kind of corporeality. The piano key becomes an extension of the performer’s extremities; the key becomes an extended arm, an extended finger. The limbs, in turn, reflect the excited movements of the brain, follow the brainstorming (or does this follow the dancing and jumping limbs?). Everything happens simultaneously—not to be tamed.

II “Beats” (Barthes) in one hand and concealment of equal metric accents in the other hand cause dissociation. Immediately in the first piano piece, both hands do different things, they are independent of one another (see Fig. 25). Fig. 25: Robert Schumann: Kreisleriana 1, bars 1-2

Do we hear voices in the second piano piece whilst playing? Voices appear and disappear. Appoggiaturas and arpeggios envelop the voices in a fog. No one particular voice is leading. In the third piece (“Etwas langsamer”, bars 33 et seq.) scales lead up and down. They appear and end somewhere, occurring in the highs, in the middle, in the lows. Here, too, the question of a so-called leadership of voices, which could claim a life of their own, arises: We cannot recognize clearly which voice is currently involved. Scales disappear somewhere. Often, a different voice takes over and another hand takes over the scale. In addition, confusion is caused by the overlapping of the beginning of one voice and the end of another one. The hand even touches the keys in extremely low registers. Sounds occur almost as coloring agents. This is the case, for example, in the fourth piano 46 | Ibid., 271; emphasis in original.

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piece. The parallels (octave and third; bar 3) in conjunction with the appoggiatura, which also introduces chromatic colorations, are completely dedicated to the color tones that appear as a colored depth (see Fig. 26). Fig. 26: Robert Schumann: Kreisleriana 4, bars 1-3

Pauses cause interruptions and breaks, for example in the fifth piano piece. Pauses repeatedly interrupt lines; they isolate fragments or individual chords. Cross-rhythmic accents, even on every quarter, occur as beats again, here in withdrawn dynamics. In the sixth piece, the simple melody from the alto moves into the tenor, into a unison of the soprano and the tenor voice, and finally into the bass—to be transformed into a tone repetition (see Fig. 27). Fig. 27: Robert Schumann: Kreisleriana 6, bars 1-5

The listener may observe an abandonment of an orientation towards pitches, a retreat into pure tapping. The melody seems to have moved far into the distance. In the further course, the migrations of the melodies continue, and the melodies move through all voices. Imitations flow into Schumann’s hands and fingers as memories of fugue techniques. The penultimate seventh piano piece is a music of breathlessness. It starts “Sehr rasch” (very quickly)—and this time the beats (Forte) do not contradict the main measure. Then it is supposed

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to go even faster; we almost hear only punches. Finally, the last piece hovers over long sustained basses that are unpredictably “misplaced” (“ver-rückt” according to Dieter Schnebel47). Later, arpeggios take the place of the sustained basses—everything floats. Some of the piano pieces abruptly stop at the end: What happens now? What is next? You could play the entire cycle as one big piano piece. Schumann seems to compose many small piano pieces that together comprise the composition Kreisleriana. This large piano piece constructs its own nesting—following the performer’s movements. Performing this piece means becoming Schumann. Schumann’s body becomes alive in the pianist’s body. There are also the intermezzi. Moreover, these intermezzi leave us with many questions. The intermezzo interrupts something. Why? For the sake of the continuation? What kind of continuation do we find? Do we find new developments, or transformations, or repetitions? The interruption calls for progress. Perhaps we can listen to a certain kind of progress. The intermezzo emerges —and the movement continues but becomes inaudible for a while. The performer, who listens and plays in this way, approaches the co-existence of the layers. Listen and play: While we are all bound to succession by listening and playing, the layers, which are interrupted, continue inaudibly. It is all there. From this perspective, the flashing repetitions appear in a new light. A bygone figure suddenly (sometimes only briefly) emerges out of the stream of fantasy to submerge, but to continue subliminally. When I perform Schumann’s Kreisleriana, I play all at the same time.

III In this sense, Schumann cultivated a practice in which all sorts of things could emerge—through the body. This is how he unburdened himself; he freed himself from limitedness and hardening.48 Music becomes a practice for survival. Kreisleriana poses the question again: Why do we need music? Making music becomes a way to be completely one’s body, to feel, to touch, and to live one’s own vitality; making music enables us to let ourselves fall into the human and the vulnerable, and to make this vulnerability a form of life.

47 | See D. Schnebel: Rückungen – Ver-rückungen, 43-54. 48 | See ibid., 84.

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1.6 L uigi N ono : ….. sofferte onde serene ... for piano and magne tic tape (1976) Pulsations: Signs of life. Keys as extensions of the body, of the fingers The score calls for a practice of a continuous movement, and of a continuous attention. Touching the keys of the piano and scanning the tape sounds (while listening) require a farewell. Despite this continuous saying goodbye, we feel continuation. The recorded piano sound as well as the piano sound when played live trembles and vibrates. It gains its life through the trembling—the vibration. “What’s about the sound of piano? The sound of the piano decays. It cannot be sustained. […] It appears by disappearing; starting to disappear just after the attack. In disappearing, it begins to live, to change. The piano: an instrument that allows me to hear how many ways sound can disappear. The sound of piano! I can hear how listening becomes the awareness of fading sound.”49

The piano sound decays, disappears. It cannot be sustained. It appears while disappearing, and then disappears again shortly after the attack. It acquires certain colors while fading out through the emergence of certain partial tones. It acquires new colors, new shades while vanishing. During a performance of …..sofferte onde serene…, the piano sounds find continuation through trembling, through vibrations. The piano is perhaps less a body, but rather even more a percussion instrument that the performer beats extremely tenderly and cautiously.50 …..sofferte onde serene… is Luigi Nono’s single work for piano solo (with tape in this case). A translation of the title is difficult. Maybe: “suffered serene waves”.51 The piece is dedicated to Maurizio and Marilisa Pollini. Pollini played the first performance (1977). The composition is closely connected with personal strokes of fate in Nono’s and Pollini’s families. Nono’s parents and one child of the family Pollini died 1975/6 within a short span of time.52 This could be an explanation of the title: an allusion to Venice, Nono’s hometown. Nono tells us 49 | E.-M. Houben: Presence – Silence – Disappearance, 1. 50 | Ibid., 126. 51 | See J. Stenzl: Luigi Nono, 91. 52 | See ibid.

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how various sounds of bells with different meanings appeared night and day, amidst the fog as well as during a sunny day. He calls them “signs of life” as invitations to work, or to thoughts, even warnings.53 Sounds appear as “signs of life”. How could this be possible? The practice seems to be a kind of release, a feast of farewells. How could saying goodbye become a form of life, a form of “survival” (Blacking)? Nono composed a piece of grief and sorrow for Pollini. Performing this piece could help find a form for the sorrow, maybe even a continuation for it. The piece helps one to remain sorrowing—to remain in the relationship to the loved person as well as to the loss. The trembling and the vibrations on the keys of the piano become acceptance of one’s own inner trembling and vibration. The tape, operated by a second performer, supports the maintenance of the relationship within the sorrow. How could we use this piano piece? This again is a question of usefulness. The performers do not study this work only in preparation for a public recital, but devote themselves to a certain practice, accepting perhaps the offered occasion to grieve in case they want to do so.

53 | L. Nono, in: D. Doepke: Booklet of the CD.

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2. Many Performers Paul Bekker’s thesis concerning the “community-forming power”1 of Beethoven’s symphony included the idea of a performance by a lot of performers for a big audience. The space of the symphony was the big concert hall, a public space. The current chapter is about the many performers of a symphony, the ensemble members of a chamber orchestra or the individuals coming together in a smaller or larger group. There is always an “intersubjective situation of a community” for those who are involved, by virtue of individual differences. To continue in Schutz’s words: “[B]oth in cooperation and in antagonism […] [the characters on the stage] are bound together in an intersubjective situation of a community, in a We.”2 One can observe interaction and communication, but also the lack of intended communication. Meaning arises through the “intersubjective situation”, through a shared performance situation, through participation in the “We”. The “face-to-face relationship”3 allows for participation in the audible and visual actions of the other ensemble members.

2.1 A nton W ebern : F ünf S tücke für O rchester op. 10, I (1911-1913) — C hristian W olff : F or 1, 2 or 3 people (1964) Alone, in Twos, with Several Co-performers within the Group (1) I Walter Kolneder starts his musical analysis with an examination of the instrumentation, with the question: In which way is the ensemble itself composed?4 In his short introductions to Anton Webern’s work—texts originating from var1 | P. Bekker: Die Sinfonie von Beethoven bis Mahler, 11. 2 | A. Schutz: Mozart and the Philosophers, 198-9. 3 | A. Schutz: Making Music Together, 176. 4 | W. Kolneder: Anton Webern, 62 et seq.

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ious lectures (1961)— Kolneder turns directly to the peculiarity of the instrumentation. He classifies three groups of instruments: strings, winds and so called “Klangfarbeninstrumente” such as harmonium, celesta, mandolin, guitar, harp, percussion (glockenspiel, xylophone, cowbells, bells, triangle, cymbal, small drum, big drum). As Kolneder points out, Webern did not use the percussion instruments primarily as rhythm instruments but to create special colors, certain timbres. And all instruments are integrated very economically. The seven wind instruments only play in no. II, but they do not play simultaneously. In no. I, four wind instruments play, but in no. III, only three winds. The guitar enters the stage only in the third and fifth piece. The harmonium remains silent in two pieces and does not play more than two two-tone sounds in no. III. In no. IV, we do not find percussion instruments apart from the small drum playing only three ppp-beats.5 Overall, each performer plays only a few sounds. Remaining silent becomes as important as playing sounds. In some pieces, some players remain completely silent. The terms “solo violin”, “solo viola”, “solo cello” and “solo double bass” indicate that everyone appears in different constellations. Fig. 28: Anton Webern: Fünf Stücke für Orchester op. 10, I, bar 1

Anton Webern, 5 Stücke op. 10 │ für Orchester © Copyright 1923, 1951 by Universal Edition A.G., Wien/UE5967. With kind permission of Universal Edition. 5 | See ibid.

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In the first bar of the first piece, there is a finely structured interaction of five performers. The harp plays the notes b1 – c1 – b1. The trumpet in B Flat, the celesta, the solo viola and the flute color these notes—all instruments act in different ways. When the harp fades away with the last note, the flute with flutter tongue creates a short crescendo, thus continuing the fade-out of the harp sound. Here, the flute takes over a task that the harp cannot fulfill as an instrument creating decaying sounds, namely playing a crescendo on a note. The flutter tongue (flute) evokes irregular energy, an accentuation that the harp cannot create as well. The trumpet supports the harp while entering. In the following example, the harp and the solo viola create a common harmonic; the celesta supports this sound. The performers devote themselves not only to this special sound, but above all to these special interactions (see Fig. 28). In the next bar, the glockenspiel is alone and picks up the tempo, “dolcissimo” and “decrescendo”. In bars 5 to 6 the solo violin and the solo viola, each with a mute, play along with the harp. The solo cello takes over the tempo this time, as the glockenspiel did before. In between, others are active: The note b1 Flat, which is played by the flute, briefly touches the violin, the viola and the harp, but the flute is part of the duo formed by the flute and the clarinet. In bars 7 and 8, the violin joins the cello to form a duo. The glockenspiel plays the fourth tone in this piece in bar 9, in octave unison with the violin. It cannot sustain the sound; its sound fades away. But the solo violin can assume this task. The violin can sustain the note, can delay the fading out (see Fig. 29). Fig. 29: Anton Webern: Fünf Stücke für Orchester op. 10, I, bars 9-10

Anton Webern, 5 Stücke op. 10 │ für Orchester © Copyright 1923, 1951 by Universal Edition A.G., Wien/UE5967. With kind permission of Universal Edition.

The glockenspiel is thus assigned to two different activities. The first: to play the first three notes relatively freely in time alone, then to play the fourth note of this piece exactly together with the solo violin. In bar 9, the harp and the trumpet act together. At the end (the last bar 12), the flute, the trumpet and the celesta form a trio. The flute passes the tone to

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the trumpet that in turn passes on to the celesta: a fading out produced together (see Fig. 30). Fig. 30: Anton Webern: Fünf Stücke für Orchester op. 10, I, bar 12

Anton Webern, 5 Stücke op. 10 │ für Orchester © Copyright 1923, 1951 by Universal Edition A.G., Wien/UE5967. With kind permission of Universal Edition.

The first orchestral piece, like all others in this cycle, can be listened to from the perspective of a single instrument—from the perspective of one performer. Depending on the choice of the instrument, I find different points of view. The clarinet shows up only at the beginning, as a duo partner of the flute. From that point onward, the clarinet is listening. The glockenspiel has the task of paying attention to the interaction with the solo violin, when both enter on the same note (in octave unison) simultaneously. Thus, Webern has put together different places within the ensemble, different means of communication and different interactions, while all performers in this piece are involved equally, but in each case in an individual way. How does the society within the piece behave, compared to a society in the life-world outside of the composition, beyond the threshold to the everyday lifeworld? Can this piece offer a form of life to us? Can it offer us a place to dwell, and a perspective on our lives? In other words: Can it be useful for us today?

II In a conversation with Gerald Gable (“I can’t shake Webern’s influence”) Christian Wolff reports on the early 1950s: “I met Cage when I was sixteen, in 1950. In fact, he was my first and, in some sense, only formal teacher. […] We analyzed

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some Webern.”6 Also, the acquaintance of Morton Feldman, who had studied with Stefan Wolpe 7, contributed to the Webern enthusiasm. Later, David Tudor and Earle Brown joined. Wolff says in retrospect: “Cage’s thinking and music were a very powerful influence. The Webern experience stuck very close to me. I went on to study most of his works and to write a little bit about them. I can’t shake Webern’s influence… I still like clean, transparent counterpoint.”8

For 1, 2 or 3 people is in ten parts, one part on each page. It is not a composition for specific instruments, but especially for players. You play the material, which is given on one page, in a free order. Nothing should be repeated (except for part IX). The players are free regarding tempo and duration; the score only indicates that black notes signify short durations, whereas white notes represent long durations. If two or three performers play the piece, they split up the material on each page between themselves. A special sign in the score calls the performers to coordinate their own sound with the sound of another player. If the piece is performed by a single performer the players coordinate themselves with a sound in the environment or with a sound that is unintentionally produced.9 “This music is drawn from the interaction of the people playing it.”10 A performance of the piece requires a high degree of decision-making ability and responsiveness. Fig. 31: Christian Wolff: For 1, 2 or 3 people, Part II (excerpt)

© Peters Corp., New York. With kind permission of C.F. Peters Ltd & Co. KG, Leipzig. 6 | Chr. Wolff: “I can’t shake Webern’s influence”. Interview by Gerald Gable, in: Chr. Wolff: Cues, 156-75, 164. 7 | See ibid. 8 | Ibid., 166. 9 | Chr. Wolff: For 1, 2 or 3 people, score, instructions. 10 | Chr. Wolff: For One, Two or Three People (1964), Program Note, in: Chr. Wolff: Cues, 492.

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In the example (Part II; see Fig. 31) a player begins to play after a previous sound has begun, then sustains this own sound beyond the end of the previous sound until another sound begins. Then the player stops this sound before that other subsequent sound ends.11 Is this a sort of music meant only for the performers? Certainly, decision-making processes and the thoughts of the performers remain hidden while the audience listens and observes the processes, the developments and relationships. But the resulting sounds as well as the visible activities transport the communication processes. The listeners may not quickly find verbal paraphrases (in the sense of “a kind of democratic interdependence”12). But the process, which has led to this or another specific sound constellation, does not remain hidden from them.

2.2 W olfgang A madeus M oz art : S erenade in B F l at M a jor (“G r an Partita”) (KV 361), L argo/M olto allegro — A dagio (presumably 1783-84 13) Alone, in Twos, with Several Co-performers within the Group (2) I Should a group perform this composition with or without a conductor? While playing the 3rd movement Adagio of the “Gran Partita”, the ensemble of the University of Michigan (Symphony Band Chamber Winds) looks very homogeneous.14 The thirteen ensemble members (two oboes, two clarinets, two basset horns, two bassoons and a double bass) are collectively oriented towards the conductor. The performers are sitting. While the Danmarks Radio Symfoni Orkestret plays the 1st movement Largo/Molto allegro, the coordination is the result of the musical direction of Ivan Meylemans. The sound of the ensemble becomes unified.15

11 | Chr. Wolff: For 1, 2 or 3 people, score, instructions. 12 | Chr. Wolff: For One, Two or Three People (1964), Program Note, in: Chr. Wolff: Cues, 492 13 | W. A. Mozart: Serenade in B Flat Major, score, 141. 14 | University of Michigan Symphony Band Chamber Winds. Conductor: Michael Haithcock. February 17, 2012. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLpBkIhlO2c; 15.11.2016. 15 | Danmarks Radio Symfoni Orkestret—Ivan Meylemans. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=3ES0Sc84RS; 15.11.2016.

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But when the 1st movement Largo/Molto allegro is performed by the ensemble Zefiro, everyone plays standing up, without a conductor.16 The double bass is placed in the middle, and to the right and left of it we find the woodwind pairs: the oboes I and II on the far left, the basset horns I and II next to them, then, on the right side (from the listener’s perspective) the bassoons I and II, beside them, and even further to the right, the clarinets I and II. The horns are distributed amongst two pairs, one behind the woodwind pairs to the right and the other to the left of the double bass. They play on original instruments. It is immediately apparent that the ensemble Zefiro pursues a different practice than the other two ensembles. There is no central focus on a conductor. The musicians are related to each other. While the Zefiro ensemble is playing, the listener may observe the personal devotion and ambition of the performers, as well as communication structures. The movements of the bodies correspond to the phrases of music.

II The entry in bar 1 of the movement Largo/Molto allegro is not a conductor-led entry, but the result of a communication process. The clarinet I enters the first sustained sound—then appears as a soloist (in bar 1, then in bars 2-3). The other members of the ensemble have the task of leaving the door open for the soloist. The audience hears and sees a kind of retreat; in this way the soloist appears without being highlighted (see Fig. 32). The group presents the individual player with more space. After the third entry (in bar 3), the soloist (clarinet I) is followed by the clarinet II and the bassoon; now more relationships develop. During the syncopation between the oboe I and the basset horn I (bars 5-6), the two musicians, following the performance of the ensemble Zefiro, are intensely related to each other (see Fig. 33). They form a duo that has entered a communication process in a certain way. The score provides many similar opportunities for encounters that happen while playing. The listener can participate in the communication and understand the relationship. We hear the performers playing. The first duo is followed by different group formations and couple formations (see Fig. 34).

16 | Zefiro Ensemble Mozart Gran Partita. W.A. Mozart Gran Partita KV 361/370a— 1: Largo, Molto allegro—Amsterdam—November 2011. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=HFf5W1VjJvQ&list=PLDBB1EC5701C8FF7D; 15.11.2016.

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Fig. 32: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Serenade in B Flat Major, 1st movement, bars 1-3

Fig. 33: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Serenade in B Flat Major, 1st movement, bars 5-6

The two oboists form a duo, while the two horn players (III and IV) play a sustained sound. The bassoon I plays a tone repetition (in bars 23-4). Very soon, the basset horn I takes the figure of the oboe I, while the oboe II plays the tone repetition. The sustained sound of the basset horn I announces this shift in roles that is noticeable for all. In the following part, there are variants of this type of communication. The communication processes become possible through breathing energies. All players are wind players except the double bass, who takes on a very special role in this community. Thus, a very differentiated, dynamic network of relationships is created. The four horns have, unlike the duos, a supporting function. They act as a binding force, placing accents. The double bass in the middle provides full

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support to the whole group in their dynamics. This treasure of rich relationships not only evokes a tonal development but enables the experience of certain encounters between the performers in this specific situation. We listen to a meeting-place; we can hear what happens between (these) people—what becomes possible between people. We experience practice. Fig. 34: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Serenade in B Flat Major, 1st movement, bars 23-7

III At the beginning of the Adagio (3rd movement, in E Flat Major) each of the four pairs (two oboes, two basset horns, two bassoons, two clarinets) is divided and contributes one soloist, while one player participates in the pulsation (see Fig. 35). This pulsation permeates the entire movement and is continuously maintained. Even towards the end (in bar 42), when the woodwinds interrupt the pulsation, it is continued by the horns. So, there are two layers of time: the common pulsation and the solo parts. The oboe I appears first, and the oboe II participates in the pulsation. Then, the clarinet I takes over the solo, followed by the basset horn I. Then the clarinet I solo occurs again, followed by the oboe I solo (bars 4-11). A trio between the basset horn I, the clarinet I and the oboe I enters, supported by the equal pulsation and the figures of the eight-note move-

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ment (bassoon II, double bass). The horns watch and accompany the process, imparting stability and cohesiveness upon the group. Fig. 35: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Serenade in B Flat Major, 3rd movement (in E Flat Major), bars 1-5

This practice permits the experience of participation. We learn how we can play a part as a duo, as a couple within in a community. A couple does not have to leave the group to be a couple. On the contrary: As a couple we find our way to ourselves precisely in this community. Even the individual gains ground—and everyone listens. The developments that become evident now are very close to those in everyday life. We observe how encounters really happen.

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2.3 L udwig van B ee thoven : S ymphony no . 5 in C M inor op. 67 (UA 22.12.1808) Individual and Group Network: The “right to appear”17 — The Promise and the Challenge of the “We” I The performance of the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, directed by John Eliot Gardiner, is particularly striking. The performers play standing.18 Most musicians are unusually engaged. A kind of breathlessness accompanies the performance from beginning to end, until the performance surprises one with exuberant cheering in the last movement. Something happens to the musicians as well as to the listeners, who might also stand while listening. There are so many people: Orientation and communication like interaction in an ensemble are not possible here. Many strings are involved; winds often emerge as singles. How can cohesion be achieved here? What is the function of the conductor? The conductor nearly disappears while everyone is standing and finds a place almost in the middle of the musicians—becomes one of them. The unmanageable community communicates pure power, searching for new cohesion. This group creates a mediation between the single performer and the many performers. Here and now a new reality arises. The symphony has almost come to an end, but couples and individuals are still emerging out of the group (4th movement, bar 318 et seq.): the bassoons for two, the horns for two, then the flute alone, the clarinet, the bassoon alone; then the flute, the oboe, the clarinet, the bassoon in the quartet with the strings (and the horns), and finally, these four players in the quintet with the piccolo. The symphony is a social event, a communal self-assurance. This practice involves the audience: Many people are included.

II The echoes of the French Revolution are unmistakable. We find an amplification of the orchestra by the three trombones, the piccolo and the contrabassoon, and thematic-motivic connections to themes of the revolution that create references.19 Even more insightful than those analytical details is Martin Geck’s hint at the collective character of a symphony performance in terms of musical practice. Geck quotes Paul Bekker, who takes the view that since Beethoven, the performance of a symphony could be compared to a musical assembly of 17 | J. Butler: Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly, 26 et seq. 18 | John Eliot Gardiner conducts the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zk01dTrEtRc; 16.11.2016. 19 | See M. Geck: Von Beethoven bis Mahler, 38 et seq.

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people, supporting a certain “sense of community”.20 Theodor W. Adorno asserts a special “oratorial” character for Beethoven’s symphonies: “In principle, Beethoven’s symphonies are simpler than chamber music despite their substantially more lavish apparatus, and this very simplicity showed what effects the many listeners had in the interior of the formal edifice. It was not a matter of adjusting to the market, of course; at most, perhaps, it had to do with Beethoven’s intent to ‘strike fire in a man’s soul.’ Objectively, his symphonies were orations to mankind, designed by a demonstration of the law of their life, to bring men to an unconscious consciousness of the unity otherwise hidden in the individual’s diffuse existence.”21

Adorno is obviously impressed by Paul Bekker’s description of Beethoven’s symphony as an “oration”. In his essay “Radio and the Destruction of Symphonic Form” he grapples with Bekker’s thesis concerning the “community-forming power”22 of the symphony; in the same breath he attacks this thesis: “The aesthetic integration of the symphonic structure is at the same time the pattern of a social integration. Bekker, since his treatise on the symphony from Beethoven to Mahler, has sought its essence in its ‘socio-genetic power’. This theory is undoubtedly wide of the mark in that music, once rationalized and planned in any way, is no longer an immediate sound, but is functionally adapted to social conditions.”23

Bekker assumes that Beethoven’s symphony was conceived and composed while following the idea of a​​ large audience and a wide performance space. According to Bekker, the score creates an “ideal image of space and audience”.24 He therefore does not attribute the power of the artwork to the beauty of the themes or to the successful structure, but to the ability to form communities, that is to create a unified, decidedly individualized entity of an audience. This audience is no longer a chaotic mass but recognizes itself as a unity with the same “sensations”, “goals”, hopes, and longings; in this context, Bekker pays attention to the “community-forming power” of Beethoven’s symphony.25 In addition, another aspect should be mentioned, namely Beethoven’s symphony as the speechless idea of a democratic assembly.

20 | Ibid., 40; see P. Bekker: Die Sinfonie von Beethoven bis Mahler, 15. 21 | Theodor W. Adorno: Introduction to the Sociology of Music, 94. 22 | See P. Bekker: Die Sinfonie von Beethoven bis Mahler, 11. 23 | Th. W. Adorno: Beethoven, 119. Extract from Der getreue Korrepetitor (GS 15, 369-401). 24 | P. Bekker: Die Sinfonie von Beethoven bis Mahler, 8. 25 | Ibid., 11.

2. Many Per formers “Beethoven’s instruments have all gained their liberty, all reveal their individualities to the full, all being capable of the same importance in the thematic form and in the symphonic organism as a whole. Here is an orchestra of genuinely democratic constitution, which seems to be not only a medium for but the object itself of symphonic expression.”26 “Its [music’s] spiritual attitude, linked with the ideology of liberty, fraternity, and the demand for individual responsibility, perfectly reflected the ideal of liberation of individuality through development of independence, the final goal being unification of all individualities into a free community.”27

Wulf Konold takes up this idea of the speechless message: “Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 is both: it is an autonomous work, and it is ‘fait social’; it points out a historical position, has the character of an appeal; and the one aspect—and this goes beyond the other works—can be defined in terms of the other. Its autonomy, its renunciation of topical statements in the political sense, creates its social relevance.”28

Beethoven’s symphony expresses a certain historical position by a decisive reflection of the conditions and possibilities of the process of composing itself. The tension between the individual composition and historically as well as socially preformed material is created by a clear statement on the own historical position.29 Beethoven self-confidently poses the question of his place in the “coordinate system of history”30, thus reflecting upon his own “aesthetic devices and categories of experience”31 that manifest themselves as changeable during the process of composing. Music can develop social power in a musical way, without a program, without a text, without a title—simply by its mere existence as a practice. Music only exists among people performing and experiencing in breathlessness and speechlessness, with amazement and enthusiasm. Exactly these repeatable actions and vivid events themselves make “social relevance” (Konold) possible. 26 | P. Bekker: The Story of the Orchestra, 115. 27 | Ibid., 116. 28 | W. Konold: Einführung und Analyse, 191 et seq.; see Th. W. Adorno: Aesthetic Theory, 308. “If, in one regard, as a product of the social labor of spirit, art is always implicitly a fait social, in becoming bourgeois art its social aspect was made explicit.” Emphasis in original. 29 | See E.-M. Houben: Das Alte ist vergangen, 60. 30 | Ibid. 31 | H. Lachenmann: Zum Verhältnis Kompositionstechnik — Gesellschaftlicher Standort, 95.

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The cultural contexts change like the modes of reception do. To highlight a composition as a contemporary one means to discover its usefulness again and again, and to include this composition in a current practice. This practice can gain contemporary significance for all participants, and it can invite performers and listeners to repetitions. The participants can re-define the “social relevance”.

III With this symphony Beethoven asserts his individuality as a composer by tackling material and structure from the inside out. He maintains the forming forces but proceeds against form; he can lean on an established system but pushes this system to its limit, at which it breaks, thus becoming the subject. Nevertheless, the symphony preserves its character as a speech for all, as an address and “appeal”: “Rather, its value lies in two moments: first, in the radical individualization of the traditional formal scheme that only forms the shell for unmistakable content; then by the use of instrumental music as a language, as an appeal to the bourgeois public, becoming carriers and addresses of this genre symphony, which consciously recognizes itself as a public event.”32

In the years following the first two symphonies, Beethoven deals extensively with the genre of the symphony, also by working on several compositions at the same time. He attempts to redefine how composing could continue. Geck speaks of the endeavor “to redefine the essence of the symphonic”—in view of the tension between conventions and individuality, form and content.33 The conventions and traditional forms provide the necessary resistance so that the individual can emerge. Against the background of this basic tension, the symphony as a process can become an opportunity for everyone to find themselves in the emancipation of the “We” (Schutz). In the festive concert hall, which recreates the splendor of courtly surroundings, the individuals can celebrate their newly discovered subjectivity. The fact that an orchestra now finds itself in this dialectic and performs the symphony means embodiment of the tension between the common, comprehensive and general on the one hand, and the particular and individual on the other. This tension is really carried out during the performance. And the sounds, which are created in this way, in such breathlessness and with such wit, have absorbed this tension and carry it on. 32 | W. Konold: Einführung und Analyse, 193. 33 | M. Geck: V. Symphonie in c-Moll, op. 67, 152 et seq.

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IV Geck speaks of “landmarks” in the first movement—regarding the “motto” and the “oboe adagio”: “The fact that these almost extraterritorial landmarks are in each case completed by a fermata, points out that they have their own time, which breaks into the sonata movement in order to shake its self-referential nature.”34 It seems appropriate to speak of question mark situations (with fermata) (see Fig. 36). These are situations of a standstill. The question arises: And what now? Fig. 36: Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphony no. 5 in C Minor op. 67, 1st movement, bars 1-5

The oboe adagio at the beginning of the recapitulation exposes an individual who is now emerging from the community. But even the strings, who perform primarily as a group, dismiss an individual at a very early stage: At the end of the first theme (at bar 21), one sound (the g2 in the first violins) hangs over, giving the impression that the orchestra did not clearly sustain the fermata. Immediately afterwards there is a pause again, a standstill under a fermata (in bars 23-4). Question mark situations like this one almost provoke the follow34 | Ibid., 155.

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ing progression. Even if we experience a temporary standstill, we can be sure: there will be continuation. The “independent time” of the fermata addressed by Geck develops its full power against the resistance of the continuation, created by a violent force (“con brio”). The renewed rushing of the entire group gains even more energy after the time of the fermata. And the repetition of the exposition becomes a very new adventure for the whole group. Up to the two pauses that conclude the exposition, the movement continues without further disturbance. And now, ready for the repetition of the exposition, we must go back to the question mark situations of the beginning. Again, everyone stops. A new orientation becomes necessary. Even if temporary security was given, if there was confirmation, the question is asked again. How is it possible to continue now? A carefree continuation is inhibited. The repetition as a repetition is thus freed from any schematism. We find abandonment of structure, gain in process. The block-by-block detachment of the wind and the string chords (towards the end of the development) is enigmatic. At first, the change between the strings and the winds takes place after two bars, then after each single bar (see Fig. 37). Fig. 37: Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphony no. 5 in C Minor op. 67, 1st movement, bars 210-17

During the block-wise change (up to bar 240), the large group of the strings and the group of the individuals from the woodwind section are juxtaposed.

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If we look only at this phrase it seems to be very similar to the composition Hoketus for two groups of five instrumentalists (1976) by Louis Andriessen.35 Andriessen tried to test the American Minimal art technique by focusing on a single musical aspect, in this case on the hocket. Here, two voices alternate very quickly; so, they never play at the same time, but complement each other.36 The mentioned phrase of the development of the symphony becomes comparable to a composition like this. Two groups reflect the actions of each other —not only a musical but above all social event.

V Question mark situations are also in the third movement Allegro; on the other hand, we find separations of individuals. Right at the beginning we find the low strings alone. Then there is an answer of the higher strings and of a few winds—and a fermata follows. Again, the question: Where shall we go now? The process is repeated (in bars 9-18). And now the two horns are left alone with the motto and take on, continue, and find support from the others. But immediately after the tutti entry, the continuation is disturbed: a standstill again (at bar 52). Again, we find a situation of instability; the participants reassure themselves: What happens now? How can we proceed now? These are question marks: Where? Who? When? Why? Where are we now? In case these questions arise in the musicians’ confrontation with the musical situation, the pauses are not make-believe pauses or make-believe stops but real spaces of helplessness and lack of orientation. The theme of the fugue at the beginning of the trio is fragmented in the following part. Repeatedly the movement gets stuck because the theme breaks off. Individuals, who come into the foreground with thematic substance from the scherzo, the fugue theme, and the motto, lead to the transition to the last movement. Themes and motifs are now entrusted to individual players and to groups of players (in bars 245-322): to the solo bassoon and the cellos, to the solo clarinet, to the group of the violins I, to the solo oboe, to the solo bassoon, to the solo horn. The appearance of individuals within the community of a group has become the subject of the symphony. We can find a similar kind of isolation in the timpani solo of the transition to the fourth movement. From the motto, like we are familiar with from the first movement, the timpani continue to develop the tone repetition, while the theme of the scherzo is fragmented in the first violins. Again, there is a situation of pausing, but a very different one—dif35 | 2 Panfl., 2 Klaviere, 2 E-Pianos, 2 E-Gitarren, 2 Perkussionen [congas], 2 Saxophone ad lib. 36 | Ensemble Offspring: Louis Andriessen—Hoketus. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=73L2Mbi86HU; 16.11.2016.

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ferent from the question mark situations that rather led to an experience of rootlessness or dislocation. But this stagnation gradually develops a kind of maelstrom that leads inexorably to the attacca, causing the group to plunge into the jubilation of the last movement. We find two moments causing a great development of energy: a) the tension between standstill/pausing on the one hand and emphatic continuation on the other hand; b) the tension between one or more individuals (primarily from the group of the wind instruments) and the community of the orchestra. Both moments are already existent when the symphony starts, namely during the first appearance of the “motto” (Geck)—in the overhanging violin sound (in the 1st movement, bar 21) that protrudes into the pause. They become manifest in the oboe adagio in the recapitulation (1st movement, bar 268). From then on, they are constantly present. The practice is to endure these negotiations, questions, and disturbances— and to live in view of them. Even if a period of standstill breaks in again and again, or even if continuation is stagnating, and disruptions inhibit continuation, there is an indestructible and unpredictable potential providing us with energies. Dealing with these resistances and negotiating these difficulties and peculiarities with each other constitutes the practice of this symphony.

VI According to Adorno, the best part of Beethoven’s symphony can be found in its “mere existence”: “Art, however, is social not only because of its mode of production, in which the dialectic of the forces and relations of production is concentrated, nor simply because of the social derivation of its thematic material. Much more importantly, art becomes social by its opposition to society, and it occupies this position only as autonomous art. By crystallizing in itself as something unique to itself, rather than complying with existing social norms and qualifying as ‘socially useful,’ it criticizes society by merely existing, for which puritans of all stripes condemn it.”37

But not only the symphony as an autonomous work gains this power: The performers as well as the listeners at Beethoven’s time maintained their existence as well; they took their “right to appear”38 during the joint performance of the symphony in a public space. Their forms of life were publicly negotiated in this way. While performing and listening they said: We are here. We gather freely. We claim our freedom.

37 | Th. W. Adorno: Aesthetic Theory, 308. 38 | J. Butler: Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly, 24 et seq.

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Today such a public negotiation of common concerns can happen again— against a different historical background. The performance of the same symphony today can affirm the existence of all involved parties anew: “So, when people amass on the street, one implication seems clear: they are still here and still there; they persist; they assemble, and so manifest the understanding that their situation is shared, or the beginning of such an understanding. And even when they are not speaking or do not present a set of negotiable demands, the call for justice is being enacted: the bodies assembled ‘say’ ‘we are not disposable,’ whether or not they are using words at the moment; what they say, as it were, is ‘we are still here, persisting, demanding greater justice, a release from precarity, a possibility of a livable life.’”39 “[W]hen bodies gather […] they are demanding to be recognized, to be valued, they are exercising a right to appear, to exercise freedom, and they are demanding a livable life.”40

The “right to appear” is a political demand, has political force. Judith Butler’s studies show possibilities and conditions of assemblies, highlighting the physical presence of those who are involved in the public sphere. The “right to appear” depends on humanity and coexistence. And the performance of Beethoven’s symphony: Isn’t it an assembly? The performance becomes the public assembly, here all participants claim the “right to appear” in the public sphere. Here all participants can celebrate their freedom by way of their own appearance. At this point once again, we go back to Small’s comments on the importance of place, time and type of participants (performers and listeners) for the musical event. His question is: “What’s really going on here?”41 “Like any other building, a concert hall is a social construction, designed and built by social beings in accordance with certain assumptions about desirable human behavior and relationships. These assumptions concern not only what takes place in the building but go deep into the nature of human relationships themselves.”42

The concert hall becomes a place that relates to hopes and longings: That’s how we are, too! That works too! The essence of human relationships itself is touched. And every place at every time allows a new view on realities and pos-

39 | Ibid., 25. 40 | Ibid., 26. 41 | Chr. Small: Musicking, 10; emphasis in original. 42 | Ibid., 29.

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sibilities. Our time is unlike 1808, but it has the same power to point beyond itself. The performance of this symphony can be understood as a political act. Can it always become a new political act, again and again, even facing changed political conditions? Adorno comes up with doubts: “Bekker’s thesis regarding the ‘community-forming power’ of the symphony needs to be reformulated. The symphony is the aestheticized (and already neutralized) form of the public meeting. Categories within it, such as oratory, debate, resolution (the decisive element) and ceremony should be identified. The truth and untruth of the symphony are decided in the agora. What the late Beethoven rejects is just this element of the conclave, of bourgeois ritual.”43

But this “neutralization” can be repealed. It is possible to use the symphony again for a performative negotiation of the “Right to Appear”—politically. The symphony’s usefulness could emerge time and again. In this way, the explosive power of the network of activities inherent in this symphony could be recovered in contemporaneity. The political power of the symphony can be rediscovered in a musical way: by experiencing the physicality of the performers who remind each other of the potential, of “powers that are inherent and still unused while we are worn out”.44 This potential comes into the foreground when we perform this symphony in such a way: with this enthusiasm, with delays and disturbances, with standstills and breathless storming ahead, with the risk of stumbling and the risk of temporary disorientation.

2.4 J ohn C age : M usic for (1984-87) Coincidence. Shared E xperience of a “We” — Being There as Well I There are 17 voices (a flute, an oboe, a clarinet, a trumpet, a horn, a trombone, 4 percussionists, 2 pianos, 2 violins, a viola, a violoncello and a voice) that can be played individually, but can also be variably combined in a variably-sized ensemble. A duration of 30 minutes is provided, but performances with a shorter duration are possible. The title is completed by adding the number of players who are actually playing. The voices are listed individually: “Parts for voice and instruments without score (no fixed relation), title to be completed by adding to

43 | Th. W. Adorno: Beethoven, 41; emphasis in original. 44 | H. Lachenmann: Fragen — Antworten, 201.

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‘Music for’—the number of players performing.”45 The performers do not plan harmonies, correspondences or interactions. Cage himself specifically aimed for isolation of each performer: “Each player should prepare his part by himself and learn to play it with his own chronometer. There should be no joint rehearsal until all the parts have been carefully prepared. They are then to be played as though from multiple centers in space. The players may sit anywhere within the auditorium with respect to the audience and to each other.”46

In November 2000, the composition was performed as Music for Ten in the Kunstraum Duesseldorf.47 During the whole year there were ten performances of Music for One, so performances of all the voices that were participating individually. Finally, in November, the performance of Music for Ten concluded the project as the performance of all ten pieces simultaneously. Cage distinguishes “two kinds of music” in each voice: firstly, a single, sustained sound (piano) preceded and followed by a pause, which is repeated a few times; and secondly, a certain number of sounds in proportional notation. Proportional notation here means that the distances between sounds indicate the durations of the sounds. The division between “two kinds of music” applies to all single pieces: “It [each ‘piece’] begins and ends at any time within the time brackets given. It is made up of one or the other or of both of two kinds of music: a) a single held ton p, preceded and followed by silence, repeated any number of times, and b) a number of tones in proportional notation (space = time), not to be repeated, characterized by a variety of pitches, dynamics, timbres and durations within a limited range.”48

Music for belongs to a certain group of compositions: For the notation Cage used “time brackets” to describe a special kind of entry and decay of the sounds. Single phrases are notated in such a time bracket that indicates (at the beginning as well as at the end) either fixed times (such as 1′45′′ at the beginning and 1′55′′ at the end)49 or variable intervals for starting and concluding (such as beginning sometime between 1′55′′ and 2′40′′ and concluding sometime between 45 | J. Cage: Music for, voice, score, instructions. 46 | Ibid. 47 | Joanna Becker, violin; Joep Dorren, voice; Rebecca Dunne, horn; Julia Eckhardt, Viola; Marcus Kaiser, violoncello; Jürg Frey, clarinet; Roman Marreck, trumpet; Tobias Liebezeit, percussion; Normisa Pereira da Silva, flute; Craig Shepard, trombone. 48 | J. Cage: Music for, piano I, score, instructions. 49 | Example: second piano phrase of piano I; see J. Cage: Music for, piano I, score, 1.

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2′25′′ und 3′10′′)50. The fixed specification thus provides a “point in time”, and the more flexible specification provides a “period”: “Therefore, a fixed bracket indicates a point in time for the earliest possible beginning and a point in time for the latest possible end of a passage […]. A flexible bracket, on the other hand, specifies a period within which […] one must start and a period within which one must finish.” 51

The performers’ coordination is very flexible; an interaction (within limits) is possible, but not intended. Harmony arises or happens. Especially with a larger number of performers and a certain distribution in the space, each individual performer is in the midst of all the others. Cage aims for a way of performing that enables the performers to find their own individual places. The performers practice to find their own places during the performance, to find themselves surrounded by many players, and to experience confidence in coincidence—coincidence understood as a coincidence of sound events at different places within the space. A clash cannot be planned. Nobody can know which encounters arise. Performers contribute to the performance if they trust in coincidence. You cannot plan coincidence. Coincidence happens; it cannot be repeated.

II How important are the pauses between the sounds and between the different “kinds of music” (Cage) in Music for? There are different types of pauses. The trumpet starts with Cage’s first “kind of music”, a sustained single sound, preceded by a pause and followed by a pause. This entire phrase is repeated several times. The pause preceding the sound can enter within the “period” 0′00′′ and 0′45′′. A silence preceding this pause can constitute the beginning. The second “kind of music” (sounds in proportional notation) following this sound ends at the earliest at 0′30′′ and at the latest at 1′15′′. The performer continues with a phrase from the first “kind of music” (a single sound, surrounded by pauses), which starts at 1′00′′ at the earliest and at 2′15′′ at the latest. It is at the discretion of the performers how they connect the two “kinds of music”. The performer can evidently influence the durations of pauses. Only the pauses in the first “kind of music” (Cage) before and after the long-lasting sound are binding. In addition to the traditionally notated pause, you always can find (as a performer) free spaces for a standstill and moments of silence. The caesura is also not to be forgotten: a break to take a breath within a phrase of the second “kind of music”. 50 | Example: third piano phrase of piano I; see J. Cage: Music for, piano I, score. 51 | M. Erdmann: Il silenzio ritrovato, 187 et seq.

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Each part (Cage: “piece”) is radically single. The single performer plays free of gestures by turning to each sound individually, even if the sounds sometimes follow each other very quickly. The individual player does not intend to integrate into an ensemble, and the individual sounds are—like the performers—isolated from each other.

III Erika Fischer-Lichte reports on a performance of Cage’s Untitled Event, which Cage initiated “during the 1952 summer school of Black Mountain College”52 . In this score Cage used “time brackets”, too. Fischer-Lichte uses the term “coincidence” to describe what was happening here: “If spectators happened to detect a connection between two elements, it could only be ascribed to coincidence or their subjective circumstances. Each action stood on its own.”53 “Even stronger”, as Fischer-Lichte explains, are Cage’s Europeras 1 and 2. “It’s material, whether costumes and pictures or musical scores and the actions of the singers and their assistants were chosen by chance operation”.54 Fischer-Lichte speaks of “de-contextualization” and quotes Cage: “Everything is separated, simply everything from everything else. The scene is not conceived so that the different theatrical elements support … or even just relate to one another, but each has its own status, its own entirely independent conditions of activity”. 55

The terms “coincidence” and “de-contextualization” seem to be applicable to Music for as well. All players and all sounds are separated from each other. There is no score that gives an arrangement of the individual voices one above the other; there are only “parts for voice and instruments”. We do not find composed connections between the sounds. The audience might experience how this separation of “everything from everything else” (Cage) causes an opening-up of everything to everything else. The music invites the event and allows for many processes at the same time. This simultaneity cannot be intended nor produced, but just simply happens. In practice, the performers expose themselves to this state of uncertainty between doing (something) and letting (something) happen.

52 | E. Fischer-Lichte: The Transformative Power of Performance, 131. 53 | Ibid., 132. 54 | Ibid. 55 | Ibid., 133; emphasis in original. See J. Cage, in: Die Opernzeitung Frankfurt, Oktober/November 1987, Nr. 1/2, Frankfurt a.M. 1987, 11; emphasis in original.

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3. Solo Solo pieces reveal many types of situations in which performers can find themselves. The indication “for a pianist” suggests perhaps quite another situation than the indication “for piano”. Olivier Messiaen’s composition L’Ascension. Quatre Méditations Symphoniques is for the organ: “pour Orgue”. In this case, an additional “for organ alone” or “for solo organ” is missing. Above all, the piano and the organ are the instruments that appear as solo instruments when they are not taking over accompaniment functions or are not playing their parts in the piano or organ concert. The double bass, on the other hand, has first appeared on the stage as a solo instrument in contemporary music. Distinctions such as “for piano” or “for a pianist” (after mentioning the title) or specific titles such as “piano piece” or only “piano” show that the role of the soloist, the situation of performing and the relationship with the audience, as well as the function of the instrument, can influence the title of a piece. Solo: I am alone as a performer. This is a challenge. There is no other performer—unless the audience is involved in any way. When comparing different solo compositions, a great variety occurs. During the performance, a performer can follow a trail; the piece leads them. They can dwell at a certain place of the composition, they might wander through different landscapes, or they can find themselves suddenly at another place. The solo performer can stay closed in themselves but can also open their being to the experienced situation—can address an audience as an individual or perform for themselves, in which case an audience could be present during the performance without being addressed. The solo situation can be accompanied by a lack of communication but can also open a wide space for a counterpart.

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3.1 C l aude D ebussy : S yrinx pour flûte seule (1913) — A nastassis P hilippakopoulos : song 6 for bass flute or alto flute or flute (2010) Listening to Oneself — Breaths — The Absent You I “The sound of the shepherd’s pipe, the panpipe, or of the syrinx as the Greeks called it […], is supposed to reach the distant beloved. Thus, music begins longingly and already definitely as a call to that which is missing.”1 Ernst Bloch calls the sound of the panpipe “the birthplace of music as a human expression, a sounding wishful dream”.2 According to Ovid’s “Metamorphoses”, he tells the following “tale”: “Pan was disporting with nymphs and chased after one of them, the tree-nymph Syrinx. She flees from him, she sees her way blocked by a river, she implores the waves, her ‘liquidas sorores’, to transform her, Pan grabs for her and finds nothing but reeds in his hands. During Pan’s lamentations for his lost beloved, the breeze produces sounds in the reeds, and their harmony moves the god. Pan breaks the reeds, longer, then shorter ones, sticks the finely graded pipes together with wax and plays the first tones, like the breeze, but with living breath and as a lament.”3 “[W]ith the unity of syrinx and nymph Ovid described the goal towards which the tone series moves, which has always been a drawing of lines in the invisible. It is a contradictory-utopian goal: this pipe-playing is the presence of the vanished; that which has passed beyond the limit is caught up again by this lament, captured in this consolation. The vanished nymph has remained behind as sound”. 4

Claude Debussy’s composition Syrinx therefore could mean: Being alone, listening to oneself—even beyond the limits of the piece or of the space (“perdendosi”, “Très retenu”) (see Fig. 38).

1 | E. Bloch: The Principle of Hope, 1059; emphasis in original. 2 | Ibid. 3 | Ibid. 4 | Ibid., p. 1060; emphasis in original.

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Fig. 38: Claude Debussy: Syrinx pour flûte seule, bars 33-5

Several performers risk to be truly alone, without addressing an audience. When observing different performers, you can recognize whether the performers are listening to themselves or not. Some are explicitly addressing an audience, and some are simply performing a piece of music. The listener can observe different activities. The breath shapes the wide phrases of the melody; it determines the length of the phrases that belong entirely to the body. The title “Syrinx” does not only refer to the nymph’s name, or to the special flute made of reed or, generally, to the flute as an object, but also promises incarnation of calling; it means incantation. A short standstill at the end of a breath might show: The breathing performers can reassure themselves of the progress. Thus, the performers seek their way in the breathing of the piece—breath by breath. While dwelling in a place, astonishment at the progress may occur. No caesura is like another one. Sometimes there are shorter breaks for taking breaths, and sometimes there are longer pauses (fermata) (see Fig. 39). Fig. 39: Claude Debussy: Syrinx pour flûte seule, bars 23-5

The caesura around “Cédez”, “Rubato” (bars 14 et seq.) is rather short. Here, the melody turns in circles, and melodies that just vanished go on—letting the threads weave. Form originates from the corporeality of the breath. The breaths are individual events. One follows the other. In this way, I advance as a performer breath by breath, dwelling at individual places. The actual performance reveals the spaces where the performer acts and lives. We can observe a coming-into-being of space, of time, of the composition itself. Time passes, an unavoidable fact. With each breath, we grow older —we exude our lives. This corporeality manifests itself through the breaths. At the same time, the limits of the body as well as those of life itself are obvious. Music becomes an existential experience and confronts us with the limits of our bodies.

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Gerhard Ruehm’s study “as long as possible” (1962) shows how the exhaling reaches its limit until we can hear nothing more than a croaking noise; it shows the transformation of a long exhalation: “‘as long as possible’ is a final linguistic reduction. only one vowel, the ‘a’, is articulated melodiously and sustained as long as possible (until the breath is completely exhausted). an elementary demonstration of the consumption of ‘beauty’ and ‘freshness’ through duration, through time.”5

Thus, the performance of Syrinx also releases a process of consumption, of wearout—in addition to a process of becoming.

II Anastassis Philippakopoulos’s song 6 for bass flute or alto flute or flute (2010) shows a listening to oneself again, but this time with very long periods of silence exceeding the length of a break (to take breath). The round fermata indicates approximately the double duration of a tone or a pause, the square fermata the three-fold or four-fold duration.6 Overall, we find indications as: “poco rubato”, “tranquillo”, “poco expressivo”.7 Does silence break the musical phrases? Or do the breaths flow into the breadth of the silence? Every single call is followed by silence. The constant and seamless alternation of call and silence continues. Silence unfolds its own space of listening—a listening that is orientated towards width and long distances (see Fig. 40). Call—silence—call—silence—and so on! Antoine Beuger writes about this process: “each phrase a call, an address, a reaching out. each silence an intense listening, an opening up to be addressed in turn. in this music the deepest and most paradoxical sense of human solitude finds its purest expression: being alone in the awareness of one’s not being alone.”8

5 | G. Rühm: botschaft an die zukunft, 56. 6 | See A. Philippakopoulos: song 6, score. 7 | Ibid. 8 | A. Beuger: Booklet of the cd; emphasis in original.

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Fig. 40: Anastassis Philippakopoulos: song 6 for bass flute or alto flute or flute

© edition wandelweiser. ew17.014. With kind permission of edition wandelweiser, Haan 2010.

Each phrase is a call, each silence creates a space. The call and the silence invite the participants to listen into the breadth of silence, and to wait for an answer. Beuger speaks of the paradoxical situation arising through the back-and-forth of call and silence. The situation of being alone in silence evokes the possibility of the call—the possibility also of listening beyond the limits of one’s own call, of just being “addressed in turn,” or of being alone with one’s orientation towards a counterpart. I call, and while I am experiencing my loneliness and solitude, I feel that I am not alone. In silence, I listen in turn to a call unto me. In this manner, my renewed call becomes an answer, and so on.

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This is not a situation of communication; it is a situation of being for oneself in relation to somebody. The performance shows the value of the space of silence that the composition opens. Here, within the wide and open space, it becomes audible that the sound brings forth the emptiness for the You. Performance as a listening to oneself reveals the necessary void. If they do not just call, the performers remain present while listening. The activity of no action is as important as the activity of playing and calling. Focusing on a You means: Listening to the call within the space of silence, calling into the breadth of silence while listening.

3.2 J ohann J acob F roberger : L amentation (Partita in C; F b WV 612) (1654) — M editation (Partita in D; F b WV 620) (1660) Listening to the Decaying Sound — “avec discretion” I • Allemande—“faite sur l’Election et Couronnement de Sa Majesté Ferdinand le Quatrième Roy des Romains se joüe lentement a la discretion”— the first movement of the Partita FbWV 6119 • Lamentation—“faite sur la tres douloreuse Mort de sa Majeste, Ferdinand le Quatriesme Roy des Romains 1654, et se joüe lentement avec discretion”—the first movement of the Partita FbWV 612 • Meditation—“faite sur ma mort future, la quelle se joüe lentement avec Discretion â Paris 1 May Anno 1660”—the first movement of the Partita FbWV 620 • Lamentation—“faite sur la tres douloreuse mort de Sa Majeste Imperiale, Ferdinand le Troisiesme, et se joüe lentement avec discretion” FbWV 633 Compositions by Johann Jacob Froberger often commemorate special events: the election and coronation of Ferdinand the Fourth, the death of Ferdinand the Fourth, Froberger’s own future death, or the death of Ferdinand the Third. All these compositions have in common the performance instruction “(lentement) avec (à la) discretion” that means: play restrainedly, with great depths of emotion. You cannot lament your own future death as an event, but you can reflect on it thoughtfully and calmly. Not all compositions “lentement avec discretion” provide an occasion for mourning, as the Allemande of Partita FbWV 611 (see above) shows, as well as the Allemande of Partita FbWV 617 with the dedication: “faite en honneur de Madame la Duchesse de Wirtemberg, la quelle 9 | See J. J. Froberger: Neue Ausgabe sämtlicher Werke VI.2.

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se joüe lentement et à discretion”.10 Froberger did not only use the performance instruction “avec discretion” in lamentations, or in scores as a commentary on public events, or as a dedication. Even a complaint about his unfortunate adventures in London is included in the introduction to a Partita: Plaincte—“faite â Londres pour passer la Melancholie la quelle se joüe lentement avec discretion”. Froberger was absentminded while operating the bellows of an organ, and the organist dismissed him; in addition, someone had robbed him of his money before this unpleasant event. Likewise, an Allemande as an introduction to the Partita FbWV 627, which he composed due to a turbulent and personally very exciting and dangerous Rhine trip, is mentioned: “faite en passant le Rhin dans un barque en grand peril, la quelle se joüe lentement à la discretion”. Apparently, Froberger wrote a kind of musical diary and attributed compositions not only to public but also to personal events. It was important to him to place a historical milestone with each composition. By the way, the instruction “à discretion” is not limited to lamentation, meditation or allemande (as the introduction of a partita). In addition, we find single passages “à (avec) discretion”, “lentement avec discretion”, “lentement et à discretion” in toccatas—sections of self-forgetfulness and thoughtfulness.11 Another lament, in addition to the lament about his own death, stands out as a special one: the lament about a robbery. It is the Lamentation “sur ce que j’ay esté volé, et se joüe fort lentement, à la discretion sans obserueur aulcune mesure”, the first movement of the Partita FbWV 614. One plays this Lamentation not only slowly, but very slowly “à la discretion”—but even more in this way: without paying any mind to any kind of measure or equal tempo; completely loosely and freely. Freedom and remoteness characterize all the pieces or movements with the instruction “avec discretion”.12 This special instruction also shows that Froberger especially appreciated the removal of metric bonds. A letter from Sibylla of Wuerttemberg to Constantin Huygens reveals that a performer could not play the subtle delays and accelerandi (molto rubato) without practice and instruction. Froberger was her teacher. She writes that a performer hardly can decipher the nuances (of measures, durations, and figurations) by looking at the score, but only can learn after profound instruction from the composer himself.13

10 | See J. J. Froberger: Neue Ausgabe sämtlicher Werke VI.1. 11 | See Toccata FbWV 102, Toccata FbWV 114, Toccata FbWV 118, Toccata FbWB 113, Toccata FbWV 101, Toccata FbWV 115. J. J. Froberger: Neue Ausgabe. VI.1. 12 | Perhaps the instruction “avec discretion” could mean most likely restraint, modesty, freedom in decision. 13 | See S. von Württemberg, quoted in R. Rasch: Duizend Brieven over Muziek, No. 6626, 23.10.1667.

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II The Partita in C (FbWV 612) starts with a lamentation—“faite sur la tres douloreuse Mort de sa Majeste, Ferdinand le Quatriesme Roy des Romains 1654, et se joüe lentement avec discretion”. I am alone as a player. I listen to myself while playing. “Sich-Selbst-Zuhören” means Listening to oneself. This term originates in the scores of Istvàn Zelenka, who conceptualized a few of his compositions this way. Zelenka calls those pieces “pieces de s’écoute”14, compositions that find their meaning primarily in the fact that the performers listen to themselves. You perform those pieces “per se”. An audience can be present but does not necessarily need to be present. Here, in Froberger’s Lamentation, the performers advance from sound to sound. In a performance like this, the performers do not exactly know what will happen next while listening with all their senses. Perhaps they feel that they are hardly active. The music carries them along. You may notice that some performers watch their hands and seem surprised—observing the path on which their own hands lead them. The score offers actions as stopping repeatedly, faltering, and hesitating as well. While performing, the performers seek out their sounds and find their ways. Performing becomes listening. One sound is set into the resonance of the last one (see Fig. 41). Fig. 41: Johann Jacob Froberger: Lamentation (Partita in C; FbWV 612), bar 1

The musicians always turn into new directions—to stop again, to hesitate, to pause. You may discover new nuances of cautiousness and attention. The tempo is slow and very free. Nobody is urging anyone to hurry. The performers act with a high amount of prudence. Based on a very subtle restraint, “avec discretion”, they study the score as a map to orientate themselves here: to pause, to wait, to listen in this or that landscape repeatedly, in order to be alone in a special way in different landscapes of the score. Chords appear as unfolded arpeggios, but also in a vertical order, whereby an arpeggiated entry of the single sounds is nevertheless common in this visible simultaneity. However, even an arpeggio follows its own tempo; it always stays separated from the other events and remains an isolated occurrence in the map of the score. The chords fit perfectly into the hand. The performers get involved in a practice of touching the keys and playing the chords. Moreover, they practice hand movements and performing gestures, train haptic skills, and sensitize their tactile sensation. 14 | E.-M. Houben/I. Zelenka: 1 Milieu, 37.

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The Lamentation is metrically unbound and free; a firm pulsation is blurred. You play inspired by the notation, but you find the music beyond the notation. All voices are involved. Leading tones occur in all voices, but without determination because the musical development remains open by going forward. The harmony takes surprising turns. Peter Schleuning sees Froberger’s lamentations “on the Melancholy, the death of Blacheroche and the Emperor Ferdinand III” in the tradition of a Tombeau composition with its surprising and extraordinary harmonies.15 The hint at “melancholy” also addresses the standstills of the music that do not aim for speedy progress and linear development. Rather, the performers linger in the resonance of what happens here. Metric unboundedness, but also free and surprising harmonies characterize the Lamentation of the Partita in C. A performance of this movement involves listening, meditating, and reflecting on the decaying sounds. Sounds fade away, and in this resonance, I find myself as a performer, hesitantly searching for my way. An audience can be involved in meditating; they can experience these reflections, too.

III Ferdinand IV, born in 1633 in Vienna, died very early at the age of 21 in the same city. Shortly before his death, in 1653, he was crowned King of Rome. While the lament, which introduces the Partita in C (FbWV 612), mourns the death of a prominent figure of the political scene (Ferdinand), Froberger’s Meditation of the Partita in D (FbWV 620) presents a contemplation of his own future death: “faite sur ma mort future, la quelle se joüe lentement avec Discretion à Paris 1 May Anno 1660”. According to Rebecca Cypess, this piece is part of a tradition of compositions that expressed sorrow and pain, like the aforementioned Tombeau and the Lamentation.16 Cypess characterizes this type of lamentation in a special way: It connects unmeasured notation, metric freedom and independence with a kind of “suspension of time”. Such a “suspension of time” might happen here for a while—as long as the performance might last. The performer steps out of the everyday life-world: “Froberger’s harpsichord idiom is closely related to the unmeasured preludes fashionable in France in the second half of the 17th century; although these preludes generally lack definitive programmes and descriptive titles, it is noteworthy that their execution, like the piece for which Froberger prescribes discrétion, involves a general suspension of time.”17 15 | P. Schleuning: Die Freie Fantasie, 69. 16 | R. Cypess: ‘Memento mori Froberger?’, 1. 17 | Ibid.; emphasis in original.

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One special feature of Froberger’s composition is that in this Meditation a musical reflection on one’s own death is celebrated.18 The object of the meditation is not a past event, but a future one. The fact that Froberger provided this meditation with the place and the date of its creation impart the character of a diary to this composition. The diary was popular in Froberger’s time as an autobiography and a contemporary document. His era was an era of growing awareness of time; people carefully documented historical events, and clocks enjoyed great popularity.19 Cypess refers to the meticulous diary entries by Constantin Huygens, and to the mechanical inventions of his son Christiaan, who invented the pendulum clock in 1659 and revolutionized the pocket watch in 1675, and she mentions the work with sundials.20 Froberger expresses his interest in an autobiography and contemporary documentation of his own and public life by dating and localizing a composition; he places himself in places throughout history. At the same time, musical Meditation parallels the literary form of meditation (in France at the end of the seventeenth century), precisely because of its special relation to time, which Cypess describes as “paradoxical”.21 Literary meditation evokes the image of the clock as a symbol for the ephemerality of time, while at the same time the meditation allows one to withdraw from the regularity of the clock into an unbound, time-free space that gave the readers the freedom to concentrate and to collect themselves. Froberger’s Meditation has a similar function: “Froberger’s piece, too, embraces an aesthetic of suspended time to allow for concentrated meditation and removal from worldly considerations, especially in calling for execution with discrétion. At the same time, by dating his composition, Froberger showed an interest in time-bound autobiography—in placing himself in the passage of time.”22

This understanding of time is paradoxical because of the noteworthy duplication. On the one hand we find this striving towards accurate measurement, towards documentation, and towards classifications of time cycles and periods, and on the other hand we observe the need for withdrawal or for a suspension of time, as well as the wish to lose oneself in time when the chronometer does not count anymore. Froberger’s Meditation on his own death allows the performers a brief retreat from the daily activities, duties and routines that drag us into the vortex of time. For a while, time is suspended, “frozen” as Cypess says: 18 | Ibid., 7. 19 | See R. Cypess, ibid., 3 et seq. 20 | Ibid., 4. 21 | Ibid., 3. 22 | Ibid.; emphasis in original.

3. Solo “Froberger’s ‘Meditation’ requires only a brief removal of the player from day-to-day activities—those activities commonly marked by the passage of time.” […] “By suspending time through performance ‘with discretion’, he closed himself off—if only briefly—from the notion of time as a regular, predictable progression, governed and symbolized by the clock. The work enables the contemplation of death—repeatable in every performance—through the dreamlike state of devotional meditation. It served the player as a tool to situate himself in the present instant, freezing time long enough to understand his place in it.”23

The composition allows the performers to contemplate their own death. The piece invites us to the special practice of Memento mori.

IV Cypess describes a musical practice that anyone can repeat at any time. With and during this activity, I gain a pause, a place into which to withdraw. I withdraw to an island of time where I can linger freely for a while, protected from the relentless ticking of the clock. The score is an offer, an opportunity for me as a performer, to lose myself in light of an acute awareness of time. Any sound could be the last one. The following silence could be a temporary interruption or a final arrival. It remains paradoxical that I can lose myself in time while listening to ephemeral sounds, to fugitive moments. I always resonate, reverberate, and echo the last sounds as I keep playing. I hear—while listening to my own playing—the elapsing of lifetime. I recognize that I always hear the sound in its very decay. I can hear how I become older. I listen to the constant disappearance of the sounds, but also to the appearance of the next ones. In this way, I also hear my own future death, as Froberger could hear his own death, even if I do not say it in words. You do not have to say it, because the music shows it. The performance of this Meditation becomes an exercise for the performers in accepting themselves and their lives and the lives of the others in humility. It becomes an exercise in affirmation.

23 | Ibid., 7.

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3.3 I st vàn Z elenk a : “The trumpet shall sound!” — “S tillstück ” (a silent piece) for a cellist, with simultaneous environmental sounds and without an audience (1990)

An Activity “per se” in an Open Space I “About 20’’ before the beginning [...] the violoncellist opens a window or a door and plays his part sitting in the heart of the incoming simultaneous environmental sounds. At 15’00’’ [after 15 minutes] the violoncellist closes the window or the door.”24 Therefore, the duration of a performance is exactly 15 minutes. The performer plays—with stopwatch at specific times—single sounds and two- to five-tone sound sequences. There are very long pauses between the single sounds or sound sequences (see Fig. 42). Fig. 42: Istvàn Zelenka: “The trumpet shall sound!” — “Stillstück” (a silent piece) for a cellist, with simultaneous environmental sounds and without an audience

© Istvàn Zelenka. Manuscript. With kind permission of Istvàn Zelenka.

What does “silent piece” (“Stillstück”) mean? Certainly, there are long and very long breaks; half-minute breaks are not unusual. In addition, the performance itself is very withdrawn, and playing happens very softly: “sotto voce, senza vibrato, molto semplice ad eguale, legato ma non portamente—semper”.25 Following this performance instruction, the players might become obscured by the “incoming” environmental sounds, for example if they open the window on a busy street. Nevertheless, who should listen to the performers, since the performance takes place “without an audience” anyway? The performers listen to themselves. Thus, this composition belongs to the so-called “pièces de s’écoute” (Istvàn Zelenka)— 24 | I. Zelenka: “the trumpet shall sound!”, score, instructions. 25 | Ibid., 1.

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compositions encouraging the performers to listen to themselves and to play for themselves ‘per se’.26 While performing, the players follow a certain practice; they become silent during this occupation with the piece, although the musical sounds do not once outweigh anything or come into the foreground. In addition, there is no need to achieve anything during the performance time of 15 minutes. A certain property characterizes the composition “The trumpet shall sound!”, namely the property that characterizes all of Istvàn Zelenka’s compositions. They do not aim for a special effect nor a message nor perfection: “Production of something: NO”—“Occupation with something: YES”.27 The action itself is the decisive factor—without a definitive conclusion, without an anticipated and desired result. As Zelenka put it elsewhere: “Not always ‘better’ realized repetitions of the same thing, but a tireless occupation within a context or within variations of this context is the aim.”28 You practice; you perform a piece of music, if possible, repeatedly and without a conclusion. Thus, this activity might become a task for one’s whole life; the activity might find a place in everyday life. Zelenka has formulated a practice with this composition “The trumpet shall sound!”. The score offers opportunities for a peaceful, quiet, attentive and cautious occupation. Most of all, this feature characterizes the composition as a “Stillstück”, a “silent piece”. Perhaps this is the reason why the piece radiates so much energy and vitality. It makes proposals to do something concrete, and to be silent and attentive at the same time. What for? Zelenka’s repeatedly asks this question: “We composers, creatively ‘com-posing’ actors and witnesses of our time/world, could/ should ask ourselves tirelessly about the ‘What’, the ‘How’ and especially the ‘Why’ of our doing.” “Is the careful consideration of the aesthetic aspects of a composition sufficient to transform sounds and silences, words, movements/gestures and immobility/ stationing as well as shapes and colors, etc., etc., into an inspiring context that is rich in content?”29

Composers, performers and listeners form a community; they are all participants in the special practice, and they are equally involved. They all ask these questions together.

26 | E.-M. Houben/I. Zelenka: 1 Milieu, 37. 27 | E.-M. Houben/I. Zelenka: und/oder, 133, 128. 28 | Ibid., 20. 29 | Ibid., 17; 18.

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II “But where is the communication, where is the desire to share something expressive with the audience, to move people? The clue to play ‘per se’ or to act ‘per se’: Does it not witness a self-centered attitude of an artist who turns his back to the world? I already hear these objections.”30

Zelenka is currently composing for lay musicians. His aim is a composition that becomes an impulse to “deal personally with a series of action proposals”.31 “The trumpet shall sound!” for a violoncellist is not a composition that even a nonprofessional performer could perform because it requires the skills of a trained cellist. However, Zelenka’s view of the performance “per se” in general reveals a lot about the background of this piece. The performance “per se” is not an activity in personal isolation from other people and from surroundings or as a self-seclusion. Zelenka’s list of works called “1 Selection of Compositions” mentions different performance locations and possibilities for a performance of “The trumpet shall sound!”: “This composition is one of the pieces of listening to oneself; it could be interpreted: a / in an intimate/private room with a window or a door to the outside world, without an audience—or in the presence of some close friends; b / in an open public space/place in the city or in nature, without a specially invited audience; c / integrated into a concert program or spectacle, simultaneously with other, spatially distant productions; d / possibly as part of a ‘special’ concert program.”32

This “Silent Piece” for one performer alone without an audience would therefore be the variant with the greatest possible seclusion among several performance variants. And are the performers even in a closed room without communication? Do they act isolated from the world? At this point, it could be helpful to mention a comparison that Zelenka draws between making music and reading. In an email to Mark So he writes: “I would like, still, tell you of my umbilical attachment to reading. The relation the reader could develop to a book seems me a very rich one; the reader spends weeks or months with ‘his’ book, which becomes a part of his everyday life; the reader chooses each time the length of his daily reading, the tempo and expression of 30 | I. Zelenka, in: E.-M. Houben/I. Zelenka: 1 Milieu, 55. 31 | Ibid. 32 | Ibid., 345 et seq.

3. Solo it, and could return to already-read passages of the book, structuring his own personal interpretation. This widely active relation of reader and book is somehow a model in my mind to musical, sounding, physical or mental projects.”33

The practice, the peaceful activity, becomes part of everyday life. Even in the quiet activity alone at home or anywhere in the world, the single performer is not alone; the practice embeds them in the world. You may feel and experience this participation through the practice that becomes part of the (everyday) life.

3.4 A ntoine B euger : pour être seul (e), sans réserve for piano (2009) Being Alone: Losing oneself, giving oneself up for lost The piano piece pour être seul(e), sans réserve already hints in the title at a special kind of being alone: “sans reserve”, that means unreservedly, wholeheartedly. Ten lines offer ten paths to the performers to lose themselves (see Fig. 43). Fig. 43: Antoine Beuger: pour être seul(e), sans réserve for piano, lines 1-5

© edition wandelweiser. ew01.142. With kind permission of edition wandelweiser, Haan 2009.

33 | I. Zelenka: Fragment of an email to the composer Mark So, 17.02.2008, in: E.-M. Houben/I. Zelenka: 1 Milieu, 47.

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The score tells the performer: “always slow to very slow. quiet to very quiet. some sounds (maybe) (somewhat) louder. pedal: occasionally, poetically. phrasing: with innermost rubato.”34 Regarding the sound durations, there is the distinction between “(not too) short” (black note) and “long to very long” (white note) durations. Individual phrases within a line are structured by “breaks to take breath, or even (much) longer ones”. Off and on there is the hint: “and so forth”. This means: “continue (if you want to do so) (for a while, a long time)”.35 As a performer I devote myself to each line, following their tracks for a while. I lose myself while playing the repetitions that simply happen. I am not actively involved in shaping this process of repetitions. Piano playing happens to me. While playing I am alone.36 As a performer, I do not need addressees for this repeating action; I lose myself in this action more and more. I get lost while playing, at the same time that I give myself up (for lost). I do not even know how long I have been playing when I am about to stop. Such time horizons are blurred. The piece encourages me to lose myself and to forget the time, the performance and any present listeners. What for? I have the experience of getting lost—of giving myself up for lost at the same time. I have this experience through the performance, through the activity. Thus, I gain confidence. I can trust in this process. I learn: I can get lost. I experience affirmation as a letting go with confidence.

34 | A. Beuger: pour être seul(e) sans réserve, score. 35 | Ibid. 36 | A first discussion of this piece in E.-M. Houben: Jürg Frey, 98-106.

4. Duo How does art encounter love? What do love and art have in common? The subject of love is separation according to Antoine Beuger; love transforms one individual into two human beings by separating the one individual forever from the loved one.1 Being just two means being together and being separated at the same time. Transferred to musical practice, this idea can offer a special view on the duo. Duality can arise during the performance of a duo. In a duo both performers ask: Where are you? And both answer: I am here. With this answer both feel: We are not one. We are together in the duality. We are together because we are not at the same place. Alain Badiou emphasizes separation as an essential aspect of duality: “Firstly, love involves a separation or disjuncture based on the simple difference between two people and their infinite subjectivities. […] love contains an initial element that separates, dislocates and differentiates. You have Two. Love involves Two. The second point is that precisely because it encompasses a disjuncture, at the moment when this Two appear on stage as such and experience the world in a new way, it can only assume a risky or contingent form.”2

Could a musical practice be imaginable in a way in which this radical togetherness becomes an existential experience?

1 | See A. Beuger: die kunst, die liebe, 142. 2 | A. Badiou: In Praise of Love, 27-8; emphasis in original.

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4.1 F ederico M ompou : C antar del A lma . P our P iano e t C hant (1951). Te x t : S aint J ohn of the C ross Being Separated in Love I Federico Mompou did not choose all twelve verses of John of the Cross’s poem “Cantar del alma que se huelga de conocer a Dios por fe”. The title could be translated as: “Song of the soul that is joyful to recognize God in faith”.3 Here is the text as it is given in the score: Aquella eterna fuente esta escondida

That eternal fountain is hidden,

que bien sé yo do tiene su manida

but I know well where it is at home,

Aunque es de noche

even though it is night.

Su origen no lo sé pues no le tiene

I do not know its origin, it has none,

mas sé que todo origen de ella viene

but I know that every origin rises in it,

Aunque es de noche

even though it is night.

Sé que no puede ser cosa tan bella

I know that nothing can be of such a beauty,

y que cielos y tierra beben de ella

heaven and earth refresh themselves at it,

Aunque es de noche

even though it is night.

Sé ser tan caudalosas sus corrientes

I know that its streams are so abundant

que infiernos cielos riegan y las gentes

that they water hell, heaven and people,

Aunque es de noche

even though it is night.

El corriente que nace de esta fuente

The stream, given birth by this fountain,

bien sé que es tan capaz y tan potente

I know that it is as wide as omnipotent,

Aunque es de noche

even though it is night.

Aquesta viva fuente que yo deseo

The wild fountain that I desire,

en este pan de vida yo la veo

I see it in this bread of life,

unque es de noche 4

even though it is night.

3 | The translation follows Antoine Beuger’s translation into German; see A. Beuger: Cantar del Alma, Ms. 4 | F. Mompou: Cantar del Alma, score, 2 et seq.

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II Is this a song for voice and piano? Piano and voice never meet each other; they never play at the same time. The piano starts on its own: The slow, metric-bound piano chant, which moves from note to note, is unusually long for a prelude. The singer waits and listens. The piano plays a four-part movement reminiscent of a chorale. But the four-part harmony off and on is expanded to five- and six-part harmonies, whereas the chant is also reduced to a two-part harmony. The pianist sometimes gets lost; sometimes—at a moment of two-part harmony—the pianist may feel a vacuum while touching the keys with only one voice in one hand. The separation becomes apparent to both, at the very latest, when the voice enters the stage. The voice floats freely and without any accompaniment; the voice is oriented mainly towards different durations of the sounds (shorter and longer ones) as well as to breaks: “dans le style grégorien”5. Three of the six verses selected by Mompou are combined during this first chant of the voice. Then there is a cut that brings to light the total separation of the two. The piano repeats the chorale-like movement of the beginning—alone. There is no simultaneity. The repetition of its own chant reveals the intimate separation of the two parts. The voice and the piano are really two different beings in this love song. The voice also repeats, still alone, the song “dans le style grégorien” (the second half of the poem). And again, the piano enters with the chorale-like chant and repeats its phrases. The separation could not be stronger. These two are together while being separated; they are together, not in the same place. They are lovers. This song for voice and piano shows the two performers as a real duo and as lovers. The listener might find a lot of traces that lead one to discover a relationship of love. These traces might be discovered in the silence that has become music.

III Mauricio Rosenmann hints at the important source for Federico Mompou’s work: the poems of Saint John of the Cross. Thus, he mentions Mompou’s piano cycle Música callada (Silent music).6 Mompou added the following note to the Música callada cycle: “Il est assez difficile de traduire et d’exprimer le vrai sens de ‘Música Callada’ dans une langue autre que l’espagnole. Le grand poète mystique, San Juan de la Cruz, chante dans une de ses belles poésies: ‘La Musica Callada, la Soledad Sonora’ cherchant à exprimer ainsi l’idée d’une musique qui serait la voix même du silence. La musique gar-

5 | F. Mompou: Cantar del Alma, score, 2. 6 | M. Rosenmann: Lieder ohne Ton, 3.

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Musical Practice as a Form of Life dant pour soi sa voix ‘Callada’, c’est à dire ‘qui se tait’ pendant que la solitude se fait musique.”7 “It is quite difficult to translate and express the true meaning of ‘Música Callada’ in another language than Spanish. The great mystic poet, Saint John of the Cross, sings in one of his beautiful poems: ‘The Musica Callada, Soledad Sonora’ seeking to express the idea of a​​ music that would be the very voice of silence. The music preserves for itself its voice ‘Callada’—that is to say, ‘who is silent’—while loneliness and solitude become music.”

Mompou refers to John of the Cross’s “Cántico espiritual”. Here, namely in the 14th stanza, the “Música callada”, a very silent music, is addressed as “the voice of silence”. “Música callada”: a music that is very silent, while loneliness becomes music. The 14th stanza of the “Cántico spiritual” is: “la noche sosegada, en par de los levantes de la aurora, la música callada, la soledad sonora, la cena que recrea y enamora; The night in deep silence, Almost giving way to the dawn, The silent and quiet music, The sounding solitude, The supper that revives and enkindles love.”8

Cantar del alma: the experience of silence and solitude within a duo—as a duo.

7 | F. Mompou: Música Callada, score, 2; see H. Henck: Program notes. 8 | The translation follows Antoine Beuger’s translation into German; see A. Beuger: San Juan de la Cruz. El cantico espiritual, 164-5.

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4.2 J ürg F re y : B uch der R äume und Z eiten for t wo performers (1999) — J ürg F re y : O hne Titel (t wo violins) (1995/96) Being There as Well — Unidentifiable Difference I In this simultaneity, each of the two players is left alone. There is no communication, no interaction between the performers. They are in each case in their own world—in their own space, in their own time. The score of Buch der Räume und Zeiten for two performers indicates that each performance lasts 55 minutes. The composition includes flute, bass clarinet, trumpet, trombone, voice, percussion 1, percussion 2, percussion 3, percussion 4, piano 1, piano 2, piano 3, piano 4, accordion, violin, viola, cello, tape 1, and tape 2. Any instrument can be combined with any other one. The two performers play simultaneously, and the dynamics are very quiet.9 As a performer I am practicing (playing or singing) a certain part while someone else is also playing or singing. I experience less being separated from the other player but more being there, too—at the same time as the other performer. The complete score is a collection and offers individual scores for the single players. Sometimes I almost lose myself as a player (here as a pianist): The sound durations are noted as half and dotted sixteenths (with the tempo indication quarter = 44), but there is no beat, no pulse (see Fig. 44). Fig. 44: Jürg Frey: Buch der Räume und Zeiten for two performers, piano 3, 1 (excerpt)

© edition wandelweiser. ew02.043. With kind permission of edition wandelweiser, Haan 1999.

In the same piece, I later find myself confronted with a completely different order of durations. Whole notes appear at certain times while the indication

9 | J. Frey: Buch der Räume und Zeiten, score.

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“quarter = 60” applies to the whole note. The player uses a stopwatch. There is silence until the next whole note, which lasts four seconds (see Fig. 45). Fig. 45: Jürg Frey: Buch der Räume und Zeiten for two performers, piano 3, 3 (excerpt)

© edition wandelweiser. ew02.043. With kind permission of edition wandelweiser, Haan 1999.

Percussion 4 offers phrases of sound and phrases of silence, each of them with its own duration. These phrases are separated from each other by the stopwatch. Thus, I switch between continuous, longer lasting sweeping and remaining silent (with one exception at 17:00) (Fig. 46). Fig. 46: Jürg Frey: Buch der Räume und Zeiten for two performers, percussion 4, 2

© edition wandelweiser. ew02.043. With kind permission of edition wandelweiser, Haan 1999.

As a bass clarinetist, I am almost completely silent when I play (the bass clarinet is sounding at notated pitch) (see Fig. 47).

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Fig. 47: Jürg Frey: Buch der Räume und Zeiten for two performers, bass clarinet, 1 (excerpt)

© edition wandelweiser. ew02.043. With kind permission of edition wandelweiser, Haan 1999.

Only at the very end, after 41 minutes, I find more support through the regularity of the low impulses (see Fig. 48). Fig. 48: Jürg Frey: Buch der Räume und Zeiten for two performers, bass clarinet, 4 (excerpt)

© edition wandelweiser. ew02.043. With kind permission of edition wandelweiser, Haan 1999.

A performer might experience and learn what it can mean to be alone while the other performer is alone at the same time. You perform in a state of absorption. Another example is the trombone part. The stopwatch indicates the entry of a sound in each case, but as a player I have the task to change the tempo from sound to sound. Surely, I will prepare the new tempo in my mind during the phase of silence between one sound and the other one (see Fig. 49). Fig. 49: Jürg Frey: Buch der Räume und Zeiten for two performers, trombone (excerpt)

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The final example is the viola, which is quite unique in its singular devotion to very long, sustained sounds and pauses for a duration of 55 minutes (see Fig. 50). Fig. 50: Jürg Frey: Buch der Räume und Zeiten for two performers, viola, 1 (excerpt)

© edition wandelweiser. ew02.043. With kind permission of edition wandelweiser, Haan 1999.

So, each of the two performers remains responsible for themselves. Each one is alone. The two “spaces and times” (see the title “Räume und Zeiten”) interfuse each other in different ways. Only two players at the same time—each one for themselves. What happens? Not the performers but their activities, and even more so the results of their activities come to various forms of interaction and mutually influence each other. A kind of mobile sculpture emerges: not a mere addition of the two spaces and times, but a mutual interfusion—with explicit separation from one another. In this mutuality, each player requires the activity of the other player, who builds his space while performing. Both performers are busy as architects; they create their own spaces. This sets this relationship apart from a love relationship.

II Ohne Titel (two violins): The two performers are wandering through different sonic landscapes together. First, they play both harmonics, sometimes the same, sometimes, slightly different, so not the same (see Fig. 51).

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Fig. 51: Jürg Frey: Ohne Titel (two violins), 1 (excerpt)

© edition wandelweiser. ew02.028. With kind permission of edition wandelweiser, Haan 1996.

A new landscape follows. Both players dedicate themselves to the practice of playing the same as the other player at the same time (see Fig. 52). The score tells us that no harmonics are created. Quite another sound appears: “One finger must press down the string completely, another finger dampens the sound. A mixture of sound and noise appears.” Bow changes are independent of one another.10 Fig. 52: Jürg Frey: Ohne Titel (two violins), 2 (excerpt)

© edition wandelweiser. ew02.028. With kind permission of edition wandelweiser, Haan 1996.

A subtle difference that cannot be identified but exists, because there are two performers. Here, not identifiable differences are played. We find the same sounds as they are notated, but two performers play, resulting in unidentifiable differences. In the next landscape of the score both performers play “arco” (bowed) and “pizzicato” (plucked), also “col legno battuto” (see Fig. 53). For the arco sounds, there is the indication: “On one bow (a slightly perforated sound will emerge).”11

10 | J. Frey: Ohne Titel, score, 1. 11 | Ibid.

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Fig. 53: Jürg Frey: Ohne Titel (two violins), 3 (excerpt)

© edition wandelweiser. ew02.028. With kind permission of edition wandelweiser, Haan 1996.

This is followed by a landscape that invites both performers to play the same again (“non div[isi]”). Both play sounds that go to the next one at quarter-tone intervals in glissando (see Fig. 54). Fig. 54: Jürg Frey: Ohne Titel (two violins), 4 (excerpt)

© edition wandelweiser. ew02.028. With kind permission of edition wandelweiser, Haan 1996.

Finally, both play repetitions, with minimal tempo fluctuations. The five-tone groups in sixteenth-notes (5/16; quarter = 58 and quarter = 54) are in each case separated by a quarter-break, which fills a 4/16 measure (see Fig. 55). Fig. 55: Jürg Frey: Ohne Titel (two violins), 5 (excerpt)

© edition wandelweiser. ew02.028. With kind permission of edition wandelweiser, Haan 1996.

In (almost) all these spaces, both performers do (nearly) the same thing. It is not their actions that distinguish them, but the very fact that they are not one. The more they agree in the performance—the less they differ in their playing—the more we can deeply experience that the two performers are two individuals, that they are not one.

4. Duo

4.3 L udwig van B ee thoven : Violin S onata no . 10 in G M a jor op. 96, 2 nd movement (A dagio espressivo) (1812) Approaching One Another The piano, playing alone at the beginning, does not only prepare the entry of the violin, but sings. Very simply, it starts with a movement that later applies to both (see Fig. 56). Fig. 56: Ludwig van Beethoven: Violin Sonata no. 10 in G Major op. 96, 2nd movement (in E Flat Major), bars 1-8

Without movement in sixteenth notes, this chant of the piano would be chorale-like, but in each case, the sixteenths are an introduction to the next tone. Likewise, the bass in eighths gently leads each of the eighths on the weak beats onto the accented one. The violinist listens to this chant of the piano. The violin takes exactly the final turn (bar 9; the notes g1 – f1 – e Flat1, then the movement in sixteenths, which was previously accompaniment), confirming that it has heard the chant. Now the piano sings the phrase again, one octave higher. At this point (bar 11) a first communication comes to a touching conclusion: I heard you, how you sang your song to me (see Fig. 57).

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Fig. 57: Ludwig van Beethoven: Violin Sonata no. 10 in G Major op. 96, 2nd movement (in E Flat Major), bars 9-11

It is hard to say why this interaction is touching to many listeners. It is not enough to say that the players make such a wonderful music together, but it is about finding a certain tone for describing how the two entities are together in this place. The violin takes the rhythmic figure from bar 12 in the piano (upbeat to the melody, bar 11)—at its first appearance even as a melodic quote with the first notes, only one octave lower. And the piano now supports the violin; its rhythmic figure has become pure accompaniment. It is a completely different communication than it was before. A new world opens for the performers. The violin sings a new melody here, and the piano accompanies with the delicate figure. This figure is like a touch. The roles have been reversed. Now the violin is singing, accompanied by the piano (see Fig. 58). Fig. 58: Ludwig van Beethoven: Violin Sonata no. 10 in G Major op. 96, 2nd movement (in E Flat Major), bars 12-5

During the subsequent chord progression (bar 21 et seq.), which evokes a modulation, the nature of the interaction has changed again. Both participants are now dedicated to progression. The piano cannot sustain the sounds, because, of course, the piano’s sound disappears soon after the attack. Therefore, thirtysecond notes are played to sustain the sound—to give to it the same intensity that the violin sound easily achieves by way of the bow. The violin takes over a task that the piano cannot fulfill. During the transition to the recapitulation (bars 32-6; 36-7) the violin evokes, insistent on figurations, a kind of standstill, a kind of fermata. After

4. Duo

ever more expansive figurations it swings with the emphasized seventh into the recapitulation (see Fig. 59). Fig. 59: Ludwig van Beethoven: Violin Sonata no. 10 in G Major op. 96, 2nd movement (in E Flat Major), bars 34-6

This introduction of the dominant seventh creates a short shock. The violin finds itself in limbo for a moment, and the piano has no influence on this situation. The two remain in a state of suspension for a while. In the recapitulation the roles are reversed. Anyone who has sung before, accompanies now—and vice versa. At various places different encounters happen—different forms of being together become possible. The final chords, for example, require simultaneous entries over a duration of seven bars; the figurations (first in the violin, then in the piano) facilitate the change from one chord to the next one. Here the two performers are together in a common breathing. This movement subtly offers a practice of being together—of performing in togetherness. Each one participates in the interaction, and each one remains individual. The performance shows how two players can be together—not despite the separation, but due to the separation. Everyone is completely individual and, at the same time, fully focused on each other.

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5. Trio Being a threesome, the separation no longer comes into the foreground as it does in a duo; the commonality begins. Three participants share a room. It takes three to deliver a narration, as thespians may know. A third party is added, and the relationship between the two is disturbed. Something can happen. While the separation is the focused subject of the duo, the trio addresses instability. The trio is a vulnerable body. Collisions, frictions, but also compensation and protection against danger become important in the trio. The three actors of a trio are radically dependent on each other.

5.1 F r anz S chubert : Trio no . 2 in E F l at M a jor D 929 op. 100, 2 nd movement (A ndante con moto) (1827) Different Fates — E xperienced Together One melody note in the cello, then another one—every sound must make sure of how it progresses. The tenacious continuation of this theme, which is said to go back to the Swedish folk song “Se solen sjunker” (“Watch the sun go down”)1, resonates in the repetitions of notes in the accompanying piano. These repetitions are not necessarily played staccato, as the score indicates, but also non-legato. The chant in the cello runs at the beginning here with piano accompaniment (bars 1-20). A duo practices unity. The upbeat motif of the octave leap downwards (bars 15-6) slows down the process. The characteristic motif wanders from the cello to the piano, back to the cello, and back to the piano; this alternation appears to be like a fermata. The eighth note is upbeat and yet provided with an accent. Both breathe here: inhaling and exhaling, inhaling and exhaling (see Fig. 60).

1 | See A. Feil: Kammermusik, 256.

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Fig. 60: Franz Schubert: Trio no. 2 in E Flat Major D 929 op. 100, 2nd movement (in C Minor), bars 1-20

Following the performance of this duo (piano and cello), the accompaniment changes to the strings, which now join and form a duo. The practice shows: Accompanying is not a subordinate activity, but rather, the strings now support the chant of the piano with repetitions that appear tone by tone; each single sound must come to life. The two strings quote the piano sound from the beginning of the movement. But this quotation becomes something completely different—becomes the reflection of the beginning. Even the Swedish melody has changed now that the piano is singing the melody in octave unison. This melody can never be played on a piano in the same way in which it was sung by the cello before. The piano appears cool and restrained, the accompaniment very intense and urgent. The strings are now a pair. One, the piano, stays alone. At the beginning of the second theme (bars 41 et seq.), the violin and the piano are very near to each other. They are closely connected. The violin and the bass in the piano are complementary to each other; now these two participants form a duo. The cello is free, and it is even free to remain silent. But it

5. Trio

reinforces the accents along with the violin—accents that are upbeat (like an eighth note), but also played on a full beat. The cello is not as closely associated with the violin here as in the accompaniment of the Swedish melody before, but it finds a place between the violin and the piano, fitting in here—reinforcing accents, commenting, giving color. After a while (bar 52 et seq.) the cello joins the violin and the piano, and they are now three. This grouping changes again soon when the violin and the cello form a complementary relationship to each other while the piano accompanies (bar 57 et seq.). From here onward, there are various groupings in a confined space: complementary duo violin and piano (bass); cello triplets (bars 68 et seq.); a short encounter of cello and piano (bass) (bar 77); cello and violin in unison, complementary to the piano (bar 78-80). The following pause and the pianissimo transition (bars 81-4), in which each instrument assumes a different role (harp arpeggios in the piano, descending scale in the cello, sustained sound in the violin), are breaks for taking a breath before a great increase. For the first time, the piano takes over both tasks, song and accompaniment, while the strings play a counterpoint together (bars 86 et seq.). This counterpoint appears here for the first time. The three now enter a landscape where everyone freely follows their own paths; the piano even follows two paths simultaneously. Violin and cello join to present the melody (bar 106), while the piano supports them with an atmospheric sound (tremolo). Dieter Schnebel mentions the “nervous atmosphere” and compares the “sentimental melody” here with “Sprechgesang”.2 He regards this section of the movement as a phase of extreme “diffusion”: “The diffusion increases to an extreme when all instruments play according to their own time courses and even the piano is divided into two parts. The upper part contains the melody in quadruplets, the lower part the accompaniment in triplets. The violin adds a dialogue of raw staccato sounds, also in triplets, and the cello provides an exciting contrast to this by way of the tremolo movement. In this confused polyphony of different layers of time, the song is completely disintegrated.”3

In two essays on Schubert4, Schnebel studies Schubert’s special ways of creating different time structures. In this context, he also addresses the stagnation of time—zones in which time is suspended: “Time structures like those ones that almost dominate in the last piano sonata dilute the time; they perforate time, even eliminate time, in such a way that a yawning silence emerges.”5 He uses 2 | D. Schnebel: Auf der Suche nach der befreiten Zeit, 78. 3 | Ibid. 4 | Auf der Suche nach der befreiten Zeit; Klangräume – Zeitklänge. 5 | D. Schnebel: Auf der Suche nach der befreiten Zeit, 77 et seq.

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the aforementioned passage of Schubert’s Andante (“confused polyphony”) as an example for the “other extreme” time structure (see Fig. 61): “the concentrated [time], while heterogeneous processes would condense into chaotic complexion until time almost disjointed itself.”6 Fig. 61: Franz Schubert: Trio no. 2 in E Flat Major D 929 op. 100, 2nd movement (in C Minor), bars 119-21

The Swedish song does not reappear in the further run of the piece, apart from the fragment in the coda (bar 196 et seq.), but the previously attempted forms of interaction appear again. Piano and cello come together in a complementary way (bar 129 et seq.) like the piano and violin did before when they formed a duo. The piano accompanies the duo violin and cello (bars 145 et seq.), which are complementary to each other, like before. By using the terms “diffusion” and “confused polyphony of time”, Schnebel tries to describe an extreme interaction—a splitting of the trio into three individuals, or in fact even four considering the split of the piano part into two layers. In calmer and still-flowing time, individualization might be discovered above all in transitions where each of the three performers plays another role to manage the transition (bars 82-4, 193-5) (see Fig. 62 a, 62 b).

6 | Ibid., 78.

5. Trio

Fig. 62a: Franz Schubert: Trio no. 2 in E Flat Major D 929 op. 100, 2nd movement (in C Minor), bars 82-3

Fig. 62b: Franz Schubert: Trio no. 2 in E Flat Major D 929 op. 100, 2nd movement (in C Minor), bars 193-5

The trio may temporarily become a duo, with or without accompaniment—with different kinds of accompaniment. An individual can join a duo in different ways; three performers can emerge as three individuals, following completely different paths. Different orientations in this threefold combination allow various colors, accents, developments, atmospheres, and create mobility of the thematic processes, which can emerge or remain hidden. The Swedish melody, for example, stands out at the climax described by Schnebel, but then disappears more and more in the twists and turns of the individual voices. The multifaceted coexistence of the three performers creates a story that can be followed down to the smallest detail due to the transparency of the trio.

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5.2 A rnold S choenberg : S tring Trio op. 45 (1946) The Trio-Body in Pulsation: Being three bodies — becoming one body. Remaining only one body? I Here, the pulse is a guarantee that the extremely unstable situation can still be maintained despite the resistance. It is the common pulse that holds the triobody together. Repeatedly, individual parts of the trio-body shed and retreat in the trio. Everyone is one and three at the same time. Anyone can leave the group at any time and rejoin the group—various processes are possible in a confined space. Right at the beginning, the violin and the viola form a duo with the trill (“quasi trill”), while the cello opposes them with a widespread theme that is dissolved into harmonics (bar 1). In the next bar, the figure wanders into the viola, while the cello only partially enters into a duo constellation with the violin (bar 2) (see Fig. 63). Fig. 63: Arnold Schoenberg: String Trio op. 45, bars 1-2

Schoenberg STRING TRIO, OP. 45, Copyright © 1946 by Boelke-Bomart, Inc., Copyright © renewed. All Rights Reserved. Used by permission of Boelke-Bomart, Inc.

The three performers are closely connected to each other; at the same time there are always individuations (for example the solo of the violin, bars 8-11). They are seldom all together (as in bars 37-40)—only in very special moments (see Fig. 64).

5. Trio

Fig. 64: Arnold Schoenberg: String Trio op. 45, bars 37-40

Schoenberg STRING TRIO, OP. 45, Copyright © 1946 by Boelke-Bomart, Inc., Copyright © renewed. All Rights Reserved. Used by permission of Boelke-Bomart, Inc.

The following section (bars 41-4) shows how quickly the orientations change— with the aim of maintaining a performance alongside the pulse: duo viola and cello (bar 41); duo violin and viola (bar 42); duo violin and cello (bar 43); duo viola and cello (bar 44). Moments of individuation and constantly changing duo formations lead to a process between splitting and being together. The pulsation changes all the time (change of measure, change of tempo). There is also a variety of playing techniques (such as “col legno battuto” [hit with the wood of the bow], “col legno tratto ponticello” [with the wood of the bow on the bridge]—here with the explicit note to really play on the bridge and not near the bridge, pizzicato and many more); in addition we find harmonics and dynamics with an extremely wide range. Without the continuous pulse, this exciting interaction would not be possible. Often, a performer plays against the pulse. The pulsation is also expressed in the body language of the performers. How do the players find an appropriate place in the concert hall? Does the trio gain strength by placing the players away from each other—or by placing the cello in the middle of the trio? The flow of energies might depend on the distance of the performers from each other. If they are sitting further away from each other, the distance might benefit the performance, because they are linked together like members of a single body. Nobody can leave this union for a longer period of time.

II Schoenberg is said to have responded to Hanns Eisler’s enthusiastic comment regarding the String Trio: “You know, I was so weak, I do not even know how I wrote it. I wrote something down.”7 Hans Heinz Stuckenschmidt, one of Schoenberg’s biographers, adds: “And he showed Eisler how chords portray in-

7 | A. Schoenberg, in: H. H. Stuckenschmidt: Schönberg, 435 et seq.

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jections.”8 The String Trio was written in 1946 immediately after Schoenberg’s illness: “Pulse and breath stopped. The doctor made an injection into the heart itself and brought Schoenberg back to life.”9 If you pay attention to the pulsation dominating the entire Trio, the question might arise again: What are the three performers doing here? Why are they acting in this way? They form a threefold body: an amorphous body that is constantly endangered; a body that acts with the risk of bursting at any time. The three players have decided to come together to form such a fragile, unstable body. It is the pulse that holds them together. As a trio-body, they do not form primarily communicative structures, but rather take on bodily functions of various kinds. This piece of music challenges the performers extremely: How does one cope with the fact that the subject disintegrates, that we must constantly deal with new turns in life, that nobody can ever be sure? The performance leads the performers into situations of instability and unpredictability. Suddenly, various impulses, feelings, and movements can emerge. What can be done in a world of risk and danger or in the midst of a crisis-ridden existence? By the performance of this String Trio, each person exposes themselves to a dangerous and daring adventure—completely reliant on the others who share this situation.

5.3 M athias S pahlinger : 128 erfüllte augenblicke . systematisch geordne t , variabel zu spielen . for voice , cl arine t and cello (1975) Continuity as Utopia. Emergence of (One’s Own) Systems The title of this trio, 128 erfüllte augenblicke (128 fulfilled moments), is a promise. It expresses utopian ideas. It describes what the performance of this trio in practice might become, if one takes the proposals of this score seriously. Perhaps a trio ensemble will then have a very special approach together—and will not prepare a specific version for a program item in a concert. The score goes one step further and offers an intense and lasting concentration on 128 loose sheets; it challenges the performers to meet the demands of a loose-leaf collection. How can the “128 moments” be involved in our lives? How can this piece become a practice? Each sheet presents a certain moment; these moments can be shorter or longer—the duration varies between 2′′ and 4′20′′. The notes to the score ex8 | Ibid., 436. 9 | Ibid., 435.

5. Trio

plain the realization of the “128 moments”: An “imaginary continuum” between a) less and more different pitches, b) longer and shorter durations, and c) pitches and noises provides us with four single stations for each of the three dimensions (a, b, and c). These stations could be compared to cuts through the continuum. Each of them occurs with increasing and decreasing tendency. Therefore, the result is a total of 4 x 4 x 4 x 2 = 128 crystallization points. A cube illustrates the dimensions: less and more different pitches are displayed in height, longer and shorter durations in width, certain pitches and noises in depth. Thus, every moment can be denoted by a three-digit number (for example .134 or .223); the sign for increasing or decreasing tendency is added in each case: < and > (see Fig. 65). Fig. 65: Mathias Spahlinger: 128 erfüllte augenblicke. systematisch geordnet, variabel zu spielen. for voice, clarinet and cello (.213