Word Art + Gesture Art = Tone Art: The Relationship Between the Vocal and the Instrumental in Different Arts 3031201086, 9783031201080

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Hanns-Werner Heister Hanjo Polk Bernhard Rusam  Editors

Word Art + Gesture Art = Tone Art The Relationship Between the Vocal and the Instrumental in Different Arts

Word Art + Gesture Art = Tone Art

Hanns-Werner Heister · Hanjo Polk · Bernhard Rusam Editors

Word Art + Gesture Art = Tone Art The Relationship Between the Vocal and the Instrumental in Different Arts

Editors Hanns-Werner Heister Rosengarten, Niedersachsen, Germany

Hanjo Polk Hamburg, Germany

Bernhard Rusam Hamburg, Germany

ISBN 978-3-031-20108-0 ISBN 978-3-031-20109-7 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20109-7 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Preface

It cannot be pretended that the relationship between the vocal and the instrumental, or the relationship between vocal and instrumental music, is not a debated topic and has not already been dealt with often and in detail. On the contrary: because of their fundamental relation—and the tension between the two poles of vocal and instrumental—the discussion about it has been running through music-aesthetic and music-theoretical, music-historical, also music-geographical as well as theological debates, often even in the form of ‘Querelles’ i.e. of larger debates as in the late 17th century e.g. ‘moderns’ against ‘ancients’. ‘Extensive’ however does not always mean thorough or exhausting. This is where this project comes in. At first, this project is fundamental in its systematic breadth: a real interdisciplinary cooperation between related, yet also distant subjects, such as art and natural sciences. Second, it is fundamental in its primarily historical depth. The considerations start at the anthropological juncture of nature and culture; on the one hand, they deal with the biological and physiological development, and on the other hand, they discuss the artistic and social development as well. This second aspect is something qualitatively new in history, which presupposes and includes ‘history of nature’, but ultimately also a reshaping and continuation of the natural by other means: culture in the case of mankind. In particular, this book is about the emergence of this relationship—and thus about the emergence of music. One may think of “deep history” (St. J. Gould) or “big history”. In this unique interdisciplinary, innovative and international anthology, the relationship between the vocal and the instrumental is examined in its as many facets as possible—not all, but at least the most relevant ones—and with many shades of color, because of its very different sub-aspects. By approaching these concepts from an unusual perspective, this book offers new way of understanding the relationship between the vocal and the instrumental. The question of this relationship is rooted in music, yet the authors pursue it in anthropological, psychological and sociological terms, and also in other arts and forms of communication. In this way, new insights into languages, arts, and communication emerge. v

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The outlines of the topic and the novel theoretical approach are briefly sketched here in the form of theses. 1. Music is a composite art, contrary to common notions. From the point of view of production, it is both an art of the voice (vocal music) and an art of the hands (instrumental music). 2. The genuinely ‘vocal’ dimension of music is the voice expressing itself as a mere sequence of tones. This ‘vocal’ needs neither an explicit periodic rhythm nor—and this is a decisive difference compared to conventional ideas—words. The genuinely instrumental aspect of music is the ‘percussive’. This is the unity of noise/sound and rhythm. 3. The duality of the system “voice + hands” is an anthropological universal—with precursors already in the animal world since the vertebrates, but particularly in the mammals. It is assigned here to the production of music and of art in general. 4. For the reasons explained above, there are also two basic arts, and only two, which are ’pure’ and elementary: word art (voice) and gesture art (hands/body). They stand at the same time for each other and against each other. They use the acoustical or the optical medium. All other arts are derived and composed. Gesture art for its part is already doubled or split: into pantomime (acting art) as ‘prose’, i.e. rhythmically irregular, free, and into dance art, as ‘poetry’, i.e. rhythmically bound, regular. Perhaps one should introduce the same split in word art—a-rhythmic ‘prose’ and rhythmically organized ‘poetry’; but the difference seems not as basic and constitutive as in gesture art. 5. These basic arts themselves are further developed from the two human basic languages word language and gesture language. There are no other. (Touch language and similar are special cases.) Like thinking, language has precursors in the animal kingdom in the form of means of communication and sign systems. Language is together with thinking and working, in the context of society, constitutive for being human. 6. The two languages (word and gesture ones) are still together in the original (ontogenetic as well as phylogenetic) ‘mimetic action’. The mimetic action is communication with all senses, observable for example in infants, but also in the proverbial “talking with hands and feet” of adults. Both languages belong to the anthropologically essential remote senses of hearing and seeing, especially for communication. In the overarching higher unit of mimetic action, both languages are together, but already—again thought from the body and its activity—potentially separable. They become independent and unfold in the course of development, precisely through learning to speak: word language becomes dominant, gesture language accompanying. Something similar applies also to the phylogenesis, such as in the evolution of mankind. Hands are used above all for the work, for the practical, material appropriation of nature. The phylogenetic evolution is reflected in the ontogenetic development. 7. Word language and gesture language are likewise together in the ‘mimetic ceremony’, the place of the origin of art in general. The mimetic ceremony is a manifestation of the assembly tending to all outside of everyday life and the

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framework for the emergence and development of art. According to its structural core, however, it is at the same time the total work of art as a process. All of the group and all of the senses tend to be involved, intensified and expanded in comparison to the ‘mimetic action’ which is concentrated on the optical and acoustic: a kind of theater (with music, dance, etc.), originally still without separation of producers and recipients. Here too, as in the mimetic action and mimetic ceremony, the unity is potentially separable. And it is separated: The process of differentiation into individual arts begins immediately already in the origin—we can think of parallels to the “Big Bang”—and continues throughout the history. (Film art, for example, has only existed since the 1880s, it was not there before). 8. To this differentiation belongs also the—original—differentiation into vocal and instrumental music. They are, so to speak, only subsequently combined into a new unit. This can be expressed in three formulas: 8.1 Instrumental music = acoustic art of gestures 8.2 Vocal music = sung word art + instrumental music 8.3 Dance art/pantomime (gesture art) + word art = musical art. The authors were not obliged to consider all this as being right. They go their own, different ways—but in the same or similar direction. The contributions in this book strive towards the common goal of reconsidering the relationship between the vocal and the instrumental, specifically in the context of the expressions of human languages, and to clarify and explain it in different areas of society, in its sphere of communication and in its natural as well as artistic languages. Rosengarten, Germany Hamburg, Germany Hamburg, Germany

Hanns-Werner Heister Hanjo Polk Bernhard Rusam

Acknowledgements

First of all, we would like to thank to Leontina Di Cecco, Senior Editor, who offered the possibility to publish this book with Springer Nature and helped generously, patiently and kindly to resolve all problems from the corrections of the translations of non-English speakers till editing and production. Second we have to thank to all authors who—despite their little spare time—have contributed to this project. Third we have to thank Divya Meiyazhagan, Viju Falgon, Saranya Kalidoss and Sylvia Schneider from the Production Team and Sabine Schmitt from the Book Editorial Service Team. Fourth we thank to our partners, who supported our work, and to the children and grandchildren who accepted some absences. Rosengarten, Germany Hamburg, Germany Hamburg, Germany June 2022

Hanns-Werner Heister Hanjo Polk Bernhard Rusam

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Introduction. Music, Gesture, Word: Singing and Sounding, Cantando and Sonando, Troping and Figuration

Abstract Based on categories of Harry Goldschmidt, I develop here a complex system of relations that shape the relationships between vocal and instrumental music. Essential here is the implementation of the complementary dual categories Cantando and Sonando. They denote, below the surface of what is sung or played, the deep structure of the genuinely vocal or instrumental. These in turn are determined by the duality of voice and hands in their production, and in terms of product as the vocal, ‘tone’ on the one hand, and the percussive, noise and rhythm on the other. With the tone and pitch movements (diastematics), an aperiodic rhythm is accidental, similar to that in verbal language and word art. With the percussive, a periodic rhythm is implied and essential, as in dance art. The duality of voice and hands is first expressed in the duality of the two communicative languages word language and gesture language. They are united in the Mimetic Action. In the Mimetic Ceremony the Normal state, the ‘prose’ of the everyday, is transformed into the Other state, the ‘poetry’ of the unordinary, of pleasure, of beauty. In Mimetic Ceremony, the two languages are transformed into the duality of the two fundamental arts of Word Art and Gesture Art. Here again the polarity of ‘poetry’ versus ‘prose’ comes into play: The art of gesture is differentiated into the prosaic art of acting (pantomime) and the poetic art of dancing. In the tone art, with the prose-like Recitando (the recitative and the like) is formed a third category of the deep structure. It falls out of the duality of voice and hands and refers only to the word language and art. Another duality is formed with the poles setting to music (Vertonung) and troping (Vertextung): 1 text/n melodies versus 1 melody/- n texts. Finally, a last duality relevant here arises with the opposition to these two forms of combining word and music, namely Troping versus Figuration. Keywords Art · Beatboxing · Beatrhyming · Body percussion · Cantando’ · Evolution · Gesture · Hands · Instrumental · Mime · Mimetic action (Mimetische Handlung) versus mimetic ceremony (Mimetische Zeremonie) · Mimics · Mouth drumming · Multiphonic · Normal state (Normalzustand) versus Other state (‘Anderer Zustand’) · Overtone singing · Pantomime · Paralanguage · The percussive · ‘Poetry’ versus ‘prose’ · Prosody’ ‘Recitando’ · Rhetorics · Semantics · Sigmatics · Sign xi

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language (‘Gebärden’) · Societal · ‘Sonando’ · Speech · Suprasegmentals · Troping versus figuration · Vocal · Vocalise · ‘Vocaleese’ · Voice · Word languag e · Work.

Duality. Music as Instrumental and Vocal Music Instrumental music and vocal music1 are “universal classes” (Harry Goldschmidt) of all music.2 In German, they are described by the end-rhyming pair “Singen und Klingen” (“singing and sounding”).3 The same end rhyme returns—rather coincidentally—in the juxtaposition of “Singen und Springen” (“singing and jumping”), turning singing into a pars pro toto for music-making and dance: phonetically similar, they express objectively different or even opposite notions—it is primarily instrumental music that conveys an affinity for dancing. Slavic languages even prioritise the differences between (vocal) “singing” and (instrumental) “playing”. While primarily historically related to the Enlightenment period and the beginnings of a growing national consciousness within the scope of the Habsburg multinational state, J. Fukaˇc explains that the Czech use of the musical term hudba (usually ‘fiddling’) instead of the old Czech expression ‘muzika’ has been used both colloquially and terminologically since 1800 as a fully equivalent term in the description of foreign language denotations of “music”, and yet it still—at least connotatively and in accordance with its etymology—connotes the idea of a sound-producing activity ([...] of [...] fiddling).4

Harry Goldschmidt has developed the relationship between the vocal and the instrumental in a large system design in several attempts since the 1960s, approaching the subject in a new, more comprehensive and progressive way.5 As he counterintuitively worked out, this duality is an appearance of the sonically manifest surface. A latent, determinant structure is another, complementary and dialectical duality. 1

The following will elaborate on some of the assertions presented in the preface. See also previous publications by the author on this subject, to which is being referred (most notably, Heister 2002). It is now treated in a similar approach but different viewpoints, aspects and emphases, and more matter. 3 E.g. “stund fürn altar, fieng an zu singen/und seine schellen auch zu klingen.” (“he stood at the altar, started singing/and sounding his bells”) Fischart, Eulenspiegel 90b; Grimmsches Wörterbuch. lemma Klingen. 4 Fukaˇ c 1993, p. 73. About some here pertinent terminological questions in the Croatia of the 17th and 18th century see V. Katalini´c and S. Tuksar. About relations between vocal and instrumental music in southeast asion music, especially in Balinese Gamelan, see D. Mack, about differences and similarities differences in children’s singing and playing of instruments see B. Stiller, about the intertwining of singing and playing particularly in the context of performing and popular music see A. Barber-Kersovan, about the relations in the cultural contexts of pop music as star-fan relationship see A. Gries, of serious high culture concert concepts of the 19th century see M. Thrun, in musical aesthetic and historic concepts see S. Reilly in the present volume. 5 In more detail on this issue, in reference to the respective writings of Harry Goldschmidt Mayer 2002, as well as Heister 2002. 2

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Sonando and Cantando as Deep Structure Following Chomsky’s “Generative Grammar”—and the state at the times—Goldschmidt has been distinguishing the surface structure and the deep structure since the beginning of the 1960s. This in turn corresponds to the distinction between “manifest” and “latent”, which happens to be of particular importance in psychoanalysis, even if this was not explicitly intended by Goldschmidt. That which is actually sung, the vocal, does not have to be “genuine” (Goldschmidt’s term) vocal in its origin and essence. The same is true for what is actually played instrumentally.6 Goldschmidt’s correlative-complementary terms for this structure of depth, which may also be called “generative”, are Cantando and Sonando—the traditional “Singen und Klingen” but framed differently. For my part, I reformulate the system of Cantando and Sonando anthropologically, genetically and into the direction of phylogenetic-evolutionary backgrounds and further develop it.7

Voice and Hands as Anthropological Universals In order to shed some light onto what may be meant by this “genuine”, we have to start out with the production of the music: It is produced with voice and hands. The system of Cantando and Sonando can be grasped in genetic-historical terms, thus also acquiring an evolutionary dimension.8 This dimensionization additionally explains certain relationships and interactions between the “universal classes”. As briefly outlined in the preface, the composition of ‘music’ as vocal music and instrumental music is based on a musical art of the voice, and in a broad sense, an art of the hands, also including the body as a basic instrument. Needless to say, anatomically and physiologically the vocal organs are also parts of the body as a whole. Feet as the other limbs (for organ, bass drum, pedals etc.) can be understood as supplementary or spare hands. But for wind instruments the mouth/breath apparatus is crucial: Natural horns, melody whistles, mouth organ in holders etc. The relationship is almost reversed: Here the hands are supplementary. Music produced primarily by mouth/breathing apparatus could possibly be almost

6

A structural Sonando can be executed by the voice, and a Cantando by instruments. A “singing playing“, an instrumental cantabile, was often an ideal of instrumental execution, particularily in the Vienna Classics, but also later. See e.g. J.-J. Dünki and L. Fankhänel in the present volume. In Artur Schnabel’s Piano Sonata, 1923 characteristical words for the execution are e.g.: singing, tenderly (singend, zärtlich) II. movement, 3rd brace; or singing, soulfully (singend, beseelt), 4th brace. 7 Cf. below; Heister 2002 and Mayer 2002. 8 On the ‘system’ and system character cf. Heister, Postface in the present volume. For the evolutionary background and basis see M. Donald in the present volume.

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understood as ‘singing with other means’9 , waiving the use of the vocal cords and the immediate possibilities of vocal expression and its immeasurable possibilities, but with gains in expressive possibilities (other sound colors, possibly amplification of ambitus etc.). In wind instruments, therefore, possibilities of the vocal apparatus are exteriorized, just as in musical instruments in general with the unfolding of productive forces those of the body and many of its subsystems. In the sense of body and soul, of course, the mind and brain are also involved as a rule. The two universal classes of musical art have, as far as the derivation from the interaction of voice and hands is concerned, a somewhat diagonal, non-symmetrical correspondence in the two universal classes of the arts: the primarily acoustic and the primarily visual. (Two other universal classes also structure the system of the arts, along the axis between ‘processual’ and ‘thingly’ arts). Acoustically versus visually focused arts in turn reflect the duality of voice and hands. And after all, this duality of the visual and the acoustical in the arts is itself based on a duality in quotidian communicative language, the language of the voice and the language of the hands, or word language and gesture language.10 This should sketch out the encaptic, multiply staggered system within the framework of which the relationships between vocal and instrumental music move.11 To denote the difference between the sphere of everyday, ordinary life and the sphere of art, marked, among other things, by aesthetic distance, I make use of two pairs of terms: one of them unusual and difficult to translate, namely the ‘Anderer Zustand’ or the ‘different’ or Other State12 versus ‘Normalzustand’ or Normal State, and one conventional, though defined somewhat differently, namely ‘poetry’ versus ‘prose’. I use this duality in a double sense. Firstly, following the terminology of Hegel in particular, it designates the oppositional and complementary relationship between banal, quotidian reality along with the ‘prose’ of everyday communication on the one hand and the sphere of art on the other, which as ‘poetry’ imaginarily-real compensates for the “deficiencies of immediate reality” (Hegel). Secondly, within the sphere of art, duality denotes the duality of artistically formed, and particularly periodized-rhythmic word art, such as, above all, metrified and versified poetry, as well as gesture art in contrast to the more quotidian, rhythmically unregulated ‘prose’. The rhythm, the mimesis of the stylized and regulated body movement and at the same time its incorporation into the work of art as an essential component, transform 9

Bernhard Rusam, emphasizing the role of the vocal apparatus in playing wind instruments; commentary on June 21, 2022. 10 The relationship between voice and hands gives rise to many farther-reaching questions beyond the relationship between the vocal and the instrumental. These surround primarily the question of the origin of human language in general and, from this view, subsequently, the related question of the origin of art and the arts. The author will be addressing them in a separate study: The Project Heister 2024 Voice and Hands. Origins of Language and the Arts (working title). See in the present volume H. S. Heister, M. Klett, S. Lehmann, K. Störl. 11 For the embedding of this system see Mário Vieira de Carvalho in the present volume. 12 Characterized in the early 1980s by the philosopher Jens Brockmeier with a somewhat narrower meaning.

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dance art for its part into the ‘poetry’ of gesture language. The acoustic counterpart to this visual aspect is word art as the poetry of word language. At least two theoretical difficulties arise here, the solution to which can only roughly be indicated here. Firstly, gesture art is differentiated from the beginning into the ‘prose’ of gesture art, pantomime, and the ‘poetry’ of dance art. The question is whether or not an analogous duality should also be assumed symmetrically for word art. As an argument against it stands that the rhythm of word art as ‘poetry’ is found in all three base genres of poetry, drama and prose.13 It therefore does not form two independent categories as gesture art in its ‘prosaic’ and ‘poetic’ version. This issue requires further reflection elsewhere. Secondly, ‘dance’ as stylized gesture language is always art. For the sake of terminological differentiation, we could however call it amateur art, practised first and foremost as ‘folk’ and ‘social’ dance, while dance art in the narrower sense as performance art, such as ‘ballet’ is professional art.14 Like ‘theatre’ in contrast to the initial Gesamtkunstwerk (total work of art) of the mimetic ceremony with everyone’s participation through performing and percepting art, it implies a separation of producing and receiving roles is implied.15

Mimetic Action. Genuine Unity of the Duality of the Two Quotidian Languages in the Normal State The old dispute as to which has the historic-evolutionary precedence, word language or gesture language, can be settled: from a semiotic and linguistic standpoint or in the light of phylogenetic and ontogenetic considerations and findings—neither. For both are equally original and in principle components of human communication that includes all sensory channels. The term for this “holistic”16 unit is ‘Mimetic Action’.17 It includes both languages (and tends to encompass all sensory areas), ontogenetically and phylogenetically, the latter of which can also be demonstrated in more recent cases, such as infants “talking with hands and feet”. However, the remote senses of sight and hearing take precedence. Mimetic action thus includes gestures, facial expressions, conscious and—even more importantly—largely unconscious “body language”,18 along with other, lower senses such as smell (“cold sweat” signalling fear), blushing (often signalling shame) etc. At the same time, “body language” can be controlled, not least for rituals and demonstrations of power, and thus stylized in the arts of acting and dancing. In evolution, acoustic-vocal 13

As in Rilke’s “Lay” of the Cornet. See Heister/Tempian in the present volume. Professionalized ritual dance is an in-between and transitional form. 15 On this subject generally, see Southern 1966 und Rapp 1973. 16 Mithen 2006. 17 In more detail see Heister 2013; a comparable concept: Mithen 2006. 18 See M. Klett and K. Störl in the present volume. 14

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word language becomes dominant for everyday communication, since the hands are primarily required for producing,19 although they are also used in a variety of ways for communication—including the special role of sign language for the deaf.20 Therefore, not least in connection with the specifically human system of the senses, only gesture language and word language are effectively/inherently human, developed languages.

Art-Languages. Transformations of Everyday Languages in the Duality of the Two Fundamental Arts of Dance Art and Word Art in the Other State of Mimetic Ceremony Word language and gesture language evolve into word art and dance art through and in the Mimetic Ceremony,21 which is the point of departure for art in general. It unites all the senses as a Gesamtkunstwerk even before the term existed. And it unites all participants of the respective group. It is functionally and structurally (temporally like spatially) separated from everyday life. The social-psychosocial mode can be characterized as the Other State—of ecstasy, intoxication, euphoria etc. in distinction from the Normal State. Word art and dance art as a further development of the two base languages an extended and varied reproduction of the duality of voice and hands, are the two primary/ fundamental arts. Music thus proves to be a derived and composite art form, which certainly does not speak against it. The two fundamental arts differentiate themselves from the historical system of the arts, and they continuously differentiate themselves further. Integration and recombination processes stand in a compensatory complementary position to this differentiation. Theatre art is of a mosaic, composite nature: pantomime as the prose from of gesture art + visual or fine art (architecture; set design) + dance art + tone art, all present in most forms of theatre in the world.22 And even in naturalistic theatre, singing or playing occurs 19

Naturally, language is part of work. Developed production is hardly possible without verbal communication. Besides talking, gestures are also involved, not least in acts of demonstration and ‘implicit learning’. On the other hand, parts of the vocal apparatus are necessary for eating and drinking. The rule of etiquette that one should not talk with the mouth full is usually observed, even by those not explicitly aware of the rule. Thus, there is the alternative: speaking/singing or eating and, sometimes mitigated by the nature of the work, working or gesticulating. 20 To the mentally and politically “deaf” the late Hölderlin spoke in a special combination of a condensed verbal language and gestural non-verbal language. See J. Paul in the present volume. 21 The term is taken from a train of thought by Georg Knepler in 1977 and developed it into a concept. This will not again be elaborated on here. See Heister 2002, 2007a and 2007b, 2013 and Heister/Singer 2013. 22 The omission of music and dance is rather the exception. It can be found, for example, in a classicist strand by Pierre Corneille and a naturalistic strand by Gerhart Hauptmann.

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occasionally, dramaturgically motivated, as it were as music in the “on”23 —as film aesthetics term the music “really” played or sung in the picture. From the perspective of mimetic ceremony, opera or musical theatre is not music plus theatre, but spoken theatre is theatre minus music. From the perspective of mimetic ceremony, opera or musical theatre are not music plus theatre, but spoken theatre is theatre minus music. Regarding the duality of hands/body and voice, the development bifurcates. In the visual dimension, it continues from the prose of pantomime and the poetry of dance art into an exteriorisation, a removal of the bodily artistic activity as an independent material reification, namely as fine art. In the acoustic dimension, word art is, so to speak, “already there”. With regard to music, the exteriorisation corresponds to the emergence of specialized musical instruments within the frameworks of the Sonando: the percussive and the tonal are independently materialized. Yet in contrast to fine art, the detachment of the product from production and thus from the human body is not quite complete. They still have to be operated and played as working instruments. Even electroacoustic music and later computerized music require input, ultimately even a kind of manual production. Also this barrier can be overcome by automating the entire production process through computerisation, including digitalization.24 However, even there, as with all automation, there remains “ein Erdenrest, zu tragen peinlich” (“a remnant of earth, embarrassing to bear”), as it says in the final apotheosis of Goethe’s Faust II: some human subject must set the process in motion—even “self-driving self-moving things” such as autonomous cars do not simply drive off without being started—at least as a rule. The exception with objects, machines and robots taking on a life of their own results either in science fiction or a catastrophe. In any other case, it is only after the interaction of human activity and instrument or apparatus that the result or product exists in an independently material form, different to the score as the written form of music, which also requires tonal realization. In the case of very high musical literacy, reading may be enough—at least almost. The extent to which it suffices depends on the complexity of the score, the degree of competence in reading music, music reading competence and the thoroughness of studying of it. If one succeeds to understand all that has been noted horizontally and vertically by listening inwardly, this would be directly comparable to reading a verbal text. But even then, the tonal “external” reaization is still necessary for the real listening pleasure and for the perception of the differences in details that result from the scope for interpretation.

Cantando as the Cocal (Tone) Cantando is the tone, the vocal. The term ‘vocalise’ would work as a word, but it is a little too specific as an already historically established term. In terms of production, it 23

Cf. the contributions on film and music by R. Calabretto and D. Stern. This appears to lead to a certain prevalence of the instrumental, although the voice can be simulated by apparatus. Such changes in the system of the Cantando and the Sonando would require separate investigations.

24

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is the aforementioned use of a vocal apparatus for singing. Regarding the product or result, it is the ‘tonal’, the distinct pitch held for a short time. This implies an aperiodic, a-rhythmic motion in the imaginarily real tonal space as pitch progressions It is a ‘poetic’ stylization of the intonations, the “speech melody” of word language. In the vocalic, the existing differences in register and pitch of the communicative word language are systematized. These fixed tones or pitches are sung in asemantic vowels or syllables that do not perform a phonemic function or, as a borderline case, even hummed only with the labial “m” (other voiced consonants are also possible).25 This occurs as pure diastematics without explicit rhythms. “Melody”, which is already the unity of pitch and duration, would be an inaccurate description of this event. As in percussion where also differences in pitch enter necessarily, also here, a kind of temporal-rhythmic structuring and tone durations due to the sheer course of time, stray in complementary to this. If the so to say “default” or minimal form in the Sonando as noise plus rhythm, is a kind of pulse, a sequence of equal durations, in regard to the percussive, then it is here a sequence of uneven, irregular durations, possibly with spontaneous, a-systematic differentiation—ultimately corresponding to the prose rhythm of word language. This arhythmic proto-rhythm, however, is accidental, and not essential like the tonal/vocal. The key point here is: The vocal in music is not inherently inseparable from the word. Rather, it exists relatively independently as non-verbal singing—the aforementioned ‘vocalise’ preserves parts of this origin. This is a fact that is often overlooked, since “vocal music” in the present day and in history is—at least primarily—the singing of and with words. Cantando and Sonando are historically-logically real existing possibilities. They are initially proto-music, historically phylogenetical as well as ontogenetical. Within the framework and from the viewpoint of already developed music, however, they can grow into independent musical possibilities and genres.26 There are pure percussion ensembles—prototypically with soprano as a complement like Alberto Ginastera’s Cantata para América mágica and corresponding music,27 as well as on the opposite side, unaccompanied vocalises such as in Nono’s Djamilah Boupacha. The scat singing of jazz, the “trallala”, “fallera”, “lalala” and the like also belong here. As an independent quasi-genre, Rachmaninov’s Vocalise op. 34, 14 combines modern vocalise, which already reveals a rhythmic differentiation, with instrumental accompaniment. 25

Procedures such as the bocca chiusa belong to this. Preverbal and pre-musical expression and communication procedures are perhaps an evolutionarily very early, possibly even preverbal form before the emergence of a developed one, functioning as social “attunement” according to Jordania 2010. 26 This preservation of what is older—not an actual abolition—resembles the stance of the merchandise from simple merchandise production in the more developed capitalist merchandise production. See, among others, Stein 2017. 27 See L. Colombo in the present volume.

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Sonando as the Percussive. Noise and Rhythm What can be described as ‘sounding’ in terms of the result, may here be called ‘playing’ in terms of production—both are conceived as the opposite of singing.28 The percussive is genuinely instrumental. It is first realized as body percussion, in the interaction of the hands as generators, or with the rest of the body as a resonator— chest above all, but also buttocks and legs. Exteriorized instruments, on the other hand, are already derived phenomena in terms of phylogenetic origin. The “first musical instrument” is therefore neither flutes nor drums, nor stones or sticks, but the human body. The percussive is thus a unity of a duality, of the two different components noise or noisiness + rhythm. Noise is rhythmic from the outset. The unique, somewhat timeless, and therefore also non-rhythmic beat is a rare exception in music—like the two hammer-blows as signs of death in Mahler’s 6th Symphony.29 (The sudden, “abrupt” thunder would be a real model here. As a rule, however, it does not stop at a single blow). It is necessary to conceptually distinguish between the two components, as the rhythmic encompasses a broad spectrum of diverse issues, reaching beyond the acoustic sensually aesthetical, as far as seasonal or biological rhythms. This adds another dimension to the acoustics of sound. In terms of production, a variation of the percussive forms a bridge specifically to the rhythmic: clapping with the hands—against each other, on the torso or the buttocks—is not only complemented and extended by clapping on the upper and lower legs, as in the Alpine “Schuhplattler”; but in addition, feet and legs can also serve as generators instead of hands, with the floor as a resonator. This brings those extremities with entirely different functions than hands into play. In Swahili, ‘ngoma’ means drumming and dancing and confirms something of the connection between the art of tone and the art of dance envisaged here. Ngoma, “beating,” thirdly, like the Italian battere, also has an unmusical, palpable-violent sense (Fig. 1).

28

The interaction of instruments and voice—as opposed to the historical primacy of singing—as emphasized by De Souza 2014. The hypothesis of the double origin of music and the convergence of the two lineages could also be supported neurophysiologically. A quick remark: rhythms are mainly processed in the left hemisphere, timbres and pitches in the right. There is no single music centre in the brain, “but many different regions that respond to different aspects of music.” (Sacks 2008, p. 146ff.) What these “aspects of music” are in detail would of course have to be defined much more precisely. On the question of areas and networks in the brain, see for instance Damasio and Kandel. On rhythm in particular, cf. Fitch 2010, Patel 2014. 29 Originally, they were five, see Duggan, Tony: The Mahler Symphonies. A synoptic survey by MAHLER Symphony No. 6, 1998, revision May 2007, http://www.musicweb-international.com/ mahler/Mahler6.htm, Accessed 2 April 2019.

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Fig. 1 Mural in a kindergarten in Mwanza, Tanzania, January 2019

One genetic level deeper still—a systematically structural, not necessarily historically genetic one—the relationship reaches from tone art to dance art.

Dance. Rhythm in the Sonando and Cantando Rhythm is a universal phenomenon in nature like in society. It is found at all levels of reality, from the macrocosmic to the microcosmic. In our context, a working definition may suffice: it is regulated, periodic movement in time. The term ‘regulated’ includes repetition, recapitulation, contrast and variation. In our case, the rhythmic can also exist without the percussive, without sound. It can express itself multifariously, especially in the arts in the acoustic as well as the visual. As far as the arts are concerned, the rhythmic element is concentrated relatively independently in dance, and, continuing from this, simultaneously in the Sonando and further in the Cantando. The basis and starting point is therefore again, just by other means, the body with hands (in dance also including feet and legs, head, facial expressions etc.).30 In this respect, the Sonando sonifies a rhythm that exists visually discernible also independently and outside of it. Instrumental music is thus the sonification of gesture art.

30

The baroque poet Simon Dach found the beautiful phrase: “tantz, der du gesetze/unsern füszen giebst.” (“dance, you who gives laws/to our feet.”; Tanz, in: Deutsches Wörterbuch 1971, accessed 19 December 2018).

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The body beat, the percussive with its rhythmic component, is principally the same in both dance art and sound art.31 It is however not identical, since its significance is complementary: in “mute” dance without words and sound, which is of course possible as such, it complements, is rather accidental, yet in music it is essential. The body beat can accompany the dance—not as a requirement, but often also as an acoustic expression and reinforcement of the rhythm. This happens automatically through instruments such as rattles tied directly to legs or arms, and also further through percussive musical instruments like castanets that can be handled in the dance. Once again, the hands come into play, in addition to legs and feet, and in addition to the visual. The further the acoustic comes to the fore here, the more the mimetic movement tends to recede. The mimesis, however, remains through its fundamental connection intact. But rhythm is not only constitutive in dance. The same applies to word art as poetry, as rhythmo-metrically formed language. This reveals once again an important interweaving that is characteristic of music—and indeed of art in general. Here, ‘poetry’ refers to the artistically formed word language or language generally— including gesture language—as opposed to the ‘prose’ of everyday communication. Rhythm in word art includes first of all the relatively abstract poetic periodic models of time arrangement, such as the abovementioned stanzaic forms or the metrical foot of verse. As in music, such models are fundamental in poetic word language, even without words. Yet, in both cases, the rhythm is already tonal, as in the Sonando. For its part, the rhythmic component in word art roots in dance art. The model for the rhythmization from word language to poetry is the actuation of the hands/body system correlative to the voice system.32 Two sources and components align in dance. The extra-artistic, practical activity of hands, body and here decidedly also legs in the spheres of material production and reproduction of life—the ‘upright posture’ based on biperalism, constitutive of becoming human, is the prerequisite—, and the communicative affirmation in gesture language receive a new configuration in dance. It is real movement in space, not merely an imaginarily real one in tonal space. Rhythm is mimesis of inner and external nature. Models of human rhythm are firstly, without an explicit acoustic dimension, walking, running, jumping and, rather ceremonially, striding. Also soundless there are, secondly, biological rhythms that are temporally more protracted that can only be perceived indirectly, such as circadian rhythms of waking-sleeping, also followed by cyclical, periodic rhythms in external nature like the seasons.

31

Dance sometimes serves as a metaphor for instrumental playing: “um dein ohr (wird) der tanz der geigen schwirren.” (“around your ear will buzz the dance of the violins”; as captured by the writer Leopold Friedrich Günther von Goeckingk, 1748-1828, in the 1770s, Tanz, in: Deutsches Wörterbuch 1971, accessed 19 December 2018). 32 Instructive, however, in the wrong order—art language before quotidian language—Steinig 2008.

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Acoustically relevant models, on the other hand, ‘percussive’, are thirdly processes in external nature such as ocean surf, wind and waves in general and others. Fourthly, processes of the ‘inner’ human nature of the body, such as heartbeat and breath, are also acoustic models. They are physiological processes in the body itself that are acoustically full of noise and periodically rhythmic in their temporal arrangement. This results in an already prenatal imprinting. Like in the first months after birth, hearing has decided priority over sight33 —there is not much to see in utero, but a whole lot to hear34 ; other senses, especially the sense of taste or, more relevant for music, the sense of balance, are also already rudimentarily involved. Fifthly, extrauterine and an acceleration of the physiological normal state, the coitus presents another rhythmic model, noise-percussive through body movements; the pre- or proto-musically vocal merely acts as accompaniment, mainly in the form of interjections, but occasionally also with words. Sixthly, models of rhythm delivered by the sphere of work with its numerous percussive processes already mentioned. Productive efficiency is increased by aesthetically relevant elegance, for which regularity and rhythm are the standards and means. As F. M. Böhme complexly sums up the mimetic potential of dance: “Dance is the imitation of an action performed with the body, in measured movement or in movement to the beat of music”.35 And finally, and rather sensationally from the perspective of our theoretical approach, he calls dance “mimicry of music”.36 From this point of view, as mentioned above, the Sonando is sonified dance art.

Adoption I. Tone Into Sonando The percussive needs in principle no sound color resp. timbre differentiation. However, the differentiation of timbre can become considerably greater in musical reality than in the elementary hand clapping and other forms of body slapping. Pitch differentiation, too. is not genuinely and essentially necessary, but existing. It appears mainly as a differentiation of varied registers, not as a systematic division of pitch space. As such, the Sonando neither has nor needs explicit fixed tones or pitches and melodies. However, as noted above, these are contained in the noise in a germinal way, for example as differences in the pitch registers. And they can be untangled from this noise and become independent—three main sources as a complementary component of the Sonando and indispensable for the development towards the unfurled music. 33

More recently, Böhme-Bloem 2019. In this context, “vestibular hearing” is characterised as ‘displacement’: “A sound is heard, and the sense of position responds.” 34 An even pronounced polyphony: the vocal in the form of the voices of mother, father, possibly siblings and other caregivers or strangers; the percussive in the form of body sounds, on the one hand, environmental sounds on the other, arhythmic or rhythmic. The child’s own heartbeat and the mother’s heartbeat build a bicinium with two different metres. 35 Franz Magnus Böhme: Geschichte des Tanzes in Deutschland (Leipzig 1886), vol. 1, p. 25, qtd. in Tanz, in: Deutsches Wörterbuch 1971, accessed 18 December 2018. Emphasis H.-W.H. 36 Ibidem. Emphasis H.-W.H.

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Firstly, the tone comes from the voice, specifically from the vocal, that is, the Cantando—thus we already have a mixture of Cantando and Sonando. Secondly, it comes from the realm of the Sonando itself, namely from musical instruments. In contrast to the working instruments that can also be used percussively and musically in “dual-use” (beating, hammering, knocking, stamping etc.), the instruments that are only specialized in music production offer the possibility, as with the voice, to produce distinct pitches. The earliest of these most likely being flutes.37 With these, different pitches are possible. And the tonal intervals are at the same time defined as spatial distances by the finger holes, thus resulting in a further, visual component of the Sonando. Models of mimetic poiesis for tones appear to be somewhat rarer in (external) nature than those for noises. The howling and whistling tempest, the buzzing of certain insect species, the melodious croaking fire-bellied toad, howling wolves, trumpeting elephants, whistling marmots, mooing cows, bleating sheep, and above all, of course, the “song” of songbirds with from thr minimalist cuckoo with only two tones to blackbird and nightingale with complex melodies, add up to quite a plethora of sources.38 The instrumentally realized Sonando with pitches then completes instrumental music with everything that belongs to it, namely noise, rhythm and tone.

Adoption II. ‘Melody’—Rhythm Into the Vocal The relationship between instrumental music and vocal music is, as noted, asymmetrical. This applies also to the level of genuineness. In the Sonando, in the percussive, the rhythmic is included. In the Cantando, in the vocal, on the other hand, it is a complementary component—structurally essential but not genetically genuine. In order for proto-music to evolve into music, rhythmic order joins the Cantando. This is, as previously deduced, the one essential and genuine component of the Sonando. Rhythm, as noted, refers to dance. There it is constitutive. The same applies to word art as poetry, as rhythmo-metrically formed language. Here we see once again an important interweaving of different sources and components that is characteristic of music—and supposedly of art in general.

37

Even with the historically somewhat earlier whistles—about 70,000 BCE—made from materials such as reindeer phalanges, it is possible to produce more than a single note by dacking, overblowing, etc. The whistles are also used to blow a single tone. 38 On the opposite, the common quail, not a singing bird but in the pheasant family, sounds the characteristic call of three repeated chirps with a sharply marked rhythm as a one-tone tune—a sonando, produced with the vocal apparatus, in this case using the syrinx instead of the larynx. Beethoven as Schubert e.g. composed this call as Der Wachtelschlag.

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Of course, it stands to reason to include rhythm in singing because, as mentioned, some kind of temporal structure is already involuntarily present in the musical process, even if it is initially not the priority. For time plays an important role in all the arts, not only in the “time arts”. Leaving aside the fact that production always takes time, the main difference is that in ‘processual’ arts such as pantomime, dance, music, theatre, film, even the sensuous realization as the completion of production is a temporal process. In ‘thingly’ arts such as fine arts, photography architecture, and to an extent also garden art, the product is already fully realized, and only the reception phase of the entire work process is a temporal process. The rhythmic in the Cantando has three main sources. Situated the closest to music is, firstly, the Sonando itself. The second lies in word art. The sources closest to the work distribution of voicehands are, on the one hand, the breath as a relatively regular, simple binary structure and, on the other hand, word language, which, like the vocal, is an activity of the voice. Even at the level of everyday communication, the ‘prose’ of life, word language already contains a rhythmic structure as a component of prosody, but an irregular, aperiodic one. Only in the artistic language of poetry does rhythm become a regular, periodic structure in the broad sense. The rhythmic in word art has for its part, various sources. It stylises, on the one hand, the aperiodic rhythm of communicative word language. On the other, it sonifies the temporal arrangement in dance art with words. The Greek concept of mousiké as a mediated unity of word art, dance art and tone art; word art is thereby bound to tone art, which in turn appears doubled, as vocal singing and the instrumental that accompanies dance and sound. Corresponding rhythms initially enter the Cantando as relatively abstract models. We may call them hollow moulds after the printing or casting moulds—which are not empty but indeed quite significant—a mould, like forms for biscuits or cavities in the production of printed letters, and so on. As models, they can easily be transferred to the Sonando. A concrete example are strophic forms. They are formative models, overlapping and permitting various verbal forms, especially in the poetry of words, Rhythm from word art, such as the relatively abstract, poetically periodic timearrangement models of verse measures or stanzaic forms, initially appear in music fundamentally without the words themselves. The adoption of rhythm into the vocal from the percussive is a process within the system of ‘music’. The transfer from word language and word art already reaches beyond this. This also applies to the third source of rhythm in music and other arts, especially in the Cantando: dance, as already discussed with regard to the Sonando. With the combination of vocal diastematics (pitch movement) and percussive (regulated) rhythm, and thus a further blending and interweaving of Cantando and Sonando, we get ‘melody’ as a new entity. While instrumental music is complete with the inclusion of pitches, this is not yet the case for vocal music with the inclusion of rhythm (see Section “Words into the Cantando” below).

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Crossover and Inversion. The Instrumental Use of the Vocal Apparatus—Whistling and Vocal Percussion The asymmetrical relationship between the Cantando and the Sonando is also evident in the use of the vocal apparatus to produce instrumental sounds. Whistling is a characteristic Sonando: instrumental, though produced with the lips as part of the vocal apparatus. Whistling with the fingers is, while also based on breath, on the other hand, indeed a matter of the hands as musical instruments, analogous to wind instruments, yet it produces far fewer fixed pitches than whistling with the mouth and it is used mainly for signals or in whistling languages due to its considerably farther-reaching volume.39 Even though there are always whistling artist time and again, is rather peripheral for music as a whole. This differs from the diverse methods of vocal percussion. It is spreading throughout the field of popular music. The terminology is not entirely stable—Mouth percussion or Mouth-Drumming are considered partly synonymous, partly subspecies. Vocal percussion is the art of creating sounds with one’s mouth that approximate, imitate, or otherwise serve the same purpose as a percussion instrument, whether in a group of singers, an instrumental ensemble, or solo.40

Vocal percussion is also found in traditional music in some cultures; in India as a relatively independent musical genre, and moreover, syllables are used to memorise percussion figures. Vocal percussion is also an integral part of many world music traditions, most notably in the traditions of North India (bols) and South India (solkattu). Syllables are used to learn percussion compositions, and each syllable signifies what stroke or combination of strokes the percussionist must use. The art of speaking these syllables is called konnakol in South India, and traditional dance ensembles sometimes have a dedicated konnakol singer, although this practice is now waning. In North India, the practice of reciting bols is usually limited to the percussionist reciting the composition about to be played, often in the context of a longer solo. These recitations are also sometimes spoken by a Kathak dancer.41

Vocal percussion has been widespread in post-serial avant-garde music since the late 1950s, resorting to methods of Dadaism and parallels in literature. A prototypical example is Maulwerke by Dieter Schnebel. Vocal percussion in pop music already presupposes its electrification. It only works with microphones and amplifiers. Beatboxing is a medial extension by machine, 39

See e.g. Warneken and Warneken/Pallowski Straebel. Conversely, woodwind instruments, in particular, realise ‘vocal’, since their pitches lay closer to each other already from early on, and use parts of the vocal apparatus, especially for articulation syllables—which can also be understood as a kind of presemantic troping. (See the contribution of Silke Lehmann in the present volume). Musical instruments like the Jew’s harp use the vocal apparatus in a different, specific way. 40 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vocal_percussion, 4 February 2022, accessed 30 May 2022. 41 Ibidem.

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a form of vocal percussion primarily involving the art of mimicking drum machines […], using one’s mouth, lips, tongue, and voice. [... ] It may also involve vocal imitation of turntablism, and other musical instruments. Beatboxing today is connected with hip-hop culture.42

A subspecies of this is Mouth Drumming, which only imitates the drum kit as a form of Beatboxing which involves vocally imitating the sound of a drum kit as precisely as possible in order to use the voice to serve the same function as a drummer in a musical setting. It is mostly used in a cappella music but has also been used in rock and jazz. Artists who specialize in this technique are simply referred to as vocal percussionists.43

As further development, like the turning of a screw, is since about 2000 beatrhyming, a new type of polyphony in which the singers accompany themselves with sounds produced by means of the vocally instrumental—an astonishing virtuosity, for that matter: The primary technique of beatrhyming is singing or speaking rhyming lyrics while concurrently imitating drum beats with the voice and lips. It can also involve techniques such as vocal scratching the spoken or sung lyrics, making vocal sound effects relevant to the lyrics, and instrument mimicry. It can be improvized, pre-written, or covering a popular song.44

Polyphony as Filtering and Stylization of Collective Speech and the Sonando Polyphony is a specific feature of music. It has several sources and countless forms. In our context, only one of these aspects will be briefly spotlighted from a specific perspective. It possibly evolved from the noise and sound dimension of the percussive—the genuinely instrumental.45 For harmony as the simultaneity of different tones or the chord can be understood as filtered noise.46

42

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beatboxing, 20 June 2022, accessed 22 June 2022. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vocal_percussion, ibidem. 44 See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beatrhyming, 8 May 2022, accessed 30 May 2022. 45 The assumption would fit to it that the East Asian, above all Chinese and Korean music express a timbre polyphony, as correlate of the European pitch polyphony and as compensation of the somewhat sparse equipment with the pentatonic pitch system. But this is a hypothesis and not yet a secured or even recognized knowledge. At least the potential plausibility of the hypothesis is supported by the fact that timbral polyphony occurs automatically when children’s, women’s, and men’s voices sing together and various musical instruments play together. The issue, however, is whether this type of polyphony has conceptual primacy in musical thought and practice instead of melodic or (as in many sub-Saharan musical cultures) metric-rhythmic polyphony. 46 See Heister 2021, chapter 5, passim, and pp. 200-208. The cluster, especially in 20th-century music, the dense packing of a chord into adjacent, juxtaposed notes, is then historically and aesthetically the conscious inversion of filtering and the regression of the chord to the latent polyphonic resp. multiphonic noise. 43

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This polyphony is not the business of the vocal, despite overtone singing (overtone chanting, harmonic singing, polyphonic overtone singing, and diphonic singing). Overtone singing is a singing technique that creates the auditory impression of polyphony by controlling the resonances in the vocal tract, thus filtering out individual overtones from the sound spectrum of the voice in a way that generates the perception of them being separate tones.47

There are instrumental parallels to this. Apart from expressions in the traditional music of some cultures, this kind of “multiphonic” playing was only realized on wind instruments after 1945, in jazz48 and avant-garde music.49 Usually, polyphony is reinforced not least by the collaboration and interplay of the vocal and the instrumental, the simultaneity of vocal singing melody and instrumental accompaniment, already since the beginnings of European art music in the organum of the 9th century. A second source of polyphony is to be found within the realms of word language: talking together and in confusion, as it always arises spontaneously in collective human communication, even in the orderly dialogue between two people, when one cuts the other short. In this case, it is already there from the beginning, but only rudimentarily and as a deviation from the norm of “rule-based” communication. As always, this becomes now filtered, stylized and constructively combined in a long historical cultural process from quotidian communication to artistic expression, from the prose of ordinary life to the poetry of art, and finally also composed and notated. In music, the highest level of polyphony as a Cantando-Sonando combination is probably the simultaneity of several melodies, each with different texts in the motet or quodlibet, even intensified by the synthesis of texts in different languages.

47

W. Saus, https://www.oberton.org/obertongesang/was-ist-obertongesang/, 3 August 2013, accessed 22 April 2022. Emphasis H.-W. H. See e.g. Saus 2011; cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Overtone_singing, 8 May 2022, accessed 9 May 2022. 48 Three types: with more than one instrument Roland Kirk or Dick Heckstall-Smith etc.; with a single wind instrument into which a second voice is simultaneously hummed or sung, as e.g. the trombonist Albert Mangelsdorf or the tubist michel godard; with multiphonics in one instrument as Heinz Holliger and others. For hinting at these differentiations, I thank Bernhard Rusam, mail of June 21, 2022. 49 E.g. Vinko Globokar. Otherwise, individual polyphonic playing is usually only possible on musical instruments with more than one string, or idiophones as the struck idiophones (e.g. xylophon or plucked idiophones (zanza/mbira).

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A special case is a semantic counterpoint between the vocal and the instrumental subsystem in that the instrumental contradicts the verbal.50 The aria of Orest in I/2 of Gluck’s Iphigénie en Tauride (1779) “La calme rentre dans mon coeur” is exemplary: in pitiable self-delusion he tries to encourage the feeling of peace that descends on him momentarily […] But the accompaniment, with a subdued, agitated, sixteenth-note reiteration of one tone, and with a sforzando accent at the first beat of every measure, betrays the troubled state of his mind, from which he cannot banish the pangs of remorse for his past crime.51

There is another, synaesthetic or polyaesthetic polyphony of spoken sentences, accompanying gestures and unconscious body language signals. It is partly led parallel, partly contrapuntal to contradictory. But it already goes beyond the merely acoustic and verbal. 52 The limit that different people, as voices, say different things at the same time, only surpasses word language at the price of intelligibility. “Rhubarb” is a wordless din and utterance of the “crowd murmur” in theatre on stage. In futuristic and above all Dadaist poetry with a Gesamtkunstwerk tendency, this element becomes independent as a work of art in its own right.53 The interplay between the vocal and the instrumental opens up new dimensions here. Music is designed for this from the very outset. Polyphony as the simultaneous sounding of singing and body beats is not a problem in music, but rather natural—just as elements of gesture language accompany word language in everyday communication. Dance art also offers approaches to the simultaneity of different things, especially when accompanied by music. On a new level and also in the visual realm, this is found in the visual arts, excessively for instance in Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s painting The Procession to Calvary (1564): laid out as a kind of “world landscape”, it has several focal points and shows various chronologically successive scenes, as in a Stations of the Cross (“Via crucis”)—usually there are 2x7—simultaneously on the same painting. Here, an overview in form of a table at a hinge point of the contribution may facilitate the overview of what has already been said and what is yet to be said (Fig. 2).

50

Standard cases of the function of the instrumental subsystem in vocal music are an intensification of expression, for instance by increasing the emotional content, interpretation of what is sung, commentary—as in the case of Gluck, often with pictorial or rhetorical means. See in the present volume S. De Filippi and M. Kerstan for the opera, H. Krauss for the “Lied“. 51 Grout, Donald, A Short History of Opera (Columbia University Press, New York. 2003 edition), p. 268, quoted after https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iphig%C3%A9nie_en_Tauride, 28 September 2021, accessed 22 April 2022. “When a critic complained about the contradiction between Orestes’ words and the musical accompaniment, Gluck replied: ’He’s lying: he killed his mother.’ Holden, Amanda (Ed.): The New Penguin Opera Guide. Penguin Putnam, New York (2001), p. 370. 52 See M. Klett and K. Störl in the present volume. 53 See e.g. N. Lipp in the present volume.

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Fig. 2 Overview

Recitando. Mimesis of the Prosody of Word Language and Word Art An important complement to the duality of the Cantando and the Sonando is a third element, the Recitando, the ‘saying’ in music that is closer to the word language, as a complement to singing and sounding, “which models the real proximity to language, possibly even in its radical prose form”.54 As it does not exhibit a regular, ‘periodic’ rhythm, it is thus, from the point of view of rhythm, ‘prose’; nevertheless, it is also

54

Goldschmidt 1981, p. 131.

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part of the principally ‘poetic’ word art, and not merely of quotidian word language.55 It can be realized both vocally and instrumentally. One of the main expressions of the Recitando is the “recitativo, that emphasizes and indeed imitates the rhythms and accents of spoken language, rather than melody or musical motives”.56 The latter is accentuated rather strangely since the recitative also forms musical melodies, and these, whether cantabile or recitative, generally do not “imitate” motives but use and embed them within their pathway. In contrast to the recitativo accompagnato, which is embedded within an orchestral accompaniment and must therefore follow more musically metrical arrangements, the Recitando principle is realized more purely in the recitativo secco (“dry recitative”). [It] is sung with a free rhythm dictated by the accents of the words. Accompaniment […] is simple and chordal. The melody approximates speech by using only a few pitches.57

Since the Recitando is derived only from the voice and one of its forms of expression, as opposed to the dual complementarity of voice and hands, it stands at odds with the double correlation of the vocal/Cantando and the instrumental/Sonando.58 Thus, even if the Recitando does not drop out of the structure of the independent musical characteristics of both Cantando and Sonando, it does stand out and potentially forms a borderline case of composing musical melody. This borderline is even perhaps crossed by the—essentially—pitchless “Sprechgesang”, whether in melodrama or rap.59 The Recitando and the Cantando musically reproduce the axis from speaking to singing. In music theatre, for instance, monologue aria or song are set against dialogical Recitation. The latter is reduced to mere speaking in the Singspiel type. With opéra comique, operetta, zarzuela, British pantomime, musical (play) etc., it is throughout Europe and Euro-America, and probably even internationally, a universal genre. “Singen und Sagen” (singing and saying), the mentioned German-language formula for the epic and its performance, is thus split into poetic notions as dwelling 55

The art of acting or mime in gesture art could be conceived as a non-acoustic recitando. It is closer to prose than the ’poetic’ art of dance, but likewise without being prose of everyday life. 56 https://www.britannica.com/art/recitative, n.d., accessed 22 May 2022. 57 https://www.britannica.com/art/recitative, ibidem. 58 Goldschmidt nevertheless classifies it as a third “correlative subsystem” or “generative mode of existance” (Daseinsweise) (1981, p. 131). In any case, it is an important component of all the word-language-derived components of music, for which Georg Knepler used the term “logogenic” in 1977, following Curt Sachs. 59 As Thomas Phleps, blues and popular music expert, suspected years ago, “it is possible to perceive similar pitches as in singing, especially for accentuation and emphasis. After all is rap based on the intonations of ‘everyday prose’, but it also deliberately leans into the more “artificial” direction. Also, in both contrast or convergence to spoken word poetry, rap can exaggerate or intensify parts to the point of quasi or even proper singing, like in transitions from rapped verse to the sungrapped chorus. Sometimes it is also the deliberate rejection of pitch that results in interesting results of a highly rhythmic, almost monotonous kind, perhaps almost analogous to religious melodic monotonous chanting.” (Mariama Diallo, Mail of 20 June 2022) This would continue the classical differentiation of chanson, couplet, song into more speech-like Recitando verses and a cantabile Cantando chorus, for which Gershwin’s songs represent a pinnacle, here also continued.

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Fig. 3 a, b. Ludwig van Beethoven, 9. Symphonie, IV. movement, mm. 216–236

and sojourning, expression of emotions, reflection versus epic-dramatic advancement of the plot or, as the case may be, its narration. This is not least an encaptic relationship of poetry and prose nested within the connection of tone art and art of acting. The Recitando is primarily prose-prosody. A prototypical example is the exclamation of the baritone in the finale of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, Movement IV Presto (D minor)—Allegro assai (D major) “O friends, not these tones!” along with the subsequent phrase “But let us strike up more pleasant and joyful ones!—Beethoven juxtaposed this prose text with Schiller’s hymnic poetry of Ode to Joy (1785, revised in 1803) and used it as a preamble in the execution of the Cantando. (Fig. 3a, b) Interestingly, the Recitando here is not syllabically chanted but immediately melismatically broken or ‘figured’, and the Figuration even spreads out in the declamation

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of the two verbal imperative phrases. The contesting exclamation of the baritone as a human voice is only one phase in the long, much segmented symphonic development that culminates at this point. Beethoven’s vocal objection had already been instrumental in several variants before this could be heard. Unspoken and yet unmistakable, it is invoked in the instrumental recitations, which react to the reminiscences of the preceding movements, introduced in a quotative manner, by repudiating and reprimanding them.60

From this hinge point, the vocal realizations of Schiller’s Ode begin, of which stanzas had already resounded before. The overall process, which cannot be presented here in full detail, illustrates several procedures of Troping in a small space in a nutshell and some of the general relationships between Cantando, Sonando and Recitando.

Words into the Cantando Vocal music is the completion of the Cantando. The whole Cantando-Sonando system is initially a purely musical one. The purity is only stained by the word, which is, however, hardly dispensable for vocal music. The word functions as pars pro toto, as an undeniable reference to the real and thus as a representation of reality.61

Musical Setting: New Melody Set to the Given Text We shall not extensively dwell on the musical setting in which a text is composed or words are set to music. It is the usual procedure and constitutes the core of vocal music. From word art and word language, prosodic features such as particularly word and sentence accentuation act as a limiting framework to which the musical setting must in principle adhere. A stressed syllable on an unstressed bar time is unfortunate, even if it happens frequently—a mostly venial sin. Thus, poetic words finally come into the Cantando from word art, as concrete words and not merely as prosodic patterns.62 The word serves denotation, that is, more precise and object-related semantics. (On connotative semantics, see Section “Figuration. “Unwording” as the counterpart to Troping” below). Different to the integration of the ‘poetically’ regulated and stylized rhythmical, which belongs primarily to the hands, the integration of the words into the Cantando 60

Stähr 1995, pp. 252f. See J.-J.Dünki, S. Schibli, M. Kerstan, S. Riley, M. Thrun in the present volume. 62 On the role of suprasegmentals see Section “Suprasegmentals and nonverbal gesture communication in the Sonando und Cantando”. below, on the role of visual-gestural language, see Section “Suprasegmentals and nonverbal gesture communication in the Sonando und Cantando”. 61

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is in a sense, natural and primordial. For it is the same organ in both—the voice— and the same medium of the acoustic. Word art like word language have several points and possibilities of contact and conjunction. Firstly, word language (which also appears in the context of music in “sprechgesang”, as not sung naked so to speak) contains proto-vocality and noise, in form of—simplified put—vowels and consonants.63 Secondly, however, word language contains proto-rhythms and word art, by definition, ‘poetic’, developed rhythms. And finally, both contain denotative semantics thaft can complement and specify the basically connotative one of music. This denotative semantics is then also reflected onto the Sonando—just as it also enters there at the same time via the gesture language stylized in dance. These pre-existent texts are primarily integrated into syllabic form, so one tone per syllable. The melismatics of two-tone or few-tone syllable breaks, or 1+n tones per syllable, is possible and common. The longer the melismas become, the more the word-sound relation dissolves, and the Troping of the vowel changes into its opposite, the Figuration. (see Section “Figuration. “Unwording” as the counterpart to Troping” below) The musical setting can also be regarded as a type of Troping. Its counterpart corresponds to Figuration.64 It is an ‘erosion’65 of the composite whole and yet a subtraction, since the word is withdrawn. Figuration thus brings vocal music back to the starting condition of the vocal. New problems and opportunities arise from the written form of both word art and tone art. It enables, for instance “Augenmusik” (“music for the eyes”) as pictorial mimesis of facts and a more complex semantics of numbers, or mixtures such as the improvizational-musical performance of a text that is already given in writing. This can here only be pointed at without further elaboration. With the musical setting, the completion of vocal music is achieved: as word art + tone art. This results in a separable and yet solid unity, often with a tendency to fuse the two arts or components.

Contrafacture: New Text Replaces Former Text Set to Old Melody and Given Composition A common form of separation and recombination is contrafacture or an older term of “parody”, which in this case has nothing to do with mockery and comedy. They may well have, however: Paul Dessau, for example, mocked the Nazi secondary national anthem, the Horst-Wessel-Lied, as the Horst-Dussel-Lied (1943), Eisler as the Kälbermarsch. Bertolt Brecht wrote the text for the latter already as early as 63

See, among others, the contribution of Hanne S. Heister on mutism in the present volume. Elaborated and conceptually developed by Goldschmidt 1977. 65 A felicitous metaphorical term for the phonematic and phonetic dissolution of morphemes and words; extensively on corresponding degradation and dissolution processes in word language a.o. Deutscher 2005. 64

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1933, and then used it for the play Schweyk in the Second World War (1941/1944), which in turn works up the novel Osudy dobrého vojáka Švejka za svˇetové války (The Fateful Adventures of the Good Soldier Švejk During the World War) by Czech writer Jaroslav Hašek, published in 1921–1923. Brecht turns “The flag [hold] high. The ranks tightly closed” into the prosodically identical “The butcher calls. The eyes firmly closed”. A melody that has already been set to music is thus given a new text. The melody as a unity of rhythm and pitch movement is the stable, the word the variable. In popular song as well as in (Protestant) chorale, contrafactures are common, not least to facilitate the spreading of the still unknown word through the familiar tone. Particularly beautiful melodies such as those of Heinrich Isaac’s Innsbruck ich muss dich lassen (Innsbruck, I must leave thee) were contrafactualized notably often. Another example from the area of nursery rhymes: Ah vous dirai-je, Maman = Morgen kommt der Weihnachtsmann = Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star

Multiple tropes like these are not rare. They have a kind of palimpsest effect— the original text, as in silenced texts in instrumental music or quotations from vocal music, appears to shimmer through—a specific and temporally-historically constituted type of polyphony.66

Contrafacture without Melody A very peculiar exemplification presents a contrafacture without melody only by means of metrically rhythmic mediation. It is found in an untitled poem by the Jewish poet from Bukovina, Manfred Winkler (1922–2014)67 from September 1963. The song rose from the unconscious into the semi-conscious memory. Yet it is conveyed in the poem only through textual rhythms that evoke musical ones, and these in turn evoke words and concepts. It begins with: (I) Morgenrot und schwarze Hand/wachen an der Wiege […]68 (The) red dawn and (the) black hand/watching at the cradle […] 66

See e.g. Heister 2011b, 2012, Rusam 2011. To Winkler and his handling of word-music-relationships see M. Diallo in the present volume. Her work in progress is also concerned with the poetry and receptive context of Paul Celan, including Winkler as the most important translator in German of Celan. 68 Winkler 2017, p. 645. The poem can be found in the section Unpubliziertes aus dem Nachlass/Frühe Gedichte aus Erez Israel, 615–672. The color combination alludes both to the contrast between day and night, light and dark, and to political contrasts—whereby in the Russian sphere in particular the “whites” represent the western “blacks”. “Morgenrot” is an association with Wilhelm Hauff’s at the time well-known Reiters Morgengesang (Equestrian Morning Song), already tonally through the rhyme “Morgenrot, Morgenrot/Leuchtest mir zum frühen Tod?” (“Red dawn, red dawn/lighting my way to an early death?”) The black hand as pars pro toto of the “bogeyman” (in German the “black man”) is haunting and threatening, not least in the child’s world, and from the child’s perspective still in Winkler’s memory. 67

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In the opening line “Morgenrot und schwarze Hand”, Monica Tempian and HansJürgen Schrader, editors of the substantial anthology with the collected works of Manfred Winkler, discovered the “rhythmically metric allusion” to the well-known children’s play song: Rosmarin und Thymian/wächst69 in unserm Garten.70 Rosemary and thyme/grow in our garden.71

The children’s song, like Winkler’s poem, has a trochaic metre as well as four verses per stanza. An Austrian variant uses the more common but also trochaic herbal pair “Petersilie Suppenkraut”. Apparently, not only the garden herbs are variable, but especially the third line. It provides a metrical passe-partout to insert the names for the game, such as: Fräulein Martha ist die Braut … (aus Dresden) Jungfer Anna ist die Braut … (aus Thüringen)72 unser Hannchen ist ´ne Braut ... Miss Martha is the bride ... (from Dresden) Maid Anna is the bride ... (from Thuringia) Our Hannchen is a bride …

The concluding fourth line rhymes with the first: “soll nicht länger warten/shall wait no longer”. The strophic form is an additional motivating model for Winkler. Like in the pattern of both the nursery rhyme, as well as the song with Hauff’s text, Winkler’s five-stanza poem, though decidedly rhyme-less, with four verses each, almost rigidly adheres to the strict trochee, four feet and a “masculine” ending in the uneven line and three-foot with a “feminine” ending in the even line. In the refrainlike conclusion of the nursery rhyme—lines 5 and 6—the red-black color contrast is prefigured:

But there was also a secret organization of this name in the Balkans, founded in 1911 with the official name Ujedinjenje ili smrt! (Unification or Death). It was a Greater Serbian nationalist organization and, among other things, carried out the assassination in Sarajevo in 1914. 69 Winkler’s double alliteration wachen/Wiege (guarding/ cradle) picks up this W (wächst/ grows) of the nursery rhyme—here a verbal sound bridge. 70 Gedicht: Winkler 2017, p. 645; Kommentar: p. 830. Die manchmal geradezu niederschmetternde Macht von Rhythmen hat Gottfried Benn thematisiert: “Es gibt Melodien und Lieder,/die bestimmte Rhythmen betreu’n./Die schlagen dein Inneres nieder,/und du bist am Boden bis Neun.“ (Destille) Das überhaupt nicht sachgerechte bürokratische Wort “betreu’n“ samt der gezwungenen Elision brauchte Benn, um den Reim zur gewollten Box-Metapher zu erhalten. 71 The Winkler translations aimed to simulate a comparable rhythm while keeping as close to the original verbal semantics as possible. 72 https://www.volksliederarchiv.de/petersilie-suppenkraut/. Accessed 14 July 2021.

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Roter Wein und weißer Wein morgen soll die Hochzeit sein.73 Red wine and white wine tomorrow shall be the wedding.

The variations of the nursery rhyme melody are as numerous as those of the text. But they are always characterized by a simplicity that corresponds to the prosody. Winkler uses the first, central line ‘Morgenrot und schwarze Hand’ (l. 2) like a refrain, varying it mainly through permutations. This idiosyncratic procedure of Winkler’s can be described as ‘Contrafacture without Melody’. It exemplifies how rhythmic identities in word assemblages, verse forms and stanza forms (roughly corresponding to the wîse of minnelyric) serve as a structural passe-partout for a special type of parody or re-troping with other, new words and contents. A bridge in terms of content presents the connection to the children’s sphere, the memory. This, in turn, activated as a resonance in Schrader/Tempian precisely those associations in the reception, that Winkler carried and poetized in the production.

Words into the Sonando Textual Setting (Troping): New Texts Set to a Given Instrumental Melody The complementary counterpart to the musical setting of texts of word art is the textual setting or rendering of instrumental melodies or even vocal melodies that have been dissolved into wordless melismas. Regarding the latter, the abovementioned ‘Figuration’, ‘Troping’ (the usual term) is the counterpart. The term originally denotes the textualization of vocal melodies that have been frayed into wordless melismas, such as the often endless, prosaic Alleluia melismas in (Gregorian) chant. The trope then forms a corresponding genre. With the development of a relatively independent instrumental music, also originally instrumental melodies or musical settings were then assigned texts; even if often by detour from preexisting musical settings as contrafactures. Words enter the instrumental Sonando manifestly as concrete words. The Troping is conveyed not least through prosody; relevant here are duration ratios including pauses, patterns of accent and relationship of pitches (or intonations, “speech melody”).74 The latter is particularly significant in tonal languages; well-known are the speaking “talking drums” in “sub-Sharan” languages and music cultures. 73

Ibidem. Text und Music: author unknown. Lyrics orally from Leipzig (1872) and Dresden (1871), from Hesse and the Rhine; the melody from Saxony and Hesse. 74 See Nunez/Reich in our volume; cf. also D. Mack.

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Fig. 4 Franz Schubert: 8th Symphony b-minor, D 759, 1st movement, 2nd theme, mm. 44–53 Thepriest75—CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=96155062, 18 June 2022, accessed 20 June 2022

In contrast, words in European music are not “spoken” instrumentally but only played, remaining latent. Instrumental music is by definition not vocal and thus wordless. But the Sonando speaks a different language here. Words, insofar as they are sunk into the instrumental, can and should usually be heard as a latent layer, like in a palimpsest.75 The procedures are not to be presented here historically and in detail. There are countless examples of this, often denied for the sake of keeping “pure” instrumental music free of anything related to reality and its degradation to “absolute” music. To outline a few cases only briefly, without claims of completeness.76 A special case of textual setting is vocaleese in jazz, also written as vocalese with only one E—both derive from the word vocalise, although it is its opposite, namely not the dissolution of word poetry into syllables. Instead of the figurating dissolution of words into syllables, words and verses are set to a piece of given instrumental music. C. Count Basie’s Jumpin’ at the Woodside from 1938, for example, was set to text by John Hendricks in the 1950s, and continuously at that.77 A rather plebeian, jocular example reveals how such claims to the text and a need for the missing word can be realized in instrumental music. In the 1st movement of Schubert’s “Unfinished” 8th Symphony in B minor, D 759, the 2nd theme (violoncellos) was slightly parodically texted by the Berlin vernacular as follows: “Ida,/wo kommste her,/wo gehste hin,/wann kommste wieda?” (“Ida,/where’d ya come from,/where ya headed,/when will ya return?”; Fig. 4). It is remarkable how closely this textual setting follows the prosody and motivics. The phrasing of the melody is taken up in the anaphors of the text, and even the fourth at the beginning and end of the theme is reflected in the embracing rhyme “Ida-wi(e)da” legitimized by the dialect. Beethoven’s well-known motto “Muss es sein?/Es muss sein!” (“Must it be?”/ “It must be!”) in the String Quartet op. 135, IV movement oscillates between jest and seriousness as a latent but formulated trope by Beethoven. Victor Ullmann alludes to

75

As, with political messages and content, clandestine, hidden or intentionally latent left in many political music; see e.g. T. Vogel in the present volume. 76 Goldschmidt developed an extensive, comprehensive system in 1999 but it also is still concentrated on one subsection, the instrumental accompaniment. For independent instrumental tone movements between bagatelle and symphony, it is still pending and due. 77 Woodside was the name of a hotel in New York where Basie rehearsed with his big band from 1937.

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Fig. 5 Alban Berg: Lyric Suite, VI. Satz Largo desolato, mm. 12–15. The first verse of the Troping that remains latent. Berg carefully marked the notes of the vocal part in the dedicated edition of the score for Hanna Fuchs-Robbetin. This is the beginning of the vocal melody extracted and set to text by G. Perle. (Perle 1978, p. 64).

this melodically-prosodically in his Cornet melodrama without the humour component, conveyed by the prosodically identical text formulation “Es kann sein” (“It can be”).78 Decidedly denied and secret, latent instead of manifest and deadly serious is the text setting or trope in Alban Berg’s Lyric Suite of 1927. The entire work refers to the secret love for Hanna Fuchs-Robbetin, who, like Alban Berg himself, was married. Name ciphers such as the acronyms A-B (A-Bflat) and the highly suitable tritone H-F (B#-F), number symbols for the names, plus autonomously speaking quotations from Tristan and Zemlinsky running throughout the entire work. Yet in the last, the VI movement, Berg even sets an entire poem to music: Charles Baudelaire’s De profundis—even if it only in a score for his Hanna Fuchs-Robbetin79 with precise entries of the ciphers and the singing part. In a kind of reversal of the soggetto cavato procedure, the latter is pulled out of the instrumental vocal fabric as the main voice. Composed is thus actually a string quartet with soprano, like Schoenberg’s epochal 2nd String Quartet op. 10, but only latent, not manifest. The published score is “pure” instrumental music (Fig. 5).80

78

See Heister/Tempian in the present volume where the corresponding musical example can be found. 79 Because of them, in order to have the H (B#) as the keynote of the string quartet in addition to the F, Berg even changes the ambitus frame of the string quartet and demands: “In this movement, the C string of the violoncello must be tuned down to B.” (score, p. 77). 80 In extenso see Perle 1978 and Floros 1978, Floros 1998.

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Berg returns to this in his Violin Concerto of 1935. Triggered among other things by the keywords for farewell to the world “nun gute Nacht” (now good night) in the chorale and “Jammer” (lament), he encapsulates the tone letters of the two name acronyms AB and HF, in the quotation from the Bach chorale “It is enough” (mainly mm. 142–152).81 Key words such as “Freude!”, “Alleluia”, “Kyrie” and “Miserere” or, in 19th century Italian opera, “pietà” occur frequently, as a motto and an often repeated underlying text, phrases or longer texts, however, relatively rarely, yet, as the example of the Lyric Suite or the final movement in Beethoven’s 9th Symphony demonstrates, in which entire stanzas of Schiller’s Ode to Joy are delivered instrumentally as a latent text, and only then vocally performed with a manifest text. Names that are very often used to latently trope instrumental works hold a special position. The procedure of the “soggetto cavato” provides both text and sound material. In Renaissance music, the “soggetto cavato” was an “excavated”, semantically coined motif, or theme, made of syllables, which were part of a name.82 The homonymy of the name syllables and the solmization syllables mediates between word and music. The solmization syllables, in turn, are originally nothing other than the incipits of Guido von Arezzo’s musically set mnemonic verses for the memorization of the modes in chorale singing, and thus tropes in themselves. A well-known example is the festive mass Hercules Dux Ferrariae by Josquin Desprez (1480, or in the early 1490s). A well-known example is the Feast-Mass Hercules Dux Ferrariae of Josquin Desprez (1480, or in the early 1490s). Here, the vowels of name and title of Duke Ercole of Ferrara by means of solmization syllables form the tones re—ut—re—ut—re—fa—mi—re, which Josquin takes as Cantus firmus—in the Kyrie I in absolute pitches d c d c d f e d—thus, here and there, cryptography. Josquin composed and combined this figure in many of the possible variants. This process is continued by an analogue one, which now makes use of tone letters instead of syllables—such as the well-known BACH as a tone sequence, signet or B-A-C-H motto. (It works poorly in English, because the H here is a B sharp, and as such not an H, but just another B.) Another way of Troping is by means of prosody. The prosody of the two names Tristan and Isolde or Richard and Mathilde, for instance, shapes a considerable part of the tonal composition of Wagner’s Tristan. Brahms uses the prosody and letters of the name of the beloved and forsaken Agathe in both of his string sextets op. 18 and 36, not only the acronym A.eS., but all the tone letters capable of music. Finally, rather seldomly, the word in its shrunken vowel form—which is at the same time the basis of the original form of the vocal, of the Cantando—is adopted in music by way of intoning the A tone in the word as A, as in Hugo Wolf’s Zur Warnung (By Way of Warning; Mörike-Lieder no. 49).83 81

Besides the respective and known literature as e.g. G. Perle or C. Floros see Heister 2021, chap. 6.1.1.6, pp. 247ff., and 8.2.3.1, pp. 586–591. 82 See Heister/Tempian in the present volume. 83 In extenso see Heister 2017.

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The Word Into the Instrumental. Quotation, Programme, Title, Performance Directions The urge for the word is often great in the instrumental, as has been shown. In addition to direct Troping, there are various methods and types of referring to and including the word indirectly and by way of detour. This broad field will only be mentioned without working it at length here. 1. In ‘autonomous’ or independent music, whether vocal or instrumental, which does not serve any single purpose, such as marching or celebrating religious rituals, but only general ones between joy, mourning and humanization, a tried and tested, frequently used means of Troping and thus semantization is the quotation.84 On the one hand, it brings in contexts that refer to different real circumstances and facts, and on the other hand, the texts originally associated with the melodies are also transmitted. This is especially important for instrumental music. The key point of this is that a wordy semantics is created or evoked by something manifestly wordless. Thus quotes B. Smetana, nationally conscious and anti-Habsburg, the preReformation Hussitenchoral (Hussite chorale) several times, among other works, in his six-movement cycle of symphonic poems Ma Vlast (My Fatherland 1874/1879). Victor Ullmann also quoted the chorale in 1944, but pro-Habsburg and anti-Nazi, in his 7th Piano Sonata as, motivated by the word, in his Cornet Melodrama.85 The decisive factor is the melody, which carries text and context within itself and transports them into the new work. For composers such as Charles Ives (1874–1952) or Karl Amadeus Hartmann (1905–1963), the incorporation of quotations is effectively a principle of composition. Through borrowings, paraphrases, etc., allusions and borrowings, Ives often creates a mosaic-like collage or pastiche.86 The more blurred and inaccurate the quotation, the more diluted and blurred the word—which usually has artistic reasons and motives. “Wording” and correct “literal” reproduction are not appropriate criteria for art. Especially in the critical parody examined above, the distortion of what is quoted is part of the moment of critique. 2. The following two types of procedures for bringing words into the instrumental, or words into notes, can be defined as ‘captions’ (‘Beschriftungen’) using a term by W. Benjamin.

84

On the function of quotation in the musical process in general, cf. Heister 2021a und 2021b, chap. 8.2. 85 In extenso and with musical illustrations see Heister/Tempian in the present volume. 86 From the abundant Ives literature see among others Burkholder 1995.

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Programmes provide templates for subjects and actions.87 They originate primarily from word art and the fine arts88 and are thus words and images for tones. Not even poetically formed texts suffice, as in the case of pictures pre-artistic visual impressions, moods and ideas. What is crucial is that they must somehow be verbalized in the last instance, put into words. Programme music in the broad sense already existed in the Florentine Trecento, before the middle of the 14th century in the vocal genre of Caccia, and then in Clément Janequin’s (c. 1485-1558) programmatic chansons. The most famous became Le chant des oiseaux, which imitates bird-calls, La chasse with its mimesis of sounds of a hunt, as with the Caccia --, [?] and finally La bataille (de Marignano, 1515), celebrating the French victory over the Swiss Confederates at the Battle of Marignano, which founded a new genre, the battaglia. Instrumental programme music emerged with a certain correlation to the aesthetic and social rise of instrumental music in general in music during absolutism and increasingly since about the last third of the 18th century. Beethoven’s “Battle Symphony” Wellington’s Victory, or the Battle of Vitoria of 1813 stand within this tradition. Like Beethoven and others, also Liszt composed programme music as both piano and orchestral music. Following Carl Loewe’s term Tondichtung (tone poetry), which “appears to have been first used by [...] Loewe in 1828”,89 he then coined the term “Symphonische Dichtung” (symphonic poetry) and developed the genre in a total of 13 works. 3. An indispensable minimal verbalization of ‘captions’ are the titles of the works: a minimal form of the programme. Incidentally, they clarify that word language as spoken language is also supplemented in music by written language—even has to, as soon as notation comes into play in the composition. Numerous of Schönberg’s work titles show how he increasingly shifts a concrete subject into the abstract under the spell of the ideology of “absolute” music. In the third piece of his Five Orchestral Pieces op. 16 from 1909, Farben (Colors), his own descriptions of the programme already blur the rather concrete subject, the impression of the landscape picture—Der Traunsee am Morgen. The music seeks to express all that swells in us subconsciously like a dream; which is a great fluctuant power, and is built upon none of the lines that are familiar to us; which has a rhythm, as blood has a pulsating rhythm, as all life in us has its rhythm; which has a tonality, but only as the sea or the storm has its tonality […].90

There are several versions of the work: Version for large orchestra (1909), Revised new version for large orchestra (1922), Version for chamber orchestra (1920), Version for standard orchestra (1949). The different versions have variable titles: 87

This is valid also for dance art; see e.g. M. Kant in the present volume. On the use of programmes— also of texts to troping—e.g. for Mahler see S. Haller in the present volume. 88 See M. Fink-Naumann in the present volume. 89 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphonic_poem, 10 January 2022, accessed 22 February 2022. 90 Translation quoted after Herbert Glass: Five Pieces for Orchestra, Op. 16, Arnold Schoenberg. https://www.laphil.com/musicdb/pieces/1777/five-pieces-for-orchestra-op-16, without date. Accessed 18 August 2020.

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Schönberg was reluctant to give the work titles. He therefore had not thought of giving the pieces programmatic titles until the Leipzig publisher C. F. Peters requested them when the work was being printed there in 1912. Schönberg’s entry in his diary for January 28, 1912 reacts: Altogether, I don’t favor the idea—the wonderful thing about music is that one can say everything so that knowing people understand it, and yet one has one’s secrets that one confesses to oneself—one does not spread them around—but titles do.92

The titles, however, show something of their own interplay between concealing and revealing concrete materials, between blurring and sharpening. “Color” is an invariant element in this context. The caption is also found as a combination of dance, tone and word, in both titles and the verbalizations of the fable in narrative ballet or in programme ballet as a parallel to programme music.93 Mozart offers a transitional form between titles and performance directions with a remarkable montage. In the title of the IIIrd movement of his flute quartet in A major, K. 298, 1786/1787, he combines genre names with performance directions: Rondieaoux. Allegretto grazioso, mà non troppo presto, però non troppo adagio. così— così—con molto garbo ed espressione’. Rondeau/Rondo [with a permutation of the Habsburgic motto acronym AEIOU] Allegretto, graceful, but not too fast, yet not too slow. So-so—with much decency and expression.94 91

Following Haselböck 2016. Emphasis H.-W. H. Therese Muxeneder, http://archive.schoenberg.at/compositions/werke_einzelansicht.php? werke_id=228&herkunft=allewerke, n.d., accessed 28 April 2020. 93 See M. Kant in the present volume. 94 Wolfgang Amadé Mozart, New Mozart Edition, series VIII, work group 20, Sect. 2: Quartets with one wind instrument [NMA VIII/20/Abt.2], p. 57—emphasis H.-W. H. This complete vowel series, which is superfluous for the genre designation, is also probably a parody of the French vocal accumulations at the end of words, which are then pronounced with a single sound. (B. Rusam, mail of 20 March 2016.) On the other hand, the Habsburg AEIOU had acquired new, enlightened splendor during these years: In 1786 Leopold II, brother of emperor Joseph II (and his successor in 1790), had abolished the capital punishment in Tuscany in 1786 during his rule there, the first time in modern history. And in 1785 Joseph II had in the third of his Patents of Toleration (Toleranzedikte) legalized Freemasonry. 92

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4. Words in notes arise primordially and almost necessarily because of the affinity of notation as writing into words. Formulated verbally instead of notational, they constitute a special form of ‘text’. They oscillate on an axis between the poles of focusing on technical or on semantic instructions. This completes the musical text with a verbal text, by words, phrases or, rarely, whole sentences. An important, separate area are performance directions for expressive values — characters, moods or affects. Regarding the performance directions in our context, the semantic-expressive ones are more important than the technical ones. As words, the performance directions form a relatively independent semantic layer. It emerges clearly above all after approaches by Beethoven with Schumann, Liszt,95 Mahler, Scriabin,96 in the Schoenberg school and others more, and in the avant-garde after 1945, not least extensively with Kagel.97 Charles Ives sometimes expands this word section of the work into longer comments in the musical text—which nevertheless do not directly become text to the notes.98 Performance directions refer to parameters that are not specifically listed in the musical text with its primacy of pitches and tone durations. This includes above all volume and articulation, including various instrumental and vocal techniques that specify the respective timbre. In addition, there are indications that go beyond individual notes or motifs for phrasing or tempo, which only really establishes the actual durations, including tempo changes. As with suprasegmentals in word language, meanings are thereby concretized and their tonal realization intensified—especially regarding connotative elements (see 8. below). The above mentioned pianist and composer Artur Schnabel (1882-195l)99 used an unusual, almost unique multitude of performance directions in his Sonata for piano (1923).100 Pitch, duration, volume and tone color or rather ways of pressing the keys are exactly noted. Additionally, almost every note comes with directions for technical and/or expressive terms of performance. Sometimes there are even different directions in both systems at the same time—a polyphony of performance directions. 4th movement, mm. 1f. 1th brace Leidenschaftlich, stark und sehr bestimmt; ganz frei, gar nicht schnell, immer eher zur¨uckhaltend/MM=76-84 ff , doch immer noch gesangvoll mp, zur¨uckhalten mp, sehr klangvoll/dunkel/i.Z. [im Zentrum] ruhig, singend, mit Bedeutung 2nd brace: f, mp Vorwärts MM=100 f [right hand:] mp sehr klangvoll, dunkel [left hand mf!] immer stark, frei, leidenschaftlich ff stärkster Ausdruck 95

See J.-J. Dünki in the present volume. See S. Schibli in the present volume. 97 See W. Reich in the present volume. 98 Cf. e.g. Phleps 1999 and Phleps 2004. 99 In extenso see e.g. Heister 2018. 100 Score edited by George A. McGuire, Peer 3618. Peermusic Classical, New York und Hamburg n.d. 96

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Passionate, strong and very determined; completely free, not fast at all, always rather reserved/MM=76-84 ff , but still songful mp, restrain very sonorous/dark/i.Z. [always in the centre] calm, singing, with meaning 2th brace f, mp Forward MM=100 f [right] + mp [left] always strong, free, passionate ff strongest expression

The visual of the multimodal musical process presents another dimension to which performance directions may extend to. Unlike in conducting, gestures in piano playing are bound, only relatively free, yet facial expressions are more independently expressive. And also body posture and body movement certainly play a semantic role, without necessarily swaying into the ‘theatrical’. This dates back a long way historically and objectively. In the tradition of rhetoric, the Baroque poet and Enlightenment philosopher J. Ch. Gottsched in 1728 ties the “good execution” to “both to language and to the movements of the body.”101 The gestural-visual thus forms yet another additional layer to the textually verbal. At times even this dimension appears in the performance directions. At the end of the I. movement it is implied, at the end of the V. movement Schnabel states it explicitly. I. Pause gut aushören! Ende erst danach! V. Hände lange über den Tasten halten! I. Listen well to the end of the pause! End only thereafter! V. Keep hands over the keys for a long time!

Gregor Piatigorsky, one of Schnabel’s duo partners, deemed music alone insufficient to understand the Sonata for Violoncello Solo 1931. He also needed words and gesture. This bizarre music fascinated me only with Schnabel’s “obligatory speech accompaniment”. He spoke grandly of his musical ideas, but without his extraordinary speech eloquence, gestures and performances on the piano, the work was much less convincing.102

Performance directions and related elements are words for music, but not words of music. The word is manifest, but not incorporated into melody and composition, and does not adhere directly in or to the body of music. Yet formulations such as Mahler’s “Den Gesang fortsetzend” (“continuing the singing”) do point quite straightforwardly to the close relations of the instrumental to the vocal.103 101

Cit. a. Siegele 1968, col. 16. Emphasis H.-W. H. So Piatigorsky 1975, p. 173. Emphasis H.-W. H. 103 Following Goldschmidt 1999, the relationship between prima volta and seconda volta comes to fruition here in the corresponding music. The first occurrence can be vocal, as in Mahler’s case, but, more often it is instrumental, in form of a prelude or introduction—prototypically illustrated in the aria Casta Diva in Bellini’s Norma, where a whole stanza is instrumentally anticipate (see below); similarly also the examined occurrences in Beethoven’s der Ode to Joy. 102

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Fig. 6 Aztec musician-poet-singer, Codex Borbonicus, p. 4 See also the picture Song of Atlahua, Florentine Codex Book 2, ibidem., Curl 2009, not paginated

5. A particular case reveal words in pictures set to instrumental music. In the Mexican “pre-Columbian” codices, in the depiction of Aztec music, the orality or vocality is integrated into the image. Symbolic of this is the speech scroll rolling out of the mouth (Fig. 6). The two men recite songs (the line between solely spoken poetry and sung song is blurred). They use as percussion instrument either a huehuetl (a vertical hollow tree trunk with a drumhead, struck with the hands), or a teponaztli (a horizontal tree trunk with “H”-shaped slits, struck with two mallets). The rhythm does not depend on the words but on the song’s content; it is a fixed pattern. The musical instruments used by the Mayans and Aztecs were quite similar, but they had different names. The Mexican teponaztli, for example, is called “tun” in Guatemala.104

Suprasegmentals and Nonverbal Gesture Communication in the Sonando and Cantando Finally, the word also enters wordlessly, by way of detour into the Cantando as well as into the Sonando, into the sounding music itself; yet in contrast to the mediation 104

Fig. and comment by Deborah Singer-Gonzales, Mail 5 May 2022.

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via performance directions ‘actually’—even if not as a word itself, but rather as its halo or as gestural correlate. There are various sources and procedures for the concretizing connotative semantization of the musical. Two main paths run along the duality that is continuously authoritative here: the bifurcations of the acoustic medium, or word language including para-language, and the visual medium, or gesture language including body language. Carried in both are word art and gesture art, including pantomime just like dance. In contrast to the actual denotative musical setting or textual setting, a connotative semantization is achieved with important, but in some respects at least structurally secondary components from word language, along with the reshaping by gestural language. Word language forms the core and centering point. Musically, this is a kind of diluted trope, only with shells and contours of the languages and arts. In vocal music the word is indeed already present and incorporated. But especially in the tonal realization in the musical execution, the gestural is indispensable, as the abovementioned example of Schnabel illustrated, especially in all forms of musical theater, where vocal music is connected with the performing art of acting. 1. The umbrella term of non-verbal communication, so non-wordly, does not exclusively refer to gesture language, but it also has an acoustic dimension, in combination with a visual, haptic, proxemic, and to some extent also olfactory dimension: Nonverbal communication (NVC) is the transmission of messages or signals through a nonverbal platform such as eye contact, facial expressions, gestures, posture, and body language. It includes the use of social cues, kinesics, distance (proxemics) and physical environments/appearance, of voice (paralanguage) and of touch (haptics).[ ... ] It can also include the use of time (chronemics) and eye contact and the actions of looking while talking and listening, frequency of glances, patterns of fixation, pupil dilation, and blink rate (oculesics).105

It thus conforms to the duality of voice and hands, but as a unity of duality it corresponds to what is termed a wholistic multimodal ‘mimetic action’, encompassing many senses. Therein, there is a new axis with the poles intentionally unintentional. To distinguish the latter, the term body language could be assigned, which, however, in turn can also be consciously handled counter-intuitively and commonly manipulatively.106 2. In non-verbal communication, the acoustic dimension, which is of primary importance for music, is represented by paralanguage.

105

Etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonverbal_communication, 31 May 2022, accessed 2 June 2022. On the range and variety of subjects, themes and aspects see for instance Laura K. Guerrero, Joseph A. DeVito, and Michael L. Hecht: The Nonverbal Communication Reader. Classic and Contemporary Readings, Second Edition. http://www.waveland.com/Titles/Guerrero-et-al.htm, accessed 22 May 2022 (1999). 106 S. M. Klett in the present volume.

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Paralanguage, also known as vocalics, is a component of meta-communication that may modify meaning, give nuanced meaning, or convey emotion, … refers to all vocal means accompanying speech, meaning all means linked to speech sounds that are important for communication by using techniques such as prosody, pitch, volume, intonation, filled or unfilled pauses, laughter, sighs, gasps, moans and groans, the throat-clearing “harrumph” … Use or avoidance of dialect within the spoken language etc. It is sometimes defined as relating to nonphonemic properties only. Paralanguage may be expressed consciously or unconsciously.107

In para-language, suprasegmentals of speech are used, meaning everything that is not bound to individual segments—especially phonemes and morphemes (words)— clause, sentence, etc. Suprasegmentals are articulated acoustically. They make relatively independent contributions to sigmatics, namely to the relationship between sign and signified, to syntactics, such as by structuring and ‘focusing’ sentence elements, to semantics, and particularly to the pragmatics in interpersonal communication, which can also be medially mediated.108 As can be derived from these lists, it is not uncommon for para-linguistic components to occur not suprasegmentally but in fact resembling segments, analogous to interjections such as “Ach!” (“Ah/ oh!”), which are articulated within the phoneme system. Outside this system, however, there are elements (or para- and sub-linguistic “segments”) such as grunts, burps, and other natural sounds of human expression, even non-communicative ones, such as those of the vocal apparatus, as well as acoustic expressions of other bodily organs, of which coughing and sneezing are still decent enough to be noted. For music, especially avant-garde music in the first three thirds of the 20th century, they were good enough to serve, like equally segmental phoneme combinations of the syllables for the vocalises, as text for a kind of shrinkage-troping. The reduction to syllables and single sounds was common in Dadaism, up to Abstrakte Oper Nr. 1 of Boris Blacher (libretto Werner Egk) in 1953, and was extended in Schnebel, Ligeti, etc. by the named natural sounds and speech sounds beyond the segmental boundaries (Fig. 7).109 In Dmitri Shostakovich’s pioneering opera The Nose (1927), the cold jittering “Brr” when awaking, before shaving, serves as the only text of the singing in the opening scene, which reaches several pitches—the non-verbal equivalent of a word is really sung. Word language, however, is not solely dependent on suprasegmentals for the— musically analogous—sound-emphasized mimesis of reality in sound. Especially in the languages of sub-Saharan Africa and East and Southeast Asia (Korea, Vietnam) there is an 107

Combined from: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasprache, 6 May 2022, and https://en.wikipe dia.org/wiki/Paralanguage, 11 June 2022, both accessed 12 June 2022. 108 See the contributions of Hanne S. Heister, Mechthild Klett, Deborah Singe, and Kerstin Störl in the present volume. 109 To name just a few works out of the extensive literature on this topic, e.g. Weber-Lucks 2015.

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Fig. 7 Dmitri Shostakovich’s opera The Nose (1927), I, 3, no. 5, cipher 95f.

extensive use of […] sound symbolism. These languages have words, numbering in their hundreds or even thousands, whose sounds map on to certain meanings: ideophones […] of which onomatopoeias are merely a subgroup.110

The connotations are not alone but mainly expressive of emotion.111 They stand for the “Ach und O des Gemüts” (“Ah and Oh of the disposition”, Hegel), the uncadenced, quotidian language interjection, which is then transformed into and as art, and developed into the musical “cadenced interjection”.

110

Doren 2018, p. 43f. This would have to be brought together by the wide field for which the term ‘phonosemantics’ may be representative. This, in turn, considered along with musical facts and approaches such as musical rhetoric and figure theory will bring new answers to many questions of musical language— especially semantics and sigmatics, the material and the objects of mimesis, the relationship of sound to meaning and sense. 111 Cf. on word language e.g. Peters 2008, Niebuhr et al. 2015 a.o.

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The connotative aspect of the word language becomes independent, autonomous in the musical language. The pre-artistic hierarchy of word language becomes virtually tendentially reversed. Music also becomes mimesis of word language and turns its connotative dimension into the main issue. 3. Prosody as an essential component of suprasegmentals is hierarchically the next systematic level. It is an important link and mediator between word language and musical language and, analogously or in parallel, between the vocal and the instrumental. The term and its associated word-field and terms are usually neither very precisely defined nor is there much agreement.112 We use prosody here in the context of word language as an overarching term for several suprasegmental varieties: 1. for the pitch dimension of spoken language, also called intonation.113 2. for the dimension of duration in spoken language, such as rhythm and, in ‘poetry’, verse and meter. Pauses, delays and accelerations as tempo changes are also included, as well as the fundamental tempo, which is even more important for music, for example Largo or Presto. 3. for the dimension of volume in spoken language, it appears primarily in accentuation of syllables and words—stress.114 In accentuated metrics, verse measures and stanza forms are co-determined by the distribution of stressed and unstressed syllables. The concept of accent, however, is complex and in music also involves durational aspects.115 4. for the timbre dimension of spoken language. A husky voice refers to emotional shocks between fear and sadness, a nasally one—apart from a prevailing cold or constitutional deficits—to upper-class arrogance as in the Viennese “Schönbrunnerisch”. Pitch, duration, volume as an accent, even timbre are at the same time components of the phoneme system and form distinctive, meaning-distinguishing features: the different tones in tonal languages, the length and shortness of vowels or consonants, the emphasis as in the difference between ténor as holding voice and main voice in cantus-firmus compositions of high feudalism and tenór as a vocal genre, and finally, open or closed vowels, which can also be understood as differences in timbre. It is striking and not coincidental that these four dimensions correspond to the four main dimensions of sound, called “parameters” in serialism. It illustrates the significant mediating function of prosody. As examined, vocal music is here less free than instrumental music. As in verse with verse feet, also in musical settings stressed word syllables should fall on stressed meter parts; and (relatively) short tones to long syllables are in most cases at least awkward. 112

Concise and precise overview by B. Peters 2008. In German as in English, for instance, pitch is—in different ways—essential for distinguishing between propositional and interrogative clauses. 114 In homonyms, it can make two completely opposite word meanings distinguishable: úmfahren means to drive over something or someone and damage or destroy it, um’fahren means, on the contrary, to drive carefully around it. Or: Über´setzen: to translate sth. from one into another language; ´übersetzen: to ferry sth. or so. from one side of a river etc. to the other. 115 These three dimensions can be suspended at least in traces also in the written language. 113

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Many composers are known to have paid careful attention to prosody. One extreme case is probably Leoš Janáˇcek, who derived his motifs in rhythm and pitch mainly from the components of the prosody of the national—Czech—language. The power of rhythmic prosody even reflects on tempo correlations between spoken and written speech, thus reaching out beyond the acoustic medium to the visual. Across languages, the speech signal is characterized by a predominant modulation of the amplitude spectrum between about 4.3 and 5.5 Hz, reflecting the production and processing of linguistic information chunks (syllables and words) every ~200 ms. Interestingly, ~200 ms is also the typical duration of eye fixations during reading. [… A tempo-] variation systematically depends on the complexity of the writing systems (character-based versus alphabetic systems and orthographic transparency). […W]e propose that during reading, our brain’s linguistic processing systems imprint a preferred processing rate—that is, the rate of spoken language production and perception—onto the oculomotor system.116

4. Combinations and mutual fertilization of the gestural, paraverbal and verbal are found in certain areas of dance art. In the execution, performance, lively acoustic realization of music, connections between gesture art and tone art are manifest, as previously shown in the case of Schnabel.117 In a revealing type of dance art, indexical, involuntary and as such often unconscious and non-intentional sounds that arise as by-products of dancing, both those of the voice and those of the body, are combined with verbal suprasegmentalia. In 1913, Rudolf von Laban’s class for dance-sound-word was much experimentation, for example with breathing sounds and voice sounds initiated by movements, or with poetry rhythms of the texts he and his students invented.118

Thus, once again, prosody forms a bridge. Due to the doubling of these special components from both arts, more than one programme is created, namely almost a “narrative ballet”, admittedly without a plot, and without a concrete “narrative” fable: The results thus created became the starting points for small dance sequences and choreographies.119

Verbal rhythms, prosaic or already poetic prosody as the second source of the rhythmic in word art are translated back into gesture art. And the instrumental use of the vocal apparatus in whistles or vocal percussion etc. is reversed here, by being utilized as a kind of pre-school of the Cantando and the tendential Troping, in union with the use of the Sonando apparatus. 5. In the fine arts, gesture is important to essential as an exteriorization of gesture art, both for its mimesis in design principles and procedures, and also as object and 116

On correlations between gestures and pitch progressions, see Gagl et al. 2022. See as one example for many Zellers et al. 2019. 118 N. Lipp in the present volume. 119 Ibidem. 117

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subject. In this context, the more general gesture language is arguably more relevant than the more specific gesture art, social and ballroom dance, and artistic dance. 120 Within word art, its role is naturally or artfully somewhat smaller.121 On one side, it is subject and theme, on the other side (here, however more weighted again) component of the formal, rhythmic organization of the text, not least in the danceaffine rhythms of the poetic language. The musical rhetoric122 conveys aspects of word language and gesture language, and thus if we include the relation of sign-signifying, also the acoustic and the visual. Its ‘figures’ are mainly pictorially gestural realizations of circumstances, along with their verbal mediation, whereby the words together with their paralinguistic halo act as triggers and keywords. 6. Finally, in the relationship between text and context, the secular ceremony or the sacred ritual in which music is incorporated can also serve as a substitute for the word. After all, they are effectively connected with the gestural and then connote or denote the meaning and sense of the music.123 Here, as in works with Gesamtkunstwerk aspirations of a more recent type, using non-artistic and non-acoustic materials such as food, other quotidian materials, waste124 , the relationships between the Cantando and the Sonando, Troping and Figuration tend to become, as it were, three-dimensional. The primary trigger is formed by elements of a meta-level: in the first instance, words are replaced by things, ‘thing-signs’125 , communicative-mimetic or even practical actions, gestures. They are mostly already significant in themselves. In the second instance, however, they refer to words, without which they are usually not completed in the sense of ‘speech acts’. This is for example the case with the imaginary transubstantiation in the Christian liturgy. In Eastern and Western Christian liturgical practice, the elevation is a ritual raising of the consecrated Sacred Body and Blood of Christ during the celebration of the Eucharist. In the Roman Rite of Mass, this elevation is accompanied by the words “Ecce Agnus Dei. Ecce qui tollit peccata mundi” (Behold the Lamb of God. Behold him who takes away the sins of the world).126

120

See A. Weismann in the present volume. See also R. Favaro, H. Heister, Heister/Tempian, M. Kant and N. Lipp in the present volume. 122 In extenso cf. S. de Filippi in the present volume. 123 See the contributions of K. Sonnendecker and D. Singer, and about the the intermedial combination of music, libretto, and stage particularly with A. Hába see P. Becker-Naydenov in the present volume. 124 Cf. the contribution of Ina Jessen in the present volume. 125 Thus e.g. in Sophocles‘ Electra the urn, containing allegedly Orestes‘ ashes, presented as a deception. 126 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elevation_(liturgy), 20 June 2022, accessed 21 June 2022. These formulations are again an echo of the words of John the Baptist in John 1:29. And they are found in the Agnus movement of the Missa, there without the deictic “Ecce”. The elaborate ritual thus also has as a fourth dimension of historical time. 121

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In the third instance, the music plays along, in the case of the transformation, a Wandlungsmusik (music of transformation) as accompanying music, which, however, carries independent features, on the organ, with an instrumental ensemble or also sung; with the latter, the word reference is then doubled. This entire course of instances can, but does not have to be run through as a whole.127

Figuration. “Unwording” as the Counterpart to Troping Figuration and its opposite Troping move along the axis of music with text and music without text, again at first indifferently, whether it concerns music of the voice or of the hands. However, as far as Figuration refers to already textualized or troped music, for instance with the abovementioned melismatic dissolution of a vocal melody into more or less widely expansive smaller continuous duration values with meaningless syllables, among other things also as the type ‘Theme and Variations’, it is a matter of a for its part connotative, ultimately gestural desemanticization. Also here, an asymmetry unravels. In instrumental music, Figuration is to a certain extent “natural”, since it is by definition wordless, at least initially and manifestly so.128 In vocal music, on the other hand, figuration is a process of ‘erosion’ and degradation, as already outlined in melismatics in connection with the Recitando (see Section “Recitando. Mimesis of the Prosody of Word Language and Word Art” above). As with instrumental Figuration, the diverse musical and para-musical use of the vocal apparatus,129 including dedicated instrumental manifestations such as whistling,130 often reveals something musically playful, evident, for instance, in the scat singing of jazz. The aspect of ‘playing’ in music-making comes to the fore here. Wordless singing, however, as in yodelling, vocalise and others, is still a manifestation of the vocal as Cantando. It is even, as elaborated in the beginning, its fundamental form. How interwoven are cantando with words, recitando, troped sonando and figuration without words, but with even increased expressivity, is exemplarily shown by the Scena e Cavatina in Vincenzo Bellini’s “tragedia lirica” Norma (1831; libretto Felice Romani). The large-scale 4th scene of Act I shows in the opera as itself a mimetic ceremony what constitutes this procedure, here as a sacred ritual. The Other State and the separation from the everyday normal state is marked by the night, the demarcated sacred grove, the gathering of all, Norma’s stylized appearance as a priestess including disguise, special utensils, solemn body language and gestures, and slight ecstasy. The scenic directions: 127

These considerations are still heuristic-hypothetical and need to be further developed. See in extension J.-J. Dünki in the present volume. 129 Cf. e.g. Warneken/Warneken-Pallowski 2011 and Gotsch 2010. 130 Cf. z.B. Osterwold/Straebel 1994 and Warneken 1995. 128

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Fig. 8 Vincenzo Bellini: Norma (1831), I, 4 (Score BMG Ricordi Music Publishing, Milano, n.d. [1898] P.R. 1385); 1. Instrumental prima volta. first flute solo, in the last 4 bars an octave lower assisted by oboe solo; 2. Vocal seconda volta. Soprano “Casta Diva, che inar(genti)” (“Chaste goddess, (who dost bathe in silver light)” Enter Norma in the midst of her ministresses. She has loosed her hair, her forehead encircled with a wreath of verbena, and armed her hand with a golden scythe. She places herself on the druidic stone, and turns her eyes around as if inspired. Everyone is silent. [...] She scythes mistletoe; the Priestesses gather it in wicker baskets; Norma steps forward and stretches her arms to the sky; the moon shines in all its light; everyone prostrates.131

The following Cavatina is preceded by a long introductory recitativo with an extensive dialogue between Oroveso, chief of the Druids (bass), Norma, chief priestess of the Druids, Oroveso’s daughter, seeress (soprano), and the chorus (Fig. 8). The scene culminates in a fervent cabaletta. The vocal figuration of Norma’s melody, already spreading in the cavatina, becomes more and more excessive towards the end. The dissolution into wordlessness dilutes the denotative semantics. It increases, however, the connotative one by means of an—just excessive—expressivity of Norma’s passion, which is torn between love for father, fatherland and foreign ruler (Fig. 9). Analogies to Figuration, likewise with a tendency of desemanticization—at least with regard to denotative semantics—, can also be found in other arts, especially in word art, which has merged with tone art in vocal music: as wordless poetry, drama and prose between Futurism, Dadaism and Absurdism. Arabesques, pirouettes, ornaments and so on can be found in dance art as well as in the performance art of acting in over-acting or grimacing, and further in the fine arts, not only in the so-called 131

https://opera-guide.ch/operas/norma/libretto/it/.

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Fig. 9 Norma (1831), I, 4 (Score ibidem). Norma in the duet with her father Oroveso, and the choir; Here in Fig. 9 only Norma’s voice is presented with coloratura, an excerpt shortly before the end: “(Diva,) spargi in terra/Quella pace che regnar/Tu fai (nel ciel)”; “(Diva,) shed on earth/That peace which you make (in heaven) reign”

“abstract art”, but also in hatchings or color surfaces that take on a life of their own, even within “representational” art.

A Preliminary and Anticipatory Summary In our search for the missing word, we have made some progress with our volume and have in turn found it in many places. Some attempts to further illuminate the interactions between tone art, prose-gesture art, and dance as poetry-gesture art have also been successful. Yet even though our achievements are not little, they are still too little. We did not succeed to include all aspects of interdisciplinarity in its entirety as would have been desirable and thus did not cover the topic in its full breadth and depth. Much remains to be done. Finally, let us name and highlight at least some of the most important tasks, desiderata, research fields and interdisciplinary interconnections. Through Troping of the instrumental, the mutual permeability and the interrelation of Sonando and Cantando are intensified. In the character of word art, there is now another, additional unity of difference in the duality, which nevertheless remains something different. Complementing the formula in the title of our book Word Art + Gesture Art = Tone Art, we can formulate: Vocal Music = Sung Word Art + Instrumental Music. The formulas can be supplemented: Instrumental Music

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= Acoustic Dance Art. Thus, even as instrumental music, it is anything but “pure” and “absolute”.132 The conclusion is saddening only for all those who believe they have to give music a special dignity by ascribing to it a historical and/or anthropological precedence over other arts or even word language—an evolutionist “prima la musica, poi le poesie”, so to speak. Those who are thus deprived of an illusion and disappointed by it may be comforted by the cognizance that music, like all art, belongs to the essence of being human and thus, as one of the artistic languages, like communicative language as a word language and gesture language, is of the same origination as humanity in general. Where there can be Figuration, there must be or must have been Troping. And musical ‘erosion’ through Figuration can, as the Alleluia tropes of the Chorale show, be restituted and reconstructed through Troping. As expression becomes material, so material, reconfigured, becomes expression again—a dialectic developed by Eisler. The destruction of meaning and significance in art between now quite traditional “anti-art” and “deconstruction” of mimesis, cognition, artwork is ultimately mediated by the interest of system preservation. For this implies that there is something that should not be; something that holds up a critical mirror of beauty to the undisguised unpleasantness of reality. But it survives and is here.133 Prof. em. Dr. Hanns-Werner Heister [email protected]

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See the short discussion apropos Hanslick in the Epilogue of the present volume. I am exceedingly grateful to Mariama Diallo, who has made an important contribution of their own to the present volume, for also translating the present text. In this way, a real English could be ensured, and the timely delivery of the manuscript was made possible.

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Heister, H.-W.: Singen, Klingen, Sagen. Zur Komplementarität von Vokalem und Instrumentalem. In: Heister, H.-W. (ed.): Kunstwerk und Biographie. Gedenkschrift Harry Goldschmidt (Zwischen/Töne. Neue Folge, vol. 1), pp. 121-155. Weidler Buchverlag, Berlin (2002) Heister, H.-W.: Mimesis, Memoria, Montage. Über einige Prinzipien des Komponisten Ives. In: Heister, H.-W. (ed.): Charles Ives, 1874–1954. Amerikanischer Pionier der Neuen Musik (Atlantische Texte, vol. 23, ed. Atlantische Akademie Rheinland-Pfalz e.V.), pp. 163-178. wvt Wissenschaftlicher Verlag, Trier (2004) Heister, H.-W.: Mimetische Zeremonie, Anderer Zustand, Singen und Spielen. Zur Entstehung der Musik. In: F. Benseler, W. Loh et al. (eds.) EWE (Erwägen—Wissen—Ethik). Universität Paderborn, Siebte Diskussionseinheit/Seventh discussion unit. Vol. 18, issue 4, May 2007, pp. 556-559. Lucius & Lucius Verlagsgesellschaft, Stuttgart (2007a) Heister, H.-W.: Mimetische Zeremonie—Gesamtkunstwerk und alle Sinne. Aspekte eines Konzepts. In: Mimetische Zeremonien—Musik als Spiel, Ritual, Kunst (Musik und. Eine Schriftenreihe der Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg. Neue Folge, vol. 7), pp. 143-185. Weidler Buchverlag, Berlin (2007b) Heister, H.-W. 2011a: Szenische Objekte. Musikinstrumente als Skulpturen und Bildträger, dargestellt an Karikaturen gegen Berlioz, Strauss und Mahler.In: Nickel, B. (ed.): Die Poesie und die Künste als inszenierte Kommunikation. Festschrift für Reinhard Krüger zum 60. Geburtstag, pp. 151-178. Stauffenburg Festschriften, Tübingen (2011a) Heister, H.-W.: “Das ist Polyphonie.” Zur Natur in und von Mahlers Tonsatz. In: Heister, H.-W. (ed.): Wo die schönen Trompeten blasen. Vokale und instrumentale Semantik im Werk Gustav Mahlers (= Heister, H.-W., Hochstein, W. (eds.): Musik und. Eine Schriftenreihe der Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg. Neue Folge, vol. 11), pp. 205-228. Weidler Buchverlag, Berlin (2011b) Heister, H.-W.: “... ein Traum das Dasein ist”—“vorbei ist die Musike ...”. Aspekte der Intertextualität und der Palimpsest-Polyphonie im V. Satz von Mahlers Lied von der Erde. In: Berger, Ch., Schnitzler, G. (eds.): Bahnbrüche: Gustav Mahler, pp. 247-283. Rombach, Freiburg i. Br. (2012) Heister, H.-W.: Mimetische Handlung und menschliche Natur. Überlegungen zur historisch-logisch ersten Ausprägung von Sprache. In: Heister, H.-W., Lambrecht, L. (eds.): “Der Mensch, das ist die Welt des Menschen ...”. Eine Diskussion über menschliche Natur, pp. 9-28. Frank & Timme, Berlin (2013) Heister, H.-W.: Die Motivierung von Tönen durch Buchstaben—eine neue Dimension des Wort-Musik-Verhältnisses? Hugo Wolfs Zur Warnung (Mörike-Lieder Nr. 49). In: Heister, H.-W., Polk, H. (eds.): Bewegtes und Bewegendes. Der Motiv-Begriff in Künsten und Wissenschaften (= Heister, H.-W. (ed.): Musik/Gesellschaft/Geschichte, vol. 7), pp. 109-127. Weidler Buchverlag, Berlin (2017) Heister, H.-W.: “Leidenschaftlich, stark und sehr bestimmt; ganz frei, gar nicht schnell, immer eher zurückhaltend”. Zur exzessiven Expressivität der Vortragsbezeichnungen in Schnabels Klaviersonate (1923). In: Dümling, A. (ed.): Artur Schnabel. Interpret, Pädagoge und Komponist (Schriftenreihe der Hochschule für Musik Saar, vol. 8), pp. 143-196. Röhrig Universitätsverlag, St. Ingbert (2018) Heister, H.-W.: Music and Fuzzy Logic. The Dialectics of Ideas and Realizations in the Artwork Process (= Kacprzyk, J. (ed.): Studies in Fuzziness and Soft Computing, vol. 406). Springer, Berlin and Heidelberg (2021a) Heister, H.-W.: Musik und Fuzzy Logic. Die Dialektik von Idee und Realisierungen im Werkprozess. Springer Vieweg, Berlin (2021b) Heister, H.-W./Singer, D.: Mimetische Zeremonien und andere gewaltarme Herschaftsmethoden. Zur Rolle der Musik in den Guaraní-Reduktionen der Jesuiten in Paraguay im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert. In: IRASM 44 (2013), issue 2, pp. 213-238. Zagreb (2013) Jordania, J.: Music and Emotions: Humming in Human Prehistory (Proceedings of the International Symposium on Traditional Polyphony, held in Tbilisi, Georgia in 2008). http://symposium.pol yphony.ge/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/02.Joseph-Jordania.eng_.pdf. Accessed 8 March 2019 (2010)

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Kandel, E.: Das Zeitalter der Erkenntnis. Die Erforschung des Unterbewussten in Kunst, Geist und Gehirn von der Wiener Moderne bis heute. Siedler Verlag, München (2014) (english 2012) Knepler, G.: Geschichte als Weg zum Musikverständnis. Zu Theorie, Methode und Geschichte der Musikgeschichtsschreibung. Reclam, Leipzig (1977) (2., expanded edition 1982) Köbler, G.: Mittelhochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed. 2014. http://www.koeblergerhard.de/mhd/ mhd_s.html. Accessed 16 June 2016 (2014) Mayer, G.: Un Brindisi Contrappuntato. Eine imaginäre Vorlesung zum 90. Geburtstag von Harry Goldschmidt. In: Heister, H.-W. (ed.): Kunstwerk und Biographie. Gedenkschrift Harry Goldschmidt (= Heister, H.-W. (ed.): Zwischen/Töne. Neue Folge, vol. 1), pp. 23-62. Weidler Buchverlag, Berlin (2002) Mithen, St.: The Singing Neanderthals: The Origins of Music, Language, Mind and Body. W&N, London (2006) Osterwold, M., and Straebel, V. (eds.): Pfeifen im Walde. Ein unvollständiges Handbuch zur Phänomenologie des Pfeifens. Podewil, Berlin (1994) Pallowski, K., Warneken, B. J.: Die Musik hinter den Worten. Zur Sozialanthropologie des Stimmklangs. In: Phleps, Th., Reich, W. (eds.): Musik-Kontexte. Festschrift für Hanns-Werner Heister, vol. 2, pp. 662-686. MV Wissenschaft, Münster (2011) Patel, Aniruddh D.: Unsolved Mystery. The Evolutionary Biology of Musical Rhythm: Was Darwin Wrong?, 25 March 2014. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.1001821. Accessed 13 February 18 (2014) Perle, G.: Das geheime Programm der Lyrischen Suite von Alban Berg. In: Alban Berg. Kammermusik I (Musik-Konzepte, vol. 4), pp. 49-74. text+kritik, München (1978) Peters, B.: Modul H2—Prosodie und Intonation SoSe 2008—Benno Peters www.ipds.uni-kiel.de/ Dokumente/ModulH/H_2/VL1_H2_170408_WEB.pdf. Accessed 22 April 2022 (2008) Phleps, Th.: “As I look back at those Times …” Über Charles Ives und seine Musik in drei Sätzen. In: Zwischen Adorno und Zappa. Semantische und funktionale Inszenierungen in der Musik des 20. Jahrhunderts (Zwischen/Töne. Neue Folge, vol. 2), pp. 188-215. Weidler Buchverlag, Berlin (2001) Phleps, Th.: Männer, Muskeln, Diskussionen. Zum 2. Streichquartett. In: Heister, H.-W. (ed.): Charles Ives, 1874–1954. Amerikanischer Pionier der Neuen Musik (Atlantische Texte, vol. 23, ed. Atlantische Akademie Rheinland-Pfalz e.V.), :, pp. 85-105. wvt Wissenschaftlicher Verlag, Trier (2004) Piatigorsky, G.: Mein Cello und ich und unsere Begegnungen. dtv, München (1975) Rapp, U.: Handeln und Zuschauen. Untersuchungen über den theatersoziologischen Aspekt in der menschlichen Interaktion. Luchterhand, Darmstadt and Neuwied (1973) Rusam, B.: Mahlers “Adagietto”—ein (Liebes-)Lied ohne Worte. In: Heister, H.-W. (ed.): “Wo die schönen Trompeten blasen”. Vokale und instrumentale Semantik im Werk Gustav Mahlers (= Heister, H.-W., Hochstein, W. (eds.): Musik und. Eine Schriftenreihe der Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg. Neue Folge, vol. 11), pp. 177-192. Weidler Buchverlag, Berlin (2011) Sacks, O.: “Schimpansen tanzen nicht”. In: Der Spiegel, Hamburg, 2008, issue 11, pp. 146ff. (2008) Saus, W.: Oberton singen. Das Geheimnis einer magischen Stimmkunst. Obertongesang lernen mit dem neuen Drei-Stufen-Kurs. Traumzeit Verlag, Battweiler (2011) Siegele, U.: Vortrag. In: MGG, vol. 14, col. 16–31 (Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart) (The Music in History and Present Day), ed. F. Blume, 14 vols. + 2 supplement-vols. + 1 vol. register. Bärenreiter Verlag, Kassel et al. (1949–1979) (1968) Southern, R.: Die sieben Zeitalter des Theaters. Bertelsmann, Gütersloh (1966) Stähr, W.: IX. Symphonie in d-Moll, op. 125. In: Ulm, R. (ed.): Die Symphonien Beethovens. Entstehung, Deutung, Wirkung, pp. 246-263. dtv/Bärenreiter, München, Kassel et al. (1995) Steinig, W.: Als die Wörter tanzen lernten. Ursprung und Gegenwart von Sprache. Spektrum, Heidelberg (2008) Villepastour, A.: Ancient Text Messages of the Yoruba Bata Drum: Cracking the Code. Routledge, Abingdon and New York (2016) Warneken, B. J. 1995: Über das Pfeifen. In: Lipp, C. (ed.): Medien popularer Kultur. Erzählung, Bild und Objekt in der volkskundlichen Forschung Festschrift Rolf Wilhelm Brednich, pp. 230-241. Campus, Frankfurt a. M. and New York (1995)

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Weber-Lucks, Th.: Körperstimmen: vokale Performancekunst als neue musikalische Gattung. Ph.D. thesis at the Technische Universität Berlin (2005) Zellers, M. et al.: Hand gestures and pitch contours and their distribution at possible speaker change locations: a first investigation. In: Proceedings of GeSpIn 2019. Gesture and Speech in Interaction-6th edition (GESPIN 2019), 11-13 September, University of Paderborn. University of Paderborn, pp. 93-98. URN: http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bsz:mh39-92613. Accessed 22 May 2022 (2019) Biography Hanns-Werner Heister, Prof. Dr. phil., *1946 in Plochingen/Neckar (BRD, BadenW¨urttemberg), has five children and is married to Karin Heister-Grech. Studied 1965–1977 Musicology, German studies and Indo-European studies/linguistics in T¨ubingen, Frankfurt a.M. und Berlin (University of Technology), 1977 Ph.D. in musicology in Berlin (University of Technology, with Carl Dahlhaus: Diss. published 1983 as Das Konzert. Theorie einer Kulturform [The Concert. Theory of a Cultural Form], 2 vols. 1993. 1970-1992 freelancer, 1992–1998 Professor for history of music and music communication at the Musikhochschule “Carl Maria von Weber” Dresden, 1998/99–2011 Professor for musicology at the Hochschule für Musik and Theater Hamburg.— Themes of research and publications: Methodology of musicology; aesthetics, sociology, history, and anthropology (in particular music and human perception, origins of language and art) of music; political, popular music, new music, jazz; music and musical culture in Nazism, resistance movement and exile; aesthetics and history of music theatre; media/technology and institutions of music culture; music analysis; music and: other arts, psychoanalysis, play, maths, cybernetics, fuzzy logic; gardening. Books: Jazz (1983); Vom allgemeingültigen Neuen. Analysen engagierter Musik: Dessau, Eisler, Ginastera, Hartmann [Of the Universal New. Analyses of engaged Music: …] (2006); (photographies by Ines Gellrich) Un/Endlichkeit. Begegnungen mit György Ligeti [In/Finity. Encountering Görgy Ligeti] (2008); Hintergrund Klangkunst [Background Sound Art] (2008; publ. 2009); Heinz Gellrich—Zeiten, Wege, Zeichen [Times, Paths, Signs] (2014); (Ed. and main author) Die Ehrenmitglieder der Staatstheater Stuttgart 1912–2018. Theatergeschichte in Porträts [The Honorary Members of the Stuttgart State Theatres 1912-2018. Theatre History in Portraits] (2018); Music and Fuzzy Logic. The Dialectics of Ideas and Realizations in the Artwork Process (Studies in Fuzziness and Soft Computing, ed. J. Kaprzyk, Vol. 406) (2021); Musik und Fuzzy Logic. Die Dialektik von Idee und Realisierungen im Werkprozess (2021). Tasten, Telegraphie, Telephonie. Musikalische Modelle und technisch-industrielle Medien (in preparation, 2022). Co-editor of (among others): Musik und Musikpolitik im faschistischen Deutschland [Music and Music Politics in Fascist Germany] (1984); Komponisten der Gegenwart [Contemporary Composers] (loose leaf lexicon, since 1992, Jan. 2022 70 deliveries); Zwischen Aufklärung & Kulturindustrie [Between Enlightenment and Cultural Industry] (3 volumes, 1993); Musik und. Eine Schriftenreihe der Hochschule für Musik und Theater [Music and] Hamburg (since 2000).— Editor of among others: Musik/Revolution [Music/Revolution] (3 vols., 1996/97); “Entartete Musik” 1938—Weimar und die Ambivalenz [“Degenerated Music” 1938—Weimar and Ambivalence], 2 vols. (2001); Geschichte der Musik im 20. Jahrhundert [History of Music in the 20th Century], Vol. III: 1945-1975 (2005); Zur Ambivalenz der Moderne [On the Ambivalence of Modernity] (series Musik/Gesellschaft/Geschichte), 4 vols., Vol. 1 2005; Vol. 2-4 2007. Bd. 5 2012; Zwischen/Töne. Musik und andere Künste [Over/tones. Music and other Arts] (series since 1995). More see www. Hanns-Werner-Heister.de.

Contents

Music Anthropologic Question—Anthropology and Sociolinguistics Music in Cognitive Evolution: Mimesis and the Evolving Domain of Auditory Intersubjectivity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Merlin Donald

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Correspondence and Contradiction: Functions and Interactions of Spoken and Body Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Kerstin Störl

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Prosody and Body Language—Paralinguistic Components in Political Communication. Vocal and/versus Instrumental in Non-musical Utterances . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mechthild Klett

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Music Aesthetic Question Word, Tone, Context: Communication and Sense in the Medium of Music . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mário Vieira de Carvalho Cantabile and the Opposite in Trumpet Melodies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Lasse Jens Fankhänel Colla Voce. On the Relationship Between the Vocal and the Instrumental in the “Lied” Works of Louis Spohr . . . . . . . . . . . . . Hans Krauss

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How Franz Liszt Imparts Singing and Speaking on the Piano . . . . . . . . . . 113 Jean-Jacques Dünki

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Love, Death, and Rhetoric. Meaningful Textual-Musical and Vocal-Instrumental Relationships in Giuseppe Verdi’s La Traviata . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139 Sebastiano De Filippi The Word in the Tone in Works of Gustav Mahler . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161 Silja Haller Normative, Descriptive, Suggestive—The Word in Scriabin’s Instrumental Music . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171 Sigfried Schibli Athematicism and Staged Meaning. Microtonality in Alois Hába’s Opera Mother, op. 35 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183 Patrick Becker-Naydenov On Some Aspects of Compositional Anthropology in Mauricio Kagel’s Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189 Wieland Reich Hans Werner Henze’s Concept of Musica Impura. On the Historical Significance of Music for Social Progress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203 Michael Kerstan Singing, Playing and Performing in Popular Music in the Age of Liquid Modernity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223 Alenka Barber-Kersovan Music-Geographical (“Ethnomusicological”) Question “We Drummed It into Them so They Can Go Whistle for It!”—Non-vocal Forms of Communication in Oto-Manguean Languages, Pirahã and Bora . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243 Alexandra Núñez and Jonathan Reich Singing and Sounds. Highlights in Chinese Culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257 Klaus Sonnendecker Song, Sound and Meaning in the Music of the Indigenous People of Guatemala in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries . . . . . . . . . . . . 273 Deborah Singer The Relationship of the Vocal and the Instrumental in Balinese Gamelan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287 Dieter Mack The Vocal and Instrumental Fields to Evoke the Pre-Columbian Universe in Alberto Ginastera’s Cantata Para América Mágica (1960) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297 Luciana Colombo

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Latin American Insurrection, New Music and Language Without Words: Word and Sound in Graciela Paraskevaídis’ pero están . . . . . . . . 315 Tina Vogel Music Sociological Question In the Name of “Art” and Progress: Symphony Soirées as a Novelty. Exclusions of Choral and Solo Singing and Virtuosity? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335 Martin Thrun Roles of the Vocal and Instrumental in the Star-Fan Relationship . . . . . . 363 Andreas Gries Music Historical Question The Terminology of Music Instruments in Croatian Multilingual Dictionaries of the Baroque Period . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 377 Stanislav Tuksar The Linguistic Issue in 18th Century Croatian Music . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 391 Vjera Katalini´c Franz Brendel’s ‘Symphonic Poem Dilemma’: Tailoring the Vocal-Instrumental Relationship to Fit the ‘New-German School’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 405 Sean Reilly Lyric Prose and Melodrama as Forms of Opposition to Nazi Barbarism. Viktor Ullmann’s the Lay of the Love and Death of Cornet Christoph Rilke, for Speaker and Piano (Theresienstadt 1944) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 423 Hanns-Werner Heister and Monica Tempian Pedagogy and Music Education Language and Gesture as a Music Educational Opportunity on the Path Towards the Expressive Interpretation of Vocal and Instrumental Music . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 453 Silke Lehmann Mutism—Paralinguistic Expressions as Replacement and Equivalent for Speaking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 467 Hanne Susanna Heister On the Differences in Children’s Singing and Playing of Instruments . . . 483 Barbara Stiller

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Gesture Language and Dance Art Hostility to the “I” and Sign Language: Hölderlin’s Poems at the Window and the “Playing of Strings” of the Hours . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 497 Jacky Carl-Joseph Paul Writing, Dancing and the Art of Embodiment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 513 Marion Kant Dance and Text Configurations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 525 Nele Lipp Fine Art Danse Macabre and Its Interpretation in Vocal and Instrumental Music, in Literature, and Visual Arts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 543 Monika Fink On Gestures and Sounds in Peasant Scenes by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, and Their Social and Political Enunciations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 553 Anabella Weismann Voices, Daily Life Sounds and Instrumental Music as Plurimaterial Forms of Artistic Communication in the Work of Dieter Roth . . . . . . . . . 567 Ina Jessen Cinematography and Technical Media Diegetic and Background Music in the Cinema: Differences Between the Uses and Functions of Vocal and Instrumental Music . . . . . 581 Roberto Calabretto Music and Film—Accompaniment or Relation. The Vocal and the Instrumental in “Film Music” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 591 Dietrich Stern Word Art/Literature and Music Listening to the Novel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 611 Roberto Favaro Still Songs In-Between and Beyond—Reflections on the Musical Dimensions of Paul Celan’s “Todesfuge” and Manfred Winkler’s “Und Die Fiedler Fiedeln” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 623 Mariama Diallo

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J. M. Coetzee: J. S. Bach—A Reading of Diary of a Bad Year and Summertime as Musical Novels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 643 Hilmar K. Heister Postface Music, Word Language, Gesture Language and Artistic Languages in the Field Between Nature—Body—Culture. Results, Interim Results and Future Tasks of Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 671 Hanns-Werner Heister

Editors and Contributors

About the Editors Hanns-Werner Heister Prof. Dr. phil., carried out his university studies in Musicology, German Studies, and Indo-European Studies and Linguistic, in Tübingen, Frankfurt a. M. and Berlin (Technische Universität), respectively. In 1977, he received his Dr. phil in Musicology from the Technische Universität Berlin, under the supervision of Carl Dahlhaus; in 1993, he received his Habilitation from the Carl-vonOssietzky-Universität Oldenburg; 1992–1998, he served as a Professor for Musical communication and History of Music at the Musikhochschule, Carl Maria von Weber in Dresden; Between 1998 and 2011, he served as a Professor for Musicology at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg. Furthermore, he worked as a freelancer for various radio stations, journals and newspapers. He also taught at various Schools of Music and Arts, such as in Berlin, Hamburg, Dresden, Wien, and Weimar. He held seminars at universities in Heredia, Costa Rica, Wellington, New Zealand, Parma, and Saarbrücken. Author and Editor of different books and book series in the field of music history and musicology, his research has been dealing with various topics, such as: methodology of musicology; aesthetics, sociology, history, and anthropology of music; political, popular music, new music and jazz; music and musical culture in Nazism, resistance movement and exile. Further topics include: aesthetics and history of music theatre; media/technology and institutions of music culture; music analysis; fuzzy logic and cybernetics; and gardening. He is also the author of many books such as: Das Konzert. Theorie einer Kulturform (1983); Jazz (Bärenreiter Verlag Kassel, 1983); Vom allgemeingültigen Neuen. Analysen engagierter Musik (Pfau-Verlag, 2006); Hintergrund Klangkunst (Schott Music, 2009); Die Ehrenmitglieder der Staatstheater Stuttgart 1912–2018. Theatergeschichte in Porträts (W. Kohlhammer GmbH, 2018); Music and Fuzzy Logic—The Dialectics of Idea and Realizations in the Artwork Process (Springer, 2021); and Musik und Fuzzy Logic. Die Dialektik von Idee und Realisierungen im Werkprozess (Springer, 2021).

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Hanjo Polk studied jazz drums, musicology and art history in Hamburg. He worked as a Freelancer jazz drummer, composer and musicologist. Since 2005, he has been lecturer for jazz history at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg. Between 2008 and 2011 he has also worked as a research assistant in the same University. He has authored and co-authored different publications, in German, in the field of music, history of music and music culture, such as: Zur Hamburger Musik und Musikkultur zwischen Novemberrevolution und Machtübergabe an die Nazis, in: Dirk Hempel und Friederike Weimar (eds.), Himmel auf Zeit. Die Kultur der 1920er Jahre in Hamburg (2010); Cassandra Wilsons Interpretation des Songs “Strange Fruit”, in: Thomas Phleps and Wieland Reich (eds.), Musik-Kontexte. Festschrift für Hanns Werner Heister (Monsenstein und Vannerdat, 2011); Komplexität und Einheit. Steve Colemans Zusammenarbeit mit der Gruppe “AfroCuba de Matanzas”, in: Hanns-Werner Heister (ed.), Schichten, Geschichte, System. Geologische Methaphern und Denkformen in den Kunstwissenschaften (2016); Zelle und Motiv. Zur Abgrenzung formaler Kategorien im Bereich des Submotivischen, in: HannsWerner Heister and Hanjo Polk (eds.), Bewegtes und Bewegendes. Der Motiv-Begriff in Künsten und Wissenschaften (2017). He is the co-editor, with H.-W. Heister, of Bewegtes und Bewegendes. Der Motiv-Begriff in Künsten und Wissenschaften (Musik/Gesellschaft/Geschichte, vol. 7, ed. H.-W. Heister), published by Weidler Buchverlag Berlin, in 2017. Bernhard Rusam Cand. phil., studied to become a teacher in music and history at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg, with piano as main subject, and the University Hamburg. Since the First State Examination in 2006, he has been working as a piano teacher, accompanist and musicologist. He has also been active as a music editor for the music publisher Peermusic Classical, Hamburg. He is currently working on a dissertation about the Roman emperors and their relation to music. He is the author of different publications, in German, including: ...es kommt die F¨uchsin als Nonne verkleidet ... Renard von Strawinsky (Weidler Buchverlag Berlin, 2007); Mahlers “Adagietto”—ein (Liebes-) Lied ohne Worte. In: Heister, H.-W. (ed.): “Wo die sch¨onen Trompeten blasen”. Vokale und instrumentale Semantik im Werk Gustav Mahlers (Weidler Buchverlag Berlin, 2011); musica et publicus. Musik als politisches Instrument im R¨omischen Reich. In: Phleps, T., Reich, W. (eds.): Musik-Kontexte (Festschrift für Hanns-Werner Heister) (Monsenstein und Vannerdat, 2011); Bauer zu Nathal. Die gescheiterte (?) Musikerkarriere des Oberösterreichers Thomas Bernhard. In: Heister, H.-W., Spies, B. (eds.): Tarnung und Aufdeckung in den Künsten vom 16. bis zum 21. Jahrhundert (Festschrift für Erwin Rotermund) (2013); St¨adtische Klanglandschaften in der Literatur um 1900. In: Widmaier, T., Grosch, N. (eds.): Popul¨are Musik in der urbanen Klanglandschaft. Kulturgeschichtliche Perspektiven (Waxmann Verlag GmbH, 2014); Vom Wertgegenstand aus der Unterschicht an die Oberfl¨ache zum Menschen unter Menschen? M¨oglichkeiten des sozialen Aufstiegs f¨ur Musiksklaven im R¨omischen Reich. In: Heister, H.-W. (ed.): Schichten, Geschichte, System. Geologische Metaphern und Denkformen in den Kunstwissenschaften (Weidler Buchverlag Berlin, 2016); ... drei N¨achte und drei Tage Leid und K¨alte ... Der Verlauf der Winterreise-Wanderung.

Editors and Contributors

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In: Heister, H.-W., Polk, H. (eds.): Der Motiv-Begriff in K¨unsten und Wissenschaften (Weidler Buchverlag Berlin, 2017).

Contributors Alenka Barber-Kersovan Institute for Sociology and Cultural Organisation, Leuphana University Lüneburg, Lüneburg, Germany Patrick Becker-Naydenov University of Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany Roberto Calabretto Department of Languages and Literatures, Communication, Education and Society (DILL), University of Udine, Udine, Italy Luciana Colombo ACCRA and CREAA, University of Strasbourg, Strasbourg, France Mário Vieira de Carvalho CESEM—Research Centre for Aesthetics and Sociology of Music, Nova University Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal Mariama Diallo School of Languages and Cultures, Humanities & Social Sciences, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand Merlin Donald Department of Psychology, Queen’s University, Kingston, ON, Canada Jean-Jacques Dünki Hochschule für Musik, Basel, Switzerland Lasse Jens Fankhänel University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany Roberto Favaro University of Padua, Padua, Italy Sebastiano De Filippi Buenos Aires, Argentina Monika Fink Institute of Musicology, University of Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria Andreas Gries University of Music and Theater Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany Silja Haller Berlin, Germany Hanne Susanna Heister Rosengarten, Germany Hanns-Werner Heister Prof. retired of the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg, Rosengarten, Lower Saxony, Germany Hilmar K. Heister St. Augustine University, Mwanza, Tanzania Ina Jessen Art History Department, Hamburg University, Hamburg, Germany; Dieter Roth Museum, Hamburg, Germany Marion Kant Pembroke College Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

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Vjera Katalini´c Department for History of Croatian Music, Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Zagreb, Croatia Michael Kerstan Hans Werner Henze Foundation, Munich, Germany Mechthild Klett Berlin, Germany Hans Krauss Spohr-Score, Spohr Project, Braunschweig, Germany Silke Lehmann University of Music and Drama, Rostock, Germany Nele Lipp Hanstedt, Germany Dieter Mack University of Music Lübeck, Lübeck, Germany Alexandra Núñez Institute of Linguistics and Literary Studies, Technical University of Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany Jacky Carl-Joseph Paul Faculty of Philosophy, University of Poitiers, Poitiers, France Jonathan Reich General Linguistics (Department of Linguistics), University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany Wieland Reich Wewelsfleth, Germany Sean Reilly Leipzig University, Leipzig, Germany Sigfried Schibli Basel, Switzerland Deborah Singer Escuela de Música, Universidad Nacional, Heredia, Costa Rica Klaus Sonnendecker University in Berlin, Berlin, Germany Dietrich Stern Mainz, Germany Barbara Stiller Hochschule Für Musik und Theater Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany Kerstin Störl Institute for Romance Studies, Humboldt-University of Berlin, Berlin, Germany Monica Tempian School of Asian and European Languages and Cultures, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand Martin Thrun Leipzig, Germany Stanislav Tuksar Academy of Music—University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia Tina Vogel Stuttgart, Germany Anabella Weismann Berlin, Germany

Music Anthropologic Question—Anthropology and Sociolinguistics

Music in Cognitive Evolution: Mimesis and the Evolving Domain of Auditory Intersubjectivity Merlin Donald

1 Introduction Music is a unique product of the human mind whose full realization was delayed until a variety of factors started to converge in late human prehistory. Music taps into some special properties of the human brain on the one hand, and on the other, reflects every aspect of human cognitive and cultural emergence, while its realizable modern forms depend heavily on technological innovation. The evocative power of music reveals and exploits aesthetic, social, and emotional properties of mind that evolved long before the modern forms of music were invented. Its basic defining features can be traced back to a radical early breakthrough in hominin cognitive evolution— mimetic action and expression, and the interactive manifestations of this innovation in culture. Other defining features of music emerged much more recently, as our species evolved the complex and abstract domains of auditory intersubjectivity. Music is a cultural as well as a cognitive phenomenon that exists independently of any single sensory or motor modality of the brain, or, for that matter, of the mind of any individual human being. It is a multimodal form of expression. It is commonly experienced and remembered as sound, and as such, it exists primarily in the auditory modality and as a vocal skill, but can also tap directly into other sensory modalities, especially those concerned with body sensation and movement. Judging from its most basic forms, it emerged originally as a performance skill, most probably acted out in social groups. As an evolving complex of skill sets, it combined several common mammalian modalities of sensation and action, most often in the context of shared emotions, such as collective celebrations, or shared grief. Its actualized forms are culture-specific creations, and most musical performances are context-specific and situational. The latter fact implies that music, in addition to its obvious demands on

M. Donald (B) Department of Psychology, Queen’s University, Kingston, ON, Canada e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 H.-W. Heister et al. (eds.), Word Art + Gesture Art = Tone Art, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20109-7_1

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perceptual and motor sensibilities, also imposes formidable demands on executive brain functions. Musical creations are arbitrary inventions. They entail culturally unique and unpredictable sequences of actions that must be assimilated by the brains of performers and audiences, directing various brain systems to perform and mix in unique interactive and expressive combinations. In this, music shares many of the same features found in religious rituals and various other art forms, including theater. The boundaries between these phenomena are not always clear. Most performancerelated phenomena share such features as synchronous body rhythms, vocal modulations, and above all, vulnerability to emotional contagion. That close link to emotion is still found in many musical genres, such as military music, national anthems, horror film soundtracks, rock concerts, and so on. The cognitive foundations of music lie in unique human brain adaptations that evolved long before music existed in any of its present forms. For example, the capacity for disciplined practice and rehearsal, needed to master most musical skills; or the ability to automatize the fine details of performance, freeing up room for higher cognitive interpretation. These reflect a host of evolutionary adaptations with very wide applications in human behavior that are not unique to music. There are also special anatomical features that influence the forms of music. The human vocal tract is quite special and judging from the very limited vocal skills of modern apes, vocal music as we know it could not have evolved in hominins until there were significant evolutionary modifications to the vocal capacities of our Miocene ape ancestors. Although vocal evolution in hominins is usually causally linked to speech and phonology, it is likely that the earliest moves toward modern human vocal capabilities were triggered by pressures for improved voluntary control of what in linguistics are called “prosodic” vocalizations, which convey emotion—as opposed to “phonological” vocalizations, which are the building blocks of words. The deliberate use of innate emotional vocalizations can involve either suppression or deliberate modulation. In that sense, it is very likely that the deepest evolutionary roots of musical vocalizations go back further in time than those demanded by phonology. Crucially, music is dependent on an evolved human capacity for learning novel and complex combinations of actions. This capacity greatly exceeds the capabilities of modern apes. This means that the emergence of music depended upon improving the primate brain’s ability to learn and refine new skill sets; in this case, a variety of skill sets that ultimately impinge on the auditory domain. This may involve many very different systems, some, such as movements of the extremities, that seem very far removed from hearing. This aspect of music evolution, much like every distinctly human skill, was contingent on a hominin revolution in voluntary movement control of the whole body, not just the vocal apparatus.

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2 The Emergence of Mimetic Capacity in the Archaic Ancestors of Species Homo The beginnings of that revolution were already implicit in the lifestyle and toolmaking abilities of the afarensis australopithecines, remote ancestors of archaic hominins. This adaptation, known generically as mimesis—including both mimetic skill and mimetic imagination—was the first unique feature of the human mind to evolve, and part of the core platform upon which the later evolution of higher cognitive function would be constructed.1 The early appearance of mimetic capabilities is proven by the presence of ancient stone tools. No modern ape can invent these tools, and they provide hard evidence for the existence of mimetic capabilities, perhaps not fully evolved, but significantly advanced over any modern ape, early in human evolution. The reasoning behind this conclusion is that their manufacture and effective use demanded the kind of deliberate, supervised practice needed for virtually all complex procedural learning. Thirty years ago, the best evidence dated the first stone tools to about two million years ago, and that has changed; the oldest evidence for stone tool use can now be reliably dated to over three million years ago,2 in afarensis. The more sophisticated Acheulian stone toolkit appears later, with the appearance of our species, Homo, about two million years ago. It is important to note that the early emergence of mimesis was not restricted to manual control, or any other specialized movement system including vocal articulation; it appeared at the very top of the existing primate voluntary motor hierarchy, as can be seen in the positioning of mimetic control in the premotor cortex of the modern human brain.3 The roots of mimesis are ancient, but it was at the top of the brain’s motor hierarchy from the beginning. Mimesis is not just a matter of improved voluntary movement; it is also a mode of thought that can create culture. It can be described as an analogue or holistic style of thinking that is manifest in action-metaphor and gesture. It is much more basic to our uniquely human way of thinking than the more abstract modes of representation found in literature and formal logic. Indeed, on present evidence, language and logic evolved much later.4 Hominins were highly skilled, long before they were articulate, and the refinement of human skill depends upon mimetic capacity. The acquisition and proper use of skills involves a form of thought that is impressionistic and imaginative, and sensitive to the specifics of social and physical contexts—in a word, mimetic. Think of it as the full command of the body as an expressive apparatus whose actions can be modified in considerable detail toward the realization of a goal, in this case, a goal defined in very concrete, practical terms.

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Donald (1991, 1993a, b, 1998a, b, 2001, 2004, 2012a). McPherron et al. (2010). 3 Donald (1991, 1993a, b). 4 Donald (2013, 2018). 2

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3 Overcoming a Cerebral Bottleneck Mimesis was the foundation-skill of the hominin mind in that sense.5 The evolution of mimesis required the hominin brain to do something that had never been done: to solve a long-standing roadblock that prevented all other mammals from refining and thus expanding their range of skills. In mimetic action, the frontal brain regions that plan and organize actions must create motor models—controlling the patterns of muscle contractions—that follow the dictates of detailed perceptual and imaginative models produced by the posterior regions of the brain. The neurological challenge is that the motor models usually do not resemble the perceptual ones, in any way; and to map the one onto the other requires a very abstract leap of imagination— a detailed imaginative map with metacognitive properties. When I say detailed, I mean that mimetic models must attend to modifying the finest details of movement, and the actor must imagine those improvements with enough precision to refine the specific skill being learned. For example, in the case of flint-knapping, the degree of precision required would be nontrivial; in the case of, say, playing a flute, the degree of precision is quite extraordinary, involving fingers, wrists, respiratory and postural muscles, the cheeks and tongue, and many other muscles, all coordinated with whatever social context is relevant. Whole-body sequences of movement, as in dance, are even more challenging, in terms of the overall coordination effort required to control distal muscle systems. To perform a simple dance properly, a human being must manipulate legs, feet, hands, and trunk in order, according to a very particular, and completely arbitrary, sequence, which may be altered according to a personal set of aesthetic values. This level of physical self-mastery is uniquely human. When it first started to emerge in evolution, this was mammalian body awareness carried to a new level. The actions of self would ultimately be controlled to a much finer degree than previously possible. Projecting refined action to the manufacture of tools demanded an abstract leap of imagination. Many animals use perceptual information in action—for example, when chimpanzees strip branches to fish for termites, they tend to choose branches that are not too thick or too rough to do the job. But they do not return to the task over and over until they have perfected a fishing device, imagining better and better fishing rods as they learn. One might speculate that they are neither compulsive nor obsessive enough, not visionary enough, to refine their actions in this way, even when highly motivated; but more importantly, they apparently lack the capacity for the detailed bodily self-awareness needed to refine their actions, or the imaginative vision to perceive the advantages of refining that tool in the first place. The latter requires taking the perceptual imagination to a new level as well—imagining longer-term performatory goals as well as refinements of concrete acts. Early australopithecines evidently took the first steps toward this kind of mimetic imagining and performing. This became the foundation for the further evolution of refined skills, which characterized human evolution. The mimetic capacity to refine the actions of self, which has continued to evolve in our own species, remains a 5

Donald (1998b, 2013).

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foundational force in human affairs, and produces such typically human cognitive patterns as our ability to acquire thousands of micro-skills in a lifetime; the existence of so many subtle local gestural traditions and personal styles; and the rich cultural variety of ritualized public expressions of such things as birth, grief, and victory. It explains our irresistible tendency to be fascinated with other humans, and to imitate one another’s behavior, as well as our conformity, and inability to resist the contagion of group emotions. Mimesis determines the tone of human social life; it is the ultimate driving force behind most of the arts and especially, of participatory games, which are perhaps the ultimate refinements of the mimetic mode (keeping in mind that playing in a rock band or string quartet is very much a complex game with rules, referees, and coaches).

4 The Metacognitive Supervision of Mimetic Action The presence of mimesis and mimetic skill also implies an ability to observe and reflect on the actions of the physical self—that is, metacognition. The latter point deserves further comment. To become better mimetic actors, hominins needed to evolve the ability to reflect on the learning process itself, with the option of deliberately examining, and shaping, their own actions. This self-supervisory ability is called metacognition. It oversees the personal domain of action and performance. There are elements of metacognition in nonhuman animals but human beings are aware of their bodies in a uniquely abstract way, almost like seeing oneself as other, as objectified. Only human beings reflect on their own actions in such detail and can modify the forms of their actions accordingly. We can take great joy in this; human children pass large amounts of time in skillrelated play. For instance, they might spend an entire afternoon improving their ability to bounce a ball, skip stones, make faces, assume odd postures, create novel vocalizations, or practice an instrument, all in the context of their personal imaginative worlds. In this, they are exercising their unique mimetic capacities. No other creature does anything like this. Many species engage in play, of course, and innate skills are exercised frequently in the young. But most species play in a stereotyped manner, and do not generate truly novel patterns, or engage in roleplaying or reciprocal mimetic games (such as pattycake). It is as if their attention was fixed on the external world, and unable to redirect itself toward the internal world of action. That is a great limitation, because it precludes what humans know as culture. If attention is largely outward directed, then motor activity, generated internally, remains fixed and stereotyped unless it is modified from without (as in a conditioning experiment). Public expressions must be observable to others, thus overt motor acts. The domains of public expression will not grow unless individuals start experimenting with their actions, and others respond, either with imitations, or modifications. This observation rings true when examining how other mammals act: they do not experiment with their bodies as human children do. Their awareness seems more other-directed, than self-directed.

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Mimesis is therefore the direct result of consciously examining our own embodiment, of the brain using its body as a reduplicative device, to express in a public manner, what is imagined. Musical talent depends on this, to varying degrees. The cognitive engine of this expressive skill is a powerful working memory space, an imaginary inner theater where imaginary actors play with imaginary actions and expressions, and where the embodied self performs various possible roles in the social world. It is also a place where self-initiated actions can be judged, altered, and exposed to internal critical scrutiny. The outcome of this remarkable process is a characteristically human capacity for re-enacting events in a nonverbal, gestural, fuzzy, quasi-symbolic manner. A child’s simple pantomime of a tea party or bedtime is a good example. It is an imaginary playback that tries to reduplicate an aspect of perceived reality but alters reality in the process. Reality does not in fact look anything like its putative re-enactment, and every successive mimetic act in such a sequence will become another variation on the initial re-enactment. The metacognitive part of the mimetic imagination can reflect on this scenario, which can be altered until the child judges it to be “right.” The details of such a performance are never fixed. They can be unpredictable and personal. Mimetic expressions, even the simplest of them, are inherently creative and always at least somewhat arbitrary. Mimesis can produce a virtual infinity of specific forms, even in the simplest reenactment, charade, or pantomime. Moreover, mimetic expressions can potentially engage any part of the body. Unlike the songs of certain birds (perhaps the closest things to human mimesis) they are not limited to one sense modality. Rather, mimesis is amodal, and can map virtually any kind of event-percept onto virtually any set of muscles, using many different specific readouts. This leads to flexible analogue motor expressions, or action-metaphors. Think of a mime creating the impression of lifting a heavy box; the point is that a mimetic actor is never limited to using one set of muscles, or one fixed set of expressive forms. There are many ways to achieve the communicative goal. Human mimetic creativity is domain-general, supra-modal, and fully accessible to consciousness. Mimetic performances are, in principle, observable by others, and thus potentially shared; that is, cultural. This is true of many typically human endeavors, and athletes, skilled craftsmen, and various other kids of performers can refine the shared skill sets of a culture by generating variations and selecting the most successful variants for posterity. In the case of skilled rehearsal, the rehearsal itself is also a mimetic act; the performer is imitating his or her own previous actions and creating variations of those actions. Those actions are evaluated against an ideal, and the result is a personal action repertoire that can be improved.

5 The Importance of Symbolic Invention If we concede that human infants get their language skills, and all the tools of symbolic thought, from culture, then we should ask: Where did cultures come from in the first

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place? What generated them in the wild? The answer is: mimetic action, which makes symbolic invention possible.6 The first truly human cultures were mimetic, necessarily, because mimetic capacity is a prelude to the invention of original symbolic representations. Apes are notoriously poor at mimetic action. Note that apes can learn to use symbols, when they are provided by human beings, but they cannot generate even the simplest kind of original gesture. As a result, they are incapable of creating cultures with unique and highly variable skill sets. The musical arts, in fact all the arts, are essentially mimetic in their cognitive style. The mimetic mode is more like fuzzy logic than analytic thought, though musical notations and other compositional aids relied on the development of the analytic thought mode for their ultimate refinement. Even literature, which is so dependent upon language and literacy, is ultimately shaped by the deep mimetic tendencies emanating from the writer’s imagination. This idea was articulated by Frye (1957), Auerbach (1953) and Langer (1976) two generations ago. In a similar vein, the French philosopher Rene Girard emphasized the role of mimetic competition in shaping the underlying dramatic tensions of human social life.7 However, mimesis by itself cannot “explain” the wide variety of existing musical forms, and especially, the very late emergence of complex instrumental music, with such astonishing features as harmony, polyphony, counterpoint, minor and major scales. Such things could not, even with hindsight, have been predicted from an elementary adaptation such as mimetic capacity. An additional cognitive factor is needed to explain such innovations. That factor is not hearing: the parameters of the human auditory system are very similar to those of chimpanzees.8 A higher level of cognitive-cultural interaction must have come into play, an interactive cognitive game that I call the domain of auditory intersubjectivity.

6 Mindsharing and Intersubjectivity “Auditory intersubjectivity” can be defined as a hypothetical interactive space in culture where a (temporary) consensus is (sometimes) reached on the sounds and feeling tones of the contemporary auditory environment, and where sounds acquire much of their meaning. It is one of the more important aspects of mindsharing—in this case, a shared preference for a certain kind of sound environment (including, often, an accepted standard of silence), and a sharing of auditory aesthetics, with a strong, largely acquired, preference for a specific set of musical forms. In modern society, a shared preference for a certain style of music is often a good indicator of intimacy and social distancing, but above all, it is a manifestation of our ability not only to read one another’s minds, but also to actively share mind. That is, human beings can evaluate the degree of overlap, or agreement, with another person, or even 6

Donald (2012b, 2017). Girard (1979). 8 Passingham (1982). 7

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with a group, on values and beliefs, and we often base our social distancing on this kind of mutual evaluation. Thus, subjective experience, including that of others, is employed by human beings as a standard of overt behavior and social structure—a standard that is intersubjective in origin. In earlier societies with less technology, and much less variety, musical preferences tended to be strongly associated with time and place; thus, the soundscapes of Islamic Spain, Baroque Germany, or Victorian Britain still exist as evocative sound signatures for those times and places. In a limited manner, musical signatures can be a useful means to help us understand the mindset of a previous civilization. Modern instrumental music is a relatively recent invention, made possible by technological innovation, musical theory, and various notational systems, all of which have appeared within the recent past. However, a mind that can invent and appreciate modern musical forms must have evolved the capacities needed to appreciate it, produce it, and assimilate it long before its invention. No one has suggested that a capacity to compose and perform symphonies could have somehow “evolved” directly. Modern music obviously exploited certain brain capacities after the fact. But where could these capacities have come from? Not from auditory evolution— human audition does not differ significantly from that of our close genetic relatives, chimpanzees, and bonobos. There might be a hint of its origins in the fact that music is a distinctly cognitive phenomenon and exists at a very high level in both its compositional and performance aspects. All recorded hunter-gatherer cultures have had some form of music, usually a combination of song, dance, and rhythm, whose form would depend on existing tool technology. In effect, the invention of music revealed the existence of latent brain capacities that had not yet been expressed. This is true of many cultural inventions, of course; for example, it is also true of writing and literacy, which also had to be piggybacked or scaffolded on pre-existing capacities.

7 The Importance of Rhythm The primary products of the evolving interactive cognitive-cultural process unique to hominins consisted mostly of countless procedural memory representations, including a multitude of performance skills—the innumerable gestural, athletic, and linguistic skills that constituted the cognitive engine of all ancient societies. The advent of complex civilizations during the past five thousand years brought literacyrelated skills that were wedded to musical notations, instruments, and eventually, such esoteric analytic products as theories of musical composition. Those inventions brought with them a need for fixing musical skills in the memories of large populations—both listening skills and performance skills—that eventually became the key building-blocks of those cultures, especially of their foundational rituals. Thus, even the foundations of a complex musical culture lie mostly in the vast procedural memory holdings of large populations. In fact, music is, along with written language, an example par excellence of a recently evolved aspect of human higher

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cognition that is formed, fixed, and transmitted as part of a traditional skill set, consisting mostly of procedural memories, within a population. The early forms of music were necessarily limited, which is understandable because technology was so limited at the early stages of our evolution, and notations had not yet been invented. Prior to the invention of specialized musical instruments such as flutes, which already existed in the paleolithic era, the options for producing musical sounds were limited mostly to percussion and vocal performance. The probability of an early role of body rhythms in starting this process should not be underestimated. The invention of voluntary motor rhythms—say, a repeated sequence such as a paradiddle—is a uniquely human skilled sequence, infinitely expandable and variable; rhythmic movement produced by various nonhuman species is, by comparison, stereotyped, relatively invariant, and usually involuntary. In humans, rhythm can originate in any voluntary (striated muscle) system and include an infinity of sequences, combinations, and gestures. Any voluntary motor subsystem of the body, including the muscles of the eyes, face, head, trunk, arms, legs, feet, and hands, and whole-body movements, each with its own distinct wiring in the brain, may be included in a rhythmic mimetic sequence. Vocal sounds may often assume a dominant role, but many other action systems, including conventionalized emotional expressions, can be incorporated into a rhythmic performance. Moreover, rhythmic performance has a collective aspect: rhythmic actions may be produced singly, in groups, or in organized group patterns. They can be performed in synchrony or played against one another, or in other arrangements that are much like counterpoint and harmony. How can we describe the synchronous movement of dozens of dancers in producing a shared pattern, without alluding to harmony, or the vocal synchrony of choirs? The complexity of rhythmic performances, often coordinated without instruments, or just with drums, reflect many of the defining properties of instrumental music. The inclusion of chant, gesture, and facial expressions, common in many local traditional dances, yields a sampling of most of the characteristics of more complex music, albeit without notations, theories, or sophisticated instruments. It is tempting to suggest that many of the properties that define music originated in the evolution of ritual dance, rhythm, and group performances. The significance of rhythm comes from its neurology: precisely because it can be arbitrarily produced by virtually any of the brain’s action systems, rhythm must be classified as a supra-modal ability, sitting at the very top of the voluntary motor hierarchy. This is conclusive evidence for the presence, exclusively in human beings, of a unified neural hierarchy that controls voluntary movement at the top of the brain’s output architecture. The rhythm itself—usually a repeated pattern in time—may typically be heard but can originate in other sense modalities as well; and the rhythm can be “read out” or expressed in action, in any of the motor subsystems mentioned above. Thus, a dancer at a rock concert may pick up a rhythm in any sensory modality, and play it out in any motor modality, switching the pattern of rhythm-to-muscle mapping at will, which is an extraordinary cognitive achievement, completely out of the reach of other mammals, including anthropoid apes. This is a highly abstract cognitive capacity that eluded mammalian evolution for tens of millions of years. It is not a simple adaptation, of course. This very particular constellation of motor

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capacities took millions of years to evolve in hominins, judging from the temporal gap between its initial appearance in australopithecines, its further advances in erectus, and its modern manifestations in sapiens.

8 The Emergence of Cultural Memory The high-level motor adaptation underlying skill had a social and cultural side effect: it provided human ancestors with the ability to accumulate a shared procedural memory bank of refined and refinable skills that could be transmitted across generations and further improved over time.9 That storehouse was external to the individual brain, while still dependent on it, inasmuch as it existed in hominin populations that carried it and transmitted it to new generations. This very basic mechanism of collective learning and memory enabled human ancestors to accumulate skill sets that could change over time spans much longer than a single lifetime. It was only the beginning of a human cultural memory system, but it was the evolutionary wedge for growing more complex cultures that, given languages and symbols, could store and accumulate even more abstract knowledge and skill. The key here was the constant refinement of skill—which gave hominins the ability to adapt to new conditions by designing new tools and novel skills needed to use them effectively and transmit them to others, across generations. This created the potential for much greater cumulative cultural change than had been afforded to other primates, and, with time, generated more complex and differentiated cultures. The overwhelming weight of evidence shows that refined skill preceded language by millions of years. It started the processes that made the hominin invention of language possible once the complexity of cultural interactions demanded it. Music, as we know it, was unlikely to be a part of this process two million years ago. But music has its roots in mimesis and mimetic culture, which had gesture, mime, skill, and ritual, all conventionalized behaviors, from the start. A mimetically competent mind had the potential for inventing languages and symbols from the start, but the full exploitation of that potential had to wait until the preconditions for high-speed speech had been met much later in our evolution.

9 Vocomimesis and Rudimentary Song Deliberate nonverbal vocal communication—vocomimesis—was very likely within the mimetic reach of human ancestors before high-speed speech. Vocomimesis is largely emotional and prosodic in nature. It is manifest in speech in the way we modulate tones of voice to express emphasis, mood, attitudes, and feelings. In the long sequence of change and experimentation that marked hominin evolution over 9

Donald (2018).

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more than three million years, it is interesting to speculate that prosody came first, and that some form of “rudimentary song” must have existed long before the emergence of full language skills.10 The field of paleogenetics might conceivably resolve when this adaptation emerged, but for the moment we must be satisfied with speculation. Relying on present evidence, the evolution of hominin vocal abilities probably lagged somewhat behind the mimetic control of the rest of the body, but when it evolved, it had to be incorporated into the same movement hierarchy on the brain as other mimetic skills, because, after all, some emotional expressions come, in part, from the voluntary motor system, involving the same kinds of striated skeletal muscles involved in all voluntary movement. In addition, emotions can be elicited indirectly and associatively, in imagination, to afford some degree of voluntary control, as exploited in the Stanislavsky method of acting. We can be certain that vocomimesis preceded speech (as it does in child development) because it is one of the preconditions for the evolution of oral language.11 It was also the first logical evolutionary step from primate vocalization to human vocalization—to deliberately modulate the expression of emotion, in a more and more precise manner. The refinement of emotional expressions with prosodic modulation is closer to what anthropoid apes can achieve with their vocal apparatus than anything of human linguistic complexity. Archaic hominins just had to do it better, with more flexibility and nuance, and with a wider social-expressive range. Was rudimentary song a natural part of an archaic mimetic communication system? Did it characterize the vocal aspect of the rituals performed by that species? And in that case, are the vocal contours of song some of the most ancient and deepestrooted features of music? This is a distinct possibility, and it might help us better situate our ideas about erectus, whose achievements in so many areas—firetending, cooking, migration, toolmaking, and so on—were so impressive.

10 Music in Social Context: The Intersubjective Domain Many of the distinguishing features of music are related to the intersubjective ramifications of having a mimetic expressive mode already in place. The term “intersubjective” refers to another unique feature of human cognition, our ability, not only to read our own minds and the minds of others, but to share mind: that is, to understand one another’s subjective worlds, and to become so aware of the similarities and differences between our personal experiences, that we can use that knowledge to guide our overt behavior and identify with our chosen cohorts. This is all dependent on very high-level social cognitive abilities special to the human species. I will focus here on the cognitive and metacognitive nature of musical experience.

10

See my discussion of this, in the context of Darwin’s ideas about language evolution, in Donald (2001, pp. 39–41). 11 Nelson (1996); see also Donald (2017).

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As a first principle, all musical art is an intentional act aimed at influencing the minds of an audience. This audience includes both composer and performer. In this sense, musical performance and composition constitutes a class of cognitive engineering, that is, the deliberate construction of a performance to influence how people (including the composer) experience and view the world, especially in its auditory aspect, but also in its wider aspects. Music is often a reciprocal or collaborative activity, thus potentially interactive. Music explores possibilities that lie latent in the shared process of cognitive intersubjectivity. The response of other minds is an essential part of this interactive process. This aspect of performance–intersubjectivity—is grounded, first and foremost, in our propensity for gaining reciprocal control of another’s attention. Just as parents guide their child’s attention toward certain aspects of the world, performing artists try to control the attention of (usually) a larger audience, ultimately to control the auditory experience of other minds. To achieve this, both composer and performer must anticipate something of the audience’s reaction, which is based, to a large degree, on the performer’s capacity for reading this reaction; again, in the domain of auditory intersubjectivity. This principle applies even if an artist deliberately plans an unpredictable outcome, in which case, uncertainty itself is engineered into the design. Thus, music taps into one of the most basic cognitive features that define human beings: our capacity for reciprocal mindreading and its corollary, reciprocal attentional influence. Human beings share mind and experience, and music capitalizes on the most important phenomenon of human mental life: sharing mind. Human beings live in mindsharing cultures, and music is an integral feature in such cultures. All art, including musical performance, is created in the context of what we know other minds can understand and remember. This places every performance in a network context: works of art originate in traditions and populations, rather than in individuals. Individual minds may realize some of the possibilities latent in a social network, but ultimately the work would be unintelligible outside an existing tradition. Traditions are examples of distributed cognitive phenomena, that is, processes of thought and memory are distributed across many brains, and often, many generations. Performances are historically situated and embedded; they can transmit, focus, and filter the perceptions and thoughts of a multitude of people who function within an extended distributed network. This involves the linking of many minds and brains in cognitive communities that trade in ideas, visual images, and sounds. In modern society most such communities operate under the umbrella of institutional structures that direct the cognitive flow through the system. Artists are important participants in this process, and they are defined by this process. In becoming one component in a large network of cognitive activity, artists, like everyone else, must draw their basic range of ideas and techniques from the network, and usually operate within strict limits imposed by the network. Creative talent radiates an effect by changing the mindset of a population. That effect is additive in a distributed system, and cultures accumulate musical sophistication by assimilating many small increments of change. The impact of truly exceptional art is contingent on the ability to assimilate and master knowledge that society

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already possesses, to carry it significantly further, perhaps to the point of revolutionizing an existing tradition, and then to pull artists and audiences along with it. The same principle applies at any scale, from a solitary performer in a small village, to a technologically complex tradition involving millions. However, it is not the artist who sets the initial standard; it is the tradition itself—held by a population and transmitted to the artist—that provides the criteria needed to make a slight incremental advancement, let alone a transcendent one. Thus, the pull between artist, audience, and the wider population. Artistic “originality” must always be defined within, and by reference to, a specific tradition. The talented artist can exert a very wide influence precisely because talent needed to create music is very rare, while talent for its appreciation is more common.

11 Acoustic Event-Representations and Mental Models Musical performances are constructivist in their effects on the mind; that is, they can deeply affect the cognitive developmental process, beginning by instilling essential performance skills. The products of musical training are also aimed at deliberately refining and elaborating soundscapes, and acoustic mental models. These models, like those of vision, are the natural outcome of the brain’s innate need to integrate perceptual and conceptual material over time. Acoustic mental models start to develop in basic auditory event-perception, as the ability to perceive and remember complex auditory events as unitary experiences, or scenes.12 Auditory events are extremely complex phenomena, yet brains grasp such events as unitary components; for example, in learning language children learn to perceive words and sentences—themselves highly complex perceptual events—to build an even wider worldview of their native language. In music, the conventions of a specific tradition, such as jazz, or the Baroque, require a similar but parallel level of skill. This process, of recognizing, parsing, and remembering specific classes of auditory events, and abstracting these to more generalized auditory worldviews, is the core of a complex perceptual process that is heavily shared by local mindsharing traditions. An event-percept that unifies sound with other sensory channels is the product of the brain’s multiple sensory and perceptual modalities, often emerging in the context of multimodal integration, which ties together millions of individual sensations of sight, sound, touch, taste, smell, and emotions, into unitary event-percepts. A social event, such as a funeral, or a wedding celebration, may be reduced to a complex series of sensations, but it is typically experienced and remembered as a unitary thing despite the inconvenient fact that the actual experience of such as event may extend over many hours, and entail a number of small-scale local dramas, each involving a different group of actors. To make it even more challenging for both brain and computers scientists, the sounds of both language and music often have no clear time markers to define the sound-stream into smaller units; yet the brain effortlessly 12

See Bregman (1990).

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batches this messy complex of sensory stimuli into clear and discrete percepts. In this context, following the melodic line of a concert band in an open setting such as a park or outdoor public celebration is an incredible cognitive achievement, for which we do not currently have even the slightest hint of an adequate theory. The integrative process underlying musical listening involves something vaguely labelled “large scale neural integration” or LSNI. Little is known about how the brain achieves this kind of integration, which, in the case of music, is usually even more complex, because it is socially relativistic integration. Social behaviors are super-complex events that extend over very long periods. Many artistic forms— including operas and liturgical music—demand the capacity to simultaneously decipher a super-complex social event—a drama or narrative—while assimilating the accompanying music within the dramatic context. A uniquely human capacity for parsing and perceiving complex events is the foundation of virtually all genres of theater and music, including purely instrumental music, which may be confined to sound, but which often contains may quasi-independent streams of sound in complex interactions—think of competing performances by several improvising soloists. Performances that typify artistic genres such as these often constitute the heart of a culture, as they are widely shared, and the community transmits this tradition to the young—for example, the traditions of Flamenco music and dance, which are permeated with complex interactive emotions that must be shared to be effective. Human cognitive communities that share such traditions require a deep form of social understanding and are mindsharing entities. Musicians and visual artists are traditionally in the forefront of any society-wide process of mindsharing, since these artistic genres are often understood more readily than, say those based purely on literate culture, and tend to have a major influence, providing the sounds and images that express cultural identity.

12 Metacognitive Reflection in Musical Traditions In addition, a musical tradition, like most artistic traditions, is metacognitive in nature. Metacognition is, by definition, a capacity for self-reflection and self-observation; though it customarily refers to individuals, it can also describe the self-reflection process of an entire society. Music qualifies in both cases. The artistic object—in this case, a musical tradition–compels a specific kind of reflection on the society that created it. For example, music can be powerfully nostalgic, and define an era by its sound. It can also capture the mood and feeling of a certain time and place. Cultural eras tend to have a certain style of movement and sound, a particular feel, captured in the domain of auditory intersubjectivity, that can be communicated over time and space, and that is why music and body language have been so instrumental in defining cultural periods, providing groups of people, of whatever size and complexity, with self-identifying experiences and symbols. Film noir is a good example; it has a distinct feel about it, captured so well by the soundtracks of those films (or vice versa—the feel of that era might be equally a product of a specific soundtrack). The

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same can be said of the songs of the depressive dustbowl atmosphere of the 1930s, or Manhattan in the twenties, fin-de-siecle Paris, and countless other examples. They are powerful cues that evoke strong memories. In this aspect, music often plays a key role in the governance of cognition: that is, it influences the direction and control of thought and memory in a social network. Music creates and provides the formative sounds and attitudes that are central to social identity. Memories that are widely shared tend to last for many generations, and important event-percepts of communities have often been radically changed through the efforts of a single artist (e.g., Verdi’s revolutionary impact on nineteenthcentury Italy, or Wagner’s on Germany, or rock music on modern America). On such occasions, the musical arts occupy a disproportionate place in governing how people perceive and feel, and what they bond or identify with. This interweaving of music with social identities and rituals explains why religions have long recognized (and, consequently, relied upon) the cognitive value of the musical arts as a unifying power. For many, the music and rituals of a religion are the main elements that define the tradition, to the point where, often, belief is easier to overthrow than ritual. Musical preferences are very difficult to budge, once formed, and can define identities. Much the same can be said of the music of modern secular nation-states. Even military institutions rely heavily on music and ritual to align the feelings of their communities, with characteristic anthems, dirges, dances, and hymns. The all-encompassing musical and artistic traditions that have emerged from global religions such as Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam, relied upon every available aspect of expression, but especially the theatre of shared ritual, which usually incorporates music. In the chaotic imagery and sounds of modern multicultural societies, musical preference remains as one of the key markers of identity. In fact, it is often the most powerful means of communicating full membership in a given cultural community.

13 The Symbiosis of Technology and Performance In this century, the musical arts are one of the most technology-driven means of sharing feelings and emotions. Given an instrument, the human imagination is freed from the limitations of the human body and introduced to a new world of possibilities. The most basic forms of chant or song do not require instruments, but there are very few human societies that do not have basic instruments such as drums, flutes, or rattles; and these started the long historical process that transformed the role of sound in human life. Advanced innovations such as melody, polyphony, counterpoint, and orchestration came much later, but they depended upon the prior existence of various technologies and notations, without which they could not have come into existence. Another point speaks to the importance of technology in forming the hierarchies of skill that shape minds: musical artists are often wedded to their instruments. One of the most interesting results of making music with high technology is the degree to which an artist or a composer comes to identify with a specific set of technologies.

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What should we call a musician who identifies completely with, say, a saxophone or a piano? Is this now a hybrid being, part piano, or part trumpet, and part human? Can we even conceive of Louis Armstrong without his horn, or Chopin without his piano? Are they therefore transformed into a sort of machine-human chimera in our imaginations? Was Bach a monster, only part human, so assimilated into the world of Baroque instruments that he was a different beast from the rest of us, almost a new species of human, having merged his imagination with the historically situated series of machines and technological advances we identify with the Baroque period? A key point: the role of the artist in all this, viewed as a component in a distributed cognitive system, is not necessarily fixed. As the system goes, so goes the cognitive role of art and music. Music can transmit ancient culture in a period of turmoil, fixing it in formal ceremony, as it did though much of the early European Middle Ages. In this way, the performer becomes a medium of transmission across time and space. Music can also solidify existing class structures or change them radically by undercutting aristocratic patterns of taste; rock music did exactly this, and rock artists became a revolutionary force. In principle, performance art can pull the rug out from under society’s feet. More often, it confirms what already exists, and the artist is a small-c conservative element. When one is dealing with a distributed network of many individuals linked together, rather than an isolated individual, as a major source of creativity, the properties of the network, particularly those of network memory, become highly relevant. These network properties are typically affected much more by technology than by the properties of biologically defined memory in the individual, which are largely fixed in the genome. Finally, it is important to point out that, like all art, music is always aimed at a cognitive outcome. The conventional engineering of, say, a bridge or a house is aimed at a specific physical outcome. In contrast, a work of art is designed to engineer a state of mind and feeling in an audience (even if the only intended audience is the artist) (Donald 2006). Note that emotions and feelings are also cognitive outcomes; they are the result of some of the most complex cognitive activities the brain is capable of. Aside from its often-underestimated subtlety, shared emotion plays a key role in consolidating shared memories in a population. Music is not the only artistic medium that can do this, but it is crucial. Architecture plays perhaps the key role in consolidating collective memory, at least, in the Western tradition. Gothic cathedrals were multi-media cognitive machines, total environments that produced and transmitted specific ideas, perceptions, and feelings across generations. They typically employed music and the visual arts to consolidate local traditions and blend them into wider traditions, and have been very important tools in guiding and changing Western culture over many generations.

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14 Conclusion In summary, music is the expressive culmination of a very ancient domain that defines the unique mold that formed human thought, the mimetic mode. The humble origins of mimetic thought are rooted in action, in the motor and premotor regions of the brain that control the voluntary musculature. But the hominin solution to the evolutionary bottleneck that held back the evolution of mimetic imagination was not so humble: the ability to transform event-percepts into action-metaphors was revolutionary in allowing human ancestors to accumulate a bank of procedural memories in culture, and to gain access to that ancestral memory system during development. The ability to produce mimetic performances also entailed a radical evolutionary change in hominin physical self-representation in the brain. This was a crucial innovation, and it occurred at the top of the brain’s motor hierarchy. It enabled ancient hominins to self-monitor their actions more effectively, to modify their voluntary actions in much more detail, and to become capable of more advanced forms of motor learning. The ability to rehearse and refine actions, to model actions on complex social event-perceptions, and to re-enact (in effect, to pantomime) one’s own previous actions in sufficient detail to improve their effectiveness, led to improved toolmaking and an expressive public culture built on a shared capacity for skill and gesture. Human ancestors were, at that early point, starting to evolve into actors, that is, beings capable of using their entire bodies as expressive devices. This eventually led to cultures of action, comprised of highly adaptive skill sets, shared rituals for coordinating them in group activities, and public gestures, held together by an increasing interest in what others were doing. Cooperation and conformity also grew out of mimesis and became powerful organizing forces to coordinate action in social groups. These prelinguistic adaptations formed an expressive foundation for sharing mind and feeling: a reciprocal, intersubjective, and metacognitive process, woven into the deepest layers of meaning that can be called uniquely human. The multitude of musical forms we now have at our disposal grew from this ancient foundation of shared feeling and emotion but could not be fully expressed until more recent transitions in our cognitive evolution gradually gave us language, writing, simple instruments, and the complex technology of modern music. Mindsharing was made faster and wider by these developments. Shared expectations, tastes, and preferences in sound were a major aspect of this process. Auditory intersubjectivity expanded, played out in the public sphere as a collective negotiation about the shape of sound in a tradition. The cognitive processes that supported this process are still active today. We share our journeys of mimetic imagination in the auditory domain, and this intersubjective process, of making imagined auditory ideas public, comparing them, and critically reacting to them, often in a very personal manner, is integral to the continued cultivation of aesthetic and social preferences in music. It grew out of a long tradition of skilled practice, rehearsal, ritual, and public display that can be traced back to the earliest periods when human ancestors started to diverge from the cognitive styles of other primate relatives.

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This tradition is now strongly wedded to the advanced technologies and theories of musical performance and reproduction, but mimetic imagination and mimetic skills are still the central drivers of this tradition. Moreover, an equally important cognitive drive, inherently social in its outcomes, propels us to participate in, and contribute to, a shared intersubjective cultural space. This drive continues to create the creative and seemingly unstoppable phenomenon that we know as culture. Cultures that are highly cognitive in their activities; minds that are supremely cultural in their interests and origins. These are core features, uniquely human, and central to human nature, such as it is, given our tendency for radical self-modification and our Protean range of variation (Donald 2019). The ultimate destination of human culture and the human mind is unknown and perhaps unknowable, but music is very likely to persist as one of its core characteristics.

References Auerbach, E.: Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature. Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey (1953) Bregman, A.: Auditory Scene Analysis: The Perceptual Organization of Sound. MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts (1990) Donald, M.: Origins of the Modern Mind: Three Stages in the Evolution of Culture and Cognition. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts (1991) Donald, M.: Précis of origins of the modern mind with multiple reviews and author’s response. In: Behavioral and Brain Sciences, vol. 16, pp. 737–791 (1993a) Donald, M.: Hominid enculturation and cognitive evolution. In: Archaeological Review from Cambridge, vol. 12, pp. 5–24 (1993b) Donald, M.: Mimesis and the executive suite: missing links in language evolution In: Hurford, J.R., Studdert-Kennedy, M., Knight, C. (eds.) Approaches to the Evolution of Language: Social and Cognitive Bases, pp. 44–67. Cambridge University Press, New York (1998a) Donald, M.: Material culture and cognition: concluding thoughts. In: Renfrew, C., Scarre, C. (eds.) Cognition and Culture: the Archaeology of Symbolic Storage (Monographs of the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research 1998), pp. 181–187. University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK (1998b) Donald, M.: A Mind so Rare: The Evolution of Human Consciousness. W. W. Norton, New York (2001) Donald, M.: The definition of human nature, in the context of modern neurobiology. In: Rees, D.A., Rose, S.P.R. (eds.) The New Brain Sciences: Perils and Prospects. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK (2004) Donald, M.: Art in cognitive evolution. In: Turner, M. (ed.) The Artful Mind, pp. 3–20. Oxford University Press, New York (2006) Donald, M.: An Evolutionary Approach to Culture; Implications for the Study of the Axial Age. In: Bellah, R., Joas, H. (eds.) The Axial Age and its Consequences, pp. 47–76. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts (2012a) Donald, M.: Evolutionary origins of autobiographical memory. In: Berntsen, D., Rubin, D.C. (eds.) Understanding Autobiographical Memory: Themes and Approaches, pp. 269–289. Cambridge University Press, New York (2012b) Donald, M.: Mimesis theory re-examined, twenty years after the fact. In: Hatfield, G., Pittman, H. (eds.) The Evolution of Mind, Brain, and Culture, pp. 169–192. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (2013)

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Donald, M.: Key cognitive preconditions for the evolution of language. In: Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, vol. 24, no. 1, pp. 204–208. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-016-1102-x (2017) Donald, M.: Evolutionary origins of human cultural memory. In: Wagoner, B. (ed.) Handbook of Cultural Memory, pp. 19–40. Oxford University Press, New York (2018) Donald, M.: Self-programming and the self-domestication of the human species: are we approaching a fourth transition? In: Petersen, A.K., Gilhaus, I., Martin, L.H., Jensen, J.S., Sorenson, J. (eds.) Evolution, Cognition, and the History of Religion: A New Synthesis, pp. 159–174. Brill, Leiden, Netherlands (2019) Frye, N.: The Anatomy of Criticism. Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey (1957) Girard, R.: Violence and the Sacred. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, Maryland (1979) Langer, S.K.: Mind: An Essay on Human Feeling. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, Maryland (1976) McPherron, S.P., Alemseged, Z., Marean, C.W., Wynn, J.G., Reed, D., Geraads, D., Bobe, R., Béarat, H.A.: Evidence for stone-tool-assisted consumption of animal tissue before 3.39 million years ago at Dikika, Ethiopia. In: Nature, vol. 466, pp. 857–860 (2010) Nelson, K.: Language in Cognitive Development: The Emergence of the Mediated Mind. Cambridge University Press, New York (1996) Passingham, R.E.: The Human Primate. Freeman, Oxford and San Francisco (1982) Richerson, P., Boyd, R.: Not by Genes Alone: How Culture Transformed Human Evolution. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, Illinois (2005)

Prof. Merlin Donald, * 1939 in Montreal, Canada and raised there. His undergraduate training was in Biology, Philosophy and Classics, from Loyola College, a small Jesuit College later absorbed into Concordia University. He obtained his master’s degree in Psychology from Ottawa University, and his doctorate in Neuropsychology from McGill University in 1968. He moved to New Haven, Connecticut, USA, first as an NRC Post-doctoral Fellow at the VA Medical Center, then as a Clinical Research Psychologist and adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Neurology, Yale University Medical School. In 1972 he moved to the Department of Psychology at Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada, eventually becoming Professor and Head of that department. After retiring from full-time teaching at Queen’s, he served as Professor and Chair of Cognitive Science at Case Western University, Cleveland, Ohio. He also held an Honorary Professorship in the Department of Culture and Society, Aarhus University, from 2010 to 2016. He is presently Professor Emeritus at Queen’s University. Professor Donald has held visiting appointments at University College, London; Harvard; Stanford; UCSB; and the University of Lund, Sweden. He was a Fellow of the Stanford Institute of Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in 2002 and 2005, and a Fellow of the Swedish Collegium in Uppsala in 2016. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and the World Academy of Art & Science. He is best known for his theoretical work on human cognitive evolution. His first book, Origins of the Modern Mind (1991), established him as a pioneer in the field of cognitive evolution, and his second, A Mind So Rare (2001) was a wide-ranging work on the nature and evolution of human consciousness. His many publications bring together research from a variety of scholarly and scientific fields, addressing key issues such as animal consciousness, the unique nature of human consciousness, free will, and especially, the emergence of culture and technology as major factors in human cognitive evolution. His current work tries to explores the possibility that the human mind is entering another period of such massive cognitive change, that it constitutes the beginning of a fourth evolutionary transition.

Correspondence and Contradiction: Functions and Interactions of Spoken and Body Language Kerstin Störl

1 Introduction: Spoken and Body Language The goal of this volume is to reconsider “the relationship between the vocal and the instrumental in the context of expressions of specifically human languages, and to clarify and explain it in different areas of society, in its sphere of communication and in its natural as well as artistic languages”.1 As a contribution to this goal, I will analyse the relation between spoken and body language, which function these two forms of “language” have, and which interactions between them can be observed in artistic and natural communication situations. For the analysis, I chose situations, which include appearances of Latin American intercultural contacts and conflicts, because spoken language can sometimes express contents of a culture other than body language. The two “languages” can complement, contradict or confirm each other. In my view, it is essential to look for their cognitive roots, in order to understand the different forms of expression and their interactions. This is why I do not want to only include findings from linguistics and cultural studies, but also consider cognitive approaches. While linguistic studies of spoken language are numerous and have been made for centuries, the science that deals with body language or non-verbal communication is still relatively young,2 although—anthropologically speaking—its subject is so deeply rooted in the human being. Fast3 talks about a “new and exciting science” 1 Heister (2022), Introduction (in this volume). About the vocal and the instrumental see also Heister (2002). 2 See for instance Fast (1976, 1987), Molcho (1994), Poyatos (1994), Müller (1998), Schmauser and Noll (1998), Hübler (2001), Ekman and Friesen (1969, 2003), Sollmann (2016). 3 Fast (1976, p. 1); see also Fast (1987, p. 8).

K. Störl (B) Institute for Romance Studies, Humboldt-University of Berlin, Berlin, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 H.-W. Heister et al. (eds.), Word Art + Gesture Art = Tone Art, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20109-7_2

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that has been “uncovered and explored” in the last few years: the science of body language, or kinesics. Rosenbusch/Schober divide non-verbal communication into 1. paralinguistics, i.e. forms that accompany the linguistic enunciation (stress, pause) and independent forms (laughter, sighs) 2. body language or kinesics (that is, non-vocal and non-verbal communication, such as gesticulation, mimics, proxemics, tactile, olfactory, visual forms, position and movements of the body) and 3. artifacts, such as clothing, hairstyle and rituals. They consider non-verbal communication in a broader sense.4 With regard to the body signals, a distinction must be made as to whether they are culture-independent (such as the reaction to biting a lemon), a biological reaction anchored in a genetic program,5 or culture-specific signals (such as greeting rituals). According to Fast, “a study of body language is a study of a mixture of all body movements from the very deliberate to the completely unconscious, from those that apply only in one culture to those that cut across all cultural barriers.”6 Hanns-Werner Heister considers “the duality of the two systems voice and hands” an “anthropological universal”, belonging to the essential remote senses of hearing and seeing. We can observe this duality of verbal and body language in different areas of expression, in scientific or everyday communication, and in arts. Hanns-Werner Heister derives two basic arts from this duality, “and only two, which are ‘pure’ and elementary: Word art (voice) and gesture art (hands/body).”7 All other arts are derived and composed. Gesture art for its part is already double or split: into pantomime (acting art) as ‘prose’, i.e. rhythmically irregular, free, and into dance art, as ‘poetry’, i.e. rhythmically bound, regular.8

According to Heister, the two languages are still together in the original “Mimetic Action”, which he defines as “communication with all senses, observable for example in infants, but also in the proverbial ‘talking with hands and feet’ of adults”. He states that, in the overarching higher unit of mimetic action, both languages are suspended, but already potentially separable. In his opinion they become independent and unfold over the course of development, precisely through learning to speak: “[…] word language becomes dominant, gesture language accompanying. Analogous applies also to the phylogenesis, the evolution of mankind.”9 Denis Diderot also considered the development of language to be a process in which gestures are increasingly being replaced by words, but in the communication of emotions, extraordinary sensations or extreme mental states, he gave priority to gestural language over spoken, verbal language.10 The originally united means 4

Rosenbusch and Schober (1986, p. 6), see also Störl (2007a, pp. 504–505). Molchow (1994, pp. 41–42). 6 Fast (1976, p. 8). 7 Heister (2022), Introduction (in this volume). 8 Ibid. 9 Ibid. 10 Diderot (1751/1965), Gessinger and Rahden (1989: 160–161, 179–180). 5

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of expression are “potentially separable”, and they are separated and “only ‘subsequently’ combined into a new unit”.11 In this essay, I will analyze two examples for some of the differentiated forms of expression, which again interact which each other.

2 Cognitive Backgrounds of Verbal and Non-verbal Forms of Expression To shed some more light on the interactions between different forms of expressions, I will delve a little more into the cognitive references that are their basis. According to Fast … Body language can include any non-reflexive or reflexive movement of a part, or all of the body, used by a person to communicate an emotional message to the outside world.12

Verbal language, on the other hand, expresses predominantly rational content. For a long time, the non-rational, such as the imagination,13 intuition and emotions, were condemned, due to the strong influence of René Descartes (1596–1650) and his rationalistic statement of the incorporeal nature of thought. That caused controversy with his sensualist opponents Pierre Gassendi (1592–1655), Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) and John Locke (1632–1704),14 who, unlike him, assumed the corporeal nature of thought, and that all thinking goes back to sensory experience. Later, the sensual ability to imagine was upgraded. In eighteenth century France, Étienne Bonnot de Condillac (1714–1780) fully developed sensualism, in which the senses, emotions and intuition, alongside reason, were considered to be important factors in the cognitive process. The embodiment theory15 can be considered a continuation of sensualist views. It assumes that the body, the environment and the possible actions of the individual must also be taken into account for an adequate explanation of cognitive processes.16 From my point of view, it is necessary to consider the different mental representations: not only rational, neocortical ones, but also emotions, produced in the limbic system, and representations of the brain stem, which regulate survival in danger.17 We are dealing with a very complex network of interlinkages between cognitive elements, linguistic and non-verbal forms of expression. My goal in this essay is to contribute to uncovering a part of this network. 11

Heister (2022), Introduction (in this volume). Fast (1976, p. 2), see also Fast (1987, p. 9). 13 For the meaning of the French term imagination in the Age of Enlightenment, see Behrens et al. (2016). 14 See Descartes (1967), Gassendi (1962), about Hobbes see Jessop (1960), and Locke (1690). 15 Rothmayr (2016, pp. 227–251) gives an overview about the different forms of the embodiment theory. See also Levine (2010, 2015). 16 Clark (1999). 17 See Störl (2022a), Levine (2015, pp. 25, 37, 40–41). 12

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Another very useful approach is the Polyvagal Theory of Porges.18 The concept of hierarchically structured emergency mechanisms of the brain—first described by the preeminent neurologist of the later nineteenth century, Hughlings Jackson19 — remains a fundamental principle of neurology and is a primary assumption in Porge’s polyvagal theory.20 This states that, in humans, three basic neural energy subsystems underpin the overall state of the nervous system and correlative behaviors and emotions.21 There are some differences between the three phases in Porges, Yakovlev and Levine, which I bring together and increase to four22 : (1) The archipallium, spanning about 500 million years, stems from its origin in early cartilaginous and jawless fish species.23 The function of this system is immobilization, metabolic conservation, and shutdown.24 Yakovlev argued, that this most primitive system forms the matrix upon which the remainder of the brain, and behavior, is elaborated.25 (2) The sympathetic nervous system is a global arousal system that evolved from the reptilian period about 300 million years ago. According to Levine, its function is mobilization and enhanced action (as in fight or flight); its target in the body is the limbs.26 (3) The paleopallium or limbic system, which emerged about 80 million years ago, exists only in mammals.27 It is related to posture, locomotion and the external (i.e., facial) expression of internal visceral states. This stratum manifests in the form of emotional drives and affects28 and shows its greatest refinement in the primates, where it mediates complex social and attachment behaviours.29 (4) The outermost developmental stratum, the neopallium or neocortex, allows for control, perception, symbolization, language and manipulation of the external environment.30 As had Yakovlev before him, MacLean divided the mammalian brain into three distinctly organized strata, corresponding to the above-mentioned evolutionary phases, calling it the “triune brain”, emphasizing the holistic integration of all the 18

Porges (2009). The Polyvagal theory was introduced in 1994 by Dr. Stephen Porges, director of the Brain-Body Center at the University of Illinois at Chicago. https://www.redalyc.org/jatsRepo/ 2470/247046764010/html/index.html. Accessed 25 October 2020. 19 Hughlings Jackson (1835–1911), see his publication from 1958. 20 Porges (2009), Levine (2010, p. 101). 21 Levine (2010, p. 97). 22 Porges (2009), Yakovlev (1948), Levine (2010, 2015), see also Störl (2022a). 23 Levine (2010, p. 98). 24 Ibid., pp. 97–98. 25 Yakovlev (1948), Levine (2010, p. 253). 26 Ibid., p. 98. 27 Ibid., p. 98. 28 Ibid., p. 253. 29 Ibid., p. 98. 30 Yakovlev (1948), Levine (2010, p. 253).

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parts.31 The different neural energy subsystems are situated in close proximity in the brain and work together for their function of ensuring survival. Survival depends on learning to avoid or escape from a situation that cause severe pain and the likelihood of physical injury. You learn to anticipate danger early.32

An example: Imagine that a tiger suddenly stands in front of you. You will first feel fear (limbic system). Fear has the function of ensuring survival. Bodily expressions of fear are, for instance, raised and straightened eyebrows,33 opened and tense eyes,34 an opened mouth with tense lips, which may be drawn back tightly.35 Feeling fear in the face of the tiger the sympathetic nervous system will immediately initiate a mobilization: the flight (sympathetic nervous system). If the tiger is faster, and about to devour its victim, the brain of the latter will activate the oldest system (archipallium), that makes him freeze (immobilization, shutdown). When the human appears lifeless, animals sometimes lose interest. The immobilization also helps him to feel less pain. In the case of danger, the older systems react with bodily actions. The functions of the neocortex would be too slow. In the acute moment, there is no time for developing a strategy, but in the long term it is possible. For instance, one can plan to ensure that tigers do not longer break out of the zoos, and one can symbolize the event in the form of language.

3 The Interaction of Verbal and Nonverbal Language 3.1 Interactions in the Natural and Body Language of a Peruvian Quechua-Spanish Speaker with Intercultural Conflicts The old survival strategies are still present nowadays in our verbal and body language. I will analyze two examples to show the intertwining of different kinds of verbal and nonverbal means of expression, symbolizing these brain functions. The first is a nonartistic example from an interview I conducted with a bilingual Quechua-Spanish Peruvian person, who suffers from an intercultural conflict.36 Pedro Martínez37 speaks Andean Spanish. He has a Quechuan mother, and his father is of Spanish 31

Yakovlev (1948), MacLean (1990), Levine (2010, pp. 257–258). Ekman and Friesen (2003, p. 5). 33 Ibid., p. 50. 34 Ibid., p. 52. 35 Ibid., p. 53. 36 The example is taken from my field research in Cuzco, Peru, in 2014. I carried out the analysis on the basis of the interview I conducted and recorded with a video camera. Parts of this example are also quoted in another context in Störl (2015, pp. 103–105). 37 All informant names in this essay have been changed to protect privacy. 32

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descent. At first, he assumed a concept of hybridity that he applies to all Peruvians, and which he obviously does not evaluate positively. (1) […] nosotros como peruanos no tenemos ni genes, porque somos una mezcla de españoles, chinos, gringos y somos una mezcla de todo. […] Yo como andino, yo le puedo decir, yo en un principio tuve nombre de Kusihuaman.38 [T39 : ‘[…] we as Peruvians don’t even have genes, because we are a mixture of Spanish, Chinese, gringos and we are a mixture of all. […] As an Andean, I can tell you, at first my name was Kusihuaman.’]

It seems that he wants to get away from the hybrid and negatively-judged reality. In talking about his original Quechua surname, it turns out that he identifies himself with “just one” culture, the Quechua one, but he tells that his mother withdrew his Quechua name as his father was too Spanish: (2) […] debido a que mi padre era demasiado español. Entonces mi padre no quiso ponerme el apellido […] Kusihuaman de mi madre, y cambió los términos de mi documentación […]. [T: ‘[…] because my father was too Spanish. So my father did not want to give me my mother’s surname […] Kusihuaman, and he changed the terms of my documentation […]’]

In his following statements, the words and above all the bodily signs are revealing, which I can reproduce from video documentation. For the further analysis I will include the categories of nonverbal behavior of Ekman and Friesen,40 and analyze the emotions, which the informant (Pedro Martínez) expresses through his nonverbal behavior in the interaction with his verbal language, and which display clear affect or dislike. There is no space in this essay for an in-depth analysis of the problem of emotions, which is very complex. Celeghin et al. mention a “longstanding debate” and that the “existence of so-called ‘basic emotions’ and their defining attributes represents a long lasting and yet unsettled issue in psychology”.41 Therefore, I will base this on the definition of “emotion” from Paul Ekman, which I consider highly appropriate. Emotions are a process, a particular kind of automatic appraisal influenced by our evolutionary and personal past, in which we sense that something important to our welfare is occurring, and a set of psychological changes and emotional behaviors begins to deal with the situation.42

The Paul Ekman Group defines the “universal emotions”: anger, contempt, disgust, enjoyment, fear, sadness, surprise, which will be helpful for the interpretation.43 The most common non-verbal expressions observed in the interview with Pedro Martínez are the illustrators, combined with affect displays. Illustrators are “[…] movements which are directly tied to speech, serving to illustrate what is being said verbally.”44 Most of the illustrators are accompanied by affect displays, the two appearing as gestures and/or facial expressions. 38

The Quechua name Kusihuaman is a pseudonym, meaning ‘happy eagle’. “T” ist he abbreviation for “translation”. 40 Ekman and Friesen (1969). 41 Celeghin et al. (2017). 42 https://www.paulekman.com/universal-emotions/. Accessed 14 March 2022. 43 Ibid. 44 Ekman and Friesen (1969, p. 63). 39

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Affect displays can be related to verbal behavior in a number of ways. They can repeat, qualify or contradict a verbally stated affect, or be a separate, unrelated channel of communication.45

In the statements of Pedro Martínez we can observe how illustrators give additional information to what he expresses verbally. In statement 3 (but also in 4, 5, 7, 8, 10, 11 and 12), nonverbal expressions can be interpreted as “batons”.46 These are types of illustrators, which “accent or emphasize a particular word or phrase”,47 or give evaluations to the speech. (3) Mi madre es andina, mi madre es indígena. [T: ‘My mother is Andean, my mother is indigenous.’] [NV48 : From the word andina (‘Andean’) on, he puts his right hand on his heart and gazes intensely.]

This illustrator (baton) and affect displays demonstrate that Pedro has positive connotations for his mother, just like for everything Andean. He identifies himself with this culture, which is very close to him emotionally. He goes on: (4) “Mi padre […] tuvo una educación mucho más superior de la de mi madre.” [T: ‘My father […] had a much higher level of education than my mother.’] [NV: From the word padre (‘father’) on he lets his arms hang down. His look is withdrawn and serious.]

He is obviously less close to his father, which can be seen through nonverbal expressions of withdrawal or disinterest. At the same time, a difference in training is highlighted. It has become a stereotype in Peru, that ethnic labeling is correlated with education, occupation and social position. While Pedro talks about his father’s education with his arms hanging down and his eyes withdrawn, this attitude is abruptly interrupted by a sudden sweeping gesture that seems exaggerated. This is a “regulator”, which announces a change of subject or view. Regulators are “[…] acts which maintain and regulate the back-and-forth nature of speaking and listening between two or more interactants.”49 He continues with a stereotypical phrase: (5) […], que en paz descansa, mi papá ha sido juez, fiscal de la nación. Fue vocal de todo el juzgo […] [T: ‘[…] may he rest in peace, my dad was a judge, prosecutor of the nation. He was vocal of all the judged […]’] [NV: From the words en paz (‘in peace’) on, he placed his right hand on his heart. Then he made a cross symbol, jitterily and barely recognizable, with his right hand. Afterwards, he returned to his previous body language.]

The jitterily and barely recognizable gesture of a cross symbol is a pictograph, another type of illustrators, “which draw a picture of their referent”.50 From Pedro’s 45

Ibid., p. 77. Ekman and Friesen use a musical metaphor here. The baton can be understood as a kind of musical instrument, originally percussive like the stick with which, for example, Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632–1678) marks the beat, then silent like the violin bow or the hand, which used the conductor for timing, up to the silent, purely optical baton, which only became established after 1800. 47 Ekman and Friesen (1969, p. 68). 48 “NV” is the abbreviation for “non-verbal communication”. 49 Ekman and Friesen (1969, p. 82). 50 Ibid., p. 68. 46

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body language, it becomes clear that he identifies his father with Christianity, and it gives the impression that he makes these statements as a duty of which he is not convinced, but that he does not want to do wrong to his father. The rejection becomes particularly clear when the name change is mentioned again, which seems to bother and disappoint him very much, because he relates this incident several times, in detail and with great emotion … (6) […] pero siempre tuvo esa imagen de decir: ‘Mi hijo no va a apellidar Kusihuaman […]’ [T: ‘[…] but he always had that image of saying: ‘My son is not going to have the last name Kusihuaman […]’] [NV: From the word imagen (‘image’) on he makes a gesture of pushing away.]

… while he expresses affection and interest through words and by body language, when he speaks about his original Quechua name: (7) Yo sentimentalmente, personalmente, me hubiese encantado mucho que realmente yo me llame Kusihuaman. [T: ‘Sentimentally, personally, I would have loved it very much if I was really called Kusihuaman’] [NV: When he uttered the word yo [‘I’], he puts his right hand on his heart, with an intense look and a smile.]

This illustrator (baton) and affect displays (similar to 3) demonstrate that Pedro loves the Andean name of his mother. (8) …, pero tengo el nombre Martínez, … [‘…, but my name is Martínez, …’] [NV: From the word pero (‘but’) on, the intensity of the gesture decreases and he has a disappointed look.]

Now he gets caught up in a contradiction between words and body language: (9) … lo cual igual me siento orgulloso. [T: ‘… of which I am just as proud of.’] [NV: The word orgulloso (‘proud’), which is so strong, is uttered in a weak voice and without energy.]

Pedro utters positive words, but the nonverbal signs show contempt. It is striking that there is such a great contradiction between his words and his body language. The weak voice and lack of expressiveness are a clear sign of incredibility. We are dealing here with a kind of double discourse, not uncommon in Andean society, which goes back to Spanish influence in the colonial period. After saying that he feels proud, Pedro continues: (10) …, pero siento que mis raíces, en mis venas está ese linaje inca, ese linaje andino, que por más que el apellido Martínez yo sé que soy Kusihuaman, yo soy andino y siempre lo voy a ser. [T: ‘… but I feel that my roots, in my veins is that Inca lineage, that Andean lineage, that beyond the last name Martínez, I know that I am a Kusihuaman, I am Andean and I always will be.’] [NV: From the word siento (‘I feel’) on, there is more power again in his body language. From the word linaje (‘lineage’) on, he puts his right hand on his heart].

The illustrators (batons) and affect displays are similar as in 3 and 7. They show Pedro’s positive affect for his Andean roots. He identifies himself with this culture, which is emotionally very close to him. The increasing body tension demonstrates interest and emotional concern.

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(11) […] me incomoda mucho y me preocupa mucho… [T: ‘It bothers me a lot and worries me a lot …’] [NV: From the word incomoda (‘bothers’) on, he puts his left hand on his heart.]

Pedro is bothered and worried that many brothers and friends want to give up their Inca or Andean lineage. He uses the left hand this time, and puts it on his heart— not like, in the statements about his mother and Andean roots, the right hand—and expresses negative connotations and the fear of losing his identity and that of his people: 12 …, que muchos hermanos quieran perder esa, ese linaje, esa etnia, y ruego mucho a taita tiqsimuyukama pachayachachiq contiqsi qhapaq Viraqucha … [T: ‘…, that many brothers51 want to lose that, that lineage, that ethnic group, and I pray a lot to taita tiqsimuyukama pachayachachiq contiqsi qhapaq Viraqucha52 …’] [NV: From the word ruego (‘I pray’) on, he holds both hands up and looks at the sky.]

Praying to Viracocha, with both hands held up and looking to the sky, shows first a positive attempt at a solution, a request for help and hope that expresses a great emotionality, but it contains also fear. He pronounces the second part of the sentence with a weak voice and he smiles weakly, showing that he does not really believe in a positive solution. He is desperate and sad: 13 …, que por todos mis hermanos también, hagamos todo lo posible por no perder nuestros raíces. [T: ‘…, that for all my brothers too, let’s do everything possible not to lose our roots.’] [NV: From hagamos (hagamos posible ‘make possible’) on, his expressiveness becomes weaker, and it doesn’t sound very convincing. From raíces (‘roots’) on, he smiles weakly, establishing contact with the interviewer and indicating the end of the conversation.]

The Andean people have a conflict between their real selves and the socially prescribed constructs, which is why they are under a strong pressure. Pedro identifies a limit between the Andean and what he calls “contemporary”: (14) […] hasta ahora siempre existe un límite, un margen en cuanto lo es andino y en cuanto lo es contemporáneo. [‘[…] up to now there is always a limit, a margin concerning the Andean and the contemporary.’]

He mixes spatial and temporal categories: the opposite of andino (‘Andean’, referring to the high mountain region of the Andes) would actually be selvático (‘jungle’, referring to the jungle or lowlands). For him, however, the “other” here is undoubtedly the Spanish or European element, and on this socio-cultural level he comes to identify the latter with ‘contemporary’, which implies that he connotes the Andean as ‘old’, ‘outdated’ or ‘in decline’. The difficulty is that Pedro believes he must, but cannot, choose between the two cultures, and ends up being attracted to a culture that he considers as ‘oppressed’ and already ‘almost extinct’. He partially adopts 51

In the Andean region, “brother” is often used not only for a biological brother, but for friends. At this point he switches from Spanish to Quechua. Translation: ‘Father of the Universe, Teacher of the World, Sacred Universal Viracocha’. Viraqucha (Spanish Viracocha) is a Pan-Andean creator deity and one of the most important deities of Inca mythology, which was already known to pre-Inca peoples.

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the negative connotations of the colonial era and tries to fight them. With such a perspective, it is difficult to face the reality. From the example cited, one can see that the words, controlled by the neocortex, interact with body language, the predominant means of expression of the limbic system, that is to say, two of the different emergency mechanisms of the brain mentioned above, two different survival strategies are interacting. In the example, they mostly have interrelations of correspondence or contradiction. In the statements 3, 7 and 10, in which the informant speaks about his Andean mother, his original Quechua surname Kusihuaman and his Andean roots, the affect displays (right hand on his heart, intense gaze) correspond with a positive connotation and emotions of enjoyment and love. When he speaks about his father, especially about his education and profession (4, 5) or about the change of his mother’s name Kusihuaman to his father’s name Martínez (6, 8), the affect displays (arms hanging down, gaze withdrawn and serious in 4 and 5, the pushing away gesture in 6 and the decrease of intensity of gesture and the disappointed look in 8) correspond to negative connotations, withdrawal, and disinterest and emotions of contempt, disgust and sadness. In these two kinds of statements we can observe a correspondence between spoken language and body language. Double bind and contradictory statements are seen in the following (5): Although Pedro Martínez obviously has negative emotions towards his father, with his words he says positive things. For instance, that he may rest in peace, while placing his right hand on his heart. Pedro Martínez had expressed mainly negative connotations towards his father, but then he changed his view, introduced by a sweeping gesture (regulator between 4 and 5). Perhaps it suddenly occured to him, that not all is negative about his father, or maybe he remembers that it is a social convention that one should not speak or think badly of the dead or of one’s father, or maybe he feels some love for him. Another contradiction is in statement 9: Pedro Martínez said that he was proud of the name Martínez, but he said it with a weak voice and without energy. That shows a negative connotation and a contradiction between the content of the words and body language, a sign of incredibility or double discourse. In Andean society, Andeans are discriminated against severely, and have been since colonial times (sixteenth century). Pedro feels connected with the suppressed parts, perhaps feeling a kind of justice and something authentic with his mother, the representative of the Andeans, while his father represents the Spanish part, the oppressors. I think that his father wanted to help him with the name change, because Andean names were despised, like Andeans, and this kind of racism unfortunately still exists today. Nevertheless, the positive words (“rest in peace”) do not sound convincingly, because the gesture of the cross is made jitterily and barely recognizably. It shows sadness and fear, as he does not want to do something wrong. Pedro does not want to do wrong to his father, but he is disappointed. Pedro is split inside. It is a question of identity. Above, I have stated that the hierarchically structured emergency mechanisms of the brain are survival strategies. For Pedro Martínez it is a question of survival, at least of psychical survival, while for many generations of his people it had also been a question of physical survival. Intercultural conflicts and a broken identity can be

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deadly. The famous Peruvian writer, José María Arguedas, who had also an Andean mother and a Spanish father, has committed suicide, after he left important writings on his intercultural conflicts to the world.53 He broke from these conflicts.

3.2 Interactions Between Verbal and Body Language, Music, Dance and Cinematic Elements in a Complex Artistic Product Another example, this time not taken from natural language but from art, in which the official, permitted, conscious confronts the unofficial, forbidden, hidden, unaccepted but desired, is the song “No Tengo Problema” (‘I Have No problem’) by the music group Culcha Candela. According to Heister54 we can view this song, embedded in a video with dance performance,55 as a “Mimetic Ceremony”.56 Unlike the example of Pedro Martínez, whose speech was authentic and spontaneous, this song was produced with great preparation, was planned before the performance, and has a mimetic function. Culcha Candela is a reggae, dancehall and hip-hop band from Berlin, with an international line-up that is multi-ethnic.57 The band members have different origins, which are reflected in the music, so they rap and sing in English, German, Spanish and Patois.58 The Spanish name “Culcha Candela” can be translated into English roughly as ‘hot’ or ‘bright culture’.59 The group uses the spelling “culcha”, with the same pronunciation as “culture”. In the following Table 1, I present the song-text of “No Tengo Problema”,60 a mixture of German and Spanish, with its English translation. The text, sung in German, is represented in Table 1 in normal writing. Some parts of the text are rapped in Spanish, and they are represented in italics. By watching the video, one can appreciate its artistic value, and to be able to perceive, with all senses, the artistic product that I am analyzing here in the form of a scientific essay limited to the written form. An analysis of this music video as an artificial product must take into account that a variety of verbal and non-verbal factors interact here. There are two languages, 53

On anthropology and self-analysis as a survival strategy in Argueda’s life, see Störl (2015, p. 16), on writing to survive, ibid., p. 109. 54 Heister (2022), Introduction (in this volume). 55 See the video of Culcha Candela (2019): “No Tengo Problema”, Album “Besteste”, Track 19, Label: Sony: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2r3hQ_vs3M. Accessed 28 March 2022. 56 About the concept of the “Mimetic Ceremony” see Heister (2007, 2008, 2013) and Heister and Singer (2013). 57 https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culcha_Candela. Accessed 17 March 2022. Regarding hip hop see also Stemmler and Skrandies (2007). 58 https://dewiki.de/Lexikon/Culcha_Candela#Diskografie. Accessed 17 March 2022. 59 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culcha_Candela. Accessed 17 March 2022. 60 Lyrics: https://genius.com/Culcha-candela-no-tengo-problema-lyrics. Accessed 16 March 2022. Slightly adjusted in terms of punctuation and presentation.

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Table 1 “No Tengo Problema” by Culcha Candela N° Content expressed by words 1

2

3

English translation

[Intro] Sie wollen wissen, wie’sa mir geht

You want to know how I am

Ist alles okay?

Is everything ok?

Können nicht versteh’n

Can’t understand

Ey, tut mir leid, ich hab’ kein Problem

Hey, I’m sorry, I don’t have a problem

[Chorus: Hook] Sie wollen wissen, wie’s mir geht. No tengo problema

You want to know how I am. I don’t have a problem

Ist alles okay? No tengo problema

Is everything ok? I don’t have a problem

Können nicht versteh’n (no tengo problema)

Can’t understand. I don’t have a problem

Ey, tut mir leid, ich hab’ kein Problem

Hey, I’m sorry, I don’t have a problem

[Part 1: Itchyban] Kein Parkplatz, egal, ich hab’ kein’n Führerschein (ne, ne)

No parking, it doesn’t matter, I don’t have a driver’s license (no, no)

Ich denk’ nicht viel nach, ich will nicht klüger sein (okay)

I don’t think much, I don’t want to be smarter (okay)

Ich bin so down to earth, aber überhigh.b

I’m so down to earth, but over high.

Alle meckern übers schlechte Wetter und ich Everyone complains about the bad weather chill’c daheim and I’m chilling at home Mein größtes Problem ist, dass ich keine hab’ (na na)

My biggest problem is that I don’t have any (na na)

Halb leeres Glas bei dir, halb voll in meinem Half empty glass with you, half full in my Glas (yeah, yeah) glass (yeah, yeah) Schaufel’ mir halt ungern mein eig’nes Grab Don’t like digging my own grave Ich sterb’ in’nem maßgeschneiderten Designer-Sarg

I’m dying in a custom-made designer coffin

Ich hab’ kein Problem und somit auch kein Drama

I have no problem and therefore no drama

Du kannst es so seh’n, aber ich seh’s halt anders

You can see it that way, but I see it differently

Lasse alle reden, lass sie haten, lass sie labern Let everyone talk, let them hate,d let them babble Es läuft wie von selbst und den Rest regelt Karma 4

[Chorus: Hook]: like 2, repetition 2 times

5

[Part 2: Johnny] Sorry dir zu sagen, dass mein Leben funktioniert

It works by itself and karma takes care of the rest

Sorry to tell you that my life is going well (continued)

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Table 1 (continued) N° Content expressed by words

English translation

Ich weiß, dir wär’s lieber, ich wär’ völlig ruiniert

I know you’d rather I was completely ruined

Würd’ dir gern sagen, dass ich auch so scheiße dastehe wie du

I’d like to tell you that I look like shit like you

Doch den Gefallen kann ich dir leider nicht tun

Unfortunately, I can’t do you that favor

Ich muss dich leider schwer enttäuschen, ich Unfortunately I have to disappoint you komm’ einfach superf klar badly, I’m just super okay Mein Terminkalender reihert, doch ich feier’ My schedule is busy, but I celebrate it das brutal brutally Ich geh’ ständig bis ans Limit, Überstunden sind normal

I constantly push myself to the limit, overtime is normal

Doch wenn du liebst, was du tust, ist das egal But if you love what you do, it doesn’t matter „Aber du schreibst doch rote Zahl’n!“ Ist doch super für die Steuer!

“But you’re writing red numbers!” It’s great for taxes!

„Dein Kredit nicht abbezahlt!“ Und bald kommt nur noch ein neuer!

“Your loan hasn’t been paid off!” And soon there will only be a new one!

„Immer noch dieselbe Frau!“ Ja, genau, hab’ “Still the same woman!” Yes, exactly, still noch die Queeng have the Queen „Du siehst irgendwie müde aus!“

“You look kind of tired!”

Ist doch normal in Berlin, haha

It’s normal in Berlin, haha

6

[Chorus: Hook]: like 2, repetition 2 times

7

[Bridge: Chino]

[Bridge: Chino]

Das Geld kommt von der GEMA

The money comes from the GEMAh

No tengo problema.Früher oder später. No tengo problema

I don’t have a problem …sooner or later. I don’t have a problem

Hast du Weed,i dann dreh’ mal

Do you have weed, then roll it

No tengo problema

I don’t have a problem

Wir schau’n mal, dann seh’n

ma’j

(No) tengo … 8

We’ll take a look, then we’ll see I (don’t) have …

[Part 3: Don Cali] ¡Ey! Te digo en la cara que no eres mi panak Hey! I tell you to your face that you are not my friend Herida profunda, no sana mañana

Deep wound, it won’t heal tomorrow

¿Que es lo que buscas? ¿Cosas injustas?

What are you looking for? Unfair things?

¿Porque me intrigas, inventas y embustas

Why do you intrigue me, invent and lie?

Quieres ver en mi a ti, pero no es así

You want to see yourself in me, but it’s not like that (continued)

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Table 1 (continued) N° Content expressed by words

9

English translation

Lo que ves fácil, así no funciona hoy aquí (¡ey!)

What seems easy to you, does not work like that today and here (hey!)

Hay dos caras, hay dos caras, una buena y una mala

There are two faces, there are two faces, one good and one bad

Una mentirosa y una que es sincera pana

One who is lying and one who is sincere, friend

La ira te alivia

Anger relieves you

Estás lleno de envidia

You are full of envy

[Chorus: Hook]: like 2, repetition 2 times

a

The German text is colloquial, with many omissions of phonetic-phonological elements. In the written form available here, the phonetic omissions are marked with an apostrophe b This is not a simple borrowing, but can be interpreted as code switching, first in the sentence “Ich bin so down to earth” and then in the middle of the word “überhigh”. This interpretation can also be justified by the fact that these expressions are not already established in common usage c The German word chillen is a real borrowing that has already become established in German in the youth language, in the sense of ‘cooling down’, ‘relax’ d Hate is the English translation of the colloquial German youth-language word haten, which is composed by the English borrowing hate + the German verbal ending -en. The meaning of haten is not ‘hate’ as an emotion, but it is a form of communication: ‘to write or tell somebody something hateful’ or ‘to express one’s hate to somebody’ e The original German noun has become the vulgar adjective “scheiße”, here used as adverb. In English it only can be translated by the noun ‘shit’. f Super is borrowed from Latin in both languages, in German and English. In German is has a colloquial touch g Queen means ‘wife’ h GEMA is the German abbreviation for “Gesellschaft für musikalische Aufführungs- und mechanische Vervielfältigungsrechte” (‘Society for musical performing and mechanical reproduction rights’). It is a government-mandated collecting society and performance rights organization based in Germany (Snow 1991) i Weed is a common slang word for marihuana: dried, resinous flowers and the small leaves near the flowers of the female hemp plant (cannabis). The German expression dreh’ mal probably refers to ‘roll a cigarette’, because marihuana is smoked j The German sentence Wir schau’n mal, dann seh’n ma’ is colloquial. In correct written language it is: Wir schauen einmal, dann sehen wir k The word pana (8) is a Spanish colloquial word for ‘friend’

German and Spanish, nonverbal means, such as facial expressions, gestures, postures, dance, pantomime elements and other movements, such as walking, paralinguistic means, such as laughter, the music in the form of vocals and instrumental accompaniment, but also the scenery, the movements and positions of the camera and other filmic elements, colors, costumes and props. The music plays an important role in the entire piece of art, but I shall not analyze it here, because it is not the purpose of this essay. I would only like to point out that the rhythm resembles a reggaeton, although it sometimes breaks out of this pattern. The track uses sparse instrumentation. The music is mainly used to accompany the singing and rapping, with a clear rhythm in

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four-four time, so that it is easy to dance to. Although the song is of a mixed style, I would interpret it mainly as hip hop, due to the alternating singing and rapping and through the prevailing casual bounce movement in the dance to be seen in the video. This artificial product is only effective in its entirety and because of the interaction of the forms of expression mentioned, which are connected to special functions of the brain. Its interpretation can only be individual, because art is always open in relation to meaning and allows for different interpretations. Nevertheless, there are some universal and culture-specific meanings that can be filtered out. Similar to the statements made by Pedro Martínez, the message of this song has two levels: an “official” one that is clearly asserted and paints a socially appropriate picture, and an “unofficial” one that is hidden. The difference is that with Pedro, the “official”, conscious level is predominantly expressed through verbal communication and the “unofficial”, unconscious one through body language. In the song “No Tengo Problema”, the two levels are represented by two different languages and two different styles. The lyrics to the “official” level, with the message ‘I do not have a problem’, are sung in German, and the “unofficial” level, with the message ‘I have problems’, is rapped61 in Spanish, at a much faster speed than the sung part. For German speakers, the “official” part is easy to understand, while the Spanish, rapped part can only be understood by Spanish-speakers. It gives the impression of insider knowledge that is only told to people one trusts, and so the song has an intercultural component. A basic problem of the analysis of the piece is to define the difference between dance and other body movements, that sometimes reach a pantomimic character, because all these means of expression flow into each other. Woitas/Hartmann62 show that dance is not just an artistic attribute or superficial pleasure, but it has a lot to do with human existence. According to the musicologist and neuroscientist Thaut63 music is based on rhythm, while our bodies are subject to temporal structuring and producing it. Our hearts pulse, while our arms and legs beat, vibrate and move rhythmically. Even our brain works like a rhythmic machine, as evidenced by the synchronous activity, the even firing, of the neuron clusters.64 Movement and motor skills are the inherent and thus connecting elements of music and body.65 In addition to the activation of the motor centers, the perception of music also results in the idea of kinesthetic images, which are a possible explanation for the urge to move to music. Just seeing physical movement allows us to experience it internally, through the function of the mirror neurons.66 The fact that we move rhythmically is therefore an anthropological constant, part of human nature. How the rhythm is realized in

61

For an analysis of rap lyrics to Cuban hip hop, see in Störl (2007b). More information about rap can be found in Kimminich (2004) and Stemmler and Skrandies (2007). 62 Woitas and Hartmann (2008, p. 111). 63 Thaut (2005, p. 4 ff). See also Woitas and Hartmann (2008, p. 112). 64 Woitas and Hartmann (2008, pp. 112–113), Spitzer (2003/2002, p. 227). 65 About music and body signs see also Heister (2010). 66 Woitas and Hartmann (2008, p. 113).

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dance, however, is culture-specific.67 The pioneer of Modern Dance Theater and one of the most influential choreographers of the twentieth century, Pina Bausch, also sees dance as an essential component of human life: Das Tanzen muss einen ganz anderen Grund haben als bloße Technik oder Routine. Es geht darum eine Sprache zu finden, mit Worten, mit Bildern, Bewegungen, Stimmungen, die etwas von dem ahnbar macht, was immer schon da ist. Aber es ist ein sehr sehr schwieriger Prozess es sichtbar zu machen. […] Es geht nicht um Kunst, auch nicht um bloßes Können. Es geht um das Leben und darum, für das Leben eine Sprache zu finden.68 [Dancing must have a reason other than mere technique or routine. It is about finding a language, with words, with images, movements, moods, that gives an idea of something that has always been there. It is, however, a very, very difficult process to make it visible. [...] It is not about art, nor about mere ability. It is about life and finding a language for life.]

It is not possible, within the limited scope of this paper, to discuss all the aspects of what dance and pantomime are. Both terms have a long history, and scientists have different ideas about the two concepts. Therefore, I shall confine myself to the aspects to be discussed in this volume and assume—as postulated in the introduction and as I have already mentioned above—that gesture art is split into pantomime (acting art) as “prose”, rhythmically irregular, free, and into dance art, as “poetry”, rhythmically bound, regular.69 In my following reflections, I will not use the names of the individual group members, as the group acts as a whole. First of all, it is noticeable that facial expressions are mainly used in the introduction of the song (1). Later on, gestures, dance and other body movements are predominantly featured. At the beginning, when the singer sings in German: “You want to know how I am”, the group appears as dark, backlit figures in front of a dark-red background, then as colorful heads with facial expressions: first one red head with a blue background looking seriously, then three red heads before a blue background. The first head is now in the middle, and changes his expression from serious to a wide, fake smile, as if preparing for the fact that a positive picture is to be drawn that, in reality, does not exist. I interpret it as intentional, to make it look fake, as the smile is not natural. This facial expression represents something transported from the subconscious. The viewer intuitively understands that there are two sides, the public and the hidden. Since this facial expression gives some additional information and works together with the words, I would interpret it as an “affect display”.70 The other two look at him, from left and right, which has a deictic function.71 When singing72 “Is everything ok?” the group appears again as dark figures in front of a dark-red background. A yellow head turns up on a red background, in profile from the left, and he gradually looks up from below. Singing “Can’t understand”, a 67

Further answers to the question “What is dance?” can be found in Störl (2022b). Bausch (2016). 69 Heister (2022), Introduction (in this volume). 70 Ekman and Friesen (1969, pp. 94–95). 71 Ekman and Friesen (1969, p. 68) categorize deictic movements as illustrators pointing to a present object. 72 The singing is always in German and rapping is always in Spanish. 68

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green head on a yellow background rolls his eyes, an incredulous look. These facial expressions are “illustrators”,73 which illustrate the message content and underlines the question or the lack of understanding. Still during the sentence “Can’t understand”, a blue head on a green background looks right and left, a deictic expression, then suddenly opens his eyes and mouth, as if frightened. This facial expression is similar to the one reproduced by Ekman and Friesen.74 They interpreted it as a fear-surprise blend. The last sung sentence of the introduction is “Hey, I’m sorry, I don’t have a problem.”, while four heads appear side by side: a blue head on green, which turns and looks up, a green on yellow looks left and opens his eyes, a red on blue is the singer, he looks left at the end, a yellow on red looks forward, then left. The attention is on the singer. These facial expressions do not seem to have a direct connection to the text, but they serve to attract attention, as do the bright colors. In the following parts there are less facial expressions. In Part 3, “I don’t think much” is accompanied by the serious facial expression of the blue head, followed by a serious and nearly angry gaze of a women in a yellow-fringed costume, who makes slow body waves, leaning against a wall. This is simultaneous to the sentence “I don’t want to be smarter”. In Part 3, while singing “Everyone complains about the bad weather”, a man looks into the camera and bares his teeth, and another man has a serious facial expression. These expressions represent negative emotions and illustrate the message (“illustrators”75 ). In Section 6, when rapping “I don’t have a problem” in Spanish, the colorful heads nod (‘yes’), then shake from left to right (‘no’). This is also a double-bind expression. The dance for the whole performance is predominantly bouncing, as is usual in hip hop (3, 4, 9), sometimes with variations, such as an introduction of little jumps (4) or rocking left and right (3). With the sentence “I’m dying in a custom-made designer coffin” (3), a man in a light green tracksuit dances and spins, seeming to expresses enjoyment about his lavish funeral and that he does not have to “dig his own grave”, a verbal part, which is accompanied by concrete digging movements, as if he had a shovel in his hands. It is a combination of dancing and pantomime. In Part 4, there is also a woman who is dancing and spinning. Other dance movements are the slow body waves of Part 3. Dance does not necessarily follow content, but more rhythm. Its meaning is abstract. There are, however, also mixed forms: dancing movements, which produce pantomimic parts. With the sentence “I’m so down to earth, but over high” (3), a man dressed in red on a green background bends down, with his hands together, then he straightens up and circles his hands overhead once, lifting his right leg. The movements described could be interpreted as pantomime. One can recognize illustrators who emphasize the content of the words (up, down). On the other hand, it can also be interpreted as dance, because he performs this movement within the rhythm and with a slight bounce. I consider it to be a blended means of expression. 73

Ekman and Friesen (1969, pp. 94–95). Ekman and Friesen in “Unmasking the face”, a guide to recognizing emotions from facial expressions (2003, p. 61), Fig. 21, right. 75 Ekman and Friesen (1969, pp. 94–95). 74

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Other types of body language are the gestures. Some of them can be interpreted as “emblems”, which are defined by Ekman/Friesen as nonverbal acts, with a “high agreement about verbal definition”.76 An emblem may repeat, substitute, or contradict some part of the concomitant verbal behaviour; a crucial question in detecting an emblem is weather it could be replaced with a word or two without changing the information conveyed.77

One example is the imitation of a woman’s body, moving both hands from top to bottom, while singing about the “Queen” (5),78 and another is rubbing the fingers like rolling a cigarette, while singing “Do you have weed, then roll it” (7). The emblems and the words are mutually translatable. The sentence “I’m chilling at home” (3) is accompanied by a gesture of a man in front of green background, holding both hands forward, palms down, made into a fist, bouncing and rocking left and right, cheerfully. The gesture could be an imitation of looking out of a window at home. It is an illustrator and at the same time a part of his dance, which expresses joy. Other gestures are deictic, they have a reference function. With “Half empty glass with you, half full in my glass” (3), the singer points his left index finger at himself at the word “my”. To emphasize the statement “Let everyone talk, let them hate, let them babble” (3), thumbs and other fingers touch and open alternately, several times. In the next picture, a woman with blue sleeves makes swinging arm waves alternately up and down (‘babble’). Obviously, these two culture-specific gestures, there and back several times, are typical for expressing that someone speaks too much and says things, which the listener does not want to hear. These two gestures likely refer to the movements of the mouth, and could be considered as emblems. “It works by itself and karma takes care of the rest” (3) is accompanied by rubbing the hands in front of the chest, in a prayer position. In Sect. 4, when the refrain is repeated two more times, the camera shots get faster and faster. The woman in the yellow-fringed costume, who stands with her back against the wall, brings both arms slowly from up to down, touching the wall, while “I don’t have a problem” is rapped. Then, a red man on a red background hits the wall with his fists, while the same line is repeated. The woman’s touch of the wall is friendly at first. When the wall is considered the problem or limit and the statement is “no problem”, the text is consistent with the body language, while afterwards the man hits it. Like in the example of Pedro Martínez, there is a contradiction between the “official” linguistic expression and the “unofficial” bodily expression, which comes through, though this time not naturally but mimetically. The two means are affect displays. 76

Ibid., pp. 63–65, 94. Emblematic gestures are very frequently used in Cuba. In Störl (2007a) I analyzed in detail the Cuban gesture in relation to the verbal language (Cuban Spanish). Field research in Cuba, La Habana, between 2000 and 2007. 77 Ekman and Friesen (1969, p. 63). 78 This example is a pictograph (type of illustrator), a movement, which draw a picture of its referent (here, the queen). At the same time it is an emblem, because it can substitute its referent. Ekman and Friesen (1969, p. 68) confirm that illustrators can include the use of an emblem.

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Bodily expressions for negation are a top down zigzag gesture from the women, in connection with a serious look (4) or moving the index finger back and forth from right to left (3, 4, 5, 6, 9). Rejection is expressed by extending the left hand forward, tilting the palm up (6, 9). At the end of the song the singer sings “Hey, I’m sorry, I don’t have a problem”. Except for the first mentioned zigzag move, the gestures of negation and rejection are, culturally, relatively firmly standardized, and can be considered emblems because they can substitute the verbal expression ‘no’. The following examples refer to auditory and visual senses: “Can’t understand” is illustrated several times by a gesture with both hands or forefingers reaching to the ears (6, 9). With “We’ll take a look, then we’ll see” (7), the thumb and index finger of a man’s hands touch, and are held sideways near the eyes. I interpret these gestures as illustrators. In the following two examples, the negation or rejection is combined with the relation to hearing. At the end of 7, shortly before the Spanish rapped part starts in 8, the second (until now, hidden) face is revealed, and the singer sings: “I (don’t) have …” The listener can only faintly hear the negation (don’t). Simultaneously, the singer puts his hand to his ear, as if he doesn’t understand. This is an introduction to the second “face”. In the first one, the group states that there are no problems, and now the “no” disappears acoustically, and in the next part, the “second face”, they state that there are really a lot of problems. In the next part (9), the group returns to the first, “official face”. Besides the relaxed posture of the singer (e.g., 7) and the group members, there are also some gestures which represent the relaxed attitude of the singer. He shakes the two front parts of his jacket, singing “Sorry to tell you that my life is going well” (5). In general, in the song, the group shows a relaxed attitude, but in the 8th part, which contains the Spanish rap, one can feel some tension, when the problems are detailed. In part 6, the viewer could perceive the difference: When singing “You look kind of tired”, there is a chest movement, imitating heavy breathing or a heartbeat. Then the singer laughs (a paralinguistic element) and makes wide gestures. This is a switch from tension to relaxation in the dialogue. In Part 8, the viewer can observe an increase in tension. The rapper states quickly “Hay dos caras, hay dos caras, una buena y una mala. Una mentirosa y una que es sincera […].” (‘There are two faces, there are two faces, one good and one bad. One who is lying and one who is sincere, friend’). That is the core and the main message of the song. A man covers his eyes with hands for a moment, maybe because of the shock that the hidden face now reveals. Many people stand together, and their chests make movements like breathing heavily or like a heartbeat, repeated many times. The movements become faster and stronger, indicating excitement. According to Samy Molcho, the thorax encloses the two sources of power in our body, the heart and lungs. The interaction of these two engines gives us activity and vitality.79 Expanding the chest indicates readiness for activity, confrontation and aggression.80 Now the emotions that come out are both expressed verbally and in body language: When the rapper raps in Spanish “La ira te alivia. Estás lleno de envidia.” (‘Anger relieves you. You are full of envy.’) (8), 79 80

Molcho (1994, p. 109). Ibid., p. 110.

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the female dancer’s facial expression indicates anger. Her eyebrows are drawn down and together, the eyelids are tensed, her mouth is open.81 She emphasizes her anger by hitting the wall. These are really natural emotions, when revealing the true face, the problems and the authentic “me” of the protagonists. Summarizing the analysis of this example, it turns out that most of the body movements emphasize the words or illustrate their meaning. The correspondence relation between verbal and body language clearly predominates. Only in a few cases is there a relation of contradiction. The different behaviors with the wall in Part 4 show the two types of interaction between verbal and nonverbal language: uttering the same sentence, “I don’t have a problem”, the woman touches it lightly, which shows correspondence, and the man hits it with his fists, which demonstrates contradiction.

4 Conclusions The main variants of interactions between spoken and body language that can be concluded from the two examples, show that the different parts of the brain work together. The main similarity between the two examples is that both represent two levels, one “official” and one “unofficial”, resulting in double-bind utterances. In the first example, the “unofficial”, hidden content is expressed mostly by body language, which accompanies the “official” content spoken in words. The body language, as the representation of emotions originating in the limbic system, and the verbal statements, which come from thinking that originates in the neocortex, work together here. In the second example, both the “official” and the “unofficial” content is expressed by verbal means, but the “unofficial” one appears as a rap in another language (Spanish), and is presented much more quickly and contains very fast film cuts. All this is more difficult to understand than the slower, more relaxed and sung “official” verbal parts. The body language here does not have the function of expressing or completing the content, but rather it underlines that this content should be hidden (someone covers his eyes with his hands), and that very strong emotions are involved (movements such as breathing heavily and the heart beat that become faster and stronger). In both examples, there are testimonies of double bind and contradictory statements, but there are also many parts that show a correspondence between verbal and nonverbal communication. Some bodily expressions are very abstract, such as dancing, others are more concrete, such as pantomime, and again others are translatable in verbal language. Some follow the content, some the rhythm of the music, some both. It is obvious, that both examples are not only blended means of expression, but also an intertwining of a lot of different functions of the brain, mostly of the neocortex and the limbic system. All these complex means of expression reflect the above-mentioned survival strategies. Although dangers nowadays are less physical, and we do not have to 81

See Ekman and Friesen (2003, pp. 82–83, 88).

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fight tigers that often, our brain provides us with the same network of older and newer emergency mechanisms as before, and we react to threatening situations, such as the loss of identity experienced by Pedro Martínez, and problems that cannot be solved, such as those represented by Culcha Candela, not only linguistically, but also physically, because fear is ultimately always the fear of death, which our brain tries to prevent immediately. The interview shows Pedro’s direct reaction to the danger of losing his identity, his own self, and in the song we saw an indirect, artistic reflection of someone’s reaction to the danger of not being able to solve problems. Seen in this light, language, body language and dance are survival strategies. That is why it is important to listen to and pay attention to people, to look at them and allow them to express themselves directly or artistically. Acknowledgments I would like to dedicate this essay to the person with the pseudonym Pedro Martínez, whose real name I would like to protect here, and who left this life far too early, at a very young age. I am very grateful to him for all the information he gave me. I will incorporate his concerns of mediating between cultures and building mutual understanding into my scientific studies, and thus carry on his legacy.

References Bausch, P.: in „Pina Bausch und das Tanztheater – Behind the art“, exposition in the Bundeskunsthalle Bonn, 4.3.-24.7.2016, video, published 11 March 2016, 0:13–0:59 (2016). https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=HKpe8XJDNRk. Accessed 01 Jan 2017 Behrens, R., Steigerwald, J., Storck, B. (eds.): Aufklärung und Imagination in Frankreich (1675– 1810). Anthologie und Analyse. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin, New York (2016) Celeghin, A., Diano, M., Bagnis, A., Viola, M., Tamietto, M.: Basic emotions in human neuroscience: neuroimagig and beyond. Front. Psychol. (2017). https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/ 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01432/full. Accessed 30 May 2022 Clark, A.: An embodied cognitive science? Trends Cognit. Sci. 3, 345–351 (1999) Condillac, E.B. de: Oevres philosophiques de Condillac. Texte établi et présenté par Georges le Roy. (Corpus général des philosophes français. Auteurs modernes, vol. 33) Paris 1947 [1], 1948 [2], 1951 [3]. Inside: La Grammaire (vol. 1), L’Art d’Écrire (vol. 1), La Logique (vol. 2) (1947–1951) Culcha Candela: “No tengo problema” (Video), Album “Besteste”, Titel 19, Label: Sony (2019). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2r3hQ_vs3M. Accessed 28 March 2022 Descartes, R.: Discours de la méthode. Texte et commentaire par Étienne Gilson. Vrin, Paris (1967) Diderot, D.: Lettre sur les sourds et muets à l’usage de ceux qui entendent et qui parlent. Édition commentée et présentée par Paul Hugo Meyer; préf. de Georges May. In: Diderot Studies VII. Droz, Genève (1751/1965) Ekman, P. (Paul Ekman Group): Universal Emotions. https://www.paulekman.com/universal-emo tions/. Accessed 14 March 2022 Ekman, P., Friesen, W.V.: The repertoire of nonverbal behavior: categories, origins, usage, and coding. Semiotica 1, 49–98 (1969) Ekman, P., Friesen, W.V.: Unmasking the Face: A Guide to Recognizing Emotions from Facial Clues. Malor Books, Los Altos (2003) Fast, J.: Body Language. Pocket Books, New York (1976) Fast, J.: Körpersprache. Rowohlt, Reinbeck bei Hamburg (1987)

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Gassendi, P.: Disquisitio metaphysica, seu dubitationes et instantiae adversus Renati Cartesii metaphysicam et responsa. Recherches metaphysiques, ou doutes et instances contre la metaphysique de R. Descartes et ses réponses. Texte établi, trad. et annoté par B. Rochot. Vrin, Paris (1962) Gessinger, J., von Rahden, W. (eds.): Theorien vom Ursprung der Sprache, vols. 1 and 2, pp. 160– 161. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin and New York (1989) Heister, H.-W.: Singen, Klingen, Sagen. Zur Komplementarität von Vokalem und Instrumentalem. In: Heister, H.-W. (ed.) Kunstwerk und Biographie. Gedenkschrift Harry Goldschmidt (Zwischen/Töne. Neue Folge, vol. 1), pp. 121–155. Weidler Buchverlag, Berlin (2002) Heister, H.-W.: Mimetische Zeremonie – Gesamtkunstwerk und alle Sinne. Aspekte eines Konzepts. In: Mimetische Zeremonien – Musik als Spiel, Ritual, Kunst (Musik und: Eine Schriftenreihe der Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg, ed. Hanns-Werner Heister and Wolfgang Hochstein. Neue Folge, vol. 7), pp. 143–185. Weidler Buchverlag, Berlin (2007) Heister, H.-W.: Mimetische Zeremonie, Anderer Zustand, Singen und Spielen. Zur Entstehung der Musik. Erwägen – Wissen – Ethik (EWE). 18/2007, H. 4, pp. 556–559 (2008) Heister, H.-W.: Herz, Hand, Hirn. Einige Beziehungen zwischen Musik und Körperzeichen in der Minnelyrik und anderswo. In: Bußmeier, K., Heister, H.-W., Lindenau, A., Raming, A.-K. (eds.) Liebe, Lyrik, Handzeichen. Beiträge zur Musik des europäischen Mittelalters, pp. 141–174. Weidler Buchverlag, Berlin (2010) Heister, H.-W.: „Mimetische Handlung und menschliche Natur. Überlegungen zur historischlogisch ersten Ausprägung von Sprache“. „Der Mensch, das ist die Welt des Menschen ...“ Eine Diskussion über menschliche Natur, ed. H.-W. Heister und L. Lambrecht, Berlin, pp. 9–28 (2013) Heister, H.-W.: Introduction. In: Heister, H.-W., Polk, H., Rusam, B. (eds.) 2022: Word Art + Gesture Art = Tone Art. The Relationship Between the Vocal and the Instrumental in Different Arts. Springer Nature, Heidelberg et al. (2022) Heister, H.-W., Singer, D.: Mimetische Zeremonien und andere gewaltarme Herschaftsmethoden. Zur Rolle der Musik in den Guaraní-Reduktionen der Jesuiten in Paraguay im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert. IRASM 44/2, pp. 213–238 (2013) Heister, H.-W., Polk, H., Rusam, B. (eds.): Word Art + Gesture Art = Tone Art. The Relationship Between the Vocal and the Instrumental in Different Arts. Springer Nature, Heidelberg et al. (2022) Hübler, A.: Das Konzept ‚Körper‘ in den Sprach- und Kommunikationswissenschaften. Francke, Tübingen, Basel (2001) Jackson, J.H.: Evolution and dissolution in the nervous system. In: Selected Writings of John Hughlings Jackson, pp. 45–84. Staples, London (1958) Jessop, T.E.: Thomas Hobbes. The British Council and the National Book League by Longmans. Green & Co., London (1960) Kimminich, E.: Rap: More than Words. Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main, Berlin, Bern, Bruxelles, New York, Oxford, Wien (2004) Levine, P.A.: In an Unspoken Voice. How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness. North Atlantic Books, Berkeley, California (2010) Levine, P.A.: Trauma and Memory. Brain and Body in a Search for the Living Past. A Practical Guide for Understanding and Working with Traumatic Memory. North Atlantic Books, Berkeley, California (2015) Locke, J.: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Basset/Mory, London (1690) MacLean, P.D.: The Triune Brain in Evolution: Role in Paleocerebral Functions. Springer, New York (1990) Molcho, S.: Körpersprache. Mosaik, München (1994) Müller, C.: Redebegleitende Gesten. Kulturgeschichte – Theorie – Sprachvergleich. Berliner Wissenschafts-Verlag, Berlin (1998) Porges, S.W.: The polyvagal theory: new insights into adaptive reactions of the autonomic nervous system. Clevel. Clin. J. Med. 76(Supplement 2), 86–90 (2009). https://www.redalyc.org/jatsRepo/ 2470/247046764010/html/index.html. Accessed 25 Oct 2020

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Poyatos, F.: La comunicación no verbal. Vol. 1: Cultura, lenguaje y conversación. Vol. II: Paralenguaje, kinésica e interacción. Istmo, Madrid (1994) Rosenbusch, H.S., Schober, O. (eds.): Körpersprache in der schulischen Erziehung. Pädagogische und fachdidaktische Aspekte nonverbaler Kommunikation. Schneider, Baltmannsweiler (1986) Rothmayr, A.: Linguistik für die Kognitionswissenschaft. Eine interdisziplinäre Ergänzung zur Einführung in die Sprachwissenschaft. Narr, Tübingen (2016) Schmauser, C., Noll, T.: Körperbewegungen und ihre Bedeutungen. Berliner Wissenschafts-Verlag, Berlin (1998) Snow, M.: Q&A. In: Q Magazine 55, 05 March 1991, p. 34 (1991) Sollmann, U.: Einführung in Körpersprache und nonverbale Kommunikation. Carl-Auer-Systeme, Heidelberg (2016) Spitzer, M.: Musik im Kopf. Stuttgart: Schattauer (2003/2002) Stemmler, S., Skrandies, T. (eds.): Hip-Hop und Rap in romanischen Sprachwelten. Stationen einer globalen Musikkultur. Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main et al. (2007) Störl, K.: Hablar sin hablar. El lenguaje de los gestos en Cuba. In: Störl, K. (ed.) Con optimismo e imaginación. La realidad cubana de hoy y su reflejo lingüístico, pp. 501–530. Peter Lang International Academic Publishers, Frankfurt am Main et al. (2007a) Störl, K.: Kubanischer Rap: Der Afrika-Bezug als Element der Identitäskonstruktion. In: Stemmler, S., Skrandies, T. (eds.) Hip-Hop und Rap in romanischen Sprachwelten. Stationen einer globalen Musikkultur, pp. 155–186. Peter Lang International Academic Publishers, Frankfurt am Main u. a. (2007b) Störl, K.: Zwischen zwei Welten. Identitätskonstruktionen und Überlebensstrategien in hybriden Kulturen. José María Arguedas und andere Fallbeispiele aus Peru. In: Röseberg, D. (ed.) El arte de crear memoria. Festschrift zum 80. Geburtstag von Hans-Otto Dill, pp. 99–121. trafo, Berlin (2015) Störl, K.: Disembodiment or acting out violence as culturally variable concepts. Examples from the Peruvian Andes region compared to occidental culture. In: Störl, K. (ed.) Embodiment and Representation. Acts of the Workshop of International Networking “Embodiment and Representation”, 7.-10.11.2019, University of Vienna. Peter Lang International Academic Publishers, Berlin (2022a) (in print) Störl, K.: Wieviel „Lateinamerika“ enthalten die „lateinamerikanischen“ Tänze in Berlin? In: Störl, K., Wolf, S. (eds.) Berührungen zwischen Deutschland und Lateinamerika. Peter Lang International Academic Publishers, Berlin (2022b) (in print) Thaut, M.H.: Rhythm, Music, and the Brain. Routledge, New York (2005) Woitas, M., Hartmann, A.: Innere und äußere Motorik. Strawinskys Bühnenwerke aus neurowissenschaftlicher und kulturhistorischer Perspektive. In: Fleischle-Braun, C., Stabel, R. (eds.) Tanzforschung und Tanzausbildung, pp. 111–116. Henschel, Berlin (2008) Yakovlev, P.I.: Motility, behavior and the brain; stereodynamic organization and neural coordinates of behavior. J. Nerv. Mental Dis. 107, 313–35 (1948)

Kerstin Störl, * 1958 in Zwickau. Romance and English studies at the Humboldt-University of Berlin and the University of Havana, Cuba. 1981 University degree and diploma and 1984 Doctor Philosophiae in the field of Spanish linguistics. 1996 Teaching qualification (habilitation) for the field of Romance Philology (Linguistics) at the Humboldt University of Berlin. 2000–2014 Representation of professorships for Romance, Hispanic, Latin American and French Linguistics in Berlin (Humboldt University and Technical University), in Greifswald, Rostock and Paderborn. 2018–2020 University Professorship of Romance Linguistics and Regional Studies at the University of Vienna. 2004–2011 Head of the “Romance Linguistics” department at the Technical University of Berlin, 2018–2019 Head of the Institute for Romance Studies at the University of Vienna. Co-edition of three book series: “Languages, Societies and Cultures in Latin America”, “Style: Creativity—Variation—Comparison” and “Interactio: Language, Culture and Embodied

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Cognition” (Peter Lang, International Academic Publishers, Berlin). Publications about Romance Studies, Linguistics, Cognitive Linguistics, Ethnolinguistics, Latin American Studies, Ancient American Studies and Cultural Studies. 2012 Co-organization of the symposium “Andean languages and cultures in dialogue” at the International Congress of Americanists at the University of Vienna, 2017 Organization of the annual conference of the Leibniz Society of Sciences Berlin on “Migration and Interculturality”, 2019 Organization of the Workshop for International Networking “Embodiment and Representation” at the Institute for Romance Studies at the University of Vienna. Elected Class Secretary for Social Sciences and Humanities of the Leibniz Society of Sciences Berlin, Leadership of the “Mental Representations” working group in the same society, member of the Quechua research group “Rimasqa Rimana” at the Free University of Berlin, of the Romanist Association of Germany and the Hispanic Association of Germany.

Prosody and Body Language—Paralinguistic Components in Political Communication. Vocal and/versus Instrumental in Non-musical Utterances Mechthild Klett

Leiber sind Musik. Der organische Körper in seinen Rhythmen, in der Notation seiner Codes, im Auf und Ab seines Oszillierens ist bereits Klang, und das ist der Grund, weshalb sich so viele Wesen als Stimme mitteilen.

1 Introduction The complex, multi-layered connection of word and gesture language, of rather denotative verbal and rather connotative bodily expression, of manifestly said and latently meant plays a considerable, often even decisive role not only in music and other arts, but also in public and political communication.1 We all play theatre—this thesis of the sociologist Erving Goffman does not put the masquerades and self-exposures in political communication, namely of politicians and journalists, on a pedestal or pillory as far as we “normal people” would hope. That which these target groups master more or less professionally is the fate of all of us, we fool ourselves and others.2 In our interaction with others, we play a role that we practised early on, sometimes deceiving others or pretending in order to look good. In political communication, however, this ability not only determines political survival, but also implies the desire to position oneself in competition with other parties, organizations or institutions and to convince potential voters or members of one’s interpretation of political conflicts and processes. Today, we naturally assume that manipulation is also involved. We also assume that these target groups know about their involuntary paralinguistic leaks in political communication and retrain them. What remains is a ritualized communication between politics and the population 1 2

Weber (2018), p. 34. Goffman (1959).

M. Klett (B) Wildrosenhölz 20, 12623 Berlin, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 H.-W. Heister et al. (eds.), Word Art + Gesture Art = Tone Art, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20109-7_3

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whose authenticity is fading, whose legitimacy is being questioned, which has to compete with many other private actors for attention and is therefore in a veritable crisis. Symptoms of this crisis include a disenchantment with politics, which, with the inclusion of right-wing world views, can ultimately lead to the strengthening of farright parties such as the “Alternative for Germany”, AfD, or right-wing movements such as “Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamicisation of the Occident”, Pegida.3 Their influence on conventional politics, for example in the German federal states of Saxony and Thuringia, has become so great that, according to polls by the television station Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk, MDR, the AfD has advanced to become the strongest party in the spring of 2022.4 In addition to polarizing attitudes, gestures and tones that discriminate against different social groups, the aim here is to draw attention to other phenomena of paralinguistics in political communication: The sermon tone, which is not only heard in Christmas addresses, can put off listeners just as much as a fighting mode. Both intonations can be understood as power-affirming gestures that have no interest in interaction, in communication as an exchange of equal arguments. And finally, there is the phenomenon of whispering and speaking softly, which—either a matter of temperament, but also of rhetoric—on the one hand signals insecurity or tries to pretend to be insecure and thus makes oneself smaller than is actually the case. The reticence can then be interpreted either as prudence or as weakness in decisionmaking. When men use higher pitched voices, they are more likely to be assumed to be insecure. However, an unagitated voice can also be used as a trademark in political PR work to demonstrate resilience in times of crisis. Finally, this chapter deals with the phenomenon that men’s and women’s voice pitches are converging, a process that has been observed for about 100 years and whose cause has not yet been fully deciphered.

2 Theoretical Background Non-verbal communication is divided into body language and paralinguistics with vocal utterances beyond verbal communication. An equivalent of the vowel without text in music such as the vocalise or scat. The raised fist of the Black Power movement, the outstretched right arm of the Old Nazis and New Right or the kneeling of German Chancellor Willy Brandt in 1970 in Warsaw at the memorial for the Warsaw Ghetto—as these well-known gestures show, body language traditionally plays a major role in political communication. These gestures are always and immediately understandable, can be used (encoded) and read (decoded), and their impact should not be underestimated. But not only the big gestures, but also many small movements, facial expressions, shoulder shrugs, lowered glances, sitting upright or 3 4

Klein et al. (2018). MDR Thüringen 2022. Accessed 6 May 2022.

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crouched down, right down to micro-movements that can only be recognized in recordings played back in slow motion, often convey unintended messages. Especially in ambiguous, unbelievable verbal statements, they acquire more persuasive power than verbal alone and play a long underestimated role in communication. In addition, there are paralinguistic acoustic utterances such as clearing the throat, loud inhaling and exhaling, laughing, filler words such as “Uh”, pauses, speech tempo and speech volume. They reveal considerably more information than is often intended, the leaks. It is true that Charles Darwin already began observing non-verbal communication and that the first ideas about this also existed in antiquity. But it is only since the 1950s that the non-verbal form of communication has been systematically studied and researched on the basis of scientific experiments. The British social psychologist Michael Argyle (1925–2002) developed the basic work on this in 1975 with Bodily Communication, which is now in its 10th edition in Germany.5 Argyle examines the connection between biological and social factors in human communication and then describes in detail how feelings and attitudes affect non-verbal communication via facial expressions, looks, gestures, postures and spatial behaviour, through to external features of appearance such as clothing and hairstyle.

2.1 Facial Expressions and Gestures Facial expressions are the central non-verbal means in political communication. The most important facial expressions are joy, surprise, fear, sadness, anger and disgust. They are further differentiated, for example into perplexity and shame, but can no longer be clearly decoded in their up to 40 different variants.6 Methodically, the “Facial Affect Scoring Technique” (FAST) divides the face into three parts and decodes them individually.7 The “Facing Action coding System” has an even more differentiated effect, distinguishing “action units” that refer to individual facial muscles and can be perceived (Ibid.). Finally, micro-expressions that last only 200 ms and become visible in slow motion can also be recognized through recordings. Facial expressions, gestures and paralinguistics are made visible in the first place by the mass media of film and television and by their private, technical reproducibility. Public meetings without microphone systems were only accessible to a very limited audience and the distance to the speakers was quite large. Even ancient rhetoric therefore placed great value on the—conscious—gestural support of the verbal, as Aristotle, for example, presented in the Third Book of Rhetoric. On the one hand, the protagonists of public, political communication have to score points with the audience in their argumentation, their appearance, their voice, their power of persuasion, but on the other hand, they also have to adhere to bourgeois 5

Argyle (1996). Argyle (1996). 7 Ibid., p. 122f. 6

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manners of politeness and respectful behaviour, since politicians are always seen as role models or make demands on themselves, for example, of decency and normatively fulfil them.8 This creates a second tension effect in addition to the publicity or the participants provoke and want to convince as anti-heroine or tough fighter.9 In political communication, therefore, verbal deceptions, provocations, lies, verbal attacks, insinuations and other artifices to which Schopenhauer refers in his eristic dialectics10 are also part of the presentation of the willingness to fight. In all cases, a public appearance is associated with tension because a battle arena is being entered, or at least a competition is being fought. In this situation of tension, it is of great importance for the participants to maintain control over the messages that are to be sent out in each case. But the non-verbal communication signals cannot always be completely controlled. While the face is one of the most controllable and a masquerade can be trained, this is less successful beyond the face. Such leak outs11 become visible through micro-expressions. They unintentionally reflect emotions. The tension in the body of the participants increases when the real opinion and the expressed opinion diverge greatly, or when lies are told. Argyle furthermore distinguishes signs of lying from people with high and low motivation. Signs of untruthful statements in the more highly motivated are pupil dilation, a higher pitch, hesitant speaking, short utterances, deliberately blinking less, more negative statements, avoidance of eye contact, unfilled pauses, few smiles and frequently changing posture. In women, however, smiling can also be a sign of discomfort.12 Especially in a conflict situation, where genuine feelings and opinions are supposed to remain invisible, but contradictory signals rise to the physical surface and push their way out, more weight is given not only to the negative signals by the audience, but also to the physical ones over the verbal ones. The reason for this decoding practice lies in the higher credibility of negative opinions, which are more unpopular and thus more difficult to represent.13 All in all, the protagonists in political communication move in the coordinate system of dominance and defensiveness as well as around friendliness and hostility. In this crosshair, a lack of eye contact can demonstrate disinterest to hostility, as can the way in which the space is taken up.14 A significant example of this was Donald Trump’s physically intrusive appearance towards Hilary Clinton during a television debate in the 2016 US election campaign.15 On the other hand, eye contact can signal approval or the expectation of approval. Frequent eye contact is decoded with aplomb, sincerity, interest and friendliness.

8

Schäuble (2018). Leif (2017). 10 Schopenhauer (2015), pp. 31–71. 11 Argyle, p. 78. 12 Argyle, p. 135. 13 Ibid., p. 84, p. 86. 14 Ibid., pp. 164–167. 15 For example, CBS News 2016. 9

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Permanent staring, on the other hand, is perceived as hostile and intrusive, and permanent avoidance of eye contact as subordination.16 Recent research shows—with all the empirical evidence—that although relatively accurate statements can be made for one’s own culture, for example about the possible chances of success of politicians on the basis of facial perceptions, this is not the case for foreign cultures.17 Moreover, decoding also reflects stereotypes in the perception of non-verbal communication,18 so that caution is advisable despite the empirical verifiability of these statements. For example, attractive people are often said to be more intelligent than they actually are, or a powerful voice was perceived as less neurotic, although this need not be true. The results for the compatibility of persons are similar: if, for example, a relaxed posture is assumed, this does not at all mean that the person perceived also acts in this way. Actual correspondence between perception and reality is achieved above all in paralinguistic final coding and decoding. The perceived pitch of the voice and the tempo of speech show the highest accuracy in the assessment of personality traits.19

2.2 Paralinguistics As Halwachs20 explains, according to Trager, who coined the term paralinguistics, three paralinguistic behaviours can be distinguished: A speaker’s voice characteristics, voice quality characteristics and vocalisation characteristics.21 While the first two are rather negligible because of their innateness, the vocalisation features reflect the essential psychic-vocal reactions. They include laughing, crying, whispering, yawning, groaning, but also shouting, sighing, wheezing, coughing, clearing one’s throat. They are not universal and innate, but above all culturally learned. Not unimportant are also the pauses, their length, how they are filled, for example, by loud inhaling and exhaling, etc. A special role is played by the rate of speech and the volume as well as their respective changes; for example, an increase in volume can indicate anger, while soft speech is often decoded as insecurity. In the course of intonation, the stretching of the intonation pitch from high to low and vice versa can also indicate irony, sarcasm or threats, for example when asking questions.22 While the “Uh” as a filler word is obviously intended to cover up possible uncertainties in an answer, other tactics of evasion are often not recognisable to the television viewer, but are indicated by paralinguistic features. 16

Argyle, p. 81. Rule et al. (2010). 18 Breil et al. (2019), pp. 8, 11, 23. 19 Breil et al. (2019), p. 25. 20 Halwachs (1994). 21 Trager (1958). 22 Halwachs (1985). 17

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Intonation and speech tempo as a research area of prosody analyse the effect of sentence melody on the basis of film or sound recordings. Philippe Martin23 uses the example of the former French presidential candidates Ségolène Royal and Nicolas Sarkozy to show that higher or lower credibility of female politicians can arise in the manner of intonation. Ségolène, for example, structured her sentences without dropping her voice to suggest the end of a sentence, so that the sentences lasted up to two minutes, while Sarkozy spoke in small sections, the sentences lasting only six seconds, thus apparently ensuring more comprehensibility and credibility. Similar to Ségolène, Thatcher had also spoken with the same effect in her election campaigns, but had switched to a new and thus more successful intonation style after language training.24 Decisive for credibility and intelligibility is a falling sentence melody at the end of a sentence. Meanwhile, however, the analysis of sentence melody and intonation can do even more. Anyone who calls hotlines and agrees to an audio recording must reckon with their own voice being analysed according to intonation criteria. For example, in order to find out about disagreements in advance. In this way, service staff can and must adjust to the moods of the callers. One tool that records and evaluates voices is the Praat programme developed by the Dutchmen Paul Boersma and David Weenink at the Institute of Phonetic Sciences at the University of Amsterdam. Similar procedures are also used for job interviews. A software programme developed by Philippe Grochowski with AI-supported voice analysis supposedly detects mental illness and, according to the manufacturer, has an accuracy of 80%. Even sociosexual preferences are said to be able to be detected via voice pitch.25 Whether this is scientifically proven by Praat and Grochowski does not even matter in the end, as long as manufacturers and users assume that the software reflects reality and they make their decisions dependent on such analyses. This makes it all the more important in political communication for speakers to develop a voice that is as trained and controlled as possible, or even to completely detach themselves from these considerations.

2.3 Political Communication The definitions of political communication follow the common, widely differentiated approaches of political science and communication studies, which also include topics and methods from psychology, sociology and philosophy. According to Ulrich von Alemann, the major schools of political science crystallise in concepts of politics described by three pairs of opposites.26 1. descriptive/empirical, 23

Martin (2013), p. 64. Plagasul (2011). 25 Stern et al. (2021). 26 Alemann, cited in Jarren and Donges (2017), p. 3. 24

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2. governmental—emancipatory, 3. conflict-orientation—consensus-orientation. Based on the concept of politics, political science distinguishes between the dimensions of politics in the English terms policy, politics and polity, in which political communication is relevant in different ways. Policy refers to the content dimension of politics, such as the amended State Media Treaty of November 2020, which, ratified by all state parliaments, no longer defines the rights and obligations of radio and TV alone, but also of all digital media, thus providing the legal but also political framework for political communication. Politics refers to the process of politics, to the procurement of majorities, clarification of power relations, for example, which invitation rules apply to political discussion rounds on TV or radio and who makes them. And finally, the term polity refers to the formal dimension of political processes. The representatives sent from different social groups decide, for example, in different bodies of the state media authorities about supervision but also about possible concentrations of private media. In the public media, the political guidelines are determined by the broadcasting councils. In 2014, for example, the Federal Constitutional Court ruled that party representatives may no longer participate in television councils and that representatives close to the state may only participate to a limited extent.27 The concept of communication is also politicised and differentiated by communication science. Starting from a sender, the transmission itself and the receiver of information or a message, the focus is placed on the one hand on communication in a transport model. On the other hand, communication is understood as an interaction of at least two actors whose directions of mediation constantly change, so that a “form of social action” emerges from this.28 Similar to the termes of paralinguistics with the terms encoding and decoding, communication studies also distinguishes between the perspective of the sender and receiver, who are referred to here as communicator and recipient. In this chapter, I take the perspective of the recipient and with it the approach of constructivism, which sees the constitutive dimension of reality in the reception of messages. Recognition or perception of an objective reality thus appears to be unattainable. At the same time, Jarren and Donges rightly emphasise that the concepts of politics and political communication cannot be divided sharply, but that political communication is a central mechanism “in the generation, formulation and articulation of political interests, their aggregation and decidable programmes, as well as the enforcement and legitimisation of political decisions”.29 Political communication is thus a means and part of politics itself. More generally, “political communication is to be understood as the result of structures and processes that influence the actions of actors and are influenced by them at the same time”.30 27

Federal Constitutional Court of Germany, 25.03.2014. Jarren and Donges (2017), p. 5. 29 Ibid., p. 8. 30 Ibid., p. 19. 28

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2.4 Interim Result: The Emperor’s New Clothes: Unmasking Politicians as a Democratic Means of Political Communication 1. Paralinguistic utterances, facial expressions and gestures are, in contrast to the verbal utterances of politicians, spontaneously readable by all recipients at any time. They therefore play an essential role in the personality assessment of public figures, especially in the mass medium of television or in the social media. 2. It is precisely in conflict situations such as in a television debate that it becomes apparent whether sovereignty or insecurity, dominance or subordination, friendliness or hostility predominate in a person or, for example, whether the participants in the discussion combine these contradictions. 3. The greater the conflicts, the more likely are unintended leaks. Thus, political conflicts in which the various participants position themselves in competition with each other and promote their views are not only constitutive for many formats, but they also increase the power of journalists who can position themselves as investigative in the media landscape. However, mutual provocations and insecurities are part of the political business and politicians are trained to react to them. At the same time, rules of politeness are also required in political communication, which limits open hostility or is counteracted by breaking taboos. 4. Even if the significance of analyses of paralinguistics, gestures and facial expressions in psychological control experiments does not always correspond to the decoding and stereotypes are reproduced, voting decisions are later made on the basis of the evaluations. In this respect, the actors are challenged to take note of these mechanisms. They certainly also help political rivals to fathom the weak points of their opponents and to base their own strategy on them. They help recipients to check their own perception in political communication, including possible stereotypes, and to sharpen their eye for contradictions between verbal and non-verbal statements. 5. Journalists are just as much a constitutive part of political communication as politicians. Their political actions remain much more protected and undiscovered, but all the more interesting for analysis.

3 Practical Examples In the following I will compare a demonstration speech with a Christmas speech, a television debate of politicians with a television debate of journalists, the development of women’s voices with the use of the quiet, reserved appearance of a politician. The appearances of politicians belong to the realm of politics, it is about winning majorities for certain positions, be it collective bargaining, social cohesion or the authority to interpret a political event.

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3.1 Combat Speech Versus Sermon Tone: Demonstration Speech and Christmas Address We now look at the practice and to what extent the gestures, facial expressions and paralinguistics correspond with the verbal statements, whether breaks or contradictions are recognisable and what effects these have. The president of the German Trade Union Confederation, DGB, Reiner Hoffmann gave a speech of about 20 min on 1 May 2019,31 i.e. on the traditional Labour Day at the main nationwide rally of the German Trade Union Confederation in Leipzig, an excerpt of which is considered here. The number of participants was so small that there were large gaps in the Leipzig market square. A weakness of the trade unions, which is also reflected in the content of the speech: Only 44% of companies in east Germany still pay collectively agreed wages, compared to 57% in the west. Let’s look and listen at minute 3:30–5:20. The DGB president is wearing a dark blue suit with a white shirt and open collar. He wears a red DGB pin on his lapel. His appearance is delicate. Tone of voice and content are congruent. Hoffmann remains in fighting mode, his issues are the wage gap between East and West Germany and longer working hours in the East. He calls for industrial action for the introduction of the 35-h week in the East and points out that where collectively agreed wages are paid in the East, there has also been alignment with the West. Hoffmann remains permanently loud and strong and stays longer at a level that only drops towards the end of the sentence. At the same time, individual words are emphasised again, see note 1. The facial expression is serious, the frown lines between the eyebrows but also on the forehead deepen now and then, which underlines the seriousness. Hoffmann’s gaze alternates between the audience and the manuscript, his hands rest on the lectern. At the beginning of movement 3, i.e. with “Until today”, Hoffmann briefly raises one arm and then remains on the lectern. With sentence 3, he raises and lowers his left arm over the words “together make sure” while placing his index finger and thumb on top of each other. Voice and movement are congruent. When he stresses a syllable, he raises his arm, and when he lowers his voice, his arm also sinks 31

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hY42NBac92c. Accessed 20 March 2022; Rede Rainer Hoffmann, 1.5.2019 Leipzig, minute 03:30–05:30, the words in italics were emphasized: (1) “Liebe Kolleginnen und Kollegen, viele haben den Eindruck, die deutsche Einheit ist auch 30 Jahre nach der friedlichen Revolution immer noch nicht vollendet. (2) Bis heute haben die Politik aber auch die Unternehmen es nicht geschafft, gleichwertige Lebensverhältnisse zwischen Ost und West herzustellen. (3) Lasst uns also endlich gemeinsam dafür sorgen, dass die Lebensbedingungen der Menschen in Ost und West angeglichen werden. [Applaus und Pfeifen] (4) Ich finde, ich finde, das ist überfällig und dafür, genau dafür setzen wir uns als Gewerkschaften ein. (5) Und ich sage euch dann selbstbewusst, wir haben Einiges erreicht. (6)In jedem Unternehmen, in denen Tariflöhne bezahlt werden, haben wir die Lohnlücke zwischen Ost- und Westdeutschland nahezu geschlossen. (7) Auch bei der Arbeitszeit werden wir nicht locker lassen. (8) Es kann doch nicht sein, es kann doch nicht länger angehen, dass in viel zu vielen Betrieben 3, 4, 5, 6 Stunden und mehr länger gearbeitet wird als die Kolleginnen und Kollegen in den westdeutschen Betrieben. (9) Der Kampf um die 35-Stunden-Woche, der Kampf um die 35 Stunden Woche muss auch hier im Osten gewonnen werden, dafür lieber Bernd Kruppa werden wir als DGB-Gewerkschaften solidarisch an eurer Seite stehen”.

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in a short rhythm almost approaching from syllable to syllable. Hoffmann repeats this gesture in the second part of the 4th movement, which is about the use of unions. In movement 6, “In every company”, he raises his right hand and puts up his index finger, while the thumb remains splayed, so that although attention is to be drawn, this does not seem lecturing. Overall, despite a strong tone, Hoffmann’s delicate appearance makes him seem somewhat gentle. Since the influence of trade unions has diminished considerably in recent decades due to the tariff flight of many companies, the appearance with this gentleness seems perfectly appropriate, authentic and free of contradictions. On 25 December 2020, German Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier delivered his Christmas address of just under nine minutes.32 Here we look at the broadcast minute 03:45 to 05:30. Next to a decorated Christmas tree hangs a flag with an eagle on it, which has an aggressive expression, but the folding of the flag makes it look unintentionally crashed, creating an ironic break with the main message when Steinmeier speaks of confidence. A glass chandelier and wooden panelling can be seen in the background. The Federal President wears a dark suit with a grey dotted tie and waistcoat, green heavily rimmed fashionable glasses and a pin on his lapel. His appearance is also very serious because of his white hair. His facial expressions are only briefly friendly at first, then serious and not very varied. His forehead only shows wrinkles for a few seconds. The gestures seem rehearsed and monotonous: two fingers of one hand touch two fingers of the other hand. Arms and hands then part once or twice, opening, before he again touches two fingers of one hand to two fingers of the other. Steinmeier only slightly varies the distance between the opening arms and hands. At the word “I” he taps his chest. And after enumerating the difficulties with the pandemic, he enters the second part of the speech with the word “Nevertheless” and raises both arms while pointing his index fingers upwards. At the words “not apart”, the movements of the arms widen outwards. At the “moving together” his hands come closer again. With the second “I”, Steinmeier puts both hands on his chest when he addresses the audience directly, for example with the word “you”, his arms reach further forward but open less. 32

https://www.bundespraesident.de/SharedDocs/Reden/DE/Frank-Walter-Steinmeier/Reden/ 2020/12/201225-Weihnachtsansprache.html;jsessionid=A4259D8154FA2B1B1E70F581AC8 38F72.2_cid504?nn=1892034. Accessed 20 March 2022, 3:45–5:18. „Fröhlich sind diese Weihnachten wahrlich nicht überall. Dennoch, vergessen wir bitte neben den vielen dunklen, die hellen Seiten dieses Jahres nicht. Gerade in diesen Tagen erleben wir doch, das Virus treibt uns nicht auseinander – im Gegenteil. Es lässt uns zusammenrücken. Unser Land ist ein starkes Land, weil so viele Menschen für andere da sind und in der Krise über sich hinauswachsen. Ich danke allen, die im Kampf gegen das Virus in der ersten Reihe stehen, die bis zur Erschöpfung arbeiten und ihre eigene Gesundheit riskieren von der Ärztin bis zum Pfleger, von der Erzieherin über den Wissenschaftler bis zum Busfahrer. Unser Land ist ein starkes Land, weil wir die Lasten der Krise gemeinsam schultern. Unser Staat greift denen unter die Arme, die wirtschaftlich in Not geraten. Viele von ihnen unterstützten den Laden um Eck, Musikschule, wenn Sportverein oder sie leisten Großartiges im Ehrenamt. In einer Zeit der Verunsicherung haben wir gelernt, dass wir unserer Demokratie vertrauen können, wir haben um den richtigen Weg gestritten und Entscheidungen dann doch gemeinsam getragen.“

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The tone of voice, like the gestures, is monotonously constant. He tries to escape the preaching tone, but does not succeed. The preaching tone is understood as “affective pauses and amplicative modulations (=emphasisations)”.33 For example, when the “e” in a secondary syllable is not pronounced as [ᵊ] but as [e] and the strongly stressed syllables are repeated at short intervals, for example as an a-b-b-a pattern, whereby the voice is raised from a to b, remains at the same level at b and is lowered again for the second a. This creates the typical droning sentence melody.34 The aim is to achieve a feeling of being understood, being included, respect, appreciation and “cohesion”, a word that even appears visually at the end of the speech as a light installation at the seat of the Federal President, Bellevue Palace. Steinmeier looks directly into the camera the whole time. The message of the Christmas address is: I understand the citizens with their problems in the pandemic. The situation is critical, but our society is up to the challenge. The preachy tone and rehearsedness conveyed by Steinmeier’s performance, however, counteract the verbal statements. No “uh” disturbs the rehearsal, but it makes the speech seem stiff and impersonal. The impression is created that Steinmeier is professionally reeling off a programme and that he doesn’t care about the audience at all, although this need not be the case. This trained authenticity thus creates more distance than closeness.

3.2 Cross-Examination Versus Factual Debate In the Maybrit Illner programme of 6.2.2020 of ZDF “Über Rechtsaußen an die Macht: Tabubruch in Thüringen”, the election of Thomas Kemmerich from the liberal party, FDP, as Minister President of Thuringia with the votes of the right-wing party “Alternative for Germany”, AfD is discussed. Participants are: the party leader of the Greens Robert Habeck, the secretary general of the FDP Linda Teuteberg, the prime minister of Saxony, from the Christian party, CDU, Michael Kretschmer, the vice chairwoman of the Left Janine Wissler, the AfD parliamentary group leader in the German Bundestag Alexander Gauland, and the editor-in-chief of “Die Welt”, Dagmar Rosenfeld. On 5 February 2020, with the election of Thomas Kemmerich, the AfD succeeded for the first time in proving that the two conservative and liberal parties FDP and CDU in Thuringia were able to connect to the AfD in terms of power politics, to split the democratic camp of the parliament and to put the parties involved in the federal government under pressure. This offensive continues in the MaybritIllner broadcast of 6.2.2020. An equally taboo-breaking gesture by the parliamentary group leader of the Left Party in the Thuringian state parliament, Susanne HennigWellsow, acknowledged the event by throwing the bouquet of flowers at Kemmerichs’ feet. Nevertheless, the AfD is able to distinguish itself as a bourgeois party in the programme. Not only because it is invited, but also because the Greens and the 33 34

Halwachs, p. 93. compare also Fiukowski and Ptok (1996), pp. 670–672.

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Left are put on the defensive over the debate of the horseshoe theory, which puts the AfD and the Left on the same level. The moderator, Maybrit Illner, takes on an unnoticed active role in this process by again questioning what has already been factually proven and thus not letting the facts speak for themselves, but opening up a battle arena for the interpretive sovereignty of Kemmerich’s election. Illner functions here as a gatekeeper,35 deciding which opinions can establish themselves and which cannot. Gauland can express his theses partly unchallenged: 1. 2. 3. 4.

Höcke is not a fascist, but a clever strategist (with contradiction), the AfD is a normal, bourgeois, democratic party, the election of Kemmerich was a completely normal, democratic election, many members of Christian Democratic Union, CDU, in Thuringia would like to work more closely with the CDU (this is proven by the inclusion of a corresponding agreement by the programme itself).

Gauland then makes the connection with the bourgeois parties CDU and FDP through his voice and the calmness he maintains. The sovereignty with which Gauland makes these assertions is evident in his manner of speaking, which comes across as emphatically slow, clear and easy to understand. Even an irrelevance like “And that’s why this is nonsense” thus unfolds respectability in Gauland. And it also shows that he is a match for the moderator with her eristic questioning technique. He uses one himself. It forms a psychological counterpoint to the fast-talkers Illner, Habeck and Wissler and thus creates an invisible bond with the representatives of the bourgeois parties Kretschmer and Teuteberg. Only the prolonged lowered gaze during his defence speech on Kemmerich’s election expresses defensiveness. The rapid speech of Habeck and Wissler, on the other hand, appears defensive, rushed and under pressure. Habeck shows a very serious facial expression from the beginning, which is recognisable by lowered corners of his mouth. Teuteberg, on the other hand, smiles very often in her defence speeches, seems uncomfortable, and thus at the same time relativises her statements before she later switches to attack mode regarding the horseshoe theory. The programme is set up in battle mode. Illner provokes, confuses and interrupts, she constantly deceives and attacks her interlocutors, cross-examines them with a total of 51 questions asked within an hour. In an analysis by linguists of the FON Institute,36 Illner is said to have a military, demanding style. She speaks in a pressed voice that makes others feel uncomfortable. Despite Illner’s attack mode, however, she does not always come across as confident, rather as if she has to keep the operating temperature of the discussion high. A completely different format is provided by the “Internationaler Frühschoppen” on the same topic: Tabubruch in Thüringen – Wie umgehen mit Rechtspopulisten? from 9 February 2020.37 This is also about the question of what effect the Thuringian 35

Jarren et al. (2002). Foninstitut (2021). 37 Phoenix (2020). 36

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decision will have on the federal parties, especially the CDU and FDP, how right-wing populism can be fought and where in Europe this fight is already being waged successfully. In this way, the programme positions itself against the AfD right from the start. Participants are: Anne Mailliet, France 24, Thomas Lundin, Svenska Dagbladet, Erik Kirschbaum, Los Angelos Times, Frank A. Meyer, publicist, Switzerland and Nadine Lindner, Deutschlandfunk. The moderation was done by Alfred Schier, who limited himself to 22 questions for the period of about 50 min, whereby the same question, what is the solution to the problem of right-wing populism, was asked several times. In addition, Nadine Lindner raised a question of her own, namely what would happen to the CDU if it did not maintain its equidistance from the AfD and the Left. While the equation of the Left and the AfD worked on Illner, the participants here agreed that the Left party is a democratic party in contrast to the AfD, which finally settled the issue. Accordingly, the voices of the participants remain calm, the expressions of all are serious. Only Frank A. Meyer shows more lively gestures with his hands and arms, his voice occasionally swells, especially when he points out the mistakes of the democratic parties in fighting right-wing populists, such as not addressing problems, or the social composition of parliaments, which lacks people with intermediate school leaving certificate. Facial expressions and gestures match the verbal statement, a factual discussion leaves out personal hostilities, the debate is comprehensible, however, the programme is not so much an adversarial debate as merely a compilation of arguments.

3.3 Vocal Versus Vocal: Women’s Voices Are Getting Deeper, Men’s Are Getting Quieter In 2017, the doctor of phoniatrics and audiology, Dr Martin Berg, together with Prof Michael Fuchs of the University of Leipzig, among others, published a study which found that women’s voices are no longer an octave, but only a fifth higher than men’s.38 A development that has been observable within 20 years. Similar results were already achieved in an Australian study from 1993,39 which, as a cross-sectional study, examined the fundamental frequency of speech using voice recordings for a longitudinal study from 1945. This trend can even be traced back to the 1920s. According to Weaver, the basic speaking frequency for women was 318 Hz in 1924, but by 1934 it had dropped to a level between 242 and 256. While in 1993 it was between 193 and 203 Hz, Berg now determined a frequency of 168 Hz, while that of men is 110. Within 100 years, there is thus a 136 Hz drop in the voice pitch of women, almost a halving. This means a step of one octave! However, the exact cause of this development has not been researched. It is assumed that women have developed lower voices due to their increased professional 38 39

Berg et al. (2017). Pemberton et al. (1998).

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activity, as it is associated with more self-confidence and assertiveness. This process shows that voice pitch is less biologically determined than socially and culturally determined and can be interpreted as a process of emancipation of women, since a lower voice (also of men) is associated with more sovereignty. For example, the female employment rate in Germany increased from an average of 57% in 1991 to 72.1% in 202140 ; in comparison, the male employment rate only increased by about 1 per cent in the same period. But physical variables also change the frequency level. For example, ageing, smoking and various medications41 are also considered to cause female voices to lose pitch. On the other hand, Stern’s study shows that women with lower voices have higher sexual activity, which could indicate a process of emancipation, similar to the higher employment of women over the past 100 years.42 While women’s voices seem to be adapting to the male role model in the work life, there is also the opposite direction of development. In the 2021 Bundestag election campaign, Olaf Scholz deliberately recommended himself as Angela Merkel’s successor, as a calm, well-considered crisis manager who—similar to Mrs Merkel— lacks emotions. The stoic Scholz is said to have a gentle voice. At the same time, his style is perceived as a counterpoint to Trump’s rhetoric.43 On the one hand, the gentleness corresponds to his temperament, on the other hand, the gentle and reflectiveness seem to be Scholz’s brand essence. The “loud silence” that Scholz spread during the election campaign was a “sound of silence”, according to El Quassil, negatively interpreted as soft-spoken. In her view, however, this is a path that Scholz has left behind. He has now developed a new voice colour, which El Quassil understands more as a metaphor than as a paralinguistic feature. In an interview with Jake Tapper of the US channel CNN, Scholz would have given a very lively interview on 7.2.2022. Similarly, the leading media criticised Scholz’s decision to supply heavy weapons to Ukraine as dithering—an attitude that the majority of Germans initially saw positively, but which has since earned Scholz minus points in polls.44 That Scholz can also speak loudly and aggressively was shown by his appearance on 1 May 2022 in Düsseldorf, where he said with a swollen carotid artery: “Ich akzeptiere jeden Pazifismus, ich akzeptiere jede Haltung. Aber es muss einen Bürger der Ukraine zynisch vorkommen, wenn ihm gesagt wird, er solle sich gegen die Putinsche Aggression ohne Waffen verteidigen, das ist aus der Zeit gefallen”.45 Scholz refers to an open letter by intellectuals criticising the delivery of heavy weapons to Ukraine.46 Scholz not only yells at the whistling audience, but also repeatedly raises 40

Destatis (2022). Pemberton et al. (1998), p. 208. 42 Stern et al. (2021). 43 El Quassil (2022). 44 ZDF (2022). 45 “I accept every pacifism, I accept every attitude. But it must seem cynical to a citizen of Ukraine to be told to defend himself against Putin’s aggression without weapons, that is out of time”. Welt Nachrichtensender (2022). 46 Dresen et al. (2022). 41

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his left arm with an open hand at first, which he closes in the course of this sentence so that his index finger and thumb touch, until finally, in the last subordinate clause, he stretches his index finger in the direction of the audience, see 0:35 min. A gesture that also has a high potential for aggression and revises the image of the gentle Federal Chancellor—possibly also used deliberately because he is now accused of being gentle as a deficit rather than prudent.

4 Concluding Remarks? The paralinguistic utterances of politicians democratize their perception because they can be decoded by everyone. They help to determine credibility and authenticity and thus also their electability or recognition. In democratic systems, politicians are in a competitive relationship, must position themselves, demonstrate sovereignty, dominance and at the same time friendliness, or take the path of breaking taboos. A preachy tone creates just as much distance or disinterest between politics and the audience as a ritualised appearance that is trained away from weaknesses. Political communication is faced with a dilemma, because the audience does not want to identify with politicians who are weak in content but authentic in their appearance and then simply stay away, as in the case of trade union events. In situations of struggle as in a non-ritualised debate like Maybrit Illner, unintentional leaks are highly likely and give the programme legitimacy. They unmask, show weaknesses or even strengths of politicians, but without completely revealing their manipulative content, which is made possible by the moderation. The high number of questions and the nature of the questions lead to results that can be determined in advance, which relativizes the democratization of the perceptions of politicians’ positions. At the same time, political debates that only focus on personal performance can become depoliticized because they lead away from the content. It becomes fatal when the performance of right-wing politicians surpasses that of democratic parties and formal democracy is not distinguished from substantive democracy. The vocal convergence of women and men across all social strata is one of the positive developments of the past decades. The convergence towards the vocal restraint formerly assigned to women carries the risk of men interpreting it as weakness in decision-making. However, this vocal position in perception can also put hard decisions, for example on higher military spending, into perspective if the soft voice is also attributed soft consequences—without these coming to pass.

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Mechthild Klett * 1965 in Bünde (Nordrhein-Westfalen), Magister in Political Science, Universität Hamburg 1995 with the topic Why did Gorbachev’s economic reform fail?. Managing editor of Stadt + Grün. Doctoral candidate at the Institute of Sociology at the University of Jena, Prof. Tilman Reitz, on the topic of The relation between Irony and Dialectics in Karl Marx.

Music Aesthetic Question

Word, Tone, Context: Communication and Sense in the Medium of Music Mário Vieira de Carvalho

1 Introduction One of the more radical denials of the language-character of music is formulated by the German musicologist Hans-Heinrich Eggebrecht (1999).1 According to Eggebrecht, music cannot say table or round table, so it is not language. Music can, however, be brought to language through a theoretical discourse on it. Music, itself, is not language, but it can be object of language, especially of a language matching that of science. But if music communicates only what it is itself through the scientific discourse about it, or, in his words, only the processes of definition that describe it, then it is no wonder that Eggebrecht (1999) outright rejects the semiotics of music. Dahlhaus (1973, pp. 41–42) concedes that the language ‘in which’ music manifests itself is not independent of the language ‘in’ which is spoken of music, and therefore, one of the ways of accessing the ‘language’ of music is the analysis of texts on music. The role of verbalization in music is also accentuated in an essay by Wellmer (2009): Music is an art distant from the words and yet it finds itself at home in the realm of verbal language. Of course, talking about music is to make music speak. Music leads us to make it speak, even though music itself does not speak. Such generalized verbalization of the experience of music, whether by the musician or by the listener, which can be found in all cultures and situations as self-description of different collective and individual uses or affordances, has obviously strong feedback on the sedimentation of musical meanings. Accepting this does not, however, imply to follow Eggebrecht in his categorical denial of the language character of music. In fact, by ignoring the immense 1 I will not approach here closely his seven theses, which I discussed in another paper (Vieira de Carvalho 2016).

M. V. de Carvalho (B) CESEM—Research Centre for Aesthetics and Sociology of Music, Nova University Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 H.-W. Heister et al. (eds.), Word Art + Gesture Art = Tone Art, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20109-7_4

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variety of musical experiences that the semantics of social interaction never cease to nourish and expand (including non-verbalizable dimensions), he excludes from the musical practices themselves any possibility to make sense. Musical meaning, according to him, would be generated not in the medium of music (the medium in which its experience or Erfahrung takes place), but rather in the medium of verbal language, especially in the medium of the technical-scientific discourse on music, in which music is reduced, from outside and authoritatively from the top to the cold reason of the categories of analysis. Logocentrism and eurocentrism are obvious in Eggebrecht’s position. He is thinking specifically of music as Tonkunst, whose concept emerged in Germany around 1800 and whose “supreme laws” were object of musicology, in the systematization of Guido Adler (1885). Characteristic of the Tonkunst is its precedence as notation over its sonic realization, and this is the reason why, for Eggebrecht (1999, p. 12), music notation is an essential moment of music theory, as far as, by making the meaning of the sound materially visible, it simultaneously selects and rationalizes it—that is, theorizes it by itself.

2 Verbalization and Deverbalization of Music Eggebrecht’s argument leads him to emphasize the historical phenomenon of deverbalization or deprivation of the language character of music. However, in my view, the question could be put exactly the opposite, highlighting the inverse historical process of verbalization, which is triggered with the emergence of musica poetica at the turn of the 16th to the seventeenth century and which constitutes an effective paradigm shift. In theoretical discourse, as is well known, music then separates itself from the quadrivium, losing its status as a cosmological-rational discipline alongside arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy, to approach or resemble the disciplines of the old trivium: Rhetoric, grammar, and logic. This historical shift in the sense of verbalization—that is: The approach to instrumental music itself as a sound language (Tonsprache) or sound speech (Klangrede)—produced in theoretical discourse will mark, as Eggebrecht himself, after all, recognizes, the subsequent four centuries in both musical theory and practice. In Dahlhaus’s (1973, p. 44) synthesis, if instrumental music was able to separate itself from verbal language without loss of aesthetic meaning it was precisely because it had already become like language. As for the inverse phenomenon, deverbalization, which occurred in the twentieth century, Adorno (1956: 649–650) attributes it to the rupture with the tonal system, which uses recurring stamps or words that, due to their invariance, have become a second nature: Chords that occur recurrently with the same function, sedimented connections such as the structure of cadences, melodic figurations, etc. The new music—particularly the multiple serialism—eliminated this vocabulary which was sedimented in the meantime, in an attempt at integral rationalization that aimed to completely eradicate the gestural and mimetic aspects of the similarity of music to language (Paddison 1991, p. 272).

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According to Elmar Budde (1988), this phenomenon of deverbalization is linked to a new concept of musical work of art characterized by its uniqueness. The unique, unrepeatable work tautologically refers only to itself, without integrating itself into a common language as was the case with tonal language. To be a unique work of art, it ceases to be language. An example of contradictory positions of contemporary composers in this regard is given by Wellmer (2009, pp. 9–13; Wellmer 2012, p. 203): While Elliot Carter sees in the specific constructive process of a work of music, despite its uniqueness, the foundation of its language character, Dieter Schnebel sees in it precisely what distances it from language. In Schnebel’s view the invention of the serial technique had restored a genuinely musical constructive process (Strukturbildung). Schnebel is thus inscribed in a tradition of thought that, going back to Hanslick and continuing, among others, with Stravinsly and Boulez, supposes a form of object-centered communication (objektzentriert—Kaden 1984, p. 140), that is, reduced to the activity of classifying sound objects or their elements according to certain abstraction criteria, an objectivist fallacy, as Ferreira de Castro (2013) calls it. Anyway, as Niemöller (2010, pp. 44ff.) remembers, several composers from the twentieth century European music canon continue to defend the language character of music: Among others, Arnold Schönberg, Alban Berg, Anton Webern, Ernst Krenek, Hans-Werner Henze, Sylvano Bussotti, Charles Ives, and, of course, Olivier Messiaen (1944), author of a compositional treatise entitled Technique de mon langage musical. Luigi Nono should be added to the list, then, in many of his works (including those more influenced by the serial technique), he explores notably the complexity of the semantic relationship between poetic text and music through the technique of linguistic fragmentation (frantumazione linguistica) and the recomposition of the fragments in the acoustic space as carriers of musical meaning (see Vieira de Carvalho 1996, pp. 200–201; Vieira de Carvalho 2007, pp. 239ff.; 248). I leave aside, for now, a more in-depth discussion of these contradictory trends, and limit myself to verifying that, if it is true that there are, in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, trends in musical composition and thought in a broad sense, including in the philosophy of music, which reject the language character of music, this fact cannot invalidate the verification, in parallel, of the opposite trend, also expressed in the emergence and great international expansion of music semiotics. Going back, however, again in time, it should be considered that, even under the hegemony of music as a cosmological-rational discipline, it cannot be said that this resulted in the inexistence of uses or practices that brought it closer to language, or in which the two merged. In fact, the oldest documentary sources, whether of musical notation or iconography, show the strong connection of these practices to contexts of communication in which music becomes inseparable from verbal language. They show that the notion of using music as a language must be broadened. In a holistic approach like the one proposed by Hornbostel (1927), it is not just only the vocal or sound language that counts. It is also the language of gestures, body, movement, from which it cannot be separated, because it is part of a whole: Human action in the most diverse circumstances and social spheres.

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No less surprising in Eggebrecht’s position is the fact that he sets aside any substantial or original relationship between music and language, as it is known that, for example, in archaic Greek, verse was a linguistic and, at the same time, musical reality (Georgiades 1954, pp. 4–5). Similarly, Augustinus of Hipona, regarding the Latin language, shows how word and verse were inseparable from music. Putting himself from the cosmological-rational and theological point of view, he does not make any essential distinction between verbal language and music. For him, music, being a more comprehensive science, dominates the totality of the numerical relations that govern the verses (rhythmic feet, meter) and their resonance in the soul and body. Hence the expression canticum dicere—to say the chant—presupposing the unity of word and music. Furthermore, the structural relationship between gestures of language and gestures of music—I am specifically referring to melodic-rhythmic configurations—are observable in most cultures. They manifest themselves not only in the musicalization of texts (thus encompassing the wide range of text-based vocal-instrumental genres), but also in the opposite process: The textualization of music, a practice that, in European music, dates back to, at least, the medieval trope (addition of text to melismas, in Gregorian chant), but which continues to be a common practice today, especially in popular music, where the so-called lyrics are often invented a posteriori, for a preexisting melody. European instrumental music itself is often marked by what we could call verbalisms (as opposed to tropisms), that is, melodic-rhythmic motifs that reproduce the prosody of words or verbal expressions. Harry Goldschmidt (1986a; b) analyzed them in Schubert and Beethoven. Hanns-Werner Heister (2015, pp. 299– 300) captures them in Wagner, in the musical drama Tristan und Isolde, where the three words of the title have structural relevance, extensively permeating the musical composition beyond the vocal-instrumental duality, intensifying the semantization of the whole. It is thus not only with the affectus of musica poetica that the semiotic charge of music is manifested, also the numerus of speculative music, which established the link between music and Harmonia Mundi, was theorized and practiced with full awareness of its symbolic power. The doctrine of ethos, which, by the way, underlies Augustinus’s treatise, and which links musical categories with cosmological, theological, political, moral, medical categories, is an example of this. We continue to find similar types of semiosis in different cultures and situations, as it has been observed in the anthropology or sociology of music.

3 Performance, Context and Meaning The other face of Eggebrecht’s denial of the language character of music is a too narrow concept of language, according to which meaning consists in denotation, that is, in the arbitrary or conventional relation between a given sign and the object which it refers to. However, already Saussure (1916, p. 101) considers verbal language only a particular case of language, to subsume in a general semiology. Still more

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comprehensive is a broadly accepted concept of language that covers all systems and means of communication, whatever the material used (Carnap 1959), and bears the notion of intermediality. Wittgenstein even inverts the terms of the question: Verbal language is unable to understand music, whereas music helps us understand verbal language. According to him, music is the medium into which language may be more perfectly translated, the one that offers the most appropriate analogy for what humans do when they speak, showing us what in no language it is allowed to say (Arnold 2000, p. 186). Hence, what cannot be said, the unsayable, is no longer seen as language deprivation, but rather recognized as constitutive of language in general, and of verbal language. As Agamben postulates, the unsayable [is] precisely what language must presuppose to signify (Agamben 1993, p. 4).2 Kramer (2013, p. 24), similarly, suggests that music’s characteristic lack of referential automatism of language and images has traditionally been confused with the lack of meaning. In fact, however, music makes apparent that the source of meaning and participation in any circumstance is precisely the surplus over and above referential automatism. In other words, the referential umbrella of verbal language is just an illusion that music undoes. Eggebrecht, instead, reduces the production of meaning to the referential umbrella, that is, to a mechanism of signification immanent to the language structure, disregarding the language performance and its contexts. But words may have very different semantic contents, depending on the situation in which they are spoken. It is just for these different performances of the verbal language that Wittgenstein displaces the problem of the production of meaning. In fact, according to Wittgenstein, there is no fixed meaning of words; meaning depends on the uses at the level of language performance. Linguistic performance is the whole—of the language and of the activities with which it interweaves (Wittgenstein 1953, p. 177 [§7]). This linguistic turn has had, as it is well known, widespread consequences in the social sciences and humanities. Not in the sense that Linguistics provides a model for social action or institutions, but in the opposite sense: That of examining the mutual co-ordination between language and praxis, as Anthony Giddens (1987, p. 80) puts it. Instead of promoting the retreat into the code, Wittgenstein seeks to understand the relational character of signification in the context of social practices, which is not only true for the ordinary language he is dealing with, but also—according to Giddens (1987: 86)—for literature and the arts in general. Giddens includes this contribution into the notion of human agency that underlies his sociological theory and therefore proposes that the focus shifts from the use of words and phrases to the process of using them in contexts of social conduct. In a non-explicit but clear relation to Habermas’ notion of a linguistically structured lifeworld (Lebenswelt) (Habermas 1981, II, pp. 229ff.), ordinary talk is thus considered precisely that ‘medium of living in the world’ in which reference and meaning interlace (Giddens 1987, p. 94). Therefore, Giddens postulates the priority of ordinary talk over other media of signification because it operates in saturated behavioural and conceptual contexts and the constitution of meaning in such talk is 2

Quoted by Moreno (2013, p. 213), in his essay on the Ethics of the Unsayable.

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the condition, moreover, of the signifying properties of writing and texts (Giddens 1987, pp. 91–92). Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1781), I remind, had already defended a similar point of view, but in more radical terms, then he condemned writing as destruction of the presence and consequently sickness of the word (maladie de la parole or maladie du langage). On exactly the same way, Gadamer (2001, pp. 13ff.), in one of his last lectures, also insists on moving the priority of reading/understanding to listening /understanding: Language is only in the conversation. This debate, here only just surfaced, leads to the reformulation of the problem of the relationship between music and verbal language as means of communication. Wittgenstein’s notion of linguistic performance or play (Sprachspiel) and its equivalent in music can be paralleled—as Wittgenstein himself does –, then he extends the notion of linguistic performance to music as a form of language. He uses instrumental music to radicalize his thesis that meaning (Bedeutung) of a sign resides only in its use: Not even words are constitutive of a linguistic performance, since the sounds of music have also something to tell us, to which we attach meanings (Arnold 2000, p. 179). Among Wittgenstein’s different kinds of language games or language performances we can distinguish, accordingly, between linguistic performance in proper sense (Sprachspiel) and music performance (Musikspiel), being the latter understood as a form of language that encompasses the actions of singing, playing, dancing, listening, and the attitudes, behaviours and movements that are associated to them. Music performances may be associated to linguistic performances in proper sense, but, for the scope of our topic, they shall not be confused with these, notably with theoretical, philosophical, sociological, ethnographic, semiotic, or other forms of speaking about music. Like the ordinary talk, music performances are also inscribed primarily in the lifeworld. They are also means of social conduct, in which the production of meaning is inseparable from the respective holistic contexts. And it can also be said of them exactly what Giddens says of ordinary talk: They are a medium in which reference and meaning interlace. In these music performances, which can be called colloquial (by analogy with conversation or talk), sound events, gestures, movements, attitudes, behaviours point out to a given situation within a cultural and social context and are, in turn, pointed out or conditioned by it. The produced meaning is part of a form of knowledge and communication that does not require verbalization or whose specificity ceases when it is verbalized. These colloquial music practices (Umgangsmusik in the terminology of Besseler) have in common with ordinary language the copresence of the communication partners, copresence that brings to the foreground the embodiment of their musical performances, the intuitive, sensitive, emotional aspects at stake, including the level of the subconscious or unconscious, which is especially relevant. Such relevance has been increasingly put in evidence by recent research in neurosciences—including the emerging field of neurosociology: We assume the capacity for conscious control, but in fact what dominates are unconscious processes that denounce this control as illusory or even a servant of a lord who is alien to him (Baecker 2014, p. 11).

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This assumption brings us to mind Bourdieu’s idea of a collective unconscious as opposed to social consciousness or class consciousness of the Marxist tradition. Anyway, the role of the unconscious becomes still more crucial in the terrain of the arts and literature, defined more recently by Rancière (2001, p. 11) as the domain of privileged effectiveness of the unconscious. But already Adorno (1970, p. 174), among others, speaks of art and sense of form (Formgefühl) as being born from the constellation between the conscious and the unconscious, and Bateson found from his empirical anthropological and psychological research that art belongs to the deeper levels of mind, in which primary processes prevail: The levels of the unconscious (Bateson 1972, pp. 135–137). Understood in these terms, musical interaction, for those who participate in it, can, after all, communicate even more than verbal language, although in a different way. While in ordinary conversation there are clearly two levels of meaning that can converge or diverge, intertwine contradictorily, or intensify one another (the level of the word as a substitution for something absent and the level of the expressive, gestural or embodied presence of the partners in a given situation), in the musical interaction (despite of processes of conventionalisation linked to cultural contexts) the experience of the presence, which also involves the sphere of the unconscious in communication, tends to become immersive. This is surely the reason why Gadamer (2001, p. 21) takes music as a model for his notion of immersing in (Aufgehen in), which, in his perspective, also occurs in ordinary talk. By making this parallel between linguistic performances in ordinary talk and colloquial music performances, I also assume, as Giddens and Gadamer do referring to talk, the historical and cultural priority of colloquial music over musical writing or notation as means of signification. In all human cultures, both speaking and singing or other forms of making music precede and are independent of whether someone dominates respectively a code of writing or a code of musical notation. This continues still to be valid in our days.

4 Communication Beyond the Signs Christian Kaden’s (1984) approach to music communication in his Musiksoziologie converges with such assumptions, for it deals just mainly with models in which the copresence of the partners, both making and listening to music, is assumed. Even when the music performance is based on notation, he focuses on sound events as encoding of meaning and their decoding in each context. In Kaden’s approach, communication occurs in self-regulated systems, being the feedbacks of the receivers also constitutive of them. Receivers are always needed as coproducers of meaning. From the copresence of the communication partners and its organic link to a social context emerges a level of encoding and decoding of meaning that is particularly comprehensive: The pars pro toto or part for the whole level. Here, Kaden identifies two intertwined dimensions of music communication: That of the embodiment of feelings, emotions, attitudes, and that of its link to a given kind of social activity

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or ritual. Any element involved in the musical process is implicitly pointing both to his/her own expressive gestures and to the event or segment of the lifeworld to which the performance is organically attached. The copresence of all partners and their feedbacks to one another as well as the actual exchange of inputs and outputs with the social environment are here determinant to produce meaning. In these situations, meaning results from inference rather than from reference. Hence Kaden speaks of symptoms, not of signs, leading to a semiosis that cannot be separated from the copresence of all partners and of a given social environment, that is, the whole in which the music performance is inscribed. According to Kaden, the conventionalisation of sound events or music configurations as signs takes place in the very moment when a symptom loses its organic link to the whole. Expressive and contextual symptoms, when separated from the holistic situation of social interaction, become conventional signs. One could say that it is precisely to the extent that the presence disappears from the horizon of communication that emerges, in its place (or as its substitute) the conventional sign that represents it. This is what Derrida (1967, p. 197) calls différance (deferral, deferment) referring to the subtraction of the presence by the sign, inherent to verbal language. Conventional signs obtained in this way—that is, by means of the autonomization of expressive or contextual symptoms—can be abundantly found in European music— including, of course, the so-called autonomous music of the concert halls. Their decoding depends, as Kaden (1984, p. 134) suggests, either on the observation of their iconic qualities (analogies with empirical images, gestures, events) or on a knowledge background about their historical-cultural genesis. All the immense literature published in the field of musical semiotics investigates mainly these dimensions to produce meaning in music. Thus, what stands out in Kaden’s approach is not what separates music from verbal language, but rather what brings them together as forms of human agency or communicative acting, in Giddens’ or Habermas’ terms. For this reason, I think that is pertinent to remind here Karl Bühler’s (1934) model of the functions of language, in which Habermas (1988, pp. 104ff.) recognizes the merit of synthesizing in one linguistic theory three distinct currents: Intentionalistic semantics, formal semantics and the pragmatic theory of the second Wittgenstein. It comprises: – The expression of intentions or experiences of the sender (expressive function); – The interpellation addressed to a recipient (appealing function); – The reference (or gesture of pointing something) in the world or horizon of the interaction (representational function).3 3

The circle in the middle represents the concrete sound phenomenon. The sides of the triangle correspond to the semantic functions of the complex linguistic sign (in my hypothesis, also a musical gesture) as three variable moments: relation with the sender, the recipient and the objects or facts (Bühler 1934, p. 28). Schlerath (1999, p. 21) discusses Bühler’s theory (without referring to Habermas), but she concludes that it does not apply to music, in which she does not recognize a representational function. In my view, however, the representational function, applied to music, may be interpreted as making sense in a broader sense, namely by pointing out to objects or facts of the communication context.

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Fig. 1 Diagram with the three functions of a sign4

If we consider the situations of the lifeworld in which reference and meaning interlace, then, in my view, this model fits to all colloquial performances, be they linguistic or musical (Fig. 1). What is missing in the diagram is eventually to make more emphatic the selfregulation of the communication system. That is to say: – There is no communication without the feedback from the receiver to the sender; – There is no communication without an environment or context to which communicative acting is structurally coupled. In other words, there is communication neither without reciprocal affectation of the partners, nor without reciprocal affectation between system and environment (exchange of information—inputs and outputs—between both).5 On the other hand, in Bühler’s model, communication presupposes signs, as it is generally assumed (signs are represented in Bühler’s diagram by the letter Z, of Zeichen). However, in the case of music, as Kaden (1984: 135ff.) puts forward, there is also the possibility of communication without sign, either in what he calls its object-centred modality, or in the modality that emerges with the concept of absolute music. What makes the difference between both is that the object-centered communication grounds on the suspension or denial of the language character of music (coinciding with Eggebrecht’s position), while the paradigm of absolute music, on the contrary, is consistent with the assumption of music as language, even of music as the language par excellence, for it bears the ability to express the inexpressible, to say the unsayable, and—as we have seen—this ability to produce meaning without and beyond the referential umbrella is just what language must presuppose in order to signify. 4 5

Bühler 1934, p. 28. The cooperative model is at the origin of human communication, according to Tomasello (2008).

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A kind of communication without sign that should be added is that one which Georg Knepler (1977, p. 126) calls attunement (Einstimmung), meaning biogenic aspects of human interaction in which sound gestures are shared as manifestations of mimetic impulses, emotions, psychologic and motion states.6 As we have already seen and the more recent research in evolutionary biology, cognitive studies and neurosciences has found out, they belong to the sphere of the pre-verbal or non-verbal, the psychosomatic articulation of primary processes based on the unconscious. That is precisely why both Kristeva and Gadamer, referring to the presence of this dimension also in ordinary talk, call it the music of language, for it produces meaning beyond the words and often against the words—against the conventional signs, the logos of the verbal language.

5 Making Music as Recovery of Presence So, we come to a last point: The shift to musical writing and the loss of meaning that it implies. It can be said, indeed, that noted music suffers from the same illness (maladie du langage) that Rousseau diagnosed in writing, as opposed to speech: The destruction of presence. And therefore, there is only a way to rehabilitate notation: Based on it, and despite it, to make music as a recovery of presence. The same idea underlies Adorno’s theory of musical performance, which also condemns and at the same time rehabilitates notation through the recovery of presence—the presence from which the notes inscribed in the sheet have been dispossessed. To make present (vergegenwärtigen) the musical gesture is, for Adorno (2001), the main task of the performer. The performer makes present what is absent, recreates the presence: This is what we call making music. Therefore, the production of meaning is shifted from the noted text to the context of its performance. There is here a likely convergence with Wittgenstein, for whom, as we have seen, music escapes any attempt to imprison it as expression, and therefore provides the model for the production of meaning, which shall be displaced to the external relations or contexts of interaction (Arnold, 2000: 177). Moreover, I insist, the communication is not complete without the feedback of the receivers, whether an audience that attends a musical performance, whether groups or individuals who pick up music through phonographic records, radio and television or, today, all kind of digital media. The process of making sense is never closed. It is again and again reopened by the feedbacks of the receivers, who are not only individual but also institutional, including structures of production and mediation, market operators, interest groups and political agents. Particularly in the case of technological media—whose innovations, are so conditioning as conditioned by the historical transformations of experience and behaviour (Stascheit 2015)—we can speak of strategies of appropriation that place the receivers 6

Knepler deals with these aspects within the context of his evolutionary hypothesis on a common origin of language and music.

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in a even stronger position of coproduction of meaning. Every attempt to unequivocally attach a meaning or symbolic load to a certain musical product (or work) is doomed to fail, for it is denied at every step by the different possibilities of uses or affordances, to which it can give rise. This naturally includes the scientific semiosis— that is, the kind of linguistic performance we call semiology or music semiotics –, then, as a discursive practice that forms the object of which it speaks (Foucault 1966), it does not offer but only one possibility of semiosis among many others. Thus, music semiotics has also to give up the claim of fixing or assigning the meaning of music. In the immense diversity of semiosis to which the music is exposed, most of them are not even verbalized by the recipients. Not only music does not need verbalization, but also it even presupposes the absence of verbalization. To listen to any music, and to verbalize this experience are different things. Still another thing is what we keep or transform as memory or simply carry in our unconscious. These are certainly very different things from one another, which, multiplied exponentially by an unlimited number of recipients, with very different biographical profiles and cultural, social, political anchorages, subvert any attempt to fix the meaning of a music or piece of music. But this is also valid for other arts or expressive manifestations, like literature or painting. What we call art or work of art only exists in the plurality of experiences that it arouses in each receiver, in a given moment, and according to a given form of life. Especially in musical practices, which tend to be immersive, each receiver coproduces meaning through the reconstitution of the presence, as if what she/he experiences were of his own invention or as if it projected her/his own mimetic impulses or deeper levels of mind (the unconscious). There is, then, a dilution of the boundaries between aesthesis and poiesis, what brings us to the issue of the emancipation of the receiver, launched by Rancière in his essay The emancipated spectator (Rancière, 2008). Transposed into music communication: The emancipated receiver/listener makes his own music with the elements of music he/she listens to. Summing up: Music, among all the arts, whether in the colloquial, whether in the presentational performances, whether on the side of production / reproduction, whether on the side of reception, is perhaps the most exposed to endless and unlimited semiosis; that one that most rebels against the ties of signification; that one that, for this reason, may be considered as paradigm of artistic communication in the ambivalence that is inherent to it: – It has the character of language, and, at the same time, escapes signification; – It incorporates symbolic norms and, at the same time, calls them into question or transgresses them; – It produces meaning, without allowing be captured by a meaning; – In short, it is both language and criticism of language.

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References Adler, G.: Umfang, methode und Ziel der Musikwissenschaft. Vierteljahrschrift Für Musikwissenschaft I(1), 5–20 (1885) Adorno, Th. W. 1956: Musik, Sprache und ihr Verhältnis im gegenwärtigen Komponieren. In: Gesammelte Schriften (Musikalische Schriften I-III): XVI, pp. 649–664. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt (1998a) Adorno, Th. W. 1970: Ästhetische Theorie. In: Gesammelte Schriften, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt (1998b) Adorno, Th. W. 2001: Zu einer Theorie der musikalischen Reproduktion (ed. H. Lonitz). Suhrkamp, Frankfurt a. M. (2001) Agamben, G.: Infancy and History (trad. Liz Heron). Verso, London (1993) Augustinus (s. d.): De Musica—Diálogo Filosófico de Agostinho de Hipona (ed. C. Fagundes, Diss. PhD (354–430). Universidade Federal de Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre (2014) Arnold, M.: Vergleichen, was zu vergleichen niemandem ernstlich eingefallen ist. In: Kunst, Kunsttheorie und Kunstforschung im wissenschaftlichen Diskurs. In memoriam Kurt Blaukopf (1914– 1999) (ed. M. Seiler, F. Stadler), pp. 163–186, öbv & hpt Verlagsgesellschaft m. B. H., Wien (2000) Baecker, D.: Neurosoziologie. Ein Versuch, Edition Unseld, Berlin (2014) Bateson, G.: Steps to an Ecology of Mind. Collected Essays in Anthropology, Psychiatry, Evolution, and Epistemology, Jason Aronson Inc., Northvale, New Jersey, London (1972) Besseler, H. 1959: Umgangsmusik und Darbietungsmusik im 16. Jahrhundert. In: Aufsätze zur Musikästhetik und Musikgeschichte, pp. 301–331, Reclam, Leipzig (1978) Budde, E.: Musik als Sprache und Musik als Kunstwerk. Über einige Widersprüche und deren Hintergründe im kompositorischen Denken Schönbergs und Weberns. In: Das musikalische Kunstwerk. Geschichte – Ästhetik – Theorie. Festschrift Carl Dahlhaus zum 60. Geburtstag (eds. H. Danuser et al.), pp. 659–668, Laaber Verlag, Laaber (1988) Bühler, K. 1934: Sprachtheorie. Die Darstellungsfunktion der Sprache. G. Fischer, UTB, Stuttgart (1999) Carnap, R.: Introduction to semantics and formalisation of logic. Harv. Univ. Press., Cambridge Mass (1959) Chapin, K., Clark, A.H. (eds.): Speaking of Music. Addressing Sonorous. Fordham Univ. Press., New York (2013) Dahlhaus, C.: Das Verstehen von Musik und Die Sprache der musikalischen Analyse. In: Aufsätze zur semiotischen Theorie, Ästhetik und Soziologie der musikalischen Rezeption (eds. P. Faltin, H.-P. Reinecke), pp. 37–47, Arno Volk, Hans Gerig, Köln (1973) Derrida, J.: De la Grammatologie. Editions de Minuit, Paris (1967) Eggebrecht, H. H.: Musik und Sprache. In: Riethmüller, A. (ed.): Musik und Sprache, pp. 9–14, Laaber Verlag, Laaber (1999) Ferreira de Castro, P.: Who Owns Musical Meaning? Aspects of the Objectivist Fallacy in the Writings of Hanslick, Stravinsky and Boulez. In: Music: Function and Value, Proceedings of the 11th International Congress on Musical Signification (eds. T. Malecka, M. Pawłowska), vol. 1, pp. 501–551, Akademia Muzyczna w Krakowie, Kraków (2013) Foucault, M.: Les mots et les choses. Gallimard, Paris (1966) Gadamer, H.-G.: Sprache und Musik – Hören und Verstehen. In: Kulturtheorien der Gegenwart (eds.. G. Schröder, H. Breuninger), pp. 13–25, Campus Verlag, Frankfurt, New York (2001) Georgiades, T. G. 1954: Musik und Sprache. Das Werden der abendländischen Musik. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt (2008) Giddens, A. 1987: Structuralism, post-structuralism and the production of culture. In: Social Theory and Modern Sociology, pp. 73–108, Blackwell, London (1993) Goldschmidt, H. (1986a): Das Wort in instrumentaler Musik: Die Ritornelle in Schuberts «Winterreise» (ed. H.-W. Heister). Von Bockel Verlag, Hamburg (1996)

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Goldschmidt, H. (1986b): Das Wort in Beethovens Instrumentalbegleitung (Beethoven-Studien III) (ed. H.-W. Heister). Böhlau Verlag, Köln (1999) Habermas, J. 1981: Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns, 2 vols., Suhrkamp, Frankfurt a. M. (1985) Habermas, J. 1988: Nachmetaphysisches Denken. Philosophische Aufsätze. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt a. M. (1992) Heister, H.-W.: Beloved Names Tristan und Isolde. The Setting of Words to Music in Wagner’s Work. In: Stöck, G., Ferreira de Castro, P., Stöck, K. (eds.): Estes Sons, esta Linguagem – Essays on Music, Meaning and Society in Honour of Mário Vieira de Carvalho, pp. 291–307, CESEM / Gudrun Schröder-Verlag, Leipzig (2015) Hornbostel, E. M.: Laut und Sinn. In: Festschrift Meinhof, pp. 329–348, Augustin, Glückstadt, Hamburg (1927) Kaden, C.: Musiksoziologie. Verlag Neue Musik, Berlin (1984) Knepler, G.: 1977: Geschichte als Weg zum Musikverständnis. Reclam, Leipzig (1982) Kramer, L.: Speaking of Music. In: Chapin, K., Clark, A. H. (eds.): Speaking of Music. Addressing the Sonorous, pp. 19–38, Fordham University Press, New York (2013) Messiaen, O.: Technique de mon langage musical. Alphonse Leduc, Paris (1944) Moreno, J.: On the Ethics of the Unspeakable. In: Chapin, K., Clark, A. H. (eds.): Speaking of Music. Addressing the Sonorous, pp. 212–241, Fordham University Press, New York (2013) Niemöller, K.W.: Der sprachhafte Charakter der Musik. Verlag Dohr, Köln (2010) Paddison, M.: The Language-Character of Music: Some Motifs in Adorno. In: Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 116/2, pp. 267–279 (1991) Rancière, J.: L’inconscient esthétique. Galilée, Paris (2001) Rancière, J.: Le spectateur émancipé. La fabrique, Paris (2008) Riethmüller, A. (ed.): Musik und Sprache. Laaber Verlag, Laaber (1999) Rousseau, J.-J. 1781: Essai sur l’origine des langues, In: Oeuvres Complètes, vol. V, pp. 371–42, Gallimard, Paris (1995) Saussure, F.: 1916: Cours de Linguistique Générale. Payot, Paris (1976) Schlerath, B.: Musik als Sprache. In: Riethmüller, A. (ed.): Musik und Sprache, pp. 15–21, Laaber Verlag, Laaber (1999) Stascheit, A. G.: History of Technology as History of Experience. In: Stöck, G., Ferreira de Castro, P., Stöck, K. (eds.): Estes Sons, esta Linguagem – Essays on Music, Meaning and Society in Honour of Mário Vieira de Carvalho, pp. 111–117, CESEM / Gudrun Schröder-Verlag, Leipzig (2015) Stöck, G., Ferreira de Castro, P., Stöck, K. (eds.): Estes Sons, esta Linguagem – Essays on Music, Meaning and Society in Honour of Mário Vieira de Carvalho. CESEM / Gudrun Schröder-Verlag, Leipzig (2015) Tomasello, M.: Origins of Human Communication. Bradford/ MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, London (2008) Vieira de Carvalho, M.: No hay caminos? — Luigi Nonos Verhältnis zur Geschichte. In: Das aufgesprengte Kontinuum. Über die Geschichtsfähigkeit der Musik (Studien zur Wertungsforschung, vol. 31, ed. O. Kolleritsch), pp. 187–219, Universal Edition, Graz-Wien (1996) Vieira de Carvalho, M.: A Tragédia da escuta. Luigi Nono e a música do século XX. Imprensa Nacional - Casa da Moeda, Lissabon (2007) Wellmer, A.: Versuch über Musik und Sprache. Carls Hanzer Verl., München (2009) Wellmer, A.: Über Musik und Sprache: Variationen und Ergänzungen. In: Grüny, C. (ed.) Musik und Sprache—Dimensionen eines schwierigen Verhältnisses, pp. 195–226. Velbrück Wissenschaft, Weilerwist (2012) Wittgenstein, L. 1953: Philososphische Untersuchungen. In: Tratactus logico-philosophicus, pp. 225–485, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt a. M. (1984)

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Mário Vieira de Carvalho, *1943 in Coimbra (Portugal). Ph.D in Musicology in Berlin, Humboldt-Universität, 1985. Emeritus Professor for Sociology of Music at Nova University of Lisbon (where he began his teaching activity in 1986). Founder in 1997 of the Research Centre for Aesthetics and Sociology of Music (CESEM), which he effectively directed until his appointment as Secretary of State for Culture (2005–2008). Board member between 2001 and 2020 and presently honorary member of the Europäische Musiktheater-Akademie (Vienna). Member of the Academy of Sciences of Lisbon. He is the author of more than half a hundred scientific publications, including 15 books, which focus on the philosophy and sociology of music, opera studies, Portuguese music, contemporary music, music and politics, music and literature. Beyond his scientific activity, he had developed still as student at the Faculty of Law of Lisbon and one of the leaders of the Students Association, an intense activity as organizer of cultural activities, inscribed in a larger movement of cultural and political resistance against the dictature. His first writings of music criticism for several newspapers and magazines date back to the 1960s (about a thousand of press articles by the end of the 1990s). Books (selection): Denken ist Sterben. Sozialgeschichte des Opernhauses Lissabon (1999); Eça de Queirós e Offenbach (1999); A ópera como teatro (2005); A tragédia da escuta — Luigi Nono e a música do século XX (2007); LopesGraça e a modernidade Musical (2017); Património musical e diálogo intercultural (2022, forthcoming); (as editor) Expression, Truth, Authenticity: On Adorno’s Theory of Music and Musical Performance (2009); as co-author with the philosopher Fernando Gil, Schumann, Eichendorff e outras notas (2005).

Cantabile and the Opposite in Trumpet Melodies Lasse Jens Fankhänel

The question of whether a trumpet plays cantabile or not seems superficially somewhat superfluous, in principle a question of yes or no. However, it is certainly more interesting to follow the “how” with a “why” and in “which context”, because the trumpet in particular is an instrument that has undergone a strong technical development in the last centuries, which has significantly changed the playing techniques and thus also changed the use and meaning within instrumental music from early baroque music to the present day, which also affects its social function. Especially in the fields of symphonic orchestral music there are manifold examples, whose closer examination in the context of the historical development of the instrument as well as in semantic contexts seems interesting. In musical usage, cantabile is usually used as songlike or singing, corresponding to the Latin canere. In the music of the Romantic period, for example, Brahms also uses the term cantando to mean singing.1 Taking into account the extremely differentiated voice and text variation in music since the Renaissance, with its many gradations between syllabic and melismatic melody, cantabile as an explicit performance designation or musical idea seems imprecise and arbitrary, since a simple folk song and a coloratura aria have an almost contradictory musical duct as their outer poles. Harry Goldschmidt developed a musical theory, in the core of which instrumental music can generally be differentiated into parts of vocal and genuinely instrumental origin2 . Even if this theory was not uncritically observed, especially in the universal claim weaknesses in the evidence were criticized,3 it offers interesting impulses in the Goldschmidt (1966, p. 13). Goldschmidt (1966). 3 Cf. symposion on Goldschmidt (1966, p. 152). 1

2

L. J. Fankhänel (B) University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 H.-W. Heister et al. (eds.), Word Art + Gesture Art = Tone Art, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20109-7_5

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Fig. 1 Natural tone series on C, own representation

analysis of music with regard to its genesis and the mutual influences of instrumental and vocal music. Goldschmidt defines the term cantando in distinction to cantabile, which can also refer to singing voices, as a singing expression, more precisely singing like words, explicitly of an instrumental voice. The term cantando, which Goldschmidt finds especially in Mahler and Liszt, does not refer here to the purely cantabile, but corresponds to a rhythmic melodic textual equivalence.4 The cantando does not resemble a musical translation of a spoken text, but can represent the range of syllabic and melismatically sung texts. Goldschmidt contrasts the cantando with the sonando, i.e. motifs, sounds and phrases whose genes do not lie in the sung text, but have developed from instrumental sounds or body movements, e.g. from dance. Despite its genetic distance from the text, such a sonando has a contextual function, which in turn can be semantically related to word and content. A timpani beat has no contextual reference in isolation, but if it sounds in the course of a musical work, it is semanticized as a sonando in the context of the musical course and/or the text or program. If one goes back in time, one finds larger amounts of literature composed for trumpet, or scored for trumpet, from the Baroque period onward. Trumpet parts of the early baroque period are characterized by the almost exclusive use of the overtone series, due to their strong limitation. Altenburg (1795)5 characterizes the use of trumpets primarily as groups supplemented by timpani, which have their function primarily as signal instruments or in the sacred realm. Accordingly, trumpets as solo instruments are an absolute exception in early Baroque music in the context of sacred or concert performance. In their later integration into mixed orchestral ensembles, they appear either in the form of signal parts or as clarino parts, usually in conjunction with timpani (Fig. 1). As a three- or four-part ensemble within the Baroque orchestral literature, they represent a form of sonando-like bridge between the timpani as percussion instrument and the strings as melody instrument. As a homophonic set of trumpets and timpani, the trumpets harmonize the timpani part, which as tuned percussion instruments in turn form the pitch-fixed bridge to the tonally indeterminate percussion beat and through their tuning also make possible a connection from the purely percussive to 4 5

Goldschmidt (1966, p. 139). Altenburg (1795, p. 128).

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Fig. 2 Vejvanovsky, Pavel Josef: Sonata à 4. In: Serenate e Sonate per Orchestra. Státnikakladatelstvi Krásné Literatuy. Hudby a Umeni, Prag (1959), m. 1–4

the tonally resonant. The limited range, especially of the low trumpet parts, greatly restricts their use to simple cadence sequences. The instrument can only be used as a melody instrument in the clarino register, and here only in certain keys, dominated by the prevalence of clarinets in C and D, correspondingly in C major and D major. In minor keys few keys offer themselves. If one considers the physiologically usually playable position in connection with the keys predominant in the early baroque, the key of G minor remains as a rule, which is suitable for the use of clarines. Vejvanovsky’s sonata can serve as an example. Harmonically G minor coincides very well with the natural series on C and is one of the few compositions of the Baroque period for trumpet in minor (Fig. 2). In the early Baroque instrumental music of trumpeter and composer Girolamo Fantini, the traditional practice is evident. G. Fantini’s fourth Sonata detta la Saracinelli opens in an 8-bar fanfare that emphasizes the trumpet’s role as a signaling instrument, but then acts aria-like and melismatically moving within the clarino register. With the exception of the sonando-like opening, the rest of the sonata is an example of the influence of monody on Baroque instrumental music. The voice of the accompanying organo is harmonically less complex, in keeping with the clarino’s reduced range of notes (Fig. 3). Here, the trumpet as a solo instrument represents something unusual up to that time. Altenburg (1795) emphasizes a little less than a century later that the trumpet is not a solo instrument within instrumental music, but rather that the use of the term solo in instrumental music denotes the emphasis of a voice that is to be performed in unison by several clarini.6 Altenburg (1795) further differentiates here the instrumentation bicinium, tricinium and quatricinium, which in turn consists of a double instrumentation (Fig. 4).

6

Altenburg (1795, p. 103).

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Fig. 3 Fantini (1638): Quarta Sonata detta la Saracinelli, m. 1–14, own illustration

Fig. 4 Morning blessing, Altenburg (1795, p.109)

Altenburg (1795) points out that the melody of the chorale “Aus meinem Herzens Grunde” is hidden within the second voice in the morning greeting that has been handed down (Fig. 5).7 Looking more closely at the structure of Morgensgruß, the first clarino represents a doubling of the chorale melody in thirds, while the principal voice represents a timpani bass. This common piece of utility music typically represents the duality of cantandi of the clarino voices and a sonando of the principal voice, which is a stylistic feature of baroque trumpet music. 7

Altenburg (1795, p. 110).

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Fig. 5 From the bottom of my heart, own illustration

The trumpets experience a strong development in their use in the works, especially the cantatas, of J. S. Bach. This development refers not only to the virtuosity of the clarino parts, which significantly raises the level of playing technique requirements, but also in the semantic context works. As an example, consider the opening chorus of the final version of the cantata BWV 80, Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott. It should be noted here that the original version of the cantata is lost and in the edition of Altnikol no trumpets are set at all, but in the edition of W. F. Bach, who as Bach’s son was a contemporary of Altnikol, they are. The chorus opens with the first dux of the choral double fugue and a fanfare of trumpets and timpani, and thus rather stereotypically. As the double fugue progresses, it quickly becomes clear that the fugue is not much oriented toward a natural speech ductus, but rather a compositional virtuoso elaboration of the fugue dominates, with the unnatural elongation of the word feste striking, just as the words Waffen and Wehr do in the second theme. Bach clearly departs here from Luther, whose hymn is set essentially syllabically, with a melismatic emphasis on Waffen. Luther’s hymn is of only secondary importance for the arrangement of the double fugue, apart from the text at the beginning. In the virtuosity of the fugue, it could also stand as an instrumental piece. The connection to Luther’s hymn is made here by the voice of the first trumpet, which abruptly quotes Luther’s hymn in the manner of a cantus firmus; the chorus follows the trumpet’s entry with ever stronger motivic transformations toward Luther’s hymn (Fig. 6). After Bach’s death, a period followed that has little determining influence on the development of trumpet literature. With regard to the trumpet’s role as an orchestral instrument, one can even speak of a regression; in the literature of Mozart and his contemporaries, its function as a rhythm or signal instrument dominates. Major new impulses came only with the development of the Klappentrompete at the transition to the nineteenth century. This innovation made it possible for the first time to play chromatically in a larger ambitus, which can be seen in the two commissioned works of the trumpet concertos by Joseph Haydn and Johann Nepomuk Hummel.8 Both works are characterized by very cantabile intermediate movements, which represent an absolute novelty in trumpet literature, but are nevertheless very different in their arrangement. While Hummel’s movement, entitled Andante Cantabile, appears almost operatically melismatic, the second movement of the Haydn concerto is more songlike in character. This is also evident in the form of a varied strophic song, characterized by a very catchy motivic head. Haydn’s work was composed during the Napoleonic Wars, a time of strong national consciousness that was also very 8

Tarr (2005).

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Fig. 6 Bach, J.S.: Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott, BWV 80, entrance chorus, vocal parts and trumpet 1, measures 22–28, own illustration

pronounced in Austria. The clear function of the cantando in Haydn’s movement becomes clear when compared to the Kaiserhymne composed by Haydn in 1797. Both works stand in a close temporal context, the clear reference in the thematic head emphasizes the national topos of the concerto (Figs. 7, 8 and 9). Although there are no references in Hummel’s work to quotations from wellknown songs, two aspects are of particular interest. The movement is headed Andante Cantabile, thus establishing a bridge to the vocal. While Haydn’s movement can still be considered very songlike, Hummel’s cantabile is closer to opera in its drama and

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Fig. 7 Haydn, J.: Trumpet Concerto in E-flat major, 2nd movement Andante, m. 9–16, own illustration

Fig. 8 Haydn, J.: Das Kaiserlied, Hob.XXVIa:43, excerpt from the manuscript

melismatics. The effect is intensified by a clearly more complex harmony and the more diverse orchestration than in Haydn’s work and is thus in its structure a novelty in the trumpet literature. What also further distinguishes the Hummel movement from Haydn is the more interrupted treatment of fanfare-like and songlike motives. In measure 13, for example, the trumpet begins with a festive triadic motive, but this is immediately continued with a melismatic double beat, thus uniting both motivic worlds. While the closeness to the Kaiserlied in Haydn’s intermediate movement, through its song-like quality, still represents a traditional trumpet cantando, which, with the exception of the melismatic ornamentation and the chromaticism in the intermediate section, is still closer to its baroque predecessors in its simplicity, Hummel moves further away from tradition. In addition to the cantando-influenced intermediate movements, both concertos do not deny their motivic roots in Baroque music. The final movements continue to be strongly characterized by signal-like motives and their musical development, even though the final rondo of the Hummel concerto in particular points to the developing virtuosity that found its way into trumpet music, especially through the development

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Fig. 9 Hummel, J.N.: Trumpet Concerto in E major, 2nd movement Andante Cantabile, own illustration

of the cornet, and triggered corresponding developments of trumpet motives in literature. As an example, the additional cornet part in Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique can be mentioned here, which is quasi a reminiscence of the newly developed instrument and appears in its form to be a fusion between virtuoso Paganini and traditional trumpet sonandi.9 The trumpet reached a particularly prominent position in the German town of Säckingen. In 1854, the poet Joseph Victor von Scheffel published the story of the Trumpeter of Säkkingen, which was set to music as an opera by Victor Ernst Nessler in 1884. Since the nineteenth century, guests of the town were traditionally welcomed by a trumpeter who blew the so-called Trumpeter’s Song. Nessler’s opera also contains a 9

Cf. Berlioz para. 21 ff.

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Fig. 10 Jung Werner’s farewell, own illustration

Fig. 11 Trumpeter song motif 1, own illustration

so-called trumpeter song, but it is not the same as the Säckingen trumpeter song. The so-called trumpeter song of the city corresponds to the farewell song of the trumpeter Werner in Nessler’s opera, thus the guests of the city are welcomed with a farewell song. What may be understood as irony is more likely due to the fact that in Nessler’s time, the farewell song was a very popular piece that helped the city’s marketing with its song-like catchiness. Regardless of the song’s text, Werner’s farewell song has little of a trumpet-like quality, but seems song-like or even hit music-like. There is, however, another number in Nessler’s opera that is indeed marked as a trumpet song. Sung by the military trumpeter Conradin, the trumpeter’s song accompanied by the trumpet in the orchestra sounds two contrasting motives. The military is accompanied by stereotyped signals that change to dolce when Conradin digresses to a lady in the evening, sounding melodic and legato (Figs. 10, 11 and 12). The advancing development of perinet and rotary valve trumpets made it possible to perform much faster tone changes and thus significantly altered the technical limits of playing, especially in the former principal position, and, in addition to the

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Fig. 12 Trumpeter song motif 2, own illustration

virtuosity that also appeared in trumpet literature, led to a strong motivic diversification within the trumpet and orchestral literature of the second half of the nineteenth century, which also contributed to the emancipation of the instrument in the Romantic orchestra. Along with Wagner and Bruckner, this emancipation can be found especially in the symphonies and orchestral songs of Gustav Mahler. Similar to the songs of Franz Schubert, Mahler’s work is characterized by a dream-reality dualism10 , which finds its roots in typical Romantic stereotypes and, strikingly expressed, contrasts the misery of everyday life with a fictitious dream world in which everything is better. Examples of this are Der Schildwache Nachtlied or Wo die schönen Trompeten blasen, in which the trumpets are often used to stylize the military or military marches. In the symphonies in particular, however, the use is also much more differentiated; in his 1st Symphony, for example, the quotation from the journeyman’s song Ging heut morgen übers Feld is heard as a cantando in the voice of the first trumpet, which in the opening of the movement is otherwise characterized by the triplet fanfare motif. Mahler brings to an end a phase of trumpet literature that was essentially shaped by the classical motivic references of its function as a signal instrument as well as the baroque trumpet tradition. Beginning with Stravinsky at the latest, and especially in the avant-garde, newer playing techniques increasingly appear, leading to a considerable differentiation of motivic relationships. Here again, however, references can be made to Sonando and Cantando. The technique of the flutter-tongue, for example, which is used by the woodwinds from Debussy on and later by all other wind instruments, is nothing other than a linguistic sound amplified by the instrument. In this respect, it would be of interest for the further outlook to extend the development of the cantabile in the trumpet literature to the music of the advancing twentieth century.

References Altenburg, J.E.: Versuch einer Anleitung zur heroisch-musikalischen Trompeter und Pauker-Kunst. Zwen Theile. Joh. Christ. Hendel, Halle (1795) Bach, J.S.: Ein´ feste Burg ist unser Gott, BWV 80. Copy by Altnikol, J. C., manuscript 1744–47, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin (D-B): Mus.ms. Bach P 177 (1744–47a) Bach, J.S.: Ein´ feste Burg ist unser Gott, BWV 80. Copy by Bach, W. F., manuscript 1740–59, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin (D-B): Mus.ms. Bach P 72 (1744–47b)

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Revers (2000).

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Berlioz, H.: Hector Berlioz Werke, Serie I, Band 1, Breitkopf und Härtel, Leipzig 1900. Plate H.B. 1. (1830) Goldschmidt, H.: Über die Einheit der vokalen und Instrumentalen Sphäre in der klassischen Musik, Referat auf dem Internationalen musikwissenschaftlichen Kongress der Gesellschaft für Musikforschung, Leipzig 19.–24.9.1966. In: Deutsches Jahrbuch für Musikwissenschaft für 1966, Edition Peters, Leipzig 1967, pp. 35–49, and Kongreßbericht Leipzig 1970, pp. 139–152 (1966) Goldschmidt, H.: Das Wort in instrumentaler Musik: Die Ritornelle in Schuberts Winterreise 1986. Von Bockel-Verlag, Hamburg (1996) Fantini, G.: Quarta Sonata detta la Saracinelli. Piece of Fantini, G.: ‘Modo per imparare a sonare di tromba’. Daniel Vuastch, Francoforte (1638) Haydn, J.: Trompetenkonzert Es-Dur, Hob. VIIe:1. Eulenburg, Leipzig (1896) Hummel, J.N.: Konzert für Trompete in E-Dur. IM, New York (1803) Mahler, G.: 1. Sinfonie. Hamburg, manuscript (1893) Mahler, G.: 2. Sinfonie. Friedrich Hofmeister, Leipzig (1897) Mahler, G.: Des Knaben Wunderhorn. Universal Edition, Wien (1905) Nessler, V.E.: Der Trompeter von Säkkingen. Schuberth & Co., Leipzig (1884) Revers, P.: Mahlers Lieder. Ein musikalischer Werkführer. C.H. Beck, München (2000) von Scheffel, J.V.: Der Trompeter von Säkkingen: ein Sang vom Oberrhein. Metzler, Stuttgart (1863) Tarr, E.H.: Die Trompete. Ihre Geschichte von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, 4th edn. Schott, Mainz (2005) Vejvanovsky, P.J.: Sonata Á 4. In: Serenate e Sonate per Orchestra. Státnikakladatelstvi Krásné Literatuy. Hudby a Umeni, Prag (1958)

Lasse Jens Fankhänel, * 1979 in Hamburg, studied music at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg and geography and education at the University of Hamburg, graduating with honors in 2008. He is deputy director of the Bismarckschule Elmshorn, a high school, and regularly performs as a trumpet player in concerts, including the Thuringian Chamber Music Days, the European Music Festival in Stuttgart, and the Schleswig–Holstein Music Festival. CD productions in the field of Klezmer and world music as well as radio and TV productions, among others at the Norddeutscher Rundfunk, the Hessischer Rundfunk and the ZDF. His musicological work focuses on Henze, Mahler and North German popular music of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Colla Voce. On the Relationship Between the Vocal and the Instrumental in the “Lied” Works of Louis Spohr Hans Krauss

1 Introduction The Lied oeuvre of the German early Romantic composer Louis Spohr (1784–1859) comprises 111 works, which were published in a new edition in 2010. In Spohr’s complete works, which with over 400 individual titles encompass almost all musical genres, they are thus given a certain prominence. Sensitive interpretation of the text, expressive declamation, lyrical-simple melody and bold harmony are the points that Spohr’s Lied work is said to possess. The musician always proved himself to be a sensitive composer who modeled the singing voice individually. Spohr published the majority of his songs in a total of 14 booklets. However, no clear principle is discernible in the combination and sequence of the texts within the individual booklets. They neither follow linguistic stylistic aspects nor are they related to each other in terms of content; the exception is the booklet WoO 119, in which three texts by only one lyricist—Bodenstedt—are combined. No booklet forms a self-contained inner unity. Conscious, planned cyclical arrangements are missing.

2 Spohr’s Lied Œuvre 2.1 Phases of Composition Spohr’s extensive Lied œuvre can be divided into two phases, which are separated by a nearly ten-year song break in the years 1826 to 1835. The first phase, between H. Krauss (B) Spohr-Score, Spohr Project, Braunschweig, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 H.-W. Heister et al. (eds.), Word Art + Gesture Art = Tone Art, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20109-7_6

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1809 and 1826, includes 31 settings for voice and piano. The second, more extensive phase covers the period from 1835 to 1858, during which another 80 songs were written, including 68 solo songs and 12 duets. In the following, the total of 99 solo songs will be examined in more detail. Already in the early songbooks of 1809 and 1815, the compositional wealth of ideas of the experimental Spohr becomes apparent. Even here, there are an unusually large number of through-composed songs and varied strophic songs. In the second phase, in which Spohr worked tirelessly on the compositional development of the Lied, he continued the experiment he had begun in 1825 of adding an additional instrument to the instrumental accompaniment, adding the decidedly virtuosic obbligato clarinet in 1837 (op. 103) and the violin in 1856 (op. 154).

2.2 History of Origins Many of Spohr’s songs were composed as a favor or friendship; due to his outstanding position as an internationally respected artist, it was virtually expected that he would provide individual songs free of charge to editors of periodicals, for example. The friendly relationship with many musicians was another reason why Spohr could not resist many a request. In particular, the commission by the princely couple of Schwarzburg-Sondershausen for a song cycle for soprano, piano, and clarinet (op. 103), which was sent by the clarinetist Johann Simon Hermstedt, was a commission that he did not want to turn down because the unusual instrumentation alone was so tempting. Similarly, Prince Leopold zur Lippe-Detmold commissioned a song cycle for baritone with piano and violin accompaniment (op. 154). The bearer was his former student August Kiel, who was also to play the violin part here. Spohr, who as Kiel’s former teacher knew his technical abilities, was therefore able to make the obbligato violin part quite demanding. As musicologist Simon Moser notes,1 the best and most interesting Lied settings were inspired by his friends. “Significantly, it is precisely those songs from the second half of the 1830s and the op. 154 that are among the most extraordinary and successful compositions of Louis Spohr’s late song output,” Moser writes.2

2.3 Spohr’s View with Regard to the Lied Genre Spohr had a very precise idea of a song: as a small-scale genre, it must have a clear form, and the declamation must not be too richly rhythmic. On the other hand, according to Spohr, rhythmic stretching and accentuation through measure changes 1 2

Moser (2005, p. 88). Ibid.

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were necessary for effective declamation, but only in moderation, because otherwise there was a danger that the rhythmic framework could no longer be grasped. The rhythmic shaping of the singing voice should not slavishly adhere to the rhythm of the text or to the poet’s instructions, and the piano accompaniment should not distract from the singing voice, and thus should not be dominantly independent. These clearly outlined principles show Spohr’s view that he regarded the text as an equally important art form, which was not yet a matter of course at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

3 Text Templates Spohr’s song texts are wide-ranging and come from a relatively large number of authors compared to other song composers. Spohr set a total of 66 poets’ texts to music; Mendelssohn, on the other hand, set a comparable number of songs to only half that number. In addition, Spohr included almost without exception works by German lyricists of his time, with two single exclusions.3

3.1 Authors and Text Selection The poetic quality of many of the texts Spohr chose for his songs is remarkable. Spohr was particularly interested in texts that inspired him, not in poetic prominence, but in whether the text was suitable for setting to music from his point of view. The suitability of a text for music was ultimately decided by its linguistic quality, its choice of words, and by how much it appealed to him emotionally. The poet from whom a text originated does not seem to have been as important to Spohr as the text itself. So it is no wonder that in some songs there is not even a text author under the song title, or sometimes a completely unknown one, without biography, without life data. The absence of some author’s names is explained by the fact that a large part of the lyrics are not from poetry collections of individual lyricists, but from anthologies, almanacs and literary-musical paperbacks published at that time. With the upswing in printing, newspapers, publishing, and the book trade at the beginning of the century, there was not only an enormous increase in music books, but also in printed matter in general, which provided the middle classes with a great deal of reading material.4 Several authors published their poems under pseudonyms, especially women writers who did not want to reveal their real names due to social norms and feared reprisals.

3 4

Victor Hugo and Walther von der Vogelweide. Cf. Moser (2005, p. 96).

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3.2 Text Layout The texts set by Spohr are mainly short, song-like poems with a strophic structure and clear rhyme sequence. Predominantly in three and four strophes, the poetic unity of the originals, which are striving towards a climax, shows a strong inner unity that Spohr was able to use to form a musically coherent structure. In his own way of treating the texts, he frequently makes changes in the originals; to be sure, he hardly ever interferes with the actual textual material, that is, only in exceptional cases does he change the original wording or the word order within the verses. But in the metric-rhythmic framework he adapts the number of syllables to the music in a few cases by adding or omitting corresponding syllables within a verse. However, specifically musically conditioned textual changes occur more frequently, in that he repeats words, parts of sentences, verses, and even entire stanzas. Spohr usually doubles or multiplies individual words and verses toward the end of the poem, the final verse by far the most frequently. The interventions, however, are always made so delicately that the poetic form is only insignificantly distorted and the original meaning of the text remains untouched. Spohr not only orients himself to the natural flow of a poem’s language, which suggests a declamatory shaping of the singing voice, especially when paying attention to speech melody and rhythm, but he also adapts the text according to his compositional idea.

4 The Solo Songs The singing voices in Spohr’s songs occupy a manageable tonal space and move predominantly within an octave, rarely within a ninth or a tenth. Mostly syllabic and in second progressions, repeated notes are largely avoided. He often relies on triplet time signatures to keep the melody flowing organically and smoothly. The conspicuously frequent use of colla voce setting and of pendulum and cradle motion as accompaniment forms in the piano part seems to be a specific feature of Spohr’s work, even though they are also to be found in the works of other composers, albeit much less frequently. A large part of his song accompaniments makes almost exclusive use of these techniques, while others have no colla voce setting at all.

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4.1 Piano Accompaniment—Colla Voce and Harmony Carrying Accompaniment Patterns In a surprising number of songs Spohr carries the piano descant colla parte with the singing voice. A total of 19 songs are composed 100% in this technique,5 another 23 more than 80%. In comparison, Schubert’s songs, for example, are far below this.6 Spohr applies the colla voce technique in two ways, as a vocal melody that often runs homorhythmically in the piano upper part and is taken over true to the note, or merely in the form of scaffolding notes of the vocal part, which can be integrated into a chordal accompaniment or take the tops of a pendulum or swaying line. The mostly plain piano part moves predominantly in a relatively narrow tonal space between E and g2 , except for some 8va bassa octaves in the piano bass. The musical interpretation of the text takes place by means of harmonics, changes of motion and changing sound densities, often also by rhythmic compression. Following the text closely, the texts are divided into sections using various compositional techniques, thus musically elaborating the structure of the stanzas, choruses or related text units.7 The range of variations in Spohr’s piano accompaniment moves between fourpart harmony, pendulum or cradle motion, broken chords, and chord repetition. The Alberti basses, otherwise common at the beginning of the nineteenth century, hardly occur in Spohr’s work. His piano writing always refers to emotions described in the text and supports textual highlights by means of chromaticism, suspension, accentuation, dynamics, rhythm or vocal compression. From about the beginning of the second creative phase, Spohr increasingly directs the accompanying part more and more pianistically. Spohr occasionally plays with lookup chords.8 Mostly rhythmized on the unaccented beat in sixteenths or eighths, they give the musical events a strong driving impulse. Spohr uses this form of accompaniment predominantly in short passages between one and ten measures, always when it is a matter of emphasizing sections of text.9

5

Lebenslied (op. 37,2), Getrennte Liebe (op. 37,4), Das Wirtshaus zu… (WoO 93), Singet die Nachtigall (WoO 105), Liebt er mich? (WoO 109), Gruss (WoO 110), Mein Vaterland (WoO 111), Sehnsucht (WoO 114), Der Herbst (WoO 115), Jägerlied op. (139,3), Zuleikha (WoO 119,1), Trinklied (WoO 119,2), Erwartung (WoO 121), Grüsse (WoO 123), Immer dasselbe (WoO 124), Wohin? (WoO 125), Die verschwiegene Nachtigall (WoO 126), Töne (op. 154,3), Abendstille (op. 154,6). 6 E.g. Mignon (D 321) with 24% and Frühlingsglaube (D 686) with 57%. 7 Cf. Moser (2005, p. 275). 8 For instance in Wiegenlied (op. 25,1), Lied des verlassenen Mädchens (WoO 90), An Mignon (op. 41,3), Der erste Kuss (op. 41,5), Ungeduld (op. 94,4), Sei still mein Herz (op. 103,1), Wach auf (op. 103,6), Glockenklänge (WoO 118), Abendfeier (op. 154,1). The proportions of lookup chords range from 2 to 22% based on the total number of measures in each song. 9 Exception: Still sei mein Herz (op. 103,1): here it is 28 bars.

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4.2 Compositional Lines of Progression The songs composed until 1826 differ in some points very much from those set from 1835 on. While in the earlier settings only two songs consist of 100% colla voce piano melodies,10 and another seven of over 80%,11 in the later settings there are already 17 songs with 100%12 colla voce and 16 songs with over 80%13 colla voce; disregarding the works without opus numbers, there are still three songs with 100% colla voce and 13 with over 80%. Most of the works without an opus number were composed for friends, acquaintances, relief funds, and publishers of periodicals or anthologies, and yet the 14 songs with a 100% colla voce share are not noticeably significant here, since the three with over 80% more or less balance out the ratio again. From the time course of the creation of the early songs, it can be seen that the trend line for the colla voce share shows a decrease until 1826, but an increase for the later ones from 1835 on (see Figs. 1 and 2). There are no clear indications as to what may have motivated Spohr to compose so many songs—and especially so many late songs—with a high proportion of colla voce. One is tempted to assume a support function in the sense of an intonation aid for some singers—after all, not all of them were professionally trained vocally; that musical and text-interpretational reasons could be the basis is absurd, at least in those cases where the proportion is exactly 100%, because here any differentiation that could follow musical points of view is logically excluded. Spohr’s repertoire of accompaniment patterns concentrates primarily on the forms of pendulum or cradle motion and chord breaking. In the early settings, 17 of 26 songs use pendulum or cradle accompaniment forms, in the later 41 of 66. Broken chords contain 8 songs in the early works, 13 in the later. The trend lines for these two main accompaniment patterns are shown in Figs. 3 and 4. Both diagrams show different trends for the pendulum/wave accompaniments and broken chords. While in the early songs the pendulum motion gradually decreases and the broken chords increase, in the later songs the pendulum motion remains unchanged on average and the broken chords decrease. Both accompaniment forms 10

Lebenslied, getrennte Liebe (op. 72,2 and 72,4). Wiegenlied, Gretchen (op. 25,1 a. 25,3), Mignon’s Lied (op.37,1), Lied aus Aslaugas Ritter, An Mignon, Klagelied von den drei Rosen (op. 41,2 to 41,4), Nachgefühl (WoO 91). 12 Das Wirtshaus zu … (WoO 93), Singet die Nachtigall (WoO 105), Liebt er mich? (WoO 109), Gruss (WoO 110), Mein Vaterland (WoO 111), Sehnsucht (WoO 114), Der Herbst (WoO 115), Jägerlied (op. 139,3), Zuleikha (WoO 119,1), Trinklied (WoO 119,2), Erwartung (WoO 121), Grüsse (WoO 123), Immer dasselbe (WoO 124), Wohin? (WoO 125), Die verschwiegene Nachtigall (WoO 126), Töne (op. 154,3), Abendstille (op. 154,6). 13 Bitte, bitte (op. 94,2), Ungeduld, Schwermuth (94,4 a. 94,5), Trostlos (op. 101,4), Zwiegesang, Sehnsucht, Wiegenlied (op. 103,2 to 103,4), An *** (op. 105,4), Unterwegs (WoO 101), Ständchen, Maria, Lied a. d. “Mährlein von d. Wasserfee” (op. 139,1; 139,2; 139,4), Fatima beim Saitenspiel (WoO 119,3), Mein Verlangen (WoO 122), Erlkönig, Der Spielmann und seine Geige (op. 154,4 and 154,5). 11

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Fig. 1 Colla voce share in the early songs

Fig. 2 Colla voce share in the later songs

also occur occasionally within a song in combination, in that parts feature one accompaniment form and other parts feature the other. The trend lines for the early songs and those for the later ones can only be explained by the fact that Spohr tried from the very beginning to increase the expressiveness of his songs by experimenting with different forms of accompaniment. It seems that his settings gained in compositional acuity and contour in the second phase of production as the broken chords diminished. The decrease in the pendulum accompaniment form in the first production phase seems to be related to various musical and textual means; a pendulum and cradle movement has a more massive effect—tonally speaking—than chord breaks, which also produce a smoother overall musical flow than pendulum movements. With his

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Fig. 3 Proportion of the accompaniment forms in the early songs

Fig. 4 Proportion of the accompaniment forms in the later songs

choice of accompaniment pattern, Spohr was thus able above all to control the degree of dominance of the singing voice within certain limits, while at the same time allowing the piano part to emerge more or less, the effect of which could be further enhanced by the use of a particularly colorful harmony in conjunction with various changes of movement. For all the independence of the piano part, Spohr always left the singing voice in the musical foreground, even if he increasingly began to detach the piano from the singing voice and to give it more profile.

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Spohr occasionally uses chord repetitions as an accompaniment form, which create a very rhythmically intensive, tonally massive and dense sound event. In the songs before 1826, chord repetitions occur in six songs, after 1835 in 19 songs.

4.2.1

Single Examples

In the following examples, selected songs are used to show how particularly high or particularly low proportions of the accompaniment forms presented above affect the overall arrangement of a song and the relationship between text and music.

Lebenslied op. 37,2 In only two of the early songs does the piano part run 100% colla parte with the voice, in Lebenslied and Getrennte Liebe, both written in 1815 and published in the second book of songs, op. 37. The melodic progression in Lebenslied is traced by the piano descant with pitch accuracy and, with only one small exception, homorhythmically at the very beginning. The voice begins each verse with a dotted eighth note, the piano descant with a quarter note and a trailing eighth note. Thereafter, the piano upper section continues completely simultaneously with the singing voice, true to note and rhythm, with the middle voice adding harmonic scaffolding notes with parallel thirds, fourths, and sixths, mostly rhythmized in eighths. The piano bass runs in semiquavers almost continuously until the end, interrupted only by a small semiquaver rest at the beginning of the fourth measure, which seems to regain momentum for the next line of verse. Spohr does not have many opportunities here to musically strengthen the text’s content, for it is already fairly fixed by the homorhythmic colla voce setting and the continuous sixteenth-note pendulum motion in the piano bass. Only in the metrical, harmonic, rhythmic and tonal melodic progression are there certain capacities of textual support. Thus he builds in subtle hemiolic tensions between ¾- and 6 /8 metrization in measures 5 and 7, and here brings the song into a certain state of suspended animation, held mediantically in measure 6 and leading rhythmically into a semiquaver descent two measures later. At g2 in measure 8, the soprano reaches the vocal climax of the song, which is harmonized in the piano with a diminished chord before the verse ends rhythmically agitated in the tonic (Fig. 5).

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a

b

c

Fig. 5 Lebenslied op. 37,2

Erwartung WoO 121 Four of the 17 songs from the production phase beginning in 1835, which correspond 100% to the colla voce technique, are also completely homorhythmic in the piano descant.14 The most striking example of this is Erwartung (WoO 121) from 1853.

14

Wiegenlied (op. 103,5), Das Wirtshaus zu … (WoO 93), Liebt er mich? (WoO 109) and Erwartung (WoO 121).

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The pendulum motion of the piano accompaniment, almost universally in semiquavers, alternates between the right and left hands, and whenever it occurs in the treble, the top notes trace the melodic course of the singing voice; then, when the pendulum motion changes to the left hand, the piano descant, usually underlaid with thirds or sixths, runs parallel and homorhythmically with the singing voice. Here, too, Spohr must find new means of expression to support the song text because of the already rigidly established piano melody and accompaniment form. He again makes use of his strengths of chromaticism, harmony and dynamics. As early as measure 10, he modulates from A-flat major to F minor, gradually returning to the original key via a diminished chord in measure 13. The longing expressed in the verse line “O komm” carries Spohr, after deliberate caesurae at the beginning of measures 20 and 38, to the melodic apex of the song— once to eb2 and finally to f2 —the second time with an additional subito forte. Almost every verse line verbalizes a great erotic desire, and Spohr gives the yearning longing its romantic space in many chromatic turns (Fig. 6).

Beruhigung op. 72,4 Among the songs from the first production phase, which have neither a colla voce part nor a pendulum accompaniment, there are a total of four settings, all of which date from 1825 and 1826 and, in addition, have the same accompaniment pattern with arpeggiated chords.15 Like three other early songs,16 Beruhigung begins with a prelude, but the majority begin directly with the entry of the voice. Independent solo passages in the piano part—even in preludes or postludes—are hardly to be found in the early songs. 23 songs of the first production phase have an epilogue, and this shows that it was important to Spohr to let a song end organically. He often introduces a harmonic resolution over a chromatic passage a few measures before the end to initiate a soft fade-out without abandoning the dominating accompanying figure in the song. Beruhigung, for example, ends with a four-bar postlude that consistently brings to a close the triplet chordal refractions in the right piano hand that have been maintained from the beginning. In a constant dynamic up and down, in rhythmic inegality between the duolally held vocal part and the triplet piano descant, and in the absence of a fixed strophic structure, Spohr keeps the song, whose text reflects emotional uncertainty, in permanent suspension, marking only pianistic cornerstones with sforzato entries. Harmonically, the song repeatedly moves far away from the home key of A minor, for example to B-flat major and B7 . Particularly troubling proclamations are clarified with chromatisms or diminished harmonies. The verse line “jetzt sorgenvolles Bangen,” for example, passes over a 15

Was treibt den Waidmann in den Wald (WoO 92), Jüngst hört’ ich welchen süßen Lohn (WoO 139), Amour et Courage (WoO 139a), Beruhigung (op. 72,4). 16 Schottisches Lied (op. 25,2), Lied beim Rundetanz (op. 37,6), Was Treibt den Waidmann in den Wald (WoO 92).

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a

b

Fig. 6 a Erwartung WoO 121, b. 9–22. b Erwartung WoO 121, b. 36–42

highly altered a#1 to b1 , the third of the dominant parallel key of G major; the text passage “ich weiss es nicht zu fassen” heads for a melodic climax with f2 and is accompanied over two measures by a diminished chord (measure 26 f.). The descending diminished fifth in “Sei ruhig Herz” with an underlying septnone chord indicates that the appointed calming does not really succeed. Beginning in measure 36, a Neapolitan, a falling minor second and a piano accompaniment that modulates harmonically from F major to A major put an emphatic exclamation point on the exclamation “darfst ob der Noth nicht klagen!” Similar constellations are also found in the following stanza of the through-composed song (Fig. 7).

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a

b

c

d

Fig. 7 a Beruhigung op. 72,4, b. 16–18. b Beruhigung op. 72,4, b. 25–27. c Beruhigung op. 72,4, b. 31–33. d Beruhigung op. 72,4, b. 34–39

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a

b

Fig. 8 a À la bien aimée, WoO 100, b. 8–11. b À la bien aimée, WoO 100, b. 36–39

À la bien aimée WoO 100 In the second production phase, there are only three songs that do not feature any parallel lines of voice and piano.17 All three are distinguished by the fact that only one of Spohr’s characteristic accompaniment forms appears in the piano, in the case of À la bien aimée broken chords in the right hand, which are maintained until the end in a regular eighth-note rhythm and are occasionally reinforced by piano bass quavers in opposite directions. The first three strophes follow each other in note-perfect written-out repetition; only the fourth strophe follows a completely different melody with a constant swaying measure and broken chordal accompaniment in diatonic downward bass counterpoint, while at the beginning the contrapuntal action is chromatically aligned. The compositional accompaniment of the text places the sung-about beloved in the center at the end of each stanza with the dominant of the home key of G major—at the end of the last stanza with the home key—which, after a harmonic “chaos”, stands quasi for the restoration of a basic harmonic order. The last stanza—melodically readjusted, as mentioned above—departs harmonically (G minor—Bb7 –Eb–Eb7 ) even further from the home key and yet shows that, after a great excursion, a return to the starting point can succeed at any time. With the quasi-hemiolic prolongation of the word “Stimme” (and in the following stanzas “Augen” and “treu”) Spohr furthermore reinforces the weight of the beloved’s qualities (Fig. 8). 17

Lied der Harfnerin (op. 94,1), Matrosenlied (WoO 80) and À la bien aimée (WoO 100).

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Still sei mein Herz op. 103,1 Spohr wrote the song for the collection with obbligato clarinet. As one of six clarinet songs, it belongs within the second production phase together with six violin songs, seven accompanied with four hands and one with french horn and piano to a total of twenty settings for extended accompaniment. Already here—in 1837—it becomes apparent that the accompaniment parts of the later compositions are steadily gaining independence. For Spohr, who had already experimented with extended accompaniment forms in 1825, the commission from the Princess of Schwarzburg-Sondershausen was very timely. The ambitious amateur singer was specifically looking for songs in which the clarinet was to be an additional instrument and was thinking of accompaniment by the clarinet virtuoso Simon Hermstedt, who, as court conductor of Sondershausen at the time, conveyed the composition commission. Spohr was particularly attracted by the fact that the most outstanding clarinet virtuoso of the time was to play the clarinet part with the princess, that he was able to conceive the clarinet part without any technical limitations and could make the highest technical demands on his long-time friend, for whom he had written four clarinet concertos. To this day, Spohr’s Clarinet Songs are considered his most popular song compositions because of their stylistic complexity. Shortly after their publication, they were sure of success and applause in public concerts. Apart from the Violin Songs op. 154, they remained the only Spohr settings that have been demonstrably performed in public and continue to be performed to present day. Spohr colors the musical events in Still sei mein Herz, about half of which are in colla voce technique and accompanied by combined pendulum motion, chord repetitions, and chordal look-ups, with deliberate tonal effects of the clarinet, abrupt changes of register, and extreme pitches.18 Here Spohr demonstrates a vast repertoire of rhythms and motifs and embellishes the song with virtuoso clarinet passages. Despite all the artificial playing around the voice, the latter remains the central element of the setting, especially since the voice and the solo instrument show no real common motivic starting points and thus the solo instrument always remains in the background—for this reason alone and despite all the virtuosity. It was clear to the practical musician Spohr that he had to design the vocal part for his client, the Princess of Schwarzburg-Sondershausen, in such a way that it corresponded to the abilities of the ambitious amateur singer, while he could design the clarinet part for a professional clarinetist. It is therefore not surprising that the instrumental part is technically much more demanding, virtuosic and motivically richer than the vocal part due to tone leaps, scales and broken chords. The clarinet usually moves into the lower register when the vocal part enters, often homorhythmically with the piano descant and in third or sixth intervals to the vocal part, while the vocal part is predominantly at home in the single to lower two-line octave and is step-melodically based. In vocal pauses, the clarinet rushes upward, pausing in the refrain line “Sei still mein Herz, und denke nicht dran” with gb2 on 18

Cf. also Moser (2005, p. 291 f).

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a high recumbent note, while the piano in the descant runs homorhythmically with the singing voice and in the left hand rhythmizes the throbbing of the heart by postbeat chords. The rhythmic throbbing is already established in the piano under the virtuosic clarinet introduction, and before the onset of the first verse it transitions into a four-bar chord repetition that accompanies a dotted bass motive that calms down at the beginning of the verse, followed by a pendulum motion in the treble that is maintained until the refrain. In the melodically varied repetition of the refrain after the second verse, the chromatic clarinet descent and an opposing chromaticism in the piano bring about a further calming, followed by a thinned-out piano line moving into the pianissimo, which only takes up the heartbeat again in the postlude, crescendoing, and then comes to an end, ritardizing and diminishing. The prelude, interlude, and postlude are in F minor, while the verses are in F major, later interrupted by modulations to A minor and F minor, G-flat major, and D-flat major. The refrain, “Sei still mein Herz,” passes over diminished seventh chords to F minor at the end of the refrain. The chromatically driven top note gb2 in the word “Wettersturm”, the low altered sixth in the Neapolitan sixth chord above the sudominant root, musically supports the dramatic weather situation depicted in the text with the triad that abruptly enters, takes the action to D-flat major, from which the beginning of the refrain develops chromatically upward, builds up tension to the top note eb2 , and then finds its way back to D-flat major on the second syllable of “Wahrheit” and calms down only at the second exclamation of the word “Wahn” in F minor. In this setting, the piano part has emancipated itself quite a bit from earlier piano accompaniments, which could also happen primarily through the assistance of the colorizing clarinet (Fig. 9).

5 Conclusion Spohr’s song oeuvre contains an enormous range, which, however, essentially draws from a relatively limited fund of accompaniment forms. The piano descant often accompanies colla voce, in various forms from no colla voce part at all to a 100% part, often in thirds or sixths to the singing voice. In the piano bass, there are essentially three accompaniment patterns that Spohr employs, pendulum motion, broken chords, chord repetitions, and each of these separately or in combination. Spohr was also aware that these relatively mechanistic tools are by no means sufficient for musical text support, and so he supplements his piano accompaniment with the sometimes excessive use of chromaticism, harmony, and dynamics. Spohr’s dilemma consisted, on the one hand, in his compositional aspirations and, on the other hand, in the awkward position of having to write songs primarily for vocally untrained clients that could ultimately be sung by amateurs. This may have been the reason why some songs have such a high colla voce part, which could be a constant intonational support for the lay singers. But it was also precisely

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a

b

Fig. 9 a Still sei mein Herz, op. 103,1, b. 28–30. b Still sei mein Herz, op. 103,1, b. 32–40

the colla voce accompaniment that initially enormously limited the possibilities for supporting the textual content. The more Spohr freed himself from the one-sided and rigid accompaniment patterns, the more he emancipated the piano part, the more possibilities of compositional text accompaniment opened up to him. To expand these even more, he added another solo instrument. Spohr’s settings are not only the product of a technical song accompaniment repertoire or of a harmonic-scoring skill and inventiveness; his great strength lies rather in forming a conglomerate from both, from which a very special musical gesture grew in the end. Thus, his constant need to keep a song flowing, to follow the metrics

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of the stanzaic form and the verse structure, to musically support textual climaxes, and to organically prepare and usher in the song’s conclusion speaks from all of his settings. Spohr occasionally interprets textual content through changes of movement, in which a dense four-part harmony dissolves into sixteenth-note passages and vice versa. He also structures and illustrates the text by alternating between agitation and stillness, between density and transparency. Even in songs whose high colla voce and rigid accompaniment patterns leave little room for textual interpretation, he succeeds in creating a setting whose harmonic-chromatic depth makes up for some structural monotony. He is aided in this by his predilection for suspensions and harmonic disguising effects, which he uses to lend a certain suppleness to the overall sound. On the other hand, he shows how flexible he can be musically in songs that have no colla voce part, but instead make use of a more varied accompaniment. With the use of obbligato instruments, Spohr also opens up further possibilities for illustrating and coloring the text or generally enlivening the musical course and building motivic bridges. What Spohr avoided in his early songs in terms of tonepainting and orchestral effects, he later transfers to the additional instruments, which can shine with tremolos, arpeggios, trills or the like according to their mood. With such accessories Spohr was able to give his songs even more unity and coherence. Finally, it was Spohr’s departure from a rigid catalog of accompaniment patterns with a simultaneous turn to flexible accompaniment forms and a high degree of chromatic-harmonic textual proximity that expanded the text-related creative freedom of Spohr’s songs, and here a high colla voce share hardly carries any weight.

References Ahrens, C.: Schuberts “Der Hirt auf dem Felsen” D 965—Lied, Arie oder “Duett”? In: SchubertPerspektiven, vol. 5, pp. 162–182. Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart (2005) Anon.: Louis Spohrs Lieder. Dierichs, Kassel. https://regiowiki.hna.de/Louis_Spohrs_Lieder (2016). Accessed 27 Jan 2022 Brinkmann, R.: Musikalische Lyrik im 19. Jahrhundert. In: Danuser, H. (ed.): Musikalische Lyrik (= Handbuch der musikalischen Gattungen 8, 2 vols.), vol. 2, p. 39. Laaber Verlag, Laaber (2004) Brown, C.: Louis Spohr: A critical Biography. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (1984) Göthel, F.: Thematisch-bibliographisches Verzeichnis der Werke von Louis Spohr. Schneider, Tutzing (1981) Katow, P.: Louis Spohr—Persönlichkeit und Werk. RTL Edition, Luxemburg (1983) Mayeda, A.: “Kennst du das Land?”. Zur Musik der Dichtung und der Poesie der Musik. In: Ballstaedt, A., Kienzle, U., Nowak, A. (eds.) Musik in Goethes Werk—Goethes Werk in der Musik, pp. 234–263. Argus, Schliengen (2003) Moser, H.J.: Das deutsche Lied seit Mozart, vol. 1. Atlantis, Berlin (1937), R Schneider, Tutzing (1968) Moser, S.: Das Liedschaffen Louis Spohrs. Studien – Katalog – Analysen – Wertungen. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Kunstliedes, 2 vols. Wenderoth, Kassel (2005) Owen-Leinert, S., Leinert, M.: Auf literarischer Spurensuche in Louis Spohrs Klavierliedern. Spohr Jahrbuch 2, pp. 31–46. Weidler Buchverlag, Berlin (2018)

Colla Voce. On the Relationship Between the Vocal and the Instrumental …

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Rummenhöller, P.: Louis Spohr. Ruhm und Vergessenheit eines Komponisten zwischen Romantik und Biedermeier. In: Romantik in der Musik. Analysen, Portraits, Reflexionen, pp. 140–148. DTV, München (1989) Spohr-Lied-Edition, ed. by Susan Owen-Leinert and Michael Leinert. Dohr, Köln (2010) Spohr, L.: Selbstbiographie, 2 vols. Wigand, Kassel and Göttingen (1860–1861) Spohr, L.: Lebenserinnerungen, vol. 2. Kassel and Göttingen (1861) Spohr, L.: Spohr-Briefe, ed. by Karl Traugott Goldbach. Spohr-Museum, Kassel. www.spohr-bri efe.de (2016f ff.). Accessed 21 Jan 2020 Waege, M.H.: Lieder mit Begleitung obligater Soloinstrumente neben der Klavierbegleitung. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des deutschen Sololiedes im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert. (Thesis typescript) LMU, München (1924)

Hans Krauss, * 1954 in Bielefeld, received his doctorate from the Technical University of Berlin in 1989, with a thesis on the compositional calculus of exemplary works by Wagner, Schönberg, Berg and Hindemith. From 2012 to 2020, he directed the Louis Spohr Music Center Braunschweig. Currently he is as an editor of new editions of Spohr’s chamber music. Publications includeComposition and Timbre; Ed. of the Report of the Louis Spohr Symposium Braunschweig 2014 “Music and politics”; Louis Spohr’s historical Symphony; Motivic-thematic Work in Spohr, Louis Spohr and the compositional Management of Ideas in the 18th and 19th Centuries, Louis Spohr and House Music, Spohr and Beethoven, The Piano Trios of Louis Spohr. www.spohr-sco re.de

How Franz Liszt Imparts Singing and Speaking on the Piano Jean-Jacques Dünki

You sing well but you don’t speak enough. Feodor Chaliapin (the singer) to Sándor Végh (the young violinist)

1 Franz Liszt, Narratives and Legends Franz Liszt (1811–1886), a prominent figure of Western Classical Music in the nineteenth century, was during his entire life, and even beyond, an ideal target for projections, legends and histories.1 This was undoubtedly occasioned by the twists and turns in his biography, his successive roles as child prodigy, young virtuoso, conductor and orchestra educator, Catholic priest, and finally master piano pedagogue, along with his private life not without scandal. However, the constant of his life consists of more than seventy years of intense compositional activity, although in this field, he was nor is sheltered from controversial aesthetic perceptions.2 Putting aside the bulk of narratives which surround his personality and work is an urgent task for any author. This paper examines a decisive moment of Liszt’s composing and its aesthetic and pianistic corollaries, based on a thorough study of the score and disregarding as much as possible surrounding biographical facts.

1 2

Walker (1989, p. 3). Brendel (2015, pp. 219–270).

J.-J. Dünki (B) Hochschule für Musik, Basel, Switzerland e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 H.-W. Heister et al. (eds.), Word Art + Gesture Art = Tone Art, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20109-7_7

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2 Prose and Poetry as Catalysts for Liszt’s Composing Besides the fact that Liszt at fifteen years had already composed several songs and written a one-act opera, his active interest in literature, nurtured first by self-study, was heightened by his encounters with contemporary poets like Victor Hugo Alphonse de Lamartine and George Sand around 1830 in Paris. Liszt’s compositions of songs and sacred music extend over his entire life3 ; his dissatisfaction with his song production which induced him to rework some items in up to four versions was notorious.4 Liszt’s reworkings of lyrical repertoire into purely instrumental music include at first piano paraphrases and transcriptions of operas by Bellini, Rossini, Verdi, Mozart, following an established practice of nineteenth century piano virtuosos. But more significant for Liszt’s composing are his metamorphoses of songs into piano music, and the weaving-in of literary excerpts in piano pieces and symphonic music. This appears in different shapes: titles, prefaces, mottos, concluding quotes and by his practice of underlaying poetry to the score. Liszt’s literary sources often precede the printed editions of his works; this can be seen as homage to his literary inspirations. They witness his profound erudition as a polyglot contemporary of poets like Lord Byron, Victor Hugo, Heinrich Heine. The intensity and frequency of this habit make it safe to assume that the literary word, mostly poetic, served as a catalyst for Liszt’s musical invention. This is corroborated by comments Liszt himself made.5

2.1 Songs and Song Transcriptions 2.1.1

Die Zelle in Nonnenwerth for Voice and Piano

Of all songs composed by Liszt, Die Zelle in Nonnenwerth is perhaps the most personal and touching. He elaborated a monologue of a deceived lover from an amateur friend’s verses three times as a song, and transcribed it four times for solo piano. Die Zelle in Nonnenwerth never reached the popularity of other songs by Liszt, such as Die Loreley, or the Sonetti del Petrarca, but offers a close insight in our subject. The three song versions differ in length and content, as we will see by looking at the first two (Fig. 1). The vocal line takes up the mood of the piano introduction at a mostly syllabic pace, but is sparing with further indications. We can therefore deduce that the underlying words provide the singer with sufficient information as to conceive and express the mood of the song. We see a similar finding is in the second version. The now enlarged piano introduction again bears the bulk of performance signs, in slight variation to the first version (Fig. 2). 3

New Grove (2001, pp. 852–859). Jeanne d’arc au bûcher, see fn. 3, p. 856. 5 Göllerich (n.d., p. 15). 4

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Fig. 1 Nonnenwerth for voice and piano, 1st version (1841), m. 1–14, Cologne 1843 Like a nutshell, the piano introduction contains the essence of the song. If we examine this beginning through the performance indications as they appear in print, a wealth of eight different signs govern the execution of the initial 3½ measures: A verbal indication for the tempo: “Andantino” / A verbal indication for the dynamic: “dolcissimo” / Pedal indication, with beginning and end (twice): Ped.— * / A fermata sign (three times) / crescendo-decrescendo sign (twice)/ soft accent > (twice) / portato (m. 1 and 2) / legato (m. 3, left hand). Please notice the slight shift of the initial five quavers motif in m. 3

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Fig. 2 Nonnenwerth for voice and piano, 2nd version (c. 1858), m. 1–16, Forschungs- und Gedenkstätten, Weimar 1961

“Dolcissimo” is replaced by “una corda”/ the crescendo-decrescendo sign appears only once, referring to the two initial chords only / the spaced-out word “crescendo” is a novelty, and so is the “p” for “piano”. The soft accent > appears only once and is stretched out, in order to indicate a decrescendo/ a new sign ^ appears in m. 5 in both hands, to mark the ‘downbeat of the phrase’.6 In the subsequent song line we discover: short legatos (for a single syllable on two notes)/ a general “p” for “piano”/ as a novelty, the tenuto sign in m. 11 to indicate a subtle downbeat. Soft 6

Schoenberg (1930, 1948).

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accents > appear in m. 14 and 15, corresponding with affective words: “Schmerz” (“pain”) and “fremd” (“foreign”). Two fermatas occur as early as in m. 15 and 16. The former may be interpreted as a singer’s rubato in late eighteenth century style, the later as a general pause. The piano accompaniment has pedal indications which emphasize the one-measure harmonic changes; in the left hand, we see wedges for the bass to mark the middle of each measure. This second version of the song makes the impression of a more contained, we might even say, measured, or overcome sadness of the monologue. Thus we recognize the role of the changed performance signs in this score: at one hand they direct the singer and the pianist toward the proper mood (or “affetto”) of this new version; on the other, they justify Liszt’s decision to rewrite his song. A third version of the song follows very much along the lines of the second, but the piano part is even more self-contained.

2.1.2

Die Zelle in Nonnenwerth for Piano Solo

The importance Liszt attributed to this song impelled him to rework it four times as a piece for solo piano. Again, we notice considerable variety in shape and content. The first three versions were composed relatively shortly after the initial song, bearing subtitles like “Élégie pour piano seul”, c. 1840, “Elegie für Pianoforte”, 1841, “Feuille d’album pour piano”, 1849. Liszt’s last and harrowing version, “Elegie”, was published 1883. Here we shall examine the second version (Fig. 3). Starting in the same texture as the piano introduction of the song, the piece continues in an elegant, genuinely pianistic arabesque of eight measures. The conclusion (m. 9–10) is finely shaped and articulated and comes to a stand-still in m. 11. The former song line starts with no less than three verbal indications: “malincolico” “espressivo” and “legatissimo”. Whereas the first indication insinuates the mood of the initial song, the second one accentuates personal concern; the third is a solely pianistic indication for the accompanying arpeggio. In the following page, Liszt enriches the pianistic texture, very much in his own tradition of Schubert and Weber song transcriptions. He even offers the player an “Ossia più difficile”—an alternative version on two supplementary staves, along with the indication “con anima” (“soulfully”). Uncommon for a virtuoso piece is the ending “perdendosi”, “rit. - - - -” and “smorzando” (literally “loosing oneself”, “retaining, slowing down”, “falling to pieces”).

2.2 Piano Solo Music and the Symphonic Poem 2.2.1

Le mal du pays

The three volumes of Années de Pèlerinage on poetic texts by Friedrich Schiller, Étienne de Senancour, Lord Byron and others are generally known to the larger

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Fig. 3 Die Zelle [Nonnenwerth], transcription for piano solo, 2nd version (1841), mm. 1–12, Leipzig c. 1843

audience. Less known are the first versions of those pieces. An early version of “le mal du pays (Heimweh)” is quoted here as an unobtrusive example. In an attempt to evoke the Kuhreigen (also known as ranz des vaches) of Appenzell in Switzerland, Liszt gives us a first line in imitation of the Alphorn (or “cor des alpes”), alluding to the 11th overtone of this natural horn. Beyond that, Liszt offers an early lesson how appropriate performance signs make the piano speak and sing (Fig. 4). “f dolente” stands for the general mood of the initial call, heightened by a series of > accents on each note, under a legato bow / “p” represents the echo, with “una corda” to render it smooth and remote / The marcato sign ^ appears first in m. 2, later in m. 8 and indicates the ‘downbeat of the phrase’.7 Here we clearly see the double function of the performance signs. On one hand, they are a guide: they instruct the player how to execute a given piece. On the other, they reveal an aural experience, and what the composer felt and heard inwardly when he actually wrote the piece down.

7

See fn. 6.

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Fig. 4 Album d’un voyageur (1837/38), vol. II, Fleurs mélodiques des Alpes Nr. 2, mm. 1–9, Editio Musica, Budapest 1976

2.2.2

Mazeppa

Even earlier than the former example, Liszt wrote the first version of his tone poem Mazeppa, inspired by a long ballad by Victor Hugo.8 Clearly conceived as a fulminant and difficult virtuoso piece (“Allegro patetico”), it is a passionate cavalcade in an uninterrupted race. The dominant movement of the accompaniment goes upwards. The middle section in the major mode gives us no relief amidst this battle scene; to the contrary, Liszt asks for “un poco animato in tempo”. A second version of the same piece reserves a surprise until shortly before the end: After a fermata, or general pause, we find a tiny fragment of recitativo, a single sigh of two measures, before the piece ends with pathetic, grandiose gestures (Fig. 5). Transformed again and integrated in the famous cycle of the “Études d’exécution transcendante”, this recitative is enlarged and given more weight. At the end, a short line of the poem by Victor Hugo is quoted (Fig. 6). The symphonic poem Mazeppa goes even further, transforming this recitativo into a lament and expanding it in a large scene of suffering and failure (Fig. 7). To summarize the foregoing examples, one can say that until now lyrical or pathetic monologues prevail. A new chapter is opened in the third period of Liszt’s life.

3 Liszt in Rome Since 1861 The range of Liszt’s mostly secluded sojourn in Rome is best summarized by a letter to a German friend: “… Der römische Aufenthalt ist für mich kein beiläufiger; 8

Hugo (1912, p. 733).

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Fig. 5 Mazeppa, 2nd piano version (1840), last page, last four staves, Breitkopf, Leipzig 1910

er bezeichnet so zu sagen den dritten Abschnitt – (wahrscheinlich den Abschluß) meines oft getrübten doch immerhin arbeitsamen und sich aufrichtenden Lebens …”9 “… As for me, the Roman sojourn is not at all incidental; it denotes so to say the third period—(probably the conclusion) of my often troubled but at least industrious and aspiring life …”. In an attempt to reduce and simplify the course of his life, Liszt surrounded himself with few visitors; his lodging was equipped with minimal furniture, at times even lacking a piano.10 In view of his ordination as a priest, which eventually took place in July 1865, his main study was devoted to sacred music and texts. During his first Roman years, the thread of his compositional work was never severed; he completed the oratorios Legend of St. Elisabeth and Christus, begun in Weimar in the mid 1850s, and wrote the Two Legends for piano (1861/62). His concert appearances as a pianist and conductor, unremunerated, continued at a reduced pace. To summarize Liszt’s Roman years, it is safe to say that the main novelty consists in a change in life orientation; prior working habits continued with a marked tendency toward contemplation and introspection. 9

Burger (2010, p. 78). Ibid., p. 122.

10

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Fig. 6 Mazeppa, 3rd piano version (1851) as nr. 4 of the Études d’exécution transcendante, last page, Leipzig 1855

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Fig. 7 Mazeppa, symphonic poem (1854), full score, m. 403–435, Leipzig 1885

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4 The Orator and His Audience, in Two Different Settings As stated above, the turn in Liszt’s life situation corresponded with a new orientation in his work. This is demonstrated by comparing a sacred work written a few years before 1861 with a piece written at the beginning of the “third period”. Our working title “The Orator and his Audience” alludes to the almost theatrical atmosphere of the two settings. We no longer find lyrical monologues, but vivid exchanges of Christ with his disciples, and of St. Francis with his audience of birds.

4.1 Die Seligsprechungen (The Beatitudes) from the Oratorio Christus11 Among Liszt’s sacred compositions, the oratorio Christus occupies a special place. Less splendid and representative than his masses, it bears witness to a very personal, intimate belief. Liszt collected the sacred texts in Latin himself.12 The Beatitudes, based on the gospel of Matthew, 5/3–10, were completed in 1855 as the first section of the oratorio. Its intimate instrumentation is in stark contrast to the compact orchestral texture of the preceding piece. In the Beatitudes, Christ is sung by a baritone, and his disciples by the choir, subtly accompanied by the organ. The three protagonists form a sort of spiritual community (Fig. 8). In the first seven beatitudes, the ‘orator’s calls are unaccompanied; the choir of five to six parts answers twice a capella; later on, its responses are embedded in organ chords. The frequency of fermatas which often occur between call and answer is remarkable. In the eighth, final and by far the longest Beatitude in praise of the “pacific”, the interaction between Christ and his disciples becomes more vivid. Their calls and responses increasingly overlap and finally fuse into one sounding body. The organ part in this work is uncommon; apart from a long, contemplative introduction, its role, from the 3rd Beatitude onward, consists in underscoring the choir. Toward the end, the organ interventions become more sparing, and the concluding Amen is sung a capella (Fig. 9).

11

Recommended listening: Franz Liszt, Christus S 3, n° 6 Die Seligkeiten (The Beatitudes). Sándor Sólyom-Nagy (Baritone), Hungarian Radio and Television Chorus, Bertalan Hock (Organ), Antal Dorati (Conductor). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PteHCN8_fHk (1:08:25–1:18:35). Accessed 27 November 2021. 12 New Grove (1980, p. 46).

Fig. 8 Christus, part 2, nr. 6 The Beatitudes (1855), synopsis

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Fig. 9 Christus, part 2, nr. 6 The Beatitudes (1855), full score, last page, Leipzig 1872

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4.2 Légende 1 pour piano: St. François d’Assise, la prédication aux oiseaux13 Very much in the spirit of the aforementioned piece of sacred conversation, the first of the Two Legends for piano, St. Francis of Assisi Preaching to the Birds was written soon after Liszt had taken up residence in Rome and can be considered as a pivotal work in Liszt’s career. It expands and ennobles the dialogue of the individual orator and his audience and no longer depends on the word as a guiding principle for the musical composition. Preceding the musical score, Liszt quoted a popular Italian legend of St. Francis from the late fourteenth century in French translation, adding a remarkable preface which will be discussed below (Fig. 10). The congregation of birds begins and ends this legend in music in a joyful “Allegretto” mood. The birds display a manifold repertoire, going from short sequences of calls, trills and tremolos to elaborated song fragments and little symphonies. After one-third of the piece, St. Francis enters the stage, preceded by a general pause. Quite exceptionally, in the context of this ‘wordless’ music, the saint’s initial address quotes the first line of the Italian legend: “sirocchie mie” (“my [dear] sisters”). His speech is carefully designed with portato and legato signs as well as marking signs (tenuto, soft accents > and, later on, stronger accents ^), very much in the manner of Liszt’s earlier song transcriptions. The birds acknowledge briefly and respectfully each part of the sermon, until the last one, which they delicately interrupt. After another general pause, a solemn chorale builds up from the middle register, irresistibly expanding to the treble and the bass. At the precise arithmetic middle of the legend, a soft transitory passage modulates from B flat major back to the A major, the basic tonality of the legend. Another succession of short fragments of sermon and audience response follow in an uninterrupted flow of recitativos, trills, tremolos, jubilations and songs. At a given moment, the sermon of St. Francis sounds in octaves, taking up the “sirocchie mie” motif in a thundering downward move to the very bass of the piano. But all of the sudden, it rises again to the heights in dwindling arpeggios. A tender prayer, to be played una corda, ensues. As a farewell gesture, the last three fragments of the sermon are greeted with a “p dolce” of the birds. The final ‘symphony’ of this piece, in a rich, shimmering texture belongs to the birds alone. The different tone ranges of the birds and the saint are noteworthy. The birds range from E4 to A7 ; St. Francis’ line resembles a contralto voice, from A3 to D5 flat, except for the saint’s ecstasy (m. 104–130) where the range is considerably widened to the treble and the bass. Liszt might have had in mind the Prelude in the same key, A major, of Richard Wagner’s Lohengrin as a model for the whole form (Fig. 11).14

13

Recommended listening: Franz Liszt, Légende n° 1 S 175/1. Alfred Brendel (Piano), Decca 478 2825. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBstIgqQLkw. Accessed 1 June 2022. 14 Liszt conducted the première, see fn. 5, p. 12.

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Fig. 10 Légende 1 (1863), synopsis

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Fig. 11 Légende 1 (1863), m. 51–70, Editio Musica, Budapest 1980

4.3 Two Settings, Similarities and Differences According to the aural evidence, these two pieces evolve from simple, detached elements of musical discourse towards a rich and more complex, interacting texture. The dialogues of the two leading figures, Jesus Christ and St. Francis with their

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respective audiences result in a vivid intercourse while former hierarchic levels are flattened. But striking differences can be found as well: Whereas The Beatitudes are meant for a closed space, an oratory, the Legend takes place outdoors, in a realm going literally from earth to heaven. Whereas the worshipping community in the Beatitudes uses the sacred words of the gospel in Latin, the Legend is based on a popular legend of the late fourteenth century in Italian. Liszt here invents a liturgy of his own and relinquishes the text in a search for an imaginary language. In a purely pianistic texture, the human voice unites with the music of the birds, leaving the usual onomatopoetic terrain behind.

4.4 The Preface of Légende 1: St. François d’Assise. La prédication aux oiseaux … Le motif spirituel de la Composition suivante est tiré d’un des plus touchants épisodes de la vie de St. François d’Assise, raconté avec une inimitable grace de naïveté dans les ‘Fioretti di San Francesco’ … Mon manque d’habileté, et peut-être aussi les bornes étroites de l’expression musicale dans une œuvre de petite dimension, appropriée à un instrument aussi dépourvu que le piano d’accents et de sonorités variées, m’ont obligé à me restreindre et à diminuer de beaucoup la merveilleuse surabondance du texte de la “prédication aux petits oiseaux” …” (“…the spiritual motive of the following composition is drawn from one of the most touching episodes of the biography of St. Francis of Assisi, related with inimitable naive grace in the ‘Fioretti di San Francesco’ … My want of aptitude, and perhaps also the narrow limits of musical expression in a work of small dimensions, adapted to an instrument like the piano thus deficient in modulatory capacities and variety of timbre, induced me to restrain myself and to diminish greatly the marvelous abundance of the tale of the ‘Sermon to the Little Birds’ …).15 Liszt’s preface to the first edition of Legend 1 reveals not only his new state of mind, but also new aesthetic views. At first glance, it appears as a double lesson in “humilitas”, as an antique, later a Christian guiding principle. The famous virtuoso and composer adopts a touching subject, an “episode” in the life of a saint, not at all heroic, as was the case for his former symphonic poems, and has at the same time serious doubts about his ability to put this legend into music. His self-abasement may be rooted in the words of Christ, “the one who humbles himself will be exalted”.16 But for what reason Liszt discredits the piano, the favorite instrument of his virtuoso years, in such harsh terms17 ? He is not the first nor will he be the last composer to deplore its deficiencies, since Schumann, Schoenberg and Busoni uttered similar vexations:

15

Preface to first edition, concurrently Rozsavölgy, Pest (1866) and Heugel, Paris (1866). Gospel of Luke 14/11. 17 Liszt’s depreciative language surpasses the estimations of the other composer-pianists, see below. 16

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“im einzelnen Klang so dürftig, in der Combination … so ungeahnt reich”18 (“thus exiguous in the single sound, so unexpectedly rich in combination”)— “Mir fehlen die Klänge! Die Farben”19 (“I miss the sounds! The colors!”) — “Das Klavier ist ein kurzathmiges Instrument u. man kann ihm nicht genug nachhelfen”20 (“the piano is a short-breathed instrument; not enough can be done to amend”)

Liszt’s two main criticisms regarding the piano, “dépourvu d’accents et de sonorités variées”21 (“deficient in modulatory capacities and variety of timbre”) can also be read as a premeditation, a new aesthetic program for Liszt’s “third period of life”. “Accent” in Liszt’s use might refer to Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s definition in the Dictionnaire de musique Paris (1767): ACCENT …. toute modification de la voix parlante dans la durée, ou dans le ton des syllables & des mots dont le discours est composé …” (“every modification of the the spoken voice in regard to the duration or the tone of the syllables and words …")22 .

Prosody on the one hand is a time-honored precept already familiar to Beethoven23 ; the “variety in timbre” on the other hand applies to the singing voice. These concerns are not at all new, as we have seen in Liszt’s lifelong endeavor to infuse his instrumental music with vocal elements; but here he utters them with a new sense of urgency.

5 The Reverberations of the Work of Liszt’s Third Period 5.1 Barriers to Understanding Neither of the two pieces discussed above was a success in Liszt’s lifetime. The Beatitudes were premiered at a private function in 1867, where the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche remarked that Liszt had “found the character of Nirvana excellently”.24 Interestingly enough, this scathing remark corresponds with Liszt’s own expression of “santa indifferenza” (“holy indifference”).25 The oratorio as a whole was performed publicly only in 1873 and received a moderate response. The Legend seemed to be a more ideal offering, but only for private encounters, e.g., when Liszt performed it for the singer Pauline García Viardot.26 Neither the public premiere 18

Schumann (1854, p. 46). Schoenberg (1974, p. 12). 20 Busoni (1909), July 26. 21 Liszt, Légende I, S 175/1, Preface. 22 Rousseau (1767), entry “ACCENT”. 23 Goldschmidt (1971, p. 545). 24 Grove (1980, p. 46). 25 Burger (2010, p. 136). 26 see fn. 25, p. 97. 19

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1865 in Budapest nor later performances received major acclaim. The Viennese critic Eduard Hanslick, deriding the Legend 1 as ‘music for the birds’, was particularly harsh: … wir bekennen, daß diese Appretierung des Heiligenscheins für den Concertsaal, diese getrillerten und gehämmerten Mirakel uns einen unsäglich kindischen Eindruck machen” (“we confess that this dressing of the halo for the concert hall, these trilled and hammered miracles make an unspeakably childish impression on us”).27

5.2 Liszt as a Teacher of His Own Compositions When Liszt took up residence in Weimar for the very last period of his life, an ever growing circle of young pianists gathered around him. His own compositions were quite naturally part of the pupils’ repertoire. One of them, August Göllerich, recorded the main points of the master’s teaching in his diary. In one entry, Liszt was asking for a clear distinction between the two layers of the piece: “gut hervorheben” (“enunciate well”) for the recitative, “sehr lange und klingend” (“very long and sounding”) for the trills.28 In another entry, Göllerich remarked that Liszt insisted that the sermon part be played “nicht zu langsam” (“not too slowly”), reiterating his demand for the “Solenne”. The “un poco espressivo” section he wished “nicht ritardieren, ganz einfach” (“don’t slow down, [play] very simply”).29 Together with Liszt’s reported dislike for playing from memory, we have a clear picture of Liszt’s new aesthetics of piano playing which we could describe as ‘clear-cut, sober, unsentimental’ and ‘conscious of the score’.

5.3 Claude Debussy’s Reception of Liszt 5.3.1

“La musique en plein air”

Claude Debussy (1862–1918), in his double function as a composer and writer, always held Liszt in high esteem, crediting him with “[une] abondance généreuse d’idées” (“a generous abundancy of ideas”)30 because of his love of music “à l’exclusion de tout autre sentiment” (“excluding any other emotion”). His fantasies of an “outdoor music” seems to be inspired by Liszt’s ‘Nature pieces’31 and correspond well to the habits of contemporary painters like Monet, Renoir or Pissarro. Debussy imagines. 27

Hanslick (1897, p. 466). Jerger (1975, p. 54). 29 Jerger (1975, p. 121). 30 Debussy (1987, p. 251). 31 e.g., Années de Pèlerinage, Album d’un Voyageur. 28

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une musique construite spécialement pour le plein air, toute en grandes lignes, en hardiesses vocales et instrumentales … “ (“a music made particularly for the open air, in largescale lines and daring vocal and instrumental features”). This sort of music could take “la belle leçon de liberté contenue dans l’épanouissement des arbres … pour prolonger le rêve harmonique” (“the beautiful lesson contained in thriving trees, in order to prolong the harmonic dream”).32

5.3.2

Préludes I: Les collines d’Anacapri

Claude Debussy’s Préludes, even better than his prose, prove what liberating effect Liszt’s piano music had on him. A glance at a piece of volume I can serve as an example (Fig. 12). In an imaginary outdoor setting, two contrasting tunes, a merry tarantella in 12 /16 (“joyeux et léger”) and an “expressif” song in the baritone register in 2 /4 share the same lofty space. The sparing accompaniment provides no harmonic anchorage; it hints at the tonic of the piece without showing it. The song line from m. 24, very much in the spirit of Liszt’s St. Francis in Legend 1, or the Nonnenwerth transcription, contains short legati, a longer portato, four tenuto signs “-” for light emphasis, and a series of three decrescendo signs. One could say that song and dance, in an elusive and elegant quid pro quo, replace the speech elements familiar to Liszt’s music—another act of emancipation of instrumental music from the word.

5.4 Arnold Schoenberg’s Reception of Liszt 5.4.1

Schoenberg’s Controversy with Busoni

In an exchange of letters occasioned by Ferruccio Busoni’s wish to transcribe Schoenberg’s Klavierstück op. 11 nr. 2, we hear an echo of Liszt’s grievances regarding the piano. Busoni wrote to Schoenberg: “Das Klavier ist ein kurzathmiges Instrument u. man kann ihm nicht genug nachhelfen” (“the piano is a short-winded instrument; one cannot do enough to rectify”).33 Schoenberg, in his answer, flatly rejected the idea of a “concert version” of his piece. Despite their great mutual respect, these disparate artistic personalities clashed on the issue of composing for the piano.

5.4.2

Schoenberg’s Ideal of a Piano Texture

Fortunately enough, the sometimes heated exchange with Busoni enabled Schoenberg to specify his own piano aesthetics. A recurring key-word is “Verzicht” (“renunciation”): 32 33

see fn. 30, p. 46. Busoni (1909), July 26.

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Fig. 12 Claude Debussy, Préludes vol. I, Nr. 5 Les collines d’Anacapri (1910), m. 14–28, Edition Peters, Leipzig 1969

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Ich habe eigentlich auf mehr verzichtet als auf einen Klavierklang, als ich begann, meiner Natur ganz zu folgen (I gave up more than a pianistic sound when I began to follow my nature).

Speaking of harmony, Schoenberg uttered: Man muss die geheimnisvollen Wunder unserer tonalen Harmonik ... so begriffen und bewundert ... haben wie ich, um, wenn man auf sie Verzicht leistet, zu fühlen, dass man, ihrer nicht mehr bedürfend, anderen Mitteln gebietet. (One must, like me, have understood and admired the secret wonders of our tonal harmonies in order to feel that they are no longer needed, because you have new means at your command).

Schoenberg also sketched out his new ideal of sound: wie ich mich deutlich abwende von dem vollen ... Klang des Wagner’schen Orchesters. Wie alles zarter, dünner wird. Wie gebrochene Farbentöne stehen, wo sonst helle, leuchtende waren. ... (how I turn away from the full sound of the Wagnerian orchestra. How everything becomes more delicate, thinner. How broken color tones replace the bright shining ones.).34

5.4.3

Liszt’s Heritage in Schoenberg’s Musical Thought

Liszt was a “Vorbild” (“model”, or “paragon”) for Schoenberg, as he wrote in an article in celebration of his 100th birthday, Wieviel an rein Musikalisch-Neuem, an durch wirkliche Intuition Gefundenem [in seinem Werk] steckt … durch Themen sowohl, die nicht unbedingt auf ein solches [tonales] Centrum hinweisen, wie auch durch viele harmonische Einzelheiten (One should not overlook how much of musical novelty, achieved through real intuition, can be found in his work; either in themes which do not necessarily refer to a [tonal] center, or in many harmonic details).35

To sum up Schoenberg’s comments, it is safe to say that he made the legacy of Liszt’s “third period” his own.

5.4.4

Klavierstück op. 11/2

Although conveying a darker mood, this piece, in its tone layers, ostinatos and time signatures, resembles Debussy’s Collines d’Anacapri and large stretches of Liszt’s Legend 1: The ‘speech’ elements, in an ever growing range uniting the different layers, are primarily designed with crescendo-decrescendo forks and discreet agogic indications in words. Every fragment of this musical discourse has its clear shape and definite ‘downbeat’. This highly expressive, but unspectacular and intimate scene owes much to the works of Liszt’s last period of life (Fig. 13).

34 35

Schoenberg (1909), August 24. Schoenberg (1911, p. 1009).

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Fig. 13 Arnold Schoenberg, Klavierstück op. 11/2 (1909), m. 1–9, Universal Edition, Wien 1910

6 Franz Liszt’s Lesson in Our Ears An essay by Schoenberg, written pro domo two decades later, can also help in understanding Franz Liszt’s piano work from the Legends onward: ... Steht man nun einer neuen Musik gegenüber, wie ... die meinige ... war, so ist man darauf angewiesen, die Logik nur aus dem Klang zu entnehmen. Hier konnte der Komponist nur im Vertrauen auf sein Formgefühl und seine eingeborene Logik arbeiten ... (… faced with new music like mine ... one has to infer the logic from sound alone. Here, the composer could only rely on his sense of the form and his innate logic …).36 36

Schoenberg (1932).

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Perhaps Liszt’s ‘lesson’, seen in this light, is primarily for listeners and players, less so for readers or thinkers.

References Brendel, A.: Music, Sense and Nonsense. Biteback, London (2015) Burger, E.: Franz Liszt, die Jahre in Rom und Tivoli. Schott, Mainz (2010) Busoni, F.: Letter to Schoenberg (July 26, 1909). https://www.busoni-nachlass.org/de/Editionen/ E010001.html. Accessed 15 March 2022 (1909) Debussy, C.: Monsieur Croche. Lesure, Paris (1987) New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Macmillan, London (1980) New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Macmillan, London (2001) Goldschmidt, H.: Beethovens Anmerkungen zum Spiel der Cramer-Etüden. In: Bericht über den Internationalen Beethoven-Kongreß 10.-12. Dezember 1970, Verlag Neue Musik, Berlin (1971) Göllerich, A.: Liszt, part 2, Reclam, Leipzig (n.d.) Hanslick, E.: Waffenruhe am Clavier. In: Aus dem Concert-Saal. Kritiken und Schilderungen, Wilhelm Braumüller, Vienna (1897) Hugo, V.: Les Orientales. Ollendorf, Paris (1912) Jerger, W.: Franz Liszts Klavierunterricht von 1884–1886, dargestellt an den Tagebuchaufzeichnungen von August Göllerich. Bosse, Regensburg (1975) Rousseau, J.-J.: “Accent” in: Dictionnaire de Musique. Duchesne, Paris (1767) Schoenberg, A.: Letter to Busoni (24 August 1909). https://www.busoni-nachlass.org/de/Editionen/ E010001.html. Accessed 15 March 2022 (1909) Schoenberg, A.: Franz Liszts Werk und Wesen. In: Allgemeine Musik-Zeitung, vol. 38, pp. 1008– 1010, Breitkopf & Härtel, Berlin and Leipzig (1911) Schoenberg, A.: Today’s Manner of Performing Classical Music T 30.04 (30 April 1948). Arnold Schönberg Center, Vienna. https://schoenberg.at/index.php/de/archiv/texte. Accessed 1 June 2022 (1948) Schoenberg, A.: Berliner Tagebuch, ed. Josef Rufer. Propyläen, Berlin (1974) Schoenberg, A.: Brief an Fritz Stiedry T 36.09 (31 August 1930). Arnold Schönberg Center, Vienna. https://schoenberg.at/index.php/de/archiv/texte. Accessed 1 June 2022 (1930) Schönberg, A.: Merkmale der Logik T 39.22 (29 February 1932). Arnold Schönberg Center, Vienna. https://schoenberg.at/index.php/de/archiv/texte. Accessed 15 March 2022 (1932) Schumann, R.: Gesammelte Schriften über Musik und Musiker. Georg Wigand’s Verlag, Leipzig (1854) Walker, A.: Franz Liszt, The Weimar Years 1848–1861. Faber, London (1989) Walker, A.: Franz Liszt, The Final Years 1861–1886. Faber, London (1997)

Jean-Jacques Dünki, * 1948 in Aarau, Switzerland. After his piano studies in Basel, Berlin, Baltimore and London, he received the Schoenberg Prize in Rotterdam 1981. Since then he has been active as a concert pianist with a repertoire focusing on the early 20th century, including numerous first recordings of Zemlinsky, Berg and Webern. As a self-taught composer since the age of nine, he witnessed first performances on four continents. From 1984 until his retirement in 2012, he taught the piano and chamber music at the Hochschule für Musik in Basel, Switzerland. From the 1990s onward, he developed a growing interest for historical keyboard instruments and practices. He is the author of a book on Schoenberg: Los signos de Schoenberg (Caracas 2005), respectively: Schönbergs Zeichen (Vienna 2006), and on Robert Schumann: Schumann interpretieren (2014). His most important articles in anthologies include: Tetrapteron, a Keyboard Quartet. The Difficulty of Integrating the Sounds of Piano, Harpsichord, Celesta and Clavichord

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(1995); Composing ‘with’ the Clavichord. A Contemporary Experience (Magnano 1997); Bach in Regers Händen (Bern 1998); “Dem Menschen ist es unmöglich...”. Tempofragen im Klavierstück opus 11 n° 3 von Arnold Schönberg (Zürich 2001); “Fest im Tact...”. Vortragsbezeichnungen in der Klaviermusik für die Jugend von Robert Schumann (Sinzig 2006); Robert Schumanns Zeichen (Zürich 2010); Zeitgenosse Robert Schumann (Zürich 2010); Zeichen setzen, Zeichen lesen. Vortragsbezeichnungen in Robert Schumanns Intermezzo op. 4, n° 2 (Zürich 2011); Möglichkeiten der Realisation Schumannscher Vortragsanweisungen auf historischen und modernen Klavieren (Sinzig 2012); Anhaltspunkte für Schönberg-Interpretationen am Klavier (Vienna 2015); Antonin Reicha and his 36 Fugues for Piano (Amsterdam 2016). Presently, he is a professor emeritus of the Hochschule für Musik in Basel, Switzerland and still active as a concert pianist, composer and writer. He gives masterclasses in piano and fortepiano as well as lecture-recitals in many European countries.

Love, Death, and Rhetoric. Meaningful Textual-Musical and Vocal-Instrumental Relationships in Giuseppe Verdi’s La Traviata Sebastiano De Filippi

1 Introduction The analysis of language as an uniquely human form of communication has a rich history. Long before John Poinsot and John Locke laid the foundations for what we now call semiology, the subject was of interest to intellectuals from the antiquity and Middle Ages. Throughout the centuries rhetoric played a leading role in literary debates and the proverbial rivers of ink have flowed over the study of rhetorical figures.1 A central place in this discussion occupies trope (from the Greek τρ´oπoς, “direction”), the substitution of one expression for a different and non-synonymous one, whose meaning is somehow figurative: a “change of direction” of an expression that deviates from its original meaning. It’s better to speak of “tropes”, anyway, since the term encompasses eight typologies, divided into two groups: on the one hand, hyperbole, irony, metaphor, metonymy, and synecdoche2 ; on the other, allegory, emphasis, and antonomasia.3 1 Said figures are adjectivation, alliteration, anaphora, antithesis, apostrophe, asyndeton, calambour, comparison, concatenation, dilogy, enumeration, enjambement, epithet, etopeia, gradation, hyperbaton, onomatopoeia, paradox, parallelism, personification, pleonasm, polysyndeton, prosography, portrait, synesthesia, and rhetorical question. 2 Hyperbole exaggerates reality, to exalt it or demean it. Irony expresses something very far from what is said, so that the receiver recognizes the true intention. Metaphor generates an identification between two elements, one more specific than the other. Metonymy is a transnomination: it substitutes one proper term for another, considering a relationship of contiguity between the two. Synecdoche is the substitution of an expression that refers to a whole for another that indicates a part, or the opposite. 3 Allegory is a chain of metaphors, in which each one is related to the previous and the following one. Emphasis consists in using an expression in a more restricted and precise sense than it usually has. Antonomasia uses an appellative name in place of its own, or vice versa.

S. De Filippi (B) Buenos Aires, Argentina e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 H.-W. Heister et al. (eds.), Word Art + Gesture Art = Tone Art, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20109-7_8

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Here we will take a special interest in the first five forms, since they are essential when moving from verbal to musical language, weighing how both interact. This centrality should not be minimized: almost the entire Western musical repertoire, by action or reaction, was composed with these rhetorical devices in mind and is brimming with tropes. In Renaissance, Baroque and Classical music the derivation of rhetorical resources from language was explicitly sought, given the influence of the Aristotelian theory of mimesis. It is a widely studied subject, so here it suffices to remember that speech was taken as a model for music: based on the Affektenlehre, both the composer and the performer were expected to arouse feelings in the audience in the way an orator did.4 In later eras the relationship between rhetorical resources and musical discourse is more nuanced, but the laws of oratory cast their shadow on that production as well.5 If this applies to instrumental music, how much more it is so in vocal music, in which these categories play a role already in the literary text (at the same time poetic, and thus in itself musical); added to this are the processes of music itself and the results of their interaction. From this point of view, it could be ventured that musical language, in addition to being poetic, is also tropic. It is certainly interesting to investigate vocal-instrumental works from the perspective of hyperbole, irony, metaphor, metonymy, and synecdoche; the matter is even more pressing when the text set to music is both poetic and theatrical, as in the case of opera: semantic stratifications are numerous, as are their overlaps, often with results possible only in this genre… let us think of a great end-of-the-act Mozartian concertato. There are many contributions to take into account when approaching a study such as this one. They range from classical rhetoric—Kennedy (1994)—to modern semiotics—Eco (2013)—, encompassing musicologists such as Agawu (2008), Danuser (1975), Krones (2001), and performers who wrote on the subject such as FischerDieskau (1985) and Harnoncourt (1982), as well as some of the main contemporary experts in Italian Romantic opera and in Giuseppe Verdi’s output, as are Budden (2008), Della Seta (2008), Dotto (2009), Gossett (2006), and Petrobelli (1998).

2 Some Starting Ideas With these authors contributing a flexible theoretical framework, we will examine here some suggestive examples in Verdi’s La Traviata, a canonical text that still lends itself to new approaches and discoveries. We will dwell on the relationships between the vocal lines (solo and choral) and the instrumental parts (orchestral and offstage), 4

The goal of each section of a composition was to produce a particular emotion: the composer manipulated meter, tonality, melody, and harmony to that end, just as the performer did with tempo, dynamic, articulation, and timbre. A re-reading of the 19th-century treatises places us well in this context. 5 On this subject, see Tizón Díaz (2018).

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mentioning their interrelation with the poetic text (verses and captions). We will have the opportunity to verify how from instrumental music Verdi introduces elements that complement, underline, deepen, nuance, anticipate, and even contradict the character of vocal lines, the content of sung text, and the instructions regarding stage actions. Now, we have to consider that during his first long stay in Paris Verdi frequented several playhouses, where he probably attended the first performances of La Dame aux Camélias by Alexandre Dumas Jr. As Emilio Sala points out,6 Verdi profited much from his time in the French capital: he made contact with at least two other heroines in love who die young: the protagonists of the stage adaptations in Antoine Prévost’s Manon Lescaut and Henri Murger’s La Vie de Bohème. Additionally, Verdi’s time in Paris allowed him to acquire a better understanding of the urban myths of prostitution—the lorette as an aristocratic evolution of the grisette–, of the rhythms of waltz and polka, of parties as an antidote to the mal de vivre, of the theatrical representation of the contemporary with all its fashions (especially the Spanish color then in vogue), and the thematic use of motifs to musically signify death. One element that our study will consider is that the title Verdi wanted for his opera and that censorship prevented him from using, Amore e Morte, is a founding fact of the work. So was the composer’s initial intention to entitle the three acts of the piece, respectively, Amore, Sacrifizio, and Morte.7 We should immediately state that in an opera such as this we have a complex intersection of creative wills, both authorial (Dumas, Piave, Verdi) and interpretive (music director, stage director, vocal soloists), and this without even mentioning the artistic ensembles involved (chorus, orchestra, band), and the textual mediation that a published score implies. We will follow the traditional Ricordi edition of the full score8 for musical examples, while confronting it with the critical edition9 and using the latter’s bar numbering.

3 The First Tableau: Salotto in casa di Violetta A few words should be said about the prelude, since here two themes of profound significance for the structure of the opera alternate: the first refers to the tuberculosis that the protagonist will die of in the last act; the second (Fig. 1) is a rereading of “Amami, Alfredo”, the soprano’s peroration in the second act. Thus, from the very first bars, Verdi’s intention to entitle the opera Amore e Morte, and to use Amore as the title of the first act and Morte as the title of the third act, is fully understood.

6

For further clarification see Sala (2008). As pointed out by Budden (1978). 8 Anonymous (ed.). La traviata: Partitura d’orchestra. Casa Ricordi, Milan (1914). 9 Della Seta, F. (ed.). La Traviata: Critical Edition Score. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago (1996). 7

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Fig. 1 Act I, no. 1, bars 17–20

We will soon see how musical materials related to the thematic area of love and falling in love (in the sphere of Violetta and Alfredo), and those inherent to death, sacrifice, and hate (in the sphere of the Germont family) constitute an architectural framework as subtle as it is precise, in some sense no less sophisticated than a Wagnerian one. After the morendo of the prelude fades away, Verdi throws us into a different environment, brutally festive. This first scene of the Introduzione offers an interesting unfolding: on one hand, the dramatic situation derived from Dumas, the verses of Piave, and the vocal lines; on the other, the orchestral writing. The curtain opens on the party chez Violetta Valéry (soprano) and our guide there is a changing instrumental discourse. The first thematic element (Fig. 2) is a hyperbole: a boisterous march in quaternary beat and binary pulse, with a pre-eminence of winds and percussion, and a certain band quality to it. In addition to establishing the humorous nature of the scene, it serves as a framework for the lively exchanges between the chorus and the characters that interact with it, in what in real life—or prose theatre—would be to speak in a loud and agitated voice: the chorus talks with Violetta, Flora Bervoix (mezzo-soprano) and the Marquis d’Obigny (bass); Baron Douphol (baritone) and Doctor Grenvil (bass) double the choral part. However, with the appearance of Alfredo Germont (tenor) and Viscount Gastone de Letorières (tenor), a second orchestral theme enters (Fig. 3), much less exterior than the first: a more cantabile and chamber music line, led by the strings—reduced in quantity for this purpose–, and with a decidedly binary structure: a moment of gallant character, which reflects in music a dialogue that is suddenly much more intimate (in a low voice, we would say) about falling in love, and which takes place between four characters: Gastone, Violetta, Obigny, and Alfredo. Without a doubt, a metaphor. The return of the chorus and the aforementioned comprimarios (doubling the choral lines) implies also the return of the quaternary, agitated and bandistic musical

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Fig. 2 Act I, no. 2, bars 6–11

Fig. 3 Act I, no. 2, bars 57–61

element. As the guests sit down at the banquet table, the second orchestral theme returns, again with reduced strings and coinciding with the discreet dialogue between Gastone, Violetta, Alfredo, and Douphol. The subsequent exchange leads us back to the quaternary march, coinciding with the suggestion that Alfredo improvises a toast. So far, from the rhetorical point of view we have a rather linear process, in which instrumental music seeks to accompany, complement, and amplify the changing character of action, text, and song, building from the score a symmetry parallel to that of the libretto. Here the vocal and the instrumental go mostly in the same

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Fig. 4 Act I, no. 2, bars 182–192

direction, since the sung lines are more rhythmic and declaimed during the presence of the first thematic element, and more melodic and lyrical with the second one. These two contrasting worlds coexist harmoniously thanks to the unity of tempo, bar, tonality, and mode (Allegro brillantissimo e molto vivace, 4/4, A major), which Verdi keeps intact up to the Brindisi. Said Brindisi (Fig. 4) presents a case of trope of great interest, because it is a multiple one. The theatrical and poetic approach is, of course, that of a toast. However, from the libretto itself other semantic layers appear, since Violetta and Alfredo have brief dialogues, almost a parte, in which they abstract from the celebration of the toast itself to flirt with subtle verbal “hints”. Rhetorically, we are in the realm of irony. On this double base of meanings other tropes are built. From the beginning, the orchestra plays a very clear waltz rhythm. This waltz has characteristics worth mentioning, because despite being an Allegretto in 1, it is not the typical fast Viennese waltz, but rather a French waltz with a calm tempo (dotted quarter note = 69). Thus, we have a toast set in Paris, with French dance music, while singing in Italian. The Italic element is further present in the gruppetti and embellishments, which are more typical of Belcanto than of waltzes. The rhetorical complexities do not stop here. The singing line respects the waltz’s triple rhythm—it would be very difficult not to—although the characters sing, metonymically, about anything but dance. Finally, the presence in the vocal part of staccati, accents, embellishments, pianissimi, and instructions such as con grazia and leggerissimo refers more to a kind of instrumental writing than to a vocal one.10 In the Valzer-duetto (Fig. 5) we have, for the first time, the musical tormentone of the waltz fully unified in instrumental and vocal writing, as well as at the level of poetic text and stage situation: a fast waltz is heard (dotted half note = 80), played by an invisible wind band—that is, offstage, an example of “music within music”—and everyone on the scene notices it, wanting to go towards the space where the dancing 10

Let’s mention here a performative consequence of neglecting the correct tempo for this waltz: if orchestras usually solve these precious virtuosities without great difficulty, the same does not usually happen with the singers—and sometimes that is precisely because the Brindisi is conducted too fast, like a Viennese waltz, making the precise vocal execution of what is written impossible.

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Fig. 5 Act I, no. 2, bars 375–385

music comes from. Everything here points in the same direction: rhetorically, we would speak of emphasis. The following scene complicates the rhetorical approach. Violetta and Alfredo talk about topics of the utmost seriousness (illness, love), adapting their expressions to the prevailing triple rhythm, since the instrumental accompaniment does not come from the orchestra in the pit, but from the offstage band, which plays a variety of waltz themes. Here we have an instance of realism perhaps more typical of Verismo opera than of a Romantic piece of Belcanto origin such as La Traviata11 : the characters in view discuss serious things, while we are aware that the party continues a few meters away. There is no contradiction here; rather, we see an intelligent juxtaposition of strong symbolic implications: Violetta and Alfredo think and talk about important issues with a dancing party in the background. In the next act, these two characters will go from the sphere of life and love to that of sacrifice and death. The Duetto proper leaves the band aside thanks to the return of the orchestra, but the waltz is still present, although in a more discreet way: the accompaniment starring in the strings is slower in character and tempo (Andantino, quarter note = 96), but it still has the ternary imprint of the ballroom dance.

11

Here we follow some of the thoughts presented in Parker (2007).

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Note how Alfredo—the idealist young man in love—expresses himself in long lines of cantabile melodicism, with discreet chordal contributions from woodwinds and horn, while Violetta—the experienced courtesan—answers him by resorting to Belcanto agilities, supported by brilliant doublings that include the flute at the upper octave. The characterization of these lovers is thus deepened by the orchestral palette. The strings are the element of union, as they continue to pulsate in antonomastic ternary rhythm. With the I Tempo, the offstage band returns with its fast waltz (in 1) and the passionate dialogues over the distant dancing accompaniment. The Stretta, a very live binary Allegro in A flat major, is too close in rhythm to a polka for that to be a mere coincidence. See how voices—both solo and choral—are coupled to the orchestral writing, through a virtuoso pointillism (repeated staccato quavers) that is more an instrumental resource than a vocal one, which rhetorically places us in a well-defined area. The composer paints the routine mechanicity of going from party to party, like automatons controlled by vice. The ensuing rhythmic complexity may even suggest certain drunkenness of those present. The rest of the first act is taken up by Violetta’s Scena ed aria. Of this number we will only say that the soprano’s great double cantabile section is again a waltz in 3, bearing the same tempo indication and metronomic marking as the Duetto (Andantino, quarter note = 96). It’s not a coincidence that the duet was in F major, and here we swing between the initial F minor and the F major of the central section— where, of course, the protagonist quotes Alfredo’s passionate declaration of love. Let’s bear in mind that this cantabile seems to take us back—we are in 1853—to the typically Classical, Belcantoish, and Liederistic problem of the strophic formula, in which identical music (both vocal and instrumental) serves two different poetic stanzas, sometimes of contrasting character. We will also find this tropic situation in other cantabili and of course in the double cabalette of this opera. The protagonist’s own cabaletta is in a fast 6/8, which implies a binary pulse and therefore, in practice, constant groups of two ternary units; with it, the waltz continues to cast its shadow over the character. It is remarkable how Alfredo’s love declaration, one of the recurrent motifs of the opera, is now heard (in actuality? or only in Violetta’s feverish mind?): the tenor sings offstage, accompanied by a solitary and metaphorical harp (Fig. 6). Up until now, our analysis of the rhetorical interrelation between text and music, and between vocal and instrumental writing, yields a conclusion that we will deepen soon enough: the ternary in general and the waltz in particular have a central significance in the structure of the work, which includes the reference to dance but goes far beyond it; in these ternary cells we find the representative core of two of the main elements from this opera that have joy in common: partying and love.

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Fig. 6 Act I, no. 3, bars 168–174

4 The Second Tableau: Casa di Campagna Presso Parigi Alfredo’s recitative opening his Scena ed aria in the second act is interesting from the dialectical point of view that concerns us: the orchestral writing is absolutely square and symmetrical in its binary-quaternary character, while most of the tenor’s phrases are articulated in dotted rhythms that escape such structure. Alfredo’s dotted rhythm remains constant during his cantabile, the Andante “De’ miei bollenti spiriti” (Fig. 7), with an accompaniment whose final auditory result is that of a constant flow of sixteenth notes in triple rhythm, at a tempo not incompatible with that of a waltz. The irony that is generated is as clear as it is effective: text and singing reflect the happy agitation of the young man; his “bollenti spiriti” are present, almost like a madrigalism, in that series of rapid sixteenth notes organized in a ternary patterns. The cabaletta is quaternary, with important implications that will become clear later. The Scena e duetto between Violetta and Giorgio Germont (baritone) is entirely quaternary: both the opening Allegro and the following Recitativo, Moderato, and the two Allegro sections leading up to the opening part of the duet proper are. In the latter, the quaternary also reigns supreme, with two main exceptions: the Vivacissimo (“Non sapete”) and the Andantino (“Dite alla giovane”), whose 6/8 m refers to a kind of waltz, dramatic in the first case and sad in the second. The dialogical scene is so long—about twenty minutes—that constitutes an “opera within the opera”;

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Fig. 7 Act II, no. 4, bars 35–39

consequently, it is very rich in elements that deserve a separate analysis, as in fact has happened.12 Violetta’s Scena contains original elements because, except for the famous “Amami, Alfredo”, it is constructed in such a way that singing is deprived of the traditional Verdian cantilena: the text remains important as always, but the expressive charge is directed towards the orchestra, with the shadow of Beethoven’s melodrama in Fidelio projecting itself on the Parmesan maestro’s score.13 Notice how Violetta, Annina (soprano), and Alfredo utter short, broken sentences, devoid of much aesthetic interest, while the character in the instrumental music offers an attentive public the emphasis that singing does not have. Violetta’s situation is dramatic, but who would imagine that already at the beginning of the second act death is walking the stage? It is exactly this subtext that Verdi suggests—with a certain ironic contradiction at the rhetorical level—from the pit: between measures 3 and 6 of the initial Adagio he introduces something of the funereal rhythm that characterizes several of his operatic scenes (Fig. 8), taken from the one executed by Italian town bands on processions to the cemetery. From the second Allegro, for eight measures Verdi presents a variation of it, with an inversion of its main rhythmic cell. Immediately afterwards, here’s another effect that can be described as a madrigalism, undoubtedly related to the idea of death: after Alfredo’s “Oh quanto”, the first clarinet and the first bassoon play a B flat seven times, in the best style of the campane a morto that the Emilian churches in which Verdi was an altar boy play on the occasion of deaths (Fig. 9). Violetta cries and Alfredo worries, but neither of

12

One of such analyzes is to be found in Powers (1987). In Fidelio’s Act II, no. 12, Melodrama et duetto, Leonore (soprano) and Rocco (bass) go down to the cistern in which Florestan (tenor) is hold prisoner. The place is dark, cold and menacing. Both Leonore and Violetta shiver; the darkness in Fidelio is objective, the one in La Traviata is in the girl’s mind.

13

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Fig. 8 Act II, no. 6, bars 1–4

them knows what the composer is subtextually advancing to the audience: this story will end with death. Germont’s Scena ed aria shows another curious instance at the semiotic level: the announcement by Giuseppe (tenor) is built on the regular repetition of eighth notes and quarter notes over just a few pitches: A (7 times), C (21 times) and, after a single transitional D, E (7 times), with an abrupt C—A interval to end it. In the face of such a paucity of resources, it is the orchestra that provides the meaning, with arpeggios and eighth note scales executed by the strings, which give the scene the theatrical significance that the singing denies it, suggesting the journey to Paris of Violetta’s calesse (carriage). Six measures later, another madrigalism: two measures of what is often called “Amsterdam” rhythm—an eighth note and two sixteenth notes—depict the hasty arrival of the Messenger (bass); the librettist says nothing about his means of locomotion, but considering the cavalcade rhythm, the listener rightly thinks of a horseman (Fig. 10). Germont’s cantabile is in 4/4, so this character’s two main moments in the opera (the duet with Violetta and the present solo) are unified by their quaternary writing: clearly, the old bourgeois from Provence knows nothing of waltzes, and in Verdi’s melodrama—while the ternary embodies Violetta in her double capacity as frivolous courtesan and enamored lover of Alfredo—the quaternary opposes those worlds, denying both the superficial air of dance and the imprudent love professed by the new couple. Not surprisingly, the tableau closes with a most traditional quaternary cabaletta, notwithstanding the agitated sixteenth notes that seem to represent the “mille serpi”

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Fig. 9 Act II, no. 6, bars 52–56

Fig. 10 Act II, no. 6, bars 127–130

that devour Alfredo’s chest. If the love of young people is agilely ternary, the opposition presented to them by old Giorgio is rigorously quaternary.

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5 The Third Tableau: Galleria nel palazzo di Flora If the party at Violetta’s house opened in medias res, the same thing happens with the reception at Flora’s palace, beginning the Finale II with a percussive chord of C major to full orchestra. In both cases, Verdi opens with hyperbolic quaternary themes with binary accentuation, in major keys—A in the first act, C here–, with the winds playing a leading role, and with a practically identical tempo (he does not indicate a metronome, but writes Allegro brillantissimo e molto vivace there and Allegro brillante here). The symmetries do not end at that: this festive orchestral tapestry is also the backbone of the entire scene, serving as a framework for the quick dialogic exchanges between comprimarios whom we met precisely at the other party: Flora, Obigny, and Grenvil. With the second party, the hyperbole almost becomes antonomasia. After an instance of “music within music” in the first act, in this one we have a case of “theatre within theatre”. To defuse the atmosphere before the events rush towards the end, Verdi presents a series of scenes in which he combines, in addition to singing and playing, acting and dance: the espagnolade of gypsies and bullfighters, a masked divertimento in which the female chorus sings with the addition of tambourines played on stage; then the male chorus does it, with the percussion of their matador pikes; and finally both groups join, with the addition of four comprimarios (Fig. 11). To the already numerous discursive and metanarrative dimensions of the Verdian score a spatial or geographical one is definitively added here: instruments that sound in the pit, offstage, and now also on the stage itself, played by singers and dancers.

Fig. 11 Act II, no. 7, bars 277–284

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The masquerade ends with Alfredo’s arrival, which marks the beginning of the Seguito del finale II. To Verdi, the entrance of Violetta and Douphol is another occasion to deploy a brilliant economy of musical resources: once again, while characters and chorus exchange short and almost recited phrases, it is the orchestra that unifies the sound fabric and charges it with an ominous significance, making the thunder heard before the lightning is seen: two 6/8 bars with an ostinato character, played estremamente piano, with limited variations and few interruptions, persist until Violetta is left alone on stage. The irony is clear: behind the icy politeness of the social dialogues lies a much greater drama, ready to explode. In the middle of everything we just described, three campane a morto are heard, this time in C, played by flutes, first bassoon, and first horn (Fig. 12). Definitively, during the second act death—barely mentioned by Violetta in her duet with Germont—has come to stay. With a single sentence, the Servant (bass) generates an important change on stage, leading the guests to dinner; he does so by singing the same C five times, a detail that would deserve separate analysis, as is the case concerning the importance of that note in Rigoletto (1851), which represents the maledizione that Monterone casts on the leading character. After the tense lovers’ tense dialogue, dominated by an obsessive ostinato in the orchestra, Alfredo’s curse follows, quite naturally in a Germontian quaternary rhythm. Here we arrive at the Velocissimo in 1 (“Oh, infamia orribile”). With the inevitable exception of Alfredo, all voices and all instruments join in a powerful unison in

Fig. 12 Act II, no. 7, bars 420–424

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octaves: the repudiation of Alfredo for having publicly treated Violetta as a prostitute is as unanimous as its rhetorical treatment at the musical level. The music of repudiation rises like a wall against Germont Jr. It is his father who crosses that wall, interrupting the sonic texture and beginning the section that brings the act to a close, the Largo del finale II. The baritone does so meeting our expectations, as he reprimands Alfredo in severe quaternary meter: even when part of the accompaniment becomes ternary (measure 4) Germont continues undaunted with a dotted rhythm, whose strict sixteenth notes do not fold down to the triplet eighth notes from the orchestra. The right-thinking bourgeois imposes his squareness on the ternary rakes. This is a concertato with a clear Belcanto matrix. Voices and instruments are grouped according to doublings and treated under equal conditions: Violetta, Flora, Alfredo, Gastone, and Germont are doubled by flute, oboe, clarinet, and first violins; Douphol, Obigny, and Grenvil are doubled by cellos and basses. The chorus’ simple chords (this kind of writing refers to the final scene in Bellini’s Norma) are associated with the accompanying figurations of horns, cimbasso, second violins, and violas. We are before a traditional musical procedure, effective but without much implications for our analysis.

6 The Fourth Tableau: Camera da letto di Violetta Modern musicology has long banished the commonplace of considering the first and intermediate Verdi as only “popular” composer, melodically inspired and solidly anchored to elements perceived as “easy”. Furthermore, La Traviata is clearly a work of planned symmetries and classical proportions. In this regard, let us mention the most obvious of these symmetries: the preludes, the latter of which is included in Violetta’s Scena ed aria. In this case, after the theme of consumption by tuberculosis (which here has a psychological value of reminiscence) we have an alternative development, with dramatic melodic materials, one of which—suggestively marked morendo—creates the metaphor of a presence who advances on tiptoes and whose identity is easy to imagine (Fig. 13).14 After the prelude, which also ends morendo (by now, an indication of a profoundly encompassing meaning!), Verdi resorts to a discursive resource of interrelationship between instrumental and vocal music not yet explicitly used in La Traviata: that of alternations. Brief a cappella recitatives alternate with fragments—short and almost disintegrated—of the consumption theme, performed by the violins. These vocal utterances, at first sight nothing extraordinary, are thus loaded with a double meaning: the music of the agony frames them and the most absolute orchestral 14

A curiosity within this symmetry: the composer indicates the same metronomic mark (quarter note = 66) in both cases, but with different verbal indications of tempo: Adagio and Andante respectively.

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Fig. 13 Act III, no. 8, bars 32–35

silence accompanies them. Obviously, we are close to the end and it will have death as protagonist. The melodrammaturgia15 varies and becomes more complex as Grenvil enters, with the return of what we could call the second theme of this prelude. The Doctor’s diagnosis (“La tisi non le accorda che poche ore”) gives way, for the last time, to the theme of consumption: the identity that we have postulated is thus confirmed by the composer.16 In the next scene Verdi uses another device that makes its first appearance here: melodrama, in the strictest technical sense of the term. On a subtle canvas of a second violin, two violas, and two cellos, two first violins—in theatrical praxis, for reasons of practicality, generally only one—play Alfredo’s love theme, “Di quell’amor” (Fig. 14). In parallel, and without strict rhythmic demarcation, Violetta declaims Germont’s letter.17 The double cantabile with which Violetta remembers her past, prefigures her death, and imagines the oblivion that awaits her is a kind of waltz: a 6/8 in the tempo of Andante mosso, whose accompaniment—mostly relied on repeated eighth notes—leaves no doubt about the ternary matrix of the music. We see here how the waltz that in the first act was mainly joy, and in the second mostly love, in the third 15

This wonderfully effective term is used in Conati (1985). For the very close relationship between desease and love in La Traviata see Groos (1995). 17 This is a quite common locus in XIX century’s Italian opera: when a character reads a letter, he or she stops singing and a very rare moment of spoken declamation is carved out, due to the additional rhetorical emphasis sought. 16

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Fig. 14 Act III, no. 8, bars 100–108

can also mean death: Violetta is, of course, the link that through sacrifice unites these factors that make up the opera’s heart. Confirming our suspicions, the Baccanale that interrupts the dying woman’s daydreaming is written in a fiercely fast binary rhythm, in 1, like the Vivacissimo at Flora’s party: a brutal carnival song for the chorus, sung offstage. As yet another instance of theater within theater and music within music, the instrumental accompaniment (essentially a doubling of the singing) should be played next to the chorus and not in the pit. After all, it is a dancing procession that passes under the leading lady’s window, with which we have here a second instance close to the linguistic code of Verismo.18 The Scena e duetto brings us back to one of the usual singing-playing relationships in Verdi’s operas, with the instrumental fabric charging a text and a vocal line with additional meaning: the quick dialogue between Annina and Violetta would not attract the listener’s attention if it were not for the rhythmic frenzy of the strings, which includes a long (24 bars) ostinato with bounced eighth notes. The section that begins with Alfredo singing “Colpevol sono” shows a similar strategy, only in this case the strings play eighth notes alone, increasing the urgency of the moment: the subtext tells us that there is no time left. The duo’s cantabile section, “Parigi, o cara”, returns to the great τ´oπoς in La Traviata, the waltz: in this case, a waltz in moderate tempo (Andante mosso), in 3/8 time and the key of A-flat major. The dance rhythm once again represents love and the hope of a future that may regain the best of the past—leaving Paris for a house in the countryside, as in the second act. After the exposition, both the instrumental and the vocal writing become more complex but, true to his determination, Verdi keeps the essential element constant: the ternary rhythm continues to pulsate like a synecdoche. The soprano’s “Ah non più” brings a very operatic resource of emphasis, yet little used in La Traviata: a stage action barely indicated by the text (“vacilla”) is 18

See Mila (1999).

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Fig. 15 Act III, no. 10, bars 180–184

made directly explicit by the orchestra; against the background of a rather tenuous string accompaniment, the first violins and double basses twice draw a short cell in fortissimo that gives the impression of someone suddenly tripping and falling (Fig. 15). It’s no surprise that the duo’s cabaletta, “Gran Dio! morir sì giovane”, is quaternary, with a binary concluding section: it is in line with this type of writing (a cabaletta should be martial in some way),19 but also it has everything to do with the end of love and life. The Finale ultimo begins with Germont entering the stage, accompanied by an agitated binary spiccato passagework by the strings. Seeing the fainting woman, the old man tells Alfredo that remorse devours his soul and that every kind word from Violetta is a terrible blow to him. Verdi rhetorically amplifies what could be a mere polite remark with the first violins repeating a sequence made up of the same cell that indicated Violetta’s hesitant step: the father’s pain is sincere and now he is the one about to fall. The next moment is of enormous theatrical significance, thanks to a tool that we could almost describe as meta-temporal, in the sense of mixing the present and the future in a single moment. Foreshadowing her imminent death, Violetta says goodbye to Alfredo and tells him her last wishes. The poetic text is simple and direct, and the soprano’s singing is centered on a discreet writing of repeated pitches. But here is Verdi’s most intertextual rhetorical amplification: the orchestra does not offer a

19

The centrality of cabalette in Verdi’s duets is posited in Powers (2000).

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chordal accompaniment and plays, in an original combination of tutti and pianissimo, the funeral rhythm of Italian bands. The hyperbole reaching the listener psychologically displaces him in time: during Violetta’s valediction, death is already a fact, as if the woman were already dead… the subtext in Verdi’s music indicates that she has the pause of someone who has not only accepted her own death but is already speaking from “beyond”. At this point, we know that death is one of the two real leading characters of the opera—along with love–, from the first prelude itself, in which the themes of consumption and love alternate: Amore e Morte, indeed. With brief parentheses, the funeral rhythm maintains its prominence until almost the very end of the opera, when Violetta actually embraces the grim reaper, with the sudden improvement that often heralds the demise of the terminally ill. On the last reminiscence of the melody of the ternary “Di quell’amor” the soprano declaims (but with written notes, not freely as it is often heard) about the joy that floods her, to finally fall lifeless. Is it strange that she dies when singing “Oh gioia” and precisely when the rhythm changes from ternary to binary? Of course not: Verdi’s metaphors have become an allegory.

7 (Not) to Conclude In the preceding paragraphs, we have revealed a complex network of rhetorical resources used in the Verdian dialogue between libretto and score, as well as a rich palette of discoursive relationships between vocal and instrumental writing. In addition, we have verified how the tension between amore and morte, far from being a mere part of a programmatic title, informs the entire work, through the contrast between ternary rhythms (related to waltz, the authentic thematic nucleus of the opera) and quaternary rhythms (the right-thinking bourgeois world): the ternary connotes the life, joy, and love of the leading couple, and the quaternary refers to the death, sacrifice, and hatred to which Germont at times manages to co-opt the young lovers. If something can be endorsed after this analysis it is that La Traviata, despite its lasting popular success, its charming diatonic melodicism, the simplicity of certain accompaniment formulas, and the schematicism of some morphologic configurations, is a work based on a structure as solid as it is sophisticated, which admits different levels of reading—a structure that has little to envy from other composers contemporary to Verdi who still today seem to be regarded with deeper respect by a certain intelligentsia.20 The multidimensionality in the rhetorical interrelationships between words and notes, and between the vocal and instrumental writing in this opera are therefore really important and profound in scope. From them, Verdi the composer for theatre clearly 20

It’s one of the main ideas this author tries to prove in De Filippi (2022), while discussing Arturo Toscanini’s recording of the opera in concert form.

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emerges as an admirer of both German instrumental music and the best universal literature, a man of deep peasant roots and yet a citizen of the world at the same time.21 There should be little doubt about it: a piece like La Traviata may be—as in fact is—extremely affordable for a non-specialized audience, but the intertextual sophistication of its compositional framework is undeniable. In short, we are dealing with only apparent simplicity: a simplicity that is sought, constructed, and certainly inspired by that of Classical composers such as Mozart and Rossini, and by great playwrights such as Shakespeare and Schiller, who were an inexhaustible source of inspiration for Verdi.22 Acknowledgements The author wishes to thank four colleagues and friends who generously read the manuscript and contributed valued advice to improve both its content and its form: Prof. Julio D. Auster, Dr. Fátima G. Musri, Dr. Nora H. Sforza and Prof. Daniel C. Varacalli.

References Agawu, K.: Music as Discourse: Semiotic Adventures in Romantic Music. Oxford University Press, Oxford (2008) Budden, J.: The Operas of Verdi. Cassell, London (1978) Budden, J.: Verdi. Oxford University Press, Oxford (2008) Conati, M.: Aspetti di melodrammaturgia verdiana: A proposito di una sconosciuta versione del finale del duetto Aida-Amneris. Studi Verdiani 3, 45–78 (1985) Danuser, H.: Musikalische Prosa: Studien zur Musikgeschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts. Gustav Bosse Verlag, Regensburg (1975) De Filippi, S.: Ensayos de ópera: De la música a la musicología. Editorial Biblos, Buenos Aires (2022) Della Seta, F.: “…non senza pazzia”: Prospettive sul teatro musicale. Carocci Editore, Rome (2008) Dotto, G.: That’s Opera: 200 Years of Italian Music. Prestel Publishing, Munich (2009) Eco, U.: Dire quasi la stessa cosa: Esperienze di traduzione. Bompiani, Milan (2013) Fischer-Dieskau, D.: Töne sprechen, Worte klingen: Zur Geschichte und Interpretation des Gesangs. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Munich (1985) Gossett, P.: Divas and Scholars: Performing Italian Opera. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago (2006) Groos, A.: “TB Sheets: Love and Disease in “La Traviata”. Camb. Opera J. 3, 233–260 (1995) Harnoncourt, N.: Musik als Klangrede: Wege zu einem neuen Musikverständnis. Residenz Verlag, Salzburg (1982) Kennedy, G.A.: A New History of Classical Rhetoric. Princeton University Press, Princeton (1994) Krones, H.: Stimme und Wort in der Musik des 20. Jahrhunderts. Böhlau Verlag, Vienna (2001) 21

Considered once as little more than a “composer of popular music”, the operista of the masses in contrast to Wagner’s intellectualism, a kind of Belcanto musician who until his intermediate creative period (which includes Rigoletto, Il Trovatore, and La Traviata) limited himself to writing beautiful and metrically regular melodies, accompanied by simple chordal figures, Verdi now helds his rightful place in the history of musical theatre—and not just because of Aida, Otello, Falstaff , and his other mature masterpieces. 22 As Webster (1987) states right from the title of his article.

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Mila, M.: ¿Precursora del verismo? Revista Teatro Colón 51, 60–69 (1999) Parker, R.: Verdi and Verismo: the case of “La Traviata”. In: Cassaro, J. P. (ed.). Music, Libraries, and the Academy: Essays in Honor of Lenore Coral, A-R Editions, Middleton, pp. 215–222 (2007) Petrobelli, P.: La musica nel teatro: Saggi su Verdi e altri compositori. EDT, Turin (1998) Powers, H.S.: “La solita forma” and “The Uses of Convention”. Acta Music. 1, 65–90 (1987) Powers, H.S.: Verdi’s monometric Cabaletta-Driven duets: a study in rhythmic texture and generic design. Il Saggiatore Musicale 2, 281–323 (2000) Sala, E.: Il valzer delle camelie: Echi di Parigi nella Traviata. EDT, Turin (2008) Tizón Díaz, M.: Música, retórica y emociones. Paideía 113, 315–337 (2018) Webster, J.: To understand Verdi and Wagner we must understand Mozart. 19th-Century Music 175–193 (1987)

Sebastiano De Filippi * 1977 in Buenos Aires, holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Music from the Escuela de Altos Estudios Musicales (Huelva), a Master’s Degree in Conducting from the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music (London), and is a PhD Candidate in Musicology at the Universidad Católica Argentina (Buenos Aires). He teaches Music at the Academia Latinoamericana de Dirección Orquestal (La Paz), for which he also serves as Artistic Director. He is a frequent guest lecturer at universities, colleges and conservatories in the Americas and Europe. He has published close to a hundred papers, articles and program notes, and is the author of three books on musicAlta en el cielo: Vida y obra de Héctor Panizza (2017), also published in Italian and English; Notas sinfónicas: Un panorama del repertorio orquestal (2020); and Ensayos de ópera: De la música a la musicología (2022). Enjoying a career as a conductor which spans four continents, he is the Music Director of the Orquesta de Cámara del Congreso de la Nación.

The Word in the Tone in Works of Gustav Mahler Silja Haller

1 Introduction Today it is well known that Gustav Mahler pursued programmatic intentions in his symphonic works. At this point, there is no contradiction to Mahler’s bon mot “pereat – every program”,1 since in this regard he had probably turned against interpretations of his music “in the sense of illustrative program music”.2 On the basis of various (mostly well-known and often quoted) statements by the composer, one can sometimes draw conclusions about specific ideas that set an impulse for his creative work using the means of expression that were available to him as a musician.

2 The Inclusion of the Sung Word as a Clarification of the Idea Against this background, the instrumental music and the sung word or the selected or self-written text represent means for the artistic creation of the intended idea, which is also made clear by several statements: When I conceive a large musical structure, I always come to the point where I have to use the ‘word’ as the carrier of my musical idea. […] During this period I had been thinking for a long time about bringing in the choir for the last movement and only the concern that 1

Letter to Max Kalbeck (1850–1921, German writer and critic), Vienna, 20.11.1900 (Blaukopf 1996, p. 277). 2 Specht (1922), p. 172 f. In addition, Mahler explained in the above-mentioned letter that “beginning with Beethoven there is no modern music that does not have its inner program” (ibid.). S. Haller (B) Berlin, Germany © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 H.-W. Heister et al. (eds.), Word Art + Gesture Art = Tone Art, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20109-7_9

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one might perceive this as a superficial imitation of Beethoven made me hesitate again and again! At that time Bülow died and I attended his funeral service here. [...] – Then the choir intoned the Klopstock chorale ‘Resurrection!’ from the organ – This hit me like lightning and everything stood very clearly in front of my soul! […] What I experienced then, I now had to create in sound. […] It’s always like that for me: only when I experience, I create tones [tondichte ich] – only when I create tones, I experience!3

Here, Mahler reveals an essential characteristic of his creative way of working by referring to the close connection or the interaction of “experience” and its crystallisation into tones. Mahler’s fear that he could be accused of “superficial imitation” seems interesting. On the one hand, the term “superficial” can only suggest the mere phenomenon of word integration in general, especially the composition of the choral finale. On the other hand, Mahler directly compares the importance of using the human voice in his Second Symphony with Beethoven’s Ninth, so that the assumption of a relatedness of the motivations in this regard could also be considered. But at least Mahler also expresses his joy about the expansion of the range of compositional possibilities: It was Columbus’ egg that in my Second Symphony I used the word and the human voice where I needed it to make myself understood. Too bad I missed that in the First! In the Third, however, I am no longer ashamed and base the songs of the short movements on two poems from Des Knaben Wunderhorn and a wonderful poem by Nietzsche.4

These words speak to Mahler’s relief at being able to adopt a procedure that is new compared to the First Symphony and, above all, promises to be more precise in shaping his idea in the Second Symphony. His differentiated approach remains to be emphasized, whereby he immediately divides the vocal component of his work into “word” and “human voice”. One gets the impression that Mahler would like to point out the different properties and meanings of these two elements, particularly as the word provides the desired content and the voice the musical expression, which— an enrichment that should not be underestimated—is supplemented by the special ‘human touch’. He further explains: If I have now and then given my symphonies a title, I wanted to put up a few signposts for the feeling,5 where it should be translated into an idea. If the word is necessary for this, then the articulated human voice is there, which can then realize the boldest intentions – precisely through the connection with the enlightening word!6

Mahler’s explanations above contain a common denominator: As already mentioned, a pre-creative idea plays a crucial role in Mahler’s creative way of working. Its character seems to be less concrete and descriptive, according to the composer it is located on the level of “sensation”. The music, possibly in connection 3

Blaukopf (1996), p. 222 f. Killian (1984), p. 35. 5 There seems to be a parallel here to Beethoven, at least a similarity in formulation can be noticed, since he had given his Pastorale the additional note “more expression of feeling than painting [Mahlerey]”. 6 Blaukopf (1996), p. 203. 4

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with the word, has the task of coordinating this “sensation” and concretizing it in the form of an “idea”.7 It is therefore reasonable to assume that the idea preceded the actual composition. At least Mahler’s choice of words indicates a meta-musical level: He speaks of “boldest intentions”, “sensation” and “imagination”, a “mental basis” underlying the Second Symphony. In order to make himself “understandable”, he uses the word in prominent places in the work. The vocabulary “experience” and “thought” also fit into this context. The idea reveals itself through the “redeeming word” and, last but not least, the “musical idea” becomes clearer for the listener through the word. In addition to verbal elements, there are of course also purely musical means that serve to develop the idea. With regard to the Fourth Symphony, Georg Göhler8 had to tolerate Mahler’s question as to whether he had “overlooked the thematic connections that are also extremely important for the idea of the work”.9 In the quotes above, Mahler uses not only the concept of the idea but also other terms that he apparently considered appropriate for the intentions that form the background of his symphonic work (“content”, “thought”, “mental basis”, “experience”). With these words, the composer ultimately describes the existence of a semantic content that can be found in the works. Consequently, Constantin Floros deals extensively with questions of semantics in his investigations into Mahler’s work: The semantics of Mahler’s music is the point at which research must begin today. There is no lack of formal-aesthetic studies and, to some extent, compositional-technical studies of his symphonies. But there is a lack of studies that relate structural aspects and semantic questions, which extend not only to the compositional technique but also to the style, the expression and the idiom, which heed every hermeneutic hint given by Mahler (even the slightest), who strive to decipher his symbolic language and at the same time seek to grasp what is new in his music.10

In addition, Richard Specht11 has handed down a statement by Mahler in which he explains the large part that the voice plays in his Eighth Symphony: But the form is also something completely new: Can you imagine a symphony that is sung from start to finish? So far I have only used the word and the human voice as an interpretative, abbreviating mood factor, in order to say something that would only have been very extensive to express purely symphonically, with the focus that only the word makes possible. But here the voice is also an instrument; the complete first movement is strictly in symphonic form and is sung in its entirety. It’s really strange that nobody has hit upon this idea so far – it’s Columbus’ egg, the symphony itself, in which the most beautiful instrument that exists is

7

Paul Bekker (1882–1937, German music critic) rightly refers to the union of emotional and rational levels that exists in Mahler’s symphonies: “He develops […] a symphonic type that unites the emotional and the intellectual element and allows both to fertilize and enhance each other” (Bekker 1918, p. 59). 8 Georg Göhler (1874–1954), German conductor and composer. 9 Letter to Göhler, New York, 8.2.1911 (Blaukopf 1996, p. 428). 10 Floros (1985), p. 13. 11 Richard Specht (1870–1932), Austrian musicologist.

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brought to its destination – and yet not only as sound, because the human voice is the carrier of the poetic thought.12

This complex of statements contains two important points: On the one hand, Mahler uses “the word and the human voice” in an interpretative and explanatory manner (“explaining”), since with their help, the idea in question is made clearer and comes into its own. The option mentioned by Mahler of also realizing his ideas “purely symphonically”, by which he clearly means a purely instrumental solution, seems remarkable. The sung word thus compresses (“shortens”) the symphonic events and the development of the idea. However, the question arises here as to whether this ‘economy function’ should actually have been the only one, especially since Mahler, as is well known, never shied away from external dimensions. He provides an answer in the subsequent explanation of his Eighth Symphony: he gives the voice a favorite role within the orchestral cast (“the most beautiful instrument”), through which a vocally dominated symphony becomes a “symphony in itself”. Mahler stated to Specht “that he was able to express his whole worldview perfectly in a symphonic way, even without the means of abbreviating and clarifying words”.13 The following statements of Specht show a clear relationship: I remember that he told me on a walk that he knew that he was capable of expressing his entire worldview, his philosophical view of life in music just as easily as any sensation, a natural process, a landscape. And he allowed the word to be valid only within the work, as an abbreviating and explaining means; in order to save an otherwise necessary extensive complex of tones by such abbreviation. But apart from his symphonies he rejected any commentary, any program; he wanted to speak to the feelings, not to the intellect, and he preferred to be misunderstood at first than to be understood in a purely rationalistic way or even in the sense of illustrative program music.14

In addition, Specht mentions Mahler’s relationship to the work of Fyodor M. Dostoyevsky and states that the works of both artists are related. He believes that internalizing the writer’s statements could contribute to a better understanding of at least Mahler’s first four symphonies: Because in the poet’s works lies everything that Mahler had to say in tones in his own way, beyond the limits where the word ends: the centralizing power, the ruling goodness, the stepping away from all ‘Lob des hohen Verstands’ [‘Praise of the high Mind’], the tremendous creative power that [...] has the highest gift of clairvoyant awareness of the world and yet still carries so much chaos within itself.15

Through these statements, Specht reveals himself to be a representative of the opinion that Mahler’s symphonies are shaped by a program of ideas (he expresses something “beyond the boundaries where the word ends, in tones”). Beyond these properties, the voice contributes to the symbiosis of word and sound by being “the carrier of the poetic thought”. Here again the question arises as to whether the “poetic 12

Specht in the Tagespost (No. 150), 14.6.1914, quoted from Floros 1992, p. 122. Specht (1922), p. 46. 14 Ibid., p. 172. 15 Ibid., p. 35 f. 13

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thought” mentioned should be viewed purely in the literary-poetic sense, because in Mahler’s art literary and musical poetry are closely related: “Only when I experience, I create tones—only when I create tones, I experience!”. If one understands the term “poetic thought” in the sense of the quote just mentioned above, a characteristic of Mahler’s word-tone relationship, the harmonious fusion of both elements, becomes clear. Furthermore, the concept of “thought” definitely shows a relationship to the stimulating idea, which in turn can be found in the connection between “creating tones” and “experience” stated by Mahler. In the following quote, Mahler clearly expresses the possibility of being able to better clarify his idea (the “content”) by bringing together word and sound, with the sound of the “human voice” and the special treatment of the word apparently playing a prominent role: Finally, when its [the work, S. H.] content rises to such a height and assumes such forms that the composer can no longer get by with the tones alone and struggles for that highest expression, which he can only achieve in the union with the human voice and articulated, poetic words, as it is the case in Beethoven’s Ninth and also in my C minor symphony.16

The following excerpt from the letter shows that the idea provided one, if not the creative impulse for Mahler. The statements written there arouse associations with the thoughts e. g. of Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel: I know to myself that as long as I can sum up my experience in word I certainly wouldn’t compose music about it. My need to express myself musically and symphonically only begins where the dark feelings prevail, at the gate that leads into the ‘other world’; the world where things no longer fall apart through time and space.17

The composer obviously places the origin of his idea outside of the world which is known to us and its immanent phenomena. Mahler’s specification of the effect of the idea on its artistic implementation requires special mention, as he expressly added “symphonic” to “musical”. Mahler’s higher regard for music than for words, also results from the type of “experiences” that he processed artistically: He transfers the supernatural “experience” into music, while he can still “summarize in words” the profane. In this sense, although limited to psychological processes, Vladimir Karbusicky also mentions: “Music seems […] to preserve the immediacy of mental events.”18 With regard to the interpretation of Mahler’s symphonies, Carl Dahlhaus points out the need to take due account of Schopenhauer’s music philosophy, which received greater attention particularly at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. According to Dahlhaus, “for the modern composer, it was not just ‘artist’s metaphysics’, with which a sober practice was ideologically linked, but rather an aesthetics realized musically and translated into sounding reality”.19 In this context, 16

Killian (1984), p. 171. Mahler’s letter to Richard Batka (1862–1922, Austrian musicologist), 26.3.1896 (Blaukopf 1996, p. 171). In Hegel’s Lectures on Aesthetics one can read: “It [music, S. H.] only begins to become the actual language of the infinite degrees of sensations where other languages are no longer sufficient and where their ability to express themselves has an end” (Moldenhauer and Michel 1970, p. 150). 18 Karbusicky (1986), p. 1. 19 Dahlhaus (1989), p. 307. 17

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Dahlhaus reflects on Mahler’s differentiation of the conceptual programs of his First and Second Symphonies into “external” and “internal” programs: “The external can serve both as a stimulus in the conception of a work and as a guide for its reception”.20 According to Schopenhauer’s remarks, the “external program serves as a sequence of images” or “guideline for the reception”, whereas the “internal program” represents a “pathway of perception”.21 Dahlhaus defines this “path of sensation”, referring to Mahler’s statement about the “dark sensations”, as one “that eludes empirical-psychological categories”.22 And according to some of Mahler’s remarks,23 Dahlhaus concludes that “the inner program [is] by no means to be sought in a biographical-documentary comprehensible content, but […] in a ‘path of sensation’ made up of feelings”.24 In summary, Dahlhaus’ concept of the “idea artwork” can be understood as a musically founded work25 that has a program in the background, which, however, in Schopenhauer’s sense, takes a back seat to the actual message of the music. Dahlhaus’ remarks also show a certain connection to Mahler’s ideas about the relationship between musical and explanatory-programmatic statement: in December 1901 Mahler gave his sister Justine a so-called “program” intended for the performance of the Second Symphony on the 20th of the month: I put together a few hints [...]. Of course, it is calculated only for a naive and not too profound person. Give it to Alma, if you like, so that she can at least get a little impression of the outer skeleton.26

It makes one think about why Mahler’s really touching explanations, according to his statement, intended to be only “a few hints”, also “for a naive person who doesn’t go too deep”, “external skeleton”. It is in this sense that Mahler’s rejection of connecting music with external programs can be interpreted: Away with the programs that create misconceptions. Let the audience have their own thoughts about the work, don’t force them to read while it’s being played, don’t teach them prejudice! When a composer has forced the feelings that flowed through him on the listener himself, then his goal has been achieved. The tonal language then came close to the words, but revealed infinitely more than these are able to express.27 20

Ibid. Ibid. 22 Ibid. 23 Mahler wrote to Max Marschalk (1863–1940, German music critic and composer), 26.3.1896: “It is therefore good if, for the first time, when my style still seemed strange, the listener receives a few guides […] on the journey—or let’s say: one star map to capture the night sky with its luminous worlds.—But such a presentation cannot offer more” (Blaukopf 1996, p. 172). 24 Quoted from: Dahlhaus (1989), p. 308. In his letter to Arthur Seidl (1863–1928, German musician and writer), 17.2.1897, Mahler quotes a remark by the addressee regarding the contrast between his program of ideas and the ‘direct’ program of some works by Richard Strauss: “that my ‘music finally contains the program as the last clarification, while in Strauss’ works the program is given’” (Blaukopf 1996, p. 222). 25 See Dahlhaus (1989), p. 304. 26 La Grange (1997), p. 86. 27 In: Schiedermair (1900), p. 13 f., quoted from: Floros (1987), p. 21. 21

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Accordingly, music has much finer and more differentiated possibilities for expression than the pure word, which again shows a relationship to the corresponding statements by Schopenhauer as well as to Mahler’s personally established hierarchy of the arts. He explained his preferences towards Natalie Bauer-Lechner in the following words: It’s nonsense [...] and drivel to keep talking about the sister arts. They are not equal to each other, are infinitely different in rank! By far the first is music, the art of the inner sense; poetry comes after it, then nothing follows for a long time; now painting and sculpture, which have their object in the external world. And last but not least comes the architecture, which has to do with dimensions and proportions. But the great, the real work of art consists in the union of the arts. It is the merit of Richard Wagner to have expressed and implemented this.28

One comes to the conclusion that Mahler categorizes the arts according to the degree of materialization. The sequence to be emphasized is: 1. music and 2. poetry. Accordingly, the composer also ascribes a comparatively high rank to poetry. When interpreting these statements by Mahler, it may also be necessary to take into account the point in time at which he made them (summer 1893). It was only through his acquaintance with the secessionist and later stage designer for the Vienna Court Opera, Alfred Roller, that Mahler began to focus more on the visual arts. The epochmaking productions that emerged from the collaboration between the two artists showed that Mahler was not averse to them. Mahler’s statements above make the program of ideas—and thus a semantic content—appear as the foundation of his symphonies. His claim to want to implement them artistically formed a special creative impulse. Word and sound are the means for the artistic implementation of the idea. In the symphony itself it lives as a semantic content.29 However, he conceded interpretation problems of his listeners, which prompted him to provide verbal explanations and titles. The importance of the sung word in shaping the idea should not be underestimated, since, according to Mahler, it lends a higher degree of clarity to the exclusively instrumental musical expression. In addition, the word compresses the symphonic process, which above all relieves the listener’s capacity for understanding. From this, in turn, an indication of Mahler’s sense of mission could shine through. He definitely wanted to move his fellow human beings and later generations with his intentions, whereby he apparently attached the greatest importance to the sung word, since the human voice can have a direct effect on the listener and speak to him in the truest sense of the word. Another testimony to Mahler’s artistic and holistic ambitions is his own poetic activity, which gives some of his works a special character. In this context, Max Steinitzer30 reports: 28

Killian (1984), p. 34. In a letter to Max Kalbeck dated 20.11.1900 (?), Mahler mentions: “But no music is worth anything if you first have to tell the listener what is experienced in it […]. You just have to bring ears and a heart and – last but not least – willingly devote yourself to the rhapsodic. A remnant of mystery always remains – even for the creator!” (Blaukopf 1996, p. 277). 30 Max Steinitzer (1864–1936), lecturer in singing at the University of Freiburg, pianist and conductor, biographer of Richard Strauss. 29

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Of all the people I met, Mahler actually had the greatest ability to express himself orally. For the finest shades in human and artistic relationships as well as in the spiritual and emotional life of the individual [...] he had a clear and fluent language […].31

The linguistic talent described by Steinitzer is indirectly confirmed by Richard Specht, who states that the young Mahler “for a long time […] thought of becoming a poet”.32 To Bauer-Lechner, the composer describes how certain texts really animated him to interpret them: It’s something different with songs, but only because you can express a lot more with the music than the words say directly, or you become your own poet again. Think of ‘Das irdische Leben’ and the ‘Fischpredigt’ or ‘Das himmlische Leben’! The text is actually just a hint of the deeper content that is to be extracted, the treasure that is to be picked up.33

Many of Mahler’s statements make clear that he is convinced that the individual art forms can only develop their true quality when they work together. This unification into an overarching expressiveness presupposes exceeding its limits. Goethe already felt the inadequacy of the arts when they appear individually. This is particularly evident in Faust, where all kinds of passages [...] call for music to complement and express it. On the other hand, Beethoven, starting from the music, ends up with the tones in his Ninth, like Goethe with the words; then he takes the gigantic step of introducing language – and with what an effect! One feels how the word supports the tones when one can return from the music to the text without words. It is as if Antaeus touches mother earth again; the solid ground under his feet, gigantic powers develop with which he conquers the heaviest opponent (the artist’s material) under his hands.34 Mahler’s detailed preoccupation with the text was the prerequisite for its subtle musical implementation and the intensification of the word’s meaning.

3 Summary In summary, it can be said that Mahler had carefully reflected on the use of musical as well as verbal expression in his creative work. An overarching thought seems to be the “insufficiency of the arts in their isolation” postulated by him (possibly in reference to Wagner), which evidently caused Mahler to cross the boundaries between music and poetry. Some of his statements make clear that for the most part he was probably less concerned with the superficial content of the words. Rather, he felt attracted by their semantic content and sought to clarify and convey this through the means of the music. At this point, the circle to the previous considerations can be closed again. Mahler’s wish to unite both art forms, and in particular his striving to emphasize the—superficially—hidden meaning of the words, in turn serves to develop the idea on which a work is based. 31

Steinitzer (1910), p. 14. Specht (1905), p. 17, quoted from: Blaukopf and Blaukopf (1994), p. 30. 33 Killian (1984), p. 27. 34 Ibid., p. 34. 32

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References Bekker, P.: Die Sinfonie von Beethoven bis Mahler. Schuster und Loeffler, Berlin (1918) Blaukopf, H., Blaukopf, K. (eds.): Gustav Mahler. Leben und Werk in Zeugnissen der Zeit. Hatje Cantz Verlag, Stuttgart (1994) Blaukopf, H. (ed.): Gustav Mahler. Briefe. Paul Zsolnay, Wien, 2rd revised edition (1996) Dahlhaus, C.: “Programm-Musik und Ideenkunstwerk”. In: idem. (ed.): Neues Handbuch der Musikwissenschaft vol. 6. Die Musik des 19. Jahrhunderts. Laaber-Verlag, Laaber 2nd edition, pp. 302–310 (1989) Floros, C.: Gustav Mahler III. Die Symphonien. Breitkopf & Härtel, Wiesbaden (1985) Floros, C.: Gustav Mahler I. Die geistige Welt Gustav Mahlers in systematischer Darstellung. Breitkopf & Härtel, Wiesbaden, 2nd edition (1987) Floros, C.: Die “Symphonie der Tausend” als Botschaft an die Menschheit. In: Nikkels, E., Becqué, R. (eds.): A ‘Mass’ for the Masses. Proceedings of the Mahler VIII Symposium Amsterdam 1988 (Mahler Studies vol. 2). Nijgh & van Ditmar, Rijswijk, pp. 121–130 (1992) Karbusicky, V.: Grundriß der musikalischen Semantik. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt (1986) Killian, H. (ed.): Gustav Mahler. Erinnerungen von Natalie Bauer-Lechner. K. D. Wagner, Hamburg, revised and extended edition (1984) La Grange, H.-L. de Weiss, G. (eds.): Ein Glück ohne Ruh’. Die Briefe Gustav Mahlers an Alma. Wilhelm Goldmann Verlag, Berlin (1997) Moldenhauer, E., Michel, K.M. (eds.): Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Ästhetik III (Werke in 20 Bänden, vol. 15). Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt/Main (1970) Schiedermair, L.: Gustav Mahler. Eine biographisch-kritische Würdigung. Hermann Seemann Nachfolger, Leipzig n.d. (1900) Specht, R.: Gustav Mahler (Landsberg, Hans [ed.]: Moderne Essays, vol. 52). Gose & Tetzlaff, Berlin (1905) Specht, R.: Gustav Mahler. Schuster und Loeffler, Berlin, 13th–16th edition (1922) Steinitzer, M.: Mahler in Leipzig. In: Stefan, P. (ed.) Gustav Mahler – Ein Bild seiner Persönlichkeit in Widmungen, Piper, München, pp. 10–15. (1910)

Silja Haller * 1973 in Berlin. She studied music and biology for teaching at high schools at the University of Potsdam. In addition, she completed the Magister Artium in musicology, Jewish studies and philosophy (Humboldt University Berlin, University of Potsdam). In 2005 she did her doctorate on the subject of word-tone design in Gustav Mahler’s symphonies. Since 2006 she has been working on the edition project Briefwechsel der Wiener Schule at Staatliches Institut für Musikforschung PK Berlin (2007–2009 as institute assistant), later also as a freelance science lecturer, e.g. for Potsdam University Press; lectureship in musicology at the Universität der Künste Berlin 2010. Since 2014 she has been working as a music and biology teacher at schools in Potsdam and Berlin.

Normative, Descriptive, Suggestive—The Word in Scriabin’s Instrumental Music Sigfried Schibli

1 Introduction Even though Scriabin is known in musical history primarily as a “piano composer,” his literary production should not be underestimated. Sometimes he hesitated whether to publish these texts, whether to regard them as integral parts of the work or as testimonies to a private inspiration that loses significance once a composition is fully conceived and notated.

2 Opera and Non-opera The genres that characterize the combination of words and music are the song and the opera or oratorio. Scriabin was occupied with opera almost all his life. In his youth he wrote a five-act opera with the title Liza; 15 musical numbers of this opera are preserved in the piano score, but no text words.1 For his childhood friend Natalia Sekerina, the twelve-year-old Scriabin wrote a Romance in F sharp major on his own text, which was printed posthumously in Paris in 1927. Several vocal compositions by the young Scriabin remained fragments. A duet in D minor from 1887 was completed, and a work on the border between vocal and instrumental music is the Chanson d’une vieille fille for violin, which the thirteen-year-old probably wrote for Olga Monighetti. Scriabin’s opera Kejstut i Biruta of 1891 remained fragmentary. A second, more elaborate opera project also remained unfinished. But it had a formative effect on

1

Skrjabin (2002, p. 4).

S. Schibli (B) Basel, Switzerland e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 H.-W. Heister et al. (eds.), Word Art + Gesture Art = Tone Art, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20109-7_10

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Scriabin’s further work. In 1903 Scriabin wrote the libretto for an opera with a philosophical theme; the libretto has been published in parts in Faubion Bowers’ monography.2 The plot—if this term is appropriate in view of the philosophically contemplative character—revolves around a “philosopher-musician-poet” in the succession of Nietzsche’s “Übermensch” and a female figure called “Tsaritsa” who resembles a princess and on whom the erotic desire of the masses is ignited. At the end there is a kind of sublimated love-death of the protagonists.

3 Program Notes It is true that the majority of Scriabin’s œuvre consists of piano works, to which it is difficult to assign a plot or a text. However, Scriabin also wrote several symphonic works, three of which are designated as symphonies and two as poèmes, which are also clearly symphonic in character: the Poème de l’Extase and the Poème du feu with the main title Prométhée. Two of these works call for a choir in addition to the orchestra. In the 1st Symphony in E major, the 6th and last movement is a pathetic choral hymn to art, whose affirmative, solemn tone was already criticized by the composer’s contemporaries. Thus, Scriabin’s publisher Mitrofan Belyayev accused the composer with bitter irony of imitating Beethoven’s 9th Symphony in it, and when a planned performance under Arthur Nikisch in Berlin did not materialize because of the high expense, Belyayev wrote to the composer mockingly: “There you have it vividly, what merit composing Ninth Symphonies has.”3 The middle symphonies, Nos. 2, 3 and 4, are purely instrumental, with the 4th symphony, Le Poème de l’Extase, being seconded by a verbal poem. The Prometheus tone poem is also not a purely instrumental work. It requires not only a color piano, but in the final section a chorus singing vocalises (or the lute “Oeahoo”). It is a work on the border between the vocal and the instrumental; one can assign a secret meaning to the vocals, but they do not form a text in the traditional sense, at best “the begun search for the word,” as Igor Belsa wrote. Marina Lobanova has deciphered the at first purely onomatopoeic sound sequence “Eaohoaoho” with Helena Blavatsky as an “ancient luciferic symbol” with the meaning “father-mother-unity”.4 While the 2nd Symphony in C minor op. 29 gets by without a program, Scriabin transcends the boundaries of absolute music in his 3rd Symphony in C minor/C major op. 43 and opens himself up to the word even as a symphonist. Le Divin Poème is the subtitle of the symphony, and the individual movements bear speaking designations. The first main movement, for example, is entitled Luttes (Struggles) after the slow introduction, which is called “Divin, grandiose”, and bears the more detailed designation “Mystérieux, tragique”; the slow movement (“Sublime”) is entitled Voluptés; the final movement is a Jeu Divin and bears the more detailed designation “Avec 2

Bowers (1969, vol. 1, pp. 309–315). Skrjabin (1988, p. 172). 4 Lobanova (2004, p. 292 ff.). 3

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une joie éclatante”. The musical text is peppered with verbal cues. Their function is twofold: on the one hand they serve as playing instructions and on the other hand they tend to verbalize the content of the music. Often they are a combination of both functions. While the indication “avec lassitude et langueur” is directly addressed to the performers in the orchestra, the indications “tragique” and “légendaire”—both in the movement Luttes of the 3rd Symphony—seem to be rather indications of the mood content of the music. After a performance of this work in Paris under the conductor Arthur Nikisch, Scriabin wrote to his patroness Margarita Morozova in May 1905: “Without a doubt, this concerto will play a significant role in the dissemination of my music and my philosophical ideas”.5 Scriabin always thought both together, his music and his philosophy. The “content” of his music resulted from the synthesis of word and sound. The numerous verbal references in the musical text can be condensed into a coherent narrative, consisting of situations of strong emotional content. One must be aware that the words of the text given by the composer in the musical text do not “translate” the music, but only form an analogy to it. Although in a letter of March 1906 to the conductor Felix Blumenfeld Scriabin spoke of an “explanatory text” for this work (“You surely know that the symphony has a philosophical program”), he refrained from publishing a programmatic text.6 The slow introduction to the symphony begins with a “Divin, grandiose” designated two-part fanfare by the winds in fortissimo. One can see in this the “motto” or leading theme of the work, pointing to a musical subject full of power and superiority. But the “hero” must first endure difficult struggles before he can triumph at the end as a “god-man.” The first main movement in C minor, entitled Luttes, is described by the composer with the words “Mystérieux, tragique.” Triumphal moments of expression alternate with those of deep despair. A delicate melody of the solo violin, which can be identified as a “love theme” on the background of nineteenth century symphonic music, is brutally interrupted by the leading theme, but returns as the main theme of the second movement, Voluptés. Here the latent eroticism intensifies into sensual love: “Sensuel, passionné, caressant” the composer notes in the score. “Avec une joie éclatante” begins the last movement, entitled Jeu Divin. Man has become God, true to the composer’s subtitle of the symphony, Le Divin Poème, and entirely in the spirit of Scriabin’s philosophy. “I am, and nothing is but me” and “I am a god,” he noted in his 1904/1905 notebook.7

4 A Parallel Work Scriabin drew an important consequence from his experience with the word-sound relationship in his 4th Symphony, which he programmatically called Le Poème de 5

Skrjabin (1988, p. 233). Skrjabin (1988, p. 255). 7 Skrjabin (1924, pp. 35 and 37). 6

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l’Extase and on which he had been working since 1904; the composition was sent to the Belaieff publishing house in Leipzig in December 1907 and premiered as op. 54 in New York in 1908. The composer laid it out as a “double work” of verbal poem and musical score. Scriabin, who was then living in French-speaking Switzerland and for a time in Paris, understood the poetic text Le Poème de l’Extase as an autonomous work, not just as a program text for the symphony. At the end of 1904, he spoke proudly of the “wonderful beauty” of this “monologue,” thus not wanting to regard the poem merely as a program (letter to Tatjana de Schloezer).8 Only in correspondence with the publisher Jürgenson did he speak of a “great poem for orchestra about a philosophical program”.9 In the year this letter was written (1906), Scriabin had the text self-published in Russian in an edition of 500 copies by a Geneva printing house. In letters from his adopted home in Vésenaz on Lake Geneva to his Russian homeland, he occasionally spoke of “my teaching” as if it were not a poetic but a philosophical-ideological work. At first he thought of printing the text in the score; but he refrained from doing so and expressly wished the conductors to “refer at first to the pure music.” At best, he considered selling the brochure with the poem at the entrance to the concert halls, but this did not come to pass.10 While the connection between word and sound in the 3rd Symphony was still purely atmospheric, in his 4th Symphony, the Poème de l’Extase, it was to be closer and more explicit. The poem was originally called Poème Orgiaque and borrowed in part from the composer’s abandoned opera attempt of 1903 (see above). The new text, however, was given the definitive title Le Poème de l’Extase by its creator— perhaps to remove any suspicion of obscenity. The parallels between this poem and the aforementioned 1903 opera project are obvious. Both texts center on a hero who is at once poet, musician, and philosopher, human leader and superman. And in both, eroticism plays the central role of a “passage stage” from the human to the divine. The concept of ecstasy, in which sexuality and spirituality coincide, also means the death of love, the final harmony of man and God, the goal of life par excellence. In the same notebook of 1905/1906 in which Scriabin sketched the poem Poème Orgiaque—the archetype of the Poème de l’Extase—he noted sentences that sum up his philosophical conviction. These notes were translated into German by Oskar von Riesemann in 1924 and published under the title Promethean Phantasies. Among other things, it states: “The world is the activity of my consciousness”. “To know is to create”, it says in another place, a little later “The history of the universe is the evolution of God, the striving for ecstasy”. Ecstasy, however, was for the philosophizing Scriabin far more than just the sexual act: “The whole history of mankind [is] an increase and in its last moment - an ecstasy.”11 The Poème Orgiaque itself did not get beyond a sketchy, fragmentary description of its contents, whereas the Poème de l’Extase is fully executed. The structure of the 8

Skrjabin (1988, p. 210 ff.). Skrjabin (1988, p. 250). 10 Schibli (1983a, p. 292). 11 Skrjabin (1924, p. 90 ff.). 9

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poem is disputed in Scriabin literature: While von Gleich speaks of a division into two parts (lines 1–224 and 225–369), other analysts such as Ulrich Tadday assume a division into four parts. He sees the same division in the music. Unlike von Gleich, who analyzes the tone poem as a five-part sonata main movement with exposition, development 1, recapitulation, development 2, and coda, Tadday sees the score as a kind of compressed four-movement symphony. Its parts could be paraphrased as longing and feeling of godlikeness-love and despair-fight and liberation-free play and realization of unity.12 The disagreement among the analysts is a consequence of the fact that Scriabin did not work according to a given formal scheme, but rather proceeded processually and associatively. The 369-line poem Le Poème de l’Extase describes the process from longing and dependence to fulfillment in freedom. Although the poem was written at the same time as the music, it was completed before the score. This parallelism tempts one to equate poetic and musical content, which cannot shake off a certain arbitrariness. The thirst for life, of which the first lines of the poem speak, is mirrored in the “theme of longing” of the flutes at the beginning of the orchestral work. And the work’s defining trumpet theme (from m. 103), which the composer called the “theme of selfassertion” and added the note “avec une noble et douce majesté” in the musical text, is an equivalent to certain passages in the poem, such as “Und kaum ist errungen, der Sieg seines Selbst…”. Scriabin’s confidant Leonid Sabaneyev quotes the composer thus: “This is the self-assertion theme from the ‘Poème de l’Extase’: it is at the same time the theme of flight, as you know… Here everything is based on this principle: it is as if the theme is constantly climbing higher. In this is reflected the idea of ecstasy, the striving higher and higher…”.13 It is interesting here that Scriabin generally chooses Italian tempo and character designations in this work (lento, dolce, molto languido, etc.), but switches to French for the “theme of self-assertion”: “avec une noble et douce majesté” (m. 103 ff.), “avec une noble et joyeuse émotion” (m. 261 ff.). Other central themes also bear French designations: “avec une ivresse toujours croissante” (m. 160 ff.), “charmé” (m. 477 ff.), “avec une volupté de plus en plus extatique” (m. 507 ff.). The formal scheme of the sonata movement is overlaid by a form of intensification analogous to the poem; the classical recapitulation has become the second turn of a spiral form on a higher level. The composition “exhibits a purposeful form of intensification directed towards an end point and building up over four stages”; poetry and music are “two sides of one coin, one aesthetic idea”.14 Thus, the music is not a linear “setting” of the text words. If one wanted to speak of program music, then at best of music to an inner program. The music expresses, in the sense of an analogy beyond the genre boundaries, the moods and emotions that are also addressed in the poem Le Poème de l’Extase. To speak of a dependence of one medium on the other would be misleading. Both media are related to a third that connects them, to the—to speak with Arnold Schoenberg—“thought”. 12

Von Gleich (1963, p. 100 ff.), Tadday (2009, p. 239 ff.). Sabanejew (2005, p. 284), Bowers (1969, Vol. 2, p. 135 f.). 14 Schibli (1983b, p. 29), Tadday (2009, p. 141). 13

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How important the world of ideas of the Poème de l’Extase was for Scriabin can also be seen in his 5th Sonata for Piano. It was written in 1907, at the time when the composer was working intensively on his 4th symphony (Le Poème de l’Extase). Scriabin prefaced the piano sonata’s score with four lines from the poem (in English translation): “I call you to life, oh mysterious forces! / Drowned in the obscure dephts / Of the creative spirit, timid / Shadows of life, to you I bring audacity.” The proximity to the orchestral work Le Poème de l’Extase results not only from Scriabin’s specific harmony with its chords of fourths and from the musical characters, which range from lyrical intimacy to brutal percussiveness. The progression of the music itself is one of “per aspera ad astra,” from noisy rummaging in the low piano register to the brightest, highest notes. “Estatico” the composer writes in the final section of the work. Otherwise, he is sparing here with unconventional instructions to his performers: “Con una ebbrezza fantastica” it says once (with fantastic drunkenness), “vertiginoso con furia” (giddy with fury) another time. Scriabin’s experience with “double works” such as the Poème de l’Extase was ambivalent. This is already evident in his vacillation between publishing the poem and keeping it secret. Unlike Franz Liszt, with his tone poems in a certain sense a spiritual forerunner of Scriabin, the latter ultimately decided against publishing programmatic texts. His next orchestral work, the tone poem Prométhée, did without a motto and also without a programmatic introduction; Scriabin merely approved an introduction to the work written by the English theosophist Rosa Newmarch in view of the first performance in London in 1913. In the musical text itself, the already familiar characterizing designations are found in the border area between the normative and the descriptive, between directives for interpretation and verbalizations of the music.

5 Orchestra and Piano Strictly speaking, neither Prométhée nor the unfinished Mysterium or the likewise unfinished preliminary stage to it, L’acte préalable, are purely instrumental works. Prométhée requires, in addition to the solo piano and large orchestra, a color piano as well as, in the final section, a four-part choir singing the lute “Oeahoo”; L’acte préalable has not progressed beyond sketches, which basically do not permit any statements about the word-sound relationship. Therefore, they cannot be further discussed in the context of this review. But what about the piano works of Alexander Scriabin? Probably no leading composer of the 19th and early twentieth century has put so much emphasis on piano music as Scriabin; only Frédéric Chopin is comparable to him in this respect. But the word is also present in many of his piano works. First of all, through the titles. Established designations such as “Prélude,” “Etude,” “Valse,” “Mazurka,” “Sonata,” etc. are increasingly supplemented or supplanted by poetic titles of some inventiveness. For the 4th Sonata op. 30, Scriabin wrote a poem in French, which probably for the first time expresses with full clarity the mental sequence of longing, fulfillment and

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weariness, as well as the motif of flight. Musically, it is remarkable what a prominent role the “Tristan chord” takes here. In contrast to the Poème de l’Extase written a few years later, Scriabin did not make a point of publishing the poem. The young Scriabin chose traditional performance designations in Italian such as “Allegro”, “Andante”, and occasionally character designations such as “Drammatico” (3rd Sonata). The traditional Italian designations such as “Vivace” or “Andante” are, however, as the well-known “Allegro” (joyful) shows, often not pure tempo designations, but also designate the character of a musical work. Already in the main work of the young Scriabin, the 24 Préludes op. 11, partly written on a trip to Europe in 1895/96, we find indications such as “Misterioso” (No. 16 in B-flat minor) or “Affettuoso” and “Appassionato” (No. 19 in E-flat major and No. 20 in C minor), which are less tempo designations than paraphrases of character. From his Opus 32 on, Scriabin often preferred creative indications such as “Allegro, con eleganza, con fiducia” (Op. 32 No. 2). Even in the consistently Italianate 4th Sonata, Op. 30, such designations as “con voglia,” “Prestissimo volando,” and “focosamente, giubiloso” stand out. Still in the 5th Sonata op. 53 there are exclusively Italian designations in the musical text. But with the 6th Sonata of 1911/1912 Scriabin switched from Italian to French. Even in his shorter pieces, independent of the sonata form, from 1907 on he frequently chose French titles such as Ironies, Nuances, Quasi Valse, Caresse dansée, Poème ailé, Danse languide, Guirlandes, Vers la flamme, which became trademarks of Scriabin’s work. French was familiar to him since he had spent several months in Paris in 1896. It increasingly became his main artistic language; thus Scriabin composed not only the Poème de l’Extase but also a program for the 4th Sonata in French.

6 Italian and French Language Apparently, the choice of a particular language was not categorical for Scriabin, but rather situational. Sometimes he combined both languages; for example, Prométhée, op. 60, begins with a standing “Prometheus chord” that is “Lento. Brumeux”; from this emerges a horns motif that is “con sord. calme, recueuilli” to be played. Technical instructions tend to be in Italian, character designations in French. Until his last completed opus, the 5 Préludes op. 74, he stuck to French character designations: “Douloureux déchirant,” “Très lent, contemplatif,” “Lent, vague, indécis,” “Fier, belliqueux,” while tempo designations generally remained Italian. For example, the third of the five op. 74 pieces is marked “Allegro drammatico.” The 4th and 5th sonatas are still marked with Italian terms, while from the 6th sonata on, French dominates, often alternating with Italian. Scriabin had no problem alternating between Italian and French indications in the same work. In the 9th Sonata op. 68, too, he chose Italian terms for the tempo (“Moderato quasi andante”), but French ones for the character designations (“légendaire,” “mystérieuseument murmuré”). He proceeded analogously in the 10th Sonata op. 70.

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Numerically, French indications predominate, and the older Scriabin became, the stronger their dominance became. This could be connected—so the assumption of Richard E. Overill—with the fact that he lived since 1904 repeatedly in the Frenchspeaking Switzerland, in Paris and in Brussels.15 Moreover, his second wife Tatjana de Schloezer, with whom he had moved to Switzerland, was of Belgian origin and French mother tongue. She had at times intended to translate the poetic Poème de l’Extase into French; however, Scriabin advised her against it. The task of a prose translation was done in her place by Joseph Belleau.16 His preoccupation with the theosophy of the Russian-German occultist Helena Blavatsky, whose books Scriabin studied in French translations, undoubtedly played a role. In Paris in 1905 he became acquainted with the French translation of Blavatsky’s book The Key to Theosophy (La Clef de la Théosophie of 1869) and wrote to Tatjana de Schloezer: “You will be amazed to what degree it is close to me”. The occupation with this main work of theosophy obviously shaped not only his thinking, but also his use of language. A three-volume French translation of Blavatsky’s Secret Doctrine (La doctrine secrète, 1888) is said to have always been on Scriabin’s work table, according to Leonid Sabanejev.17 Even after Scriabin finally returned to Moscow in 1910, he did not renounce French titles. French was thus far more than just a sign of outward conformity. Above all, the word “languide” or “languido” (languishing) became a cipher for an expressive quality favored by Scriabin; it still links such disparate works as the Poème de l’Extase with the simultaneously composed Danse languide from op. 51 and the Poème languide op. 52 no. 3. The Poème-Nocturne op. 61, a 172-measure composition in sonata form, is also marked “avec langueur” and “comme en un rêve” in the secondary theme. Further ciphers of Scriabin’s musical thought are the numerous “flying” motives, which are closely related to the world of ecstasy. Already in the third line of the poem Le Poème de l’Extase there is talk of the “bold flight” of the spirit, and the ascending theme in the musical work of the same title (m. 39 ff.), described by the composer as “flight of enthusiasm”, is marked “Allegro volando”. Later, the indication “Allegro molto. Leggierissimo” is supplemented by “Volando” (m. 531 ff.). A similar thematic formation already underlies the second movement of the 2nd symphony, without the composer referring in words to its soaring character. According to Leonid Sabanejev, however, Scriabin once explicitly referred to this theme as the “Aufflugthema.” Explicitly related to the word field around “flying” is the Poème ailé (Winged Poem) op. 51 No. 3 in B major. It consists essentially of a succession of short starts in thirty-second notes, like the wing movements of an insect or a bird, each rising to a higher note.18 The indication “ailé” is also found several times in the 6th Sonata op. 62 as well as in the final section of the 10th Sonata (m. 306: “frémissant, ailé”). Here again, 15

Overill. Skrjabin (1988, p. 274). 17 Sabanejew (2005, p. 266). 18 Schibli (1983c, p. 69 ff., here p. 74). 16

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Fig. 1 A. Scrjabin, piano sonata No. 6 op. 62, m. 10–1620

rapid, fluttering upward gestures imitate the movements of a bird or insect—Scriabin occasionally spoke of his “insect sonata”. He made a point, however, of saying that this designation was not meant to be figurative or illustrative. In his symbolist world view, animals did not have meaning as such, but as “reflections of our psyche. Their outer form corresponds to our movements of mind.”19 Some designations in Scriabin’s musical texts refer to similarities with instruments such as “quasi Trombe” (like trumpets) in the 5th Sonata. While this playing instruction is conventional within musical terminology, other verbal insertions in the musical text refer to Scriabin’s distinctive, specifically mystical-symbolistic world. In addition to the term “mystérieux” or “mystique,” which can be read more frequently in his work, the indication “Appel mystérieux” (mysterious call) is striking, appearing in at least eight places in the 6th Sonata for Piano. First in the first measure as an iambic (short-long) repetition of the low octave on D in the second quarter of the three-fourth measure. Here, however, the closer definition as “appel mystérieux” is still missing, which is explicitly added from measure 137 on. The appeal is first heard as an octave call on D, then as a single note (G flat), then again as a two-note signal (G), and in heightened urgency as a two-note signal that is repeated (G flat). This signal (m. 187 ff.) triggers an “unfolding of mysterious forces” (“épanouissement de forces mystérieuses”) that culminates in the section “più vivo - avec une joie exaltée.” The recapitulation then sets in. The appeal to the “mysterious forces” is followed, as in the Poème de l’Extase and the 5th Sonata, by the ascent to the “heights of negation” (Fig. 1). The single-movement 6th Sonata is particularly rich in characteristic designations such as “mystérieux,” “souffle mystérieux,” “ailé.” In the first 38 measures there are no less than eight different indications in French, in addition to the Italian dynamic indications.21 A second theme in the exposition is linked by the composer with the indication (m.39 ff.): “le rêve prend forme (clarté, douceur, pureté)”. Later, the composer notes to the ascending secondary theme: “tout devient charme et douceur” 19

Sabanejew (2005, p. 300 f.). https://imslp.org/wiki/Piano_Sonata_No.6%2C_Op.62_(Scriabin%2C_Aleksandr). Accessed 7 March 2022. 21 Facsimile at http://juilliardmanuscriptcollection.org/composers/scriabin-aleksandr. Accessed 7 March 2022. 20

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Fig. 2 A. Scrjabin, piano sonata No. 6 op. 62, m. 134–13722

(m. 244 ff.). The final section of the sonata reads: “L’épouvante surgit, elle se mêle à la danse délirante” (Horror rises, it mixes with the frenzied dance). Such remarks in the musical text go far beyond directives for interpretation and approach programmatic statements of content, suggesting a plot without words (Fig. 2). Scriabin’s very next piano sonata, No. 7 op. 64 of 1911/1912, incorporates a signal-like or even appeal-like motif into the substance of the main theme. In the first measure, a rising, rhythmically sharply accentuated signal (A-D flat, A-E flat) emerges from a complex sound above the root C—with the notes C-F sharp-B flatE-A-D flat it corresponds to the “Prometheus chord” with a deeply altered ninth— which, with its signal-like character, imprints the work with urgency from the beginning. Even if the composer does not give it a verbal characterization, one would like to understand this motif as a “mystical call” or appeal in analogy to the 6th Sonata. “Souffle mystérieux” and “appel mystérieux”, but also “mystérieusement murmuré” (9th Sonata op. 68), are remarkable in that they do not refer to a haptic or emotional quality (like “doux” or “caresse”), but to acoustic phenomena that one associates with the linguistic expression for a certain pragmatic gesture. An appell is a call with a heightened urgency (it is not by chance that appells recall the military sphere), while “soufflé” denotes an audible movement of breath, and “murmuré” means an indistinct murmur. The fact that Scriabin often specifies his music with linguistic qualities is another indication of his tendency to dissolve the boundaries between the different “media” and to unite the arts into that unity which he assumed had originally existed, according to the motto of Scriabin’s friend Sabaneyev in the anthology The Blue Rider of 1912: “The time has come for the reunification of all these scattered arts. This idea, already vaguely formulated by Wagner, is today much more clearly conceived by Scriabin.”23

Such ciphers, moreover, reveal Scriabin’s will to use his music to convey content beyond “tonally moving form” (Eduard Hanslick), to embody human emotions in general, and to articulate them in verbal language. Scriabin’s confidant Leonid Sabaneyev quotes a characteristic saying of the composer: his worst foreboding was to remain “nothing but a composer of sonatas and symphonies”.24 And undoubtedly Scriabin’s penchant for titles with fire associations or for metaphors of destruction (Flammes sombres, op. 73/2, Vers la flamme, op. 72, Douloureux déchirant op. 74/1, Fier, belliqueux op. 74/5) in connection with his theosophically influenced ideas of a “world fire” as a turning point of mankind to a higher level of being.

22

https://imslp.org/wiki/Piano_Sonata_No.6%2C_Op.62_(Scriabin%2C_Aleksandr). Accessed 7 March 2022. 23 Kandinsky and Marc (1912, p. 57). 24 Sabaneyev (1931, p. 790).

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7 Conclusion This inevitably raises the question of the redundancy of such titles. Would a pianist interpret a piece like Désir op. 57/1 or Caresse dansée op. 57/2 differently, would it have a different meaning, so to speak, if instead of this title there were a traditional playing instruction or a metronome indication? Probably not. Here the problem already raised in Scriabin’s Symphonies is repeated: Is a designation such as “romantique, légendaire” substantive or merely accidental to the music? Does its presence change anything in the tonal realization? Is it more than just an “inner program”, a private matter of the composer, so to speak? Scriabin could not know how later generations would interpret his music. But he certainly suspected that interpreters of his music would need more precise assistance than the usual Italian performance instructions. Of course, he could not have known the 1968 recording of Glenn Gould’s 3rd Sonata in F-sharp minor—a work that is considered the “high point of this composer’s early phase” and whose musical text has only very rudimentary verbal annotations. One can only speculate whether Scriabin would not have added some poeticizing indications to the musical text if he had known the outrageously note-faithful but also frighteningly stiff and moodless interpretation of the brilliant Canadian pianist.

References Bowers, F.: Scriabin. A Biography of the Russian Composer, 2 vols., Kodansha, Tokio/Palo Alto (1969) Gleich, Cl.-Chr. Von: Die sinfonischen Werke von Alexander Skrjabin. Creyghton, Bilthoven (1963) Kandinsky, W., Marc, F. (eds.): Der blaue Reiter. München (1912) Lobanova, M.: Mystiker, Magier, Theosoph, Theurg: Alexander Skrjabin und seine Zeit. Von Bockel, Hamburg (2004) Overill, R. E.: Alexander Scriabin’s use of French directions to the Pianist. http://www.scriabinassociation.com/articles/alexander-scriabins-use-of-french-directions-to-the-pianist/. Accessed 7 Mar 2022 Sabanejew, L.: Erinnerungen an Alexander Skrjabin. Kuhn, Berlin (2005) Sabaneyev, L.: Scriabin and the idea of a religious art. In: Musical Times, 1931, vol. 72, no. 1063, pp. 789–792 (1931) Schibli, S.: Alexander Skrjabin und seine Musik. Piper, München (1983a) Schibli, S.: Alexander Skrjabin. Le Poème de l’Extase op. 54. In: Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 3, March 1983, pp. 28–29 (1983b) Schibli, S.: Skrjabins Flug. Zu einer zentralen Figur in Aleksandr Skrjabins Leben und Werk. In: Musik-Konzepte 32/33, pp. 69–80 (1983c) Skrjabin, A. (ed. von Riesemann, O.): Prometheische Phantasien. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart (1924) Skrjabin, A.: Briefe. Reclam, Leipzig (1988) Skrjabin, A.: Jugendwerke für Klavier. Notenverlag Trais Giats, Ardez (2002) Tadday, U.: Mythos und Ekstase bei Skrjabin. In: L. Lütteken (ed.) Mythos und Musik um 1900. Zürcher Festspiel-Symposium 2008, pp. 134–152 (2009)

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Sigfried Schibli, * 1951 in Basel (Switzerland). Swiss musicologist and music critic. Dr. phil. University Frankfurt/Main with the book “Alexander Skrjabin und seine Musik. Grenzüberschreitungen eines prometheischen Geistes”, Munich/Zurich 1983.

Athematicism and Staged Meaning. Microtonality in Alois Hába’s Opera Mother, op. 35 Patrick Becker-Naydenov

1 Introduction During the Interwar period, the Czech composer Alois Hába developed an aesthetic category of ‘athematicism’ to explain his music. However, this notion of athematicism is different from the more popular homonymous term used by members of Arnold Schoenberg’s Second Viennese school. There, the temporary renunciation of clearly and perceptibly treating thematic material is a means to ensure the highest significance for each moment, for the greatest abundance of expression, but not a procedure to guarantee variety: It did not aim at rejecting the force of motivic-thematic development, instead trying to eliminate it in [a Hegelian] negation.1

In turn, the existing literature on Hába has highlighted how this composer did not go as far as Schoenberg and his circle. In response to Carl Dahlhaus’s contribution to the 1984 Congress of the International Schoenberg Society, Rudolf Stephan explained: For Schoenberg, athematicism does not work as a style principle. Even more, Schoenberg never considered avoiding those traditional technical achievements Hába programmatically demands for polyphonic Satz technique (pushing Hába much closer to Hauer in this respect). The method of composing with twelve interrelated tones builds on motivic-thematic development without fully identifying with it. As is well known, Schoenberg’s basic idea always derives from concrete musical thought and has to create connections between every detail since Schoenberg does not feel a homogenous collection of tones is enough to do so— anything else would not satisfy his need for connection and compositional logics. The music thus manifesting should appear as varied as possible but still follow order without hierarchy in a meaningful way. In contrast, Hába wanted complete freedom from everything traditional and for him that included all kinds of traditional motivic-thematic development and 1

Stephan (1985), p. 158.

P. Becker-Naydenov (B) University of Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 H.-W. Heister et al. (eds.), Word Art + Gesture Art = Tone Art, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20109-7_11

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Satz techniques. However, since Hába consciously avoids those, his construction of melodies and rhythms as well as all compositional details becomes conventional.2

Nevertheless, even more decisive than the difference in developing a selfreflective history of composition between the Second Viennese School and Hába’s so-called ‘Secession’ is the significance athematicism acquired as an aesthetic and compositional category after around 1922 and Hába’s Third String Quartet, op. 12. From an aesthetic perspective, Hába claimed a qualitative leap directed toward ‘music as freedom.’3 Once he was on the way toward it, Hába assumed that, in terms of compositional aesthetics, instances of musical freedom were no longer understandable for an audience and, thus, required extra-musical explanation. Very much to confirm this claim and repeating a truism of contemporary music at that time, the supposed incomprehensibility motivated an enormous theoretical output. For example, in his 1923 On the Psychology of Writing Music: The Laws of Tonal Movement and the Basis of a New Musical Style, Hába mentions a fundamental problem of verbal and written language when dealing with modern music. It is already difficult once we realize that, in contrast to more well-established disciplines, there are no fixed terms for related phenomena of music psychology.4

However, from today’s perspective of research into the history of listening, it is still possible to show instances of understanding—and cases where music selfreflectively offers moments to learn understanding—when looking at Hába’s first opera Mother, op. 35.

2 Hába’s Ideal Listeners The basis for Hába’s ideas about listening psychology and understanding music is the concept of an ideal listener, going beyond the homonymous type of music reception outlined by Theodor W. Adorno in his Introduction to Music Sociology.5 Instead, at best, Hába’s ideal listener is faithful to the composer by virtually following his entire work and creative development. Therefore, fomulated as a hypothesis, Hába’s explicit problem—a kind of music whose freedom makes it so new that it becomes impossible to describe what it actually is—solves itself at precisely the moment where the use of texts charged with verbal meaning complements passages of purely instrumental music. Once texted or integrated into semantically-charged scenic situations, supposedly autonomous instrumental music becomes part of a meaningful network familiar to an ideally faithful listener—even where the music is not entirely naturalistic: On the one hand, such semanticized music can reappear in the future where, even without an accompanying 2

Ibid., pp. 158–159. For example, concerning Hába’s stance on tradition, cf. Hába (1925), p. 57. 4 Ibid. 2001, p. 5. 5 Cf. Adorno (1992). 3

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text, its earlier use makes it significant. On the other hand, the later semanticization of forms used in earlier works allows to interpret them retrospectively. That is precisely the case in Hába’s first contributions to texted musical genres: Besides his Choral Suite, op. 13, that appeared six years before, Hába’s quarter-tone opera in ten scenes Mother, op. 35, from 1928 is this composer’s first work in this direction. Concerning the problem of music’s comprehensibility, Hába’s stage work seems to offer faithful listeners what this paper calls staged meaning or meaningfulness (Bedeutsamkeit); i.e., by combining music and libretto, this work offers the potential or, at least, the possibility of meaning opening up avenues of retrospective or future interpretation of Hába’s other untexted compositions. As examples of different meaningful instances in Hába’s Mother, I have come up with the following list outlining the most apparent passages: 1. Intertextuality: quotations, allusions, etc. 1.1. “Amen,” God, church (funeral in the first scene)6 1.2. Folksong imitations (4th scene, wedding dance)7 1.3. Marked tonal passages (e.g., the reappearing C Major chord)8 2. Speech melody (folk ballad)9 3. Athematicism (recurring passages throughout the entire opera). Nevertheless, as much as these passages exemplify instances of staged meaning, their meaning surely derives from the very setting of a stage performance. However, once going beyond Hába’s Mother as a key work in this respect, the significance of instrumental music depends on reusing passages originally appearing in performative and intermedial theater settings. Strictly speaking, passages from the opera’s orchestral preludes, interludes, and postludes—or compositional models alluding to them—appearing elsewhere in Hába’s œuvre should mean ‘less’ in the model just presented—to speak in Eggebrechtian terms, music’s sense and the meaning behind it seperate once more.10 However, when willing to agree with Hába—a move that does not necessarily result in a decreased critical distance to his sources—nothing could be further away from his own ideas. The very beginning of Hába’s opera Mother presents a brilliant case of overlapping explicit and implicit theories,11 also raising the question of how far Hába composed his opera with his theory rather than the mere libretto in mind. (Fig. 1). The orchestral introduction to scene 1 ends with a small motif in the clarinets as a point of rest after an increasingly dramatic development. Truly, this recurring motif takes on important functions throughout the opera as a whole. However, it becomes 6

Since the score lacks numbered bars, I am citing the score’s page numbers. Hába (1991), pp. 36–38. Ibid. 8 Ibid., pp. 45–47. 9 Ibid., pp. 130–134. 10 Cf. Eggebrecht (1977). 11 Cf. Dahlhaus (2001) and cf. Danuser (2014). 7

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Fig. 1 Alois Hába: The Mother. Orchestral Prelude to Scene I (m. 6)

key due to its increasing entanglement with interjections in a Slovak dialect of the Czech language, clearly evident in the opera’s third scene. As the motif from the orchestral introduction and its connection with Czechoslovak exclamations show, for Hába, this passage’s sense and its interpretative meaning are not separated. The melodic progression of c sharp–c flat—c—c flat and e–e flat–f –e flat corresponds to the elementary melodic form of quarter-tone music in general as Hába explains in the section “Melodic and Harmonic Fundamentals of the Quarter-Tone System” of his 1927 Neue Harmonielehre: I observed these varied intonations among peasants (in Slovakia) years ago. I found a psychological motivation to be the reason why those singers from the people intone the intonation a whole tone higher in pitch: They do it out of joy since, when they perform serious songs, they sing intervals smaller than fixed half and whole-tone steps.12

Thus, for Hába, his opera’s motif and the joyful exclamation have always naturally been together. The Psychology of Musical Composition mentions: From a psychological point of view, composing in quarter-tone and six-tone systems expresses a completely different species of emotions shaping musical development and forcing a choice of material best-suited to inner movements.13

Thus, the question of understanding Hába’s microtonality and his athematicism ultimately relates to a far more comprehensive creative and aesthetic program: Hába sees ‘his’ microtonality as continuing ‘natural’ musical practices of regional folk music in the Slovak part of Czechoslovakia. At the same time, athematicism radicalizes certain characteristics of speech melody, whose importance for ethnographic research is well-known through Leoš Janáˇcek’s work at that time. For Hába, however, the individual quarter-tone step between two half tones marks the beginning of microtonality in total. That is the reason for this motif’s occurrence at the beginning of Hába’s opera. Nevertheless, right from the start it is fully charged with meaning by deriving it from a verbal interjection or exclamation. On an elementary level, to use a Heideggerian concept, sense and meaning appear as primordially entwined.14 Hába’s opera and his Choral Suite, op. 13—entirely modelled on the meaningful exclamation Hába found in Slovakia—allow to rephrase the initial question on music’s incomprehensibility: There is nothing alien in an approach examining 12

Hába (1927), p. 136. Ibid., 2001, p. 14. 14 Cf. Heidegger (2006), § 18, pp. 83–88. 13

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Hába’s music, which adds interpretation to musical analysis. Instead, Hába thinks of microtonality as primordially related to meaning since it originates in an expressive and joyful interjection, a lamenting sigh, or similar fundamental exclamations. However, it is a long way to go from the fundamental motif mentioned above to large forms of orchestral and staged music. If the motif’s meaning were actually to be carried on from small passages to large forms, that would require a mediating instance in untexted cases. For Hába, matters are clear: It is the scale or mode as a combination of affectively and semantically charged quarter, half, and whole tone steps mediating between individual exclamations and large forms. When, in conclusion, relating these observations back to the pressing contemporary question of music’s incomprehensibility once it approached post-tonal areas in the early twentieth century, it shows how Hába’s early vocal music—especially his opera Mother—does not merely reflect on his instrumental music for it semantically charges recurring musical passages by linking them with meaningful texts. Rather, Hába’s compositional manifestation of explicit aesthetic theory suggests that, much like in their sounding realization in op. 13, affective sounds do away with the charge of incomprehensible music as a whole: Microtonality stages meaning because the elementary two-tone progression stands both at the threshold of musical sense and linguistic meaning.

References Adorno, Th.W.: Einleitung in die Musiksoziologie. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main (1992) Dahlhaus, C.: Was heißt „Geschichte der Musiktheorie?“ Explizite und implizite Theorie. In: Idem: Gesammelte Schriften in zehn Bänden, ed. H. Danuser, vol. 2: Allgemeine Theorie der Musik II, Kritik, Musiktheorie. Opern- und Librettotheorie, Musikwissenschaft, pp. 344–375. Laaber, Laaber (2001) Danuser, H.: Inspiration, Rationalität, Zufall. Über musikalische Poetik im 20. Jahrhundert. In: Idem: Gesammelte Vorträge und Aufsätze, ed. Hans-Joachim Hinrichsen, Christian Schaper, and Laure Spaltenstein, vol. 1: Theorie, pp. 141–153. Argus, Schliengen (2014) Eggebrecht, H.H.: Musikalisches Denken. In: Idem: Musikalisches Denken: Aufsätze zur Theorie und Ästhetik der Musik, pp. 131–151. Heinrichshofen, Wilhelmshaven (1977) Hába, A: Von der Psychologie der musikalischen Gestaltung. Gesetzmäßigkeit der Tonbewegung und Grundlagen eines neuen Musikstils, transl. by Josef Löwenbach. Musikedition Nymphenburg, Munich (2001) Hába, A.: Die Mutter: Oper in zehn Bildern, orchestral score. Filmkunst-Musikverlag, Munich (1991) Hába, A.: Neue Harmonielehre des diatonischen, chromatischen Viertel-, Drittel-, Sechstel- und Zwölftel-Tonsystems, transl. by idem. Kistner und Siegel, Leipzig (1927) Hába, A.: Grundlagen der Tondifferenzierung und der neuen Stilmöglichkeiten in der Musik. In: Grues, H. (ed.) Von neuer Musik. Beiträge zur Erkenntnis der neuzeitlichen Tonkunst, pp. 53–58. Marcan, Cologne (1925) Heidegger, M.: Sein und Zeit. Niemeyer, Tübingen (2006, 19th edition) Stephan, R.: Hába und Schönberg. In: Idem, Vom musikalischen Denken. Gesammelte Vorträge, ed. Rainer Damm and Andreas Traub, pp. 155–161. Schott, Mainz (1985)

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Thorau, Ch.: The art of listening and its histories: an introduction. In: Idem, Ziemer, H. (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Music Listening in the 19th and 20th Centuries. Oxford University Press, Oxford (2018). https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190466961.001.0001

Patrick Becker-Naydenov is a postdoctoral researcher and assistant professor in historical musicology at the University of Leipzig. He is substitute professor for historical musicology at the University of Kassel and lecturer in musicology at the University of Vienna. He read musicology, philosophy, German literature, historical linguistics, and economics at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. His master thesis on post-World War II Bulgarian avant-garde music received the Humboldt-Preis 2019. He received his PhD with a dissertation on state-regulated music theater in Socialist Bulgaria (Mind Factory: The Economy of Music Theater in Socialist Bulgaria) from the Berlin University of Arts, where he also worked as a predoctoral researcher in the DFG research training group “Knowledge in the Arts.” He is a member of the editorial board of the German magazine PositionenTextue zur aktuellen Musik and active in music journalism.

On Some Aspects of Compositional Anthropology in Mauricio Kagel’s Work Wieland Reich

Of the 230 independent, i.e. individually performable works by Mauricio Kagel,1 only a few are objectively titled, i.e. merely with a traditional genre term (and possibly the instrumentation), such as Sexteto de cuerdas (1953; rev. 1957), Trio in drei Sätzen für Violine, Violoncello und Klavier (Trio in three movements for violin, cello and piano, 1984/85), Impromptu II für Klavier (Impromptu II for piano, 1998), Fünf Vocalisen für einen Countertenor (Five vocalises for a countertenor, 2004/05). Most of the titles of the works open up associative spaces that go beyond inner-musical points of connection such as a form and directly informative things such as the instrumentation. One word can suffice for this: Finale (1980/81) is not for, but with chamber ensemble, because the latter will witness and participate in a staging of the conductor’s passing.2 Thus the activation of the recipient begins already before the perception, reading, and this will, contrary to what was to be expected, not only demand the sense of sight more than usual in the concert hall, but ethically expand the aesthetic experience. The emphatic production on stage transforms in the auditorium into empathic reproduction3 ; art and life, if previously considered as separate ontological spheres, cannot be separated, at least from this final perspective. What is music? The result of what people who make music do. And what people who listen to music perceive from it. Consequently also visible things. And thought along. And added. The range of the anthropogenic is large, from the sound-producing activity to the traditional musical form used to the virtual, unobservable assembling and networking of the perception data to a piece of music in an individual connotative 1 I have not counted short pieces from cyclical works as individual compositions for this purpose. Cf. Reich 2001/2017, pp. A–Z3. 2 Cf. Reich (1996) and Klüppelholz (2015), pp. 21–25. 3 Which in turn can articulate itself quite actively, as Werner Klüppelholz reports: “At a performance in Helsinki, an uninformed nurse rushed over to resuscitate the conductor Kagel.” (Klüppelholz 2015, p. 22) All quotes cited in this paper constitute translations from the German original. (W.R.).

W. Reich (B) Wewelsfleth, Germany © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 H.-W. Heister et al. (eds.), Word Art + Gesture Art = Tone Art, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20109-7_12

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resonance space. Mauricio Kagel’s composing can be understood as field research in the vastness of the reality of the human, all-too-human.4 He assembled elements of deconstructed reality in the form of concrete realities into his compositions, even into seemingly autonomous, only self-sufficient, vulgo: “absolute” music, and this in a quantity, variety and music-morphological diversity that is without precedent.5 To Kagel, formulated in a way suitable for everyday life, nothing human was alien. Philosophically brought to a formula: To him—contrary to his working-life-long adversary, the cosmologically oriented Karlheinz Stockhausen—man was the measure of all things.6 This explains the encyclopedic impression of his catalog raisonné.7 Kagel certainly did not compose music for "all things", but for an extraordinary number of them, which can only be indicated here with a small selection, but which is nevertheless able to illustrate both the diversity of the subjects and the anthropological answers to the basic philosophical question of Immanuel Kant (What is man?).8 Phonophonie. Vier Melodramen für zwei Stimmen und andere Schallquellen (Phonophony. Four melodramas for two voices and other sound sources, 1963/64)— Homo loquens, Homo linguae capax; Zwei-Mann-Orchester. Für zwei Ein-Mann-Orchester (Two-man orchestra. For two one-man orchestras, 1971/73)—Homo automatos, Homo ex machina; Die Erschöpfung der Welt. Szenische Illusion in einem Aufzug (The Exhaustion of the World. Scenic illusion in one act, 1976/78)—Homo imperfectus, Homo creatus, Homo imago Dei; Der Schall. Für fünf Spieler (The sound. For five players, 1968) - Homo investigans; Acustica. Für experimentelle Klangerzeuger und Lautsprecher (Acustica. For experimental sound generators and loudspeakers, 1968/70)—Homo experiens; Der Tribun. Für einen politischen Redner, Marschklänge und Lautsprecherzuspielungen (The Tribune. For a political speaker, marching sounds and loudspeaker feeds, 1978/79)—Homo ideologicus, Homo politicus; In der Matratzengruft. Versuch einer Beschreibung nach Worten von Heinrich Heine. Für Solotenor und Ensemble (In the mattress tomb. Attempt at a description based on words by Heinrich Heine. For solo tenor and ensemble, 2007/08)—Homo mortis memor; Liturgien. Für Soli, Doppelchor und großes Orchester (Liturgies. For soli, double choir and large orchestra, 1989/90)—Homo orans, Homo rituum; Morceau de concours. Für einen oder für zwei Trompeter (Morceau de concours. For one or for two trumpeters, 1970/72)—Homo competitor; Klangwehr. Für schreitendes Musikkorps (Sound weir. For striding music corps, 1969/70)—Homo bellicosus;

4

Friedrich Nietzsche: Menschliches, Allzumenschliches (1878/1886). Cf. Klüppelholz (2009) and (2015), pp. 5–14. 6 The Homo-mensura dictum of Protagoras, quoted from Steenblock (2019), p. 35. 7 Cf. Reich (2009). 8 Quoted from Steenblock (2019), p. 214. 5

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Die Rhythmusmaschinen. Aktion für Gymnasten, Rhythmusgeneratoren und Schlagzeug (The Rhythm Machines. Action for gymnasts, rhythm generators and percussion, 1977/78)—Homo sportivus; Déménagement (Umzug). Stummes Schauspiel für Bühnenarbeiter (Déménagement (Moving). Silent play for stagehands, 1977)—Homo laborans; Match. Für drei Spieler. (Match. For three players, 1964)—Homo ludens; Tremens. Szenische Montage eines Tests. Für zwei Darsteller, elektrische Instrumente, Schlagzeug, Tonbänder und Projektionen (Tremens. Scenic montage of a test. For two performers, electric instruments, percussion, tapes and projections, 1963/65)—Homo crapulae indigens; Eine Brise. Flüchtige Aktion. Für 111 Radfahrer (A breeze. Fleeting action. For 111 cyclists, 1996)—Homo vehiculis fabricatis utens; Homo faber mobilis; Fragende Ode. Für Doppelchor, Bläser und Schlagzeug (Questioning Ode. For double choir, winds and percussion, 1988/89)—Homo rogans; … nach einer Lektüre von Orwell. Hörspiel in germanischer Metasprache (… based on a reading by Orwell. Radio play in Germanic meta-language, 1983/84) Homo grammaticus linguisticus syntacticus; Interview avec D. pour Monsieur Croche et Orchestre. (1993/94) - Homo dialogiae; Sankt-Bach-Passion. Für Soli, Chöre und großes Orchester (St. Bach Passion. For solos, choirs and large orchestra, 1981/85)—Homo sacer; Verborgene Reime. Für Chor und Schlagzeug (Hidden rhymes. For choir and percussion, 2006/07)—Homo poeta; Duodramen. Für zwei Singstimmen und Orchester (Duodramas. For two voices and orchestra, 1997/98)—Homo discursus; Les Inventions d’Adolphe Sax. Cantate pour chœur et quatuor de saxophones (2004/05)—Homo inventor; 10 Märsche um den Sieg zu verfehlen. Für Bläser und Schlagzeug (10 marches to miss the victory. For winds and percussion, 1978/79)—Homo ironicus; Hallelujah. Für Stimmen (Hallelujah. For voices, 1967/68)—Homo naturaliter religiosus. For many more synoptic attributions, more information would be necessary than just the title. However, the perspective of ethnology alone—which is basically nothing other than anthropology plus sociology plus geography9 —illuminates several other pieces in the catalog raisonné, in which Kagel dealt with musical subcultures and folkloristic from first and second hand10 in a compositional way. In Aus Zungen stimmen für Akkordeonquintett (From tongues voices for accordion quintet, 1971/72), Charakterstück für Zitherquartett (Character piece for zither quartet, 1971/72) and Musi für Zupforchester (Music for plucked instruments orchestra, 1971/72), these are not only the instrumentations that refer to 9

Cf. Andraschke (2004). To avoid the term “folklorism" here, which is controversial in folkloristic research, without mentioning it, because in my opinion it is still useful. Cf. the Wikipedia entry: https://de.wikipedia. org/wiki/Folklorismus. Accessed 31 March 2022. 10

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the leisure music-making of amateurs, but also the music-making mechanisms of amateur ensembles—whose activities, by the way, Kagel always paid the highest respect to—and, above all, entertainment or folk music particles in the composition. The title of the work Musi—actually only “music” in Bavarian dialect—already preconcertually opens up the contexts of autochthonous folk music and what is only declared as such, namely music-industry-produced “music for the people” such as “easy listening songs”. On a larger scale, this is also the theme of Kantrimiusik. Pastorale für Stimmen und Instrumente (Country music. Pastorale for voices and instruments, 1973/75). The right-wrong spelling of the title (in German), a typical Kagelesque reception feint, already hints at the contradiction of the authentic and the apocryphal, which is Kagel’s concern.11 Here, in scenic realization—then titled Pastoral in Pictures (film version 1976)—a pseudo-idyllic panopticon of rural spaces is presented with fictitious folklore fragments. Openly made audible and visible, and thus accessible to reflection, fakelore12 deigns to be folklore. Exotica für außereuropäische Instrumente (Exotica for non-European instruments, 1971/72) goes even further in this respect, literally radically, to the root, to the origin, and does so in a twofold direction, namely concerning the audience on the one hand and the musicians themselves on the other. The audience experiences the performance of multiple mimetic conversion: six musicians do not play their main instruments, but operate a multitude of different plucked, wind, string and percussion instruments from several non-European countries, which they de facto master just as little as the laws of the autochthonous music associated with them. They are now dilettante imitators of foreign rhythms and melodies. This alone has performing potential. In addition, they have to sing, and this with self-invented phonetic sequences that imitate foreign languages, which reinforces the impression that roles are embodied here in an acting manner, especially since actions are obviously answered with reactions, and thus communication takes place. The unusual actions of the musicians—even the simultaneous playing of instruments and singing is out of the ordinary13 —complicates the identificatory enjoyment of art; it creates distance, as if one were an unprepared witness to mysterious esoteric rituals. From this point of view, Exotica could be understood in music anthropological terms as a “mimetic ceremony”.14 Whether this attribution could be categorically too narrow is debatable. Hanns-Werner Heister himself, however, subsumes here, by all means expanding, “… special phenomena of the type ’instrumental theater’”15 and concretely Pas de cinq. Wandelszene für fünf Darsteller (Pas de cinq. Walk-scene for five actors, 1965).16 It should be added that this piece is a "composition with non-sounding material", which, like the works of Kagel’s "Theater of Instruments", 11

Cf. Andraschke (2004), pp. 59–63. The beautiful word was invented by Richard M. Dorson. See the Wikipedia entry: https://en.wik ipedia.org/wiki/Fakelore. Accessed 31 March 2022. 13 Out of the framework of European-style art music. With singer-songwriters it is habitual. 14 Cf. Heister (2007). 15 Heister (2007), p. 170 f. 16 Cf. Heister (2007), p. 174. 12

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is subject to the laws of an "Immanent Theater" or "Theater of Immanence", but is not "Instrumental Theater" in the true sense of this genre.17 Like an alternative to the "Mimetic Ceremony", the category "Scenic Anthropology," conceived by composer Manos Tsangaris and seemingly unlimited in its receptivity, appears: ... which means as much as ‘Study of man in tents’ means. Skené in ancient Greek originally means tent, then also arbor, hut and later on first stage. That which makes visible (theatron) probably originates from the sphere of the tents. Tents of all nomadic-archaic societies, where shamanized, danced, sang, conjured up, was put into a trance. And also prophesied. This is the beginning. In all situations of life our consciousness forms something like tents, scenes in which we are located, from which we perceive the world. Often these are circuits, Dispositive. We are a medium between the media. Exactly the place where the world converges for us. For example, if the two of us sit across from each other in a restaurant and talk to each other, this conversation takes place inside a "tent". What is happening around us on the outside, is filtered, the consciousness is completely focused on our togetherness and its objects. Everything else seems to disappear. That’s how it always goes. Consciousness forms reference spaces of different dimensions, in which we are able to travel the world, through the world itself forms us. The whole is on the one hand mobile, on the other hand us always familiar. The polyphony of the world converges into an albeit wandering (ambulatory) space whose coordinates, forces and parameters can be studied. This is one of the noblest tasks of scenic anthropology. Composition as part of a science of man. Situations and events are composed. Man is always in the middle of it, is there as a recipient at the center of the composition, of the composed event. The viewer is in the picture. His perception, his sensory and linguistic levels are transformed in movement and put into relation. Works are created in which it is not the music, the theater, the word in music or in the theater are thematized, but the dynamics and nature and the way in which people perceive the same space from different levels of perception, converges, experiences. This experience is part of his creative process. In the same way that he defines the space in which he finds himself (which he and which he invents, through which he and who measures him), he transfers him into the one, i.e. universal, space of his experience, of life.18

The discussion of the usefulness of both concepts is, of course, only meaningful in a larger framework that presupposes in-depth analyses of different works by different composers. It would also have to be clarified whether anthropologically relevant experiences of music recipients need the sense of sight or the scenic or even only visible level at all. In the meantime, it remains to be noted that Kagel has implanted anthropologically basic compositional elements into his piece Exotica: The concert hall becomes a place of encounter with strangeness, which the phenomenologist Bernhard Waldenfels— referring to Plato’s astonishment, with which philosophy begins—describes as the “salt of experience”.19 And thus of knowledge.20 17

That is, if it is a genus at all. This is disputed, which is why the term is occasionally used in lower case. All the terms mentioned are developed in detail in Rebstock (2007) and (2009). 18 Tsangaris 2011. Accessed 01 April 2022. Incidentally, Tsangaris studied "New Music Theater" with Mauricio Kagel. Cf. http://tsangaris.de/biographie.htm. 19 Waldenfels (2021). 20 Which leads into the research field of xenology. Cf. Bremshey (2004).

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This fundamentally requires openness, curiosity. En passant: Mauricio Kagel told of a Korean ensemble that asked for permission to perform Exotica in Germany, mainly with European folk instruments. Kagel: A splendid idea, although just the opposite of my approach to the subject of exoticism in music, but strikingly logical in the intended reversal of execution. Without hesitation I affirmed this adventure: please continue!21

For ethnology and especially, of course, ethnomusicology, Kagel was very interested throughout his life; as a teenager he was even a participant in an ethnologicalanthropological expedition to Bolivia and Peru as a sound assistant.22 Apart from Exotica, his passion left its clearest traces in the eight-part cycle for salon orchestra called Die Stücke der Windrose (The Pieces of The Compass Rose, 1988/94).23 And his passion for non-European percussion instruments is still evident in one of his last works. Verborgene Reime für Chor und Schlagzeug (2006/07) calls for, among other things, two t’ao ku (Chinese rattle drum), one t’ang ku (Chinese barrel drum), two dondos (talking drum from Ghana), four bougarabous (West African cup drums), one buzzing bow (Australia) and a Caucasian frame drum called daira for the rich percussion instrumentarium. Back to Exotica. Basal for the musicians is, as already indicated above, the linking of hand and mouth. In the words of Werner Klüppelholz: ‘Exotica’ is about the dialectic between unity and divisiveness. This is indicated by the added singing, which evokes a more primal level of music-making. The self-evident use of the voice also in the instrumental music of ’primitive’ cultures has become internalized in occidental music, has shrunk to the mute comprehension of melodic arcs in instrumental playing; it seems alienating if something of it penetrates to the outside, Glenn Gould is considered an oddity. The isolation of the interpreters from the usual professionalism, their reduction to a state preceding the division of labor, fits in with this.24

21

Kagel (2009), p. 181. On page 4 of the sketch sheets for the composition, Kagel already noted: “One would have to write ‘EUROPIK’ from an exotic point of view.” (Kagel 1971, 1971/72, Chapter IV, 3). The fact that Kagel was already accused of what is nowadays called “cultural appropriation” shows above all how far-sighted he was. In March 2022, dreadlocks on a white cellist at a Fridays For Future demonstration will be enough for this accusation. Cf. the article “Diskriminierende Frisur? Fridays For Future löst eine Debatte über Dreadlocks und kulturelle Aneignung aus (“Discriminatory hairstyle? Fridays For Future triggers a debate about dreadlocks and cultural appropriation”, in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung No. 71, 25. 03. 2022, p. 8. For performance practice, the position of Kagel’s indefatigable companion Pit Therre, who considers a certain parodic attitude on the part of the musicians to be substantial, is highly relevant. Cf. “Die Emanzipation der Musiker hat nicht geklappt”. Pit Therre im Gespräch über die Achtundsechziger mit Werner Klüppelholz (“The Emancipation of the Musicians has not worked”. Pit Therre in conversation about the Sixty-Eighters with Werner Klüppelholz), in: MusikTexte vol. 170, August 2021, pp. 32–34. 22 Cf. Klüppelholz (2001), pp. 253–258. Apropos: Kagel himself used the terms anthropological, ethnomusical, ethnomusicological synonymously in his sketch sheets for Exotica. (Kagel 1971, 1971/72, chapter IV). 23 See Lück (2009) for further references. 24 Klüppelholz (1981), p. 71.

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Singing as well as instrumental playing requires a great physical and mental engagement, especially in new music, the instrumental-vocal simultaneity activates a maximum of interacting processes between body and consciousness. Whether the body even creates consciousness, and consequently whether Cartesian mind–body dualism is invalid, is ultimately the crucial philosophical-anthropological question behind the current “embodiment” discourse.25 Evidently, singing instrumentalists “embody” more than non-singing ones in every respect.26 This can be experienced particularly well in the Konzertstück für Pauken und Orchester (Concert piece for timpani and orchestra, 1990–92). Just before the spectacular eye-catching conclusion, the soloist seems, as it were, to isolate himself. A strange moment with the effect of sudden privacy. It is the third cadenza of the work.27 No virtuoso playing is heard; instead, the timpanist sings individual short textless melodic phrases into a simple megaphone, accompanying himself with cadential timpani notes.28 A “mimetic-ceremonial” (see above) imitated archaic incantation ritual, so that the conclusion will succeed? Escapist regression into a childlike selfsatisfied state of mind? In any case, there is no further concertation in the musicalformal sense for a short time; instead, Kagel gives space to a kind of “leapfrogging action” that not only permits interpretations, but induces them. Such communicated or in the recipient caused contents of experience (in philosophical terminology: qualia) can be understood as “non-sounding material” (see above) in a fundamental anthropological sense. They belong to the basis of Kagel’s often quoted professional ethos: You know, people often reproach me that my music is so charged, so intense and compact that the normal listener is repelled by it. I see no fault in this; on the contrary, I am very proud of it. Because I can demand that the listener receives my music with the same seriousness with which I write it, and that he is as productive while listening to it as I am while composing it. I don’t want listeners who merely seek distraction in a concert. Under no circumstances. I demand that the listener works. But this is not meant in an authoritarian way, but with the greatest kindness. For he does not work for me, but for himself. If he, the listener, makes an effort, if he thinks, thinks along, then he gains something.29 25

In this context, I can only refer to this branch of research in cognitive science, which has become significant for several human sciences. Embodiment is also becoming more and more a useful paradigm for various music sciences. In order to at least draw attention to further reading in this context, the following publications should be mentioned: Yedema (2006); Hiekel/Lessing 2014; Oberhaus /Stange 2017; Ruccius 2019; Schmitt-Weidmann (2021); Scharfetter/Wozonig 2022. 26 Cf. Rebstock (2007). 27 Score C. F. Peters No. 31942, p. 76f. 28 Cf. the concert recording of September 23, 2018 with Jean-François Lézé (timpani) and Sylvain Cambreling on the podium: “Concerto para tímpanos e orquestra de Mauricio Kagel” (17:25–18:50). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIvYV_d1YuA. Accessed 29 March 2022. In contrast to what is prescribed in the score, here the megaphone funnel does not rest on a timpani skin when singing, which produced stronger effects both tonally and visually. The soloist also takes liberties with melodic and dynamic shaping. 29 Kagel (1971, 1971), p. 91f.

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Kagel had already paradigmatized simultaneous vocal and instrumental activity before Exotica in the “Scenic Concert Piece” Repertoire (1970)—part of Staatstheater. Szenische Komposition (State Theatre. Scenic Composition, 1967/70), in a sense a nine-part encyclopedia of stage art—paradigmatically composed. It is single action No. 97 (of a total of 100).30 It takes place behind the scenes, where the musician has to play any wind instrument, ad libitum he may go back and forth. According to Kagel, the performance can be extended over a very long period of time in the manner of an ostinato. In a single-line system, the vocal action is notated at the top as a “model” to be developed further: singing very high into the instrument, three longer entries, two of them with fluctuating pitch. Below, the instrumental part: a triplet sixteenthnote figure, to be performed staccatissimo and with non-periodic accents, annotated: “Any instrumental notes—in low register—within a major third.“ Kagel has given each action a title—admittedly below the notation, as in Debussy’s Préludes, though this may also be due to graphic clarity—usually just one word such as “Tarnkappe” (Stealth cap), “Unfall” (Accident), “Immateriell” (Immaterial), “Balsam” (Balm). In music-theatrical transposition, this becomes an anthropological compendium of human oddities.31 Action 97 is entitled “SANG UND KLANG” (Singing and Sound). Here, of course, the German proverb “Ohne Sang und Klang” („without singing and sound “) resonates: ... without much ceremony, without much ado; to disappear without a fuss: to depart ingloriously; also: to go away inconspicuously, unnoticed. The phrase originally refers to the ecclesiastical ceremonies at a funeral and actually means: without the bells ringing in honor of the dead and a funeral dirge or requiem being sung...32

Interpreted from here, metaphorically certainly the fullness of life is meant, which however also includes work—for the musician: practicing—and effort (here unmistakable). This is precisely what Kagel elaborated in a complex way at the same time in Atem für einen Bläser (Breath for a wind player, 1969/70). The, so to speak, audioethnological scene allows the insight into the life of a professional musician—and the illusionless outlook. Already the performance has to be “tired”. After an unprecedented variety of mainly denatured sounds that the breath can evoke simultaneously with the vocal apparatus and instruments,33 it is said on p. 11: “hysterically scream 30

The score is published by Universal Edition: No. 15197. Repertoire now substantiates my above statement that nothing human was alien to Kagel. Action 3 is called Kaiserschnitt (“Caesarean section”), action 4 Geburt (“Birth”), action 5 Abort (“Abortion”), action 83 Onanie (“Onanism”), action 86 Sich erwürgen (“Strangle oneself”). 32 Röhrich (2011), p. 1280. The work first appeared in 1973. The language enthusiast Kagel could not yet consult it for Repertoire, but demonstrably used it for Die Erschöpfung der Welt (1976/78). In the "Werkbuch" („workbook “) published on the occasion of the premiere in 1980 (Stuttgarter Hefte 8/2, not paginated) there is a collection of material with the heading “Bekannte Redensarten (aus Röhrich)” (“Popular phrases (from Röhrich)”). 33 The vocal reference work is Phonophonie (1963/64). The technique of using the voice as a “coloring agent” for the wind instrumental sound can only be mentioned here with reference to its methodically diverse use in corresponding pieces. Cf. Phantasiestück für Flöte und Klavier (Fantasy piece for flute and piano, 1987/88); Zwei Akte. Grand Duo für Saxophon und Harfe (Two 31

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(always on the same pitch)”, then “’stifle’ scream by blowing”—p. 14: “exhale + soft whistling sound (extremely advanced lips)”—p. 16: “’psalmodize’”—p. 17: “Slide inconspicuously to the edge of the chair (move knees cautiously)”—p. 18: “In slow motion: without stopping to blow, stretch out completely on the floor”, and after a downward glissando: “Apparently dead: with eyes closed and mouth open”.34 Atem is the secular prelude to the Sankt-Bach-Passion (1981/85). “What is art, if not a form of ability of suffering, which is at the same time the form of suffering of ability?”.35 Only one year after Atem, Kagel composed, so to speak, its vital variant: Siegfriedp’ für Violoncello (Siegfriedp’ for cello, 1971), in which the performer must constantly inhale and exhale audibly as well as produce buzzing sounds and vocalizations of varying length, specifically notated in pitch, which become more linguistic through consonant additions here and there, but remain no less enigmatic. And all this in addition to the already virtuoso cello playing! This piece thematizes—once again—a hard working musician, although here it is about the positive mediation of artistry, especially since it is at the same time a concrete portrait of the cellist Siegfried Palm, because it is equipped with acoustic realities.36 “There is no right life in the wrong one” is one of Theodor W. Adorno’s most famous sentences37 , which, because it has long since sunk to the level of a bon mot, is seldom taken seriously. With Peter Sloterdijk one can counter anthropotechnically: Yes, there is. By practicing, in a fundamental as well as comprehensive sense. Man, understood as a practicing being, has an “autoplastic” effect on himself: In truth, the transition from nature to culture and vice versa has always been wide open. It leads over a bridge that is easy to walk on - the practicing life. […] No activity escapes the principle of the retroactive imprinting of the operator - and what retroacts also acts in advance. The deed produces the active, the reflection the reflected, the emotion the feeling, the examination of conscience the conscience itself. […] When I argue for the expansion of the practice zone, it is in light of the overwhelming evidence that people - on this side and beyond work and interaction, on this side and beyond "active and contemplative life"- act on themselves, work on themselves, make examples of themselves.38

The road from practice to proficiency is, as every musician knows, a traffic circle one in real terms. Practicing, however, is not the simple sum of will plus imitation plus repetition. Peter Sloterdijk again: “With the power of repetition, the double

acts. Grand Duo for saxophone and harp, 1988/89); Schattenklänge. Drei Stücke für Bassklarinette (Shadow sounds. Three pieces for bass clarinet, 1995). 34 Quoted from the score Universal Edition No. 14981. The last page is printed in Reich 2004, p. 101. 35 Sloterdijk (2021), p. 519f. 36 Cf. Klüppelholz (1981), p. 66. Siegfried Palm (1927–2005) premiered this piece himself. Previously, he participated in the world premiere and film adaptation of Match für drei Spieler (1964; 1966). 37 Adorno (1969), p. 42. 38 Sloterdijk (2021), pp. 25, 501, 174.

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Fig. 1 Chromatic scale and tonal disposition per instrument

nature of repetition as repeated repetition and repeating repetition is understood at the same time.”39 The immediate and multiple repetition has either an enervating or archaictherapeutic effect in music. It is not for nothing that the attitudes towards Techno and Minimal music are so contrary. Apart from the Scylla denial and the Charybdis devotion, there has always been a musical way out called variation. Mauricio Kagel preferred this. In his oeuvre, the anthropological affinity for repetition is balanced compositionally with the serial allergy to repetition on the basis of a conceptual numerological methodology that organizes all parameters in an artistically highly differentiated process. This is demonstrated in conclusion by the last 17 measures of the V. Streichquartett in zwei Sätzen (V. String Quartet in two movements), one of Kagel’s last works, composed in 2005/06.40 After a four-part organum in fourths and then seconds/ninths in the broadest register (m. 248–259) consisting of twelve (!) measures, there follows an ascending pentatonic transition in parallel sixths and thirds, respectively. Emerging from this, the viola’s F#1 remains as a drone for three measures and grounds the beginning of the final section. The tones selected for each instrument from the chromatic total are processed in a stable melodic structure; only in the cello did Kagel intervene once in this structure (see illustrations) (Figs. 1, 2, 3 and 4). In the cello part, the number of notes and rests are permuted or varied at each pass. The deviations from the pattern of direct note repetition shape the reaching of the end, supported by a general rallentando already from m. 272. What can no longer be schematically depicted here is the changed dynamics and articulation at each passage, which Kagel still combined with different types of strokes.41 Repetition and non-repetition have already been deliberately combined in this one layer of the four-part structure. What is “Entwickelnde Variation” (“developing variation”) for Arnold Schoenberg’s compositional technique can be conceptually summed up for Mauricio Kagel with the formula „Variierende Montage” (“Varying montage”).42 The three-tone sequence of the 1st violin is likewise subject to the principle of constantly changing tonal color, while the dynamics remain stable except for the last two passages. Numerologically, this part is strictly constructed: The tone model is 39

Sloterdijk (2021), p. 309. Score C. F. Peters No. 11073, pp. 65–67. CD recording with the Vogler Quartet (2017) by jazzwerkstatt (PHIL 06034). 41 This is based on systematically worked out tables that cover all technically possible combinations of both hands. One such (for electric and Spanish guitar) is illustrated in Klüppelholz (2001), p. 245. In Kagel (1971, 1971)/72, chapter IV, 4 combination grids for Exotica are accessible. 42 Introduced and analytically demonstrated in the Sankt-Bach-Passion (1981–85). Cf. Reich (1995), p. 135ff. Incidentally, the four notes of the cello part contain the B-A-C-H. 40

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Fig. 2 1st and 2nd violin: tones and melodic structure

Fig. 3 Viola: tones and melodic structure

played nine times, separated by rests of duration nine eighths. The two appended notes cadenced to an augmented C# major triad, but with a tritone rising. The 2nd violin accentuates the musical movement with a pendulum motive,43 which is always executed with Bartók pizzicato. Shortening of the eighth notes to sixteenth notes is due to the rallentando already mentioned. Here and at the end, it also becomes clear in this part that numerology does not serve a serial end in itself or is even committed to an esoteric mysticism of numbers. The numbers provide suggestions for the componere, the assembling, which Kagel accepts or, if necessary, changes. That it is a question of a numerical preorder is proven by the renewed and stable distribution of the nine, which must also be a neutral quantity because all the parts move independently of the metrical scheme of the 7/8 time signature (initially also 4/4). The time signature obviously serves only the optical coordination.

43

This, too, is typical of Kagel’s melodic style as a whole. Cf. Reich (1995), p. 210ff.

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Fig. 4 Violoncello: tones and melodic structure

The strictly mirror-symmetrically organized viola part contains no rests at all. This and its vocal melodicism make this part the primus inter pares of the voice architecture constructed around it. One perceives it as a cantus firmus. Mauricio Kagel’s last string quartet ends in the newly tailored garb of a medieval Isorhythmic motet. Historical awareness—which in turn is linked to repetition via memory44 —is certainly not an insignificant anthropotechnical exercise content. Mauricio Kagel, who shows himself here as Homo metans et numerans and Homo historicus, takes his listeners seriously in their broadest anthropological definition as “flexible multiple beings”.45

References Adorno, Th. W.: Minima Moralia. Reflexionen aus dem beschädigten Leben. Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. 1969 (first edition 1951) Andraschke, P.: Exotica aus Deutschland. Soziologisches Fragen in Kompositionen von Mauricio Kagel. In: Tadday, U. (ed.): Mauricio Kagel (Musik-Konzepte 124), pp. 51–70. edition text + kritik im Richard Boorberg Verlag, München (2004)

44

What already Sören Kierkegaard emphasized: “Repetition and memory represent the same movement, only in opposite directions; for what is remembered as having been is repeated in a backward direction; whereas actual repetition is memory in a forward direction.” (Kierkegaard 2005, p. 329). 45 This anthropological characterization comes from Hans Lenk. I have taken all the human images used here in Latin from a list compiled by Lenk with a total of 405 different formulations. Cf. Lenk (2010), pp. 87–120.

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Bremshey, Ch., Hoffmann, H., May, Y., Ortu, M. (eds.): Den Fremden gibt es nicht. Xenologie und Erkenntnis. LIT Verlag, Münster (2004) Generalintendanz der Württembergischen Staatstheater (ed.): Mauricio Kagel: Die Erschöpfung der Welt. Uraufführung. Werkbuch (= Stuttgarter Hefte 8/2), Stuttgart (1980) Heister, H.-W.: Mimetische Zeremonie – Gesamtkunstwerk und alle Sinne. Aspekte eines Konzepts. In: Heister, H.-W. (ed.): Mimetische Zeremonien – Musik als Spiel, Ritual, Kunst. (Musik und. Neue Folge, Band 7), pp. 143–185. Weidler Buchverlag, Berlin (2007) Hiekel, J.P., Lessing, W. (eds): Verkörperungen der Musik. Interdisziplinäre Betrachtungen. Transcript, Bielefeld (2014) Kagel, M.: Für wen komponieren Sie eigentlich? Gespräch mit Hansjörg Pauli. In: Pauli, H.: Für wen komponieren Sie eigentlich?, pp. 83–105. S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. (1971) Kagel, M.: Skizzenblätter zu Exotica für außereuropäische Instrumente (1971/72). In: Ensemble Modern Medien (ed.): Mauricio Kagel. Exotica für außereuropäische Instrumente (1971/72). Konzertmitschnitte Ensemble Modern und Internationale Ensemble Modern Akademie; Dokumentation der Proben; Meinungen, Analysen und Gespräche; Kompositionsskizzen und Ablaufskizzen der Aufführungen. EMDVD-003 (DVD 2012) Kagel, M.: Der Schall und die Folgen. Mauricio Kagel im Gespräch mit Matthias Kassel (2007). In: Kunkel, M., Papiro, M. (eds.): Der Schall. Mauricio Kagels Instrumentarium, pp. 177–186. PFAU-Verlag, Saarbrücken (2009) Kierkegaard, S.: Die Wiederholung. In: Diem, H., Rest, W. (eds.): Sören Kierkegaard, Die Krankheit zum Tode, Furcht und Zittern, Die Wiederholung, Der Begriff Angst. dtv Verlagsgesellschaft, München (2005, 2021) Klüppelholz, W.: Mauricio Kagel 1970–1980. DuMont Buchverlag, Köln (1981) Klüppelholz, W. (ed.): Mauricio Kagel. Dialoge, Monologe. DuMont Buchverlag, Köln (2001) Klüppelholz, W.: »Musik ist eine realistische Kunst«. Manifestationen der Wirklichkeit im Werk von Mauricio Kagel. In: Jungheinrich, H.-K. (ed.): Aufgehobene Erschöpfung – Der Komponist Mauricio Kagel, pp. 41–51. Schott Music, Mainz (2009) Klüppelholz, W.: Kagels Musikbegriff. Ein Essay (fragmen, Heft 55). PFAU-Verlag, Büdingen (2015) Lenk, H.: Das flexible Vielfachwesen. Einführung in die moderne philosophische Anthropologie zwischen Bio-, Techno- und Kulturwissenschaften. Velbrück Wissenschaft, Weilerswist (2010) Lück, H.: Himmelsrichtungen populärer Musik. Mauricio Kagel: »Die Stücke der Windrose«. In: Jungheinrich, H.-K. (ed.): Aufgehobene Erschöpfung – Der Komponist Mauricio Kagel, pp. 135– 145. Schott Music, Mainz (2009) Oberhaus, L., Stange, Chr. (eds.): Musik und Körper. Interdisplinäre Dialoge zum körperlichen Erleben und Verstehen von Musik. transcript, Bielefeld (2017) Rebstock, M.: Komposition zwischen Musik und Theater. Das instrumentale Theater von Mauricio Kagel zwischen 1959 und 1965. Wolke Verlag, Hofheim (2007a) Rebstock, M.: Zur Präsenz des Abwesenden im instrumentalen Theater von Mauricio Kagel. In: Klüppelholz, W.: Vom instrumentalen zum imaginären Theater: Musikästhetische Wandlungen im Werk von Mauricio Kagel, pp. 65–83. Wolke Verlag, Hofheim (2007b) Rebstock, M.: Theatralische Produktion musikalischer Präsenz. „Immanentes Theater“ und „Theater der Immanenz“ in Kagels Der Schall. In: Kunkel, M., Papiro, M. (eds.): Der Schall. Mauricio Kagels Instrumentarium, pp. 133–142. PFAU-Verlag, Saarbrücken (2009) Reich, W.: Mauricio Kagel: Sankt-Bach-Passion. Kompositionstechnik und didaktische Perspektiven. PFAU-Verlag, Saarbrücken (1995) Reich, W.: TRUGSCHLUSS UN(d)ENDLICHKEIT: Mauricio Kagels Finale mit Kammerensemble (1980/81). In: Fricke, St., Reich, W.: »..., zum 24.xii. 1996 für Mauricio Kagel. Zu »Finale« (1980/81) und »..., den 24.xii. 1931« (1988–91) (fragmen, Heft 15, 1996), pp. 4–12. PFAU-Verlag, Saarbrücken (1996) Reich, W.: Figuren – Spiel – Ende – Gedanken – Stille. Versuch über Kagels Art schließlich zu enden. In: Tadday, U. (ed.): Mauricio Kagel (Musik-Konzepte 124), pp. 97–106. edition text + kritik im Richard Boorberg Verlag, München (2004)

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Reich, W.: Discours [musical] de la méthode. Kagel, Mauricio: Komponist, Enyklopädist. In: MusikTexte vol. 120, pp. 1–6. Köln (2009) Reich, W.: Mauricio Kagel. In: Heister, H.-W., Sparrer, W.-W. (eds.): Komponisten der Gegenwart, edition text + kritik, München (1992 ff.), 21. Update 2001 / 60. Update 2017 (2017) Röhrich, L.: Lexikon der sprichwörtlichen Redensarten. Verlag Herder, Freiburg (2011; third reprint oft he 2003 edition in three vols.) Ruccius, A.: Klangkunst als Embodiment. Die kinetischen Klangskulpturen Stephan von Huenes. Primat Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. (2019) Scharfetter, N., Wozonig, Th. (eds.): Körper(-lichkeit) in der Musik des 20. und 21. Jahrhunderts. transcript, Bielefeld. (Will be published in December 2022) Schmitt-Weidmann, K.: Der Körper als Vermittler zwischen Musik und (all)täglicher Lebenswelt. Distanzauslotungen am Beispiel ausgewählter Werke der Neuen Musik. transcript, Bielefeld (2021) Sloterdijk, P.: Du musst dein Leben ändern. Über Anthropotechnik. Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. (2021 = 5. ed. of the 2012 edition; first published 2009) Steenblock, V.: Geschichte der Philosophie, 3rd edn. Reclam, Ditzingen (2019) Tsangaris, M.: Szenische Anthropologie, in: Homepage Internationales Institut für Kunstermittlung (founded 2011). http://iike.de/anthropologos-sk.html. Accessed 01 Apr 2022 Waldenfels, B.: „Fremdheit ist wie das Salz der Erfahrung“. Bernhard Waldenfels im Interview mit Leyla Sophie Gleissner (published 18 September 2021). https://www.philomag.de/artikel/ bernhard-waldenfels-fremdheit-ist-wie-das-salz-der-erfahrung. Accessed 01 Apr 2022 Yedema, S.: „... also, gestikulieren Sie ein wenig“. Körpereinsatz zwischen Kritik und Experiment im Musiktheater von Mauricio Kagel (Phil. Dissertation Universität Utrecht), Berlin 2006 (Digital publication. Currently only accessible via the author) (2006)

Wieland Reich *1963 in Thuine/Lower Saxony) teaches music, religion and philosophy at a secondary school in Schleswig–Holstein. 1993 doctorate with a Kagel study at the University of Siegen: Mauricio Kagel: Sankt-Bach-Passion. Compositional technique and didactic perspectives. Pfau Verlag, Saarbrücken (1995). Since then numerous publications on Mauricio Kagel, furthermore on Ernest Bloch, Benjamin Frankel, Vinko Globokar, Karl Amadeus Hartmann, James MacMillan, Bohuslav Martin˚u, Galina Ustwolskaja, Johannes Wallmann and John Zorn. Article Mauricio Kagel with an overview of his entire œuvre, in Komponisten der Gegenwart (1992 ff.), 21. Update 2001/60. Update 2017. Together with Thomas Phleps († 2017), editor of two Festschriften dedicated to H.-W. Heister: Hanns-Werner Heister: Vom allgemeingültigen Neuen. Analysen engagierter Musik: Dessau, Eisler, Ginastera, Hartmann, Pfau Verlag, Saarbrücken (2006); Musik-Kontexte. Festschrift für Hanns-Werner Heister (two volumes), Verlagshaus Monsenstein und Vannerdat, Münster (2011).

Hans Werner Henze’s Concept of Musica Impura. On the Historical Significance of Music for Social Progress Michael Kerstan

1 Introduction The idea of musica impura as a contrast to his contemporaries’ postulation of an absolute, pure music has developed in Hans Werner Henze since his beginnings as a composer, first emotionally, then conceptually, not least thanks to his friendships with important word artists with whom he has worked. The composer then, from the 1970s onwards, explicitly identified these impure influences of his music, thus initiating a reflection among artists who have subsequently occasionally spoken of their art as an arte impura. His music, especially his music theatre works, were often attributed corresponding effects on society by the public, be it through tangible scandals, through social discourse, and not least his pedagogical work, which cannot be separated from his artistic work, produced such effects. This development will be taken into consideration in the following.

2 Aesthetic Transgressions Early in his career, Hans Werner Henze was concerned with the idea that his music was impure or unclean. After completing his studies with Wolfgang Fortner in Heidelberg (traditional counterpoint and harmony) and René Leibowitz (dodecaphony) and after participating three times in the Darmstadt Summer Courses for New Music, he had got to the core of the principle of twelve-tone music and left it behind in its rigidity. He realises for himself.

M. Kerstan (B) Hans Werner Henze Foundation, Munich, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 H.-W. Heister et al. (eds.), Word Art + Gesture Art = Tone Art, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20109-7_13

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Freedom, wild and beautiful new sound, can only come from a sense of solitude and freedom. The truly new does not appear polished, not settable, but robust, generous, unclassifiable.1

Henze soon set himself apart from his colleagues at the Darmstadt Summer Courses, on the one hand by moving to Italy and on the other by his lifelong “longing for the full, wild euphony”.2 He laments the compulsion to subordinate himself to a conformity to the rules, which he had only escaped through liberation from German fascism. Then: the appearance of a new type of art judge, an elite of connoisseurs, sarcastically strict, knowing where it is ‘clean’ and where it is ‘unclean’. Separating the wheat from the chaff. Old comrades, new comrades, moralists. (...) One is reprimanded, policed, put in one’s place, trees are not allowed to grow to the sky.3

On the other hand, he also distinguishes himself from his colleagues by “crossing aesthetic frontiers”4 and a “notoriously unclean handling” of the rules of twelvetone music,5 which, however, should not be misunderstood as the use of an “unclean technique”, because the “craft of composing itself is ‘clean’ and achieved through hard work”,6 according to the Hamburg musicologist Peter Petersen. The early approach of Henze’s understanding of his art as musica impura, without having yet found the term, also feeds on his disgust with National Socialism, under which he had to spend his childhood and youth and which had alienated and taken away his father. He is committed to insubordination in every respect, to freedom of expression, to personal freedom, even at the price of loneliness. His first significant work, Apollo et Hyazinthus7 from 1948–49, is therefore anything but “autonomous music”. It deals with the myth of the love between Apollo and Hyacinthus as narrated by Lucian8 and Ovid.9 While throwing a discus, the jealous wind god Zephyros gets in their way and deflects Apollo’s disc against the temple of Hyacinthus, who falls down dead. His blood soaks the earth, from which a flower sprouts. The piece expresses jubilation and grief over his first great love and its loss, as well as the longing for reconciliation with his father.10 Henze composes, without text, not only this myth about a divine murder of jealousy, he also experiences it in real life, so to speak, from complete bliss11 to attempted suicide.12 At the same time, he tries to reconcile himself posthumously with his father; it is not 1

Henze (1984, p. 30). Ibid., p. 25. 3 Ibid., p. 28. 4 Jacobshagen (2007, p. 111). 5 Petersen (2005, p. 317). 6 Petersen (1995a, b, p. 75). 7 Henze (1949). 8 Lukian (1985, pp. 494–496). 9 Naso (1988, pp. 257). 10 Cf. Kerstan (2021, pp. 197–200). 11 Henze (1996a, b, c, p. 99). 12 Ibid., p. 112. 2

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Fig. 1 Hans Werner Henze: Apollo et Hyazinthus, T. 300–313: alto part ((c) Schott Music, Mainz)

for nothing that he has chosen Georg Trakl’s poem, Im Park, for the last movement, which ends with the words: “O! then you too bend your forehead to the ancestral decayed marble”.13 Impure in this play is not only the retelling of an ancient myth (especially a homosexual one in a time in which not only the homophobic Paragraph 175 but also the social consciousness from the Nazi era persisted to a large extent in Germany), but also the playful use of old musical forms: The piece has elements that (in my imagination) might be inherent in an 18th-century French chamber concerto (roughly to the extent that the customs officer Rousseau claimed to paint in the Egyptian style.14

The composer himself writes that in this piece he “sometimes overstepped the boundaries allowed to abstract music (…) as we know it from programme music”.15 Even more, the twelve-tone series on which the piece is based has a narrative character, and he reconciles tonality with twelve-tone. With the last two verses of the Trakl poem in the last movement, this row appears in its basic form, and with it Henze sings of his first great love and laments the rejection by his father, while the text at the end demands respect for the ancestors, the musical ancestors, but also for the deceased father (Fig. 1). One can imagine the series as four groups of three: In the first group, ‘C-F-B’, the ‘innocent C’ is followed by the ominous tritone; a light, pleasant D major tonality in the second group: ‘A-F sharp-D’ hints at the first great love. With the heavy E-flat major tonality ‘G-B flat-E flat’ that follows, the brow inclines, love too becomes heavy, and the decayed marble is evoked at the end in C-sharp minor, ‘E-C sharp-G sharp’—an ending that takes up seven bars, half of this final phrase. The friend is presented to the father at the grave, reconciliation with the father is also posthumously impossible and love is unlasting—it has ceased. So much hope is built up throughout the piece, but it is not redeemed, a “sigh of unsatisfied friendship and love”,16 as Schubart characterises the key of C-sharp minor, remains. This melancholy mood, this Weltschmerz indeed, is intensified by the ostinati of the strings.

13

Trakl (1915, p. 58). Henze (1984, p. 26). 15 Ibid., p. 27. 16 Schubart (1839, p. 383). 14

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This work by the then 22-year-old composer thus incorporates extensive nonmusical material: elements of ancient mythology, German Romanticism, his own biography and music history.

3 Poesía Impura Supported by the Austrian writer Ingeborg Bachmann, with whom he had a deep human and artistic friendship, Hans Werner Henze was able to further develop and expound his idea of musica impura in the further course of the 1950s. Their collaboration resulted in the ballet Der Idiot, the radio play Die Zikaden, the two operas Der Prinz von Homburg and Der junge Lord and two cycles of poems, Nachtstücke und Arien and Lieder von einer Insel. For the Nachtstücke und Arien, she adds two verses to her poem Im Gewitter der Rosen, and the Lieder von einer Insel are about their common residency on Ischia. She supports him in bringing the use of words into the focus of his work. In addition to his personal context, especially since she herself has a musical background and has always been concerned with the connection between words and music. Henze explicitly refers to her essay Music and Poetry, which she wrote for a concert programme book of Munich Musica Viva concert series in 1959. He quotes it at length in the lecture Die geistige Rede der Musik,17 which he gave at the Braunschweig Chamber Music Festival in 1959. Music, for its part, comes into a confession with the words that it otherwise cannot make. It becomes liable, (...) it becomes political, compassionate, participatory and gets involved in our fate. It gives up its austerity, accepts a restriction among the restricted, becomes attackable and vulnerable. But it does not need to feel inferior for that. Its weakness is its new dignity. Together, and excited by each other, music and word are an offence, a riot, a love, an admission. They keep the dead awake and disturb the living, they precede the desire for freedom and pursue the indecent into sleep. They have the strongest intention to take effect.18

In it, Bachmann postulates a mutual dependence and enrichment of word and music—she considers a word-bound piece of music valid if the text would not function without the music and if the music would not make sense without this text. As a Wittgenstein expert, she repeatedly seeks to dissolve the boundaries of language with the help of music, whether in her essays on music aesthetics.19 In her novel Malina20 or in some of her poems, such as Schwarzer Walzer 21 (Black Waltz), which refers to the Offenbach opera Hoffmanns Erzählungen (Tales of Hoffmann), or more precisely to the Barcarola at the beginning of Act IV.22 She enigmatically links the 17

Henze (1984, pp. 52–61). Bachmann (1959, pp. 161–166). 19 Ibid., cf. Bachmann (1978a, p. 342 f). 20 Bachmann (1971). 21 Bachmann (1978b, p. 141). 22 Cf. Cybenko (2005). 18

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birthday of the first-person narrator in Malina with her own and with the anniversary of the death of E.T.A. Hoffmann, on whose texts the Offenbach opera is based; “for why should not someone begin to live when the spirit of a man expires, but I do not mention the name of this man…”23 ). The interweaving with music is particularly pronounced in one of Bachmann’s last poems, Enigma, which is dedicated to Hans Werner Henze.24 Enigma Für Hans Werner Henze aus der Zeit der Ariosi Nichts mehr wird kommen Frühling wird nicht mehr werden Tausendjährige Kalender sagen es jedem voraus Aber auch Sommer und weiterhin, was so gute Namen Wie “sommerlich” hat – Es wird nichts mehr kommen. Du sollst ja nicht weinen, sagt eine Musik. Sonst sagt niemand etwas. Enigma For Hans Werner Henze from the time of ARIOSI Nothing will come again Spring will be there no more Thousand-year calendars foretell it for everyone But also summer and furthermore, what has such good names as “summerlike” so nothing will come again. Thou shalt not weep, a music is saying. 23 24

Bachmann (1995, p. 297). cf. Petersen 2014, pp. 74–115.

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Otherwise no one says anything.25

The “Time of the Ariosi”—this is the year 1963, after Ingeborg Bachmann was left by Max Frisch and no longer wants to live, and when Henze lets a relationship fall apart and suffers from it himself. He suffers and escapes into work: “The feelings drag on the ground. My heart lies in the street. Composing is the only right thing to do, I cling to it and write one piece after another this summer, day in, day out.”26 Ariosi is a five-movement double concerto for soprano, violin and orchestra, a work of mourning on poems by Torquato Tasso. In which the composer mourns a lost love, whether his own or that of Ingeborg Bachmann to Max Frisch, whose loss broke her heart. In her penultimate poem Enigma with the dedication For Hans Werner Henze from the time of ARIOSI, she remembers once again this terrible phase in both their lives, and how he—i.e. the music, kept them alive at that time. It is a fusion of words and music, full of allusions to works they both adored, it is the integration of poesía impura and musica impura. The poem can also be seen as a work of mourning in their relationship, for after the opera The Young Milord there was no more collaboration, they saw each other less and their correspondence diminished. Nevertheless, they remained on friendly and trusting terms until her death in 1973. This short poem contains two musical quotations—“Nothing more will come” is taken from the Altenberg Lieder op. 4 by Alban Berg; “Thou shalt not weep” from the 5th movement of Gustav Mahler’s 3rd Symphony, as Bachmann herself pointed out,27 albeit enigmatically—she locates the last verse in Mahler’s 2nd Symphony; all in all, it is a poesía impura that draws from real life and does not exist without music. H. Höller has pointed out that the pauses revealed by the typesetting of the last verse suggest “waiting for the last word”,28 thus the hope for a future coming together of word and music, a “utopian communication”.29 Independently of each other, Bachmann and Henze are united by their view beyond the confines of their own discipline and their rejection of L’art pour l’art, the elitist artist on an island. This is the subject matter in their common radio play Die Zikaden as well as in Henze’s radio opera Das Ende einer Welt (The End of a World) with a libretto by Wolfgang Hildesheimer. This is about a house concert on an artificial island, “its sinking and the resulting end of a handful of hypocritical cultural operators and snobs”.30 25

Bachmann (1968, pp. 91–95). Henze (1996a, b, c, p. 233). 27 Bachmann (1968, p. 91). 28 Höller (1998, p. 161). 29 Soproni (2008, p. 120). 30 Henze (1996c, p. 32). 26

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Hans Werner Henze received further theoretical training by the poet and essayist Hans Magnus Enzensberger. He met him in the late 1950s at Süddeutscher Rundfunk, for whom they both wrote radio features. Through Enzensberger’s mediation, Henze received two invitations to Cuba in 1969–70, combined with teaching assignments and artistic encounters. Between 1970 and 1974, he invented two plays with Enzensberger, El Cimarrón and La Cubana. Enzensberger is not only a poet, essayist and writer, but also translates texts from Spanish. Including those by Pablo Neruda, such as the programmatic text Sobre una poesía sin pureza (On a poetry without purity), which the latter had written in 1935 as a preface for the first issue of the literary magazine Caballo verde para la poesía.31 He had been appointed its editorial director shortly before. In it, he promotes a concept of poetry that starts from the reality of the active human being and puts this the theme in contrast to an autonomous poetry that brought abstraction and themes such as eternity or poetry itself to the fore. Neruda thus followed the philosopher Ortega y Gasset, who lamented in his work La deshumanización del arte that poetry was becoming more and more distant from people who were not directly involved in the artistic debate precisely because of ever more abstractions.32 So let the poetry we seek be worn out by the works of the hands as by an acid, permeated by sweat and smoke, smelling of urine and of lily, soiled by the various activities carried on within and without the law. An impure poetry like a suit, like a body, with stains of nourishment and shameful attitudes, with wrinkles, observations, dreams, waking, prophecies, declarations of love and hate, beasts, shocks, idylls, political convictions, denials, doubts, affirmations, taxes […]. Without consciously excluding anything, without consciously accepting anything.33

What happened in Spanish literature before the fascist regime of Generalissimo Franco (Neruda then worked as consul of Chile in Madrid) can be transferred to the music-aesthetic debate in Germany after World War II. The idea of an “absolute music”, as formulated by Eduard Hanslick as early as 185434 and declared as a standard by Carl Dahlhaus for the second half of the twentieth century35 and last but not least Adorno’s apodictic postulates about what is and is not allowed in the arts36 31

Neruda (1935, p. 3). This means, e.g., the Romantic-influenced striving for originality and innovation, the use of private symbols and metaphors, the self-sufficiency, purity, and authenticity of art, anti-realism (a poem should not mean, only be), the logical incoherence of symbolism (meaning of the subconscious and dreams). Intranscendence (abandonment of a “moral”), dissolution of logical connections; cf. Ortega y Gasset (1955) (orig. 1925). 33 Neruda (1935), op.cit. 34 Hanslick (1858, p. 23 f.): “What instrumental music cannot do, music must never be said to be able to do; for it alone is pure, absolute tonal art. (…) We must even reject sound pieces with certain headings or programs, whenever the ‘content’ of the music is concerned.” 35 Dahlhaus (1978). 36 Adorno (1970, p. 456): “The arts have no general laws, but objectively mandatory bans apply in each of its phases. They radiate from canonical works. Their existence immediately commands what is no longer possible from now on.“ Cf. Adorno (1990, p. 40): “The musical material commands a “canon of the illicit”—spent sounds, techniques and forms no longer available to the composer.” 32

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and what is ‘pure’ music,37 form a clear contrast to Henze’s conception of music and composing.

4 Musica Impura Hans Werner Henze left the idea of absolute music behind early on, and even at the beginning of his career he used “impure” instruments from folk and jazz music, for example, as one of the first composers of serious music, the vibraphone (in the Whitman cantata Whispers from Heavenly Death in 1948) or the ocarina, jazz trumpet and trombone (in his radio opera Das Ende einer Welt in 1953). In 1971 he speaks of “musica impura” for the first time, explicitly referring to Pablo Neruda.38 He says that he uses current compositional techniques in such a way that they become politically useful, which he equates with “making them impure”. For him, it is not only about the opposition of word-bound or pure instrumental music, but also about content drawn from reality and especially about the musical material itself.

4.1 Sinfonia N.6 One year later, he specified this approach using the example of his Sinfonia N.6, with which he questioned everything that constitutes “pure” and “absolute” music and which he composed in a revolutionary spirit and with enormous ambition: The piece was intended as a report “on our difficulties with music, our difficulties with the form of society in which we live, our difficulties in making the revolution, our difficulties with the Third World”.39 Formally, it is a three-movement work, but its movements merge seamlessly, and the orchestra is divided into two groups positioned opposite each other, playing “contrasting themes that are also dialectical in themselves”.40 All this discharges into a powerful polyphony, seen by the composer as an expression of the historical development of the genre. Here, at the height of his revolutionary musical efforts, Henze once again makes it clear what he thinks of Adorno’s canon of the banned. He contaminates the work with ‘used’, ‘broken’ material and, even more, with the use of instruments that have hitherto been held in low esteem in the bourgeois philharmonic colour spectrum. Instruments from popular music such as banjo, electric guitar, electrically amplified violin and Hammond organ, 37

Adorno (1970, p. 223): “Evident, for example, how much the composer who disposes with tonal material receives it from tradition. However, if he uses, critically against that, an autonomous: completely purified of terms like consonance and dissonance, triad, diatonic, then the negation contains the negated.” 38 Henze (1984, p. 154). 39 Ibid., p. 190. 40 Ibid., p. 191.

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as well as percussion instruments that reflect the reality of the oppressed, such as steel plates and chains. Contamination also occurs in the contextual references: In the first section he uses a Vietnamese freedom song, Stars in the Night, which is first heard on the banjo. The second section is based on Miguel Barnet’s poem Fe de erratas (List of Errors), and Mikis Theodorakis’ anthem of freedom can be heard on the electric guitar. Henze considers these quotations to be “common vocabulary”.41 However, and this is the price to be paid for this enormous effort, he fails in his claim to write easily accessible music for the revolutionary masses. In later revisions, Henze then recomposes the aleatoric and the freely intonable passages, strengthens the string part and pulls the two orchestral groups together, mainly to make the piece accessible to traditional symphony orchestras. For the composer, this music is impura not only because its parameters do not follow the rules, but also because it is “stained with weaknesses, disadvantages and imperfections”,42 with the lived life of its author, his actions, thoughts and feelings. From the perception of such a vita impura thus follows the creation of an ars impura,43 “if the artist does not want to choose the escape routes into idealisation or falsification of human conditions or even into the trivial play with sounds and forms.44 ”

4.2 Requiem Yet another example of Henze’s musica impura is his Requiem written in 1990/1992. Here he has transformed a text-bound genre into absolute music, but it is by no means content-free. He describes the work as “secular, multicultural and fraternal”.45 The composition was triggered by the death of his close and long-time friend Michael Vyner, the artistic director of the London Sinfonietta. Several friends of Henze’s died in the same period at the end of the 1980s. Including Wenzel Lüdecke,46 Luigi Nono,47 Manfred Gräter48 and Dieter Schidor.49 In addition, the Second Gulf War was raging, during which US General Schwarzkopf had hospitals and schools bombed and created the cynical term “surgical strikes”. In his autobiography, written almost

41

Ibid., p. 192. Ibid. 43 Petersen (2005, p. 315). 44 Ibid. 45 Henze (1996a, p. 576). 46 Wenzel Lüdecke (1917–1989), movie-producer and founder of the Berliner Synchron, still one of the most important dubbing studios in Germany. 47 Luigi Nono (1924–1990), Italian composer; cf. Henze (1996a, b, c, p. 574). 48 Manfred Gäter (1928–1989), head of the music department of the WDR (West German Broadcast Company); cf. Henze (1996a, b, c, p. 450). 49 Dr. jur. Dieter Schidor (1948–87), movie-actor, -director und -producer; cf. Henze (1996a, b, c, p. 371 f). 42

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at the same time, the composer describes in detail the background for each of the nine movements.50 Siegfried Mauser has described how the contamination is achieved here using three “strategies of secularization”51 : The liturgically bound form of a requiem is being deconstructed by the renunciation of words; the subtitle “Nine Spiritual Concertos” intensifies this break, since it refers to Heinrich Schütz’s word-bound spiritual concertos. Mauser sees the second secularisation strategy in Henze’s insertion of a ninth movement entitled ave verum corpus in the actually eight-movement Requiem, the eight-line content of which corresponds to Mozart’s version Ave verum K. 618. The third strategy, following Mauser, concerns the concretion of content mentioned above. In Henze’s mourning, “personal and general aspects”52 are intertwined, with the “alternating speech of lament and accusation”53 constituting the essential semantic element of this strategy. Mauser furthermore mentions a great openness to external elements combined with a formally closed character of the work through multiple intertextual references,54 consisting of self-quotations and allusions as well as quotations from other works. Thus the first movement (Introitus) emerged from a fragmentary piece for piano and seven instruments that Henze had composed for the Marigny Theatre in Paris in 1956 and which has not given him a moment’s peace since. Henze writes: “With my Requiem I had solved the Marigny complex, closed a chapter in the history of my œuvre.”55 Movements II (Dies irae), III (Ave verum corpus) and IV (Lux aeterna) are based on the 1991 Quintetto, even if “direct references have occasionally been made unrecognizable”56 or even disappear completely. Henze conceived movements V (Rex tremendae), VIII (Lacrimosa) and IX (Sanctus) as a trumpet concerto for Håkan Hardenberger, which can be performed independently of the Requiem. In movement VII (Tuba mirum), Mauser recognises quotations from Henze’s oratorio The Raft of the Medusa,57 and movement VI (Agnus Dei) renounces intertextual references to the composer’s own work. Intertextual external references range from “hidden allusions to overt quotations”,58 such as the original melody of the Dies Irae in movement I (Introitus) and movement II (Dies Irae) as well as Mozart’s Ave verum corpus in movement III (Ave verum). The Badenweiler Marsch and Schubert’s Military March are quoted in movement V (Rex Tremendae) and Berg’s Wozzeck and a Bach chorale in movement VIII (Lacrimosa). Mauser’s remarks demonstrate “a structural and

50

Cf. Henze (1996a, b, c, pp. 573–578). Mauser (2002, p. 56 f). 52 Ibid., p. 57. 53 Ibid. 54 Ibid., p. 58. 55 Henze (1996a, p. 577). 56 Mauser (2002, p. 59). 57 Ibid. 58 Ibid. 51

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semantic richness of relationships that decisively enhances the communicative and linguistic character of the music in Henze’s Requiem”.59

4.3 Further Text-Supported Instrumental Works Henze’s other instrumental works with textual underpinnings are also impura, telling of states of mind, love, fear, of events from reality, of ancient heroes and anti-heroes, such as the two cello concertos Ode to the West Wind inspired by a poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley and Love Songs, based on six English poems from the various artistic periods and containing the most diverse mental conditions and numerous different rhyme schemes. Although the composer does not want to see these verses published, he has authorised Peter Petersen, who was able to decode them with expertise, to do so for an academic publication.60 His large-scale orchestral work Heliogabalus Imperator refers to Artaud’s Heliogabal or the Crowned Anarchist, and the guitar concerto Ode to an Aeolian Harp from 1986 is based on four poems by Eduard Mörike. The two guitar sonatas Royal Winter Music I and II are character portraits of Shakespeare’s theatre figures. Henze himself has often expressed himself about the linguistic quality of the music, especially of his music. But it also has gestural qualities, as for example in the 1968 oratorio Das Floß der Medusa (The Raft of the Medusa), where the choristers gradually stride along the podium from the left, the realm of the living, provided with wind instruments, to the right. Into the realm of the dead, characterised by string instruments. This is not only a scenic element in a concert piece, but also a composed sonic process that makes the increasing dying on the raft audible. Henze’s music, via these linguistic and gestural qualities, also has a theatrical character, or, as he put it at a lecture in Zurich in 1993: “We have all the good reasons at hand to be allowed to understand music as a performing art.”61

5 Opera Impura “Everything moves towards the theatre and comes back from there”62 Hans Werner Henze stated at a lecture in Berlin in 1963. Henze’s anti-war opera, the Actions for music entitled We Come to the River is “full of allusions to today’s military dictatorships and liberation movements”63 : there are simultaneous actions on three stages, each one assigned to a musical ensemble, 59

Ibid., p. 60. Petersen (1995b, p. 267–302). 61 Henze (1999, p. 136). 62 Henze (1984, p. 102). 63 Petersen (1995a, p. 82). 60

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also sitting on stage and not in the orchestra pit. All the musicians are soloists; the percussion player has scenic parts (The drummer, madman 10). A military band parades through the audience hall as it plays to victory. The march they play, however, is distorted and depicts the horror of war (“Lieutenant Jones has his legs shot off.”) An insurgent who wants to convince the general interned in an insane asylum, to help the resistance, is related with allusions from the music of the liberation movements.64 While he sings, “They break musician’s hands …”, he is accompanied by the guitar, undoubtedly an allusion to the “treatment” of Victor Jara in the Santiago stadium. In addition, there are duetting viola d’amore and viola da gamba as stylisation means. Thus, with the music of the oppressors and the victims, the composer’s attitude towards them is made audible at the same time. When the young emperor intones his Buddha legend, a Balinese bamboo organ, the angklung, is heard together with temple bells and ancient cymbals. An organist plays chorale fantasies on Hans Leo Hassler’s “Herzlich thut mich verlangen” twice, at the beginning, after a deserter has been sentenced by the general and towards the end, after the sentence against the general has been carried out.65 The positioning of the musicians on the stage, “dressed as if for a gala performance”,66 is part of the “stage design”, their performance becomes part of the stage action. The use of instruments from different cultures illustrates the global dimension of the problem under discussion. In this concept, music acquires a gestural character and becomes an acting person itself. In his dissertation,67 Stephan Sebastian Schmidt deduces the term opera impura directly from Henze’s concept of musica impura, and with this Schmidt defines a “didactic form of music theatre that is used extra-aesthetically. Independently of Marxist theories”.68 In an opera impura, a “fusion of the trivial with the sublime, the comic with the tragic, and the cliché with the profound is attempted”.69 It “combines enlightenment with entertainment”.70 According to Schmidt, it is “characteristic that it uses simple, popular musical and literary material”71 and it is opposed to “elitist thinking”.72 Schmidt considers his definition to be appropriate for a series of English operas, beginning with John Gay’s Beggar’s Opera (1728), through the four Savoy operas by Gilbert and Sullivan (H.M.S. Pinafore, 1878, Patience, 1881, Princess Ida 1884, The Mikado 1887), to Vaughan Williams’ The Poisoned Kiss from 1929. They all have in common, he says, to fuse entertainment and instruction, and their satirical

64

Petersen (1988, p. 85). Henze (1984, p. 263). 66 Ibid., p. 264. 67 Cf. Schmidt (2002). 68 Ibid., p. 15. 69 Ibid., p. 8. 70 Ibid. 71 Ibid. 72 Ibid. 65

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character allows the audience various possibilities of interpretation or even just simple pleasure.73 Then he turns to the two operas Henze made with Edward Bond, first We Come to the River, which had its world premiere at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden in 1976, then The English Cat, which was performed for the first time at the Schwetzingen Schlossfestspiele in 1983. He denies both pieces the character of an opera impura, because they are not easy to understand, have too high an ambition, with which. Incidentally, the composer failed. The authors “blatantly present their criticism and impose their view of things on the audience in an authoritarian manner. (…) They do not flinch from imposing the future, supposedly righteous order by fascistoid means.”74 Moreover, the two works “have been converted from committed art to agitation and propaganda because of their radicalization”.75 We Come to the River would be a “proletarian Marxist agitprop opera”, The English Cat a modern form of opera buffa. In both satirical criticism became denunciatory, Schmidt said. “In The English Cat, Bond and Henze defame institutions that promote order, such as the church, the judiciary and the family, as antisocial institutions at their core.”76 Schmidt never gets tired of emphasising that both writer and composer are “Marxist”, “socialist” or “leftist”,77 as if the main artistic interest of the authors lay on the class struggle. It seems as if the author is not so much criticising the two artists’ plays as their political attitudes: “The ending of the opera, like that of all Bond’s works, is cautiously optimistic, for a tragic ending would counteract the Marxist conception of history.”78 But there is also a methodological problem with the term opera impura: Schmidt is deducing it from Henze’s aesthetics and uses it as a music-historical term, superimposing it on earlier works, thereby reducing it to just instruction and entertainment.79 Impura in poetry and music, however, is much more, as already has been pointed out. In We Come to the River, opera impura assumes a gestural and linguistic character; Sang Myung Han has proposed the term action music for it, which she took from Henze’s notes on his Second Violin Concerto80 and developed on four of his works directly preceding River: El Cimarrón (1970), Der langwierige Weg in die Wohnung der Natascha Ungeheuer (The Tedious Way to the Place of Natascha Ungeheuer, 1971), the Second Violin Concerto (1972) and the TV opera La Cubana (1973).81 These pieces represent four different hybrid music-theatrical forms invented by Henze: El Cimarrón he calls a Rezital, derived from the English recital, which is 73

Cf. Ibid., p. 57. Ibid., p. 228. 75 Ibid., p. 160. 76 Ibid., p. 196. 77 Cf. Ibid., pp. 1, 2, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 160, 161, 162,163,165, 166, 167, 169, 175, 183, 197, 199, 206, 209, 222, 224, 231, 232. 78 Ibid., p. 183. 79 Cf. Förger (2003). 80 Henze (1984, p. 164). 81 Cf. Han (2009). 74

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a simple song evening. The unusual Germanisation, however, points beyond this form of event to scenic elements. Henze himself staged the premiere in 1970 at the Aldeburgh Festival. Natascha Ungeheuer is subtitled Show with 17, which suggests a revue-like character and at the same time alludes to show business82 ; in his Second Violin Concerto, on the other hand, a bass-baritone participates and the violinist, costumed as Baron von Münchhausen, also acts as a speaker, specifically by reciting Gödel’s formula in Enzensberger’s version: In any sufficiently abundant system, propositions can be articulated that are neither proofable - nor disproofable - within the system, unless the system itself were inconsistent.83

La Cubana has the genre designation Vaudeville (New York entertainment theatre around 1900) and makes use of all the possibilities of television that were common at the time, such as atmospheric sounds, cuts, flashbacks, etc. In retrospect, the composer considers all these pieces as preparatory works for the opera We Come to the River,84 where the techniques and music-dramaturgical methods till then developed, the gestural and linguistic character of his music are culminating.

6 Hybrid Forms of Musica Impura and Opera Impura In addition to the three hybrid works mentioned by Sang Myung, Henze experimented with numerous different semi-scenic or imagined scenic forms, right up to the end of his life. The examples can only be mentioned here in a very cursory way, but their genre designations and subtitles are sufficiently instructive:

6.1 Cantatas with Scenic Elements These include Moralities from 1966, subtitled Three Scenic Plays by W. H. Auden based on Aesopian fables, and the one-hour piece Opfergang (Immolazione) from 2010. Henze set Franz Werfel’s dramatic poem Das Opfer (The Sacrifice, 1913) to music for singers. Instrumentalists and concert piano.

6.2 Melodrama The dramma in musica Aristaeus composed in 2003 is a melodrama for narrator and orchestra. In this work he revisits the Orpheus myth and writes his own libretto 82

Henze (1984, p. 194). Ibid., p. 165. 84 Ibid., p. 255. 83

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based on the retelling by the Italian Renaissance poet Angelo Poliziano from Montepulciano.

6.3 Concert Opera The concert opera Phaedra, premiered in Berlin in 2007, is an opera with concert elements, i.e. musical sections with suspended stage action, and the musicians are placed on the stage. Here too, as in River, the musicians’ performance becomes part of the stage action.

6.4 Concert Forms with Explicit Theatrical Content This refers to concertante works where the singers and musicians sometimes take on characters and then return to the role of concert musician. These include the 1973 song collection Voices, which contains elements of musical theatre, and the Second Violin Concerto mentioned above.

6.5 Imaginary Theatre The composer himself has invented this term and used it for two pieces, El Rey de Harlem (Imaginary Theatre I, 1979), for mezzo-soprano and small ensemble with a text by Federico García Lorca, and the clarinet concerto Le miracle de la rose (Imaginary Theatre II, 1982), following the homonymous text by Jean Genet. The music tells a complex story. In the first case with text. In the second without. The listener should be able to follow it through the music itself.

7 Contribution to Social Progress Henze’s efforts to develop the linguistic, gestural and theatrical character of music are fed by his general human, political and aesthetic considerations. He sees himself not only as a creative artist, but also as a mediator, stimulator and political actor. He is not concerned with the low-threshold artistic standard to reach the masses, but with the low-threshold access to his artistic creations and to music per se. With this attitude, he set up the Cantiere Internazionale d’Arte Montepulciano in 1976, reviving the genre of community opera, founded in the USA from 1935 by

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Aron Copland, Marc Blitzstein and Roger Sessions85 and continued in England by Benjamin Britten.86 He wrote arrangements of the Paisiello operas Don Chisciotte della Mancha and Re Teodoro in Venezia as well as his children’s opera Pollicino, a compilation of the Hansel and Gretel material by the fairy tale collectors Grimm, Perrault and Collodi. This opera is also worth a closer look with regard to the concept of musica impura, on the one hand because the composer assigned dramaturgical, i.e. narrative and gestural tasks to the instruments: The recorders, their delicate voices full of agony, obviously represent the souls of children - the weepiness and tremulousness, the unfinishedness of the recorder’s sound speaks of their sorrows, their sighs, their sufferings. In the sound of the harmonium we recognise the bigotry of the adults. The guitar music is closely related to the good things in the countryside - peace, warmth and well-being.87

On the other hand, life-historical and emotional aspects of the composer merge into the narrative and the music, Henze’s own childhood memories of hunger and cold, fear and joy.88 These memories burst forth from the subconscious, not least because he undergoes several years of therapy with the Roman psychoanalyst Michele Risso after the death of Ingeborg Bachmann in 1973. Risso finally suggests radically changing the ending of the fairy tale, which he finds immoral and uneducational.89 After the children in the play have survived all dangers, freed the girls from the claws of the man-eater and passed the fire and water test, they do not return to the parents who abandoned them previously. In the end, they have become free of them and live out their adolescence independently and happily. While establishing the Cantiere and the musical work associated with it, Hans Werner Henze, together with numerous colleagues and friends, transformed a dying city into a flourishing community. In this respect, the social impact of Musica impura is even measurable. In the years that followed, he founded other music projects in Austria, teaching young people the art of composition. Thus, the rock opera Sperrstund (Closing Hour) was created in Mürzzuschlag, composed by young people, and a community opera in Deutschlandsberg, Robert the Devil, was also invented by young people.90 In a workshop at the Schleswig–Holstein Festival, he taught composition to teachers who would henceforth teach this art in school lessons, just like reading and writing.91 With all these projects, Henze has a wide impact on society. His starting point is always the linguistic nature of music: “What I would like is to achieve that music 85

Kerstan (2000, p. 16 f.); cf. Zuck (1980, p. 161): It was a job creation measure for unemployed musicians brought about by Roosevelt’s New Deal. In this context, the operas The Second Hurricane by Copland, The Cradle Will Rock by Marc Blitzstein and Der Jasager by Kurt Weill were produced, among others. These productions at the Henry Street Settlement Theatre marked the beginning of the career of the great director Orson Welles. 86 Noye’s Fludde from 1958. 87 Henze (1984, p. 351). 88 Ibid. p. 349. 89 Henze (1996a, p. 470). 90 Cf. Kerstan (2006, pp. 169–177). 91 Cf. Henze (1998).

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becomes language and does not remain this sound space in which feeling can be reflected in an uncontrolled and ‘emptied’ way. Music would have to be understood like language.”92 In this spirit, he also founded and ran the Munich Biennale—International Festival for New Music Theatre. As a shining star, Alban Berg’s Wozzeck, its concept of realism and its aesthetic aspirations stand above the commissioned works realised by young composers as they confront the questions of the time and “in a lifethreatening confrontation with themselves and the musical material, search for a personal answer, for an unprecedented denomination of truth”.93 This commitment also contains cultural and socio-political urgency, starting with the claim to get New Music out of the night studios and to let new works emerge for the repertoire, to the establishment of composition workshops, new music-theatrical forms such as puppet operas and street music theatre, to the promotion of female composers—in four festivals under Henze’s artistic direction, 12 women received a commission to compose a piece of music theatre. In the course of time, the term musica impura made a certain career: in 1983, German composer Mathias Spahlinger calls a piece for soprano, guitar and percussion with an explicit message, the Neruda quote pobre por culpa de los ricos (poor through the fault of the rich) música impura.94 Finally. In his 2016 dissertation Música impura: A Noção de Presença na Criação e Performance Sonora (Música impura: The Concept of Presence in Sound Production and Performance),95 the Brazilian Gregory Ribeiro Silva looked at the performance of the musicians, their extra-musical means and their unconscious or conscious effect on the listeners.

8 Conclusion The concept of Musica impura corresponds to an attitude and an aesthetic concept that characterises Hans Werner Henze’s entire oeuvre. His music is never selfsufficient, but points beyond the notes and wants to make an impact. The means for this are numerous; they begin with the exploration and, if you will, exploitation of his own mental, material and political life or are extracted from literature. He always composes at the height of his skill and awareness, knowing that his music is not immediately catchy and understandable to everyone. But he finds ways and means to make his highly complex, polyphonic and often polyrhythmic works accessible. He uses allusions and quotations from his own music or works by composers he reveres, but always stylised and alienated. Henze’s instrumentarium consists of musical instruments from all over the world, using them in their uniqueness and diversity and not amalgamating them into a world 92

Henze (1984, p. 191 f). Henze (1988, p. 8). 94 Spahlinger (1995). 95 Ribeiro Silva (2016). 93

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music, likewise rhythms, allusions and quotations from jazz, folk music or folklore, also being stylised. In addition, he includes the musicians in his concept, regarding them as partners and not as a sound body, making them visible and thus allowing their performance to become a gestural component of the sounding music. He lets them show him advanced and newly invented playing techniques and introduces them to his compositional material. Henze increasingly employs the musicians as soloists, thus contributing to their emancipation. In some works, they take on the role of the conductor, who in turn is transformed from an authoritarian ruler into a partner of the musicians; in Natascha Ungeheuer, he is explicitly called the sign-giver. All these musical resources. Including alienation, irony, parody and persiflage, are used in a dramaturgical context, thus contributing to the linguistic and gestural quality of Henze’s music. The importance of Hans Werner Henze’s Musica impura for progress is demonstrated on the one hand by the persisting high number of performances and still controversial reception of his works, and on the other hand by the further development of his two great musical deeds, the founding of the Cantiere Internazionale d’Arte Montepulciano, which has been in existence for 47 years, and the Munich Biennale—International Festival for New Music Theatre, which recently experienced its 18th run after 34 years.

References Adorno, T. W.: Ästhetische Theorie. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt/Main (1970) Adorno, T.W.: Philosophie der neuen Musik. In: Gesammelte Schriften, Band 12: 2nd ed. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt/Main (1990; orig. 1949) Bachmann, I.: Die wunderliche Musik. In: Ch. Koschel et al. (eds.): Ingeborg Bachmann, I.: Musik und Dichtung. In: H.-K. Ruppel (ed.): Musica Viva, pp. 161–166. Nymphenburger Verlagsbuchhandlung, Munich (1959) Bachmann, I.: “Todesarten”-Projekt. Kritische Ausgabe. Vol. 3.1. Malina. Eds.: D. Göttsche, M. Albrecht. Piper, Munich (1995) Bachmann, I.: Enigma. Für Hans Werner Henze aus der Zeit der ARIOSI. In: H. M. Enzensberger (ed.): Kursbuch 15, pp. 91–95. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt (1968) Bachmann. Werke. 4th vol.: Essays. Reden. Vermischte Schriften. Anhang. Piper, Munich (1978a) Bachmann, I.: Sämtliche Gedichte. Piper, Munich (1978b) Brockmeier, J.: Sterben und Erinnern in Hans Werner Henzes “Requiem”. In: Jacob A. v. Belzen (ed.) Musik und Religion. Psychologische Zugänge, pp. 165–182. Springer, Wiesbaden (2013) Cybenko, L.: Musik als grenzübergreifendes Thema bei Ingeborg Bachmann: der Fall “Malina”. In: TRANS. Internet-Zeitschrift für Kulturwissenschaften, No. 13 (2002) https://www.inst.at/trans/ 13Nr/cybenko13.htm. Accessed 01 April 2022 Dahlhaus, C.: Die Idee der absoluten Musik. Bärenreiter, Kassel (1978) Förger, A.: Stephan Sebastian Schmidt: Opera impura. Formen engagierter Oper Frankfurter Zeitschrift für Musikwissenschaft: in England. In. Jg. 6, 180–188 (2003) Han, S.M.: Action music. Das Konzept der musik-theatralischen Kompositionen von Hans Werner Henze 1966–1976. Dissertation, Berlin (2009) https://refubium.fu-berlin.de/bitstream/handle/fub 188/5410/01.Henze_Han.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y. Accessed 29 April 2022

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Hanslick, E.: Vom Musikalisch-Schönen. Ein Beitrag zur Revision der Ästhetik der Tonkunst. 2nd revised ed. Rudolph Weigel, Leipzig (1858) Henze, H.W.: Apollo et Hyazinthus. Improvisationen für Cembalo, Altstimme und acht Soloinstrumente über das Gedicht Im Park von Georg Trakl. Score, Schott, Mainz (1949) Henze, H.W.: Musik und Politik, 2nd revised and enlarged edition, ed. J. Brockmeier, dtv, Munich (1984) Henze, H.W.: Neues Musiktheater. Almanach zur 1. Münchener Biennale. Hanser, Munich (1988) Henze, H.W.: Reiselieder mit böhmischen Quinten. Autobiographische Mitteilungen. Fischer, Frankfurt (1996a) Henze. H.W.: Language, Music and Artistic Invention. Given at the Jubilee Hall, Aldeburgh on Tuesday 11 June 1996 during the Forty-ninth Aldebugh Festival of Music and the Arts (= The Prince of Hesse Memorial Lecture 1996). Britten-Pears-Library, Aldeburgh (1996b) Henze, H.W.: Ein Werkverzeichnis 1946–1996c. Mainz, Schott (1996c) Henze, H.W.: Komponieren in der Schule. Notizen aus einer Werkstatt. Schott, Mainz (1998) Henze, H.W.: Musiksprache und künstlerische Erfindung. In: Henze, H.W. (ed.): Musik und Mythos. Neue Aspekte der musikalischen Ästhetik V. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main (1999) Höller, H.: “Enigma”. Ingeborg Bachmann “An die Musik”. In: Letzte, unveröffentlichte Gedichte, Entwürfe und Fassungen von Ingeborg Bachmann. H. Höller, ed., p. 161, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main (1998) Jacobshagen, A.: Musica impura. Der langwierige Weg in die Wohnung der Natascha Ungeheuer von Hans Werner Henze und die Berliner Studentenbewegung. In: Jacobshagen, A, Leniger, M. (eds.) Rebellische Musik. Gesellschaftlicher Protest und kultureller Wandel um 1968, pp. 103– 124. Dohr, Cologne (2007) Lukian von Samasota: Göttergespräche. XIV. Unglücklicher Tod des schönen Hyacinthus. In: Luikian: Lügengeschichten und Dialoge, pp. 494–496. Greno, Nördlingen (1985), (first published at Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, Leipzig, 1788/89) Kerstan, M.: Künstlerische Kulturarbeit. Eine empirische Untersuchung zum Jugendmusikfest Deutschlandsberg. Dissertation, Tübingen (2000) Kerstan, M.: Hans Werner Henze als Erzieher. In: M. Kerstan and C. Wolken (eds.): Hans Werner Henze. Komponist der Gegenwart, pp. 169–177. Henschel, Berlin (2006) Kerstan, M.: Homosexuelle Spuren im Œuvre Hans Werner Henzes. In: Grönke, K., Zywietz, M.: Musik und Homosexualitäten. Tagungsberichte Bremen 2017 und 2018, pp. 191–208. Textem, Hamburg (2021) Mauser, S.: Henzes Requiem und die Ästhetik einer “musica impura“. In: Hans-Klaus Jungheinrich (ed.) Im Laufe der Zeit. Kontinuität und Veränderung bei Hans Werner Henze. Symposion, 8. und 9. September 2001, pp. 55–61. Alte Oper Frankfurt am Main, Schott Musik International, Mainz (2002) Miglio, C.: Gedächtnis, Schrift, “Musica impura”. Ingeborg Bachmanns Lieder von einer Insel. In: Biti, V., Liska, V. (eds.) Arcadia—International Journal of Literary Culture Internationale Zeitschrift für literarische Kultur, issue 42 pp. 352–374. Walter De Gruyter, Berlin (2007) Naso, P.O.: Buch X: Die Lieder des Orpheus von göttergeliebten Knaben und böser Leidenschaft verfallenen Mädchen. v. 162–216: Hyacinthus. In: Naso, P. O.: Metamorphosen, pp. 257 ff. dtv, Munich and Zurich (1988) Neruda, P.: Sobre una poesía sin pureza. In: Caballo verde para la poesía. P. Neruda, ed., No. 1, Oct. 1935. C. Mendez and M. Altolaguirre, Madrid (1935) Ortega y Gasset, J.: Die Vertreibung des Menschen aus der Kunst. In: Gesammelte Werke, Vol. 2, pp. 229–264. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart (1955) (orig. 1925: La deshumanización del arte) Petersen, P.: Hans Werner Henze. Ein politischer Musiker, Argument, Hamburg (1988) Petersen, P.: Tanz-, Jazz- und Marschidiome im Musiktheater Hans Werner Henzes. Zur Konkretisierung des Stilbegriffs “musica impure” In: Musiktheorie 10/1, pp. 73–86, LaaberVerlag, Laaber (1995a)

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Petersen, P.: Liebeslieder. In: Petersen, P. (ed) Hans Werner Henze. Werke der Jahre 1984–1993 (= Kölner Schriften zur Neuen Musik vol. 4), J. Fritsch and D. Kämper (eds.), pp. 267–302, Schott, Mainz (1995b) Petersen, P.: Musica impura« im Zeichen gesellschaftlichen Engagements – Hans Werner Henze: Das Floß der Medusa (1968). In: Geschichte der Musik im 20. Jahrhundert, Bd. III: 1945–1975, ed. H. -W. Heister, pp. 312–321, Laaber-Verlag, Laaber (2005) Petersen, P.: Hans Werner Henze – Ingeborg Bachmann. »Undine« und »Tasso« in Ballett, Erzählung, Konzert und Gedicht, pp. 74–115. Argus, Schliengen (2014) Reina, M. F.: Pablo Neruda y los poetas españoles, Centro Virtual Cervantes. Instituto Cervantes. https://cvc.cervantes.es/literatura/escritores/neruda/acerca/reina.htm. Accessed 15 March 2022 Ribeiro Silva, G.: Música impura: A Noção de Presença na Criação e Performance Sonora, Dissertation. São Paolo (2016). https://docplayer.com.br/88478941-Gregory-ribeiro-silva.html. Accessed 12 April 2022 Schmidt, S.S.: Opera impura. Formen engagierter Opern in England. Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, Trier (2002) Schubart, C.F.D.: Ideen zu einer Ästhetik der Tonkunst. In: Schubart, C.F.D.: C. F. D. Schubart’s gesammelte Schriften und Schicksale, Vol. 5, J. Scheible, Stuttgart (1839) Soproni, Z.: Musik und Dichtung im Spiegel einer Freundschaft. Ingeborg Bachmann und Hans Werner Henze. In: http://acta.bibl.u-szeged.hu/16990/1/ost_studien_002_115-121.pdf, pp. 115– 121 (2008). Accessed 18 March 2022 Spahlinger, M.: música impura. Peer Music, Hamburg-New York (1995) Trakl, G.: Sebastian im Traum. Sammlung. Wolff, Leipzig (1915) Zuck, B.: A History of Musical Americanism. UMI Research Press, Ann Arbor (1980)

Michael Kerstan, * 1955 in Stuttgart (Baden-Württemberg), Dr. rer. soc., is director of the Hans Werner Henze Foundation, Munich and freelance stage director. 1995 doctorate with a study on the social impacts of a music festival at the University of Tübingen: Künstlerische Kulturarbeit. Eine empirische Untersuchung zum Jugendmusikfest Deutschlandsberg (2000). Operatic stage productions include El Cimarrón (H. W. Henze), which has been touring with the El CimarrónEnsemble from 1999 on in numerous cities all over Europe, The Child God (Bun Ching Lam) at the CrossSound Festival in Juneau (Alaska) 2006, Phaedra (H. W. Henze) at the Maggio musicale fiorentino, Florence 2008 (awarded Premio Abbiati), Comuni-canti (Vito Palumbo), Sassari 2008, Nothing and More (Jack Fortner), Fresno 2014, Dido and Aeneas (Henry Purcell) at the Cantiere Internazionale d’Arte in 2016. Opera libretti include The Egg Musher (Stefan Hakenberg, Ingolstadt 2007), Das Babylon-Experiment (Matthew King, Nuremberg 2008), Gisela! (H. W. Henze, Cultural Capital of Europe Ruhr. 2010). Monographies on the biography of Bella Rosenkranz: Bella. Odyssee einer Fürtherin in der Sowjetunion (2005) and the Nuremberg operetta: “Souris Arche”. Kurt Leo Sourisseaux und die Nürnberger Operette ab 1950 (2007). Publications on Hans Werner Henze, Karl Amadeus Hartmann, Benjamin Britten, together with Clemens Wolken, editor of Hans Werner Henze. Komponist der Gegenwart (2006).

Singing, Playing and Performing in Popular Music in the Age of Liquid Modernity Alenka Barber-Kersovan

1 Setting the Theoretical Stage The still ongoing aftermath of the COVID pandemic brought to light ground-breaking changes of all aspects of musical production, distribution, and consumption. In practical terms the pandemic did not induce any significant new facts—it rather exposed the radical shifts in individual and collective performative practices that were active already before. Especially the lockdowns with their brutal silencing of the musical life enlarged as in a magnifying glass the fluidity of relationships between human and non-human agencies and accelerated the re-configurations of collectivity, identity, and interconnectivity due to globalisation and digitalisation. Against this background the present article reflects on the persisting and the changeable elements of popular music from a postmodern perspective, concentrating on singing, playing, and performing. The term postmodern was coined by Jean-François Lyotard (1924–1998) in his The Postmodern Condition—A Report on Knowledge. Contemplating about the general orientation of the society of his time Lyotard argued that the age of modernism dominated by the rational thinking of the eighteenth and nineteenth century came to an end. It has been characterized by non-questionable ‘great narratives’ which served to legitimize the existing social orders and their institutions. In postmodernism, however, which is according to Lyotard rather a state of mind than a historical epoch generalizing theories and believes were replaced by the plurality of different language games, focusing on narrower micronarratives of the everyday life, and promoting plurality of thoughts, concepts, and social practices.1 1

Cf. Lyotard (1984).

A. Barber-Kersovan (B) Institute for Sociology and Cultural Organisation, Leuphana University Lüneburg, Lüneburg, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 H.-W. Heister et al. (eds.), Word Art + Gesture Art = Tone Art, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20109-7_14

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A similar point of departure applied Ulrich Beck (1944–2015) in his Risk Society/Towards a New Modernity.2 In his panoramic analysis of the Western society Beck pictures his ‘second modern’ as a radical break with the framework of the industrial society as prevailed in the nineteenth century. It was replaced by what he called ‘the risk society’, whereby the risks are due to the (unforeseen) side effects of the industrial progress. They are characterized by the erosion of traditional constellations such as family, work, or national sovereignty and caused significant transformations of working conditions, communication patterns and lifestyles. According to Beck the detachment from historically given social values and norms became evident on a global scale and can be tracked down in all aspects of life, including individual biographies. A significant influence on the time diagnosis at the end of the 20th and the beginning of the twenty-first century had the work on ‘liquid modernity’ as conceptualized by Zygmunt Bauman (1925–2017) in his works Modernity and Ambivalence,3 Liquid Modernity4 and Liquid Times: Living in an Age of Uncertainty.5 Bauman’s explanatory model is also based on the premise of the accelerated structural changes of the Western societies, but rejects the terms ‘postmodernism’, ‘second modernism’ and ‘late modernity’ in favour of the ‘liquid modernity’. With this term he describes the dissolution of the fixed order, which leads on one hand to deregulation, decreased security, and fears. But on the other hand, in a contingent world of limitless possibilities the dissolved social frames of reference allow more freedom and reinforce individuality and flexible career designs. To make this fundamental shift plausible Bauman distinguishes between the “solid” and the “liquid” modernity. ‘Solid’ or ‘heavy modernity’ was according to Bauman an era of hardware, bulky machines, big factories, territorial conquests, rationalized bureaucracy, national state structures and mighty empires.6 It was also an era of work, bound on physical effort and integrated in special conditions of welfare and exploitation. Unlike ‘solids’ which are basically rigid and non-changeable, ‘liquids’ cannot easily hold their shape and present a totally different framing7 by promoting exterritorialisation (globalisation) and disembodiment (digitalisation) of all aspects of life. The ‘flexibilization’ of the working market caused the end of permanent employment contracts, replacing them with short term agreements and self-employment. The participation of individuals in social life is determined by their economic potential and submitted to increased de-regulation, and the disintegrated notions of time and space display continuous change as the only remaining permanence.

2

Cf. Beck (1986). Cf. Baumann (1991). 4 Cf. Bauman (2000). 5 Cf. Bauman (2007). 6 Bauman (2000), pp. 113–114. 7 Bauman (2000), p. 24. 3

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2 Defining the Topic Based on the theoretical framework of the liquid society as a metaphor for the social conditions of the first decades of the twenty-first century, this article questions some chosen aspects of singing, playing and performing in a field which is referred to as popular music. Though the word “popular music” as widely used also in everyday contexts seems to rely on a wide consent of presumed meaning, the term itself eludes any attempt of a precise definition. Besides musical practices as well as their theoretical interpretations are a matter of historical changes. This results in a thicket of different definitional approaches,8 which consider historical, structural, aesthetical, communicative, distributive, receptive and commercial aspects. According to Helmut Rösing who undertook a classification of the definitional approaches since the 1960ies, a strong influence on the musical practice had the normative approach. This approach was founded on an alleged hierarchy of music fields with the European classical music being superior to other kinds of musical expression. A result of this dichotomization was the division into the ‘serious’ and ‘popular’ music with meanings such as ‘light’ music (Adorno) or ‘trivial’ music (Dahlhaus) whereby its negative image is still unfavorably influencing cultural politics, copy right, (state) promotion, sponsoring, media programming, music education and the research into musical forms understood as “popular”.9 Theodor W. Adorno adhered to this dichotomy in an essay On Popular Music and generated his arguments from the properties of the musical material. If masterpieces of classical tradition are characterized by the organic development of the musical structure, popular music is based on the repetition of standardized musical formulae. Another aspect that, according to Adorno, contributes to the defamation of this musical genre is its entertaining function.10 Thus, in the context of a normative definition the value of music and its popularity seem to be inversely proportional, which should be evident already from the work-aesthetical analysis with originality as a basic indicator of musical quality.11 In order to avoid the dichotomic division between ‘high’ and ‘low’, ‘elitist’ and ‘mass’ etc. Philip Tagg undertook a further classification in which he considered as a third factor those musical forms which are labeled as folk music and were traditionally a research object of ethnomusicology.12 Tagg compared in his “axiomatic triangle” different kinds of musics according to the dominant type of producer, the form of distribution, the prevailing storage medium, the type of society that gave rise to it, the main mode of financing, the socio-cultural status of the listeners, the congruence or non-congruence of the social context of producers and recipients, the existence of 8

Cf. Rösing (2005); Wicke (1992); Middleton and Manuel (2001). Rösing (2005), p. 33; cf. also Middleton and Manuel (2001). 10 Cf. Adorno (1941/1998). 11 Rösing (2005), p. 37. 12 On this axiomatic triangle is based also Tagg’s definition of popular music in terms of music that is neither folk music nor serious music (Tagg 1979, p. 26). 9

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theory and aesthetics and the author status (anonymous/non-anonymous).13 However, when applied to particular examples, also this definition reaches its limits, since it fails to recognize that several features can be realized in several fields in different ways or be even absent. Further definitional attempts highlight the important role of the media. The print of the sheet music as the first form of commodifying music was followed by a long history of technological innovations, whereby the list of older media which were (and partially still are) formative for musical expression and dissemination of popular music must contain at least gramophone, radio, television, and film. They went hand in hand with the growing music industry such as publishers (Tin Pan Alley), labels, magazines and different kinds of merchandising. Subjected to cross media marketing they induced substantial changes in all aspects of the musical production, distribution and consumption referred to as mediamorphosis in terms of Kurt Blaukopf14 and Alfred Smudits.15 With the accelerated digitalization new possibilities of musical production and distribution came up so that the availability of the music became omnipresent and its consumption increased to a previously unknown extent. Therefore, another common approach links popularity to dissemination, pointing out either to the number of listeners, sales of sound carriers or charts. Based on quantitative data these issues give the impression of objective measurements of popularity, though they fail to link them to the perceptive situations of the consumers and their inscriptions of musical meanings.16 However, though quantitative, qualitative and/or normatively oriented definitions are able to convey informative definition particles, they all fall short in view of a term whose quality lies in its multidimensionality. ‘Popular music’ is a collective term with no clearly definable characteristics on the part of the research object,17 subjected to constantly changing musical practices. It is an organic consequence of the prevailing social conditions, wherefore with Middleton and Manuel fluidity can be considered as the main aspect of what is understood under ‘popular’.18

3 ‘Music’ versus ‘Musicking’ As the rapid social transitions reshape musical practices at an ever-faster rate, also the understanding of the subject/object relationship of popular music underwent significant re-configurations. With the coming up of the New Musicology and the Popular Music Studies the prevailing grand narrative about the autonomy of the 13

Tagg (1982), pp. 41–42. Cf. Blaukopf (1989). 15 Cf. Smudits (2002). 16 Cf. Middleton and Manuel (2001). 17 Rosing (2005), p. 36. 18 Cf. Middleton and Manuel (2001). 14

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artwork was questioned, and the positivist idea of the ‘opus music’, written down in a score in order to retain its ‘solid’ structure, yielded to a broader understanding of music.19 The wide body of New Musicology is influenced by cultural studies, feminism, gender studies, queer theory and postcolonial studies. Promoting new topics, as well as new theoretical and methodological approaches especially the work of Susan McClary20 and Rose Rosengard Subotnik21 is important. Contrary to Eduard Hanslick’s understanding of music as a ‘sounding form’22 on its own right they pointed out to the role of music in the social formation of individuals and groups by influencing their feelings and subjectivities and pleaded for a scientific approach that would reflect the close relationship between the music and its social function. Further, for this essay some suggestions were adopted from Eduard Small’s theory on ‘musicking’. With this newly coined term Small expressed his view that ‘music’ is not a noun (such as in the case of a musical work), but a verb (to music), referring to different aspects of musical performance. Or in other words: Music is not an object, but an activity that is realized in singing, playing, listening, composing and practicing.23 A similar approach is the vibrational theory of music by Nina Eidsheim. She also points out to the non-fixity of music, highlighting the importance of the aural, tactile, spatial, physical, material, and vibrational sensations and well as the social dynamics of musical experiences.24

4 Sounds Versus Words Drawing on the theoretical background presented some chosen aspects of popular music will be subjected to closer examination. As the basic point of departure will serve the plurality of meanings of songs as the major musical form of this field. The term itself refers to a sung or singable poem, which is usually built up in alternation of verses and refrains: Purely instrumental pieces are in popular music seldom and normally consist of instrumental arrangements of well-known hits. Artifacts from this field are mostly associated with individuals or groups which authorize and interpret them.25 Further, since in this musicking practice fixed scores—if provided at all—are restricted to rudimentary sketches of the musical layout, there is a lot of freedom in performative realisation. This allows countless interconnections between singing, 19

An important role played in this connection Joseph Kerman’s essay “How We Got into Analysis, and How to Get Out” in which he pleaded for a disciplinary turn that would advocate for ‘new breath and flexibility’ in how to examine music. 20 Cf. McClary (2006). 21 Cf. Subotnik (1995). 22 Hanslick (1922), p. 58. 23 Cf. Small 1998. 24 Eisdheim (2015), p. 7. 25 Cf. Burdorf (2007).

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playing and performing, and the semantic meaning of a piece can change if one and the same song is being sung by a different singer or on a different occasion.26 Songs are a fusion of word and music, which have to be heard more rather then read.27 However, as in all other musical fields also in popular music the relationship between the words (lyrics) and sounds (“music”) cannot be put on a common enumerator. The broad spectrum of possibilities includes on one hand nonsensical playing with words and syllables such as “Yeah, Yeah, Yeah” (The Beatles) or “Da, Da, Da” (Trio) and on the other hand well-structured lyrics of the Tin-Pan-Alley production. But there are also poetic narratives with high aesthetic value such as those by Leonard Cohen, Patti Smith and Bob Dylan.28 In some cases, such as with singer songwriters, the artists author the lyrics as well as the music, and they also perform their own songs. They put a strong emphasis on the verbal message and the singing part is sparsely accompanied with piano, guitar or a small band, often unplugged. The lyrics encompasses on one hand personal story telling and on the other hand critical testimonials of social injustice as it was the case with the political activism of Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie and others. Critical voices of political singer songwriter accompanied or even carried social movements of the late 1960ies, and some songs still act as anthems of resistance. Further it has to be pointed out that among singer songwriters are comparatively many women, among them Joni Mitchell, Carole King, Suzanne Vega, Tracy Chapman, Alanis Morrissette, Tori Amos and Katie Melua.29 Though the term ‘singer songwriter’ refers predominantly to Anglo-American artists, the phenomenon is known also in other countries. In Germany singer songwriter influenced the so called “Liedermacher”, who draw partially also from the own heritage of the political song (Hanns Eisler, Stefan Wolpe, Paul Dessau etc.). Using German as the main point of cultural identification in West Germany during 1960ies protest songs by artists such as Franz Josef Degenhardt, Reinhard Mey, Konstantin Wecker and Knut Kiesewetter enjoyed considerable popularity. In the then German Democratic Republic the spearheads of the Liedermacher counterculture were Wolf Biermann, Bettina Wegner and Stephan Krawczyk, who however were forced to exile for political reasons.30 In France there is a long tradition of Chansons, which enjoy also international reputation and are sometimes covered in local languages. In Italy singer writing their own music and lyrics are called Cantautori/Cantautrici, and in South America in the 1960ies Nueva Canción was established. Also, in the previously socialist countries there were regional forms of a genre, in which could be sang what might have been forbidden to be spoken out: An example are the Russian chansons by the so-called bards, who also build on historical role models (blatnye pesni).

26

Frith (2004), p. 203. Cf. Bradley (2017). 28 Ammon and Petersdorff (2016), p. 12. 29 Cf. Hamilton and Willims (2016). 30 Cf. Robb (2007). 27

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All examples sketched, as different they might be in terms of musical realization have in common a strong concentration on the verbal message. However, following Simon Frith the meaning of the lyrics should not be understood by its face value, because the text is not read, but sung and performed either live or recorded. That means that the speech acts bear next to their semantic meaning also sound information and different non-verbal forms of communication which give the words different content accentuations. Hence according to Simon Frith the ambiguity of the lyrics can be precisely what makes the song feel relevant for a particular listener by allowing different interpretations.31

5 Rapping Between Speaking, Singing and Playing In some cases, the interaction of lyrics and music is settled in a twilight zone between speaking and singing. Different manifestations of this kind of vocal articulation, called “Sprechgesang”, run like a red thread through the whole music history,32 but got some special features in popular music, especially in Rap and HipHop. With Rap meaning “to chat” or to speak in a rather harsh way a rhythmic distinctive verbal articulation is described which incorporates rhyme, rhythmic speech and ‘street vernacular’.33 It can be traced back to its African roots, in particular the musicking of the West African griots who perform their rhythmically accentuated stories over drums or a sparse instrumentation. Other influences are certain styles of Blues and Jazz and the 1960ies African-American poetry. Some features have been taken over also from Reggae. This applies specially to toasting or boasting the purpose of which is the verbal showmanship.34 In Rap lyrics dominates over music, which serves as a support by emphasizing the metrical structure of the verse. Strong beats of the accompaniment coincident with the stressed beats of the verse, whereby the rhythms of the intervening syllables might be improvised. This is especially the case with Battle-Rap in which a real or fictional opponent is supposed to be verbally humiliated. Also, these speech acts, called dissing, are a traditional form for clarifying disputes with the help of verbal encounters. They can be recorded, but are mostly performed live and freestyled, i.e. improvised without a template, as a competition between two or more rappers in front of the public.35 Early rapping developed out of announcements, which were made by DJs and Masters of Ceremony to keep a party going.36 Usually delivered over a beat by a DJ or turntablist, rap occupies a grey area between speech, prose, poetry and music. 31

Cf. Frith (2004). Cf. Stephan (2016). 33 Keyes (2004), p. 1. 34 Cf. Wynands (1995). 35 Cf. Toop (2000). 36 Cf. Brewster and Broughton (1999). 32

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Another fluid transition considers the beatboxing, in which rhythm instruments are imitated by the voice. With this vocal percussion technique, the rapper creates beats with the lips, tongue, voice and throat, using the help of the inhaled and exhaled air. Especially in the early days of hip-hop, beatboxing was used to support the freestyle Rap, blurring the boundaries between the voice (singing) and the instrument (playing) and producing “instrumental” music with the bodily means of the “vocal”. As exemplified in Rap also in some other popular music genres such as Disco, Reggae, House, Ska, Drum’n’Bass, Ambient, Techno and Electronic Dance Music demarcation lines between issues taken for granted started to falter. As for instance in the case of turntables, which were originally designed as a device for music reproduction, their potential classification as a music instrument relies on the specific form of musicking. It goes hand in hand with the acknowledgment of a DJ as a musician,37 who can be considered as a composer or a performer. DJs might not have any music education in traditional sense, might not be able to play a classical instrument or read music, but with partially virtuosic skills they accomplish a creative contribution by turning pre-recorded music into an endless string of sonic experiences by heavily manipulating it through techniques such as mixing, synchronising, crossfading and scratching. This makes a DJ set a kind of composition, for which the recorded particles are used as a raw material.38 Similar as a traditional band DJs are booked as an ‘act’, fill also big locations, and some of them even enjoy the status of pop-star.

6 Liveness in a Mediatized Culture Further blurring of alleged demarcation lines applies to the relationship between the live and the mediatized39 performance. The key questions of this issue go back already to Walter Benjamin’s essay “The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction” from 1935. Drawing from his observations on film and photography Benjamin argued that through mass duplication and the media presence a work of art loses its auratic experience. Under “aura” Benjamin understood the specific experience in the perception of an original work of art in real space and time. When exposed to a mass reproduction, however, not only the depiction of reality but the (collective) perception of it is supposed to change as well.40 In the era of the accelerated digitalization the questions of ‘authenticity’ and ‘uniqueness’ of the perceived objects is even more pertinent as they were 80 years ago. However, according to Philip Auslander the juxtaposition of live performances 37

Brewster and Broughton (1999), p. 22. Cf. Brewster and Broughton (1999). 39 Drawing on Jean Baudrillard Auslander deploys the word “mediatized” to indicate that a particular cultural object is a product of the mass media or the media technology. For him a “mediatized performance” is a performance that is circulated on television, as audio or video recordings and other forms of reproduction technology (1999, p. 5). 40 Cf. Benjamin (1935/1969). 38

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versus mediatized ones is a superficial one, because the notion of ‘live’ is premised on the absence of a recorded artefact and vice versa. Hence the two categories mentioned might seem to be exclusive on the level of the cultural economy (events versus media and recording industry), but in praxis they find themselves in a complex web of mutual relationships. The notion of a ‘live broadcast’ is just a simple example of the circumstances, in which the live and the recorded are not acting as a binary opposition, but as complementary issues.41 As Auslander remarked ‘liveness’ is neither an intrinsic property of a performance nor does it apply to the presumption that performers and the audience have to be both physically and temporally co-present. There is no automatism due to which the live precedes the mediatized, and the initially recorded music might get in retrospect its verification through a live performance. Further the mediatized can act also as an inseparatable part of the live performance by using analogue or digital devices, whereby the examples cover a broad range from the simple amplification of musicians and bands, lip-synchronisation and inclusion of videos in a stage performance to experiments with multimedia and virtual reality. Even more: live events are increasingly either made to be reproduced or are becoming almost identical with the mediatized ones.42

7 The Blurring of the Demarcation Line Between the Real and the Virtual With the rapid deployment of digital technologies this phenomenon gained new dynamics.43 The blurring of the distinctions between ‘live’ and ‘mediatized’ affects not only the sound and the performance of musical events, but also aesthetic epistemologies, the notions of here and now, the spacial and temporal proximity or distance, the issues of ‘the human’ and ‘the mechanical’ as well as questions of creativity and authorship. A good example is the re-staging of the holographic performances by Hatsune Miku and other virtual pop-stars in analogue settings. Hatsune Miku means ‘the sound of the future’44 and refers to the software synthesizer Vocaloid2 which uses speech synthesis to create artificial singing that resembles human voice. The software was developed by Crypton Future Media and was first presented in 2007.45 It was created as a commercial, consumer-oriented product, providing a library of vocal fonts which should enable also non-musicians to ‘sing’ their own ‘compositions’.46 41

Auslander (1999), p. 59. Ausländer (1999), p. 34. 43 Auslander (1999), p. 55. 44 Cf. Sandabad (2014). 45 Cf. Kärki (2022). 46 Cf. Eidsheim (2019). 42

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The Vocaloid2 program, though not the first product of its kind, gained worldwide popularity. It was marketed by the mascot Hatsune Miku, the image of whom is based on Japanese comics (manga) and animation films (anima). As different as the graphic artefacts of individual artists from these fields might be, they also draw on a common canon of iconographic conventions. This applies also to the appearance of Hatsune Miku, especially her disproportionately large eyes and the emphasis on the styling of her hair. She looks like a teenage girl wearing a school uniform with a short miniskirt and a long tie whereby the futuristic image design of her outfit is highlighted by coloured flashing lights. Her trademark are two long turquoise pigtails tied with two square magenta hair rings, beneath which she wears headphones. Her singing voice sounds artificial and resembles the singing manner of J-Pop stars.47 Based predominantly on the fan activity shortly after its invention the figure took on a life of its own. Professional and amateur music lovers composed on the basis of the program thousands of pieces with Hatsune Miku’s voice and produced uncountable video animations to be uploaded in the internet.48 On this basis also first albums were compiled and due to the strong interconnection of different media the singing avatar got known also in other parts of the pop culture, such as computer games. There are even cases in which a live band got broader recognition by letting the allegedly 16 years old virtual girl with a child voice to interpret their songs. The next step was the organization of “live” concerts with the first virtual popstar.49 They are always sold out and met with stormy enthusiasm. The songs for these shows are selected by Crypton Future Media from the rich fundus of fan productions and played live by a band. The holograms are projected on a special screen, which allows a 3D perception of the singer, who is often joined by other singing avatars such as Rin, Len and Luka, each of them having an image and a voice of its own. Hatsune Miku performed even as the support act for a Lady Gaga’s tour, whereby the live performance and its virtual pendant merged into a single musical event.50

8 The Issue of Authenticity As Erika Fischer-Lichte reports performance results from the interaction of two groups of people congregating in one place at the same time, sharing a certain experience in physical co-presence.51 A performance is thus not being restricted to the action on the stage only, because in popular music it can be reciprocated by clapping, dancing, singing along or waving lights by the fans, which also effects in a feedback loop the happening on the stage. However, this kind of dialogue is limited

47

Cf. Anderson (2021). Michel (2015), 13. 49 Cf. Schuppisser (2013). 50 Cf. Müller-Degenhardt (2019). 51 Fischer-Lichte (2005), p. 16. 48

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by the fact that a music performance is a para-theatrical form as described by Christian Joos Bernau,52 in which the interaction between the pop stage and the public is neither totally spontaneous nor totally pre-planned. Especially big shows are carefully rehearsed and they might be repeated during a tour in a similar way evening by evening, but due to unpredictable factors there might be still place for improvisation. This raises the question of authenticity not only of the mediatized shows discussed above, but of live performances as well. According to Ralf von Appen is authenticity an ethical ideal, based on the values of honesty, loyalty and consistency, both to oneself and to others. Term describes a critical quality of the perceptual content (objects or people, events or human actions) that presupposes the contrast between appearance and reality as the possibility of deception and falsification. It can be related to the author, the work and the reception,53 whereby the individual valences of the phenomenon touch several normative categories. The first kind of authenticity is the personal authenticity which is applied to somebody whose actions are perceived in line with his believes and convictions. This form of authenticity can be traced back to the romantic image of the artist as a rebellious individual, committed to its own needs and desires only and independent from social and commercial constrains. He is able to actualize himself and live an idealized freedom which is denied to the audience and thus provides an identification and projection surface for the needs and wishes of the fans who are not in the position to experience the same.54 A different form of authenticity is according to Ralf von Appen the socio-cultural authenticity.55 This narrative is connected to the ideal of the personal authenticity, but differently motivated. It is based on the assumption that musicians live up to the values of their audience, particular of the local or social subculture from which they emerged. Currently the urge to demonstrate ones belonging to a certain social group is quite strong with HipHop, whereby the authenticity is mostly equalized with street credibility. The difference between the two is significant: If authenticity in popular music is an individual (subjective) benchmark, street credibility is a collective (intersubjective) one, stressing the congruence between the musical persona and the living conditions of the fans.56 Philip Auslander on the other hand, argues in his essay In Concert: Performing Musical Persona that there are three different layers of persona to be distinguished.57 They are the real person, the person of the performance (the musical persona) and the song personality. Artist names such as Johnny Rotten, Sid Vicious, David Bowie or Lady Gaga signal that the persona on the stage might not be identical with the real personality of the performer. Further the musical persona, communicated also

52

Cf. Jooß-Bernau (2010). Cf. Knaller and Müller (2006). 54 Von Appen (2013), p. 64. 55 Von Appen (2013), p. 43. 56 Cf. Von Appen (2013). 57 Auslander (2021). 53

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through image, visuals and publicity material might not be the sole ‘author’ of his/her appearance. As demonstrated in the seminal study Creating Country Music—Fabricating Authenticity by Richard Peterson the staging of authenticity goes far beyond the actual performance. In the line with his production of culture approach the emerging of country music was not merely a matter of musicians, but also a result of the broader social conditions. Peterson mentioned the entrepreneurial spirit of the era, the legal and political system and the development of music technology as well as the input of managers and other key promoters which helped to create, perform, distribute and evaluate the work of the musicians. Further his phrase ‘fabricating authenticity’ highlights the fact, that authenticity is not a clear standard, but a contingent issue which might differ among the musical genres and change in time.58 In contrast to this alleged (re)construction of the past elements as they might have been is the concept of the inauthentic authenticity in terms of Lawrence Grossberg. Grossberg particularly exposes the post-modern turn in popular music that can be viewed either positively as an ironic statement or negatively as a final commercialisation of this musical genre.59 In this case the staging of a performance is so obvious that nobody expects any personal or social authenticity. Well known examples are David Bowie’s theatrical staging as Ziggy Stardust, Roxy Music with their ironic shows or Pet Shop Boys who declined for a long time any attempts to present a live show till they produced highly artificial performances with pre-programmed tracs, synchronized video sequences and elaborate choreographies. And as paradox as it might sound, it was of all things their flouted rejection of all authenticity pretensions that made them really ‘authentic’.60

9 Where Are We Now? Under these general presumptions in respect to singing, playing and performing of popular music in the liquid modernity the following conclusions can be drawn: At the time being all kinds of music are available to a previously unknown extend. We notify an extreme overproduction of cultural artefacts on one hand and the changing forms of reception on the other. The new listening patterns can be characterized as a qualitative decline of attention on the part of the listener61 and a devaluation of the importance of cultural goods. Also, the general acceleration as described by Hartmut Rosa62 inhibits an intense participation in musical life by the rapid change of styles and fashions.63 58

Cf. Peterson (1999). Grossberg (2010), p. 226. 60 Von Appen (2013), p. 68ff. 61 Cf. Seifert (2018). 62 Rosa (2013), pp. 483–484. 63 Seifert (2018), p. 19. 59

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According to Peter Manuel postmodernism is related to features such as the penetration of capital, commodification and the mass media to all aspects of public and private life.64 As already postulated by Kurt Blaukopf technological mutations, such as the digital mediamorphosis have a decisive change in the overall structure of the musical field.65 They contribute not only to globalisation but influence all spheres of production, distribution and consumption of (popular) music. Robert Seifert named in this connection among others new ways of experiencing music (e.g. through new hardware); new chances for creativity (e.g. creating personal playlists); active participation (e.g. via social media); increased interaction with musicians/fan community and the democratization of music (decreased economic restrictions).66 From the perspective of musicians on the other hand, digitalisation enables an affordable access to the production means, and allows direct contacts between the musicians and the fans. New technologies make new ways of making music possible and stipulate postmodern techniques such as de-construction, bricolage, sampling, mixing, and mashup. They also open the way to previously unknown aesthetic worlds of multimedia and Virtual Reality and induce significant changes in the musical perception. Another feature is the fact that several demarcation lines that were believed to be stable before, began to crumble. An important feature is the blurring of the demarcation lines between “art” and “entertainment”. This is especially evident in an increasing number of crossover projects, such as performances by Nigel Kennedy or Laurie Anderson or recordings of pop anthems by symphony orchestras. Influences however are reciprocal, because as popular music applies “classical” elements, the classical scene appropriated some aspects which are considered to be “popular”.67 Due to the general skepticism against generalizing ideas, under the postmodern condition traditional meta-narratives dissolved into a multitude of different concepts. Celebrating diversity and subjectivism the appropriate way for explaining social transformation became micronarratives in terms Jean-François Lyotard.68 The cultural sociologist Andreas Reckwitz refers in this connection to a “society of singularities”69 in which the social logic of the particular is submitted to the processes of aesthetization and intensification of the affect. As this applies to objects as well as to social relationships, physical attractiveness became a central aspect of (self)presentation, situating sexuality in the sphere of legitimate ‘consumption’.70 Under these conditions’ popular music with its emotionalized eroticism became the main polygon for negotiating gender identity. Where HipHop tends to emphasize the traditional heteronormative matrix, Harry Styles experiments with caring

64

Cf. Manuel (1995). Blaukopf (1989), p. 224. 66 Seifert (2018), p. 211. 67 Cf. Scott (2011). 68 Cf. Lyotard (1984). 69 Cf. Reckwitz (2019). 70 Cf. Reckwitz (2020). 65

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masculinities. Stars as Madonna, Anni Lenox or Grace Jones checked the boundaries of the common presentation of femininity, and David Bowie and Conchita Wurst subverted through their androgyn image the reproduction of traditional gender stereotypes.71 Next to cross dressing and gender bending on the level of image there are also numerous examples of vocal androgyny of female artists such Patti Smith and Grace Jones (deep voices) and male artists Michael Jackson, George Michael and Prince (high voices). In the same context belongs also the changed relation to time. Since the utopian ideas of modernity seemed to fail, current visions are not focused on the future, but on the past. As observed already by Simon Reynolds in his influential work Retromania: Pop Culture’s Addiction to its Own Past there are some interesting developments in niche scenes. However, the main stream did not produce for decades any real novelty as were at their time Punk, Techno or HipHop, but exhausts itself in the recycling of past trends.72 Other indicator of the prevailing nostalgia is the historization of popular music by establishing pop music museums and archives and the rediscovering of analogue media like record player and the vinyl disc. The postmodern instability considers also the blurring of the borders between the producers and the consumers respectively between musicians and fans. The best example is Vocaloid, which gave also the amateur musicians the possibility to be actively involved in music production. Instead of a composer, who is responsible for the forming of a musical work as a well-defined entity there is a creative crowd that develops a plentitude of ‘works’ in ever new ways. Also, the virtual superstar Hatsune Miku is a crowed sourced celebrity, which however is experienced and worshiped as authentic. Hatsune Miku seems to be a precursor of the future development of popular music. For 2022 a large-scale hologram tour of the deceased Whitney Houston was scheduled73 and a holographic super show with a specially build theatre in London has been launched to worship the legendary group, Abba. This dramatical changes feed among others also the fear that the golden age of popular music as flourishing since the middle of the twentieth century is drawing to a close. This hypothesis is supported especially by Mark Fisher’s research on hauntology as presented in his 2014 book Ghosts of My Life. To his opinion the increased revival and commodifying of dead stars via holograms as in the case of Hatsumi Miku can be equated with the ‘cancelation of the future’.74 If one ventures a glimpse into the future, with the regard to popular music especially the further digitalization, visualization and multimedialization can be expected. Important impulses will come from experiments with Virtual Reality, intensifying the visual-centricity of popular music, creating new environments for musicking, enabling a more interactive involvement of the public in musical events and introducing new ways of sensory perception. Also the practicing of consumption as an 71

Cf. Reitsamer (2015). Cf. Reynolds (2012). 73 NN, An Evening With Whitney (2022). 74 Cf. Fisher (2014). 72

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act of creation might be reinforced and the role of the prosumers75 as hybrid agents between producers and consumers strengthened. Though most changes described in this essay were present already for a longer period of time, they intensified with the COVID19 crisis. Since due to the (more or less) strict lockdown the entire musical eco-system came to a sudden stop, most production and consumption of popular music relied on internet, which boasted another push of digitalization. About the long-term effects of the epidemics however, can be only speculated. Will it be possible to revitalize the popular music scene in old terms after the end of the pandemic? Which new conventions developed during the lock downs will remain and how will they influence future musicking? Will the audience still expect mega-events like festivals with tens of thousands of visitors? How will be the future balance between live music events and their digital simulation configurated? And last but not least: What effect will these issues have on singing, playing and performing in popular music?

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Reckwitz, A.: Die Gesellschaft der Singularitäten. Zum Strukturwandel der Moderne. Suhrkamp, Berlin (2019) Reckwitz, A.: Das hybride Subjekt: Eine Theorie der Subjektkulturen von der bürgerlichen Moderne zur Postmoderne. Suhrkamp, Berlin (2020) Reitsamer, R., Liebsch, K.: Music, Gender, Differenz. Westfälisches Dampfboot, Münster (2015) Reynolds, S.: Retromania: Pop Culture’s Addiction to its Own Past. Faber and Faber, London (2012) Robb, D. (ed.) Protest Song in East and West Germany since the 1960s. Boydell & Brewer, Rochester (2007) Rosa, H.: Beschleunigung und Entfremdung: Entwurf einer kritischen Theorie spätmoderner Zeitlichkeit. Suhrkamp Verlag, Berlin (2013) Rösing, H.: Populäre Musik – Was meint das? In: Barber-Kersovan, A., Lothwesen, K., Phleps, T. (eds.): Das klingt so schön häßlich. Gedanken zum Bezugssystem Musik, pp. 33–47. transcript Verlag, Bielefeld (2005) Sandabad, M.: Künstlicher Star Hatsune Miku. Seit sieben Jahren 16 Jahre alt. Spiegel Netzwelt, (2014). Retrieved from https://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/games/hatsune-miku-der-kuenstlichepopstar-aus-japan-a-1004227.html. Accessed 17 June 2022 Schuppisser, R.: Popkultur – Wenn das Hologramm plötzlich zum Popstar wird. Aargauer Zeitung (10 March 2013). Retrieved from https://www.aargauerzeitung.ch/panorama/people/wenn-dashologramm-plotzlich-zum-popstar-wird-ld.1752192. Accessed 17 June 2022 Scott, D. B.: Postmodernism and Music. In: Sim S. (ed.) The Routledge Companion to Postmodernism. Third Edition (revised) (2011). Retrieved from https://www.academia.edu/3058366/Pos tmodernism_and_Music Seifert, R.: Popmusik in Zeiten der Digitalisierung. Veränderte Aneignung – veränderte Wertigkeit. transcript, Bielefeld (2018) Small, C.: Musicking—the meanings of performing and listening. Wesleyan University Press, Hanover and London (1998) Smudits, A.: Mediamorphosen des Kulturschaffens. Kunst und Kommunikationstechnologien im Wandel. Braumüller, Wien (2002) Stephan, R.: Art. Sprechgesang. In: MGG Online, retrieved from https://www.mgg-online.com/ mgg/stable/17211. Accessed 17 June 2022 Subotnik, R.R.: Deconstructive Variations: Music and Reason in Western Society. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis (1995) Tagg, P.: Kojak. 50 Seconds of Television Music. Toward the Analysis of Affect in Popular Music. Studies from the Department of Musicology, University of Gothenborg, Göteborg (1979) Tagg, P.: Analysing Popular Music: Theory, Method and Practice: In: Popular Music, vol. 2, Theory and Method, pp. 37–67. Cambridge University, Cambridge (1982) Toffler, A.: Die Dritte Welle. Goldmann Wilhelm GmbH, München (1997) Toop, D.: Rap Attack. Serpent’s Tail, London (2000) von Ammon, F., von Petersdorff, D.: Lyrik/Lyrics: Songtexte als Gegenstand der Literaturwissenschaft. Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen (2016) Wicke, P.: Populäre Musik” als theoretisches Konzept. In: PopScriptum 1/92, Begriffe und Konzepte, pp. 6–42. Humbold Universität Berlin (1992). Retrieved from https://edoc.hu-berlin.de/bitstream/ handle/18452/20904/pst01_wicke.pdf. Accessed 17 June 2022 Wynands, R.: Do the Reggae. Reggae von Pocomania bis Raga und der Mythos Bob Marley. Pieper-Verlag und Schott, München (1995). Retrieved from https://dubblog.de/wp-content/upl oads/2012/05/DoTheReggae.pdf. Accessed 17 June 2022

Alenka Barber-Kersovan * 1945 in Kikinda (Yugoslavia), studied historical musicology, systematic musicology, psychology and aesthetics at the Universities of Ljubljana, Vienna and Hamburg, where she finished her studies with a thesis on the Slovenian Punk and its contribution to the erosion of the socialistic value system. She worked as a music therapist at the Psychiatric Clinic in Ljubljana, program director of the Slovenian Musical Youth and scientific officer at the Institute

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for Sociology of Music in Vienna, Music Academy in Hamburg and the Institute for Music Education in Hamburg. Further she was a lecturer at the Institute for Musicology of the University of Hamburg and at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna. Currently she is teaching sociology of music at the Leuphana University in Lüneburg. Barber-Kersovan held for a long time the position of the managing director of the Gesellschaft für Popularmusikforschung/German Society for Popular Music Studies and is also active in music politics, being a member of different committees of the Hamburg and the German Music Council. Her main research interests are popular music, music and gender, music and politics and urban music studies. She is also a co-editor of the publication series Urban Music Studies of the Intellect Publishers. Selected publications: Frauentöne - Beiträge zu einer ungeschriebenen Musikgeschichte (Ed. with Annette Kreutziger-Herr and Melanie Unseld, 2000); Getanzte Freiheit. Swingkultur zwischen NSDiktatur und Gegenwart (Ed. with Gordon Uhlmann, 2002); Vom ‘Punkfrühling’ zum ‘slowenischen Frühling’. Der Beitrag des slowenischen Punk zur Demontage des sozialistischen Wertsystems (2005); West Meets East. Musik und interkultureller Dialog (Ed. With Harald Huber and Alfred Smudits, 2011; Music City: Musikalische Annäherungen an die “kreative Stadt” (Ed. with Volker Kirchberg and Robin Kuchar, 2014); Arts & Power (Ed. with Volker Kirchberg and Lisa Goupp, 2022 (in print).

Music-Geographical (“Ethnomusicological”) Question

“We Drummed It into Them so They Can Go Whistle for It!”—Non-vocal Forms of Communication in Oto-Manguean Languages, Pirahã and Bora Alexandra Núñez and Jonathan Reich

1 Introduction In a number of speech communities around the world so-called whistled and drummed languages can be found. Put impressionistically: People communicate with one another via whistling or drumming. In this paper we take a closer look at these phenomena and try to relate them to the vocal and the instrumental. As for the role of the vocal and the instrumental, the approach to this topic is ‘ex negativo’, based on the following tentative definition of the vocal: Whatever is to be considered as vocal, needs to involve vibration of the vocal cords. Lack thereof leads to a classification as non-vocal. Hence, drummed and whistled languages are considered to be non-vocal: Drummed languages obviously rely on drums, while whistling does not “require the vibration of the vocal cords”.1 The structure of this paper is as follows: Sect. 2 provides the reader with a general overview of the phenomena of whistled and drummed languages. This overview is then fleshed out in Sect. 3 via several case studies: the languages Bora, Pirahã and two Oto-Manguean languages. The reader will notice that all of the languages chosen for this paper are spoken in the Americas. This is due to the availability of relevant literature and its age. That said, languages spoken in Africa or Europe could also have been chosen. Finally, Sect. 4 discusses the relation of the vocal and the instrumental

1

Meyer & Gautheron (2006), p. 574.

A. Núñez (B) Institute of Linguistics and Literary Studies, Technical University of Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany e-mail: [email protected] J. Reich General Linguistics (Department of Linguistics), University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 H.-W. Heister et al. (eds.), Word Art + Gesture Art = Tone Art, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20109-7_15

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to whistled and drummed languages based on the definition given above. Section 5 summarizes the paper. A quick note on terminology: Throughout this paper, the terms ‘whistled/drummed language’ and ‘whistled/drummed speech’ are used roughly interchangeably. This reflects the literature.

2 Whistled and Drummed Languages Whistled and drummed languages have been known to the ‘wider world’ for a considerable time. According to one account,2 what might constitute the first written description of a whistled language dates back as early as 1630. It references the Silbo of the Canary Island of La Gomera.3 Similarly, Stern in his 1957 paper4 on so-called ‘speech surrogates’ adduces a plethora of, mostly African, drummed languages. Moreover, as for “forms of communication related by abridgment of speech”, whistled and drummed languages forming a subset of these, he states: “The literature on this subject is both abundant and well-known”.5 The second to last quote discloses the critical feature of both whistled and drummed languages: They are abridgments of speech, that is, they are arrived at by transposition of a spoken language into another modality, such as whistling or drumming, thereby inevitably involving a “reduction in acoustic complexity”.6 Hence, whistled and drummed languages are always based on a spoken language.7 Another term describing this phenomenon, apart from the abovementioned term of ‘speech surrogates’, is that of ‘emulated speech systems’.8 In what follows we will sketch the general mechanisms underlying those systems.

2.1 Whistled Languages Speech communities that use whistled speech almost always inhabit rugged terrain, chiefly mountainous environments as well as those rich in thick forests.9 Adding to that, as Meyer10 puts it, “relatively isolated activities […] e.g. shepherding, hunting 2

Busnel & Classe (1976), p. 6, 111. Meyer (2004), p. 405 mentions an even earlier date, namely the “treaty of the Tao in Asia” dating back to the sixth century BC. 4 Stern (1957). 5 Stern (1957), p. 502. 6 Seifart et al. (2018), p. 2. 7 Cf. Seifart et al. (2018), p. 2. 8 Cf. Seifart et al. (2018), p. 2. 9 Cf. Meyer (2004), p. 405; 2008, p. 70. 10 Meyer (2008), p. 70. 3

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and harvesting in the field” the need for efficient long-distance communication arises due to potentially long walking distances. Over distances of several hundred meters spoken language, even when shouted, is no longer a feasible means of communication.11 This is where whistling comes into play. Several factors, such as a comparatively narrow frequency band or a slower ‘speech’ flow compared to the spoken equivalent, make whistling less susceptible to distortion by ambient noise and a more efficient means of long-distance communication.12 According to Meyer, whistling can cover distances up to “ten times greater than shouted speech”.13 Being found almost all over the world,14 whistled speech systems are based on spoken languages belonging to many different language families and exhibiting many different typological profiles. When discussing the actual processes of how spoken language is transposed into the whistled modality, a basic distinction can be made between tonal and non-tonal languages, respectively,15 since, broadly speaking, they employ different ‘whistling strategies’. In tonal languages it is primarily the suprasegmental features of the spoken language, i.e., chiefly tone and its fundamental frequency, which are reproduced via whistling.16 In Busnel & Classe’s words: “The whistler merely produces a melodic line, ideally identical in range and contour, but inevitably transposed up by several octaves, with that of normal speech”.17 Thus, in whistled speech based on tonal languages segmental features such as vowels and consonants are typically not reproduced. Surprisingly though, despite this seeming lack of sufficient phonological material and the resulting potential for homonyms18 whistling is still a highly efficient means of communication. This is because context of usage usually provides enough additional, situational information to prevent potential misunderstandings.19 This critical role of context seems to apply to whistled languages generally.20 Whistled languages reproducing non-tonal languages, such as the one of Ku¸sköy (Turkey, based on Turkish), or the aforementioned Silbo spoken on La Gomera (based on the local variety of Spanish), employ a different strategy. In those languages it is mostly the segmental features, i.e. vowels and consonants, which are reproduced.21 Meyer22 provides the following illustration: “For non-tonal languages, whistlers learn 11

Cf. Meyer (2008), pp. 70–71. Cf. Meyer (2004), p. 410; 2008, p. 71. 13 Meyer (2008), p. 71, referencing Busnel & Classe (1976) and Meyer (2005). 14 Meyer & Gautheron (2006), p. 574. 15 Cf. Meyer (2008), p. 74, who provides a more in-depth typology of whistled languages. 16 Cf. Meyer (2008), pp. 74–75; Meyer & Gautheron (2006), pp. 573–574. This is not to say, though, that whistling of tonal languages reproduces only tone to the exclusion of other suprasegmental features such as, e.g., stress; see Sect. 3.2.2 on Chinantec. 17 Busnel & Classe (1976), p. 82 on Mazatec, discussing Cowan (1948). 18 Cf. Cowan (1948), pp. 283–284. 19 Cf. Cowan (1948), pp. 283–284; Meyer & Gautheron (2006), p. 575. 20 Cf. Meyer & Gautheron (2006), p. 575. 21 Cf. Meyer & Gautheron (2006), p. 574. 22 Meyer (2008), p. 73. 12

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to approximate the form of the mouth of the spoken voice while whistling; this provokes an adaptation of vowel quality into a simple frequency.” Thus, the pitch of the whistles primarily reproduces the underlying vowels with different pitches representing different vowels. The consonants are then displayed via “modulations of these pitches”.23 As for the actual physical process of whistling, different techniques are in use among the world’s whistled languages. Apart from labiodental and bilabial whistling, the usage of one or two fingers is also common.24 One factor constraining usage of the different techniques is the distance to be covered via whistling, with the finger techniques usually being used for long-distance communication because they enable the production of a more powerful whistle.25 Furthermore, both egressive and ingressive whistling are found.26

2.2 Drummed Languages In the case of drummed languages, too, spoken language is reproduce in another modality—drumming. Drummed languages are found in different parts of the world. Apart from South America and Africa, they are also known from Asia and Oceania.27 Just as the whistled counterpart, drummed languages are mostly used for longdistance communication. According to Seifart et al.,28 drummed speech can cover distances longer than the ones covered by conventional speech “by a factor of up to 100”. This, as they claim, is more than with any other emulated speech system. Overall, they summarize the acoustic properties of drummed languages as follows29 : drummed speech […] employs the most radical reduction in acoustic complexity in all three main dimensions of acoustic signals: frequency, amplitude and time. […] Drummed signals exploit the natural bio-acoustic properties of percussions for optimal sound propagation in natural environments […]. Their low pitch frequencies are not blocked by large vegetation […] and their high amplitudes and narrow frequency band reduce further noise-masking effects […].

All of these characteristics make drummed languages an excellent candidate for long-distance communication in a rainforest environment such as the one inhabited by the Bora.

23

Meyer & Gautheron (2006), p. 574. Cf. Meyer & Gautheron (2006), p. 574. For visual illustrations of the different techniques, see Busnel & Classe (1976), p. 5, 29. 25 Meyer & Gautheron (2006), p. 574. 26 Cf. Almeida (1984), p. 55, discussing Busnel & Classe 1976. 27 Cf. Seifart et al. (2018), p. 2. 28 Seifart et al. (2018), p. 2. 29 Seifart et al. (2018), pp. 2–3. 24

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In contrast to whistled speech, drummed speech is virtually exclusively found in communities speaking a tonal language.30 This is probably not surprising in light of the abovementioned serious reduction in acoustic complexity associated with drumming. After all, as far as perception is concerned, pitch and rhythm constitute the most prominent features of drumming. Accordingly, in drummed speech it is “underlying phonological tone categories”31 that are reproduced via different pitches in drumming. Moreover, rhythm also plays a crucial, though, apparently, seriously understudied role.32

3 Case Studies This section focuses on several concrete cases. It is mostly descriptive in nature, hence drawing heavily on the relevant literature. Since drummed and whistled languages always reproduce the spoken language of a given community, in the following sections descriptions of the systems in question are preceded by information on the underlying spoken languages.

3.1 Bora Bora is classified as related to neighboring Muinane. Both languages can be traced back to a common ancestor ‘Proto Bora-Muinane’.33 Possible genealogical links to other languages are debated, but, as of yet, have not been proven convincingly.34 The Bora people inhabit areas in the North-West Amazon rainforest belonging to the states of Colombia and Peru35 with speaker numbers estimated at around 1,000 as of 2015.36 As with many indigenous languages of the Americas, speaker numbers are decreasing with Spanish slowly replacing Bora. A similar process seems to hold true for Bora drummed speech, since the traditional drums, although used on a daily basis just a century ago,37 “are gradually falling out of use”.38 The phoneme inventory39 of Bora consists of 29 consonants and 6 vowels. Furthermore, there are two phonological tones (high and low), hence each syllable has one of those two tones. They do, 30

Cf. Seifart et al. (2018), p. 3, who mention only one exception to this correlation. Seifart et al. (2018), p. 3. 32 Cf. Seifart et al. (2018), p. 2, 3. 33 Cf. Seifart & Echeverri (2015). 34 Cf. Seifart & Echeverri (2015), p. 280, 311. 35 Cf. Seifart et al. (2018), p. 4; Seifart & Echeverri (2015), p. 280. 36 Cf. Seifart & Echeverri (2015), p. 280. 37 Cf. Seifart et al. (2018), pp. 4–5. 38 Seifart et al. (2018), p. 5. 39 For the precise phoneme inventory of Bora, see Seifart & Echeverri (2015), p. 281. 31

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however, possess only a limited functional load as far as distinguishing lexical items is concerned.40 As another phonological feature of Bora, among others, vowel length (short vs. long) is also found.41 The actual drums used for Bora drummed speech are called ‘manguaré’ and are described as “wooden slit drums”.42 A functional set of drums consists of two drums of different sizes, each one producing two different pitches. The drums themselves are mounted in a “wooden structure” with a given drummer standing between them using “two wooden mallets covered with natural rubber”.43 Only adult men seem to engage in drumming, although, apparently, every member of a given community can understand the drummed messages.44 Furthermore, both of these capabilities are, apparently, “acquired without explicit training”.45 Interestingly, the manguaré drums are used for both communicative and musical purposes. Seifart et al.,46 applying terminology originally used in the description of drummed speech of the Akan, name a ‘musical mode’ and a ‘talking mode’. While in the former mode—genuine music—all four pitches of the manguaré drums are used, the ‘talking mode’ makes do with only two, the drummer producing one pitch with each of the two drums. In the talking mode, the drums are used for communication both within a given community and across communities, which, at times, are up to 20 km apart from one another.47 Unsurprisingly, the two pitch qualities produced by the two drums represent the underlying phonological high and low tone of spoken Bora, respectively.48 Furthermore, each drum beat corresponds to a syllable in spoken Bora.49 However, representation of the underlying tones isn’t the only mechanism enabling drummed Bora to function as a means of communication: Seifart et al. were able to establish the crucial role played by rhythmic structures in the talking mode. According to their analysis, tonal features alone could not enable effective communication due to the aforementioned limited functional load of tone.50 As for the general structure of manguaré drummed speech, it should be noted that messages adhere to a comparably fixed, or rather “rigid”—in Seifart et al.’s words—‘syntax’ with a “fixed order of building blocks”.51

40

Cf. Seifart & Echeverri (2015), p. 281. Cf. Seifart et al. (2018), p. 6. 42 Seifart et al. (2018), p. 5. This page contains an image of a set of manguaré drums. 43 Seifart et al. (2018), p. 5. 44 Cf. Seifart et al. (2018), p. 4. 45 Seifart et al. (2018), p. 4. 46 Cf. Seifart et al. (2018), p. 5. 47 Cf. Seifart et al. (2018), p. 4. 48 Cf. Seifart et al. (2018), p. 8. 49 Cf. Seifart et al. (2018), p. 5. 50 Cf. Seifart et al. (2018), p. 15. 51 Seifart et al. (2018), p. 9. See Seifart et al. (2018), p. 6 for an illustration of the structure of the so-called ‘calling-messages’. 41

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3.2 Oto-Manguean Two of the languages discussed in this paper—Mazatec and Chinantec52 —belong to the family of Oto-Manguean languages. Oto-Manguean constitutes not only one of the major language families in Mesoamerica but the “language stock with the deepest time depth in the Americas”.53 Its internal diversity is considerable and claimed to be on par with the one encountered in Indo-European.54 Accordingly, the overall number of languages that are classified as Oto-Manguean is significant: While glottonyms such as ‘Mazatec’ or ‘Chinantec’ suggest the existence of one single language, this is not actually the case. What is referred to as ‘Chinantec’ for instance, according to a 1989 study, actually consists of fourteen individual languages, which are not mutually intelligible.55 This is why, when referring to a given variety, researchers further specify it, adding the name of the location where it is spoken, yielding, e.g., San Pedro Sochiapam Chinantec (see Sect. 3.2.2). Although spoken in several countries, most Oto-Manguean languages are found in Mexico, chiefly in the states of Guerrero and Oaxaca, the latter of which is known for exceptional linguistic diversity.56 The way of life of Oto-Manguean-speaking communities historically has been “associated with highland agriculture”.57 The speakers thus inhabit an environment that is ‘amenable’ to the development of whistled languages (see Sect. 2.1). Finally, a noteworthy feature of the Oto-Manguean family is the fact that all of its members are tonal, exhibiting tone systems of varying complexity, depending on the individual language.58

3.2.1

Mazatec

Whistled speech among speakers of Mazatec has a special place in the scientific literature due to Cowan’s seminal 1948 article “Mazateco Whistle Speech”,59 which constitutes the oldest research paper on a whistled language and whistled languages in general.60 Cowan conducted his studies in and around Huautla de Jiménez in the

52

In the literature on Oto-Manguean languages the Spanish (e.g. ‘Chinanteco’) and the English (e.g. ‘Chinantec’) glottonyms are both found. 53 Sicoli (2005), p. 798. 54 Cf. Sicoli (2005), p. 799. 55 Rensch (1989), p. 3, cited from Campbell (1997), p. 158. 56 Cf. Sicoli (2016), p. 414. 57 Sicoli (2005), p. 800. 58 Cf. Campbell (1997), p. 157; Sicoli (2005), p. 799. 59 Cowan (1948). 60 Meyer (2008), p. 74.

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state of Oaxaca.61 This region is composed of typical ‘whistle territory’: mountainous highlands with an average height at around 2,500 m.62 According to Cowan’s analysis, the variety of Mazatec described by him possesses a total of four level tones63 as well as a number of tonal glides.64 These tones are the central elements reproduced in the whistled modality: Generally speaking, each “whistle punch” in whistled Mazatec “corresponds to one syllable […] of the spoken language”.65 This is reminiscent of the situation encountered in drummed Bora, where there is a similar one-to-one correspondence between drum beats and spoken syllables. Another interesting parallel pertains to the actual whistlers and drummers, respectively: In both cases it is exclusively men who engage in those activities. Cowan states that, while women can understand what is being whistled by the men, they do not whistle themselves.66 As for the production of the whistles, different techniques are described in the literature. Apart from bilabial67 whistling, a labiodental68 technique is also attested. Finger techniques, however, don’t seem to be found. In terms of the distances covered via whistling, an interesting picture emerges. Cowan’s account reveals that whistles may be exchanged at a distance of anywhere between “a few feet” with people standing virtually next to each other and “a quarter of a mile”, a situation encountered, for instance, when people “whistle across the valley bottom to laborers […] on the opposite mountainside”.69 Whistling, thus, is not exclusively a means of long-distance communication. The vitality of Mazatec whistled speech nowadays can obviously not be assessed based on reports from 1948 and 1976. However, it is to be expected that, as with most of the world’s whistled languages, it has been continuously falling out of use during the last decades and is not as ubiquitous anymore as it apparently was in the 1940s, judging from Cowan’s account.

61

The information contained in Busnel & Classe (1976) on Mazatec whistled speech is based on research that was also conducted in that area. 62 Cf. Busnel & Classe (1976), p. 27. 63 Cf. Cowan (1948), p. 285. 64 Cf. Cowan (1948), p. 284. 65 Cowan (1948), p. 284. 66 Cf. Cowan (1948), p. 281. 67 Cf. Busnel & Classe (1976), pp. 28–29; Cowan (1948), p. 285. 68 Cf. Meyer (2004), p. 409. Meyer (2004), p. 406 states that there are 14 different varieties of Mazatec spoken in the highlands and that they were “able to record four of them in whistled versions”, one being the variety of “Huautla”. Hence, the variety documented by Cowan (1948) and Busnel & Classe (1976) seems to be part of Meyer’s sample as well. It is not specified, however, in which exact variety/ies the labiodental technique is found. 69 Cowan (1948), p. 282.

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Chinantec

The variety of Chinantec70 discussed here is that of San Pedro Sochiapam, which is located in the mountainous north of Oaxaca.71 Just as in Mazatec, vowels and all but one consonant, the glottal stop, are not represented in whistled speech; neither is nasalization, which is phonemic in Oto-Manguean languages.72 However, given the extraordinary prosodic complexity of Chinantec73 a lot of features can still be expressed in whistled speech: The representation of seven tones, stress patterns and the glottal stop lead to the impressive number of “twenty-eight contrast possibilities for each syllable that can be whistled”.74 This allows for a system of communication that is considerably less formulaic than Bora drummed speech. Another feature Chinantec whistled speech has in common with the Mazatec variety is the fact that, again, only men whistle with women understanding it.75 In terms of whistling techniques, three different forms are attested: “close-by”, “mid-range” and “far distance” whistling.76 A demonstration of these techniques in the aforementioned video documentary (see footnote) reveals that in the case of far distance whistling a finger is used to intensify the whistle. As for vitality, Chinantec whistle speech is hardly used anymore nowadays.77

3.3 Pirahã Pirahã is classified as the sole living member of the Mura language family spoken in the state of Amazonas, Brazil by some 110 people as of 1986 (!).78 Once again, we are dealing with a tonal language.79 Whistle speech in Pirahã, according to Everett, is “very similar to the phenomenon of the same name described for Mazateco by Cowan (1948)”.80 This is, among other things, because, again, only men whistle.81 There are, however, also less ‘ordinary’ 70

This section draws on Sicoli (2016). Sicoli himself, however, also draws on earlier work, namely by David Foris. Readers interested in Chinantec whistled speech are referred to a video documentary featuring Mark Sicoli, among others, see Sicoli (2016), p. 419 for the link (also retrievable on YouTube). 71 Cf. Sicoli (2016), p. 414. 72 Cf. Campbell (1997), p. 157; Sicoli (2016), p. 415, 416. 73 Cf. Sicoli (2016), p. 414. 74 Sicoli (2016), p. 415. 75 Cf. Sicoli (2016), p. 414. 76 Sicoli (2016), p. 412, referencing Foris (2000), p. 21. 77 See also Sicoli (2016), p. 414. 78 Cf. Campbell (1997), p. 193; Everett (1986), p. 200. 79 Cf. Everett (1985), p. 416; 1986, p. 312. 80 Everett (1985), p. 414. 81 Cf. Everett (1985), p. 414. It should be mentioned that, on a global scale, whistle speech is by no means restricted to men, cf. Busnel & Classe (1976), p. 30.

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features to Pirahã whistle speech. First of all, it is ingressive as opposed to the more common egressive whistling found elsewhere. Secondly, it is one of several ‘prosodic channels’, the other ones being ‘hum speech’ and ‘yell speech’.82 In hum speech and yell speech—just as in the case of whistle speech—the segmental level is absent and merely prosodic features (tone, stress, intonation, etc.) are uttered, via humming and yelling, respectively. Everett states that those three prosodic channels are all just as productive as spoken language. What’s more, mothers, when communicating with their little children, seem to predominantly use hum speech. Everett further states that children are able to “control the prosodic features of a given lexical item or utterance before its (basic) segmental manifestation”.83

4 Discussion We now want to address the question of the relation of whistled and drummed speech to the vocal and the instrumental. In the introduction we stated that the approach presented in this paper is ex negativo: Drummed and whistled speech were defined as non-vocal. Let us first consider Bora drummed speech. Due to the very usage of drums, the instrumental is certainly represented. This is especially true in light of the musical mode which exists alongside the so-called talking mode and where the manguaré drums are used for actual musical performances. In that mode the drums perform the function of musical instruments. Whistled speech, however, constitutes a more difficult matter: If classified as nonvocal, the question remains how the instrumental relates to that. Let us first have a look at the literature. Brown,84 in his 2017 account of a possible “Joint Prosodic Origin of Language and Music” describes the synchronic relationship between language and music within the framework of a so-called “musilinguistic continuum”. He states: At the extremes of the continuum are language and music, represented both vocally (as speech and vocable-based singing, respectively) and instrumentally. The latter includes speech surrogates, such as drummed and whistled languages […], as well as conventional instrumental music.

Thus, for Brown whistled languages, too, are instrumental. Unfortunately, he doesn’t elaborate on this. A seemingly similar stance is found in Sicoli’s85 aforementioned paper on Chinantec. He describes whistled speech as “a mediated form of communication that modifies the vocal tract to another type of bodily instrument”. He further refers

82

Cf. Everett (1985), pp. 412–415. Everett (1985), p. 413. 84 Cf. Brown 2017, p. 15. Questions as to the validity of this account are not the objective of this paper and are, hence, not addressed. 85 Sicoli (2016), p. 412. 83

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to “instrumentality (lips, tongue, finger assist)”.86 The reference to a “bodily instrument” suggests that the human body itself by virtue of its parts can already be seen as a type of instrument. Such an understanding of the human body would, however, call into question the very existence of the vocal, since it would render the vocal essentially instrumental in nature. Finally, Meyer & Gautheron87 (on whistled speech) appear to define ‘instrument’ in a somewhat narrower way: “We may notice that the finger and the leaf can be seen as the first steps toward the use of an instrument (like jewharps, flutes and drums to produce instrumentally played speech”. This suggests that introducing a finger in order to intensify whistling would qualify as instrumental, while ‘ordinary’ whistling without usage of fingers wouldn’t. In light of those difficulties regarding the definition of the instrumental, we shall try to approach this issue from a different angle: the question of the status of whistled and drummed speech systems vis-à-vis the spoken language. While the older literature, such as Stern,88 refers to whistled and drummed languages as ‘speech surrogates’, newer accounts seem to prefer to call them ‘registers’, see the following quote by Sicoli89 : “As a specialized version of a language used for specific purposes in particular social circumstances, whistled speech varieties are linguistic registers.” Similarly, Seifart et al.90 refer to drum systems such as the one encountered in Bora as “natural speech registers”. Especially in the case of whistled speech, this appears to be fitting, because, as stated by Cowan91 for Mazatec: “Culturally, whistling is treated as a natural and integral part of conversation.” Furthermore, whistling, at least in the case of Mazatec, is learned by boys “almost as soon as they learn to talk”.92 This all indicates that whistled speech, even if whistling itself is classified as non-vocal and its ‘instrumental status’ is hard to assess, is very closely tied to the vocal, spoken language, because it reproduces it. In the case of drummed speech these close ties are also found: Here, it is via the instrumental modality of drumming, that the vocal, spoken language is reproduced. In both cases we thus encounter an intimate relationship to the vocal, which makes it difficult to classify even drummed speech as exclusively instrumental in nature.

86

One has to keep in mind that the topic of Sicoli’s paper is not the instrumental and/or the vocal. Meyer & Gautheron (2006), p. 574. 88 Stern (1957). 89 Sicoli (2016), p. 412. 90 Seifart et al. (2018), p. 13. 91 Cowan (1948), p. 284. 92 Cowan (1948), p. 281. 87

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5 Summary In this paper we presented and discussed the phenomena of whistled and drummed speech and tried to relate them to the vocal and the instrumental. The findings shall now be summarized. Our approach was based on the definition of the vocal as involving vocal cord vibration. We derived from that the non-vocal ex negativo. Drummed and whistled speech were thus tentatively defined as non-vocal. The instrumental wasn’t defined, but usage of musical instruments was taken to be indicative of the involvement of the instrumental. However, given that both drummed and whistled speech are based on and reproduce the spoken language—which is vocal in nature—and thus exhibit an intimate relationship to the vocal, we stated that even drummed speech could hardly be thought of as exclusively instrumental. Thus, irrespective of the potential role of the instrumental, the vocal always, in a sense, forms part of these emulated speech systems. The boundaries between the vocal and the instrumental, the vocal and the non-vocal can be considered fuzzy at best. In the case of the Pirahã prosodic channels we, furthermore, encounter a non-vocal channel—whistle speech—alongside the two vocal channels of hum speech and yell speech. We would like to close with a final observation: Brown93 in his 2017 article on the origin of music and language, as a sort of primeval, first state in that development proposes “an involuntary but ritualized system of affective prosody”. Given the different prosodic channels encountered in Pirahã, which highlight the importance of prosody, not only in that language but in language more generally, it seems to be worthwhile to pursue further the role of prosody in language.

References Almeida, A.: Vom Pfeifen und Trommeln. In: Zeitschrift Für Dialektologie Und Linguistik, vol. 51, Issue 1, pp. 53–78 (1984) Brown, S.: A joint prosodic origin of language and music. In: Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 8, 1894 (2017) Busnel, R.-G., Classe, A.: Whistled Languages. Springer-Verlag, Berlin, Heidelberg and New York (1976) Campbell, L.: American Indian languages: the historical linguistics of native America. Oxford University Press, New York (1997) Cowan, G.M.: Mazateco whistle speech. Language 24(3), 280–286 (1948) Brown, K. (ed.).: Encyclopedia of Language & Linguistics, vol. 13, 2nd edition. Elsevier, Oxford (2006) Strazny P (ed.).: Encyclopedia of Linguistics. Fitzroy Dearborn, New York (2005) Everett, D.: Syllable weight, sloppy phonemes, and channels in Pirahã discourse. In: Proceedings of the Eleventh Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, pp. 408–416 (1985) Everett, D.: Pirahã. In: Handbook of Amazonian Languages, vol. 1, pp. 200–325 (1986)

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Foris, D.P.: A grammar of Sochiapam Chinantec. SIL International and The University of Texas at Arlington, Dallas (2000) Derbyshire, D.C., Pullum, G.K. (eds.): Handbook of Amazonian Languages, vol. 1. Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin (1986) Meyer, J.: Bioacoustics of human whistled languages: an alternative approach to the cognitive processes of language. In: Anais Da Academia Brasileira de Ciências, vol. 76, Issue 2, pp. 405–412 (2004) Meyer, J. : Description typologique et intelligibilité des langues sifflées, approche linguistique et bioacoustique. Ph.D. thesis, Université Lyon 2 (2005) Meyer, J.: Typology and acoustic strategies of whistled languages: Phonetic comparison and perceptual cues of whistled vowels. J. Int. Phonetic Assoc. 38(1), 69–94 (2008) Meyer, J., Gautheron, B.: Whistled speech and whistled languages. In: Encyclopedia of Language & Linguistics, vol. 13, 2nd edition, pp. 573–576 (2006) Rensch, C.R.: An etymological dictionary of the Chinantec languages. SIL and University of Texas at Arlington Press, Arlington (1989) Seifart, F., Echeverri, J.A.: Proto Bora-Muinane. In: LIAMES—Línguas Indígenas Americanas, vol. 15, Issue 2, pp. 279–311 (2015) Seifart, F., Meyer, J., Grawunder, S., Dentel, L.: Reducing language to rhythm: amazonian Bora drummed language exploits speech rhythm for long-distance communication. In: Royal Society Open Science, vol. 5, Issue 4, 170354 (2018) Sicoli, M.A.: Oto-Manguean languages. In: Encyclopedia of Linguistics, pp. 797–800 (2005) Sicoli, M.A.: Repair organization in Chinantec whistled speech. In: Language, vol. 92, Issue 2, pp. 411–432 (2016) Stern, T.: Drum and whistle “languages”: an analysis of speech surrogates. In: American Anthropologist, vol. 59, Issue 3, pp. 487–506 (1957)

Alexandra Núñez, * 1984 in Wuppertal (Germany). Master’s degree in German Language and Literature (1st major) and Art History (2nd major) at the University of Kassel, the University of Siena (Italy) and Heidelberg University. Since 2017, PhD student at TU Darmstadt in the field of Linguistics and Digital Humanities. Research interests: cognitive linguistics, critical discourse analysis, theories of embodiment and metaphors and natural language processing. Publications: Núñez, A.: Der Arabische Frühling – eine westliche REVOLUTION? Ein diskurslinguistischer Beitrag zur lexematischen Wissenskonstitution in Printmedienkommentaren (2010–2011). In: Keller R., Schneider W., Viehöver W. (eds.) Zeitschrift für Diskursforschung (ZfD)/Journal for Discourse Studies (JfDS), pp. 40–63. Beltz Verlag, Weinheim (2021); Núñez, A., Gerloff, M., Do Dinh, E.-D., Rapp, A., Gehring, P., Gurevych, I.: A ‘wind of change’ – shaping public opinion of the Arab Spring using metaphors. In: Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, vol. 34, Issue Supplement_1, pp. i142–i149 (2019); Núñez, A.: Wenn das ‚Embodiment‘ politisch wird: Das ImageSchema PATH und seine Realisierung im Mediendiskurs zum „Arabischen Frühling“ (2010–11). In: Polzenhagen F., Kövecses Z., Vogelbacher S., Kleinke S. (eds.) Cognitive Explorations into Metaphor and Metonymy, pp. 149–164. Peter Lang, Frankfurt (Main) (2014). Jonathan Reich, * 1995 in Itzehoe (Germany). BA studies in Semitic Studies (1st major) and Assyriology (2nd major) at Heidelberg University (2015–2019) with focus on Aramaic and, chiefly, Arabic. Since 2019, MA student of General Linguistics at the University of Cologne. Current interests, among others, include Papuan languages, demonstratives, prosody and the morphosyntax-pragmatics-interface. Alongside MA studies, work as student assistant at the SFB 1252 “Prominence in Language”. Publications: Geva-Kleinberger, A., Reich, J.: TAWF¯IQ CANAANS Briefe an GUSTAF DALMAN als linguistische Quelle für das PalästinensischArabische. In: Zeitschrift des Deutschen Palästina-Vereins, vol. 133, Issue 2, pp. 205–236 (2017).

Singing and Sounds. Highlights in Chinese Culture Klaus Sonnendecker

1 Introduction The Book of Songs (shiji) contains 305 songs collected about three-thousand years ago.1 They were widely translated into European languages. Marcel Granet (1884– 1940) interpreted some of the songs as flirtatious response singing during the mating season. The Chinese character for music ‘yue’ may also be pronounced as ‘le’, then it means ‘joy’, or ‘to enjoy’. In Confucian cosmology music had the function of consolidating the ruler’s power. Confucius criticized vulgar tunes (suyue). Music at court had to be either for ceremonies (yayue) or banquets (yanyue). The five tones of the pentatonic-scale were seen as reflections of the five planets (wuxing), or together with moon and sun (heptatonic) of seven stars. The twelve-tone (dodecaphonic) system was linked to the monthly circle (shier dizhi), with winter- and summersolstice indicating yin and yang tones. During the history of twenty-five dynasties in China musical reformers searched for the harmonies of pure and authentic music, which got lost in antiquity. The last northern Song emperor Huizong (1082–1135) favoured a tonal system based on proportions of his bodily limbs.2 The Sanfen sunyi fa (trisection rule of adding or subtracting one third to determine a pitch) lead to the inability to produce a pure octave: ‘The Yellow Bell cannot be restored’ (huangzhong bu fan gong). Huangzhong (Yellow Bell) names the first of the twelve tones. In 1581, Zhu Zaiyu described in Luli rongtong a mathematical method for the equal temperament. He related the twelve-tones with the five- and seven-tones (yinyang-yun) to achieve a natural heavenly order (ziran tianli), which combines circle and square 1 Granet (1919, 1926); Waley (1954)2 ; Rückert (1833); von Strauß (1880); Simon (2015); https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitch-accent_language, 18 April 2022, accessed 22 May 2022. Peng (2022); Liu/Yuan (2009). 2 Lam (2006); Kojima (2006).

K. Sonnendecker (B) University in Berlin, Berlin, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 H.-W. Heister et al. (eds.), Word Art + Gesture Art = Tone Art, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20109-7_16

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(heaven and earth). He fixed, with the help of the Pythagoras theorem (gougushi), huangzhong at 655.65 Hz, between es2 and e2 . For an exact computation he invented an abacus with 88 rows and 567 beads, as well as an instrument (yunzhun) to measure the tuning of pipes (lüguan). About forty years later Simon Stevin (1548/49–1620) in Bruges discovered equal temperament related to the twelfth root of two. But no immediate exchange between East and West occurred, although the Jesuit missionary Jean Joseph Marie Amiot (1718–1793) reported on Zhus research in letters (1761, 1788 and 1789) from Beijing. Some studies of Zhu Zaiyus writings were only published in recent years in Chinese and in western languages.3

2 Stephen Jones This article is based on Stephen Jones research on shawm bands and shengguan music in the northern Chinese countryside. Shawm bands are instrumentalists, whereas Daoist shengguan musicians chant hymns as well. Jones is reluctant to write about the rich vocal traditions of northern China as they were manipulated to propagate political campaigns. As a former collaborator of Laurence Picken (1909–2007) on music at the Tangcourt,4 in 1986, Jones entered Beijing’s Central Conservatory of Music, founded in 1964. There he became an ‘errant’ student of Yuan Jingfang (b. 1936), who taught him to play the Chinese zither (qin).5 Raffaella Gallio became in the 1980s one of the first western students at Shanghai Conservatory. She arranged contact to Li Shigen (1919–2010), the specialist on Tang music in Xi’an. When Jones found interest in 3

Peng (2019, 2022); Zeng (2003); Woo (2017); Wu (2008); Wang (2021); Standaert (2005). Jones/Picken (1987); Kouwenhoven (1991); stephenjones.blog 10 Febr. 2017, China 1986: “The reason for my first visit was to seek clues to Tang performance practice in living traditions there— how to recreate his transnotations in a convincing style. […] And immediately I discovered a vast unknown treasury of living folk and ritual music, soon putting historical musicology to one side in favour of contemporary ethnography. —See also Jones (2004), pp. 169 and 184; Chen (2005); Hall (2005); Lee (2000). 5 Yuan Jingfang (1976); stephenjones.blog 25 June 2017, when Jones wrote his first book (Folk Music of China, 1995) he relied heavily on her studies. This book is a tribute to Picken, who personally owned a huge collection of Chinese musical instruments, but during the Mao-era was excluded from visiting mainland China, instead he collected and published material on Turkish musical instruments.— stephenjones.blog 16 Febr. 2017, in 1986–1987, Jones also received tuition from the qin-players Li Xiangting (b. 1940) and Lin Youren (1938–2013); stephenjones.blog 13 Jan. 2017, Wu Jinglue, Zhang Ziqian and Wu Jiaoji. Finally, he concluded “qin music is oversubscribed, concentrating on the inner life of imperial literates, whose interests were qin, poetry, chess, calligraphy, and painting (qin-shi-qi-shu-hua). Like in Daoist ritual studies, scholarship is concerned with texts more often than with social ethnography.”—stephenjones.blog 10 Aug. 2017: “In 1988 Tang music scholar Yin Falu (1915–2002) proposed as his Chinese name Zhong Sidi to Jones, and his colleagues in the orchestra at home gave him the nickname: missionary. In 2012, Zhang Lili wrote Lun Zhong Side de Nan Gaoluo yinyuehui yanjiu (PhD thesis at Zhongyuan yishu yanjiuyuan) about his research on the music association in the village. More than twenty years after Tian Qing and Qiao Jianzhong had directed his field-study there. (Accessed 01 April 2022). 4

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fieldwork projects, Tian Qing advised him to affiliate at Beijing’s Music Research Institute (MRI), founded in 1954. On visits to Beijing’s Buddhist Zhihua temple Tian Qing had discovered its connection with Quliaying, a village in Hebei province, from where the temple recruited young musicians.6 Between 1989–2001 Jones took part in nationwide research on folk-music in China’s countryside, supplementing an earlier study by Yang Yinliu (1899–1984) in urban areas and monasteries. Traditional music was neglected, because in the twentieth century Chinese composers and musicians were trained in western music theory. In the early 1970s ethnomusicologists collected material of traditional East Asian music and religious rituals outside the mainland. Since Deng Xiaoping’s (1904–1997) open-door policy research projects with foreign participation began in areas of China.7 Initial comparative studies of religious rituals and music were undertaken in Fujian province, near Taiwan. It became evident, that traditional culture had survived on both sides of the China straits and was struggling against challenges by new medias. Vocal and instrumental traditions were archieved from core provinces and borderlands. Further material was collected in so-called autonomous regions of Tibet, Xinjiang, Mongolia, and among ethnic minorities in Yunnan, but also in coastal cities like Tianjin, Shanghai, Quanzhou, as well as in Hongkong, Singapore, and among inhabitants of foreign China-towns. After about twenty years, compilations were published in Chinese under the general heading Anthology of Folk Music of the Chinese Peoples, subdivided for provinces and counties, or areas of national minorities, under different aspects like dance, folk-songs, folk-instrumentals, narrative singing, and operas.8 Jones felt like being on a salvage mission and cites a quote ascribed to Confucius: “When rites are lost, seek throughout the countryside” (li shi qiu zhuye).9

2.1 Traditional Music in the Northern Chinese Countryside Until 2011 Jones took part in field-work projects with MRI’s leading musicologists. He traveled to Jiangsu/Shanghai, Liaoning, Guangdong, and researched especially in Hebei,10 south of Beijing. In 1991, he studied shawm bands in Shanxi. For the Hua Brothers Shawm Band from Yangjiabu11 in Yanggao county, he arranged concerts at festivals in Washington, 6

Jeff Todd Titon (b. 1943), a leading American ethnomusicologist, visited Qujiaying and its new museum of traditional music. (sustainablemusic.blogspot.com/search/label/China, 15 Nov. 2009). Accessed 22 April 2022. Overmyer (2009); Szczepanski (2008). 7 Lin (2021), Introduction: “In 1966, Taiwanese western educated musicologists started to collect folk-songs (Minge caiji yundong), in 1967, Zhongguo minzu yinyue yanjiu zhongxin (National Centre for Musicethnology) was inaugurated. 8 Yuan Jingfang, in: imc-cim.org; Wu (1994); Witzleben (1995). 9 Ban Gu, (Qian) Hanshu, ch. 30; Peng (2019), p. 188. 10 stephenjones.blog 16 April 2017, Catholics in Gaoluo. 11 Shawm, also called Zornâ (suona): Liang (1985), p. 270, sona, Chinese oboe; Reinhard (1956), p. 127, Oboe; Kleeman (2010), p. 712, suona, horn (a Chinese brass trumpet-like wind instrument);

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Amsterdam, Venice, and the UK). In Yanggao’s Upper Liangyuan village he established a close acquaintance with the Li Family Daoists, a shengguan (mouth-organ and double reed pipe) band, who perform at funerals and temple-fairs. Since 2005, he arranged five tours for these household musicians to the USA, Europe (UK, Holland, France, Italy, Germany), and Hongkong. Their service subsumed under ‘life-cycle and calendrical ceremonials’ is strictly regulated by the customary rules. They have to adapt to preferences of locals at home, while on tour the band plays more elaborate pieces from manuals, due to representing an Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH).12 Whereas the shengguan music is played by ritual specialists, shawm bands serve ritual, but rarely perform the rituals themselves.—Shawm bands lead a procession, but at a halt they stand a side. Then musical ritual of the Daoists occupies centrestage.—Shawm bands are appropriately renao (festive, bustling, lively, uproarious), whereas the Daoist shengguan ensemble is more sophisticated. Daoists do not go to the burial ground. Only the chief Daoist has to determine, with a compass, the exact position of the coffin in the grave, and afterwards to exorcize the house of the deceased. Ritual is performance, and is expressed largely through sound—the items of vocals, percussion, and melodic instrumental music that permeate the sequence: Word, the Vocal and the Instrumental, Cantando and Sonando13 intertwine. “Texts are conveyed at quite different tempi: the choral hymns before the coffin extremely slowly, the solo recitations in parlando style, the choral mantras at such speed that [a film editor for] the subtitles can hardly keep up. This aspect of ritual performance is rarely reflected in translations […].—Hymns are sung in adagio molto.14 Shawm bands just play instruments, whereas the yinyang Daoists prepare scriptures to recite or chant, and burn them. Thereby they address either the gods or souls of the dead and the living. At times, shawm bands, and shengguan bands as well, entertain spectators: a musician is fooling around miming (‘catching the tiger’), while others play on. The main purpose for performance of these bands lies in strengthening social coherence between the living and dead. Although rituals possess a religious background, Du Yaxiong denies any religious relevance, as tradition stems from Confucian heritage alone.15 The preaching of Buddhism consoles believers by the Jones 1992, p. 7, a small horn is often called haidi, sea-flute, pp. 8, 13 and 16. Jones (2017), vol. 2, pp. 90–91: three sizes of shawm: “1. yihao (number one; the character hao also means: trumpet; brass wind instrument), lowest note E; 2. erhao, in F; sanhao, in G; chuhao (extralarge), larger shawms in D or E flat; small suona (horn), shawms (laba, trumpet). 12 stephenjones.blog 26 Jan. 2017: “I describe, not prescribe – except when I transplant them to the alien context of the concert hall, when my subliminal influences, and their own perception of the demands of the situation, seem to prevent them to perform with somewhat more grandeur than in the casual current conditions of rural funerals.—stephenjones.blog 12 Aug. 2016: “My subject is Daoist ritual, not ‘Daoist music’; however, ‘music’ (let’s say sound) is always a core aspect of ritual. 13 To these terms s. Heister, Introduction in the present volume. 14 stephenjones.blog, 23 March 2018. 15 Du Yaxiong explained in his PhD thesis (2002) traditional music theory with the numerology derived from the five elements (wuxing) theory and by the trigrams based on yinyang duality in

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message of gaining an escape from earthly sufferings. Teaching of mantras, parables, and tales are delivered to the accompaniment of sounds. The same is valid for Daoists.16 In 1999, Jones went with fellow-researcher Guo Yuhua to meet traditional musicians in areas of Shaanxi province, where Mao’s Long March had ended. She advised him, that for a Chinese scientist “social problems remain to be taboo. So, we accumulate dry lists of ritual manuals and sequences, vocal and instrumental items, and birth-dates of performers”.17 Nevertheless, he collected all available data on social history with a critical attitude. For musicians suffered discrimination and possessed a rather low social status. They were usually addicted to opium, and nowadays to amphetamines, in order to resist fatigue while playing more or less continuously for hours or days.18

2.2 Shawm (Suona) Gongs, chimes and flutes formed an elementary part of court-rituals in Chinese antiquity. When the Han and later the Tang had temporarily conquered parts of Central Asia, musicians with their instruments were accepted as tribute-products. Shawm-and-percussion (chuishou) bands are common throughout the Islamic world, including North-Africa and Eastern-Europe, and around 1800 also in Western-Europe (Alla turca). The suona was incorporated in military marching bands during the Ming.19 Until recently Chinese peasants remained illiterate and music is practiced by family members. Performance techniques are transmitted orally, and through learning by doing, to the next of (agnatic or adopted) kin, rarely with the help of manuals. Blind and illiterate shawm player Erhu (Wang Hui, b. 1946) observed that “only stupid

the Book of Changes (Yijing). Therefore the concept of changes is the basic foundation of Chinese music. In the ‘Postscript’ he deliberated, that if certain instruments were no longer used, it might have been for practical reasons, or because of a change from sacred to secular employment; but in Du (2009) he remarks, that theory is absent for Chinese traditional music, and contradicts his earlier assertion on the leading role of Confucianism by pointing out, that a constant change is due to Daoism. 16 Tian Qing 1999/2000. Tian argues that Buddhist music was adapted to Chinese culture and Daoism. The editors of the CHIME-journal promised to present the second part of his article on Tang and Song in the next issue, but it was not printed; Giesen (1977); Hsu (2010); Szczepanski (2008). 17 stephenjones.blog 19.06.2018, Stephen Feuchtwang introduced Guo Yuhua (b. 1956) to Jones, in 1999 she took him to Li Manshan’s village and also to Shaanbei. (Accessed 01.04.2022). 18 Jones (2017), vol. 1, p. 91, pp. 101–13, the repertoire consists of (a) processional pieces, (b) eight great suites, (c) small pieces, (d) pop pieces. 19 Jonesblog 19 Dec. 2016; 06 Jan. 2016. In the countryside the solo instruments pipa, zheng, qin, erhu are rather rare. For a discussion of the earliest relations between east and west Asia, see De Rose (2021).

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gujiang [musicians] learn gongche [notation]”.20 Boys start to learn initial skills, like how to beat drums and cymbals rhythmically, or take over the second shawm. At a mature age they may gradually be prepared to play lead instruments. While notation is an emblem for a qin scholar’s achievement of ‘high culture’, for shawm bands it has hardly any significance. Shawm musicians are legions, while at any time only a few hundred played the qin. Occasionally shawm musicians learn with the aid of gongche. Jones calls it solfeggio mnemonics. But the main learning process takes place during ceremonial performance, allowing for constant flexibility in variation over a fixed skeleton of small pieces and eight great suites.21 Small pieces are usually vocalderived from local operas. The Hua band’s repertory consisted of five suites: ‘Entering the little building’ (shang qiaolou), ‘The general’s command’ (Jiangjun ling). ‘Chant of the water dragon’ (Shuilongyin), ‘Banquet of hundred harmonies’ (Baiheyan), and ‘Geese landing’ (Dayanluo). Its core repertory was for two identical shawms playing in heterophony, whose lowest note was e1 (in transcription transposed by Jones to C). The melodies were accompanied by a percussion section with barrel drum, two pairs of small cymbals, and a knobbed gong; yet on the attached DVD shawm bands also play sheng, trumpets, and saxophon. Melodies are rather fixed, except for decorations of an elusive melodic skeleton (of pieces or suites). Melodies are traditionally handed down from generation to generation, but at each performance they may be varied by decorating variations according to the proficiency of the respective musician. Especially if two shawm bands perform at the same event, they are expected to play distinctively different pieces. Over the constant percussion metre, the shawm players use considerable melodic and rhythmic latitude, with constant syncops. The upper shawm part is evocatively called zoujian (walking shrill) or chuijian (blowing shrill), while the lower part is lata (dragging out the bass). The gong is sounded on the first beat of every bar; two pairs of small cymbals play on beats 1, 3, 5, and 7 of 8/4 bars, and on beats 1 and 3 of 4/4 bars. In all (seven) scales, melodies are based on pentatonic sets, with the two further degrees of the heptatonic scale, used occasionally as passing notes or to create a feeling of temporary modulation (metabole). In virtually all parameters the shawm 20

Jonesblog 16 Nov. 2019. Jones et al. (1992), p. 22, Jones (2017), vol. 1, pp. 101–13, Repertories; extensively in: Jonesblog 14 July 2017, Dissolving Boundaries; about the gongche, see Jonesblog 03 Mar. 2018, 26 Mar. 2017; 22 Dec. 2016, the solfeggio do-re-mi-fa-so-la-si equals the gongche: he-si-yi-shang-che-gong-fan; with liu and wu as upper octave notes for he/do and si/ re respectively (taking the older system with he, rather than shang, as do!). Thus, Jones starts with so-la-ti, this variation is common for Kunju-operas: compare en.wikipedia.org-Gongche notation: shang che gong fan liu wu yi; usual variations: he si yi, instead of the last three notes liu wu yi; Reinhard (1956), Tafel p. 88; Peng (2021), p. 237, the characters for the tones are untranslatable. Zhu and Jiang (2021), research in central Hebei found proof, that teaching gongche notation is more free than staff notation, although a character corresponds to many pitches, which is complex and changeable. - Szczepanski 2008, pp. 80–126, Gongche, here, p. 124, summarizes: gongche allows shengguan improvisation, and strengthens the line of transmission from teacher to disciple. Therefore gongche is meanwhile a secret ritual language. See also pp. 281ff., Appendix: Gongche pu and Cipher Scores currently held in Wutaishan. On page 123, the author criticizes the prevailing didactic method of equating gongche to solfeggio. 21

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suite is more complex than a qin piece, which creates an atmosphere suitable to the meditations of its player.22 The shawm players use circular breathing. There is a close rapport in the heterophony of the two or more shawms. While the second shawm plays a rather simple version of the skeletal melody (of a selection of traditional qupai), mainly in the basic octave, the leader takes the upper role, often going off high into the upper register. As they converge on the same note or go to different octaves, sometimes landing on 5ths or even 2nds, with different rhythmic densities, a cohesive and varied counterpoint emerges. The metre is not always clearly duple. Cadential figures may contain an ‘extra’ beat. Most of the melody is played by stopping the upper strings. A melodic pitch may be decorated by sounding an open string one or two octaves lower; sometimes octave doublings are played. Phrases are often varied with simple left- and right-hand techniques. Pitches are entirely pentatonic, with a single five-note scale as standard. The scale is based in la (D in the score), with subsidiary cadences on mi (A) and do (F). Variations of pitch, style, scales, melodic repertoire, and suite form differ from district to district. In Shaanbei, while entertainment music died out with the old elite, ge group dancing—whose rural performances, however ritually significant, have always been very occasional—is more prominent, and more secular in towns.23

2.3 Qin and Shengguan (Zither and Mouth-Organ + Oboe) In China, ritual music in temples belongs to the segments of elaborated musical education for individuals and orchestras. The earliest surviving notation for the qin (zither) ‘Qu Xian shengqi mipu’24 (1425, “The Emaciated Immortal’s Handbook of Spiritual and Marvellous Mysteries”) was composed by the Daoist recluse Zhu Quan (1378–1448).25 Versions of Pingsha luoyan (“Geese landing”, title of a piece for the qin) have been handed down from master to pupil with the aid of notation (dapu).26 22

Jones (2017), vol. 1, p. 94; Jonesblog 14 July 2017, 27 Apr. 2019, Yet more Chinese clichés! Music: Chinese scale: a heptatonic scale is based on anhemitonic pentatonic melodies, with occasional temporary modulation up or down a fifth creating a new anhemitonic pentatonic set. Jonesblog 16 Nov. 2019, with their deep experience of the ‘old rules’ of ceremonial, far from the abstruse erudition of the literati who dominate sinology, they were the main transmitters of imperial Chinese culture, who should be esteemed. 23 Jones 2017, vol. 2, p. 153, pp. 214–15, shawm bands converted to a nationally standardized repertoire of pop music and TV themes. 24 Thompson (2022); Dahmer 1985; Schaab-Hanke 2009. 25 Zhu Quan, 17th son of the first Ming Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang. A descendant, Zhu Chenhao (1476–1521), Prince of Ning, started an unsuccessful revolt in 1519, and a later offspring, (Zhu Da, 1626–1705), was the famous painter Bada Shanren. Zhu Zaiyu belonged to the Imperial clan too, but appealed against his installment. 26 There are many recordings of qin music available, and some in folklore style stem from national minorities, while only a few by Chinese shawm bands of village ritual associations. In 1985, a record with Pingsha luoyan was distributed by musicaphon’s Unesco collection: a musical anthology of

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Meanwhile written sources of music are collected and taught at conservatories. The rigid prescription of qin scores fossilizes the music. A qin piece is generally divided into six short sections, while shawm pieces extend over a dozen sections of labeled melodies (qupai), clearly separated by percussion interludes. Since the Ming, qin pieces typically open and close with a brief section in harmonics. In the 1950s, the tempo was performed slowly. Although qin music is never entirely slow, yet never as wild as final sections of shawm suites.

2.4 The Sheng (Mouth-Organ) Nowadays the sheng have fourteen pipes, but it may also have three less or more, ranging over two or three scales. Fingering (of the 17-pipes, at Zhihua temple): on its home base various do-so (he-che, in gongche solfeggio) pipes at the back are played with both hands’ third and fourth fingers (pipes 15, 14, 13, and 11), giving a nice full chord. The middle fingers of the right hand are hooked inside to give access to the inner holes of pipes 3 and 4 (re and mi). The Li band (in northern Shanxi) vary the usual position of the ti and its harmonizing fa# (dafan and gou, pipes 5 and 6)—playing this distinctive chord with the two thumbs stopping adjacent holes right in front of the player’s face. When a ritual association buys new sheng, musicians take them to be tuned (pin sheng) to the standard pitch of their own association, taking the che gong of their yunluo or tuning them to the lowest note of their dizi flute. The Upper Huanghao association fixed the pitch to D, but their pitch had to be changed to E, to match that of other groups in the area.27 The classic form of the shengguan ensemble consists of pairs of sheng, guanzi, dizi, and yunluo instruments. The sheng (mouth-organ) is often considered the basic instrument, while the guanzi (oboe) plays the leading role. The dizi (flute) and yunluo (gong-frame) seem to be becoming less important. When using shengguan then the percussion accompaniment is drum, small cymbals, and yunluo (two-gongs-in-frame). The ritual starts with seven visits to the altar or the soul-hall to deliver the scriptures. When all sing together (Jones calls it: a cappella), the dangdang (gong-in-frame) replaces the yunluo, and one Daoist wields a handbell; and they play interludes and codas on the two types of large cymbals nao and bo. Other instruments have become obsolete: the fast chanted scriptures for earth and temple rituals were mainly accompanied by muyu (woodblock), and a bronze bowl (qing) should also be struck intermittently, as for the Pardon ritual.28 the Orient, No. 32: China; qin-player Ding Boling (1939–81). General Editor, Ivan Vandor (1932– 2020). According to Bell Yung (1987) the title ‘Pingsha luoyan’ is misleading, because it had no relation to any known piece with that title. The Hua Brothers Shawm Band played their version of ‘Da Yanluo’ in August 1992, which is on the DVD, attached to Jones 2017, vol. 1. 27 Jonesblog 10 Mar. 2017; 01 Mar. 2017; 23 Mar. 2017. Accessed 01 Apr. 2022. 28 About shengguan instruments, see Jones 2017, vol. 3, pp. 256–78, ch. 14, The Vocal Liturgy; (pp. 279–80, ch. 15, The Ritual Percussion); pp. 290–97, ch. 16, The Melodic Instrumental Music, here p. 291, six players: 2 mouth-organs sheng, 1–2 (large and small) oboes guanzi, 1 flute dizi, 2–10

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While the more elite temple rituals use only vocal liturgy accompanied by ritual percussion, melodic instrumental music has long been commonly added for rituals among the folk. Throughout north China this takes the form of the exquisite shengguan chamber ensemble, which coalesced during the Ming. The instruments play in heterophony, each decorating the bare bones of the nuclear melody differently; the plaintive guanzi oboe leads, the sheng mouth-organ maintaining a continuous wall of sound, decorated by the halo of the yunluo (ten pitched gongs mounted on a frame), and darting ornaments from the dizi flute.29

Daoist rituals serve for retreat (zhai) and offerings (jiao). White symbolizes mortality (yin), and red blesses the living (yang). There were rituals for funerals (bai, white), earth (xie, thanks), and temple (miao). Nowadays funerals play a predominant role. Temple fairs took place in summer, and thanks to the earth in winter. For the funeral there are five inner (hoisting the pennant, judgment and alms, fetching water, invitation, transferring offering) and five outer rituals (opening the quarters, dispatching the pardon, roaming the lotuses, smashing the hells, crossing the bridges). Of those rituals only a selection is performed during services for a funeral, lasting two or three days.

3 Vocal Music The human voice was in Chinese culture always more important than instrumental music. But some instruments like the flute or sheng were understood as playing the part of human voices. China’s northern neighbours in Mongolia practice throat singing, which makes the voice sound like an instrument. Their style and Xinjiang’s muqam have influenced vocal music in northern China.

3.1 Bards in Shanxi and Shaanxi Throughout Asia the tradition of narrative singing is common. A type of folktales (errentai, song-and-dance duet) from nearby Inner Mongolia is popular in northern China. Blind beggars traditionally appeared as soloists at temple fairs in northern China30 : Singing (shuoshu, shuocheng, or quyi) about truth, goodness, beauty, and filial piety (zhen, shan, mei, xiao), about emperors and concubines, scholars and gongs on a frame yunluo; no reason is given for a change of instruments. Jones does not explain, why some instruments are no longer used. Rituals consist of the following themes: 1. Delivering the Scriptures (pp. 52–56), 2. Fetching Water (pp. 67–68), 3. Hoisting the Pennant, and Judgment and Alms (pp. 85–91), 4. The Invitation, and the Redeeming of Treasures (pp. 109–12), 5. Transferring Offerings (pp. 126–28), 6. The Burial (pp. 136–38), 7. Solo Activities of the Daoist, 8. The Invitation Revisited (pp. 298–307). 29 Jonesblog, 25 Apr. 2018; Jones 2017, vol. 1, p. 89, instruments for classic ‘suites’ (six players): 2 large shawms, 1 drum gu, 1 pair of small cymbals cha, 1 small gong gouwa, 1 large gong luo, doubling on natural trumpet hao and small gong dangdang. 30 Jones (2017), vol. 2, pp. 29–87.

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maids, generals and outlaws. Singing dominates the stories of which almost threehundred songs are locally known in Shaanbei. In some sections dialogues are spoken. The bard accompanies himself on a plucked lute (pipa or sanxian) and two clappers fixed to his left leg and right hand. Most temple fairs have no narrative singing anymore, because it was used for political campaigns, and afterwards cassettes and lately mobile phones substituted bards. After local opera troupes lost state funding they had to rely on touring the circuit of temple fairs. A brief comment on the DVD (attached to the book) declares, that bards are presently imitating Jinju-operas in a reduced form. With improved health-care blindness is almost eradicated and former blind bards became healers and godfathers, who give amulets to boys. The DVD shows an initiation ceremony for a long row of young boys crawling through a pipe. A cutter separates a sash attached to each body, symbolizing a charm which may have hitherto protected them. Another take on the DVD features a bard chanting, first before the house- and then in front of the kitchen-altar, to gods or ghosts, for curing or blessing a boy by his incantations. Other professionals with links to musicians are geomancers, female spirit mediums, and owners of funeral-shops. Jones found them more helpful to receive information about musicians than from local officials. For contrasting reasons, the texts of both hymns and scriptures are barely intelligible to the human ear: whereas the former are sung very slowly with melisma, the latter were chanted very fast, iso-rhythmically. Daoists use a variety of styles of vocal delivery along the continuum from speech to song. Yanggao Daoists distinguish only shuowen solo recited sections and zantan sung hymns. They call their singing reciting (nian), whether singing a cappella, accompanied only by ritual percussion, or if accompanied by shengguan wind instruments, only half of them can sing.31

A Daoist lists his tasks for the funeral: blowing and beating, writing, reciting,32 looking (chuida-xie-nian-kan)33 . Clients frequently come and ask him for calculating auspicious dates, when to marry, to travel, to start a business, or even to name the day they have to die. Chants for funerals were copied by the Li family from the Daoist Canon. They comprise: Bafangzhou (mantras for eight quarters) Laojunjing (scriptures of Lord Lao), Shiyiyao (eleven victims of bad death), Zhenwujing (scripture to the perfect warrior) Zhenwuchan (litanies for the perfect warrior), Sanguanjing (scripture of the three officers) Sanyuanchan (scripture for the three primes), Yanshengchan (scripture of prolonging life), Yushujing (jade pivot scriptures) Yushuchan (jade pivot litany),

31

Jonesblog 01 June 2021, Pacing the Void 2: Styles in vocal liturgy; Jones (2017), vol. 3, pp. 256– 78. 32 That is, thus, a specific combination of Sonando (with and without tone as mere percussion) and Recitando. (Editor’s note). 33 Jones (2017), vol. 2, p. 5, kan refers to choosing auspicious days; nian means delivering chants; xie concerns all forms of documents for rituals; chuida means play wind and percussion instruments. Thrasher (1985), p. 7, “Genres such as chuida outdoor ritual music and Buddhist chant, because of their strong representational sense have absorbed relatively aesthetic value. [..] Chinese … are always a bit surprised at Western scholars’ interest in them.” Thrasher (2008) has revised his earlier negative statement.

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Rangzaijing (scriptures for averting calamity), Longhu tudijing (scriptures of dragonand-tiger, and of the earth) Lingguan Erlang zhou (mantras for Lingguan and Erlang), Wudoujing (five bushels scripture), Qian’gao Hougao (prior and latter invocations). In daily life numerous invocations are chanted as well.34

3.2 Nationwide Education of Chinese National Vocal Music In antiquity the literary genre of songs was for male and female singers. In 136 BC it became mandatory for (male) academicians to study the Book of Songs (shijing). The Tang empire established the jiaofang academy to teach music, theater, and dance for court entertainment. This institution lasted for a thousand years. Since the Ming the female roles were performed by males. Mei Lanfang (1894–1961) became the last world-famous impersonation of female roles in ‘Peking-operas’. Normally, women were excluded from appearing in public, except for a few instrumental soloists, and in music of minorities, or as spirit mediums. In modern times singers of both sexes have equal rights to act on stage. The history of western music in China began in the seventeenth century when missionaries spread the Gospel and introduced cipher notation. In the twentieth century elements of modern western music flourished in China and many musicians and singers were trained in playing western instruments and in ‘bel canto’ singing. Seventy years ago, Russian advisers strictly followed the same trail.35 Presently, among students performing in concerts at Berlin’s UdK (University of Arts) almost half of them have roots in the Far East. Media innovation produced new trends in popular music, and records by foreign entertainers swept into China. When K-pop conquered TV-programs it created an influential trend. Chinese authorities, always afraid of loosing control, marked musical entertainment of the 1920s as ‘yellow music’, containing dangerous pornography. In recent years pedagogical institutions all over China publish articles about ‘Chinese National Vocal Music’. In neighboring countries efforts to strengthen their respective national identities are propagated with similar verve. Comparative studies substantiate that some Chinese students of vocal music reject liberal teaching methods at American institutions. A proper handling of ‘soft skills’ in musical education should lead to success in the contest of systems. In 2014, Jin Tielin (b. 1940) prescribed for Chinese vocal music schools the scientific principles of ‘scientificity, national character, artistry, and contemporaneity’. Performers in mass media should revive and incorporate elements of national heritage. Such methods of drill are a clear sign that many vocalists are engaged by the army.36 Whereas Jones always emphasizes that in each village the rituals may be different and are constantly changing, the central authorities try to promote a fixed national culture on television screens. 34

Jones (2017), vol. 3, pp. 375–82, Appendices 2–3. Yang & Saffle (2017); Mittler (2022); Schneerson (1955). 36 Yu (2019), p. 67. 35

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A nationwide reconstruction of national vocal music is planned, in order to present China’s cultural heritage as being superior to other nations. Lin Weiya’s elaborate study of vocal singing on the island of Lanyu (Orchidsisland), southeast of Taiwan, reveals the ethnohistory of a remote place, whose inhabitants migrated from islands, north of Luzon in the Philippines. Lanyu was only in the nineteenth century integrated in the administration of the Chinese empire, subsequently (1895) Japan took control of Taiwan, and of Lanyu. After the 2nd world war the Han-Chinese of Taiwan suppressed the use of the native language, settled criminals on the island, and established a depot for nuclear waste from three power plants. Lin Weiya recorded and analyzed eight different types of songs. On Lanyu no instruments are used, singers occasionally accompany songs with hand-clapping. Old people still remember lots of Japanese military songs. In the Catholic Church service hymns are sung to the tunes of a piano in native language, while in the Protestant Church service hymns are sung in Chinese in harmony with the tune of an organ. As Lanyu became a tourist destination, and many of the younger generation seek work on the island of Taiwan, karaoke singing became popular among natives. Karaoke singing follows the pattern of the former group singing. But Lin Weiya fears that other types of singing will soon be forgotten.37 The ancient tradition of in responsive singing (yaqiang), described in the Book of Songs, has survived among a group of Yi in southwestern China.38 Such a start of courtship was also practiced among the Naga tribes of northwestern India.

4 Conclusion Stephen Jones combined his interests in performing ‘period instrumental music’ with studying living music in the Chinese countryside. Already thirty years ago, in field notes on ‘funeral music in Shanxi’, the scope of his work was outlined. But he restricted the range of survey continuously, from overall observation to the portrayal of an individual. He improved his techniques of documentation, from print, recording, and shooting photos to a personal blog, filled with news, reviews of books, media analysis, and above all, facets of English humour. His blog is steadily updated and linked to registries: tags and categories, posts I like, and additional subject headings. It contains video clippings from a variety of different recordings, in order to facilitate the comparison of the same piece of music, performed by various orchestras or soloists, along with its respective scores of notation. Whereas on top of the left side one may select themes, or slides from a gallery of 183 photos, 15 numbers of a playlist, and below the monthly archive dating back to November 2016 is placed. The top bar gives access to a list of themes.39

37

Lin (2021); Funk (2019). Lu (2020); Rees (2000). 39 Wang (2021). 38

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By studying lively traditional music in China Jones became part of an ongoing research in a hitherto neglected area. In his writings he predicted that the members of the ensembles met by the research teams could be the last ones to remember traditional pieces, as their repertoire was already widely reduced. The modern lifestyle influences the younger generation to seek opportunities in towns, and finding there first an appropriate education and later a promising career. Yet, recently he posted some hope, that traditional music in the countryside could survive, if it adapts to altered circumstances, as it always achieved under changing conditions, because no golden age of traditional music ever existed. In China itself, the prospects for study will evolve along new paths, as future students will have to follow on-line instructions and strict surveillance. Jones is not in favour of the emblem ‘Intangible Cultural Heritage’, for fears that it only creates arranged attractions for the industry of tourism.

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Klaus Sonnendecker, * 1951, studied Sinology, Japanology, and Ethnology at the Free University in Berlin.

Song, Sound and Meaning in the Music of the Indigenous People of Guatemala in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries Deborah Singer

1 Introduction In 1770 the archbishop of Guatemala, Pedro Cortés y Larraz, concluded an extensive report on the state of the parishes of the diocese of Guatemala. This report was compiled in the Descripción Geográfico Moral de la Diócesis de Goathemala,1 prepared from three field visits that the archbishop made between the years 1768 and 1770.2 To form an opinion attached to reality, Cortés y Larraz did not hesitate to personally cross the province, traversing mountains, rivers, and valleys to reach the most remote corners of the diocese. He questioned each doctrinal priest, reviewed the books of the parishes, and carefully observed whether the neophytes of different towns received the sacraments of the Catholic Church. His final impression was quite negative. He complained about the lack of preparation of the doctrinaire priests. He also noticed in the settlers, primarily indigenous, too much laziness and the vice of drunkenness. To make matters worse, he realized that the indigenous people refused to learn the catechism, which constituted the basis for integrating native peoples into the colonial order and the Kingdom of God (Figs. 1 and 2). Although music occupies a marginal place in the Description, some references to devotional singing and instrumental practice in those villages can help us understand the developing dynamics of evangelization, at least under the terms defined by the Catholic Church. In truth, most towns did not even have a school to instruct children in the dogmas of the faith. When there was one, as is the case in the Jocotenango

1 2

Moral Geographical Description of the Diocese of Guatemala. See Cortés y Larraz (1958).

D. Singer (B) Escuela de Música, Universidad Nacional, Heredia, Costa Rica e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 H.-W. Heister et al. (eds.), Word Art + Gesture Art = Tone Art, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20109-7_17

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Fig. 1 Map of the Audiencia de Guatemala, by Nicolas Sanson D’Abbeville (1600–1667)3

parish, education was limited only to an Indio fiscal4 who taught the prayers in Latin that the children had to sing repeatedly. Cortés y Larraz points out that these devotional songs were intoned mechanically, without the natives understanding the meaning. Worse still, the archbishop laments that everything the children learned they immediately forgot as soon as they left school. Considering this precarious state of the evangelization process, one wonders if the sung prayers fulfilled their intended purposes. If the word had no sense, did the sound take its place? To what extent did the sound refer to pre-Columbian religious practices? Is it possible to argue that it was a space for negotiating meanings? These questions are not easy to answer in the context of inter-ethnic relations but inquiring into the subject can help shed light on the levels of resistance that underlay the all-encompassing Christian universe.

3

https://iifilologicas.unam.mx/senderosFilologicos/index.php/senderosPhilologicos/la_bola. Accessed 02 April 2022. 4 The “indio fiscal” was the representative of the priest in the doctrines. It fulfilled administrative, police, religious, and educational functions. He was also busy teaching music.

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Fig. 2 Archbishop Pedro Cortés y Larraz5

2 Devotional Songs From the beginning of Hispanic colonization, musical instruction constituted an integral part of the catechization process of indigenous communities. We see it in the provision given by the missionary José de Acosta in De Procuranda Indorum Salute (1588): … children and the rude learn simply the catechism by heart. This objective is reached with full success by making them sing at times, and at times recite the catechism at fixed days and hours (…), and they submit to the impulse of the preacher and to the authority with which he talks.6

The final goal of these practices was the voluntary submission to the voice of the evangelizer. The missionaries did not attempt to make the neophytes understand the meanings of the Catholic doctrine because at the time, the idea that the indigenous were incapable of understanding matters of the spirit7 was commonplace. Given that, the only way they were let to internalize the faith was through a routine of 5

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cortesylarraz.JPG. Accessed 02 April 2022. Acosta (1984, p. 339). 7 See Antonio Sepp (1710, p. 215); José Cardiel (1747, p. 177); Cortés y Larraz (1958, pp. 184–185). 6

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mechanically repeated prayers, which produced an apparent consent between colonizers and colonized. José de Acosta wrote about this subject most clearly: “And do not be afraid to tire them out with repetitions, because those poor people don’t have so much need for exquisite speeches, but for a few easy things, more in accordance with their mentality, and repeat them over and over again”.8 Music played a relevant role in this process since it helped automate the cult and arouse emotions, regardless of the meaning of the words. Consequently, sound took precedence over sense.9 Music also helped create an environment in which the hegemonic notion of order prevailed. The principle was that conversion to Christianity would come naturally through the teaching of Western values. Singing prayers instilled those values and integrated the indigenous people into the Kingdom of Faith. This practice spread across all the missions, doctrines, and pueblos de indios.10 However, accomplishing the process turned out to be more complex than the Catholic Church had anticipated because making an accurate translation of Catholic dogma into local languages involved many limitations. Even so, the diocesan synod of Guatemala ordered in 1566 to translate the songs into local languages so that neophytes understood what they were singing.11 Translating did not necessarily guarantee a complete understanding of the precepts of Catholicism. Certain notions caused great confusion among the natives, such as the Holy Trinity—which very few friars understood, and were able to explain— Transubstantiation, and original sin. The indigenous did not accept the norms of conduct that the colonizers were trying to impose and therefore rejected their lifestyle. Because of this, sporadic attendance at mass was more of a procedure of fidelity than a proof of faith.12 They used to sing prayers mechanically and without interest, or as Cortés and Larraz describe, “with various errors and without any intelligence”.13 The repertoire selected to teach them was simple and versatile enough to sing on different occasions. Such is the case of the alabado (praise). Cortés y Larraz describes 8

“Y no tema cansarles con repeticiones, pues no tienen esos pobres tanta necesidad y exquisitos discursos cuanto de unas pocas cosas fáciles y más acomodadas a su mentalidad y repetírselas una y otra vez” (Acosta 1984: 81). 9 The Jesuit missionary Antonio Sepp (1655–1733) used music as a means of conveying Catholic doctrine: “In this way, to uneducated creatures incapable of understanding the things of the spirit, the truths of the Catholic faith enter their ears” (“De este modo, a criaturas incultas e incapaces de comprender las cosas del espíritu, les entra por el oído las verdades fundamentales de la fe católica”). Sepp (1951, p. 236). 10 The Jesuit Missions of Paraguay represented a successful example of using music for evangelization purposes. Ceremonies provided a frame for negotiation processes and resistance. See Heister and Singer (2013). 11 Article 12 of the diocesan synod held in Guatemala in 1566 refers to the problem of indigenous people singing in Latin: “And they sing this in Latin and they don’t understand what they say and they don’t benefit from it, (that’s why) we order that our priests and vicars make the natives sing the four prayers in their language instead.” (“Y esto lo cantan en latín y no entienden lo que dicen ni de ello reciben provecho mandamos que en lugar de lo dicho nuestros curas y vicarios hagan que los dichos naturales canten en su lengua las cuatro oraciones”). See Pérez Puente (2016, p. 249). 12 See Gruzinski (2007, p. 178). 13 Cortés y Larraz (1958, p. 73).

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it as follows: “This is the sum of all the doctrine and devotions of the Indians, who enjoy singing, sing the alabado in different modes”.14 Beyond the versatility of the praise, I intend to highlight that the mechanical repetition and the varios yerros (various errors) detected by the archbishop, caused a displacement of meaning that generated spaces for divergence. In other words, the indigenous voices managed to transform the songs intended to keep the traditional ways of the Catholic faith intact. This process brought about a reconfiguration of the link between the natives and dogma. The different modes of singing that Cortés y Larraz highlights may be related to the distortion attributed to the indigenous speech. This phenomenon has been studied previously in the analysis of musical manuscripts elaborated by native copyists.15 We observe a constant omission or substitution of letters,16 often explained as a supposed incapacity of indigenous people to pronounce Spanish words correctly. In my view, the phenomenon is related to the dispute over significance. It means that, among other things, what is left of the music is primarily the bare sonic, quasi-instrumental framework without any actual connection to the text. This scaffolding remains open to the old hidden and unsung texts.

2.1 Divergent Devotions The groups that interact in antagonistic conditions in the context of colonial domination do not share the same criteria of enunciation. Subaltern communities activate alternative communication strategies that impact the ways reality is perceived and understood. The effect is a shift in the system of meanings, as we can see in the following example. The English missionary Thomas Gage resided in Guatemala between 1625 and 1637, practicing as a doctrinal priest in Mixco, Amatitlán, and Petapa. Years after, Gage published his missionary experiences in the book entitled A new survey of the West Indies (1648). He noticed that when priests questioned indigenous people about Christian doctrine, their answers used to be vague and ambiguous. The missionary commented that when asked about the mystery of the Trinity and the incarnation of Christ, “they will only answer what they have been taught in a catechism of questions and answers; but if you ask them if they believe such a point of Christianity, they will never answer affirmatively, but only thus: perhaps it may be so”.17

14

Ibidem, p. 43. The archbishop points out that the “alabado” (praise) contained the mysteries and truths that the natives should know, considering their (limited) capacities. 15 Such is the case of the 9 codices found in 1963 in the Department of Huehuetenango, Guatemala. The repertoire consists of pieces that are in Latin, Spanish and some local languages; Most of them are of Spanish, and Franco-Flemish origin. See Baird (1981). 16 For example, “d” is replaced by “t” (humiltat, navitat), “u” by “o” (Jesos), “r” by “l” (otla), etc. 17 Gage (1946, p. 258).

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Many years after, Archbishop Cortés y Larraz faced a similar reality. When he questioned the natives about the mysteries of the faith, he always received a noncommittal answer: “perhaps it be true, my father”.18 This might be understood as a camouflaged act of rebellion but—as the priests themselves reported—it was the way the neophytes avoided giving a wrong answer that would expose them to punishment. Although I have not found any official reaction from the Church, this fact seems to have strengthened the doubts about the sincere conversion of the natives. All of this points to a rearrangement of the Western imaginary, according to the needs of indigenous people. In this process, singing played a fundamental role insofar as it made it possible to incorporate external discourses (of the colonizers) into the universe of rituals, symbols, and local meanings. I mention as an example the Quiché calendar that Archbishop Cortés y Larraz found in the town of San Pedro la Laguna. On the calendar, they indicated the correct day to sing responses, celebrate Masses and other devotional functions, in a kind of confluence of the liturgical time of the Catholic Church with the pre-Columbian temporal cycles of the Mayan culture. The indigenous people kept track of time through a series of 20 days. Each day had the name of an animal, a plant, a mythological character, or a natural phenomenon, and they were combined with numbers from 1 to 13 to complete a 260-day cycle.19 Old calendars established a cosmological ordering and created a harmonious relationship among human beings, nature, and the universe. What is significant about the calendar that Cortés y Larraz found is that its creator was a fugitive indigenous man who served as a healer and choirmaster. We know that the choirmaster had the function of teaching the songs of the Catholic Church, but in this case, he also appears associated with shamanic rituals linked to witchcraft, which at the time was the main threat faced by doctrinal priests. The archbishop often heard that the acts of witchcraft persisted, and those who carried them out used to be the choir singers, such as the indigenous Juan Joseph and Juan Alexandro, both from the town of Cuyultitán.20 Since the choirmaster updated the ancient myths and ancestral knowledge, his position operated as a place for interference in the transmission of Christian dogma. Therefore, the song extended its field of significance and offered a margin for transgression.

2.2 Indigenous Songs What was the situation with the ancient ancestral songs? The witnesses of the time describe the singing of the natives as practices that were difficult to elucidate. It may have been ancient shamanic songs whose execution allowed them entry to a parallel universe, where the ancestors lived, beyond the here and now. In this sense, 18

“Quizás ser verdad mi padre” (Cortés y Larraz 1958, p. 115). Estrada Peña (2015, pp. 193–194). 20 18 See Cortés y Larraz (1958, p. 127). 19

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it is necessary to consider that these were eminently oral cultures, which endow the discourse with a musical dimension that affects the construction of meanings. It is a way to transform the acoustic sensory experience into an experience of knowledge.21 The autochthonous songs evoked mythical images through an ambiguous language that was obscure and, for the same reason, aroused suspicion in Spanish-Creole circles. The Franciscan missionary Fray Bernardino de Sahagún pointed out that no one could understand the ancient songs and psalms dedicated to the devil except for the natives who were used to that language.22 In 1690 the Guatemalan regidor and chronicler Antonio de Fuentes y Guzmán wrote in the Recordación florida … that in the performance of their old religious rites, the indigenous people sang out of tune and with a sad voice.23 The substitution component of letters and meanings was always present and provoked even more mistrust. Thomas Gage wrote that the natives sang praises to the King of Glory or the Sacrament in the same way they formerly did to their kings and emperors. In 1762 the mayor of Sonsonate, El Salvador, wrote a description of the festivities carried out to celebrate the ascent of Carlos III to the throne of Spain. On that occasion, he paid attention to the ritual singing of the natives: [These musicians] sing in their Mexican language, extremely syncopated, which is not understood, even by great and excellent teachers of the language, what they utter; and it is only perceived to name some saints, and especially Saint Mary.24

The invocation of Saint Mary does not constitute proof of the authenticity or insincerity of the conversion. It is an appropriation of certain characteristic elements of the sacred song but adds reminiscences of pre-Columbian rites. In 1808, the Guatemalan priest and historian Domingo Juarros wrote that “just by pronouncing words with more or less force, they change their meaning”.25 Since these are codes that only a very selected group of people could understand, it is possible to conjecture that the deconstruction of the discourse has reduced the words to phonemes that referred to something different, for example, the presence of divinity or the song of an animal.26 The elements taken from Christianity were translated into local codes, thus creating a space for negotiation. On the other hand, the sound event had counterhegemonic effects: it redefined the meanings of the Western world, perpetuated the traditional universe of the ancestors, and reinforced community ties. 21

See Sullivan (1986). “Son los cantares y salmos que tiene compuestos y se le cantan, sin poderse entender lo que en ellos se trata, más de aquellos que son naturales y acostumbrados a este lenguaje” (Sahagún 1956, p. 255). In a previous article I analyzed the “presence” of the devil in music. See Singer (2019). 23 Fuentes y Guzmán (1933, p. 39). 24 “[Estos músicos] cantan en su mexicana lengua, sumamente sincopada, que no se entiende, ni por grandes y excelentes maestros de la lengua, lo que profieren; y solo se percibe nombrar algunos santos, y en especial a Santa María”. See Veyra (1762, p. 76). 25 Juarros (1857, p. 36). 26 Amongst the Yaminahua of Southeastern Peru, humans become non-human through shaman songs. These songs create a communication space between them. See Townsley (1993, p. 454). 22

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3 Demonic Sounds In colonial texts, the sound of flutes, drums, rattles, bells, boxes, and drums is frequently mentioned—in generic form. All these instruments are known as typical of the indigenous people. Cortés y Larraz points out that in the towns that belonged to the diocese of Guatemala, the boys made their instruments and enjoyed playing them. The prelate adds that “it would be better if they continued in other studies more useful to the Republic”.27 Information about the functions that these instruments fulfilled is relatively scarce. Some authors emphasize that its sound could transform into the voice of a summoned non-human entity. The sound also marked the beginning, the climax, or the end of a significant event for the community. Often the sound of the instrument went hand in hand with screams and howls that helped create the connection with traditions, ancestors, divinities, and the cosmos. It was a way of conceptualizing the sound phenomenon in union with religious practices that were linked to other living beings and transcendent objects.28 For this reason, some authors prefer to use the concept ritualized sound rather than music, since modern western culture endows music meanings that were completely unknown to the natives (authorship, work of art, and individuality, among others).29 How was that kind of sound perceived in the Spanish-Creole world? According to the descriptions made by the Guatemalan chroniclers, the perception of the indigenous sonorous world depended on value judgments that emphasized otherness and displeasure. Here we should pay attention to the fact that culture determines sound perception. The written sources come from the representatives of the colonial power, all of them with the possibility of omitting, highlighting, and judging the events that they narrated in the text. In the case of the sound of the instruments used by the natives, the ritual context in which the performance took place guided the acoustic perception of the witnesses, even though they were incapable of understanding the meanings. Antonio Fuentes y Guzmán describes the “melancholic flutes, drums, whistles, and snails, which made this composition of these instruments a more annoying than harmonious music”.30 This effect was enhanced when the sound was inserted in an ancient ritual dance, as was the case with the Oxtum dance. To perform it, the natives used to play the so-called long trumpets, which Fuentes y Guzmán described as instruments that invoke the devil (Fig. 3).31

27

“Mejor sería que continuaran en otros estudios más útiles a la República”. See Cortés y Larraz (1958, pp. 287–288). 28 See Hill and Castrillon (2017). 29 In indigenous communities, sound has a political impact linked to the universe of ritual practices. It becomes a symbol of identity and collective belonging. See Wilde (2005). 30 “… flautas melancólicas, atabales, pitos y caracoles, que hacían esta composición destos instrumentos una música más aína y molesta que armoniosa” (Fuentes y Guzmán 1933, p. 39). See Singer (2019, p. 114). 31 “Invocan al demonio con semejantes trompetas”. Ibidem, pp. 20–21.

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Fig. 3 Dancing musicians from the Bonampak mural32

Other witnesses refer to a dance that represented the sacrifice of an indigenous person, who—amid shouts, screams, and the sound of long trumpets—was attacked by four other men who represented different animals.33 The presence of screams should not be surprising since their purpose was to frighten and at the same time recreate the spirit of the animal they were invoking. Thus, it aroused an emotional state that made the transition from one world to the other possible. Archbishop Cortés y Larraz observed this phenomenon in the parish of Patzum during the celebration of Corpus Christi. He noticed that inside the church, there was recollection, stillness, and silence, but in the procession that took place later, the indigenous people used their masks, feathers, and animal costumes. Every so often, they emitted scandalous howls that the archbishop describes as bustle; nevertheless, he harbors the suspicion that “it may very well be something else”,34 referring to ancient practices of idolatry. The natives played flutes and drums to call deities. Their purpose was to recreate the sound of nature and connect all the participants with the narratives of origin. The community felt immersed in a soundscape that gave meaning to the real world so that the sound itself was the transforming entity that influenced self-recognition.

32

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bonampak_mural._Room_1._Musicians_and_dan cers.jpg. Accessed 16 November 2022. 33 Ruz (2006, p. 295). 34 Cortés y Larraz (1958, p. 96).

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3.1 Rites and Dances The rites are acts of high symbolic content carried out at a specific time and involve images, sounds, movements, gestures, and corporal expression. They reconstruct an aestheticized social order that strengthens community ties and collective memory through the display of senses. Furthermore, it provides the framework of meaning in which the performance articulates sound and dance.35 The principle of repetition of an enacted ritual consolidates the ideal of group stability and self-constituting. Despite that, the performative nature of the rite gives a chance to change, even more in a context where antagonistic cultures come into contact. Among the indigenous cultures of Guatemala, the whole community participates in the rituals of purification, protection, the cycle of life, and communication with supernatural forces. They give offerings and perform traditional dances because “communication with God takes place not only through words but also through musical sound and movement”.36 Performance simultaneously employs a multiplicity of channels to make the sensory experience significant. To that extent, the religious meaning of voice, instrumental sound, and dance contribute to constituting human beings.37 Dancing becomes a relevant activity because it depicts the hierarchy system of the group (only the indigenous of the ruling castes are allowed to dance) and structures the social interaction of participants. Thomas Gage claims to have seen a ceremonial dance in which 30 or 40 indigenous of nobility participated, all dancing in a circle to the beat of an instrument he calls tepanabaz. The author highlights that “It was the old dance, which they used before they knew Christianity, except that then instead of singing the lives of the saints they did sing the praises of their heathenish gods”.38 The traditional culture integrated dance and song into an expression of hybrid religiosity. Some reports refer to the dance of the deer (baile del venado), a hunting ritual that consisted of catching (with leaps and screeches) an indigenous person disguised as a deer.39 Dancing the deer dance was the way to invoke it and communicate with it, that is, to bring it into existence: “the symbolism of performative arts translates primordial images into visible and audible expressions”.40 In this way, the community created a more harmonious relationship with the non-human being with whom they shared time and space for a moment.

35

See Turner (1999). Harris (2006, p. 72). 37 “All performance is a specific cultural mode of existence, a way of moving the senses in space while evaluating the meaning of existence in time” (Sullivan 1986, p. 28). 38 Gage (1946, pp. 268–269). 39 Veyra (1762, p. 161). 40 Sullivan (1986, p. 22). 36

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3.2 Integrative Sounds All this music and dances had a place in the public celebrations of the colonial city’s festivals, as the chroniclers of that time report. In those civic-religious events, the participation of the autochthonous peoples was welcome since it implied a sign of integration. The different nations that inhabited the continent were under the protecting mantle of the Spanish Crown. Domingo Juarros indicates that indigenous sodalities of neighboring towns paraded at the Corpus Christi procession. They played “drums and other instruments that this nation uses”.41 The author highlights the presence of indigenous marimbas in the festivities that took place in 1680 when the new cathedral of Santiago de Guatemala was inaugurated.42 For his part, Carlos Cadena described the ceremony for the reception of the Royal Seal of Carlos IV in the Nueva Guatemala de la Asunción (1793). The text indicates that the indigenous people of the neighboring towns waited “with banners, masks, boxes, bugles and other instruments, which they use in their rejoicing”.43 In all these cases, the Spanish stripped the sound of any reference to the preColumbian universe. The authors focused solely on the aesthetic aspects of these practices, transforming them into mere staging whose purpose was to give the event a magnificent splendor. That gaze of the colonizer certainly reinforced the condition of the otherness of local culture, but at the same time spread the idea of an inclusive universe in which all peoples willing to submit to colonial power had a place (Fig. 4).

4 Conclusion Teaching devotional singing facilitated the evangelization process of the indigenous people of Guatemala. However, the recurring “mistakes” that neophytes made when singing transformed the song into a great signifier that modified the original meaning that the priests tried to convey. This displacement led to the infiltration of old ancestral sounds, such as those generated by instruments, human voices, screams, and howls. The sound represented the symbolic presence of the non-human beings, whom they call through the performance of dances. Dancing was an act to reenact the world and keep ancient traditions alive. It therefore was an effective strategy of resistance to colonization as well. Each performance updates the cultural values and thereby strengthens social bonds in a manifest desire for permanence. In this sense, ritual dances were the expression that articulated these strategies since they condensed a sum of significant elements during festivities. Incorporating these dances within the framework of the celebrations glorifying Spanish-Creole power was a way of proclaiming the success of 41

Juarros (1857, p. 239). Ibidem, p. 362. 43 Cadena (1793, p. 52). 42

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Fig. 4 Florentine Codex, Aztec musicians in a ceremony44

the colonial project; however, the public festivity also constituted the platform for subordinate groups to make their voice heard. With all that, can we maintain that the evangelizing project managed to materialize in its intended way? Well, as the acoustic phenomenon enables the creation of new meanings, the persistence of “shrieking and hideous noise” in indigenous catholic practices seems to indicate that “perhaps it may not be so”.

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https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Aztec_drums,_Florentine_Codex..jpg. Accessed 16 November 2022.

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Wilde, G: Música, sonido y poder en el contexto misional paraguayo [en línea]. Revista del Instituto de Investigación Musicológica “Carlos Vega”. 19,19. https://repositorio.uca.edu.ar/handle/123 456789/1087. Accessed 29 January 2022 (2005)

Prof. Dr. Deborah Singer, * 1965 in Vallenar, Chile. She earned her undergraduate degree in Music Performance from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and got a scholarship from the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD) to do postgraduate studies in Freiburg, Germany. She earned a master’s degree in Latin American Literature with the thesis Tácticas carnavalescas: enmascaramiento y denuncia en la comedia-bailete El Güegüence o macho ratón [Carnival tactics: masking and denunciation in the comedy-dance El Güegüence o macho ratón] (Universidad de Costa Rica, 2007), and a Ph.D. in Studies of Society and Culture with the Doctoral thesis Prácticas estéticas y espacio urbano en las reducciones jesuítico-guaraníes del Paraguay: construyendo sujetos occidentalizados (1609–1768) [Aesthetic practices and urban space in the Jesuit-Guarani reductions of Paraguay: building westernized subjects (1609–1768)] (Universidad de Costa Rica, 2013). She has published several papers interrelating music and culture, mainly related to music during the Spanish colonial domination: indigenous colonial theater, the sound space in the framework of the public celebrations of the colonial cities, music at the mission towns set up by the Society of Jesus in Paraguay, and music and stereotyping in colonial villancicos. Among others: El colonizador blanco europeizante frente al indígena centroamericano: Configuración de identidades y alteridades a partir de los géneros discursivos coloniales (2005), Poesía contestataria en un campo de detención: la voz de Floridor Pérez (2006), El Güegüence: patrimonio cultural de Nicaragua (2008), Entre la devoción y la subversión: la música como dispositivo de poder en las reducciones de la provincia jesuítica del Paraguay (2009), La configuración del espacio caribeño en novelas de Tatiana Lobo (2010), El testimonio de Rigoberta Menchú: estrategias discursivas de una subjetividad fronteriza (2012), Música colonial: otredad y conflicto en la catedral de Santiago de Guatemala (2016) De Furias infernales a cristianas devotas: las mujeres indígenas en la voz del misionero jesuita Antonio Sepp (1655–1733) (2019), De músicas amenazantes a músicas devocionales: Los sonidos indígenas en el imaginario colonial de Guatemala (siglos XVI al XVIII) (2019), El espacio sonoro como plataforma para la acción coordinada: repensando los festejos públicos en el reino de Guatemala (1750–1815) (2021).

The Relationship of the Vocal and the Instrumental in Balinese Gamelan Dieter Mack

1 Introduction: Some Basic Thoughts About Voice and Rhythm However, Darwin had some advice. His solution can be put into the following words: In the beginning there was love. It was certainly not the heavenly one, but the one of the earth, the loves between sexes. The male strived to please the female, and the female selected those that revealed the best advantages. As it was the case with the cutest in shape and colour, also the best singers and howlers had been preferred since centuries […]. It is the rhythmical and the trills and smacks what triggered the naturalist for imitation.1

That’s what we read in the first few pages of the book Die Anfänge der Musik by Carl Stumpf from 1911. More than one-hundred years later, we tend to slightly smile disparaging at such statements from the beginnings of comparative musicology. However, an aspect of truth is evident as well. In our everyday life, rhythm is again and again in the foreground. And if someone comes from a holistic-philosophic conceptualization of life, then our whole life may be understood as something rhythmical, and not only because of the term “the rhythm of life”. It is not at all astonishing when we read shortly later: In the beginning, there was rhythm, namely the rhythmically organized movement […]. Organized movement that […] is the origin of all arts, is nothing else than physical work, namely the collective work. Numerous activities that are necessary for everyday life, for the development of food, for constructing, rowing, hammering etc. can be conducted better, if they are organized rhythmically.2

1 2

Stumpf (1911, p. 9). Stumpf (1911, p. 14).

D. Mack (B) University of Music Lübeck, Lübeck, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 H.-W. Heister et al. (eds.), Word Art + Gesture Art = Tone Art, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20109-7_18

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One good example is the more or less proven fact that the complex rhythmical structures of Balinese gamelan derive from working rhythms during rice pounding.3 That practice shows a striking phaenomenon: Even the simplest rice-pounding pattern does not only engage the functionally active persons. There is also a real musical activity to animate the collective rhythmic pattern. How far rhythm and vocal utterances have historically developed parallel to one other is hardly detectable. Nevertheless, it seems to be appropriate to proceed on the assumption that the first differentiations of vocal practice were rather rhythmical, while various pitch systems developed later. Consequently, we can state that rhythm and vocal activities are more closely connected with each other than one might assume. Let us continue with such considerations and have a look regarding the vocal in connection with conventional musical instruments. It seems to be obvious that humankind always attempted to construct musical instruments with a certain analogy to the voice. We do not know when the first human being has tried to bring a reed to oscillate. However, it is a fact that double reed instruments can be found all over the world in almost every culture. And on the question regarding the basic idea of such an instrument, the answer is mostly that it was the attempt to imitate the human voice. A striking example would be the piece Tanjung Perak with the Ensemble Kenong Telu in Madura, a small island north of Surabaya in East Java.4 The double reed instrument sronen sounds almost similar to a throaty female voice. Furthermore, there is an archetypical punctuation and structuring of the melody by percussion instruments. We can conclude that in any direction, the human voice seems to be the most expressive, versatile, physical and individual musical instrument. Why starting in the seventeenth century Western art music more and more limited the diversity of the human voice in favour of quite a sterile and uniform ideal of the voice character, cannot be discussed here at length. Let us not forget that something similar happened with the increasingly standardised wind and string instruments. Only in the twentieth century composers so-to-speak woke up—although because of rather different reasons—and recognized that musical instruments can also be used in different or more extended ways. Surprisingly this happened less in the realm of the voice and singing. Regarding a new and unique treatment of the voice, Arnold Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire did not receive many followers or imitators. Even in a lot of contemporary operas, strings scratch behind the bridge, an oboe plays septuplets with multiphonics, but the vocal parts remain in the aesthetical prison of nineteenth century Belcanto-style: Of course, there are a few exceptions to this. Apparently almost nobody feels bothered by that. What Dieter Schnebel, Mauricio Kagel and some others have composed as revolutionary vocal music in the 1960s, was mostly regarded (and in some cases still is today) as a contemporary though ephemeral and transitory provocation or even

3

Schlager (1976, p. 36ff). See the CD Music of Madura, ODE Record Company, Auckland Nr. 1391; recorded by Jack Body and Yono Sukarno.

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aggression.5 It seems to be the only explanation for the fact that vocal performances of Dadaistic texts, for example by Kurt Schwitters, or concrete poetry today are still regarded as something surprisingly new, although most of that material is almost 100 years old. I am quite sure that the human voice will be an instrument of the future that will increasingly occupy young composers,6 because its flexibility and direct physicality cannot be achieved by any other musical instrument. Furthermore, the percussive use of the human voice seems to also be of special importance as it will be described in the following. Other examples would be the use of the voice in many compositions by Steve Reich, but also in many pieces of concrete poetry of Kurt Schwitters or Michel Seuphor. Once again, we recognize the mutual relationship between the vocal and the percussive.

2 Overview on the Role of the Vocal in Balinese Music If we talk today about the music of the Indonesian island of Bali, vocal music will hardly come into our minds. What has become internationally famous of Balinese music culture is the bigger ensembles of 20–25 players, who produce a highly charged and virtuoso music on metallophones, gong sets, drums and perhaps some flutes.7 As a matter of fact, the vocal plays an important role as well, although the oftenheard statement that an instrument is the extension of the human voice, seems to be less relevant for the Balinese music culture. Therefore, it makes sense to define the various categories or genres at the beginning. The most well-known forms of vocal activities can be found in the various types of music theatre (arja, wayang wong, sendratari, gambuh, topeng). Whether it is formalized singing or freer vocal actions depends on the genre and context. I prefer the term vocal actions because the boundaries between singing and talking are more than flexible. Especially in special exalted and exaggerated talking gestures, ornamental pitch movements are essential. It would not be unusual that such articulations are considered exalted and exaggerated for Western ears as well. A vocal ideal, as exists in the European art music tradition, seems to be obsolete in Bali. Certain ideal types of vocal sound are generally attached to specific mythological persons and social status in the widest sense of its meaning (see below). Similarities may be detected in the vocal activities of a dalang, the main actor “shadow roll” in wayang kulit, a play with carved leather puppets behind a screen shadows. Here, the requirements are extremely high and challenging in every respect. First of all, a dalang has to have 5

See the encompassing documentation of the Schola Cantorum Stuttgart under Clytus Gottwald in a 10-CD Box Atelier Schola Cantorum, Cadenza CAD 800901. 6 Please allow me a short note regarding the pedagogical sector: It is often regrettably said that young people cannot play an instrument and do not sing folksongs anymore. They also reject any occupations with music theory. My experiences are different, provided that a teacher him/herself should be able to demonstrate everything practically (and without notation!). By that, he/she may give exciting new stimuli for new horizons and will strengthen the self-conscious of the pupils. 7 The string instrument rebab appears quite seldom, at least in Bali.

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an encompassing knowledge about history and mythological stories. We should also not forget that he or she is a single person who must manage the shadow puppets on the screen while singing at the same time with different timbres (depending on the respective character). Finally, there are the long dramatic, often humorous and mostly spontaneous dialogues. After all, one shall recall that a dalang needs to speak various languages on command.8 Further formalized singing genres can be found in ritual pieces and the prayers of the priests. A completely independent secular art form—though it implies some elements of traditional singing—is the so-called kecak, a genre with 80–150 participants, who imitate the instrumental gamelan music with the voice. Another important aspect that must be mentioned is the vocalisation during the learning process of gamelan music, especially regarding kendang (drums) patterns. Finally, there is a rare practice which is the almost extinct gambang-singing in East Bali’s Bali Aga cultures. It was in this remote region where they create melodies based on the vowels of the text.9 One may miss the mentioning of the janger dance and its accompanying music. Janger dances are executed by a small female (janger) and a small male (kecak) choir. It developed probably during the 1920s in North Bali. Popular folk melodies (not only from Bali) are used, and it is said that janger is a kind of stylized flirting dance. Often, one may read that janger is one of the most popular performing arts of Bali (see Wikipedia). I strongly disagree with this notion. There were more political reasons that favoured this quite banal presentation, which is rather untypical for the Balinese.10 In the following I will present some remarks on Balinese vocal aesthetics. After that I will focus on the second and third type of vocal music as it is in better concordance with the overall idea of the book11 —the relation between vocal and instrumental art. Regarding the first genres, Edward Herbst has published an encompassing book that enables a deeper insight into those art forms.12 It is also clear that those art forms are less based on a special relationship between the vocal parts and the instrumental ones.

8

Balinese language has three levels: High Balinese (singgih), middle Balinese (lumrah) and low Balinese (sor). High Balinese is the language of the three high casts, the triwangsa, based on Old-Javanese language. A sudra (lowest caste) is supposed to address a member of the triwangsa (brahmana, satria, wesia) in high Balinese. But a member of triwangsa will talk to a sudra in low Balinese. The middle level is apparently a mixture of both levels. Besides these three levels, the national language Bahasa Indonesia, there is the sacred literature language called Kawi, which is generally used by priests, dalang and some participants of these various music theatre forms. The overall population of Bali does not understand Kawi. 9 Schlager (1976, p. 31ff). 10 For further information see Bandem and DeBoer (1995, p. 112ff). 11 I will not discuss the gambang practice of creating melodies based on the vowels of a text. So far this is regarded as a highly speculative thesis, and nothing cannot really be proven. 12 Herbst (1997).

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3 About the Vocal Aesthetics in Balinese Music Singing is an activity intertwined with some other mode of aesthetic expression: dance, instrumental music, characterization, poetry, storytelling. It is in these contexts that much of its meaning, inspiration and purposes arises. To read poetry is to sing […]. To act is to dance and sing […]. And although some rules are not vocal, any experienced performer is expected to be able to vocalize, in dialogue, stylized speech and song. It is difficult, especially for the best Balinese performing artists, to objectify an individual activity such as singing and to teach “it” outside of its context.13

Herbst precisely emphasized the pivotal point of vocal music in Balinese practice. It is the almost holistic identification of a vocalist with his role and function. In other words, he or she is never the interpreter of a certain role in a dialectic sense. Rather they slip into that role and becomes a different person, the mythological person that they perform. Herein we find as well the answer for the different voice characteristics (see above). High-ranked nobles of the Hindu mythology and the gods of the good side are generally presented with a refined high head-voice and long held out notes. Lower and demon-like persons (also high-ranking bad people) rarely sing. Their behaviour is signified by a rough, throaty, and partly grotesque vocal character/colour. Here, the ceremonial singing of the priests should be mentioned, less because of a similar context but rather because of the peculiar contemplative character of their activities. However, the singing of the priests is never regarded as an artistic activity. During a temple ceremony it even takes place simultaneously while the gamelan is playing the ceremonial repertoire some 30 m apart. In those music theatre gernes mention above, it might be astonishing that the Balinese audience is completely uninterested in those formalized melodies of the high-ranked nobles. And this is not only the case because the text is in Kawi language (similar to the ritual songs of the priests), which most people of the society do not understand at all. For them, the scenic presentation through masks, clothing and movements and also the respective ceremonial context during a performance are enough satisfying for most of the Balinese. Finally, there is another important aspect which belongs to all forms of music theatre and mask plays. It is the appearance of so-called translators. Normally they are two or four quite burlesque, if not sometimes even clumsy figures (with half masks to keep the mouth free). They are the ones who present the real story with a free recitative-like, though often exaggerated vocal style in a simple low Balinese language that everyone can understand. They are the real actors who develop the story that is presented. During their mostly improvised dialogues, they interpolate many issues of the current everyday life. By that, they become the real entertainers for the Balinese.14 Spontaneity and diversity of expression determine the degree of acceptance by an audience.15 The vocal presentation is very diverse and operates with many different vocal characteristics, where especially the end of phrasings is often combined with an exaggerated 13

Herbst (1997, p. 9). Remember that a dalang has to articulate alle these different functions and persons alone! 15 Some quite clown-like and grotesque interpolations belong to these roles. 14

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glissando up or down. A special relationship to the instrumental accompanying music of the gamelan does not exist (sometimes the gamelan even stops completely). Therefore, the music of such passages is reduced to relatively short and simple ostinati. The two kendang (drums) players coordinate between the vocal/theatrical actions and the respective gamelan ensemble.

4 Kecak in Bali The origins of today’s kecak can be traced back to so-called sanghyang trance dances/-ceremonies. Most of these have an exorcistic character or function. The vocal accompaniment by some 15 to 20 male and female persons is based on interlockinglike vocal actions, similar to those in modern secular kecak, with the exception that the articulation is softer. The origin of those sanghyang performances are less clear. The well-known Balinese dancer, composer and ethnomusicologist Dr. Wayan Dibia writes: A master artist of Bona village of Gianyar, I Madé Sija, once said that in his home village, Kecak was created before the Dutch occupation. At that time, Bona and the surrounding villages were attacked by a destructive epidemic that caused countless deaths. When once the villagers conducted a prayer in the local temple in order to stop the epidemic, a Sanghyang medium went into trance and passed on a holy message to the congregation that the deities residing in the temple wished to have a form of music and dance. Because no bronze music was allowed, the villagers spontaneously created vocal music and chanting.16

We are certainly not able to verify the truthfulness of this story, even more so as it reveals the question how sanghyang performances had been accompanied before that event (which should have taken place somewhere in the nineteenth century). I Madé Sija, a well-known dalang, whom I met personally in the 1980s, was in fact one of the most accomplished Balinese I ever met. He had an encompassing historical knowledge and a big collection of old lontar (palm leaves with historical, ceremonial and mythological texts). This would advocate for a high degree of truthfulness. However, the blending of mythos and reality is quite common and important in Bali. The described practice seems to be correct, at least regarding the phonetically articulated interlocking rhythms, while a part of the voices sang the ritual melodies. However, the change from that ritual performance to a secular performing arts version is quite definite. Not least it was influence of the German painter Walter Spies who lived a long time in Bali.17 In the 1930s, Spies was deeply impressed of the potential dramatic of the kecak voicing during a traditional sanghyang performance. At the occasion of his consulting function during the German film production Insel der Dämonen (Island of the Demons, 1933 by Friedrich Dalsheim and Victor von Plessen) he urged the Balinese to develop this vocal technique and create a secular 16 17

Dibia (1996, p. 7). Rhodius (no year, p. 272ff).

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form of music theatre based on the ramayana epos. Finally, this became a central scene in the film.18 Additionally, Wayan Dibia19 reports a second version. He says that this new secular version was created by the Balinese themselves, more or less during the same time period. Both versions do not oppose each other, especially because at that time, a lot of musical developments took place, and traditional ritual music forms had been transferred or transformed into secular performing arts. A kecak performance is basically a vocal transformation of all functions of a typical Balinese gamelan orchestra. In this case, the dancers are not active with their voices. There are some single functions as the storyteller or dalang, the juru kemplung who marks the basic beat (kempli in instrumental gamelan), the melody presenter, the juru gending, one or more solo singers, the juru tembang, and the leader of the choir, the juru tarek. The interlocking-like character of the male choir with its sharp articulated cak, cuk and cek sounds create that typical dramatization of a kecak performance. It is obvious that the name kecak derives onomatopoetically from those sounds.20 In instrumental gamelan, the interlocking is generally two-voiced (polos = the basic one and sangsih = the additional one), using transposition in other octaves and doublings to ornament the basic melody. In kecak, the rhythmic structure is more organized for a large number of vocalists. Dibia (1996, p. 12) gives a simple cak telu version, various rhythms with three cak articulations for each vocalist (telu = three) in a so-called batél form with two beats: Beat (fastest): (main beat) Melody: On-beat: (polos) Off-beat: (sangsih) Between-beat: (sanglot)

x

x

x

x x pung Yang

cak

x

cak

cak cak

x

cak cak

x pung Nggir cak

cak cak

Please note that the Balinese have the metric emphasis on 2, 4 and 8. There are similar patterns with five, six or even eight articulations if the overall pattern is longer and has four or eight beats/melody tones. Another difference is that in instrumental gamelan the figuration pitches are closely related to the core melody as can be seen in the following example (Fig. 1).

18

Zoete and Spies (1938, p. 67ff). Dibia 1996, p. 7. 20 A good listening example can be found on the CD Kecak and Sanghyang in Bali, King Records KICC 5128. An introduction to Balinese music may be found at Tenzer (1991) and in German at Mack (2004). 19

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Fig. 1 Example figuration

In the lower system, the upper voice is the core melody and the lower voice a slower and deeper extract of it. In the upper system, the lower voice is the polos (basic) and the upper the sangsih (additional).21 The colotomic gong structure is notated in the middle. Although this example starts with a gong on beat one, the Balinese would start to count on the notated second beat. However, for us it is easier to read it as notated. With the exception of the second last melody note, all the others coincide with the same pitch in the figuration. This is not at all the case in kecak. There is also a big difference in tempo. A pattern like the above (from the dance Baris) is generally performed with a crotchet = 170 or more, while in kecak it won’t exceed approximately 120. Kecak focusses on this kind of rhythmic texture, which, when performed by the normal 50–120 vocalists, creates an enormous and impressive power. The cak articulation can always be exchanged with cuk or cek etc., including various dynamic changes as well. Normally, all this may be determined by the leader of the choir via a short up-beat-like phrase. However, it is my experience that they have determined a fixed version in advance. Today, kecak is a very popular form of performing arts, based on the classical instrumental gamelan structure. But there are also a lot of contemporary composers like Wayan Dibia or Gêdé Asnawa, who have significantly developed that repertoire.22 Even some instrumental gamelan compositions are elaborated with kecak-like elements. Finally, I would like to add some thoughts to the process of learning and teaching gamelan via a vocalisation of all voices and especially the drum patterns. Personally, I have a high esteem regarding this oral method because it implies a certain physicality, which also helps not to forget the music for quite a long time. I even recall a Balinese saying that even if one’s mind forgets the melody or a rhythm, the hands will still remember. Even today and despite of the increasing complexity of the compositions, oral practice is still the common standard, and this is based on the vocal teaching and learning techniques. Regarding pitch, the Balinese use the usual names of their scale like ding, dong, deng and dang which they often pronounce ning, nong etc. 21

The notation is certainly only approximate to a Balinese pelog-selisir tuning. See Asnawa’s pioneering composition Kosong from 1980, one of the most important compositions at that time for new developments. A short excerpt can be seen in a film from 1983 by Michael Blackwood on Colin McPhee. A recording might be available on one of the numerous Bali-Records cassettes.

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Fig. 2 Kendang pattern

This technique is even more important for learning drum patterns. Both kendang (drums) are carved inside like an hour-glass, the lower one is called wadon (female) and the higher one lanang (male). They are played by two persons in the usual interlocking style. When learning kendang patterns, one always starts verbally but with both parts together. It makes the playing of a single part much easier. It also enables the two players to exchange the drums or even play a combined version, if for example during a rehearsal only one person is present. The respective sound syllables have onomatopoetic character: pak or ka-pak in the interlocking routine are slap-like beats on the higher side of both drums; deg is an open sound on the lower side of kendang wadon, while dut is the similar and higher sound on kendang lanang (including slight damping on the higher side). Here is an example (Fig. 2). A spoken version would probably sound like:

This was a short overview on the relation between the vocal and the instrumental in Balinese music. From my point of view, the last two forms, kecak and the drum language, show a central element of Balinese music culture, which is the special physical character of the music. Vocal imitation of the gamelan is a very common technique all over Bali, for example in teaching dance as well. I remember many hours when my old teacher I Gusti Gêdé Raka from Saba was teaching the legongdance to young girls of the village. Normally he sat behind a single drum, singing the melody and interpolate it with important accents or gong tones. But when he stood up and physically moved the arms and legs of the children, he even sang a combination of everything that was important. In contrast to Western aesthetics, Balinese vocal practice has almost no peculiar sound ideal, except those related to the status and character of a person in music theatre. There is also no text-music relationship as for example in the Western genre Lied. It is a further proof of the abstract and transcendental aesthetics in Balinese music. I would like to finish with a short anecdote from 1997. During that time, the Balinese composer I Nyoman Windha (*1956) stayed for three months in Basel and Freiburg because of a big art collaboration project between Bali, Switzerland (Pro Helvetia) and Germany (Goethe Institut). One of the numerous productions was a modern dance choreography of Esther Sutter from Basel on the music of Nyoman Windha. The music was played by my gamelan group Anggur Jaya. At first, Windha

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had composed pure instrumental music, but suddenly (and almost at the end of the rehearsal period), he added two long vocal parts which had quite a romantic and highly differentiated (micro intervals) character which was very different to the rest of the piece. As a response to my question what the reason for this peculiar change might be, Windha gave various explanations. But one of them was that during our long evenings in my studio, we had listened to a lot of vocal music from the Renaissance. Windha was deeply impressed by that music, and it led to these new compositional ideas of vocal practice.

References Bandem, I.M., DeBoer, F.: Balinese Dance in Transition: Kaja and Kelod, 2nd edn. Oxford University Press, Kuala Lumpur (1995) Dibia, I.W.: Kecak—The Vocal Chant of Bali. Hartanto Art Books, Denpasar (1996) Herbst, E.: Voices in Bali. University Press of New England, Hanover (1997) Mack, D.: Musik aus Bali und Westjava. Lugert, Oldershausen (2004) Rhodius, H.: Schönheit und Reichtum des Lebens Walter Spies. Boucher, Den Haag (no year) Schlager, E.: Rituelle Siebenton-Musik auf Bali. In: Oesch, H. (ed.) Forum Ethnomusicologicum Series I: Basler Studien zur Ethnomusikologie 1. Francke, Bern (1976) Stumpf, C.: Die Anfänge der Musik. Olms, Hildesheim (1979, reprint from 1911) Tenzer, M.: Balinese Music. Periplus, Singapore (1991) Zoete, B. de, Spies, W.: Dance and Drama in Bali. Oxford University Press, Kuala Lumpur (1973, 1938)

Dieter Mack, * 1954 in Speyer, studied piano, music theory and composition in Freiburg with Klaus Huber and Brian Ferneyhough. Since 1986 Professor for Music Theory/Hearing Education at the MHS Freiburg and since 2003 until 2021 for Composition at the University of Music Lübeck (2008–2011 and 2016–2020 also Vice President). 1980 to 1999 member of the Stuttgart ensemble ExVoCo. Since 1978 first research stays in Bali, 1981/82 for a whole year. 1982 foundation of the Gamelan Ensemble Anggur Jaya, further research stays until 1991. 1992–1995 DAAD longterm lecturer at UPI-Bandung and 2000–2006 visiting professor at the Art Academy ISI Surakarta. From 2007–2019, director of the DAAD’s Musicians’ Choice. 2009–2016 Chair of the Music Advisory Board of the Goethe-Institut.

The Vocal and Instrumental Fields to Evoke the Pre-Columbian Universe in Alberto Ginastera’s Cantata Para América Mágica (1960) Luciana Colombo

1 Introduction A review of Alberto Ginastera’s catalog reveals that approximately 1/3 of his works include singing (17 out of a total of 54 opus).1 These works, however, are characterized by a wide generic, stylistic and thematic eclecticism. In a general sense, we can affirm that “the voice”, as the only acoustic instrument capable of mediating the textual component, has been used by the composer to poetically construct the universes he has sought to sonorize in each of his works. In the case of Cantata para América Mágica (Op. 27, 1960) this fact is of particular interest since it is the only composition in which Ginastera incorporates the voice and, through it, the texts of indigenous origin, in order to evoke the pre-Hispanic America. As we will try to demonstrate in this article, the vocal and the instrumental fields are combined in this piece in a very particular way with the objective of creating a sonorous ideal that would be representative of this pre-Columbian universe. This representation results from the articulation between the texts, certain topics related to the Indo-American and the symbology incorporated in the compositional weave. But before going into the analysis of this juncture, we will briefly review the poetics addressed in the other works of his catalog in which the voice is also incorporated. During the first two decades of his career, it is possible to identify in a preponderant way the chamber format and the themes related to Argentine folklore. That is evidenced in his works: Dos canciones (Op. 3, 1938), Cantos del Tucumán (Op. 4, 1938), Cinco canciones populares argentinas (Op. 10, 1943) and Las horas de una estancia (Op. 11, 1944). Furthermore, in two scenes of his famous ballet Estancia (Op. 8, 1941) the voice of a baritone interprets poems from the reference work of gaucho literature, the Martín Fierro by José Hernández. L. Colombo (B) ACCRA and CREAA, University of Strasbourg, Strasbourg, France e-mail: [email protected] 1

Suárez Urtubey (1986). See also Kuss (2002).

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From the 1960s onwards, Ginastera definitively distanced himself from the national poetics, and focused on sounding tragic stories of the Spanish Visigothic royalty and the Italian Renaissance nobility. His three operas Don Rodrigo (Op. 31, 1963–1964), Bomarzo (Op. 34, 1966–1967) and Beatrix Cenci (Op. 38, 1971), as well as the Sinfonía Don Rodrigo (Op. 31ª, 1964) and his Cantata Bomarzo (Op. 32, 1964), show this characteristic.2 Although temporally distanced, we also find in his catalog three compositions conceived from biblical texts: Psalm 150 (Op. 5, 1938) for mixed choir, children’s choir and orchestra; Hieremiae Prophetae Lamentations (Op. 14, 1946) for mixed choir a cappella; and Turbae ad passionem gregorianam (Op. 43, 1974) for three Gregorian singers, mixed choir, children’s choir and orchestra. Finally, we must mention his piece for soprano and orchestra, Milena (Op. 37, 1971), created from certain fragments of the correspondence between Kafka and Milena Jesenská, and those in which he incorporates the poems of Juan Ramon Giménez and Pablo Neruda: String Quartet No. 3 (Op. 40, 1973) and Serenata (Op. 42, 1973), respectively. This tour allows us to confirm our initial assertion that Cantata para América Mágica is the only vocal piece in Ginastera’s catalog in which he seeks to represent a pre-Columbian imaginary. However, this is not the only piece in his catalog in which he refers to Indo-American subjects. In fact, already in his ballet Panambi (Op. 1, 1934–1937) he does so, inspired in this case by a Guarani legend. The next composition in which we can find this reference is his Doce preludios americanos (Op. 12, 1944), in some of which Ginastera gives prominence to major and minor pentaphonic scales (a fundamental topic of indigenous music). Three years later, he composed his symphonic triptych Ollantay (Op. 17, 1947). In this case the composer based on a homonymous colonial text originally written in Quechua and presumably of Inca origin. The piece that concerns us in this article is the fourth in the composer’s catalog with this characteristic, preceding the Popol Vuh (Op. 44, 1975–1982), which last number (8) remained incomplete at the time of his death. We present below the words of Ginastera himself, referring to this last composition. Here the composer gives information about his conception of “primitive America” and “the pre-Columbian”, and the way in which he has sought to represent this in his works. For this reason, we consider this quote fundamental for the subject matter of this article. […] at the moment I am evolving...This change is taking the form of a king of reversion, a going back to the primitive America of the Mayas, the Aztecs and the Incas. This influence in my music I feel as not folkloric, but – how to say it? – as a kind of metaphysical inspiration. In a way, what I have done is a reconstruction of the transcendental aspect of the ancient preColumbian world. Some Inca music survives, you know, but it’s very elementary-pentatonic like Chinese, very primitive. I do use that, but transformed by imagination and inspiration.3

2 3

See Buch (2011). Ginastera (1984, pp. 6–8).

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I—Prelude and song of dawn

Soprano and orchestra

II—Nocturne and love song

Soprano and orchestra

III—Song of the Warriors departure

Soprano and orchestra

IV—Fantastic Prelude

Orchestra

V—Song of agony and desolation

Soprano and orchestra

VI—Song of prophecy

Soprano and orchestra

2 General Characteristics and “the Pan-American Issue” in Cantata Cantata para América Mágica is a piece for dramatic soprano and percussion orchestra, integrated by more than 50 instruments (including two pianos). Structurally, it consists of six movements, five of which incorporate voice. The texts present in each of these movements, each independent of the others, allow for a sort of plot development, in which the destruction of the Mayan civilization by the arrival of the Spanish colonizers is foreshadowed (Table 1). The piece was commissioned by the Fromm Foundation and premiered on April 30, 1961 at the Cramton Auditorium of Howard University (Washington, D.C.), during the Second Inter-American Music Festival, organized by the Organization of American States (OAS). In concordance with the event in which it was premiered, Cantata seems to have emerged as a “Pan-American sound symbol”. This is demonstrated by music critic Irving Lowens, in his review published the day after the premiere: “In the cantata can be seen the logical culmination of Ginastera’s evolution from militant nationalist to citizen of the Western hemisphere. For this is unmistakably music of the Americas.”4 The contextual aspect undoubtedly conditioned this Pan-Americanist interpretation of this piece by the public and critics present at the premiere. It is important to consider that, in the context of the Cold War, the United States sought to intensify this ideology (through the OAS and philanthropic societies), with the aim of strengthening military and economic relations between the countries of the continent. Culture played a fundamental role in this regard. Although we do not believe it was not so much an ideological question, but rather an aesthetic one, there was a clear intention of Ginastera to allude from the conception of this piece to the continental union (at least, Latin American). The title, the origin of the texts and the instruments that make up the percussion orchestra are key clues to consider: In relation to the title, musicologist Pola Suarez Urtubey argues in her article dedicated to this piece that by using the adjective “magical”, Ginastera refers to the idea of a “primitive” America.5 It is no coincidence that the composer chose this adjective, considering that the concept of “magic realism” had already made its 4 5

Lowens (1961). Suárez Urtubey (1963, p. 21).

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appearance in Latin American literature twelve years before the creation of Cantata (1960).6 This term, which would soon identify one of the most representative literary trends of the continent, was used to designate a type of story in which “the marvelous” was mixed with “the real”. These stories usually dealt with Latin American myths, in many cases giving prominence to the indigenous world. An example can be found in the novel Los hombres de maíz by Miguel Ángel Asturias (1949), in which symbols of the Mayan cosmovision are incorporated. Evidently, Ginastera was familiar with this movement, and chose its terminology to describe the anthropological fantasy he wanted to represent in Cantata.7 Going back to Suarez Urtubey’s article, it states that Ginastera considers that in the cultural and spiritual formation of the continent, there has been both a “magical or pre-Columbian” and a “Christian” stage. “And Ginastera argues that the first one has not died completely, but that in a miraculous way it remains alive and we perceive it in some moments, as if it were the beat of an invincible poetic and musical vein.”8 Continuing with the preceding metaphor, Cantata would seem to intent to reveal this pulse that would link, according to the composer’s idea, the continent since pre-Columbian times. Let us now see how this question is revealed on the narrative level: The texts incorporated in this piece (compiled by the composer with the assistance of his first wife, Mercedes de Toro)9 come from the Popol Vuh (book of the creation of the Maya world), the Chilam Balam (book of Maya prophecies) and the Rabinal Achi (Maya dynastic drama). As for the history of these books, it is important to consider that they were written or translated after the Conquest by Spanish and French priests, based on accounts or ancient hieroglyphs of Mayan origin. That is why their content was mediated from the beginning by European culture and the Christian religion. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, some of these texts aroused great interest in certain scientific circles, giving rise to new interpretations and translations. Between the 1940s and 1950s, the Fondo de Cultura Económica de México (“Colección Biblioteca Americana”) and the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (“Biblioteca del Estudiante Universitario” collection) launched a large print run of these works in Spanish.10 It is highly probable that these were the editions that the Ginastera couple used for the texts of the piece. In addition to these three books, some Aztec chants and poetry of Inca origin would have inspired the creation of the texts of the second

6

The term is introduced by Arturo Uslar Pietria in his essay Letras y hombres de Venezuela (1948). See Buch (2017, p. 7). 8 “Y sostiene Ginastera que la primera no ha muerto por completo, sino que de una manera milagrosa se mantiene viva y la percibimos en algunos momentos, como si se tratara del latido de una invencible vena poética y musical.” Suárez Urtubey (1963, p. 21). 9 Schwartz-Kates (2010, p. 93). 10 Popol Vuh: las antiguas historias del Quiche (1947); El libro de los libros de Chilam Balam (1948); Teatro indígena prehispánico: Rabinal Achí (1955). 7

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and third movements of Cantata. This is evidenced by a note in Ginastera’s own calligraphy found in the Paul Sacher Stiftung.11 The congregation of sources originating from different pre-Columbian civilizations (Mayan, Aztec, Inca) proves the intention of conceiving this composition as a symbol of continental cohesion. In this regard, Ginastera declares: “When I wrote the Cantata for América Mágica, it came to my mind from the texts, a fundamentally American piece”.12 Something equivalent occurs on the sonorous aspect, since several of the instruments that make up the percussion orchestra are originally from, or are a fundamental element of the folklore of various regions of Latin America; we are referring to the teponaztli (which are suggested in the percussion set n°5: 6 Temple-Woods13 ), the cajas, the marimba, the two bongos, the reco-reco, the chocalho, the claves, the maracas and the güiro. Returning to the narrative question, it should be noted that, despite the supposed inspiration in Inca poetry and Aztec chants (of which no precise evidence has yet been found), Cantata only makes specific references to icons and events of the Mayan cosmogony. This is evident in movement I, which quotes in a practically verbatim way a prayer that appears in the third chapter (third part) of the Popol Vuh,14 in movement V, which quotes the words of the Varon de los Queché from the second act of the Rabinal Achi,15 and in movement VI, which presents clear references to events recounted in the section entitled “Primera rueda profética de un doblez de katunes” of the Chilam Balam.16 If we add this fact to Malena Kuss’s musicological analysis of this piece, in which she demonstrates the resources through which the Mayan symbology is incorporated into the compositional weave (see Sect. 5.1), we can affirm that Ginastera focuses on the Mesoamerican region to construct his representation of pre-Columbian America. This attitude can be interpreted as a replication of the exotic, indigenist ideal demanded by the United States, and which figures such as the Mexican composer Carlos Chávez had been forging since the preceding decades. According to Leonora Saavedra, from 1928 onwards Chávez begins to stimulate the Mexican indigenist interpretation of his music as a result of the construction of a strategic alterity. “Along with the indigenist interpretation, Chavez’s music was identified as the new American music, in the Pan-American sense of the term.”17

11

Kuss (1990, p. 15). “Cuando yo escribí la Cantata para América Mágica, a mí me vino a la mente por los textos, una obra fundamentalmente americana.” King (2007, p. 356). 13 Ginastera, Cantata para América Mágica, score. 14 Popol Vuh: las antiguas historias del Quiche, p. 109. 15 Teatro indígena prehispánico: Rabinal Achí, p. 78. 16 El libro de los libros de Chilam Balam, p. 49. 17 “Junto con la interpretación indigenista, la música de Chávez fue identificada como la nueva música americana, en el sentido panamericano del término. Saavedra” (2002, pp. 125–136). 12

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3 “Pre-Columbian” Sonorous Ideal: Instrumental Ensemble As we have just mentioned, Carlos Chávez was a fundamental figure for the consolidation of the pre-Columbian musical ideal during the first half of the twentieth century. Guided by the desire to learn about the Mexican past, and to develop a style that would be understood as modernist and his own, Chávez began to study the Aztec culture. As a result, in the 1920s, he composed his two ballets El fuego Nuevo (1921) and Los Cuatro Soles (1924), both influenced by the primitivism of Stravinsky’s Russian ballets.18 In the following decade, this “indigenous and primitive” perspective of his music will be valued by US composers and critics as an “originally American” trait, which will serve to establish an alterity regarding European music.19 We will see below some characteristics of these ballets: El Fuego Nuevo is inspired by the Mexican ceremony of the same name, which sought to maintain the continuity of the solar movement, and from this, the universal order. The instrumental ensemble of this ballet is made up of thirteen percussionists, a whistle choir, strings and a female choir.20 Los cuatro soles, meanwhile, “is based on the cosmogonic myth of the same name, related to the cyclical creation and destruction of the cosmos by catastrophes related to water, wind, fire and earth, creating four eras, or suns”.21 This piece incorporates pentatonic collections and indigenous percussion instruments, such as the teponaztli, the tlalpanhuéhuetl, as well as the voice of a soprano. According to Leonora Saavedra, the premiere of this ballet in 1930 “was decisive in establishing certain signifiers of the indigenous”.22 In his text “Compositores de América latina, 1941” Aaron Copland recalls the first time he heard this ballet in 1927. In this regard, he assures: “that time the concept of “Latin American music” really struck me”.23 A decade later, Copland would become a key figure in the musical and political scene of the continent through his work for the Office for Coordination of Commercial and Cultural Relations Between the American Republics (whose main objective was to promote Pan-Americanism) presided over by Nelson A. Rockefeller.24 From this strategic position, Copland would boost Ginastera’s international career, helping him in 1942 to obtain the Guggenheim grant that would allow him to make his first trip to the United States (1945). It is very likely that Copland’s opinion regarding a “Latin American musical ideal” associated with 18

Saavedra (2019, pp. 137, 157). Saavedra (2002, pp. 135). 20 Parker (1998, p. 41). 21 “está basado en el mito cosmogónico del mismo nombre, relacionado con la creación y destrucción cíclica del cosmos por catástrofes relacionadas con agua, viento, fuego y tierra, creando cuatro eras, o soles.” Saavedra (2019, pp. 154–155). 22 “fue determinante en cimentar ciertos significadores de lo indígena [...]” Ibid., p. 157. 23 “esa vez el concepto de “música latinoamericana” me punzó realmente.” Copland (1967, p. 155). 24 Hess (2013, p. 191). 19

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certain characteristics of Chávez’s indigenist works was influential in Ginastera’s imaginary for the later realization of Cantata. Evidently, in choosing the instrumental ensemble for this composition, Ginastera resorts to one of the topics strongly associated to the pre-Columbian sonorous ideal: we are referring to the conjugation of the voice, in representation of the aerophones, with the percussion instruments. The two aforementioned works by Chávez represent just one example of the many instances in which academic composers have drawn on this imagery since the early decades of the twentieth century. The construction of this notion is based on the numerous historical, archaeological and iconographic investigations that have been carried out on pre-Hispanic cultures, especially in the Mesoamerican region, since the mid-nineteenth century. A key piece in this regard is Historia Antigua, Tomo I de México a través de los siglos de Alfredo Chavero (México y Barcelona: Ballescá y compañía, 1889). The importance of this encyclopedia lies in the fact that it contains references to the ancient music of the Mexican territory, also providing organological information on wind and percussion instruments, and highlighting the importance of instruments such as the teponaztli. According to Leonora Saavedra, Chavero’s research became the only source used by Mexican composers of the early twentieth century (such as Carlos Chávez, Ponce and Antonio Gomezanda) to musically construct the representation of the pre-Columbian.25 If we focus on Argentina, Ginastera’s homeland, we also find an important indigenist compositional current since the beginning of the twentieth century. One of the first references to presumed pre-Hispanic music appears in the opera Huemac (1916) by Pascual de Rogatis (1880–1980), which deals with a Toltec legend. Since the orchestral score of this opera is lost (except for one dance), little is known about the instrumentation used. However, it is known that, at the time of composing his opera, De Rogatis had not been able to access the ethnological studies that were being carried out on Mesoamerican cultures.26 Continuing with the operatic genre, it is possible to identify eight other indigenous operas premiered at the Teatro Colón before 1960. These are Tabaré by Alfredo Schiuma (1925), Ollantay by Constantino Gaito (1926), La leyenda del Urutaú (1934) by Gilardo Gilardi, La novia del hereje by Pascual de Rogatis (1935), Siripo by Felipe Boero (1937), Las vírgenes del sol by Alfredo Schiuma (1939), Lin-Calel by Arnaldo D’Esposito (1941) and El oro del Inca (1953) by Héctor Iglesias Villoud. Although we have not been able to access the scores of these operas, it is possible that some of their orchestral or vocal characteristics may also have inspired Ginastera’s Cantata. Returning to the subject of the timbre topic associated with the pre-Columbian, it is possible to find numerous references to Mayan musical instruments in some of the original texts used for Cantata. In El libro de los Chilam Balam, for example, there are multiple allusions to drums, rattles27 and flutes.28 Although less precise on 25

Saavedra (2019, p. 135). Kuss (1976, pp. 192–214). 27 El libro de los libros de Chilam Balam, pp. 59, 71, 105. 28 Ibid., pp. 93–94. 26

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the organological level, we also find a significant passage in which the resonance produced by “wooden musical instruments being beaten”29 is evoked. In the case of the Rabinal Achi, another of the sources used for the Cantata texts, we find the following passage in the words of the Varón de los Queché: “Let my Yaqui flute play, my Yaqui drum, my Queché flute, my Queché drum, the dance of the prisoner, of the captive in my mountains, in my valleys, as if to make the sky throb, to make the earth throb.”30

4 Among Deities, Orators and Priestesses: The Female Protagonism in Cantata The fact that Ginastera decided to incorporate the voice, instead of resorting to an aerophone, surely has to do with the intention of incorporating the texts, which enable the dramatic development of the piece. The choice of the feminine voice is probably related, besides the correspondence of register of some of the traditional aerophones of the mayan culture (like certain flutes, trumpets, ocarinas and whistles31 ), to the important place that female deities have occupied in the “Olympus” of pre-Columbian civilizations. Emblematic in this sense is the “PachaMama”, or “Madre tierra”, a deity of the Andean cosmovision venerated since Inca times.32 In the case of the Mayan cosmovision, we find among the main divinities the goddesses Ixmucané and Ixchel. The first of them, identified in the Popol Vuh as “the grandmother of the dawn”,33 “the fortune teller, the trainer”, is invoked in the prayer quoted in the first movement of Cantata. In the case of Ixchel, she is the lunar goddess, and is therefore associated with the rainy season, the earth and fertility.34 Flowers and singing have been key elements in the rituals directed to this goddess. Due to the main symbols surrounding Ixchel (moon, rain, flowers, singing) we could implicitly identify her in the poem of the second movement of Cantata: Your love was like summer’s rain perfumed with seent of fresh-cut blossoms/Your singing was delicious equal to sons of the golden bird/The moon and the sun for ever shone all around you/Gone you are now./Endless and sad are the lonely nights I am without you.35

In her article “La diosa lunar Ixchel…”, María Montolíu Villar seeks to demonstrate that the goddess Ix Chebel Yax (classified in the codices with the letter O) is 29

“instrumentos musicales de madera que se golpean” Ibid., p. 118. “Que toque mi flauta yaqui, mi tambor yaqui, mi flauta queché, mi tambor queché, la danza del preso, del cautivo en mis montañas, en mis valles, como para que haga palpitar el cielo, para que haga palpitar la tierra.” Teatro indígena prehispánico: Rabinal Achí, p. 71. 31 Rodens and Sánchez (2014, p. 51). 32 See di Salvia (2013). 33 “la abuela del alba”, “la adivina, la formadora” Popol Vuh: las antiguas historias del Quiche, pp. 28–29. 34 See Montolíu Villar (2010). 35 Ginastera, Cantata para América Mágica, score. 30

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the same lxchel (classified with the letter I), but in her elder version. In this version, the lunar goddess has a destructive connotation and is associated with catastrophes and death. In addition, she is revealed in the form of a chthonic monster and is linked to the concrete time of the human world.36 The implicit manifestation of this dual goddess in the second movement of Cantata could constitute an anticipatory symbol of what is going to happen in the storyline from the third movement on, in which war is revealed and, from it, the end of civilization. When reflecting on the motivations that may have led to the choice of a female figure as the protagonist of Cantata, it is necessary to take into account, in addition to the theological perspective, the anthropological one. It is essential to highlight, in this sense, the important role that Maya women played in rituals and religious ceremonies. This role varied according to the social stratum, from priestesses to orators, and was developed both in the domestic and public spheres. This has been immortalized in clay effigies, as well as in sculpture and monumental painting.37 However, we must consider that we are referring to an androcentric and patriarchal society, defined by a strong warlike character. Although in Cantata this character is clearly manifested in movement III “Canto para la partida de los guerreros”, the female voice appears there only as a witnessing narrator, describing the events prior to the combat. In movements 1, 2 and 6, on the other hand, the feminine mediates the strong mystical component that carries the piece, in the form of supplication, evocation, and prediction.

5 Indo-American Allegories in the Compositional Weave The musical analysis of this piece evidences two of the main compositional parameters from which it has been conceived: we refer, on the one hand, to the organization of pitches, from the use of the dodecaphonic technique; and, on the other hand, to the timbre and textural exploration, from the exploitation of the instrumental possibilities. These parameters are approached jointly, both by the instruments that integrate the orchestra and by the voice, and have been developed with the purpose of recreating the poetic universe of the piece, in the first case through the incorporation of Mayan symbology, and in the second, through the allusion to indigenous topics.

36 37

Montolíu Villar (2010, p. 69). Rodríguez-Shadow (2016, pp. 50–52).

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5.1 Mayan Symbology Incorporated from the Techniques Related to the Second Viennese School Regarding the use of the dodecaphonic technique in Cantata, the analysis by Malena Kuss is revealing.38 There, it is evident how Ginastera performs the derivation of the basic series (which appears in the fourth movement) in a manner similar to that used by Alban Berg in his Lyric Suite (1926).39 The series derived from this will make up movements 1, 2, 5 and 6. The third movement is the only one in the piece that is atonal and, therefore, does not have a generating series. Although the series appears on both instrumental (on the 6 instruments with defined tuning: the two pianos, celesta, Glockenspiel, xylophone and marimba) and vocal levels, it is in the former that the Mayan symbology is manifested. That is why we will now focus especially on movement IV (the only purely instrumental movement), from which the structure of the piece can also be understood. This “Fantastic Interlude”, constituted as a palindrome, functions as an axis of symmetry and as the generating nucleus of the piece. This is how Malena Kuss explains the relation established between the macrostructure of this movement and the Mayan concept of time: As in the complex cyclical interrelationship of the Mayan calendars, in which long time cycles absorb other shorter cycles, each half of the “Interludio Fantástico” contains two adjacent circles, each palindromic within the palindromic or circular macrostructure of the whole movement. We think of the baktun of 400 years of 365 days, the katun of 20 years of 365 days and the tun or solar year of 18 months of 20 days each —or 360 days— of the Cuenta Larga as concentric circles.40

In the first of these “adjacent circles” (measures 41–105), Ginastera makes a compositional development based on the transposition of the basic series in the order 0–9–4–1–4–9–0. This section suggests the numerical symbolism of the Mayan cosmogony, since 9 is the number of the heavens and the hells, and 4 are the cardinal points of the cosmic structure.41 In this regard, it is narrated in the Popol Vuh: Large was the description and the account of how the whole heaven and earth was fully formed, how it was formed and divided into four parts, [...] the measuring cord was brought and stretched out in heaven and on earth, in the four angles, in the four corners [...].42 38

See Kuss (2000). Letter from Berg to Schoenberg dated September 1, 1928, in which he explains his serial “pluralism”, rationalized to maintain the Schoenbergian precept of basing a piece on a single series. Communication by Dr. Malena Kuss, UNAM/Mexico, masterclasses October 20 and 22, 2020. 40 “Como en la compleja interrelación cíclica de los calendarios mayas, en la que largos ciclos temporales absorben otros ciclos más cortos, cada mitad del “Interludio fantástico” contiene dos círculos adyacentes, cada uno palindrómico dentro de la macroestructura también palindrómica o circular de todo el movimiento. Pensamos en el baktun de 400 años de 365 días, el katun de 20 años de 365 días y el tun o año solar de 18 meses de 20 días cada uno —o 360 días— de la Cuenta Larga como círculos concéntricos.” Kuss (2000, p. 5). 41 Ibid. 42 “Grande era la descripción y el relato de cómo se acabó de formar todo el cielo y la tierra, como fue formado y repartido en cuatro partes, […] se trajo la cuerda de medir y fue extendida en el cielo 39

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The second of the “adjacent circles” (measures 106–133) consists of a polyphony created by six series, which are transpositions of the basic dodecaphonic series. These series are played by the xylophone (P-5), marimba (P-2), Glockenspiel (P10), celesta (P-8), piano I (P-11) and piano II (P-7). Although the six instruments begin simultaneously presenting their series in measure 106 (and, successively, their derivatives), they soon move rhythmically out of step in order to avoid coincidences. Finally, they all converge in the 7'' chord that will create the symmetry axis of the piece. In the development of this section Malena Kuss also identifies an analogy with the wheels of time in the Mayan calendars, which “had to complete several cycles to converge on the day of the same number, name and destiny of the beginning”.43 Like the 4 and the 9, the 7 (measure of time in seconds chosen by the composer for this chord-mirror) is a fundamental number in the Mayan cult. Concerning this, we quote a passage from the Chilam Balam, very allusive in relation to the plot outcome of Cantata: “The power of the Katun will end with seven years of the power of Kin, Sun. Seven years will be of war, seven years of violent death […] then it will be the end and termination of the power of the Ah Kines […]”.44 Malena Kuss highlights the fact that the running time of Cantata (28' ) and its two halves (14' each) are multiples of this number.45 At the end of the sixth movement, Ginastera places the “grand finale” to the piece when he incorporates the pentatonic scale’s base notes (G–D–A, of G–E–D–C–A), a fundamental topic associated with indigenous music.46 For this, he performs a procedure analogous to that used by Alban Berg in the sixth movement of his Lyric Suite to include the chord of Tristan.47 This section has an undeniable dramatic force, since it is accompanied by the phrase “Mute and dead grow the timbrels! Mute and dead grow the drums!”, which prophesies the extermination of the peoples and the fall of the Mayan gods, in the hands of those who proclaim the Christian religion (Fig. 1).

5.2 Vocal Treatment and Relationship with Texts Beyond the serial aspect, the vocal treatment in Cantata is at the service of the dramatic course of each movement. In general terms, we could say that, although these are melodies that require great vocal virtuosity, the compositional search does y en la tierra, en los cuatro ángulos, en los cuatro rincones […]” Popol Vuh: las antiguas historias del Quiche, p. 21. 43 Kuss (2000, p. 5). 44 “Terminará el poder del katun con siete años de poder de Kin, Sol. Siete años serán de guerra, siete años de muertes violentas. […] entonces será el fin y término del poder de los Ah Kines […]” El libro de los libros de Chilam Balam, p. 86. 45 Kuss (2002). 46 Kuss (2000, p. 7). 47 Communication by Malena Kuss in her masterclass on October 22, 2020 for the Ginastera module, UNAM/Mexico.

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Fig. 1 Measures 137–146 of Movement IV

Fig. 2 Measures 35–39 of movement I

not seem to be directed so much to the showcasing and comfort of the interpreter, but to the representation of a primitive, unfathomable, mystical character. These characters (also recognizable as indigenous topics) originate in the musical discourse moments of ferocity and other moments of extreme seclusion. Both to arouse and to distinguish these conditions, multiple resources are used, which make Cantata a difficult piece to approach vocally. We refer, on the one hand, to the different modalities of execution, which vary from the conventional lyric singing form, through Sprechstimme, to parlato, and, on the other hand, to the extreme treatment with regard to pitches and dynamics. Furthermore, there is also the execution of fast microintervals (quarter tones), associated with the omnipresent ornaments. The numerous acciaccaturas that appear evoke the indigenous form of melodic ornamentation known as “kenko” (“ckencko”: winding, meandering), which consists of not directly addressing the sounds of the melody, but adding notes in advance that end up enriching the melodic scheme.48 In the following, we will present some sections as an example of vocal treatment, and we will relate this parameter to the texts. Example 2 corresponds to measures 35 and 39 of movement I, which evokes the prayer of the first men and women of the Quiché tribe before the arrival of dawn. In this section it is possible to identify the “kenko” ornamentation. In addition, it is exemplified the extreme approach of pitches and the way in which they reinforce the meaning of the text (this is observed in the words “heavens”, which is given the G 5 and “land” in an A 3). The dynamic fff in this low area of the soprano’s register gives the phrase a sense of drama, which matches the fervent and mystical character of the movement (Fig. 2). 48

Velo de Pítari (1978, p. 27).

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Fig. 3 Measures 89–92 of movement III

Example 3 concerns measures 89–92 of movement III. This is the epic moment of the dramatic progression, since here is described the attitude and attire of the warriors heading for combat. It also describes the reaction that his ferocity generates in nature, with the repeated phrase “Earth again trembles”, which appears in the selected measures. The indication “con fierezza”, the tempo (M.M. = n 160), and the continuous metrical change, contribute to generate the violent and agitated character of the scene. The reiteration of the descending 3°m in the melodic line, added to the numerous “t” that appear as a consequence of the repetition of the text, collaborate in the representation of the tremor. They also help to transfer the orchestral percussive character to the vocal plane. The ff dynamics in the middle register of the soprano, which must be played simultaneously with the ff of the instrumental ensemble, gives the phrase a forced character. The ostinato and rhythmic simplicity contained in this section functions as a signifier of the primitive character (Fig. 3). In measure 25 of movement V, we see how the use of the Sprechstimme, the indication “senza tempo” and the pp dynamic are combined to represent the sobs of someone who is resignedly awaiting death after defeat. In the sentence: “Now I must die, and never again I wander over land and under this these skies”, it is again possible to observe the way in which the meaning of the text is reinforced through the treatment of pitches, which, in this case, must be performed in an approximate way (Fig. 4). The last example corresponds to measures 20–25 of movement VI. In this case, it is possible to observe how the use of tuplets (7 demisemiquaver equivalent to 8), the ornaments and the microintervals are combined to represent the state of trance in which the prophetess finds herself, foretelling the destruction of civilization (Fig. 5).

Fig. 4 Measure 25 of movement V

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Fig. 5 Measures 20–23 of movement VI

5.3 Formation and Orchestral Treatment For the construction of this fantastic sonorous universe, Ginastera combines the percussion instruments of the traditional symphonic orchestra with some characteristic of Latin American folklore (for which he makes a suggestion of substitutions in the preface of the score). In addition, it incorporates two pianos and a pair of stones, which must be played by knocking them together. Below, we detail the rest of the instruments that make up the orchestra: -6 kettledrums, tuned to six different pitches; -3 drums (1 side-drum without snares, 1 tenor-drum y 1 bass-drum); -3 suspended cymbals of different sizes and 3 tam-tam (these 6 instruments must maintain the relation of 6 different pitches); 1 small suspended cymbal; chimes; 3 triangles (two small ones and one conventional); 1 bass drum (must be lower than the previous one); 2 crashing cymbals; Sleig Bells; 2 pairs of “antique cymbals” of different sizes; 1 large xilophone; 1 Glockenspiel; 1 celesta; 1 marimba; 2 claves (one low and the other high); 3 maracas (two small and one medium); 3 Indian-drums of different sizes; 6 teponaztli of different sizes; 2 bongós; 1 reco-reco; 1 chocalho; 1 güiro y 2 sistrums (one metallic and the other of seashells). The aim of this instrumental congregation is to create a vast palette of orchestral colors to be used according to the character of each movement. As is the case on the vocal level, some of the resources for achieving variety have to do with exploring the multiple possibilities of instrumental execution, and with pushing those possibilities to their limits. This is evidenced, for example, in the extreme pitches approach in most of the marimba’s interventions (of four octaves). We must also take into account the possibility that Ginastera may have used experimental instruments, which would explain the peculiarity of the register in which the Glockenspiel is written in the course of the first movement.49 Up next, we seek to show some examples of the way in which the variation in the execution forms responds to the dramatic need of each movement. We will concentrate, in this case, on the use of different drumsticks: Following this parameter we focus on movement II, in which it is indicated to execute the 3 cymbals and the 3 Tam-Tam with brushes. This decision has to do, certainly, with the fact of attenuating the attacks and thus making the creation of the sweet and melancholic sound environment that this “Nocturno y canto de amor” requires possible. By contrast, in movement III “Canto para la partida de los guerreros”, the composer indicates 49

Communication by Marina Calzado Linage in her masterclass on November 3 for the Ginastera module, UNAM/Mexico.

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that these same instruments should be played with hard felt drumsticks (as well as the bass-drum). By amplifying the attack and, therefore, the sonority of these instruments, the aim is to evoke the violent character of the implied scene. Another way to modify the timbre and dynamic spectrum of the instruments is through the use of sordines. An example of this is evidenced in the maracas that are used in movement IV, which must be wrapped in a piece of fine wool. This allows the timbral fusion with the rest of the instruments to take place, and to maintain the ppp dynamics, fundamental to create the “fantastic” atmosphere of this interlude. Although many of the indications that have to do with the instrumental execution (use of the drumsticks and attenuation of the sonorities) are indicated in the score, in most cases these will depend on the conductor’s criteria. These details are decisive to achieve the timbre fusion, to generate the climaxes suggested by the texts and to achieve the dynamic balance between the orchestra and the soprano’s voice. We do not want to conclude this section without referring to the textural issue, although we consider that the complexity with which this aspect is developed in Cantata would deserve an extensive separate chapter. In general terms, we can say that the moments of greatest instrumental density and rhythmic coincidence in this piece are associated with the evocation of the barbarian character (as happens during almost all of movement III, or between measures 27 and 33 of movement V) and of the mystical climaxes (as between measures 66–68 of movement I, and in the 11 measures before and after the 7'' measure of movement IV). On the other hand, in the sections in which the intention is to evoke love (as in movement II) or the ritual and unfathomable character (as in the beginning of movement IV), a pointillist type of treatment is used.50

6 Conclusion In the course of this article, we have evidenced the multiple ways in which the vocal (also understood as a mediator of the textual) and the instrumental are articulated in this piece to evoke the “pre-Columbian universe”. We have begun by reflecting on Ginastera’s use of the concept of “magical” as a synonym for pre-Columbian, and on the idea of “the pre-Columbian” as an allusion to the fraternity of the American peoples. The first concomitance between the vocal and the instrumental to evoke the preColumbian is recognized, then, in the incorporation in the vocal line of texts of indigenous origin and in the integration in the percussion orchestra of typical instruments of the folklore of diverse regions of the continent. The research we have carried out on the texts of Cantata, added to the analysis made by Malena Kuss (in which it is revealed how the Mayan symbology is knit into the compositional weave from the techniques related to the Second Viennese School), allows us to affirm that Ginastera situates himself in the Mesoamerican 50

Suarez Urtubey (1963, p. 32).

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region to build his Americanist ideal. With this attitude, the composer seems to align himself with the exotic, indigenist ideal that composers such as Carlos Chávez had been forging since the previous decades, in his need to build an alterity vis-à-vis the United States of America, and the latter, in turn, vis-à-vis Europe.51 This is why Cantata “concerted” with the political tinge of the event in which it was premiered and was interpreted by U.S. critics as a representative sonorous product of “The Americas”. The second concomitance can be recognized in the choice of the piece’s instrumental. As we have commented in the title no 3, the conjugation of aerophones and percussion instruments is representative of the pre-Columbian sonorous ideal. This ideal has been built by the composers who preceded Ginastera from the study of the first scientific documents dedicated to the original civilizations, which appeared in the mid-nineteenth century. The choice of the female voice seems to be related, in addition to the correspondence with the register of certain aerophones characteristic of the Mayan civilization, to the important place that women have occupied in Mayan civilization, both in their representation as deities and, in real life, in their role as orators and priestesses. That is to say, the feminine in Cantata has a timbre purpose, but fundamentally a dramatic one. The third and last concomitance can be recognized in relation to the allusion to certain topics related to the Indo-American, achieved through the exploration (and exploitation) of the possibilities of instrumental ensemble execution (timbres, dynamics and textures). We refer to the “kenko”, as well as to the representation of the primitive, ritual, unfathomable and mystical character. As we have exemplified in points 5.2 and 5.3, these topics are developed alternately and through various resources, in accordance with the program of the different movements that make up Cantata. The pre-Columbian aspect of Cantata is the result of a subjective construction (based on certain clichés and symbols), whose objective had more to do with the satisfaction of the composer’s aesthetic curiosity than with constructing a history of the antiquity of the continent, or with adhering to a Latin American search for identity. Perhaps the most magical component of this piece has to do with the ability to evoke that remote universe from the language and hegemonic techniques of Western culture. The good reception that Cantata has had since its premiere until today (counting more than 72 performances worldwide) could be a proof that Ginastera’s compositional eloquence has made this fantasy about pre-Columbian America become, in a way, a kind of truth. Acknowledgements To Esteban Buch, for recommending me in the writing of this article. To the Chair "Eduardo Mata" of the UNAM (Universidad Autónoma de México) for bringing me closer to the study of this piece, thanks to the masterclasses dictated by Malena Kuss, Luis Gorelik, Marina Calzado Linage and Virginia Correa Dupuy (2020).

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Saavedra (2002, pp. 135).

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References Buch, E.: L’affaire Bomarzo. Editions de l’EHESS, Paris (2011) Buch, E.: Ginastera, luces y sombras del centenario. In: Ginastera, del nacionalismo al realismo mágico. Fundación Juan March, Madrid (2017) Copland A.: Compositores de Sudamérica, 1941. In: Copland habla sobre música. Siglo veinte, Buenos Aires (1967) di Salvia, D.: La Pachamama en la época incaica y post-incaica: una visión andina a partir de las crónicas peruanas coloniales (siglos XVI y XVII). Revista Española de Antropología Americana 43(1) (2013) El libro de los libros de Chilam Balam. Trad. A. B. Vásquez y S. Rendón, Colección Popular, México D. F. (1948), 3rd ed. (1972) Ginastera, A.: Cantata para América Mágica. Score. Barry, Buenos Aires (1968) Ginastera, A: Interview by Lillian Tan. Am. Music Teach. 33(3) (1984) Heister, H.-W.: Trauer eines Halbkontinents und Vergegenwärtigung von Geschichte. Die “Cantata para América mágica”. In: Spangemacher, F. (ed.) Alberto Ginastera. Zu Leben und Werk (Musik der Zeit. Dokumentation und Studien, Vol. 4), Bonn, S. 45–75 (1984) Hess Carol, A.: Copland in Argentina: Pan Americanist politics, folklore, and the crisis in modern music author(s). J. Am. Musicol. Soc. 66(1), 191–250 (2013) King J.: Entrevista a Alberto Ginastera. In: El Di Tella y el desarrollo cultural argentino en la década del sesenta. Asuntoimpreso, Buenos Aires (2007) Kuss, M.: Nativistic Strains in Argentine Operas Premiered at the Teatro Colón (1908–1972). University Microfilms International, Michigan, Ann Arbor (1976) Kuss, M.: Alberto Ginastera, Musikmanuskripte. Inventare der Paul Sacher Stiftung. Amadeus Verlag, Winterthur (1990) Kuss, M.: Certidumbre de la utopía: estrategias interpretativas para una historia musical americana. In: Boletín Música: Casa de las Américas. No. 4, Nueva Época, La Habana (2000) Kuss, M.: Ginastera. In: Fischer, L. (ed.) Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart. BärenreiterMetzler Publishers, Kassel, Person section (2002) Lowens, I.: Ginastera’s Cantata Enchanting, Exciting. In: The Evening Star. Washington, May 1 (1961) Montoliu Villar, M.: La diosa lunar Ixchel: Sus características y funciones en la religión maya. Anales de Antropología 21(1) (2010) Parker, R.: Carlos Chavez: A Guide to Research. Garland Publishing Inc., New York and London (1998) Pietria, A.U.: Letras y hombres de Venezuela (1948), 3rd edn. Editorial Mediterráneo, Madrid (1974) Popol Vuh: las antiguas historias del Quiche. Trad. Adrián Recinos, Colección popular, México D. F. (1947), 23rd ed. (1993) Rodens, V., Sánchez, G.: Aerófonos mayas prehispánicos con mecanismo acústico poco conocido. In: Zalaquett, F., Nájera, M.I., Sotelo, L. (eds.) Entramados sonoros de tradición mesoamericana: Identidades, imágenes y contexto, pp. 51–70. Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Ciudad de México (2014) Rodríguez-Shadow, M.J.: Las mujeres mayas de antaño. Fundación Cultural Armella Spitalier, Ciudad de México (2016) Saavedra, L.: La construcción de una alteridad estratégica. In: Bitrán, Y., Miranda, R. (eds.) Diálogo de Resplandores; Carlos Chávez y Silvestre Revueltas, pp. 125–136. México, Conaculta, INBA (2002) Saavedra, L.: La música como conocimiento social y comunidad identitaria: México, 1910–1930. Instituto nacional de Bellas artes y Literatura, Ciudad de México (2019) Schwartz-Kates, D.: Alberto Ginastera: A Research and Information Guide. Routledge Music Bibliographies. New York and London (2010)

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Suárez Urtubey, P.: La Cantata para América Mágica de Alberto Ginastera. Revista Musical Chilena 17(84), 19–36 (1963) Suárez Urtubey, P.: Alberto Ginastera (1916–1983). In: Revista del Instituto de Investigación Musicológica “Carlos Vega”. No. 7 (1986) Teatro indígena prehispánico: Rabinal Achí. Biblioteca del estudiante Universitario, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, México D. F. (1955), 4th ed. (2015) Velo de Pítari, Y.M.: Los cantos de carnaval en el valle de Santa María. In: Revista del Instituto de Investigación Musicológica “Carlos Vega”, No. 2 (1978)

Luciana Colombo, * in 1990 in Buenos Aires, is an Italo-Argentinian musicologist and singer. Currently, she is a contractual doctoral student at the ACCRA at the University of Strasbourg. Her thesis, conducted under the direction of Alessandro Arbo and Esteban Buch, is consecrated to the study of the incorporation of tango rioplatense in the operas of Argentine composers, from the end of the twentieth century to the present day, aiming to understand the morphological and aesthetic identity of these works in light of their production and reception contexts. Graduated as Music Professor with a specialization in opera singing at the Alberto Ginastera Conservatory in Buenos Aires, she then obtained a Master’s degree in Musicology at the University of Strasbourg with the thesis Interactions between opera and tango: The cases of Juan José Castro, Pompeyo Camps and Astor Piazzolla (1951–1987), in 2021. At the same time, she attended two certificate programs, “Composers of Latin America: converging views” (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, UNAM), and “Music and poetics of tango” (Universidad Nacional de las Artes, UNA), in association with the Academia Nacional del Tango (Argentina). Other publications: Discovering its roots abroad … For a dialectic of itinerancy in Gato Barbieri (2022).

Latin American Insurrection, New Music and Language Without Words: Word and Sound in Graciela Paraskevaídis’ pero están Tina Vogel

“On january 1st 1994 all of us who still believe in the human being and his utopies were shaken by the irruption [of a new hope] in Chiapas Southeastern Mexico”.1

1 “Otro Mundo es Posible” (“Another World is Possible”)—Revolt of Dignity On that January 1st, 1994, which composer Graciela Parasekvaídis refers to in the paratext of her piece pero están, the Mexican government signs the controversial NAFTA free trade agreement with its northern neighbors, the United States and Canada: Driven by the prospect of wealth and progress, Mexico wants to participate in the neoliberal upswing. But history shows that not everyone in Mexico is able to benefit from this prospect, and not everyone agrees with decades of unilateral decision-making by the central government. And so, on that same January 1, 1994, something unexpected and powerful shook the southern state of Chiapas for the first time: The Zapatista social revolutionary indigenous federation gained widespread national and international attention after the armed arm of their movement2 —the EZLN ("Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional", "Zapatista Army of National Liberation")—occupied various district capitals and declared war on the Mexican

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Paraskevaídis, Graciela: "pero están", manuscript, Montevideo: (1994), paratext, p. 1. The EZLN and publicly appearing community members cover their faces with ski masks ("pasamontañas") or triangular scarves, which accompany numerous leftist political movements in all parts of the world as a symbol of adopted Zapatista thinking. 2

T. Vogel (B) Stuttgart, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 H.-W. Heister et al. (eds.), Word Art + Gesture Art = Tone Art, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20109-7_20

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Fig. 1 Comandanta Ramona (ca. 2006, Junta de Buen Gobierno)3

central government. Their main aims are land, health, freedom, education, democracy and social justice for the indigenous population. These celebrated achievements of the Mexican Revolution at the beginning of the twentieth century under Emiliano Zapata in fact never reached the indigenous communities of the southern regions. And it is also about self-determination, profound democratization, equality of opportunity, and aims to turn away from neoliberal economic structures that exclude the population of Mexico’s most resource-rich region in favor of powerful profiteers of social and sustainable wealth, leaving them in poverty, disadvantage, marginalization, destitution, and racism. The Mexican government responds with repression: Two weeks of civil war claim many lives before the EZLN retreats to the remote mountaineous regions to continue its struggle by civilian means. Various treaties are signed, and two years later the conflict parties agree to a ceasefire, with the promise of comprehensive rights, economic reforms and democratization. The peace, alas, does not last. The Mexican government already breaks the first agreement, and the Zapatistas reciprocate by disengaging from the dialogue. Since then, the conflict has been frozen and lacks new approaches for negotiations. But road signs signal drivers and especially government representatives, when they are entering Zapatista territory: For although the movement disengages in dialogue, it is beginning to build its own structures in grassroot governing structures, which comprise, to this day, as five autonomous "caracoles", administrative and logistics centers, and more than 1,000 villages (Figs. 1, 2). 3

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subcomandante_Marcos, 20 April 2022, accessed 20 April 2022.

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Fig. 2 Border marking of the Zapatista territories5

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subcomandante_Marcos, 20 April 2022, accessed 20 April 2022.

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2 “The Hope of Those Who Have Not Come But Are Here” That uprising, the Zapatista movement and the created structures are of particular importance in Latin America. The idea of the Zapatistas constitutes a revolutionary transformation of Mexico, but at the same time a bifurcation for a continent whose indigenous heritage seeped into its own soil, or disappeared into the gold chambers of its colonizers. The Cuban Revolution in the late 1950s generated a sustained and successful enthusiasm for the Latin Americas utopias. These hopes are soon brutally crushed by series of military dictatorships, supported explicitly or implicitly by Western States. These military juntas suppress any social rebellions and impose neoliberal state structures in turn, using disproportionate force for the benefit of a small, entrenched elite. The Zapatista uprising provides an alternative to these reactionary forces and once again confronts the capitalist world and its allies with historic demands for justice. The political art figure of Subcomandante Marcos (Fig. 3), whose civil name behind this nom de guerre is thought to be Rafael Sebastián Guillén, has played a not inconsiderable role in the Zapatistas’ notoriety. Until 2014, he acted as the mouthpiece of the Zapatista movement and shaped the public image via his regular comuniqués with a ski cap and tobacco pipe and celebrated secrecy about his bourgeois biography.4 Marcos, at least in the first decades after the uprising, represents more than any other Latin American political figure the rights of the disenfranchised and left-behind. Graciela Paraskevaídis quotes his speech to the first Democracy Convention in the paratext of her work pero están: "On August 9, 1994, the first National Democratic Convention was held in Chiapas. Marcos alluded in his words to the absent ones: ’The hope of those who did not come, but are here’."6 ,7 The last sentence reads in Spanish "La esperanza de los que no vinieron, pero están" and in the important subordinate clause—"…, pero están" ("…, but are present"/ "…, but are here")—also forms the title of her composition.8

4

Marcos sees himself as a sub-comandante of the movement, that is, he is active in a subordinate position – because in a superior and unchallengeable position are the will and consensus of the people. When asked about his identity, Marcos replied, "Marcos is gay in San Francisco, black in South Africa, Asian in Europe, anarchist in Spain, Palestinian in Israel, Indio in San Cristóbal, and a Jew in Nazi Germany." When asked about his age in reference to the time and sorrowful centuries of colonization, "I am 518." Anecdotal tradition, cited in: García Márquez, Roberto Pombo, "Subcomandante Marcos. The Punch Card and the Hourglass." In: New Left Review. No. 9 (MayJune), 2001 (newleftreview.org – Interview with Subcomandante Marcos, originally published in Revista Cambio. Bogotá March 26, 2001). 6 Paraskevaídis (1994), Paratext, p. 1. 7 "On August 9, 1994, the first National Democratic Convention met in Aguascalientes, Chiapas. Marcos considered in his words those who were absent: ’The hope of those who did not come but are present here.’" Paraskevaídis (1994), paratext, p. 1. 8 It should be noted here that the Spanish verb "estar" ("to be"), as distinct from the verb "ser" (also "to be"), carries the particular resonance of persistence, presence, being geographically and physically present.

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Fig. 3 Subcomandante Marcos at the Earth Color March (2001)9

3 Latin American Revolutions and New Music Graciela Paraskevaídis (*1940 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, † 2020 in Montevideo, Uruguay) composed pero están (1994) in Montevideo, Uruguay, where she has lived and worked since the military dictatorships in the seventies. She is one of those artists who take up and express revolutionary ideas in revolutionary aesthetics, and who have long stood for the seizure of consciousness and socio-political responsibility in new music beyond the geographical borders of the continent. This mindset emerges in the second half of the twentieth century with the realization that colonial and neocolonial times merged quasi seamlessly after the independence of Latin American states, and that despite political independence, large sections of the society continues to be foreign-determined and subject to epigonal adaptation. The Cuban Revolution is also considered a historical turning point in the arts, inspiring many artists to break away from their metropolitan models to achieve cocreation and dialogues on equal terms in aesthetic discourse. Thus, in the sixties and seventies of the twentieth century, numerous composers began to define and establish new educational and promotional opportunities, as well as their own aesthetics. These, although operating within the framework of European art music, reflected 9

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subcomandante_Marcos, 20 April 2022, accessed 20 April 2022.

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the new Latin American self-image. Aesthetic characteristics include, especially in the works of Graciela Paraskevaídis: A respectfully committed attitude towards the indigenous world and the ancient American heritage of the continent,10 concrete rather than synthetic electroacoustic sounds produced by living musicians, voices and instruments of indigenous cultures, blocks of sound rather than discursive development, silence as part of the sound structure, and extreme reduction of means with simultaneous highly expressive power.11 Graciela Paraskevaídis composed numerous references that point to the complex issues of identity and revolution in Latin America (e.g. magma, y allá andará según se dice), resistance (e.g. todavía no, huauqui) and social awareness of the situation and political events on the Latin American continent. As the "sounding veins of Latin America",12 these works crisscross the continent to question evolved structures and persistent historical imbalances. This approach embraces the Zapatista uprising in Chiapas and the aesthetic reference of Paraskevaídis with almost natural clarity—after all, they are equally testimony to indigenous insurrection and hopeful vision of a more just world.

4 Together to Its Entirety The sounds in pero están are surprisingly different from the expectation invoked in the paratext of a work about insurrection and civil war scenes in Mexico. Paratexts in Paraskevaídis often indicate a strong humanistic and ideational context, they refer to the concerns and resonances of a place and a historical moment. The music reflects these directly and on an immanent level. But it is structurally autonomous and independent of extra-musical references, and rich in metaphors, symbols and sound images. In pero están the atmosphere is mostly quiet, the musical material and its composition is subject to the idea of reduction. Vocals, flute and oboe complement each other to form structural units, micro units and macro units, the voice articulates vowels and selectively the nasal sounds m and n. These sounds are hummable 10

In contrast to an exoticistic or commercial-folkloristic layout of art: "You won’t see Indians adorned with feathers here," anecdotally recalled statement of the composer. 11 Thus, in Eduardo Bértola’s 1978 La visión de los vencidos by the Mexican cultural anthropologist and nahuatlist Miguel León Portilla resounds in frictionally-changing clusters, dissonant sustained tones with strongly reduced emerging tones, difference tones, and contrastive structural parts, and is both an acoustic customer and an indictment of the outrageous acceptance of colonial history. Numerous other musicians incorporate elements of the Indian heritage into their aesthetics (e.g., Cergio Prudencio’s La ciudad, Jacqueline Nova’s Creación de la tierra, Joaquín Orellana’s Humanofonía, Coriún Aharonián’s La flecha clavada en el pecho de Don Juan Díaz de Solís) or take a stand on economic-political circumstances and social consequences of the continent (e.g., Gilberto Mendes’ Beba Coca-Cola – Brazilian concretist, who perverts the words of the brand’s slogan and arrives at "Caca Cola," or, Tato Taborda’s Prostituta Americana). 12 The notion of "sounding veins" (and a multitude of similar puns in the most diverse disciplines) goes back to the much acclaimed treatise The Open Veins of Latin America by Eduardo Galeano – with whom Paraskevaídis was a friend – in which he analyzed the history of the continent in terms of dependency theory in the early 1970s, thus becoming a reference point for the intellectual left.

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and, as surface or recumbent sounds, ideal formable sound material—and yet they do not come to an expected verbal dimension, are, as it were, only sound bodies or initial sounds of words that are held back and do not unfold into an intelligible vocabulary. In addition, larger sections divide the piece. Five blocks of sound do not develop logically from each other, but rather stand for themselves and enter into reference with each other. In many places, the instrumental or vocal sound changes almost imperceptibly into harmonics, coloring the sounds with an additional quality. Something primordial, naturally present, not always visible or notable, is included in the sound structures, participates. The piece seems vibrant and somewhat archaic, conveying a sense of endurance, consistency and permanence.

5 Instrumentation Without Hierarchy On closer examination, these impressions are due to a number of particular aesthetic approaches. At first, the instrumentation seems ordinary in chamber music. In the Central European musical tradition, one first associates it with the levels of text-music or speech-music. Paraskevaídis chooses a new use of the voice, a different conception and poetics of the voice in music: It sounds like an instrument that acts more or less exposed in its original capacity and also becomes similar to the instrumental character. Instead of following the traditionalist hierarchy of soloistic singing and instrumental accompaniment, the flute and oboe—rich in overtones and particularly similar to the human voice in their airy tonal content—stand in direct and equal relation to the singing voice. But the structural arrangement also dissolves the familiar hierarchy in favor of the development of a common whole. For example, the first notes of the piece are clusters from the overtone series of the first note in the chant (section A, page 1, last system: d’), which they fan out, play around idiosyncratically, and connect complementarily and rhythmically to form a common line. With the entry of the voice articulating the vowels a-e-o, this initial movement freezes: Overtones appear in the singing voice in front of a long, sustained layer of single notes of the cluster (Fig. 4). These vowels a, e and o, which are formed and moved in the oral cavity and pharynx to form overtones in singing, are also found in the formation of harmonics on the flute and oboe. Flutists, for example, have two possibilities for creating harmonics, favored by the uniform cylindrical shape of the tube, via acceleration of the airflow while simultaneously blowing and grasping low notes, or with the help of fingering combinations and experimentation with the formation of the vowels a, e, o, and oe in the oral cavity (the latter usually allowing for more precise and cleaner harmonics). The three instruments of the group thus articulate the same sound phenomenon of the respective overtone possibilities via the same vocal technique. The vocal and the instrumental are thus set into harmony wordlessly, although mediated by wordlanguage phonemes or vowels. They speak the same language and structurally and tonally transit extremely smoothly into each other by acting complementarily and by professing again and again to the same reference: A series of tones that, following

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Fig. 4 Graciela Paraskevaídis: pero están, section A. Manuscript, Montevideo (1994)

laws of nature, are always present but do not always become visible or individually audible.

6 Singing Without Words: Turning Away from Semantics and Hierarchy Section B continues the principle of instrumental and vocal structures complementing each other, as (now traditionally notated) a quiet and highly expressive melody becomes mutually complementary to a whole—something becomes complete: whole again. Distracted and strange, and also a bit melancholic, this contrastive view into tradition seems to be – and yet the actually decisive role in this passage is played by the arrangement as a complementary collective work: The vocal part changes to the consonant m and the vowel u in section B, the first harmonics are heard in the flute (Fig. 5, p. 3, last system), before sound block B shifts on and gives room for the characteristics in section C. The first harmonics are heard in the flute (Fig. 5, p. 3, last system). Sections C and D form a phase of complete condensation of the familiar material: Thus, the initial clusters are energetically expanded from C onward, and the flute and oboe complement each other in striking intervallic pairs that still form a complementary melodic unit but encompass significantly larger intervallic leaps.

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Fig. 5 pero están, section B

Below this, the vocal part—still textless or wordless—forms a contrasting lingering counter element in the familiar vowel change and overtone singing, conveying permanence and steadiness. Only one measure before section D do all three voices head for a short and intensely interacting intermezzo by means of idiosyncratic turns—each of which had previously been executed by the other voice (flute: Free eighth-note movement; oboe: Harmonics on a”; voice: Return to articulation without overtones) (from section D, p. 5): The voices now form a three-part complementary line, interweaving through the registers of rapid intervals in ties of two, and follow each other directly and unbrokenly, leading each other on and passing immediately into the following movement. In out-composed heightening—expansion to triple bonds, accelerando, crescendo, extreme interval spreading over four registers—they are for a brief moment in threes a unity of all extremes possible in terms of playing technique—only to thin out again in the same movement, to become static-stable again, until the vocal part disappears "liberamente" into silence in a freely shaped cluster slowed down with fermatas (Fig. 6). Into this calmness a new block of sound (section E) is inserted, in which all voices gather in slow motion on a’ and produce only minimally iridescent color reflexes in sustained tones of varying length. This contemplative mood persists for 24 measures, in which only the vowels in the chant change to m and n and selectively break out into a diminished fifth on es” (p. 7, first and second systems; e.g., Fig. 7). The denser alternation of vowel and closure sounds suggests enunciation: Is something to be pronounced? Will a lexical dimension come in the song? It will not. Nasal closure sounds such as m and n in Paraskevaídis work are often disclosed with the superscription "as if gagged," "frightened," "clenching the teeth and lips tightly" (dos piezas para oboe y piano, 1995). The performance terms form verbal equivalents to

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Fig. 7 pero están, section E, measures 2–9

the nonexistent vocal text and often a relatively independent, expressive semantic layer—here a politically charged pronunciamento.13 The sounds thus acquire a certain sound quality or sound property, but even beyond the sonic component they are a constant in the composer’s oeuvre and work. For in the Latin American context of history and politics, such suppressed, foreign-determined sounds always have also a political connotation or are linked with the suggestion of limitation and subjugation. The conscious use of this sonority requires a deep awareness of the expressive potential of sonic material, its possibilities and symbolism, and in many of Paraskevaídis’s pieces reveals a reading that exhibits ideological connotations: "painful accusation, resistance, non-submission, refusal of the ’givens’ in a non-passive way." The lexical dimension of the song is thus deconstructed in pero están. Direct intelligible expression is purposefully prevented. This way of singing—"with despair", "like a muffled cry", "dolorosamente, lamenting"—poses new challenges for the performers, because the singers also need to position themselves beyond technical and musical requirements. Mental and emotional dimensions are central to the performance, as is positioning will and commitment. The composer

13

Cf. e.g., also Heister: "Passionate, strong, and very determined; quite free, not at all fast, always rather restrained". Zur exzessiven Expressivität der Vortragsbezeichnungen in Schnabels Klaviersonate (1923), in: Albrecht Dümling (ed.): Artur Schnabel. Interpret, Pädagoge und Komponist (Schriftenreihe der Hochschule für Musik Saar), St. Ingbert 2018, pp. 143-196.

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does not concern herself with trivial concepts of virtuosity14 in which the logic is to execute as many notes, scales and rhythms as possible in as short a time as possible: "This music rejects any superficial acrobatics and requires a different technical and expressive approach that challenges performers and listeners alike."15 The musical discourse forms a special feature in the work of Paraskevaídis and is evident on various levels of the piece. Firstly, performance indications and the wordless, alexical, even anti-lexical layout of the textual dimension in the song offer the possibility of a political-ideological reading without semantic or programmusical structures becoming audible. Secondly, the use of and the demands on the instrumentation and its tonal possibilities require special commitment on the part of the performers. Finally, the processing of the sounds and in the course of the composition, this facility of questioning and repositioning shows itself as a facility in cooperation and complementary processes, which gain significance in the sound context: At all levels of the piece it is about community and consensus, creating structural togetherness.

7 How Do We Want to Talk to Each Other? How Do We Relate to Each Other? In the final moments of the section, these familiar ideas resound again in gently erupting reminiscences: Espressivo phrases in the vocals that only just show through (p. 7, second system), harmonics in the instrumental voices, dotted sounds in the flute that extend upward (p. 8, first system), shadows of the espressivo line in the flute (p. 8, second system) pushing through the picture in the distance—all above clusters from the respective other voices with barely noticeable shimmering overtone effects. The voices and their motivic statements seem like a permanent dialectical sounding out, quietly becoming denser as the piece draws to a close: They detach themselves from the silence and present themselves—but at the same time at no point do they lapse into the dynamic of interruption and disturbance, in which they, for example, overrun, discursively hijack or continue another motif. In section F, this structure is condensed by slightly shifted syncopations on a’, which turn around each other in inner movement, and through a clearly notated eight-bar repetition seems like an aquarium in which the sound mass turns over its structure, namely the voices exchange their registers: Flute and oboe on the rather low a’, singing with lyrical melancholy shadows in the second octave register. Until a sustained a’ in the oboe remains and fermatas of silence give space to the final thoughts: Out of this silence, a soft dot sound introduces the final bars, in which the now whistled melody, interspersed with rests and headed "più lontano," manifests itself once again in the flute ("or by the one who is just the best whistler in the 14 15

Solomonoff (2015), p. 21. Ibid.

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Fig. 8 pero están, section F

ensemble") over very quiet sustained and harmonics at intervals of fourths, and fades "into nothingness" as an ascending phrase in clearly notated quarter notes (Fig. 8). The whistling used at this point is a characteristic "sonando": Instrumental, although produced with the lips as part of the vocal apparatus.16 As an archaic essence of air and sound, these last sounds act as a natural synthesis of the core of the possibilities of human, sound and their aesthetic composition. On one hand, the 16

In contrast, whistling with fingers, which is also based on breath, requires the use of the hands as musical instruments, analogous to wind instruments.

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core is about suppressed, foreign-determined expression, about words that are not spoken. In the basic arrangement of the piece and especially in the last section, on the other hand, it is also about how we humans fundamentally relate to each other in the alternative, how we want to speak to each other. We find in these bars voices that exchange positions and perspectives in unison, structures that only become a whole in cooperation, but also individual motifs that take up space in a formative way and are able to take over the motifs of others in a formative way. In this sense, pero están is a profoundly programmatic piece that expresses imposed speechlessness, yet in its essence overcomes the imposed silence and leads into the utopia of cooperation.

8 In Summary: Revolution in Sounds In pero están Paraskevaídis combines many of the main features of her aesthetic convictions. The piece is inspired by historically significant events, which the composer takes up in her understanding of art and forfeits in her music as an offer of social reflection. On a music-immanent level, various parameters contribute to this objective. Melodic progressions in pero están have no linear, harmonic, directional or teleological development, but appear fundamentally in physical-acoustic corporeality. It is thus a matter of textures: Of timbre, intensity, duration, sound-internal rhythmic phenomena, the distribution of sound components throughout the spectrum, and their composition with the respective sonic environment. Silence is also a structuring element in this piece.It is not understood as an absence of sound, but used in a formative way. It divides blocks of sound, opens up improvisationally free creative spaces or creates possibilities of closeness and distance from which individual ideas emerge and into which they disappear again. In pero están, the instrumentation is used without hierarchy and contributes to the idea of the piece on different levels. Singing voice and instruments are used on an equal footing, articulate in similar techniques of tone production and extension, and deconstruct the traditional connection between singing and textual level. The voice is no longer the exposed carrier of melody and text, but has the same position and function as the oboe and flute; the textual level resists lexical-semantic expectations and articulates itself in reference to extra-musical references to reality. Basically, however, it consistently plumbs the sound spectrum, gropes for tones and boundaries in spectral space, and finds together again in the consensus of unisons. The sound generators are used in such a way that their way of playing and the sound result are in cooperation and approximation to each other. Sound textures are in relation to each other, but also melodic sequences are at no point executed by only one instrument—there is always at least one of the other voices complementarily involved in the compositional event. Thus the challenge for the interpreter is to do more than just play the instrument: The interplay requires extreme attentiveness, consensus, and collaboration. The piece is interestingly fragile and complex in execution, but very firm in the commitment required of the performers. In this respect, Paraskevaídis is very likely referring to the basic execution of melody in the indigenous cultures of Latin America: Following the

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principle of "arca" and "ira," several performers arrive at the complete melodic line in regular, dense alternation and complementing each other. This decision of the composer is a way to redefine the interplay and to connect it, in reference to social alternative models, with consensus, participation and joint effectiveness. Contrasts are another important feature in pero están: The formal parts are connected without transitions, existing in juxtaposition of textures and blocks. The blocks of sound seem rather static, as if frozen in time, but always exhibit inner movements, often containing compositional ideas of their predecessor blocks as shadowy memories. In particular, however, Paraskevaídis’ music refrains from large-scale displays of means: It does not want to be pompous. Reduction is the most fundamental of its aesthetic principles, which includes all of the aforementioned music-immanent areas. For it is a music "that enables the experience of ’ser’ [rather ’to be,’ that is so in essence] and ’estar’ [rather ’to be changeable,’ to be physically ’present’]. [Paraskevaídis composes with a] poetics that reveals to us something about the relationship between the individual and society, but also about the state of humanity. Which resists pomp and banality by making alternative proposals and creating a plurality of meanings that follows a dramaturgy fed by the smallest possible but most powerful elements."17

9 “Preguntando Caminamos” (“With Questions, We Are Moving Forward”) Reduction to the essential is, as mentioned, a fundamental and important concern for the composer. For her, the revolutionary character of a piece, that is, the degree of aesthetic innovation and thus its substantiality, quality and credibility, combines aesthetic characteristics and humanistic views and attitudes: "One must have something to say and one must say it well."18 This piece has a lot to say. In their interplay, all these aesthetic features form a new path of compositional design that constantly questions and attempts rearrangements without ever relying on convention or epigonality. The political and historical-social interpretation is an additional level of the music, but it does not presuppose it, imply it or make it concretely audible: "As in other pieces related to this one by similar elements, pero están does not intend to tell or describe a story. It is a kind of testimony, a symbolic way to try to reflect certain contemporary events that deeply move me. Music should exist as such, without needing any explanations."19 This idea of creating consciousness and reordering change is analogous to the extra-musical inspiration of pero están: Because one of the principles of the Zapatista worldview is also to be there, to ask questions, to dare to reorder and to explore consensually until a communally supported, a common whole emerges. "Preguntando caminamos" ("With questions, we are moving forward") is a guiding principle that repeatedly runs through Zapatista murals and comuniqués, 17

Solomonoff (2015), p. 34. Private correspondence with the composer, consultation on the definition of political music. 19 Paraskevaídis (1994), Paratext, p. 1. 18

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but also in sympathetic references. Paraskevaídis translates this way of thinking into sound: She establishes this process of communal reorientation in a music that questions and reimagines hierarchies, roles and aesthetics, makes alternative proposals, explores possibilities, co-creates and moves forward questioningly. And which is always fundamentally dedicated to the goal of questioning historically grown and hegemonic hierarchy. It is one of the gatherings of music and society in Latin America in which social movement and art declare their respective "¡Ya Basta!" ("Enough!") to the interconnected concerns. "To figure out how to set history in motion again."20 Not to assert reversed hegemonic claims in the sense of reversed power relations— but to enable dialogue and participation on equal terms and to allow fundamental utopias of just social community to become real. As one hears in the mythologized speeches of Subcomandante Marcos, the Zapatistas want a world in which many worlds have a place. And for this, "it is not necessary to conquer the world. It is enough to create it anew".21 ,22

References Habermann, F.: "We do not have to conquer the world, it is enough to create it anew. Contribution to the Conference ’Justice or Barbarism’" (Intercontinental Forum Berlin). Online publication in: https://www.rosalux.de/publikation/id/3472/wir-muessen-die-welt-nicht-erobern-es-rei cht-sie-neu-zu-schaffen, last accessed 9 March 2022 (2000) Kastner, J.: "Alles für alle! Zapatismo between Social Theory, Pop and Pentagon", edition assemblage, Münster (2011) Muñoz Ramírez, G.: "20 + 10 The Fire and the Word" (German edition), Unrast, Münster (2004) Paraskevaídis, G.: "pero están", manuscript, Montevideo (1994) Solomonoff, N.: " ’... vivir tan hondo ...’. Humanismo y militancia en y por el sonido. Una interpretación de los recursos compositivos y expresivos den la música de Graciela Parasekvaídis a partir del análisis de cuatro obras con participación de la voz" (Boletín Música # 39). Casa de las Américas, Havana, pp. 25–42 (2015)

Tina Vogel, *1984 in Mainz, music editor for new music and its mediation, studied Music as well as French and Spanish Literature Studies at the University of Osnabrück (Master of Education). She also holds an instrumental diploma in extension studies (classical music, flute) at the Osnabrück Conservatory. After the Second State Examination in Baden-Württemberg, she returned to the University of Osnabrück as a research assistant at the Institute for Musicology and Music Education with Prof. Dr. Stefan Hanheide. She obtained her PhD from the University of Osnabrück for her doctoral thesis on the role of contemporary concert music in political context of Argentina, Chile and Uruguay: „’Libres en el sonido’ or how to manifest your freedom in 20

Habermann, F.: "We do not have to conquer the world, it is enough to create it anew. Contribution to the Conference ’Justice or Barbarism’" (Intercontinental Forum Berlin). Online publication in: https://www.rosalux.de/publikation/id/3472/wir-muessen-die-welt-nicht-erobern-es-reichtsie-neu-zu-schaffen, last accessed 09.03.2022 (2000). 21 Habermann (2000). 22 Marcos adds at this point: "One must [sic.] laugh a lot to create a new world. Otherwise the new world will turn out to be square to us and will not […] move.", quoted from: Habermann (2000).

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sound: Contemporary music against the military dictatorships in Argentina, Chile and Uruguay”. Her research focus remains on on new music from Latin America, new music from Iran, and music in the area of tension between political violence, for which she also holds several teaching assignments, and radio contributions at Deutschlandfunk, e. g.: „Hidden Sounds for a Better World. Uruguayan Composer Coriún Aharonián. coriún aharonián. una carta“ (wergo, schott music, 2019), “Seven Questions for the Chilean Military Dictatorship: The Chilean Composer Eduardo Cáceres or How to Compose with Invisible Ink” (MusikTexte, 2021). Her work has been published in various anthologies and journals (MusikTexte, Neue Zeitschrift für Musik) and associated labels. Collaboration on research projects and publications on music in the First World War.

Music Sociological Question

In the Name of “Art” and Progress: Symphony Soirées as a Novelty. Exclusions of Choral and Solo Singing and Virtuosity? Martin Thrun

1 Preliminary Remark Prudent assessments of the program profiles of concert institutions ideally presuppose intensive institutional historical research on a large number of cities in quite a few countries.1 In the German-speaking countries alone, to which I confine myself, well over one hundred concert institutions in the narrow sense are to be reckoned with.2 In the following, attention will be concentrated on a few indicative landmarks in order to trace the novelty of symphony soirées. It is necessary to accept the crux that a nominal definition of the term “symphony soirée” (symphony concert) cannot be provided. Even if it initially seemed that only pure orchestral performances (symphonies and overtures), to the exclusion of singing, formed the substance of the content, the intended horizon of meaning was thwarted as soon as solo works with orchestra or orchestral songs found a place in ‘symphony concerts’ and sometimes even the lowest common denominator, which ideally consisted in the renunciation of vocal and instrumental solos, was lost. Terminological uncertainties are not to be overlooked, when in source texts the expression of ‘so-called’ symphony concerts became more frequent. An obvious approach to the topic is offered by the Berlin residence, where Carl Möser’s symphonic soirées were successful after 1827. Additional perspectives are opened up by reception documents that point beyond Berlin, including a survey by Friedrich Chrysander (1867) that contours the concert landscape around 1865. 1 The title of this contribution does not fully reflect the intended content. In German it would read: “Im Namen der Kunst und des Fortschritts”. What is meant “die Kunst” will become clear in the course of the study. 2 In this article, the terms concert and concert institute refer to standing (regular, periodic) winter or series concerts of professional civil and court orchestras.

M. Thrun (B) Leipzig, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 H.-W. Heister et al. (eds.), Word Art + Gesture Art = Tone Art, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20109-7_21

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Table 1 Overview of the repertoire of the Gewandhaus concerts (1835/36–1839/40)4 Instrumental music (346 performances)

Vocal music (248 performances)

98 Symphonies 106 Overtures 142 Works or pieces for single instruments with and without orchestra (including 24 concertos and concert pieces for piano and 28 for violin)

81 Choruses, ensembles, finales, etc. 33 Duets etc., among others by Vincenzo Bellini (7), Gioachino Rossini (11) 134 Arias, single songs, among others by Bellini (7), Gaetano Donizetti (6), Saverio Mercadante (13), W. A. Mozart (25), Rossini (24), Carl Maria v. Weber (15)

Furthermore, the “devil of virtuosity” as a counterpart of symphonic soirées will be considered—in view of a rather German concern—which was sooner or later opposed by program reforms. Finally, a random review of concert profiles in six cities will provide information on the extent to which the novelty of pure (soloistless) symphony concerts asserted itself in the practice of concert life around or after 1900. It is not insignificant that since the beginnings of the bourgeois concert—oriented to the model of courtly institutions—the type of the instrumental and vocal concert as the decisive typus of ‘the concert’ spread internationally, this with astonishing independence far beyond the nineteenth century.3 In order to give a first idea of this, it is sufficient to look at the program structure of the Leipzig Gewandhaus concerts at the time of the era of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (1835–1847). A repertoire analysis of the five-year period from 1835/36 to 1839/40, which includes 594 program numbers, shows at least an approximate balance of instrumental and vocal music (Table 1). It is remarkable that in the existing repertoire the choral and solo singing had a considerable importance, as then also beside sacred music the Italian vein of the Leipzig “Great Concert”5 going back to Johann Adam Hiller remained conspicuously present and found supporters even in the revolutionary year 1848.6 If the vokal music and the choral singing in the Gewandhaus concerts, it can be assumed that the local conditions were favorable, which were only given where concert institutes and choirs (Gesanginstitute) cooperated with each other or where a singing society was incorporated into the concert institute. In addition, it should not be overlooked that even Richard Wagner adapted the format of the Gewandhaus concerts when he gave a series of six concerts with the Riga Theater Orchestra in 1838/39, the programs of which included vocal and instrumental solos as well as choruses in addition to symphonies and overtures7 ; Wagner justified the choice of program with the intention of making the “concerts at the same time pleasant evenings of entertainment,” [“Conzerte zugleich zu angenehmen Unterhaltungs-Abenden”] because—as 3

Thrun (2020), pp. 333–341. N.N. (1840). 5 Thrun (2020), pp. 333–341. 6 N.N. (1848). 7 Wagner (1967), p. 349f., footnote 1. 4

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he explained later—“everyone knows quite well that not all parts of the audience pay homage to art is paid homage to [recht wohl weiß ein Jeder, daß nicht von allen Theilen des Publikum’s grade nur der Kunst gehuldigt wird]”.8 Assuming about 20 Gewandhaus concerts per year, the program of each concert would include a symphony and an overture as well as at least two vocal pieces and one or two solo instrumental performances (as will be shown later, vocal and instrumental solos were often referred to as “accessories”; Eduard Hanslick spoke of “tinsel”9 ). Overall, the outline of a ‘mixed’ program that has been addressed and described as the ‘Gewandhaus type’ is evident.10 Although there can be no question of a Leipzig invention, I will adopt the term for the sake of simplicity. The weight of the ‘Gewandhaus type’ is further supported by the fact that in 1844 it was apostrophized as an “ordinary concert”,11 on the part of historical critics even as a “’normal concert’ with traditional alternation of vocal and instrumental, concertante and symphonic contributions”.12 As an aperçu, it can be added that Warsaw critics in 1838 looked forward to “complete concerts” as soon as popular classical garden or hall concerts there were enriched with vocal music.13 The imagined unity of the vocal and instrumental concert continued to shimmer in the expression “complete concert”.

2 A Momentous Beginning: Carl Möser’s Berlin Symphonic Soirées (1827–1842) Klaus Kropfinger’s study “Klassik-Rezeption in Berlin (1800–1830)” is one of the few that excellently characterized the outstanding importance of the court musician Carl Möser (1774–1851) as the organizer of Berlin quartet and symphony soirées (1813/14–1841/42).14 Even if program-historical research, which in Kropfinger’s case goes back to 1830, still leaves something to be desired, it can be assumed without doubt that the soirées amounted to hundreds and hundreds of concerts within three decades.15 As soon as Möser had quartet soirées alternate with symphony soirées 8

Richard Wagner, circular letter “An die verehrten Herren Musikglieder des Orchester,” Riga, 11 September 1838. In: Wagner (1967), p. 348f. 9 Hanslick (1869), p. 382. 10 Grotjahn (1998), pp. 102–142. The expression ‘Gewandhaus-Typus’ (“ächt Leipziger Gewandhaus-Typus”) is quite vouched for on the part of the source terminology (G. 1871, p. 232). 11 Lange (1844), no. 6, unpaged. 12 Huschke, (1982), p. 169f. 13 v. Zuccalmaglio (1838), p. 118: “[…] this time Hermann has even thought of vocal music, and has songs, choruses and arias performed alternately, whereby the garden musics grow into complete concerts”. 14 See Kropfinger (1980), pp. 301–379. 15 An example is given for the 1837/38 season: “Möser has organized in this season as usual 18 subscribed and 3 extrasoireen. Beethoven plays the leading role here, next to him Mozart and Haydn” (Truhn 1838, p. 49).

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from 1827/28—which remained unchanged until his retirement (1842)—they were always ‘at the height of their time’. There is no question that they were inferior to the Paris Conservatoire concerts (founded in 1828); nevertheless, they resembled the level of sophistication of the Gewandhaus concerts, the London Philharmonic Society, the Vienna Society of Friends of Music, or the Viennese Concerts spirituels. Kropfinger has aptly marked and commented on the interface at which a novelty of concert beyond the conventional instrumental and vocal concert took shape in Berlin in 1827: Now, however, the control loop, the “form” of the “instrumental and vocal concert” had been broken insofar as [with Möser’s symphonic soirées] a concert had been installed in the area of the large public concert events, the special design of which consisted in the fact that it no longer contained any vocal pieces. The interesting thing about this is that these concert events of purely instrumental character quite obviously developed out of Möser’s chamber music events, which—already existing since 1813/14—basically functioned as a critical counter-instance to the concert business and thus above all to the “instrumental and vocal concert”. [...] The new form of event also meant, however, that the chamber music soiree now effectively became what it had been advertised as for years: a pure string quartet event. Conversely, the instrumental concert, which now included several genres, was on its way to becoming an orchestral and symphonic concert. Already in the spring of 1829, Möser performed two symphonies and an overture in his “Instrumental Academy” [...].16

Möser’s programs usually included the performance of two symphonies and an overture. Nothing determined the programs more than the works of the triad Haydn— Mozart—Beethoven, which were considered “classical”. It was no coincidence that there was talk of “classical instrumental academies”17 ; and it was hardly less of a coincidence that Möser, in view of his persevering persistence, stood as a “martyr of classical instrumental music”.18 His soirées offered exactly what corresponded to the audience’s acquired horizon of expectations. “Another circumstance that there is so little that is new in these soirées,” was a critical comment on the rampant program conventionality in 1839, “is that the old subscribers, the distinguished regulars, immediately wrote on the subscription list: we only ask for classical music,— Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven”.19 When Adolf Bernhard Marx praised the “full gallery of our great works of art” that dominated Möser’s programs, this meant nothing other than that the canonization of ‘masterpieces’ was progressing.20 16

Kropfinger 1880, p. 371. —William Weber overlooked the eminent role Carl Möser played as co-creator of symphonic soirées; “Möser,” he wrote, “directed a public concert series whose programs offered the usual mixture of opera overtures and excerpts, virtuoso pieces, symphonies, and sometimes quartets” (Weber 2008, p. 130). In Möser’s concert series, exactly the opposite was the case! The misjudgement was not without consequences insofar as Weber tended to give priority to the Vienna Philharmonic Concerts: “The Philharmonic programs were the earliest examples of the ‘pure’ format of three pieces followed by major orchestras at the end of the nineteenth century” (ibid., p. 205). The evidence Weber cites refers to concerts of March 10, 1844 and March 7, 1847 (Wiener Philharmoniker 1842, p. 57). 17 Marx (1830), p. 29. 18 Truhn (1838), p. 49. 19 Truhn (1839), p. 111. 20 Marx (1830), p. 29. —See Schrenk (1940), pp. 69, 82–85, 93, 102f., 105.

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Kropfinger, who was of the opinion that the soirées “basically functioned as a critical counter-instance […] to the ‘instrumental and vocal concert’”, considered only artistic intentions. On the other hand, economic motives may have been involved, since Möser gave the symphony soirées for his own benefit21 and refrained from the costly engagement of soloists.22 After his retirement, accusations accumulated that he had not remunerated the services of band members23 or had made the Theater-Orchester-Schule subservient to private profit-making.24 If dishonest intentions were involved, a shadow falls on Möser’s company as a “critical counterinstance”, burdened with the embarrassing stigma that avarice cannot be ruled out as a motive for action and that stinginess gave rise to the symphony soirées. In contrast to bourgeois concert institutions, which were subject to the will of their governing bodies, two factors were decisive for the lasting success of Möser’s symphony soirées: the drive of a spreading individual and the granting of the court. The non-interference of courtly authorities looked very much like secretive promotion. It sounds paradoxical: in the end, the laissez-faire principle of munificence made possible the city concerts [Stadtkonzerte],25 which could only be beneficial to the reputation of the Residenz.26 With Möser’s retirement, a traditional strand of Berlin city concerts came to an end. They were followed by the newly conceived “Symphonie-Soiréen der kgl. Kapelle zum Besten ihres Wittwen- und Waisen-Pensionsfonds” (Symphonie-Soirées of the royal orchestra for the benefit of their widows’ and orphans’ pension fund), which were subordinated to the court theater directorate since 1842. After several conductors shared its direction from 1842 to 1844, Wilhelm Taubert (1811–1891) took over the sole direction27 between 1844 and 1883. He expanded the basic outline of the soirées to two symphonies and two overtures; if, with a few exceptions, singing and solo works continued to be excluded, this will also have been done with the intention of allocating the net profit solely to the pension fund.28

21

Hanemann (1874), p. 75f.: “It was he [Möser] who first awakened a sense for classical music in Berlin through his quartets and symphony-concerts, which he performed with the help of the orchestra, albeit for his own benefit”. 22 In the period in question, concert organizers spent about a quarter of their expenses on the fees of soloists (Stephenson 1928, p. 74, cf. here the foundation minutes from 1828; Blum 1975, p. 203). —The orchestra available to Möser was, on the one hand, half of the kgl. chapel with 45 members, and on the other hand, the theater orchestra school with accessors from the kgl. chapel, which formed a second orchestra of up to 60 members. See Truhn (1838), p. 49; Lange (1849), p. 365. 23 T. (1845), p. 371. 24 Geyer (1846), nos. 3, 24 and 25, here: no. 24, unpaged. 25 On the establishment of residential city concerts see Thrun (2014). 26 Kahlert (1842), p. 110: “Berlin is the gathering place of North German knowledge, rich in institutions for the arts through the generosity of the Prussian kings. It has brilliant operas, large and small singing societies, Möser’s quartet and symphony evenings. If it had not been for this valiant private enterprise, a large part of the classical musical works would be little known in Berlin”. 27 N.N. (1868a), p. 38f.; Schrenk (1840), pp. 105f., 127f., 200, 207. 28 N.N. (1867b), pp. 465–466.

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Until 1844, Taubert, Carl Wilhelm Henning and Mendelssohn Bartholdy shared the direction of the soirées.29 During the two-year interim period, Mendelssohn Bartholdy presumably initiated the plan to adapt them to the ‘Gewandhaus type’, an approach that failed after only a few remodeled concerts. This was probably less due to the disfavor of the audience than to the clamor of the critics, who resisted the innovation: “If we could make a request for the next concerts, it would be to remain as much as possible with the tendency of the soirées and to limit the number of musical pieces by a few”30 . Several circumstances coincided that were unfavorable to the transfer of the ‘Gewandhaus type’, starting with the unusual length and colorfulness of the programs and ending with the participation of soloists. Among the Berlin critics, Otto Lange stands out, who saw the cult status of the soirées endangered and based his fundamental reservations on ‘autonomy-aesthetic’ considerations: The actual field in which the essence of music [das Wesen der Musik] reveals itself most completely remains [...] instrumental music. Here the text falls away, and the dominion of music is limited to its own circle; also here the connoisseur and the layman are quite decidedly different. While the latter preferably seeks the comprehensible expression of feeling or imagination in music and prefers to turn to vocal music, the connoisseur usually loves instrumental music in its artful treatment of all its melodic and harmonic forms and interweavings. Is it perhaps due to this that we find the second cycle of our symphonic soirées interspersed with vocal parts? [...] While until then the symphonic soirées formed an epoch in the history of Berlin musical performances, they now take on the significance of an ordinary concert. If we are asked: “Why shouldn’t they?” we certainly do not know how to answer this. At the most, we could say: the forces are fragmented, the spirit directed toward the one, the innermost essence of art [das innerste Wesen der Kunst] is dispersed, dilettantism is promoted, and the possibility of seeing instrumental music reach the level it can really reach is removed, and so on.31

Following topoi of Romantic musical views, Lange started from the premise that pure instrumental music represented (“revealed”) the actual music (“the essence of music,” “the innermost essence of art”) and projected the principle onto demands on programming. This entailed the far-reaching consequence that vocal music was not only accorded a subordinate rank, but that it was to be eliminated from the programs altogether. The ‘Gewandhaus type’, which also did not disdain soloistic accompaniment, was given the almost honorable status of an “ordinary concert”, aimed more at “amateurs” than at “connoisseurs”. On the other hand, symphony soirées shone thanks to social distinction, as if they were addressed to “connoisseurs”

29

Schrenk (1840), p. 105f.; Otto 3 1985, p. 178f.; Thrun (2019), pp. 128–130. Lange (1844), no. 6, unpaged. 31 Lange (1844), no. 6, unpaged. —Lange’s statement accommodates ways of research that give preference to perspectives on the history of ideas of the bourgeois concert and are guided by the supra-temporal construct of an ’ideal–typical’ determination of the symphonic concert; see Dahlhaus (1978), pp. 51–53; cf. further the distinction made by Hanns-Werner Heister between an emphatic and pragmatic category of the concert (Heister 1983, vol. 1, p. 32f., 42); see also Gossett (1989). 30

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or, as Eduard Krüger expressed it in reference to art-religious dictions, to a “PietistenClubb”.32

3 “What Musical Person Would be Able to Digest Two Symphonies in One Evening?” Even if critics and audiences33 in Berlin remained favorably disposed toward the novelty of symphony soirées, this did not mean that the gain was met with unqualified applause.34 With regard to renowned organs of music journalism, it is striking that Franz Brendel, as editor of the “Neue Zeitschrift für Musik,” allowed a decade and a half to pass before he gave his hesitant approval to symphony soirées, which he was fundamentally skeptical about,35 to the effect that he approved of them “at most” as a concert offering in large cities—i.e., as one among many. “Only in large cities […],” he summed up in 1862, “can the one-sidedness of so-called symphony soirées at best be accepted. Where only one art institute exists, it must not limit itself to one half of the art field, to one genre, and exclude the other entirely”.36 Brendel’s statements, in their own way, foretold that symphonic soirées had a difficult road ahead of them. Indeed, for the time being, the novelty left few traces in concert practice. In the middle of the nineteenth century they lead to big and middle cities: to Breslau/Wroclaw (1838), Danzig/Gdansk (1845), Stettin/Szczecin (1851), Bremen (1859), Dresden (1848 resp. 1858), Stuttgart (1862) or Hamburg (1862). The musical section of the Wroclaw Künstler-Verein (founded in 1827) included so-called instrumental concerts in its program from 1838 to 1848, of which it was said that they were arranged “entirely according to the model of Möser’s soirées

32

Krüger (1844), p. 114: “Pietistic! that is, interpreted in bona partem, entering the Kunsthalle with earnest piety, with holy need, and not leaving a finger’s breadth of space to the intrusion of the mob either”. 33 W. (1871), p. 111. 34 To Brendel see the contribution of S. Reilly in the present volume. (The eds.). 35 Brendel (1856), p. 117: “Symphoniesoirées. These are more one-sided, but in such one-sidedness more consistent, and in them it is easier to avoid the confusion in the arrangement of the musical pieces. […] Nevertheless, it must be said that singing is to the concert what the eye is to the face, the sun to the landscape. One only avoids the difficulties if one omits the singing, one eliminates, one does not overcome them”. —The reservations did not prevent Brendel from placing the symphony and overture at the top of his hierarchy of values: “As always, the performances of the orchestra under the direction of Mendelssohn, Gade and David, through the often accomplished, mostly excellent, rarely less successful execution of the symphonies and overtures, formed the high point of the Gewandhaus concerts. Here, through the performance of these works, art is prepared a sacred place [Hier, durch den Vortrag dieser Werke ist der Kunst eine geheiligte Stätte bereitet], here, indeed, the most glorious is performed, which must fill with enthusiasm especially those who are not already accustomed to it through many years of listening and who have become numb to this excellence (Brendel 1845, p. 191). 36 Brendel (1862), p. 110.

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in Berlin”.37 In fact, the model was only partially effective, since the programs— although choral and solo singing remained excluded—included the concession to perform a solo concerto (with orchestra) in each concert in addition to a symphony and an overture.38 All in all, the instrumental concerts of the society formed only a brief episode in the outline of Wroclaw’s concert life. Between 1848 and 1859, Prussia’s second-largest city was to completely lack a noble concert institute in the narrow sense; the symphony soirées initiated in 1859 by a society of notables and initially directed by Carl Reinecke adhered to the model of the ‘Gewandhaus type’39 ; this is no less true of the Wroclaw Orchester-Verein (founded in 1861/62).40 The Gdansk “Symphony Soirées for Orchestral Music”41 founded in 1845 by August Denecke (1821–187242 and conducted by him throughout his life, initially gave the impression that a virtue had been made of necessity. In view of the “exclusion of all solo material,” they were regarded as an “imitation of the Berlin arrangement” and, curiously, were found to be suitable for Gdansk precisely for this reason, “since the procurement of solo material that is to contribute to the filling of a concert evening presents very great difficulties”.43 On the other hand, another reviewer from Gdansk disapproved of the arrangement, speaking unabashedly in 1847 of a “misguided form of the program, which offered too little variety”,44 and praised the ‘Gewandhaus type’, as if that were the corrective: “One retains the form which many years of experience have sanctioned and which is also found to be the most appropriate by the standing concert institutes of the most musically educated cities (Leipzig, for example)”.45 A year later, the same critic repeated the same advice, this time also with regard to Leipzig: If the Gdansk symphony-concerts are to endure for the long term, then the layout of the Leipzig concerts should serve as the best model. An overture and a symphony seem to be sufficient for the evening to represent pure instrumental music. The remaining pièces may belong to the noble entertainment music, whereby the singing must also be given its full right.46

It was probably due to the publicity of the Leipzig concerts, which received much attention in the specialist press, that skeptics opposed the novelty of symphony soirées with the ‘Gewandhaus type’ as an alternative, or with the features that characterized it, 37

Kahlert (1840), p. 147. Cossmaly (1982), pp. 90–102. —On the concert activities of the Künstler-Verein between 1846/47 and 1847/48, see Neue Berliner Musikzeitung (1, 1847, pp. 25f., 58, 89, 350) and Neue Berliner Musikzeitung (2, 1848, p. 140). 39 Thrun (2019), p. 113f. 40 See Behr (1912). 41 The indication of the life data follows Michalak (2012), p. 110, footnote 28. 42 Chrysander (1867), p. 347. 43 L. … z. (1848), p. 222. 44 k (1847), p. 186. 45 k (1847), p. 187. 46 k (1848), p. 122. 38

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such as program diversity and variety. Even after a quarter of a century, long-standing misgivings had still not died down, so that in 1872 a Gdansk critic concluded: Unfortunately, the public shows so little interest in this undertaking that it is difficult to carry it out. In our opinion, the committee would achieve more success if, as is usually done in other places, it would bring in a proven soloist for each soirée, whether for vocal or instrumental performances; such a change would be desirable to the public in any case.47

In the same year, the soirées under their previous director came to an end. It is perhaps no coincidence that Carl Cossmaly (1812–1893), who co-edited the program documentation of the Wroclaw Künstler-Verein in 1846, himself took the initiative to create an institute (Kossmaly’s Symphony Concerts) in Szczecin in 1851, which was intended for the sole performance of pure instrumental music. That it was due to the lack of audience,48 when subsequently the original concept was dropped and the participation of soloists was approved,49 can only be assumed. The concerts supported by military orchestras were taken over in 1890/91 by the Szczecin Musikverein, which continued them until 1902, following the ‘Gewandhaus type’.50 In Bremen, Carl Martin Reinthaler maintained, in addition to the private concerts (founded in 1825), a cycle of “symphony concerts” from 1859 onward, following Taubert’s Berlin model.51 When the second cycle was due in 1860/61, there was confidence that the two institutes complemented each other.52 However, the continuation of the concerts was considered uncertain as early as the fifth season; the “Bremer Morgenpost” reported on November 11, 1863, that it seemed “very problematic”, whether these concerts [the symphony concerts under Reinthaler] will take place; however, it is quite natural that the enthusiasm for them is only a very divided one, since only a few people are inspired by the sense for classical music alone, and they already have the opportunity to hear symphonies etc. in other concerts.—One should now also try to make the entertainment fair for the ladies by more variety, e.g. vocal recitals and the like, at least in the second section, then there should not be a lack of subscribers. The attention of the management has already been drawn to this, but it did not consider it appropriate to make a change.53 47

Fr. (1872), 73. —According to Chrysander, Denecke gave four soirées annually with a number of 400 subscribers (Chrysander 1867, p. 347). Michalak (2012, p. 116) assumed less than 300 subscribers. 48 Chrysander’s inventory (1867, pp. 368, 374) allows the comparison that in Szczecin (ca. 70,000 inhabitants) Kossmaly’s symphony-concerts around 1865 found no more than 90 subscribers, while in the industrial city of Zwickau (ca. 25,000 inhabitants) the Musikverein für Vocal- und Instrumentalmusik (founded in 1856) came to 600 subscribers. The enormous difference in popularity may also be due to the fact that the Stettin Concert Institute, as it was called in 1864, was “unfortunately only accessible to the moneyed aristocracy due to the high entrance fees” (N.N. 1864, col. 195). 49 Hillgenberg (1883), p. 477. 50 Prost 1916, p. 21f. 51 Chrysander (1867), p. 343. 52 Bremer Sonntagsblatt, November 7, 1860, quoted from: Blum (1975), p. 250: “The symphoniesoireen have to keep to the ground on which they move, for it is the quite correct and fruitful one; orchestral works and only these are the task here. Solo playing and the performance of vocal compositions must remain the inviolable domain of private concerts […]”. 53 Quoted from: Blum (1975), p. 272f.

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It can be assumed that Reinthaler’s “symphony-concerts” soon came to an end.54 It is possible that the Stuttgart court conductor Karl Anton Eckert was inspired by the example of other court chapels (Berlin, Dresden) when he announced in 1862 “that in the future instrumental music would be given priority in the programs of our concerts, and arias and songs would be left to the private concerts”.55 A few years later, the reorganization was withdrawn: The clamor of the public for singing, namely in the form of opera arias, duets, etc., was too great; also, the urging of a part of the musicians at the Capelle itself, who cared far more about increasing the pension fund than about cultivating the art and progress in it, is said to have been so energetic in authoritative circles that Mr. Eckert is now, as it seems, quite inhibited in his commendable striving to educate the public.56

Already in the 1866/67 season, “solo matters” were again abundantly represented in the concerts of the Hofkapelle, so that the renegade crowd of visitors no longer stayed away.57 It is difficult to determine which Dresden concert institute was meant by Brendel, which around 1848 followed the model of Taubert’s symphony soirées: “In Berlin, one gives two overtures and two symphonies in one evening, and one has imitated this arrangement in the subscription concerts of the last year in Dresden.58 This is an excess, and instead of awakening the sense for music, it can only cause dullness and indifference”.59 On the other hand, it is indisputable that the “Subscription Concerts of the Court Orchestra for Instrumental (Orchestral) Music”,60 initiated in 1858 and consisting of six events per year, initially presented only instrumental works61 “for official and financial reasons,” and in the style of Taubert’s Berlin soirées; The Dresden critics repeated well-known reservations when they found the choice of 54

Blum (1975), p. 248: “How long these concerts [the symphony-concerts established by Reinthaler in 1859] lasted is still unclear. It is possible that they were later continued in concerts at the Künstlerverein, to which, however, soloists and choirs were also added”. 55 N.N. (1862), p. 639. 56 N.N. (1867a), p. 26. 57 N.N. (1867a), p. 26f.; N.N. (1867c), pp. 624–625. 58 The trade press offers only unspecific information on this; see W., F.W. (1848), p. 157. 59 Brendel (1848), p. 196. —Surprisingly, in 1848 Adolf Bernhard Marx, who had previously praised Möser’s quartet and symphony soirées without reservations, agreed with Brendel’s view: “Or does one seriously believe that it is possible—and often possible—for the art lover to take in three quartets or two symphonies and two overtures in succession with sensual soul-warming devotion and lasting profit for mind and artistic practice? —For my part, I will believe it from the evening on, when two tragedies are performed one after the other. Until then, however, I will and must deny it. The human soul must not be imagined like a well pipe, through which the water flows indifferently and without a trace (except that the pipe becomes rotten after straight), right in and left out” (Marx 1848, p. 147). 60 Chrysander (1867), p. 349. 61 N.N. (1868b), p. 140: “The six subscription concerts of the royal orchestra in the hall of the Hôtel de Saxe, which holds a maximum of 600 people, present only instrumental works for official and financial reasons, whereby it is to be lamented that even classical solo performances by the members of the orchestra are excluded: one thinks here in this respect strangely small and narrow-minded”.

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program “impractical”62 and pointed out that “those concerts are rightly preferred by the German audience in which an appropriate alternation of orchestral, vocal and solo performances is offered, even if the aesthetic artistic principle of unity cannot be observed as strictly as in the so-called symphony concerts”.63 Until 1894, the general management of the royal court theater insisted on its conventional program concept, but—as was customary elsewhere—tolerated additions to the program of suites, serenades, program music, symphonic poems, etc. In 1894/95, it finally added a series of six concerts as Series B, which, intended as a counterpart, gave space to instrumental soloists.64 With soloistic performances, Series B occupied the top place in the popularity scale.65 In the Hamburg Philharmonic Society, several attempts were necessary in the 1860s under Wilhelm Grund (1791–1874), Julius Stockhausen (1826–1906) and Ju¬lius von Bernuth (1830–1902) to abandon conventions. Reason is said to have been the first conductor to fail in his plan to add a number of “so-called ‘special symphony concerts’” to the concert series. Stockhausen’s experiences were along the same lines,66 so that Clara Schumann was inclined to the pessimistic prognosis reflecting the vote of the auditorium: “The audience there is far from being ready for beautiful orchestral performances”.67 Only Bernuth succeeded in paving the way for symphony concerts. Kurt Stephenson summarized the lengthy start-up phase: Another meritorious reorganization was carried out by v. Bernuth with the definitive introduction of concerts that completely dispensed with the soloistic accessory of a more or less un-maintained kind, so-called “special symphony concerts”, since 1869. Grund had already made a completely failed attempt at this (1862), Stockhausen’s attempt in the same direction had also failed due to the sluggishness of the audience, which clung tenaciously to cherished habits. v. Bernuth finally broke through with this institution in 1869. Bernuth finally broke through with this arrangement in 1869.68

Stephenson left aside a related detail, for under Bernuth’s direction the concerts had been increased from six to ten, of which three were now reserved for purely

62

N.N. (1863), col. 310: “Four such similar pieces of music in uninterrupted succession, even without a major pause, is not only exhausting for the listeners to the highest degree, but also equally tiring for the performers. […] and the assertion is not bold that the great majority of those involved on both sides leave the hall after the end of the concert in over-saturation and exhaustion”. 63 N.N. (1863), p. 310. 64 See Reichert (1908). 65 Dresden und das Elbgelände (ca. 1905), 53: “In winter (October to March): two times 6 symphony concerts of the Königl. Kapelle in the Royal Opera House (6 without soloists (Series A), 6 with soloists (Series B). The seats are all in firm hands, also in the dress rehearsals on the morning of the concert evening in question, with the exception of the dress rehearsals of series A.”. 66 Stephenson (1928), p. 145: “At the committee of the Philharmonic Society, Stockhausen pushed for the increase of the concerts to six per winter, among which two were to be devoted exclusively to orchestral works, but unfortunately they did not last”. 67 Clara Schumann to Johannes Brahms, letter of November 25, 1863, quoted from: Stephenson (1928), p.145. 68 Stephenson (1928), p. 154.

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orchestral performances, four for programs with solo recitals, and the rest for collaboration with the Sing-Akademie.69 As noted at the outset, it is helpful to refer to Chrysander’s inventory of 1865.70 Using authentic documents, she laid out the profiles of 198 singing societies and concert institutes in 110 cities. Of relevance here are only the 73 concert institutes documented in 61 cities.71 If one leaves aside two additionally considered private orchestras, the number of relevant concert institutes in the narrow sense is reduced from 73 to 71 in 59 cities. The names of the concert institutes listed by Chrysander, together with the attached brief characteristics, offer informative clues as to what the institutes were active for. In more than 30 cases, the profiles read “for vocal and instrumental music”. If it is noted for another 13 institutes that they were dedicated to all branches of the musical arts or only preferably to instrumental music, this means overall that at least 43 of the 71 institutes relied on the duality of vocal and instrumental music. Singing was excluded in the orchestral and instrumental societies frequented by dilettantes (which are passed over here) and, of course, in professional “symphony soirées” or “symphony concerts,” for which Chrysander cited four institutes in Bremen, Gdansk, Dresden, and Szczecin (they were discussed above); in addition, there was one in Hirschberg/Jelenia Góra that was not more closely contoured.72 Meanwhile, the prototype, the Symphonie-Soiréen der Berliner kgl. Kapelle, fell victim to underreporting. Chrysander went beyond the given framework when he included Carl Liebig’s Berlin “Kapelle für Instrumentalmusik” (founded in 1841) and Benjamin Bilse’s Liegnitz/Legnica travel orchestra, the “Bilse’sche Capelle für Instrumentalmusik” (founded in 1842), in the statistics. Under their own direction, they organized mainly inexpensive popular classical garden or hall concerts with a framing that mostly corresponded to restoration concerts.73 For Liebig’s Kapelle, which soon after its founding eliminated light music from its programs, an annual volume of 225–250 “symphony-concerts” was mentioned, each of which attracted 1,000–1,500 visitors; Bilse’s Kapelle came to 200–300 concerts.74 Both managed an annual workload of 425–550 concerts, which makes the activity of the other documented 71 institutes, with about 530 concerts annually, seem almost marginal. Consequently, it can be assumed that concert institutes in the narrow sense were overshadowed to a considerable extent by private bands. Thus, there is much to be said—paradoxical as it may seem—for the extraordinary popularity of “symphony concerts”, as long as 69

Sittard (1890), p. 325f. Chrysander (1867). 71 Since Chrysander reckoned with the inadequacy of his statistics, a contemporary finding that assumed 90 concert institutions in 80 German “concert cities” is not surprising (Senff 1867, pp. 969– 973). 72 Chrysander (1867), p. 356. 73 Popular classical garden and hall concerts had different formats. Liebig organized restoration concerts in gardens or garden establishments (when it rained or in winter), but also offered concert cycles in the Singakademie at higher admission prices. 74 Chrysander (1867), pp. 342, 360. 70

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one disregards concert institutes as ‘aesthetic churches’ that offered their audiences solemnity, seriousness and contemplation (contemplative music perception). Julius Stockhausen summed up the contradiction in his own way when he wrote from Berlin to Clara Schumann on March 3, 1868: In Northern Germany, the population is receptive to singing, they also like to listen to a quite beautifully cast opera, but music, music without the word, without an explanatory text, they like only with beer and wine, with tea and coffee, with stocking and embroidery thread. That’s what they call education here in Berlin... And so the taste for orchestra and subscription concerts is spoiled for a long time.75

This heralds the emergence of a new perspective that would have to deal with popular classical concerts.

4 “Devil Virtuosity” In the discussions about the pros and cons of symphony soirées, authoritative valuations in the name of “art” or “music”, which were aimed at cultural hegemony, collided with the counterpart of subjective preferences and inclinations, to which we will return in a digression.76 The “one-sidedness” of the novelty, conceded on both sides, was regarded sometimes as a positive, sometimes as a negative. Among proponents, it was believed to be in the interest of “all true art lovers and connoisseurs” as the “cultivation of art [Pflege der Kunst] and progress”.77 while objectors criticized the lack of diversity, variety, and finally, in sum, the “misguided form of the program,”78 which was “stereotypical,” “monotonous,”79 “impractical,”80 or “narrow-minded”.81 In view of the practice described above, there was sometimes a willingness to compromise, for example when solo works with orchestra were added

75

Julius Stockhausen to Clara Schumann, letter of March 3, 1868. In: Julius Stockhausen (1927), p. 307. 76 Bollenbeck (1999), p. 84f.: “But what does cultural hegemony mean more precisely? The claim of the educated citizens to define what is to be understood by art and to attribute to themselves what the arts achieve becomes reality in the nineteenth century, because ideas about art and developments in art confirm each other. […] Admittedly, there are differences between a highly tuned semantics of art and a banal practice. Schiller and Goethe are praised, but are they read?”. 77 N.N. (1867a), p. 26. 78 K (1847), p. 186. 79 Krüger (1844), p. 113. —Krüger echoed the views of skeptics with the predicates “stereotypical” and “monotonous”. Ultimately, he pleaded for symphony soirées as a metropolitan concert offering: “For Berlin, London, Paris, Leipzig, etc., I would rather suggest that this one-sidedness […] be carried out quite thoroughly” (Krüger (1844), p. 119). 80 N.N. (1863), p. 310. 81 N.N. (1868b), p. 140.

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(Wroclaw) or program profiles changed (Copenhagen,82 Hamburg, Dresden); wherever concessions were omitted, i.e. vocal and instrumental solos were omitted, the novelty threatened to fail almost without exception (Bremen, Szczecin, Stuttgart). When Brendel accused the Berlin symphony soirées of an “excess” that “only caused jadedness and indifference,”83 his judgment was like that of an expert who took practice-oriented requirements into account. Nevertheless, he made an error of judgment, since Taubert’s soirées as a “place of chronic dustiness”84 never came into danger. In addition to the conventionality of the program, Taubert was helped by the eminent social prestige of his concerts. In 1865, they were glossed over with the remark: “It is not having heard the music, but only having been at the concert, that makes up the significance of the evening”.85 The thought is not far-fetched that under Taubert the choice of program was almost incidental, as long as it clung to the tried and true.86

5 Excursus: Symphony Soirées as a Refuge for the Arts It is not incidental that Otto Lange, who disapproved of the ‘Gewandhaus type’ in 1844, approved of the customary arrangement of the Berlin symphony soirées in the name of the “innermost essence of art” [im Namen des innersten Wesens der Kunst] or the “essence of music” [oder des Wesens der Musik] (see above), just as then other authors who welcomed the novelty appeared as advocates of “art and progress” [Fürsprecher der Kunst und des Fortschritts],87 among them Hugo Riemann, who recalled “the great interests of art” [die großen Interessen der Kunst] (see below). What is meant by art [die Kunst] in all these cases is based on art-theoretical implications that betray an emancipated aesthetic or art- and history-philosophical consciousness that evokes the appearance that the work of art is divorced from any social references (with the exception of those of art-immanent and autonomous aesthetics). From such a point of view, no stricter law prevailed than that of the postulated freedom of art from external purposes as a condition for the art character of the artifact. Comparable to an aesthetic taboo, the alliance of art or the artist with the public, on the other hand, bears the unforgivable stain of illegitimacy, if only because of the mere agreement. Stefan Kunze gave consideration to the development of an aesthetic consciousness “that could claim to have cut off the extra-artistic references, thus to have brought

82

The Copenhagen Music Society (founded in 1836) had “so-called symphony-concerts” alternate with instrumental and vocal concerts in the 1840s (H. (1847), col. 228). 83 Brendel (1848), p. 196. 84 Weissmann (1925), p. 102. 85 N.N. (1865), p. 182. 86 N.N. (1867b), p. 465f. —The article includes concert statistics for the period from 1842 to 1867. 87 N.N. (1867a), p. 26.

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art to itself, to have liberated it, but in reality placed art under a far more oppressive dictate than its self-evident social bond had ever been”.88 On the other side, voices were gathered that relativized the importance of art. Among them were, besides Mendelssohn (as co-creator of the ‘Gewandhaus type’), Brendel (see above) or Hermann Kretzschmar (see below), as well as those correspondents whose names were unknown and whose reports—coming from Gdansk, Szczecin, Bremen, Dresden or Hamburg—were quoted.89 From their perspective, there was little or no concern that the aesthetic phenomenon would be affected (contaminated) by contact with reality, i.e., with extra-artistic references, so that a certain space remained for subjective preferences and inclinations that welcomed singing or virtuosity. Against the background of divided views and ambivalent experiences, the majority of the concert institutes demonstrated a tantalizing persistence that remained devoted to the ‘Gewandhaus type’. Even though Hans von Bülow, as a virtuoso on the podium, may have privately railed against the “infamous German program template of Gewandhaus-servant tradition”90 and, as conductor of the Meiningen Orchestra (1880–1886) and later of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra (1887–1893), made socalled model performances his business, this did not mean that a generalization of the symphony concert, concentrated on purely orchestral performances, was in sight, not even in Bülow’s own programs.91 Just at the time when Bülow’s career as a concert conductor began, Hermann Kretzschmar directed the Rostock Concert Association from 1877 to 1887, whose programs depicted the ‘Gewandhaus type’ as if tailor-made.92 He could be sure to have the majority of the audience on his side when he took the stand: The rigorists may [...] only allow the music societies the accessory of a virtuoso nature, which forms a considerable part of the programs. [...] The program need not be inartistic by any means, because it brings music from different genres. [...] Precisely by adding the soloistic performances to the orchestral ones, the music societies offer the opportunity for the followers of different artistic directions to meet from time to time, and they thus protect one party as well as the other from one-sidedness.93

Kretzschmar, who took the “accessory of a virtuoso nature” under his wing, also spoke of the precarious question of soloists, which had been a problem for concert 88

Kunze (1983), p. 27. Admittedly, the impression is sometimes given that the critics took over the representation of the audience’s interests. However, there are also known cases in which visitors addressed concert directors directly in order to emphasize their wishes, as happened in Chemnitz in 1836 with the petition: “Without singing, especially without choirs, every concert, no matter how beautifully played and blown, lacks the charm of diversity and variety, and male choirs, no matter how well they are performed, have an unavoidable monotony if they recur again and again” (quoted from: Rau (1932), p. 63). 90 Hans von Bülow to Hans von Bronsart, letter dated December 7, 1877, quoted from: Hinrichsen (1999), p. 80. 91 Cf. the program examples presented by Hans-Joachim Hinrichsen (1999, p. 60f.). 92 Puls (2007), pp. 24–38. 93 Kretzschmar (1881), p. 221f. 89

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institutions since the 1830s at the latest, since they thought they could hardly foresee the engagement of professional soloists and became dependent on them.94 The decisive factor was the undiminished preference for vocal and instrumental solos, a preference that per se stood in the way of pure orchestral performances such as the novelty of symphony soirées. Considering the circumstances, the stumbling block of program conventionality was joined by another: the headache over the “soloist question” or supposed “soloist nonsense”.95 In this context, Riemann’s essay “Das Überhandnehmen des musikalischen Virtuosentums” (“The Excess of Musical Virtuosity”) is informative; he did not attack virtuosity as an artistic phenomenon, nor did he fear an annoying multiplication of its representatives. The “devil of virtuosity”96 was to be found elsewhere. It was to be found, as conductors knew and sooner or later openly admitted, in the alleged prevalence of virtuosity in concert halls. The Gewandhaus was not exempt from this, which is why Riemann expressed disapproval in 1880: “Let’s just admit it openly: the emphasis of Gewandhaus concerts today is no longer on symphonic, but on soloistic performances”.97 Energetically he turned against a symptom of the time: Just check the programs of our most outstanding concert institutes, and you will be amazed at the place they give to virtuosity! The appearance of one virtuoso is hardly enough for a concert; it may have to be two or three. Would that at least the institutes, which consider themselves the most sacred temples of art and enjoy a corresponding reputation, would keep themselves free [rein!] of the accusation of damaging the great interests of art [die großen Interessen der Kunst] by favoring virtuosity! Alone, here the—wallet has a say.98

When Riemann took up a lance for conductors as guardians of the “great interests of art,” he approached dictions that were typical for Lange or Krüger (see above). Full of regret, he jumped to their side as sufferers who “had to experience that the concerts without soloists remained empty, or that the half of the concert that was kept free of soloists was taken as a convenient excuse for coming later or leaving earlier”.99 Riemann was not alone in his observations. They are rarely found in the columns of the daily or specialist press, even more rarely in general music history writings, 94

Kretzschmar (1881), p. 218: “The conditions under which the music societies operate today are in many cases more difficult [than in the past]. […] Today, the recruitment of external artists causes considerable costs everywhere; the dilettantes in the orchestra have had to be replaced by paid professional musicians”. 95 Weingartner (1912a), p. 130. 96 Riemann (1900), p. 225. 97 Riemann (1900), p. 202. Riemann passed over the fact that similar complaints had long been known; see Brendel (1854), p. 46: “Classical works of art are tolerated in order to give the whole a worthy background. The virtuosos, especially the singers, are the actual stimulants, those for variety, for animation in general, those to give the whole the right spice. See also N.N. (1868c), p. 258: “A large part of the concert audience unfortunately places the main emphasis on the performances of a female singer […]”. —It is known from the Hallenser Bergkonzerte that between 1874 and 1892 about 132 female artists, including 100 female singers, performed (Schwetschke 1910, p. 67f.). 98 Riemann (1895), p. 8. 99 Riemann (1900), p. 225.

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but all the more so in the memoirs, minutes or correspondence of concert directors. Viktor Schnitzler (1862–1934), who attended the Cologne Gürzenich Concerts from his youth on, was a lawyer on the board of directors of the Concert Society from 1897 to 1931, initially as an assessor and from 1907 as chairman of the commission, was very familiar with the grievances Riemann pointed out. A certainly not deceptive recollection from his youth recorded that the symphonies—like purely instrumental works in general—were less favored by the public. There was nothing to be said for going home before the symphonies, which usually formed the second part of the programs. The programs were, according to the taste of the time, more Italian salad than serious music making. It was quite natural that every instrumental soloist, in addition to his concert with orchestra, also played solo pieces in the second part, and that the vocal soloists, in addition to an aria, had to sing a few songs on the piano, a bad habit that could only be broken in later times.100

Elsewhere, he emphasized once again that “in earlier years, the mass exodus before and during symphonies often assumed alarming dimensions […] and the applause at the tightrope walk of some virtuoso or even at the teasing songs of a coloratura singer was greater than at the symphony of a classic”.101 In the vagueness the literal sense of the term “classic” is blurred, which can be referred in the narrower sense to the triad Haydn—Mozart—Beethoven, in the broader sense to the continuously supplemented repertoire. The picture conveyed by Schnitzler knows several parallels. Almost word-forword, in the minutes of the meeting of the management of the Zurich Tonhalle Society of March 14, 1908, there is the note: “We must not conceal from ourselves that a large part of the audience attends our concerts mainly because of the soloists”.102 A year earlier, even Felix Weingartner as a star conductor, gentleman and elegist of New German provenance—in the eyes of Adolf Weissmann, he ushered in “a new era of conducting”103 —did not hold back the statement: “For the most part, the soloists are the main thing in the symphony concerts, the orchestral performances more or less a secondary matter”.104 Heretically, one can ask at this point how the “symphony concerts” meant by Weingartner got their name in the first place, when the genre symphony, of all things, which lent the name to the concert format, was in the eyes of many in a secondary position. One answer to this could be that, at the latest since the wars of liberation, German music journalism spoke as if from one mouth to honor ‘the symphony’ as one of the highest goods of German music, so that it was probably only a matter of time before the trophy “symphony” was mentioned in the event title. Attentive observation will not fail to notice that the impartiality with which Kretzschmar came to the aid of the “accessory of virtuoso nature” in 1881 melted into nothingness 40 years later in Schnitzler’s memoirs. Subsequently, he put it in a 100

Schnitzler (1935), p. 29f. Schnitzler (1935), p. 96f. 102 Quoted from: v. Orelli (2009), p. 62. 103 Weissmann (1925), p. 101. 104 Weingartner (1912a), p. 126. 101

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completely different light, castigating it as a “bad habit”.105 The re-evaluation can be traced back to the fact that the discussion about program reforms that began to roll on around 1900, in which Kretzschmar also had his share,106 acted like a pressure wave that drove the ‘Gewandhaus type’ into a corner.107 It is unavoidable to recall that symphony soirées à la Möser or Taubert had hardly a chance to gain a foothold outside Berlin. In contrast, “program reformers”,108 “purists”109 or “style fanatics”,110 applied the lever elsewhere by asking the ‘Gewandhaus type’ to bleed for the sake of art (which in principle was not entirely new111 ). On the one hand, their main concern—a group of eloquent music writers and conductors—was to curb the allegedly objectionable “accessory of a virtuoso nature,” if not virtuosity at all. On the other hand, under the slogan of “stylistic purity,” they were concerned with program concepts that were to be based on a guiding idea out of educational interest. Reformist pronouncements were conspicuously haunted by authoritarian and aggressive attitudes, which also spilled over to the other side. As if looking at theaters of war, in the name of the “ideal mood”112 that was to animate the concert, there was talk of a “struggle against stylless programs”,113 of the “banishment of all entertainment and virtuoso music”114 or the “systematic suppression of virtuosity”,115 whereby the 105

It is sometimes noticeable that concert societies were so ashamed of this “bad habit” in retrospect that they omitted the documentation of vocal and instrumental solos in their own program listings— usually under the pretext of lack of space; see Gondolatsch (1925), p. 22: “Songs, arias, a cappella choruses, solo pieces for individual instruments—with the exception of the concerts—have been left out due to lack of space”. 106 Kretzschmar (1903), p. 87: “The goodness of a program lies in the spiritual coherence of the works heard, and this coherence must exist as much between the concerts of a season as between the numbers of the individual concert”. 107 Schwab 2 (1980), p. 16: “The pure ‘symphony concert’ as we know it today, in which primarily orchestral works are performed, emerged in many places only towards the end of the nineteenth century in the wake of ‘concert hall reforms’”. See also Heister (1983), vol. 1, pp. 312–318. 108 I take the expression “program reformer” from Leopold Schmidt (1909), p. 53. 109 Schmidt (1909), p. 51; see also Spanuth (1918), p. 160f. 110 Schmidt (1909), p. 52. 111 For the sake of fairness, it should be remembered that in bourgeois subscription and concert societies, the choice of program was usually in the hands of concert directors. Therefore, the view that conductors always identified with their programs is out of the question. It turned out, for example, that Julius Rietz caricatured the Gewandhaus concerts he conducted, with brief interruptions, from 1848 to 1860 as “‘Kaleidoscope Concerte,’” which he “regard[ed] as a necessary evil that he could not prevent.” The same dissent troubled his successor Carl Reinecke, who in 1889, not for the first time, had reason to complain “that every concert with two soloists forces us to the quite unartistic point of view of reducing the orchestral numbers to a minimum, i.e. to choose orchestral numbers as short as can be found, if we do not want to exceed the period of two hours”. See Creuzburg (1931), pp. 95, 102. 112 Marsop (1903), quoted from: Heister (1983), vol. 1, p. 313: “Every soloist performing in an orchestral concert, be he the most objective of the objective and play only angelic music, draws attention to his person. Through this, the ideal mood is clouded”. 113 Hausegger (1921), p. 183. 114 Hausegger (1921), p. 172. —Locked print in the original! 115 Wilhelm Mauke, quoted from: Heister (1983) vol.1, p. 313.

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martial diction was not lacking that it was time to “tear out soloist numbers with one grip”.116

6 Outlook on Concert Practices Around and After 1900 Against the background of the debates about program reforms, program profiles of concert institutions in Basel (Allgemeine Musikgesellschaft), Berlin (kgl. Kapelle, Philharmonic Concerts), Frankfurt a.M. (Museum), Cologne (Gürzenich Concerts), Leipzig (Gewandhaus), and Vienna (Philharmonic Concerts) will be considered. With regard to the time around or after 1900, they will be questioned as to when and to what extent the type of the pure (soloist-less) symphony concert was present in them.117 This will show that Hansjakob Ziemer’s statement at least tends to hit the mark: “A uniform set of bourgeois values did not exist even in the concert”.118 With regard to the Leipzig Gewandhaus concerts, the Nikisch era (1895–1922) is of interest first, in which the ‘Gewandhaus type’ lost ground, in that not only were soloistic accessories halved,119 but also the Gewandhaus management gave its approval to a modest number of soloist-less concerts from 1904/05; in the 27-year Nikisch era, they were limited to 37 out of a total number of 581 concerts. Thus, the management opted for a moderate course and, in line with other institutions, was far from sharing the views of rigorists. Nikisch, who as Gewandhauskapellmeister was simultaneously in charge of the Berlin Philharmonic Concerts from 1895 to 1922, did not pay much attention to ideas for reform, not even to those addressed directly to him, as the “Vossische Zeitung” warned in 1912: The bringing in of soloists should be saved for special occasions in the large philharmonic concerts, as well as in the symphony evenings of the royal chapel. This is an outdated custom that no longer has any justification in our musical life today. [...] The essential, the characteristic are the pure orchestral performances [...].120

In the 25 seasons of the Berlin Nikisch Concerts (1895/96–1919/20) documented by Adolf Weissmann, the latter conducted 246 Philharmonic evenings, including 12 pure symphony concerts, which corresponded to a share of five percent, which was one percentage point higher for the Gewandhaus Concerts. 116

Baberadt (ca. 1909), quoted from: Schmidt (1909), p. 51. The subsequent comments are based on the following sources: Mörikofer (1926); Weissmann (1921); Wackernagel (1958); Frankfurter Museums−Gesellschaft, archive. https://www.museum skonzerte.de/service/programmarchiv/. Accessed 20 October 2021; Seipt (1988); Die GewandhausKonzerte zu Leipzig 1981, pp. 377–542; Wiener Philharmoniker (1942). 118 Ziemer (2008), p. 104. 119 Creuzburg (1931), p. 134: “As stated earlier in treatment of Reinecke’s time, Nikisch created a transformation in the soloist question in that—something Reinecke had not succeeded in doing despite his efforts—he placed the ’emphasis on orchestral performances’ by causing the Gewandhaus management to engage only one soloist for a concert”. 120 N.N. (1912), quoted from: Peter Muck 1982, p. 389. 117

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As a newly appointed Frankfurt museum conductor and program reformer, Siegmund von Hausegger came up with the idea in 1903 to confront the audience unawares with “style-pure programs”, i.e. programs with “guiding thought”.121 Barely three years passed before his concept failed due to the resistance of the audience and the press, he gave his last concert on March 30, 1906, and resigned from his post.122 In addition, another main point of his reform work focused on banning instrumental solos from the concerts. In contrast, he thoroughly welcomed solo performances as part of his orchestral programs, so that among his 69 Museums concerts (1903/04– 1905/06) there are no more than seven without soloists. By the way, Hausegger must have understood “stylistically pure programs” in a different way than Weingartner, who, as will be seen, reduced the engagement of soloists to an absolute minimum and, not least for this reason, credited himself with the “purposefully stylistically pure cultivation of our great classical music”.123 In Cologne’s Gürzenich concerts, the deprived winter of war in 1914/15 swept away the “accessories of a virtuoso nature” for all time,124 just as the first concert without soloists on December 1, 1914, took place in this very season (ten years later than in the Gewandhaus concerts). The number of pure symphony concerts between 1914/15 and 1932/33 was no more than 17, out of a total of 223 Gürzenich concerts, 60 of which were predominantly full-length choral works. This shows that in the remaining concerts the engagement of soloists remained commonplace. Hermann Abendroth, who directed the concerts from 1914 to 1934, considered the participation of top soloists indispensable for cost reasons. Everhard Kleinertz paraphrased a letter (February 10, 1930) from Abendroth to Cologne’s Lord Mayor Konrad Adenauer; “There can be no savings in the costs for the soloists, because if second-rate performers were engaged, the income would drop considerably […]. An expensive soloist, despite higher fees, would bring substantially increased ticket sales for the dress rehearsal as well as for the concert”.125 Here, one and the same constraints were at work that led Riemann in 1880 to the remark: “Alone, here the—wallet has a say”. With regard to the Basel Allgemeine Musikgesellschaft, several cycles of events can be distinguished in the half century from 1876 to 1926. In the cycle of “symphony concerts”, which usually consisted of ten annually, not a single program within 50 years was without the participation of soloists; virtuoso accompaniment was abundantly provided year after year until the post-war period.126 There was room for purely orchestral performances, which could more easily be called 121

Hausegger (1921), p. 175. —See also Ziemer (2008), pp. 101–104. Hausegger (1921), p. 37–41. 123 Weingartner (1912b), p. 15. 124 The only exception was the 1933/34 season, in which two purely “soloist evenings” with piano pieces and piano songs were included in the program (Seipt 1988, p. 244). 125 Kleinertz (2008), p. 108f. 126 Walter Mörikofer did not quite want to admit that vocal and instrumental solos always remained present in his period of investigation: "In many respects, the symphony concerts before the turn of the century showed a somewhat different face than we are used to today. The focus was on the cultivation of pure art, but the concerts also had to fulfill a social function. The programs were 122

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symphony concerts, to a modest extent in popular concerts127 and in occasional cycle concerts (1902, 1904, 1907, 1908128 ) or in Bach, Händel, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann or Brahms evenings.129 As one of the most renowned conductors of his time, Weingartner had complete freedom to choose the program himself. In his glorious Symphoniekonzerte der Berliner kgl. Kapelle (1891–1907), according to his own statement, not more than one soloist appeared within a season130 —probably an absolute unicum in his time—, a restriction that can also be noted in his Wiener Philharmonische Konzerte (1908/09–1926/27). In 19 Viennese seasons, he conducted 171 Philharmonic concerts, 143 of which were symphonic concerts without soloists; eight performances were Beethoven’s choral symphonies and three were oratorios or requiems; he limited the participation of instrumental soloists (in solo concerts with orchestra) to 17, and that of vocal soloists—apart from choral works accompanied by orchestra— dropped to almost zero. Weingartner’s purism, which was focused on art, in no way prevented him from including his concert overture “Aus ernster Zeit” op. 56 in the program on November 8, 1914,131 a botch and side piece to Wagner’s “Kaisermarsch” and Max Reger’s “Vaterländischer Ouvertüre” op. 140, which trumpets with patriotic song quotations.132 The overture was preceded by Bach’s Second Brandenburg Concerto (BWV 1047), and followed by Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony op. 67—all in all, certainly not a prime example of the “purposefully stylistically pure cultivation of our great classical music” [“zielbewußt stilreine Pflege unserer großen klassischen Musik”] that the conductor strives for.133 Compared to the concert institutions discussed earlier, Weingartner’s Berliner and Viennese conductions harbored a ‘contrasting program’. The stratification of program components seems to have been turned upside down; in his Viennese appearances, the proportion of soloistless concerts was a proud 80 percent; in Hausegger’s Museum or Abendroth’s Gürzenich concerts, it was about ten percent, and in the Nikisch concerts (Berlin and Leipzig), five to six percent, whereas the Basel Symphony therefore much more varied, and the soloists often delighted the audience with the performance of small, entertaining solo pieces and ditties" (Mörikofer 1926, XXII). 127 Mörikofer (1926), pp. 26, 73, 121f., 124, 127, 145–149, 216–223, 225–227, 229–231, 233–235, 238–242, 244f. 128 Mörikofer (1926), pp. 132, 144f., 159f., 164f. 129 Mörikofer (1926), pp. 155, 170, 188, 219, 223f., 228, 236, 245f. 130 Weingartner (1912a), p. 130: “When I took over the Berlin concerts in 1891, I limited solo participation to one concert a season, and yet the income has increased fivefold over the years. This may be considered an exception”. 131 Wiener Philharmoniker (1842), p. 80. 132 After the Kiel performance of the work (1915), the press judged: “‘m Siegerkranz’ and the Marseillaise. In the process, France gets quite a beating, in that its national anthem, which is nevertheless full of verve, is distorted in an almost monkey-like manner. Both songs are later joined by ‘Deutschland, Deutschland über alles’ (Germany, Germany above everything) and all three are processed and distorted in a way that makes a mockery of the folk song, until Germany alone is left. —In this way, we will probably not overcome the French; even in music, they would remain victors” (quoted from: Kopf (2001), p. 122). 133 Weingartner (1912b), p. 15.

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Table 2 Distribution of program divisions in the Munich Musical Academy (1811–1911) Time interval I 1811–1869 (58 years) (%)

Time interval II 1869–1904 (35 years) (%)

Time interval III 1904–1911 (7 y./F. Mottl) (%)

I. Symphonies and smaller orchestral works

380 (13.5)

560 (33.5)

123 (58)

II. Overtures (and marches)

519 (18.5)

231 (14)

22 (10)

III. Concertos and concert pieces

599 (21)

257 (15.5)

17 (8)

IV. Duos a. mul. Instrumental works

112 (4.0)

27 (1.5)

9 (4)

V. Choral works and cantatas

240 (9)

91 (5.5)

22 (10)

VI. Arias and songs

587 (21.0)

492 (29)

20 (10)

VII. Duets and songs for several voices

352 (13)

18 (1)

−(0.0)

Concerts avoided soloistless programs altogether. Furthermore, the program profile of the Nikisch concerts was transferred to Wilhelm Furtwängler’s Berlin Philharmonic Evenings (1922/23–1932/33); in the 117 concerts spread over eleven seasons, including only six [five percent] without soloists, a faint reflection of the ‘Gewandhaus type’ shimmered with the participation of 26 orchestra-accompanied vocal and 98 instrumental soloists, while in addition eight evenings with full-length choral works or symphonies guaranteed the coherence of the instrumental and vocal concert. As an appendix, a breakdown of the Munich Musical Academy (1811–1911) suggests itself, in order to reweigh the relationship between the instrumental and the vocal from a different perspective, similar to what was done with the Gewandhaus concerts (1835/36–1839/40) (see above). In the period in question, Karl Bihrle elicited 952 concerts of the Musical Academy, whose programs he divided into seven categories.134 His classifications are presented in the following overview in three time windows, with percentages added to the absolute numbers to make the divisions more comparable (Table 2). Reform ideas in the Felix Mottl era (1904–1911), which strengthened the program profile in favor of the instrumental and considerably reduced vocal and instrumental solos, are striking—even if they had been initiated long ago. In the process, the vocal portion initially shrank from 43 (time interval I) to 35 percent (time interval II) and dropped to a mere 20 percent in Mottl’s time. If Hausegger failed as a museum conductor with his “stylistically pure programs,” the opposition of the public and the press contributed decisively to this, including an anonymous letter to the editor published in the “Frankfurter Zeitung” in the spring of 1906 under the heading “Stilreinheit! Betrachtungen aus einer Logen-Ecke im Frankfurter Saalbau”.135 In the name of average listeners, the lodge subscriber 134

Bihrle (1911), p. 165f. N.N. (1906), quoted from: Ziemer (2008), p. 103, footnote 129. —Since I do not have the original, I refer to passages published by Ziemer (Ziemer 2008, p. 103). The source cited is: Institut für Stadtgeschichte Frankfurt am Main (Mag S 1827).

135

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taunted—her sauciness answered the arrogance of the conductor136 —that the now missing virtuoso performances contributed essentially to “understanding the solemn majesty, the teasing cheerfulness and the deep seriousness that our classics and romantics laid down in their symphonies. On the detour via the joy of the glorious songs and sparkling virtuoso pieces, he [the average listener] learned to love and absorb the great true music [die große wahre Musik]”.137 It was up to mature listeners to decide what they liked, and it was “their right […] to flee before the beginning of the final symphony”.138 A final sting was added, as the subscriber freely added that visitors spend money “to savor a sensual stimulus, not to be uplifted mentally”.139 Again, it was a rebuttal; this time, it alluded to Hausegger’s resolution to “lift the listener above himself through art” [den Hörer durch die Kunst über sich selbst empor zu heben”].140 On closer inspection, the rejoinder simply signaled the rebellion against the foundations of Romantic musical aesthetics, among which the idea of metaphysical elevation fixed on pure instrumental music was not the least.141 Last, but not least, the question of whether Carl Möser’s symphony soirées pointed the way to the future of the concert can be answered with yes and no, since the answer depends on the perspective with which the variety of manifestations of the concert is viewed. In other words, although the novelty of symphony soirées left some traces in the period under study, a uniform coloration of the choice of programs, encompassing all concert institutions, can by no means be detected. If this article is more concerned with the external prospectus of concert institutions, it goes without saying that much remains to be said about the internal prospectus. At the same time, it is evident that the willful profiling, the what for of the concert institutes, which was in the hands of concert directors or conductors, had usually already decided in advance how the inner core should be created.142 Research into program history would be ill-advised 136

Hausegger 1921, pp. 169–184. —This is Hausegger’s ‘inaugural speech’, in which he announced, in the interest of “serious art practice”, that a “fight against styleless programs” was imminent and that the “evil of a haphazard program arrangement” was to be eliminated by “a reform carried out in the sense of stylistically pure programs”; in addition, the principle should prevail of "having an educative effect" on the audience, whose “sense of style […] is very reduced” (Hausegger 1921, pp. 169, 172, 178, 183f.). 137 N.N. (1906), quoted from: Ziemer (2008), p. 103. 138 Ziemer (2008), p. 103. 139 Ziemer (2008), p. 103. 140 Hausegger (1921), p. 172. 141 In his ‘farewell speech’ (Hausegger 1921, pp. 37–41), he spared neither the public nor the press. As a statement of faith, he adopted an alienating understanding of art as the “brightest emanation of the human spirit" and the "most important cultural factor,” and he passed off his affinity for totalitarianism as humble artistry that, for the sake of the dignity of art [um der Würde der Kunst willen], must insist on its “educational significance” (Hausegger 1921, p. 37). 142 The horizon of open questions can be hinted at with an observant note by Hugo Riemann (1900, p. 201): “That […] no Wagnerian overture is played [in the Gewandhaus concerts], although Richard Wagner was born in Leipzig, goes without saying; for the Gewandhaus honors the memory of Mendelssohn far too much to open itself up to the author of ‘Judaism in Music’”. The resolution of the Lübeck Society of Friends of Music to forego performances of English, French, and Russian music during the wartime winter of 1914/15 was along similar lines (Hennings 1921, p. 47); Wilhelm

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to rely solely on pure empiricism (the figures of concert statistics) and to overlook the many-sided will of the decision-makers, dependent on art-theoretical premises, political, social, and economic circumstances, on the one hand, and the divergent expectations of the public, not always in favor of “art”, on the other.

References Baberadt, K.F.: Stilreine Programme (ca. 1909), quoted from: Leopold Schmidt, Moderne Kunstpuritaner. In: Aus dem Musikleben der Gegenwart. Beiträge zur zeitgenössischen Kunstkritik, pp. 50–53, here: 51, A. Hofmann & Comp., Berlin (1909) Bartels, K., Zschacke, G. (eds.): Variationen. 100 Jahre Orchester in der Hansestadt Lübeck. Schmidt-Römhild Verlag, Lübeck (1997) Behr, H.: Denkschrift zur Feier des 50 jährigen Bestehens des Breslauer Orchester-Vereins E. V., Druck von Wilh. Gottl. Korn, Breslau (1912) Bihrle, K.: Die musikalische Akademie München 1811–1911. Festschrift zur Feier des 100 jährigen Bestehens. Mühlthaler’s Buch- und Kunstdruckerei A.G., München (1911) Blum, K.: Musikfreunde und Musici. Musikleben in Bremen seit der Aufklärung. Hans Schneider Verlag, Tutzing (1975) Bollenbeck, G.: Tradition, Avantgarde, Reaktion. Deutsche Kontroversen um die kulturelle Moderne 1880–1945. S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt a.M. (1999) Sonntagsblatt, B.: Quoted from: Blum, K.: Musikfreunde und Musici. Musikleben in Bremen seit der Aufklärung, p. 250, November 7, 1860. Hans Schneider Verlag, Tutzing (1975) Brendel, F.: Leipziger Musikleben. In: Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 12, vol. 23, pp. 190–192, 200, 208 (1845) Brendel, F.: Die Replik der [recte: des] Hern. F. Hinrichs. In: Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 15, vol. 29, pp. 185–190, 196–200 (1848) Brendel, F.: Die Musik der Gegenwart und die Gesammtkunst der Zukunft. Hinze Verlag, Leipzig (1854) Brendel, F.: Thesen über Concertreform. In: Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 23, vol. 45, pp. 97–99, 109–111, 117–119, 129–131 (1856) Brendel, F.: Capelle und Musikleben in Sondershausen. In: Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 29, vol. 57, pp. 73–75, 85–87, 93–96, 101–103, 109–111 (1862) Chrysander, F.: Versuch einer Statistik der Gesangvereine und Concertinstitute Deutschlands und der Schweiz. In: Chrysander, F. (ed.) Jahrbücher für musikalische Wissenschaft, vol. 2, pp. 337–374. Verlag Breitkopf & Härtel, Leipzig (1867) Cossmaly, C.: Breslauer Künstler–Verein. In: Schlesisches Tonkünstler-Lexikon, Koßmaly et al. (eds.), 4 issues in 1 volume [Reprint of the editions Breslau 1846/47], pp. 90–102, Georg Olms Verlag, Hildesheim/New York (1982) Creuzburg, E.: Die Gewandhaus-Konzerte zu Leipzig 1781–1931. Mit einem Vorwort von Bruno Walter. Verlag Breitkopf & Härtel, Leipzig (1931) Dahlhaus, C.: Soziale Gehalte und Funktionen von Musik. In: Funkkolleg Musik. Studienbegleitbrief 9, pp. 37–60. Beltz Verlag und Musikverlag Schott, Weinheim et al. (1978) Die Gewandhaus-Konzerte zu Leipzig. Mit einem zusammenfassenden Rückblick von den Anfängen bis 1781. Im Auftrag des Gewandhauses zu Leipzig, J. Forner (ed.), VEB Deutscher Verlag für Musik Leipzig, Leipzig (1981) Furtwängler commented on this in a program note: “If we […] limit ourselves to German music this year [1914/15], we do so because German music is the best. And we may be grateful to the war that it makes us aware of our own riches here as well, that it points us back to ourselves” (quoted from: Bartels/Zschacke 1997, p. 65).

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Riemann, H.: Präludien und Studien, Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Ästhetik, Theorie und Geschichte der Musik, vol. III. Verlag Bechhold, Leipzig (1900) Schmidt, L.: Moderne Kunstpuritaner. In: Aus dem Musikleben der Gegenwart. Beiträge zur zeitgenössischen Kunstkritik, pp. 50–53. Verlag A. Hofmann & Comp., Berlin (1909) Schnitzler, V.: Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben, Tischer & Jagenberg Verlag, Köln (1935). —This book edition was preceded by a private printing (Köln 1921) under the same title Schrenk, O.: Berlin und die Musik. Zweihundert Jahre Musikleben einer Stadt 1740–1940. Ed. Bote & Bock, Berlin (1940) Schwab, H.W.: Konzert. Öffentliche Musikdarbietung vom 17. bis 19. Jahrhundert (= Musikgeschichte in Bildern. Bd. IV: Musik der Neuzeit/Lieferung 2). VEB Deutscher Verlag für Musik Leipzig, Leipzig (1980) Schwetschke, U.: Hundert Jahre Bergkonzerte. Verlag Gebauer-Schwetschke, Halle a. Saale (1910) Seipt, A.: Hundert Spielzeiten—Eine Dokumentation aller Konzerte, kommentiert von Angelus Seipt. In: Irmgard Scharberth, Gürzenich-Orchester Köln 1888–1988, pp. 195–294. Wienand Verlag, Köln (1988) Senff, B.: Die Componisten und die Concertdirectionen. In: Signale für die musikalische Welt 25 (1867), pp. 969–973 (1867) Sittard, J.: Geschichte des Musik- und Concertwesens in Hamburg vom 14. Jahrhundert bis auf die Gegenwart. Verlag von A. C. Reher, Altona/Leipzig (1890) Spanuth, A.: Das Konzert als Gipfel unserer Musikpflege. In: Signale für die musikalische Welt 76 (1918), pp. 139–142, 159–162, 181–184 (1918) Stephenson, K.: Hundert Jahre Philharmonische Gesellschaft in Hamburg, Philharmonischen Gesellschaft Hamburg (ed.), Druck und Kommissionsverlag von Broschek & CO., Hamburg (1928) T.: Aus einem Berliner Briefe. In: Repertorium für Musik, H. Hirschbach (ed.), 2 (1845), pp. 370– 372, Leipzig (1845) Thrun, M.: “Serenissimus gnädigst zu verstatten geruhet...”—Stadtkonzerte im 18. Jahrhundert als Einrichtung der Institution Hofmusik. In: Lange, C., et al. (eds.) Komponisten im Spannungsfeld von höfischer und städtischer Musikkultur (= Telemann-Konferenzberichte XVIII), pp. 255–277, Georg Olms Verlag, Hildesheim et. al. (2014) Thrun, M.: Konzertstadt Leipzig als kulturelle Autorität. Leitbild und unnachahmliches Muster inmitten des 19. Jahrhunderts. In: Loos, H. (ed.), Musikstadt Leipzig. Beiträge zu ihrer Geschichte (= Quellen und Forschungen zur Geschichte der Stadt Leipzig 17), pp. 81–141, Leipziger Universitätsverlag, Leipzig (2019) Thrun, M.: Verwehte Spuren. Assoziationsmerkmale frühbürgerlicher Konzertpraktiken im deutschsprachigen Raum. Mit einem Anhang: Konzertgründungen in Zeiten Georg Philipp Telemanns (1700–1767). In: Concertare—Concerto—Concert. Das Konzert bei Telemann und seinen Zeitgenossen (= Telemann-Konferenzberichte XXI), Ralph-Jürgen Reipsch et al. (eds.), pp. 290–360, Georg Olms Verlag, Hildesheim et al. (2020) Truhn, F.H.[H.T.]: Aus Berlin. Möser’s und Zimmermann’s Soireen. In: Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 5, vol. 9, pp. 49–50 (1838) Truhn, F.H.[H.T.]: Aus Berlin. In: Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 6, vol. 10, p. 111 (1839) Hausegger, S.v.: Betrachtungen zur Kunst. Gesammelte Aufsätze, Siegel Verlag, Leipzig (1921) Orelli, M.v.: Volkmar Andreae. Dirigent, Komponist und Visionär. Ein Kapitel Zürcher Musikgeschichte, Diss. Zürich 2009. https://www.zora.uzh.ch/id/eprint/108554/1/20090594_ 002344648.pdf. Accessed 12 May 2022 (2009) Zuccalmaglio, A.W.v., [St. Diamond]: Aus Warschau. In: Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 5, vol. 9, pp. 117–118 (1838) W.: Die Gegenwart und die Musiker. In: Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 68, 1871, vol. 67, pp. 89–91, 101–103, 109–111, 121–124, 141–143, 149–151 (1871) W., F. W.: Aus Dresden. In: Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 15 (1848), vol. 29, pp. 157–158 (1848) Wackernagel, P., Furtwängler, W.: Die Programme der Konzerte mit dem Berliner Philharmonischen Orchester 1922–1954. F. A. Brockhaus Verlag, Wiesbaden (1958)

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Wagner, R.: Sämtliche Briefe, vol. 1: Briefe der Jahre 1830–1842. Strobel G, et al. (eds.) VEB Deutscher Verlag für Musik Leipzig, Leipzig (1967) Weber, W.: The great transformation of musical taste. Concert programming from Haydn to Brahms. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (2008) Weingartner, F.: Akkorde. Gesammelte Aufsätze. Verlag Breitkopf & Härtel, Leipzig (1912a) Weingartner, F.: Erlebnisse eines “Königlichen Kapellmeisters” in Berlin. Cassirer Verlag, Berlin (1912b) Weissmann, A.: Arthur Nikisch und die Berliner Philharmonischen Konzerte 1895–1920. Ein Rückblick. Lange Verlag, Berlin (1921) Weissmann, A.: Der Dirigent im 20. Jahrhundert. Propyläen-Verlag, Berlin (1925) Wiener Philharmoniker 1842–1942. In: Kraus, H., Schreinzer, K. (eds.) Statistik. Universal Edition Wien, Wien (1942) Ziemer, H.: Die Moderne hören. Das Konzert als urbanes Forum 1890–1940 (= Campus Historische Studien 46). Campus-Verl., Frankfurt/New York (2008)

Martin Thrun, Martin Thrun (1987 doctorate, 2001 habilitation in musicology) has worked as a freelancer or research assistant at university or non-university institutions since 1988, including Cologne, Freiburg i.Br., Chemnitz, Frankfurt a.M. and Leipzig. Published among others: Neue Musik im deutschen Musikleben bis 1933 (1995); Deutschsprachige Bibliographie der Neuen Musik 1910–1990 (2001); Eigensinn und soziales Verhängnis. Erfahrung und Kultur “anderer Musik” im 20. Jahr-hundert (2009); Erfreuen ohne zu stören: Populäre Garten- und Saalkonzerte. Nachklänge von Londoner Vauxhall Gardens in Frankfurt am Main (1777–1859) (2014); Führung und Verwaltung. Heinz Drewes als Leiter der Musikabteilung des Reichsminis¬teriums für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda (2015); Konzertstadt Leipzig als kulturelle Autorität – Leitbild und unnachahmliches Muster in¬mitten des 19. Jahrhunderts (2019).

Roles of the Vocal and Instrumental in the Star-Fan Relationship Andreas Gries

1 Introduction Music, conceived as a unified phenomenon, can be understood as a composition of several aesthetically effective components. In addition to the distinction between instrumental and vocal music, there is a classification system, Cantando, Sonando, and Recitando, coined by Harry Goldschmidt, which refers to the deep structure of the relationship between the instrumental and the vocal.1 This system serves as the basis for the following explanations about the function of the vocal and the instrumental in pop and rock music with regard to the bond between fans and stars, which is essential for this musical genre. To this end, in this manuscript I will first deal with particular expressions of sonando and cantando and their function within rock and pop music by means of examples. Subsequently, the significance of verbal language, gestures, and dance will be examined in order to show in which aspects of the star-fan relationship the vocal and the instrumental play a role.

2 Sonando and Cantando in Pop and Rock Music The terms sonando and cantando are suitable for making content-descriptive localizations of manifestations of pop and rock music. Goldschmidt’s “eminently pragmatic categories”2 show themselves as a separation of the sung from the spoken, and in such a way that they stand in dialectical relation to each other: “In singing the 1 2

Goldschmidt (1967, pp. 35–49), and Heister (2019, p. 89). Goldschmidt (1981, p. 126).

A. Gries (B) University of Music and Theater Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 H.-W. Heister et al. (eds.), Word Art + Gesture Art = Tone Art, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20109-7_22

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saying is suspended, in saying the singing is suspended”, in the genuinely instrumental a “vocal impact” is kept free and vice versa.3 The following description of the sonando and cantando elements of pop and rock music is also committed to this approach. The distinction of these original elements makes pragmatic sense, but according to Goldschmidt it does not do justice to the meta-problems, since a categorical use is opposed by existing “blurings” that can be differentiated and described, since the “interdependence of the two subsystems constantly gives rise to new meanings”.4 Here, not least, the reference to Hanns-Werner Heister’s interdisciplinary elaboration Music and Fuzzy Logic and the principle of blurring as, besides filtering and crystallization, a relevant approach to blurring, as it arises or is produced artistically in ways of working, is to be made.5 Georg Knepler also writes in an evolution-related consideration that the elements are not only fitted into the system, but “they, as it were left to their own devices, transgress system norms, even at times explode the system”.6

3 Genuin Sonando: The Percussive The percussive, by which is meant the unity of the two components noise or sound and rhythm, is realized as body percussion.7 On the one hand, it plays an important role as a musical design element, but on the other hand, it also influences the fans’ attachment to their favorite star. This can be shown very strikingly with Queen’s We Will Rock You: A universally known rhythm functions as the initially sole musical design element, which is stomped and clapped throughout the song by the band, and at concerts also by the audience—replacing the rhythm section. Involving the audience, however, is also a way of making the star-fan bond visible and audible, because synchronizing a common pulse is an essential way for fans to identify with their favorite star. The speed of this pulse has an impact on the heartbeat of the listener, and marketing takes advantage of this fact. The percussive, which not only manifests itself as body percussion but is also performed in real instrumental form, thus not only has a musical, style-forming function, but it also serves to promote group affiliation.

3

Goldschmidt (1981, p. 127). Goldschmidt (1981, p. 135). 5 Heister (2021). 6 Knepler (1998, p. 43). 7 Heister (2019, p. 90). 4

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4 Vocal Imitation of the Instrumental Rhythms of popular music are mostly included in schemes of pulse and meter. This cannot be reduced to the body beat and the instrumental alone; rather, rhythmic and vocal elements intertwine: injectives, clicking or snapping sounds, which are part of African languages, represent another dimension of sonando. These sounds have been implemented in popular music since the 1980s through the development of beatboxing, which has emerged as vocal percussion and whose predecessor since the 1920s was scatting, which is used to imitate and improvise playing figures typical of the sonando in the cantando. The term click roll is used for a clacking sound that can also be linked to a vowel; the significant sounds known from the Khoisan language are also called “clicks” in rap, djing and breakdancing. The sounds have remained in the ear through the Fat Boys, whose first songs consisted mostly of explosive drum machine beats, scratches, a lot of rap and some synthesizer chords, synth bass and trivial vocal hooks accompanied in unison with a digital, percussionidiophone sound in high register, mostly performed by female voices. Gradually, human beat boxing was added, eventually replacing computer beats with sometimes ‘crazy’, spleen-like, over-the-top sounds. Michael Jackson used the scream as a component of songs intensively from 1987 on, using screeches and shouts as unaffected-authentically generated voice effects. These exclamations can reinforce an emotional content already implied in the melodic line and can be found as‚ wowing’, screaming and shouting in other genres as well. The falsetto or harsh timbres had long been in use, but were now outrated, exposed, and established with sampling, as well as special effects devices for cantando with breath sounds, moaning, and exalted, extremely high-pitched artificially shrill exclamations. Vocal imitation of percussive has essentially the same functions as instrumentally performed sonando—scatting and beatboxing are both stylistic features and embodiments of rhythm. Percussiveness, moreover, takes on a role in sonando for tone production in acoustic or electric bass with slapping, hitting, plucking and ripping the strings. With the slap techniques popular in funk and soul and in the styles of the 60s to 80s were practically played with instruments elementary for timing, which per se are characterized by a longer transient behavior. Percussive sounds with an instrument “alienated” from its intended purpose were produced in new music by John Cage with the Prepared Piano and Paul Dessau with the Bug Piano, among others. Piano or harpsichord thus belong to the instruments with strings that can be fundamentally struck, plucked or bowed.

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5 Genuin Cantando: Vocal Expressions Genuine cantando is the “vocal”, which is characterized by clear pitch progressions in aperiodic, arhythmic movement. Heister describes this as the “poetic stylization of the intonations, the ‘speech melody’”.8 At this stage, there is still no connection to the word language; rather, vowels and syllables without meaning are used here.9 For pop and rock music, this raises the question of what motivation underlies human vocalization. Was it in the beginning the need, an intention, a thought, the search for a solution, for meaning, the mens mundi? A sound, simply a vowel? Perhaps in the beginning there was also the cry, the primal cry, that is an exclamation on a sounding, variable pitch. Not yet a chant or recitative, a sound running as in neume writing—but a sound. Both the singing of vowels and syllables and the scream as a musical component are found in current pop and rock music as distinctive stylistic devices. The former is evident in improvised lines appended to the end of a word set to music. The vowel of the last syllable of a word is continued solmization-like over a longer distance. This technique is adlibs or oversinging—as Mariah Carey or Whitney Houston perform it extremely.10 The fact that these adlibs in many cases go beyond the genuine cantando by following the rhythm of the song is irrelevant for their function, because they are not only an unmistakable stylistic feature, but also show the vocal abilities of the respective performer. These vocalizations are significant on a musical level for the emotional bond between performer and fan, because first and foremost they convey feelings.

6 Instrumental Imitation of the Vocal In the field of music production, the typical instruments of pop music enable the modulation of pitches, the creation of varying pitches—as is possible when singing. The best-known effect device in pop music is probably the vocoder, which can be used to slide tones as with the human voice. A less direct, but this imitating design option arises with the electrically amplified string instruments. In principle, the electric guitar can produce glissandi similar to the human voice in cantando. Jimmy Hendrix figures at the Woodstock Festival with an improvised version of the US national anthem under the influence of high amplification, distortion, as well as an equalizer crashing planes in protest against the Vietnam War. Due to extremely fast fingering techniques such as sweep picking and tapping, the guitar solo tends to have quite a 8

Heister (2019, p. 90). Heister (2019, p. 91). 10 Oversinging does not mean overstraining the voice as in metal growling, but is used synonymously with adlibs: The vowel irises extend beyond the actual end of the word and are performed either on the vowel or nasal consonant of the last occurring syllable. 9

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bit of advantage over the human voice when played at high speed, however, because the percussive component comes into its own here. A number of other parameters play a role, with equalizers, effects and harmonizers influencing the sound character of instruments and voices.

7 Recitando: Language and Gesture Only in combination with the word language does the song receive a title and become linked to a theme and thus more memorable. The word language functions as a carrier of meaning. It is not only the words that convey the content, but above all the way in which they are rhythmized and sung: In everyday colloquial speech or that of a ceremony, a ritual, rhythmizations occur that do not proceed like musical patterns. This includes reciting on a single note, known from the rituals of the Catholic mass, or chanting in metal. For example, in the song Bye Bye Beautiful by the metal band Nightwish from the album Dark Passion Play, the vocal parts are divided between singer Anette Olzon cantando and Marco Hietala recitando, quasi aria versus recitative. Hietala recites on almost only one note: “Did you ever listen to what we played? Did you ever let in what the world said (…)?”.11 The function of articulation in this example is to give emphasis to the accusatory, angry state of mind. In speech, both facial expressions and gestures influence the verbal language, so that aperiodic rhythmic elements are combined with those of the hands. The gesture crystallizes as interpersonal communication through movements, arms, hands, head and posture, through which non-verbal messages are carried out or sound messages are given complementary expressivity, which is also used by speakers theatrically, controlling. In the digital age, gestures are reduced to messages based on characters such as emojis, or partially trigger computer functions such as wiping the screen. In its unadulterated style and expressive posture, the gesture is thus linked to the cantando and sonando, and sometimes replaces them. Comparably, the gesture can be mediated by the mask in the function of a quasi newly incorporated role figure, or further metonymic symbols can be substituted. As a fixed sign, the gesture is a carrier of meaning, a hand signal pointing in one direction, a symbol. The prerequisite for understanding gestures is the possibility of decoding them on the part of the counterpart, whereby the codes may differ scenespecifically. When a hand movement with pattern-giving formation and rhythmically executed constituent becomes an expression of the ideal image of a collective scene, an anticipated horizon of expectation is also connected with it. The gestures accompanying the sonando, cantando and recitando influence the interpretation of the content, the rhetoric, the emotional impact and the intense expression of human feeling, the spirit, the soul. They have a place in complementing the verbal, accompanying it with the use of tone, pitch of voice and expressing the ‘soul’ of inner attitude, be it 11

These words are addressed to Tarja Turunen, with whom they parted in dispute.

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solemn, indifferent, enthusiastic, ironic or obscene—helpless, friendly or generous. Intersubjective linguistic stimuli used additively in practice, which mean something completely different from what has just been discussed in the context, evoke an interpretation concerning the conversation in the recipient as codes or introduce the actual topic with such a sublimely incorporated priming. All physiologically conditioned, from neurobiology soul-emotionally euphoric partly also artistic forms of expression are thus based on a motivation, which is directed towards a higher goal irrespective of the noetic realization process in its individual character. More precisely, the performers create something out of nothingness with the multifactorial sensory stimuli as per the transcendental realism according to Aristotél¯es and do this in a partly spiritual function within society. To clarify whether a sonando produces the same effect as a cantando or recitando, it is necessary to ask to what extent these components, as well as the gestures produced from the body, are used in the fantum on an equal footing or separately in their incommensurable physicality. Striking gestures, patterns of movement, be it in a posture, a conspicuous social behavior, appearance (the getup, the hairstyle), be it certain instruments used by the star or the appearance in a mystified place of longing held in the distance in the music video are suitable for marketing. The musical components recede into the background, whereas fields of association such as feelings and moods move into the foreground, which are reinforced by suitable texting and work towards a group-dynamic convergence process as an identification model of a certain scene on the basis of thematic specifications.

8 Dance Rhythm is not only relevant for the language of words (especially for poetry), but above all for dance. Dance, as an art of gesture, is a human trait, dependent on rhythm, proceeding from it—although it also functions without fixed rhythm patterns, so in the tempo rubato. Gestures can arise from dance, be integrated into an action and converted for it. In the art of dance, what was previously perceived exclusively sonically, acoustically, becomes visually perceptible. This visible can take on a life of its own, and so a rhythmic visual representation can do without the pulse of the underlying piece of music.

9 Development from the Mimetic Ceremony The Mimetic Ceremony, which stands and takes place outside of everyday life, reality, serves in all cultural circles as an understanding of a social group and is strongly connected with dance art as gesture art. For millennia, emotional insights and experiences from everyday life are brought into ceremonies, whereby the aesthetic, according to Knepler the “intuitive-holistic” mental form of knowledge is declared as

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the oldest.12 The participants in a Mimetic Ceremony put themselves into an “other”, the everyday transcending state, enriched and inspired by vocal, instrumental music and word-language. Music is transcending anyway—it does not in itself need religion. All senses from smell, touch, taste to pain (initiation rites) are touched and “addressed”. As for rituals, whether in daily life, sports, or the performing arts, they include gestures and sounds. They are performed in a situational separation from reality into a second reality that takes place separated from ordinary life.

10 Ecstasy In the experience of the state of intoxication from the desire for connectedness in a secure community, for participation and social recognition, two strands develop, on the one hand the fan scene with its hype, its signs and gestures, the screaming and crying at concerts, and on the other hand the performance staged for a “new age” and with it the construction of the image of a star. Social reasons are thus the starting point of a certain culture of movement, dress, behavior, quasi at the same time code and identifier. With regard to the star cult, such practices can be interpreted as general fan behavior, because the specific behavior patterns in rituals, the unified consumption (drugs, alcohol) use and serve to underpin a group spirit. This is the basis of the fan culture’s soulfulness and enthusiasm. The fan community is supposed to appear in public as an aesthetically distinguishing unit; the point is to signal unconditional support for the object of worship. Those who come in the wrong outfit have discredited themselves as fans.13

11 Collective-Cooperative Spiritual Power and Mindset From the primal human need to sing together, in order to manifest an emotional bond as well as, if necessary, an attitude, ergo to confirm each other, the star cult respectively the projection in the direction of a person or a quasi supernatural being grows. This takes place in a community alignment, quasi in line aligned to an altar, a speaker, etc. Central is thereby that the components are overdrawn, exaggerated and (in the religious sense) glorified or adulated. Concerning the word, it is noticeable in religious rituals that very simple, banal contents seem like huge-imposing ‘godlike’ realizations—although they may be trivial. A stylization in an often repetitive debauchery, hyperaesthetics, an overacting up to a hype is therefore in the nature of things for the methodology of the ritual.

12 13

Knepler (1998, p. 41). Cf. Gebhard (2010).

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Representative symbols, e. g. liturgical ostensoria like showing the host in a monstrance, are also applied in the genre of rock music, especially in metal. Such signs control the ideal image of the cult aligned with Nordic myths and are expressed in semiotically significant codes such as clothing, styling, the dance culture, the scene’s own greetings, written characters, and displays of pentagrams partly borrowed from the religious as a sign of belonging, whether audio-visually through the audible instrumentation or visibly on CD covers and posters. Religious symbols are transformed for metal culture, providing identification with a time-honored, evolved custom. As a religion-like element and phenomenon, the pipe organ finds its way into the genre, the Spanish Façade Trumpets (Register: Chamade) directed horizontally towards the audience smoke like cannon barrels, further metaphors and religious topoi are prestigious for the ground of the Schleswig–Holstein Wacken Open Air Festival with the designation Holy Ground. As a greeting constituting the scene, the mutual clapping with the flat right hands and the hand sign of the manu cornuta become exemplary.

12 The Shaping of a Star Figure In a stylization—by means of the existing tools of the exclamation, the cry pointing out of the ecstatic, out of everyday life—the forming of a star figure continues to take place. The ecstasy that emerges from the Mimetic Ceremony thus remains an ecstasy in the result, only now in a mass euphoria—for a much larger (fan-) community. The special situation and position of the star needs a “role”, a play, and must not be invalidated by “the normal”. It is constructed and therefore needs an appearance such as in a coolness, without movement, with an exaggerated movement, or a special movement. It should be well considered (i.e. designed) in terms of the further development of individual characteristics, preferably by an external image agency, so that they do not strip the actual person, avoid the loss of the factual personality. In the context of the cognitive reception of the star through the perspective of his fan, the instrumental and vocal art parts are compared in a dissociation. To what extent these have different effects on the fan and thus set divergent reactions in motion will be deciphered here. These art parts can take over functions for suitable modes, in which the fan receives the star out of various motives, trigger influence on the identification or characterize a star and thereby ensure that this is perceived as deeply authentic. It is well known that fans perceive their idols as role models, this occurs immediately and ensures that one’s own situation in a possibly non-functioning environment is distracted from and expectations are projected towards the fictitious ideal image, partly in parasocial interaction, in anticipation of a connection that is realized. If this does not take place, the original view may tip and turn negative. This may happen not only because of an unfulfilling expectation—for example, to be led into a better

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future—but also because of the technical processing possibilities of a studio production, which allows subsequent processing and corrections of the previously made recording through mixing processes. Both vocal and instrumental display conceal a certain myth, since they can be given a valorization in musical production that does not correspond to factuality. Possibly this constellation is a trigger for a disillusionment of the fan, who sees his personal star image, developed in parasocial focus, blatantly disturbed by real conditions in live situations. In this respect, the substantial influence of a star image becomes clear, which must be constructed for a consistent concept. Which preconditions of such an in-scene setting must be given for a constant success in the sense of the market economy, will have to be analyzed substantially by an agency controlling the image campaign and thus already in a dialectic of the partly imitating partly creative development of behaviors of the fan is indicated, which role the establishment of an instrumental or vocal part in the star cult is able to take. The vocal parts are—since they are immanent in the human body—to be regarded as massively target-oriented, since they can be approximately memorized and sung or spoken by every single fan. A text excerpt with a pointedly formulated message is already sufficient for this. Instrumental parts like extraordinary, unmistakable electric guitar solos bring the aspect to memorize irrevocably, they reflect an attitude and have the potential to capture an entire music scene, to reflect and depict the characteristic image. The same applies to symbols, which have a meaning from the perspective of reception psychology, since they are rites that have been trained over thousands of years, continue to want to be acted out and performed as part of the staging, which is evident in the collectively identical behavior with regard to the greeting rituals, and they thus take on a central role for the reassurance of the community, serve as predetermined signs—even if they were developed under the control of a marketing agency. Moreover, due to their visual nature and texture, they can be depicted on merchandising items and shown in videos or on Internet platforms. Electronic sound design, technical amplification and the recording process are of significance in popular music and have a growing importance.

13 The Noisy Percussive as the Germ Cell of Dance The first musical instrument to be felt or heard is not an exteriorized one, but the percussive pulse of the body beat. Body percussion stands for rhythm beating using the body as an instrument, but using the chest, buttocks and legs as resonators. Most of all the common clapping—for example to a sung rag or hit song—the stamping with the feet, produces like the dancing a synchronous group dynamic movement, which can be perceived visually as well as acoustically. Synchronous rhythmization can be understood in Dance Art primarily visually. While such action is ‘conducted’ acoustically, it also seems possible to explain such a phenomenon

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behaviorally, be it through the enthusiastic applause with encore acclamations in a concert hall or the cheering of a team in a stadium. The “application” of music fuels “the synchronization of a group of individuals”.14

14 Poiesis: As a Higher Goal for Socially Evolving Cultural Areas—From Gesture Art to Performance In this variety, the expressive part of the performance is linked with the influence of gestures. Gestural performances can be built on a note-oriented abstraction, on tones and sound events. Expressive performance is a semiotic action, a rhetorical attempt to convey messages of a gestural, symbolic, or emotional nature to an audience through instrumental interfaces. To enable such an exchange of information or transport of expression, music is needed. Dance without music could be described as more or less lifeless or at least as ‘dry’, ‘colorless’. An emotionless, mechanically executed action without any aspect of movement— even if only with expressionless facial expressions—may be intended in an alienated, constructed, staged performance, but not in the attitude of a Mimetic Ceremony, which in living, spiritually motivated music-making includes the sensory worlds and original deep structures as meaning-giving, allows art to emerge in a poiesis that is deeply penetrated and at the same time directed and aimed at a higher goal. The values by which people are guided, growing out of aesthetic or religious aspirations, are transcendent here and remain so in the performance, in the presentation, in the performance—especially since the performers are also motivically “pre-formed” out of an ideal-spiritual drive. There must be a reason why someone invests a lot of time, trains and maltreats the body, in order to bring this to an audience in the brief moment of standing on stage—even though the elaboration is mostly integrated into an intensive social practice. Performances are not regarded as objects, they serve a connective exchange oriented to the rituals of each day. In this, the recitando takes on a more elevated role, as texts are read in a large “range” of emotions, the performers perform their identities, which do not necessarily represent what they really are. Texts leave a lot of room for interpretation, what is not explicitly said or represented can be read under a wide range of indirect feelings and desires.

14

Lehmann (2021).

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15 Conclusion Pop and rock music is elaborated and used as a form of movement as well as communication, since and in that gesture and sound art submit to the percussive and interact at the same time. In such networking, the cantando, the vocal, takes over the function as a direct mediator: genuine sounds and words coming from nature express feelings that are expressed in pop and rock music as screaming, shouting, wowing and the like. The same can be observed on the part of fans—they also scream and screech at concerts and communicate their emotions in this way. Contents are transported by means of the language of words, the language of gestures is used to accompany and promote an authentic expression. In the mimetic action and the performance resulting from it in another form, singing as a “primal language” also takes on a high significance. To these imprints of the mode of expression dance as gesture art (and steadily further arts) is added. In such expansion, the components continue to submit to the sonando, the percussive, which is immanent and stylistic to pop and rock music. The rhythmized sonando assumes the function of a common pulse of the music and the crowd dancing to it. In such synchronization, the regular pulsating or swinging of the mass of people promotes the collective effervescence, the feeling of belonging to a group, the movement also follows the intention, drives revelation experiences and transcendence through like-minded dance behavior such as the pogo or wave-like back and forth movement of the hands stretched in the air, thus ultimately also fosters fan loyalty and becomes the distinguishing feature of a style. In the foreground are emotions and movements of mind, as specific language rather a common sense and feelings emerge; the textual contents of cantando or recitando give at most a directional indication. The word language has on the one hand a significant, on the other hand in the weighting a subordinate rank: The higher rank shows up in the fact that from the talking with hands and feet, the development of exteriorized, originally for the work needed movements all parameters can be reached. From this the gestures develop in the Recitando, from which many other arts develop. Recitando also plays a more important role in performances; last but not least, verbal language is also important for fans who use battle cries to cheer on and communicate with their favorite star. The subordinate function of verbal language can be seen in the fact that text content does contribute to recognition value, but this is more in terms of the sense orientation of shared feelings. In pop, one orients oneself more to sounds, including voices, and less to the expressiveness of the content. From the point of view of lyrical quality, the importance of word language decreases from classical music to pop and rock music. Only when word art becomes gesture art is it able to take on a central role in star cult and pop music.

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References Gebhardt, W.: Fans und Distinktion. In: Roose, J., Schäfer, M.S., Schmidt-Lux, T. (eds.) Fans. Soziologische Perspektiven, pp. 183–204. Springer, Heidelberg (2010) Goldschmidt, H.: Über die Einheit der vokalen und instrumentalen Sphäre in der klassischen Musik. Referat auf dem Internationalen musikwissenschaftlichen Kongreß der Gesellschaft für Musikforschung, Leipzig 19.-24.9.1966. In: Deutsches Jahrbuch für Musikwissenschaft für 1966, vol. 11.1966, pp. 35–49, Edition Peters, Leipzig (1967) Goldschmidt, H.: Cantando-Sonando. Einige Ansätze zu einer systematischen Musikästhetik. In: Goldschmidt, H., Knepler, G. (eds.) Musikästhetik in der Diskussion. Vorträge und Diskussionen, pp. 125–152, Deutscher Verlag für Musik, Leipzig (1981) Heister, H.-W.: Hände und Stimme. Zum Verhältnis von instrumentaler und vokaler Musik. In: IRASM vol. 50, Issue 1–2, pp. 87–104 (2019) Heister, H.-W.: Music and Fuzzy Logic: The Dialectics of Idea and Realizations in the Artwork Process. Springer, Heidelberg et al (2021) Knepler, G.: Musikästhetik. Ansatz aus der Sicht ur- und frühgeschichtlicher Forschungsergebnisse. In: Sitzungsberichte der Leibniz-Sozietät. Ästhetik und Urgeschichte. Kolloquium zum 90. Geburtstag von Georg Knepler, vol. 25, Issue 6, pp. 39–44 (1998) Lehmann, C.: Der genetische Notenschlüssel. Warum Musik zum Menschsein gehört. Herbig, München (2021)

Andreas Gries, * 1967, studied church music, composition, piano, harpsichord, concert exam organ with award and high school teaching at the conservatories in Vienna, Lübeck, Rostock and Hamburg as well as at the Sweelinck Conservatory in Amsterdam with Erwin Ortner, MariaRegina Seidlhofer, Hans Haselböck, Ivan Eröd, György Ligeti and Bob van Asperen. His artistic and pedagogical career has included various responsibilities in theater and dance performance, for example the Stage Holding Academy and the Ballet Center John Neumeier in Hamburg. He developed concepts for musical productions, composed and arranged for the Altonaer Theater, the Hamburg Marathon and the ‘Laeiszhalle’. Pedagogical activities at high schools and at the Hanover University. Collaboration with Ensemble Resonanz (Elbphilharmonie) and Camerata Salzburg (Mozarteum). Focus in interdisciplinary research on the star-fan relationship. Textbook on popular accompaniment practice and the forms of improvisation in rock, pop and jazz.

Music Historical Question

The Terminology of Music Instruments in Croatian Multilingual Dictionaries of the Baroque Period Stanislav Tuksar

1 Introduction Words denoting any type of musical reality add another dimension to the phenomenon of music, transcending both the sounding reality (music in its physical existence) and its design as ‘intentional object’ (in Roman Ingarden’s sense), conventionally called composition. To think of music in terms of non-musical notions and to talk about music while trying to find the most adequate verbal/linguistic correlates to these notions means to step into another, parallel world of human psychological and intellectual potential. It goes without saying that this process of transition encompasses the whole vast universe of musical phenomena covering all types of musical conception and understanding, as well as its production and reception in their varied ontological and abundantly rich historical perspectives. A special challenge consists in bringing together the two worlds—notional as expressed in the form of linguistic constructs and physical in its concrete and objective historical context—where hermeneutic methods, i.e. the semiotic knowledge and phantasy of interpretation in deciphering real meaning of words, are foregrounded. A further complication in the context of this complex issue consists of the fact that words form part of different linguistic systems/languages, causing additional problems in grasping their meaning, i.e. in the deciphering and identifying of the particular areas of reality which they denote. In order to make possible at all notional/verbal communication among people speaking different languages when dealing with any subject, musical topics included, systematized collections of words have been compiled since time immemorial, going back in history beyond the Classical Greek and Roman worlds, i.e. to the foundations of European cultures and civilisations at large.

S. Tuksar (B) Academy of Music—University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 H.-W. Heister et al. (eds.), Word Art + Gesture Art = Tone Art, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20109-7_23

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Not entering the vast area of lexicography in general, I will not discuss here questions such as divisions in dictionaries of terms and/or object-related lexicons and encyclopaedias, nor their micro- and macro-structures. I will rather try to offer a concrete historical example, the research effectuated in the area of music terminology coming from the history of one south-Slavic linguistic system—the Croatian language, in its historical form of three dialects as lexicographically codified during the Baroque period. The case of five early Croatian dictionaries is specific in several respects. The objects under consideration here are five dictionaries compiled and published between the mid-17th and mid-eighteenth centuries, containing 966 lexical units in all three Croatian dialects denoting phenomena related to instrumental music.1 They have 1417 correlates in four European languages (779 in Latin, 273 in Italian, 187 in German and 178 in Hungarian).2 They are (in chronological order of the publication of their printed versions): (1) Jacobus Micalia (Jakov Mikalja), Blago jezika slovinskoga (Treasury of the ‘Slovinian’ [Slavic] Language), Loreto-Ancona, 1649–1651; (2) Georgio Habdelich (Juraj Habdeli´c), Dictionar ili Réchi Szlovenszke zvexega ukup zebrane, u red postaulyene…na pomoch napredka u Diachkom navuku Skolneh Mladenczeu Horvatszkoga i Szlovenszkoga Naroda (Dictionary or Slavonic Words Compiled from Larger and Ordered … to Help the Progress of Schooling by Young Pupils of Croatian and Slavonian People), Graz, 1670; (3) Ardelio della Bella, Dizionario Italo-Latino-Illirico (Italian-Latin-Illyrian Dictionary), Venice, 1728; 2nd ed. Dubrovnik, 1785; (4) Joannis B˙elloszt˙enëcz (Ivan Belostenec), Vol. I: Gazophylacium, seu LatinoIllyricorum onomatum aerarium (Gazophylacium, or the Treasury of LatinIllyrian Words); Vol. II: Gazophylacium illyrico-latinum, Zagreb 1740. (5) Andrea Jambressich (Andrija Jambreši´c), Lexicon Latinum interpretatione Illyrica, Germanica, et Hungarica (Latin Lexicon Interpreted in Illyrian, German and Hungarian), Zagreb, 1742. First of all, the above-mentioned dictionaries are general dictionaries and not specifically music dictionaries. This elementary aspect offers a completely new perspective on the further research and assessment of its lexical contents. Further on, the fact that their compilers were all people of the church, notably four Jesuits (J. Mikalja,3 J. Habdeli´c, A. della Bella, A. Jambreši´c) and one Pauline monk (I. B˙elostenec), adds a new dimension concerning the research of the strategic purposes of both their lexicographical work and the intentions of those who backed their publications organizationally and financially. Secondly, it has been stated that the starting linguistic idiom of all five dictionaries was Latin. This fact is a direct consequence of both general and specific 1

All terms denoting the complete sphere of music (vocal music, instrumental music, theory of music, etc.) in all five dictionaries together number more than 2000 words. 2 Tuksar (1992), p. 528. 3 In this text I will use the modern Croatian graphic versions of the names of all five lexicographers.

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circumstances within which the dictionaries were created. In Croatian historical lands (Croatia proper/Ban’s Croatia, Slavonia, Dalmatia, Istria), where these dictionaries were conceived and compiled, Latin was still throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the lingua franca of the intellectual circles in both ecclesiastical and secular (politics, education, administration) social spheres. As the higher educational system (Jesuits: Primary and secondary schools in the towns of Dubrovnik, Zagreb, Rijeka, Varaždin, Osijek, Požega, as well as the Zagreb University founded in 1669; Paulines: Secondary schools in the towns of Lepoglava, Križevci and Senj) was completely in the hands of the Catholic Church and the language of instruction was Latin, a practical means was urgently needed for the education of young people coming from the lower social strata and speaking only local Slavic dialects. ˇ This specific situation, when the three Croatian dialects (Cakavian/Ikavian, Štokavian/I(j)ekavian and Kajkavian/Ekavian) also functioned to a certain extent as literary languages until the beginning of the nineteenth century, in which part of the documentation and of the belles lettres (both poetry and prose) was written (and, of course, spoken too), presented an additional problem in the times when these dictionaries were published and used. This is obvious even in the name of the language as mentioned in individual dictionaries: Slovinski (Slovinian), slovenski (Slovenian?), ilirski (Illyrian). To this one should add the double standard in graphic presentation of specific Slavic sounds—one graphic system based on Hungarian and the other on Italian solutions. Both aspects—the question of dialects and the name of the linguistic idiom used—pose for contemporary researchers complex problems in solving individual terminological and semantic issues. Thirdly, turning to the issue of music terminology, it must be pointed out that all the dictionaries under consideration were compiled by music non-specialists for general use. This situation points to some advantages and disadvantages for contemporary researchers. One disadvantage could be the fact that the lack of specific knowledge by the compilers automatically excludes from the above-mentioned dictionaries any more detailed and/or more subtle terminology denoting some specialist objects or notions regarding the sphere of music at large. Another disadvantage has been noticed in some cases when the correlations between terms in different languages reveal that the compilers confused different instruments under the same or similar linguistic forms (the obvious case is the wrong bringing together of different instruments under the Latin term cymbalum4 ). Although relatively rare, these cases are a clear warning that the hermeneutical level in connecting individual signifiers/terms with the signified objects should be analytically investigated with great caution. On the other hand, a certain advantage might be found in the fact that the terminological fund depicting musical phenomena included in these dictionaries can be characterized as known to the great majority of the population and as such used (and understood) in practice by many so-called ordinary people, and not only by music 4

See the terminological chains quoted later in this text in the examples for art music instrument in dictionaries by all five lexocigraphers under consideration, where such diverse instruments are semantically incorrectly connected as cymbals from Greek and Roman Antiquity, ancient Egyptian sistrum, Medieval bells, harpsichord, Pannonian (mostly Hungarian) tzimbalom, etc.

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specialists. Thus, contemporary researchers might gain insight not only into the general scope of denoted musical objects within single social and/or ethnic groups, but also in the range, quality and importance of music within a certain period of time and in a certain geographic area. The specific value of this terminological fund lies also in the fact that the denoted area of music reality—i.e. notated vocal and instrumental compositions, music books and musical instruments—has survived in a much more modest scope: In the period between c. 1600 and 1760 only about 100 church and secular songbooks (both prints and manuscripts) have been found in Croatian music archives and collections; about only 70 prints and manuscripts of individual compositions by European authors (among them, by Viadana, Gesualdo da Venosa, Corelli, Rameau, A. Scarlatti); about 25 music books (among them those by Artusi, Fux); and only a few musical instruments: Besides more than a dozen organs, several stringed instruments (violin, viola d’amore, mandora, a Norwegian langleik), a clavichord and several positive organs.5

2 Music Terminology in Particular Dictionaries The scope and specific contents, i.e. the whole repertory of music terminology, differs among various Croatian dictionaries. Although various factors influenced the choice and number of musical terms, it is interesting to note that in four cases (all except in Habdeli´c) the percentage of musical terms encompasses between 1 and 1.5% of the whole terminological fund of single dictionaries, which remains the ratio of the great majority of general dictionaries up to the present day. Let us now follow the particular dictionaries in order of their chronological appearance in print, with special emphasis on terms denoting musical instruments.

2.1 Jacobus Micalia (Jakov Mikalja): Blago Jezika Slovinskoga (1649–1651) This is chronologically the first among the printed dictionaries under consideration. In fact, it is the second Croatian dictionary ever to be printed.6 It was compiled by an Italian of supposedly Croatian origins, as a result of Mikalja’s missionary sojourns in Dubrovnik (1630–35), as well as among Croats in Olovo in then TurkishOttoman Bosnia (1637), and Timi¸soara (today in Romania, 1637–1645). Historicallexicographical research has found that it is a general dictionary of the Dalmatian dialect spoken in Dubrovnik, containing about 25,000 Croatian words in all, related 5

Cf. Katalini´c (1989), pp. 20–40. The first one was the Dictionarivm qvinqve nobilissimarum Evropae lingvarvm, Latinae, Italicae, Germanicae, Dalmatiae, & Vngaricae by Faustus Verantius (Faust Vranˇci´c), printed by Nicolaus Motettus in Venice in 1595.

6

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to corresponding Latin and Italian words. The musical fund identified in it consists of 281 terms, i.e. encompassing slightly more than 1% of the whole fund. These musical terms cover the following areas: Musical instruments and their parts (53 terms); performers (27); the types and manners of vocal and instrumental performance (82); type of musical products (31); mode of the reception of sound (28); theoretical aspects of music (40); and terms denoting music and dance (20). It has been stated that Mikalja’s terminology all together corresponds historically mainly with Dubrovnik of the 1630 s and its early-Baroque musical and general culture.7 Regarding the terminology of instrumental music, it has been stated that terms were given for 16 instruments in all, among them for art music instruments 8 in Croatian, 11 in Italian and 10 in Latin, for folk music instruments 5 in Croatian, 2 in Italian and 3 in Latin, and for general and signal giving instruments 3 in Croatian, 3 in Italian and 4 in Latin. Here are three examples of correlated linguistic chains (in Croatian—Italian— Latin) covering each one of the three areas (words are given in their original graphic version): • Art music: Cymbal / glavocimbal—cembalo—cymbalum. • Folk music: Surla / sviralla—sampogna / flauto—tibia / fistula. • Signal giving objects: Zvonno—campana—campana/nola. In bringing together, i.e. translating single terms from the starting language to the other two Mikalja was not always correct and evidently, as non-musical expert, occasionally confused the denoted instruments: In 39 correlated terminological chains 30 were correctly related and 9 are questionable. In general, “… it is evident that Mikalja’s terminology designating musical instruments clearly reflects the town-type and art music-type category of sound producing objects.”8

2.2 Georgio Habdelich (Juraj Habdeli´c): Dictionar Ili Réchi Szlovenszke (1670) The Jesuit Juraj Habdeli´c (1609–1678) was schooled in Zagreb, Vienna, Graz and Trnava, and was later active in Rijeka, Varaždin, Trnava and Zagreb. An ardent Counter-Reformation author, he is today considered to be the greatest author of the seventeenth century in northern Croatia writing in the Croatian-Kajkavian idiom, a virtuoso stylist using a very rich vocabulary in his moralist-didactic writings composed both in Latin and Kajkavian-Croatian dialect. Habdeli´c compiled his Dictionar as chronologically the first dictionary created “to help the improvement in Latin schooling for young students of the Croatian and Slovenian nation.”9 It 7

Tuksar (1996), pp. 269–270. Tuksar (1996), p. 273. 9 Kombol (1945), p. 207. 8

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was published on the occasion of the organization of the Zagreb Jesuit University a year after its foundation in 1669. This general dictionary contains about 12,000 lexical units in all, among which there are 81 words denoting phenomena in music, which is much less than the usual 1% of the lexical fund. They cover the following areas: Musical instruments and their parts (25); performers (12); types and ways of performance (23); musical products (6); and five terms for each of the three areas: Reception of music, music theory and dance. Generally viewed, Habdeli´c’s terminology reflects the educational context at large in mid-seventeenth century Zagreb and north-western Croatia.10 Concerning the terminology of instrumental music, it has been stated that terms were given for 12 sound producing objects in all, with 14 Croatian terms and 13 correlative terms in Latin: • b(i)zikalyka—siringa; brunda—sistrum; bubeny—tympanum; czimbala— cymbalum; guszle—fides; orgule—organum; pischal—fistula; rog—cornu; sip—tibia / fistula; sveglya—fistula; tambura—fides unitus cordae Turcis usitatae; trumbeta—tuba; trumbeta kasze poteze—tuba ductilis; zvon—campana. In this, pischal/sveglya/sip are Croatian-Kajkavian terms denoting the same folk woodwind instrument correlated with the Latin term fistula. The most interesting feature in this terminological field is Habdeli´c’s characterization of tambura as an instrument “used by the Turks”. It is organologically correct, since this instrument, which in the nineteenth century became the main instrument of north-Croatian folklore, was transferred and acculturated from the Turkish cultural sphere, originating in turn from the Persian long-necked lute tanbur.11

2.3 Ardelio Della Bella: Dizionario Italo-Latino-Illirico (1728; 2 1785) Ardelio Della Bella (1655–1737), a Florentine Jesuit missionary came to Dalmatia for the first time in 1681, stayed there for the next six decades and learned perfectly the local Slavic linguistic idiom to the extent that his sermons were later published as a model of oratorical skills and the purity and beauty of its ‘Slavic’ language. His master-work is the above-mentioned dictionary, published first in Venice in 1728, and in a second edition in Dubrovnik in 1785. The dictionary is considered today as a product of philological discussions held in the Dubrovnik “Akademija Ispraznijeh/uˇcenih ispraznih”, or in its Italian version the Accademia degli Ozi(o)si Eruditi. This first attempt at a historical dictionary of the Croatian language aimed at “showing the lexical fund left as a heritage from fertile literary activities in Southern Croatia during the previous two and a half 10 11

Tuksar (1980), pp. 51–68. Tuksar (1980), pp. 56–65.

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centuries.”12 It contains a number of quoted textual fragments from some 40 works by earlier Croatian writers, as illustrations for the contextual usage of individual terms. Contemporary analysis has shown that these quotations were drawn from the literary output of the outstanding Dubrovnik Baroque writers Ivan Gunduli´c (1589– - c (1675–1737), along with works by other 15th- to early 1638) and Ignjat Ðurdevi´ 18th-century Dalmatian authors (for example, Šiško Menˇceti´c, Matija Alberti, Junije Palmoti´c and Nikola Nalješkovi´c).13 Music terminology consists of about 300 Croatian words, of which more than 50% have been analyzed to date, denoting musical instruments and instrumental music at large: Instruments and their parts (76), performers and instrument builders (24), the manner of performing on instruments (62), musical products or the type of the sounding of music instruments (21). As many as 141 lexical units denoting instrumental music had not been previously registered by earlier lexicographers Mikalja and Habdeli´c, so that 77% of Della Bella’s instrumental terminology should be considered as new lexicographical acquisitions. Here are the same terms for instruments as quoted by Mikalja, showing Della Bella’s lexicographical approach, following the pattern: Italian, as the starting term— Latin—Croatian: • Art music: Cembalo → Cimbalo, istromento musicale / Cismbalum [sic], li, n. –Poùdriza, ze. F. Polubúbagn, gna, m. Polubúbgniza, ze, f. “Slatkoglàsnjem hvâlitega. Polubúbagnim sred vessèglia”. Gior. Psal. Folk music: Zampogna, stromento di fiato—Fistula, lae. F. —Súrla, le. F. “Znam. • Folk music: Zampogna, stromento di fiato—Fistula, lae. F. —Súrla, le. F. “Znam. sctòse bocchje gnój, súrla, tèr tánzi pak”. Nal. Kom / Sviróka, ke. F. “S’ Búbgnim, diplim svirókàmi, Sljêdit rájska tó vesseglje Mnoox pastjêra dôghje k’ nàmi”. Palm. Signal giving objects: Campana, stromento noto di metallo per suonare— Campana, ae. f.—Zvonno, nna, n. The advanced lexicographical approach when compared with Mikalja is evident in Della Bella: While Latin terms remained quoted in a single and dry form, new terms as synonyms and more detailed qualifications for musical objects are given in Italian, and a precious, very innovative contextual use of single terms in examples from Croatian literary sources is quoted (from Nalješkovi´c and Palmoti´c); furthermore, accents have been introduced on single vowels to indicate the length of their pronunciation in Croatian. Also, the declension and gender indication is given for nouns in Latin and Croatian.

12 13

Vonˇcina (1988), p. 156. Tuksar (1995), pp. 267–280.

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2.4 Joannis B˙elloszt˙enëcz (Ivan Belostenec): Vol. I: Gazophylacium, Seu Latino-Illyricorum Onomatum Aerarium; Vol. II: Gazophylacium Illyrico-Latinum (1740) Ivan Belostenec’s life has been well researched and reconstructed earlier in the twentieth century. He was born in Varaždin between 1593 and 1595, he entered the Pauline order in 1616 and proceeded afterwards with his schooling in Vienna (1618) and later in Rome in the Collegium Germanicum (1621). After returning to his homeland, Belostenec was ordained in 1624 and spent the rest of his life commuting between Pauline monasteries in Istria, central (Svetice near Ozalj) and northern Croatia (Sveta ˇ Helena near Cakovec, Lepoglava). Belostenec’s life work was undoubtedly his encyclopaedic dictionary in two volumes, Gazophylacium, “one of the most controversial products of our [i.e. Croatian] literature before Illyrism.”14 Research on the dictionary has been extensive and interpretations of its authorship, destiny, contents and importance considerably varied among researchers. However, some facts have turned plausible and are today widely accepted: Belostenec worked on the compilation of his dictionary in the period 1665–1674; his manuscript remained unpublished for 65 years for political reasons; the 18th-century editors entered only some minor improvements (in the technique of ‘contact synonyms’ they added the mark ‘D.’ for Dalmatian idioms, and introduced some terms from Della Bella’s Dizionario); its publication in 1740 was prompted by the new political situation (the Croatian Ban/Viceroy financially supported its publication) following the liberation of the eastern province of Slavonia from the Ottomans, when Belostenec’s linguistic orientation towards the unification of Croatian dialects became attractive for practical use. Regarding his terminology of instrumental music (129 Latin and 156 Croatian terms in all), and taking into account both volumes of Gazophylacium, it has been stated that in denoting 19 various instruments Belostenec has quoted 73 musical terms in Croatian (accompanied by 63 correlative terms in Latin). That means that he included several synonymic terms for each instrument, among which are 39 terms not registered by earlier lexicographers (Vranˇci´c, Mikalja, Habdeli´c, Della Bella). The 19 denoted instruments are (in modern Croatian orthography with their correlatives in Latin): arfa—psalterium; arpikorad—sambuca; b(i)zikal(j)ka—siringa; brunda— sistrum; bubenj—tympanum; cimbal—cymbalum; citara—cithara; dude—lyripipium; gusle—fides; orgule—organum; pišˇcal—tibia, fistula; poudrica—gravicymbalum; rog—cornu; slepe gusle—monochordum; strunate orgule—clavicordium; tambura—fides duarum chordarum; trumbeta—buccina; trumbeta vleˇcena—tuba ductilis; zvon—campana.. If we apply the same pattern used for Mikalja’s and Della Bella’s terminological examples, we read in Belostenec as follows: • In Gazophylacium, seu Latino-Illyricorum onomatum aerarium (Vol. I). 14

Vonˇcina (1979), pp. 213–214.

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• Art music: Cymbalum, li. g.n.2.p.c. —czimbale, czimbal. Cic. • Folk music: Tibia, ae. F. (…)—2. pischal, (D.) szvirala • Signal giving objects: Campana, ae. g.f.1.—zvón, (D.) zvonno. Ab Oppido Campaniae Nola dicta, ubi primum ejus usus repartus est (…) • In Gazophylacium illyrico-latinum (Vol. II). • Art music: Czimbal, czimbala, (D.) Poudricza, polububnicza—cymbalum, li. • Folk music: Szviralla—tibia. v. pischal. • Signal giving objects: Zvón – campana, as; sampanum (sic). It is not possible among numerous terms and within the limited space of this article to point out all the specific and very interesting issues regarding Belostenec’s terms for instruments, not mentioning his detailed insight into some instruments’ subdivisions (for example, for denoting horn: Rog zaviat, rog zaviat na palicze, rog posztarski, rog lovni, rog zvinyen, rosich/mali rog) or highly interesting terms for female performers on some instruments (for example: Bubnyaricza/bubanchicza, guszlaricza, piszkachicza, trumbetassicza, zvonaricza). What should be mentioned are the analytically established facts that in spite of his tendency towards the unification of dialects, the basis of his vocabulary is Croatian-Kajkavian; that he (or his editors?) has entered all the terms previously included in other dictionaries; that he introduced both folk and art music instruments in a balanced manner, thus confirming the encyclopaedic aspirations which were present in 17th-century lexicography as they also were, for example, in Italian and French linguistics; that he has even tried to coin new terms for some instruments, a tendency which reappeared in Croatian only in the mid-nineteenth century; that his work might be interesting also as a treasury for some Latin terms, neglected or forgotten in other European dictionaries of his time.15

2.5 Andrea Jambressich (Andrija Jambreši´c): Lexicon Latinum Interpretatione Illyrica, Germanica, Et Hungarica (1742) This encyclopaedic quadri-lingual Latin-Croatian-German-Hungarian dictionary resulted in fact from a work by two Jesuits, Andrija Jambreši´c (1706–1758) and Franjo Sušnik (1686–1739). After Sušnik, who collected most of the lexical material, passed away in an earlier phase of printing, Jambreši´c revised the material and published the whole dictionary under his name. It could be understood as a more advanced, enlarged and updated substitute for Habdeli´c’s already obsolete elementary Dikcionar from 1670. Further on, it seems that the rivalry which existed between the Jesuit and Pauline orders for primacy in education in northern Croatia also rushed the publication of Jambreši´c’s Lexicon after it was announced that the Pauline monk 15

It is interesting to notice that among these 63 Latin terms quoted by Belostenec, 19 have not been registered in Curt Sachs’ Reallexikon der Musikinstrumente, 1979.

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Belostenec’s Gazophylacium would be finally published in 1740, 65 years after the death of its compiler in 1675. Besides additional geographical descriptions of individual towns, peoples and states, Jambreši´c’s Lexicon’s specialty are his original graphic solutions for specific Slavic phonemes (such as š and ž), which anticipate some solutions of the modern graphic standardization of Croatian written language introduced in the mid-nineteenth century. Music terminology in Jambreši´c’s Lexicon has been the least investigated in comparison with all the earlier Croatian dictionaries. Among more than 400 terms (in 346 entries), 209 denote the field of instrumental music.16 Both compilers (Jambreši´c and Sušnik) being northern Croats, their lexical fund primarily leans heavily on northwestern Croatian spoken practice and the socio-cultural context of the 1730s in the same area. On the other hand, it reveals the supra-regional, even supra-national intentions of its compilers and publishers, relating ‘under one roof’ vocabularies in the languages used in the south-eastern part of the Habsburg Empire: CroatianKajkavian (which is close to Slovenian), Latin, Hungarian and German. This might be also explained by the ethnic composition of the majority of intended consumers of the Lexicon, i.e. nationally and linguistically diverse novices in Jesuit colegii in Zagreb and Varaždin, which, in the mid-eighteenth century, “outnumbered all other secondary schools in the Croatian lands taken together.”17 Let us use for comparative reasons—as examples of Jambreši´c’s lexicographical method—the same lexical units as for Mikalja, Della Bella and Belostenec: • Art music: Cymbalum, li, n. Cic.—Czimbola—s. Cymbel—Tzimbalom • Folk music: Fistula, ae. f. Cic.—Piszka, Pischal, Pischalka, svéglya, szviralo (…)—Eine Pfeiffe, Flöten (…)—Síp (…) • Signal giving objects: Aes, Aeris, n. (…) Aes campanum—Zvon. E. —Glocke— Harang, &c. In this, while for art music and signal giving objects no specific qualifications were given when compared with Habdeli´c, for the folk music example three more Kajkavian dialectical terms are given in Jambreši´c’s Lexicon (piszka, pischalka, szviralo), while Habdeli´c’s term ‘sip’ was transferred from Croatian-Kajkavian to the Hungarian linguistic idiom, from which it in fact originated.

3 Conclusion The vocabulary covering musical instruments presented here forms part not only of the complex of the broader area of instrumental music (to which also belong words denoting parts of these instruments, performers, types and manners of instrumental performance and musical products) but also of music terminology at large (terminology of vocal music and theory of music). 16 17

Tuksar (1992), pp. 87–109. Vanino (1942), p. 178.

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For the history of Croatian music, the importance of vocabulary covering musical instruments, specifically for the Baroque period, is higher than expected owing to the fact that in many cases—especially in the area of art music instruments—this vocabulary is the only, albeit indirect, proof that such artefacts existed in social and musical reality. Namely, as previously mentioned, the great majority of musical instruments from the Baroque period has disappeared, being either estranged or simply annihilated through social and natural causes, and what was left were only their names in vernacular (together with some rare pictorial presentations). It is also important to point out that “the designation ‘Baroque’ means that the lexical fund under consideration [here] was by no means invented but only codified during the Baroque period, forming in its greater part a considerably older lexical layer.”18 In addition, the fact should also be taken into account that these five dictionaries did not contain all of the musical terminology present in the Croatian linguistic sphere of the Baroque and earlier periods: “… the rich and broad sphere of pre-Baroque and Baroque literature [the belles-lettres] in the Croatian dialects truly noted a series of terms for instruments and phenomena in the field of instrumental music which were not registered in these dictionaries…”.19 In general, the role of the relatively small segment of music terminology—as collected, structured and presented in the contents of the five above-mentioned dictionaries—should not be underestimated. In this fragment particularly, as well as in the totality of the vocabulary included in these dictionaries in general, the role of four Jesuit and one Pauline lexicographer has been of the utmost importance in helping to constitute the norms and standards of the Croatian literary language before the creation of its modern version in the mid- and late-nineteenth century. In this, the general role of Jesuit activities in Baroque musical culture has been recognized long ago on both local and global levels.20 Thus, not contesting their utilitarian functions in everyday practice, these lexicographical activities above all helped the Croatian spiritual and social habitus to maintain its intellectual existence and to survive as part of both the Central-European and Mediterranean civilizational and cultural patterns during some of the most decisive periods in its history.

References Handwörterbuch der musikalischen Terminologie, ed. Hans-Heinrich Eggebrecht. F. Steiner Verlag, Wiesbaden (1972ff.) Katalini´c, V.: Pregled izvora o glazbenoj kulturi baroknog razdoblja na tlu SR Hrvatske [A Review of Sources of Musical Culture in the Baroque Period in the SR of Croatia]. In: Stipˇcevi´c, E. (ed.) Glazbeni barok u Hrvatskoj, pp. 20–47. Osor, Osorske glazbene veˇceri (1989) 18

Tuksar (1992), p. 650. Tuksar (1992), p. 653. 20 Cf. Patiers 1993. 19

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Kombol, M.: Poviest hrvatske književnosti [History of Croatian Literature]. Matica hrvatska, Zagreb (1945) Patiers, D.: L’influence de la musique des Jésuites de Bohême sur la formation et le style de Jan Václav Stamic, In: The Musical Baroque, Western Slavs, and the Spirit of the European Cultural Communion, ed. S. Tuksar. Croatian Musicological Society—Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Zagreb, pp. 101–123 (1993) Sachs, C.: Reallexikon der Musikinstrumente, reprint: G. Olms, Hildesheim—New York (1979) Tuksar, S. 1980: Kajkavska glazbena terminologija u ’Dictionaru’ (1670) Jurja Habdeli´ca [Kajkavian Musical Terminology in the ’Dictionarium’ (1670) by Juraj Habdeli´c], In: Glazbena baština naroda i narodnosti Jugoslavije od 16. do 19. stolje´ca, Vol. I, Zagreb-Varaždin, pp. 51–68 (1980) Tuksar, S. 1983: Nazivlje glazbenog instrumentarija u Gazofilaciju (1740) Ivana Belostenca [Terminology of Music Instruments in Gazophylacium (1740) by Ivan Belostenec], In: Varaždinski zbornik 1181–1981, ed. Andro Mohoroviˇci´c. JAZU—Skupština Op´cine Varaždin, Varaždin, pp. 441–460 (1983) Tuksar, S. 1992: Hrvatska glazbena terminologija u razdoblju baroka [Croatian Musical Terminology in the Baroque Era]. Hrvatsko muzikološko društvo—Muziˇcki informativni centar KDZ, Zagreb (1992) Tuksar, S. 1995: Hrvatska glazbena terminologija u Dizionario Italiano-Latino-Illirico Ardelia Della Belle (Mleci, 1. izd., 1728): nazivlje glazbala i instrumentalne glazbe [Croatian Musical Terminology in Dizionario Italiano-Latino-Illirico by Ardelio Della Bella (Venice, 1st ed., 1728): Terms for Instruments and Instrumental Music], In: Dani hvarskog kazališta. Hrvatska književnost 18. stolje´ca—tematski i žanrovski aspekti, ed. N. Batuši´c et al., Split, pp. 267–280 (1995) Tuksar, S. 1996: Croatian, Latin and Italian Musical Terminology in the Dictionary Blago jezika slovinskoga (Loreto-Ancona, 1649–1651) by Jacobus Micalia, In: Musica, scienza e idee nella Serenissima durante il Seicento. Atti del convegno internazionale di studi Venezia 1993, ed. F. Passadore and F. Rossi. Fondazione Levi, Venice, pp. 269–283 (1996) Vanino, M.: Isusovci i hrvatski narod [Jesuits and Croatian People]. 2 vols., Filozofsko-teološki institut Družbe Isusove, Zagreb (1969–1987) Vonˇcina, J.: Jeziˇcno-povijesne rasprave [Linguistic-Historical Treatises]. Liber, Zagreb (1979) Vonˇcina, J.: Jeziˇcna baština [Linguistic Heritage]. Književni krug, Split (1988)

Stanislav Tuksar, * 1945 in Gornji Kraljevec, is a Professor Emeritus of the University of Zagreb, Croatia, being awarded BA in philosophy, English and violoncello, MA and PhD in musicology, all at the University of Zagreb, where he taught musicology from 1993 till 2015. He also made advanced studies at the Université de Paris IV-Sorbonne (1974–76) and was research fellow at Staatliches Institut für Musikforschung in West Berlin (1986-88). He participated in some 140 scholarly symposia in Croatia and abroad and lectured at 25 universities worldwide. He published as author, editor and translator 30 books, and has authored more than 250 articles. Since 2000 he has been Editor-in-Chief of the International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music. Member (past and present) of the editorial boards of the journals: Acta musicologica (Basle), Current Musicology (New York), South African Journal of Musicology (Durban); Arti musices (Zagreb); De musica disserenda (Ljubljana); Kroatologija (Zagreb), Muzika (Sarajevo). He was co-founder (1992), Secretary (1992–1997) and President (2001–2006, 2013–2018) of the Croatian Musicological Society, and he is full member of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts (since 2012), both in Zagreb. His main research areas are music-cultural aspects and aesthetics of music in the 16th–19th century period. His main authored works are: Hrvatski renesansni teoretiˇcari glazbe (1978; English translation: Croatian Renaissance Music Theorists, 1980); Hrvatska glazbena terminologija u razdoblju baroka (Croatian Music Terminology of the Baroque Era, 1992); Kratka povijest hrvatske glazbe (Short History of Croatian Music, 2000); Kratka povijest europske glazbe (Short History of European Music, 2000). He has also edited some 20 proceedings, among which are: Lisinski/Jelaˇci´c: Music, Arts and Politics: Revolutions and Rastorations in Europe and Croatia, 1815–1860 (2021); The Great War (1914–1918) and Music

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(2019); Ivan Zajc (1832–1914): Musical Migrations and Cultural Transfers in the ‘Long’ 19th Century in Central Europe and Beyond (2016); Croatia in the Baroque and the Enlightenment. A Cultural Survey (2015); Franjo Ksaver Kuhaˇc (1834–1911): Music Historiography and Identity (2013); Zagreb 1094-1994. Zagreb and Croatian Lands as a Bridge Between Central-European and Mediterranean Musical Cultures (1998); Music, Ideas, and Society. Essays in Honour of Ivan Supiˇci´c (1993); Musical Baroque, Western Slavs, and the European Cultural Communion (1993). S. Tuksar has also translated into Croatian five books by Erich Fromm (2), Zofia Lissa, Howard M. Brown–Louise K. Stein and Claude V. Palisca.

The Linguistic Issue in 18th Century Croatian Music Vjera Katalini´c

1 Introduction The national movements which developed in the first half of the nineteenth century, especially in Slavic countries, were mostly based on the Herderian premise that national identity was constructed by means of a national language. However, the enlightened thought of the mid-eighteenth century prepared this perspective and backed it by its desire to collect and systematize national legacies. Cautious optimism marked the second half of the enlightened century in the Croatian lands, induced by the eastward withdrawal of the Ottoman Turks,1 and resulted in the gradual demilitarization of towns—former frontier strongholds with fortifications—, growth of artisanship, more intense trading and agriculture, a reorganized education system, and development of cultural life. Political organization and geographical position directly influenced cultural spheres: the continental part of today’s Croatia, at that time called Civil Croatia, with its small littoral on the northern Adriatic coast, belonged to the Habsburg Empire as part of the Hungarian kingdom with absolutist Habsburg rule; Dalmatia, the coastal part of Civil Croatia, was under the jurisdiction of the Venetian Republic. In the very south of the Adriatic coast was the independent Republic of Dubrovnik (Ragusa), while the Venetian Republic and the Habsburgs divided the peninsula of Istria in the northern Adriatic. Thus, Civil Croatia belonged to the central European cultural circle, and the east Adriatic coastal region was under strong Mediterranean, predominantly Italian influence. Being the 1 The Croatian borders remained almost entirely unchanged until the end of the First World War: the Drava river in the North, the Danube in the east, the Sava river towards Bosnia (then under the Ottoman rule), and Dalmatia with the Dubrovnik Republic in the South. The peninsula of Istria makes an exception, because it became part of Croatia only after 1945.

V. Katalini´c (B) Department for History of Croatian Music, Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Zagreb, Croatia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 H.-W. Heister et al. (eds.), Word Art + Gesture Art = Tone Art, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20109-7_24

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outer borders of their respective centres, both regions were exposed to the occasional Turkish threat, but also, to some extent, Turkish influence. Therefore, military affairs were financially dominant and the unsettled nature of everyday life meant that opportunities to regularly participate in cultural life, especially musical life, as desired by its citizens, were not always provided. Taking all this into account, the second half of the century brought a certain relief that enabled the better education of its citizens, first solid theatre spaces and, consequently, the migration of opera companies and individual musicians, the acquisition of music material and a growing need for secular musical culture in general. Being a predominantly Catholic country, education was partly organized by church orders (mostly Jesuits and Franciscans for male pupils and Ursuline and Benedictine nuns for girls). Thus, monasteries, cathedrals and parish churches often functioned as important musical centres which gave impulse to various aspects of music making. Such stratification of musical life in its political, religious and general cultural spheres also influenced the complex literary and linguistic traditions. A series of case studies will be presented here in order to analyse and clarify that situation.

2 The Noble Sorgo/Sorkoˇcevi´c Family of Diplomats and Musicians in the Republic of Dubrovnik The family Sorgo (today better known under its Croaticized name Sorkoˇcevi´c) played an important role within the old nobility of the Republic of Dubrovnik, both as cultivated persons (equally, men and women) and meritorious administrators in the government who performed various functions in the service of the Republic.2 One of them was Luca Sorgo (Luka Sorkoˇcevi´c, Dubrovnik, 1734–1789), educated at the Jesuit gymnasium there and later in humanities in Rome. Beside his general training, he received a good music education with private teachers: in Dubrovnik it was Giuseppe Antonio Valente/Valenti, the cathedral maestro di cappella originating from the Neapolitan Kingdom, and in Rome it was the popular opera composer Rinaldo di Capua. Sorgo’s witty short instrumental symphonies point to the “transitional” three-movement pieces with rudiments of the sonata pattern, composed most probably during the 1750s and early 1760s. The autographs and some copied parts are today kept at the Franciscan monastery in Dubrovnik, while modern editions served as the basis for many performances.3 One of the important tasks was Luca’s diplomatic activity, especially his mission to Vienna in 1781, where he had to establish good political relations with the new emperor, Joseph II, after the death of Maria Theresa. He kept evidence of his encounters and various experiences in a diary. This recently published but incomplete bundle of manuscript notes in Italian gives evidence of a highly educated and refined person, whose perceptive remarks show 2

For a recent publication on the composers in the Sorgo family cf. Katalini´c (2014). Probably the best known performer of Sorgo’s symphonies is The Salzburger Hofmusik with Wolfgang Brunner, who also prepared the publication with parts of the symphonies.

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his interest in and knowledge of politics, military skills, diplomacy and arts.4 For a musicologist, his remarks on music and dances at the court as well as descriptions of meetings with famous musical personalities of his time, such as Joseph Haydn, Christoph Willibald Gluck, Pietro Metastasio, various singers and visits to private academias and public theatre performances are of the utmost interest. Although it is obvious that his main language in communication was Italian—as was the case with educated people in Dubrovnik—, he obviously spoke French and undoubtedly Croatian, which some Croatian words and phrases used in his diary testify to.5 Further, his preserved letters to his friends show the same issue. (The same occurs in the letters - Boškovi´c when corresponding with his Dubrovnik family and friends.6 ) by Ruder However, it is not certain whether Luca composed any vocal music: among his music material there are some pieces with uncertain authorship, also connected with the musical activity of his son (the manuscript bearing the name of the father in the handwriting of the son!) that will be discussed here as well. Luca’s son Antonio/Antun (Dubrovnik, 1775—Paris, 1841), active as a historian and the last Dubrovnik envoy in Paris, also received musical education in his native town as well as in Italy. His first compositions are dated in 1793 and point to different musical interests than those of his father. Four symphonies, a series of trios and other types of chamber music form the secular part of his compositional output.7 Besides an aria with orchestra accompaniment, Nell’ umile mia capanna, on verses from the libretto L’Astrologo in villa by an anonymous author, some sketches and incomplete romances have also been preserved in French (Toute la vie) and Italian (Di padre caro), as well as La Preghiera, the only piece that was published in Paris.8 However, he also composed some motets (Tantum ergo, Dixit Dominus) that were probably performed in the Dubrovnik cathedral. One of the vocal-instrumental church pieces of dubious authorship is a three-part psalm preserved in two text versions: a Croatian one Babilonskiem nad riekama (By the waters of Babylon) and an Italian one: Di Babele in riva, with a remark: Traduzione dallo Slavo). The remark, written down on the title page by the Franciscan organist Kuzmi´c, who brought the material into the Franciscan library in the mid-nineteenth century, confirms the dubious authorship: 4

Cf. Katalini´c and Radoš-Perkovi´c (2021). “Italian was, in fact, the official language of the Republic, and most of its citizens were at least bilingual (Italian and Croatian), whereas the educated classes were also familiar with Latin, French and German.” Cf. Radoš-Perkovi´c (2020), p. 54. 6 Radoš-Perkovi´ c (2020), pp. 53–64. 7 Usually, the titles of his autographs are in Italian and he signs them as Antonio conte di Sorgo. However, a title page of a Tantum ergo is in French (probably composed during the short Napoleonic reign in Dubrovnik), signed Monsieur Antoine comte du Sorgo. On the other hand, a title page of his trio in A-flat bears the title: Trio per due Violini e Basso Del Nobil Sig.re Antonio Conte de Sierkowinsky. The Polish variant of his family name probably originates from his friendship with the French spy, a Polish nobleman Alexander Sapieha, who spent some time in Dubrovnik in 1804–1805 (cf. Katalini´c 2014, pp. 49, 79). 8 La Preghiera, a piece for voice and piano, was composed on the text by the Italian revolutionary poet and librettist, Conte Carlo Pepoli, better known for his libretto for Bellini’s I Puritani; it was published in the 1830s as part of a series of drawing-room miniatures in the newspaper series Cent-et-un. 5

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“Sorgo Luca ov. il figlio Antonio”.9 It is possible that it was originally composed on the Croatian text (translated from Latin by the Dubrovnik Baroque poet Ignjat - c/Ignazio Giorgi) by Luca Sorgo (the father) or some other composer, and Ðurdevi´ later translated and arranged in the Italian version by Antonio (the son). The analyses of the handwritings did not give any clue to this dubious source.

3 Julije/Giulio Bajamonti, a Physician, Composer, Ethnographer and Interpreter The Dubrovnik nobleman Luca Sorgo died in 1789 when his son Antun/Antonio was only 14. Luca’s brother Miho/Michele Sorgo assumed the role of tutor and directed the boy towards the humanities, especially history. On the other hand, the role of musical tutor was taken over by the family friend Julije/Giulio Bajamonti (1744– 1800), a physician and widely educated humanist and musician from Split, an important port in Dalmatia. The region was at that time (since the fifteenth century and until the abolishment of the Republic in 1797) under the jurisdiction of the Venetian Republic. Venice and its culture was, thus, the strong centripetal force for many intellectuals, individuals from Dalmatia included, and the place for their higher education. After his basic education in the humanities and in music in his native town, Bajamonti studied medicine in Padua (completed in 1773) and most probably took music lessons there or in Venice. His musical output was framed by the period from the 1760s to 1800 and consists of various sacred and secular compositions. Some 200 pieces have been preserved in sacred and secular institutions such as the Cathedral of Split, the parish church in Stari Grad on the Island of Hvar, Split City museum, and the Udina-Algarotti private collection (now kept in the Musikverein in Zagreb) etc. Among his masses, motets, passions (all in Latin) and organ pieces, his oratorio volgare (in Italian) La traslazione di San Doimo (1770) is considered to be a turning point in his style, being a transition from the Baroque operatic style to the transparent symmetrical setting of Classicism in music and the humanistic concept of the Enlightenment in its text.10 He compiled the libretto,11 composed music and prepared a booklet for its performance, which was not premiered in the church but in the theatre. Afterwards, during his studies in Padua, he composed da capo arias for voice and orchestra inspired by Venetian operas, aimed to be performed in his native town of Split. For a few years, he acted as a physician in the town of Hvar (on the 9 Some musicologists read the inscription as Sorgo Luca ed il figlio Antonio, or as Sorgo Luca ad il figlio Antonio, but I came recently to the third variant by analysing Kuzmi´c’s handwriting and it seems to me to be the right interpretation, also according to their biographies. 10 Cf. Kos (2004), pp. 75–90. 11 The plot is based on the legend of the local saint—St Domnius—the first bishop of Salona (then ancient Roman capital of Dalmatia) and Christian martyr in the fourth century, who became the patron saint of Split. He was buried in Salona, but in the seventh century, when Slavic, i.e. Croatian tribes arrived to the Adriatic coast, the citizens of Split wanted to transfer his sarcophagus from Salona to Split. The legend says that it could have been moved only by innocent children.

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Island of Hvar), where his student was Giuseppe Raffaelli, a priest, whom he sent to study music in Padua with Ferdinando Turrini Bertoni.12 They both performed in Bajamonti’s cantata as singers.13 Along with a respectable number of sacred pieces, Bajamonti composed a Requiem for the deceased scientist from Dubrovnik, Ruder Boškovi´c /Ruggiero Boscovich (1711–1787), who passed away in Milan. He spent his last 10 years as maestro di cappella of the Cathedral in Split. Besides his activities as physician and composer, Bajamonti was interested in the history of his native town and Dalmatia, in literature and poetry,14 in the natural sciences, in medical history as well as ethnography and wrote a series of articles in the form of letters, published mostly in Italian journals.15 It was he who accompanied the Italian abbot Alberto Fortis on his ethnographic journey on the east Adriatic coast in 1774,16 serving as guide and interpreter, visiting towns on the coast and villages in the interior—the Dalmatian hinterland—investigating the life and customs of the Dalmatian peasants, the Morlachs. It is most probable that Alberto Fortis found there the traditional lyric poem Hasanaginica/Asanaginica (he named it ‘a Morlach ballad’) on the wife of Hasan-aga/Asan-aga in the local (Ikavian) variant of the Croatian language17 near Zadvarje and the town of Imotski (at that time part of Ottoman Bosnia, today in Croatia)18 and that Bajamonti or some of his learned friends (such as Ðuro Feri´c from Dubrovnik) translated it into Italian. The poem in Croatian and Italian was published in Fortis’s Viaggio in Dalmazia in 1774,19 which Johann Wolfgang Goethe then translated from Italian into German (1775), Sir Walter Scott into English (1798), Alexander Pushkin into Russian (1835), etc. Bajamonti’s interest in collecting traditional songs went even further. Having developed a friendship with one Bosnian Beg during his visits to Bosnia, Bajamonti wrote down three folk melodies: Canto delle fanciulle de Travnik, Canto dei giannizeri and Canto dei cadi,20 which are 12

Cf. Miloševi´c (2016), pp. 151–160. Cf. Grgi´c (1996), p. 88. 14 He translated from French into Italian (Rousseau, Voltaire), translated and commented Latin poets, wrote verses in Italian and Latin, communicated in English, and after the fall of the Venetian Republic started to learn German (cf. Gostl 1996, pp. 183–198). 15 His literary legacy, his correspondence included, has been preserved in the Archaeological Museum in Split. 16 Fortis (1774). 17 The oldest variant of the poem in Croatian (in Cakavian-Ikavian ˇ dialect) was found in the Papali´c Collection in Split (cf. Miklošiˇc 1883, pp. 413–490). 18 The Cakavian-Ikavian ˇ variant of the local Croatian language was transformed (by Bajamonti himself?) into the Štokavian-Ijekavian variant of the Dubrovnik variant of the Croatian language, then by Vuk Stefanovi´c Karadži´c who thus proclaimed it a Serbian traditional poem. The bibliography on that issue is abundant and controversial. 19 Xalosna pjesanza plemenite Asan-Aghinize/Canzone dolente della nobile sposa d’ Asan-Aga, in: Fortis (1774), pp. 98–99ff. 20 Song of the girls from Travnik, Song of the janitsari—i.e. soldiers, Song of the judges. There are also seven texts of folk songs copied from the Bajamonti’s collection of folk songs, allegedly lost; the copy is kept in the Baltazar Bogiši´c Library in Cavtat. The texts are written in the Ikavian variant of Croatian. In his diary, Bajamonti describes how he came across these melodies (cf. Mimica 1996, p. 207). 13

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preserved in his legacy in the Archaeological museum in Split. Regarding Bajamonti’s ethnographic activity, his essay on Il Morlacchismo d’Homero21 should be pointed out in which he discusses the life, customs and oral poetry of the inhabitants of the hinterland of Split (the ‘Morlachs’) and compares it with Homeric tradition and contemporary literature on this topic (Giambatista Vico, Minervino, F. A. Wolf, etc.).22 Following the liturgical tradition, Bajamonti composed church music on Latin texts at the end of the eighteenth century. However, various church collections give evidence on some translations into Croatian, especially of those pieces that include the participation of the devotees in the church. For example, in the Franciscan monastery in Sinj (in the hinterland of Split), the Franciscan monk, versatile copyist and composer Petar Kneževi´c, translated a mass of Italian provenance from Latin into Croatian (Missa u harvatski jezik—Mass in the Croatian Language).23 Another example originates from the Franciscan monastery in Omiš to the south of Split, where translations of the popular and traditional sequence Stabat Mater were written down in 1804.24 On the other hand, parallel to the Latin liturgy of the Roman rite, on the Croatian coast and close hinterland, the tradition of Glagolitic singing also continued in the eighteenth century. The Church Slavonic language was permitted within the Western Rite by the Council of Trent and the Croatian variant was used in the churches led by the so-called Glagolitic monks.25 They were trained also in the so-called Zmajevi´c Seminary in Zadar (the administrative capital of Dalmatia), that survived until the Napoleonic conquest of the east-Adriatic coast in the early nineteenth century and the foundation of the Illyrian provinces.

4 Music, Text and Context in Zagreb, the Capital of Croatia The standard issue of church music in Zagreb, a centre of the bishopric established in 1094, is strongly bound to the Roman-Catholic church and Latin church books. However, the more stable political situation of the Kingdom of Croatia26 during the eighteenth century enabled a more dynamic development of the musical activity in and around the cathedral. The tradition of the Zagreb Rite lived in its specificities above all in the tradition of the sung passio in the Croatian language, as well as songs 21

On Morlacchism in Homer, published 1797 in Giornale Enciclopedico d’Italia in Padua. Mimica (1996), p. 208. 23 Breko Kustura (2016), pp. 221–229. 24 Katalini´ c (1991), pp. 12, 112d. 25 There are various combinations, such as liturgical singing in the Croatian vernacular, but the text written in the Glagolitic script, or the liturgy in Croatian in Latin script (for example, in: Rituale Romanum translated by Bartol Kaši´c into the Slavic language, printed in Rome in 1640). On that topic, cf. Bezi´c (2015), pp. 727–734. 26 According to an agreement, Kingdom of Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia unified with the Kingdom of Hungary in the twelfth century, and they both with Habsburg Empire since the sixteenth century, in order to fight the Ottoman invasion. 22

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sung in the church on various occasions, collected in the songbook Cithara octochorda, published in the eighteenth century in three editions (1701, 1723: printed in Vienna; 175727 : printed in Zagreb). Each of its eight units brings firstly Latin and then Croatian texts in the local Kajkavian dialect. Melodies were published on the stave system with four lines without any rhythmisation; the first two editions employed a rather archaic black square choral notation and the third one the rhomboid notation. Concerning music, all are one-part melodies with the exception of five added diaphonic songs in the second and the third editions. The songbook was published for the Zagreb bishopric, containing songs and melodies from the choral tradition, those with folk elements and those characteristic for the Zagreb rite, in order to standardise its repertoire. Further, the canonic repertoire of the Zagreb rite is preserved in Cantuale processionum (published in 1751) and in the passions: in 17th- and 18thcentury manuscripts in Croatian, such as Passionale croaticum (1683), compiled by the Zagreb canon Kristofor Perši´c, another by an anonymous compiler (1736) and finally in a printed volume (1764): Muka y szmert Kristusseva by Toma Zakarija Pervizovi´c.28 The newly appointed Zagreb bishop, Maksimilian Vrhovac (1752–1827), a welleducated and enlightened intellectual, got a decree by Joseph II (after reducing the chapter to only eight members) to abolish the Zagreb Rite29 and introduce the Roman one in order to standardize the rites within the Empire.30 The imposed and newly introduced German songs demanded new and able singers, which Vrhovac brought from Vienna. However, only rare elements of the Zagreb Rite (above all the melodies from Cithara octochorda) were to some extent revived at the end of the nineteenth century by the representatives of the Caecilian movement. At the same time, in the Bishopric seminary, students occasionally performed plays (often including music) in the local, Kajkavian variant of Croatian. The Jesuit tradition (not only in Zagreb) included such plays in Latin, and only after 1766 in Croatian.31 27 Its full title says: Cithara octochorda seu cantus sacri latino-croatici, quos in octo partes pro diversis anni temporibus distributos, ac chorali methodo adornatos, pia sua munificentia in lucem prodire jussit alma, et vetustissima cathedralis ecclesia zagrabiensis. The title explains its organisation in eight parts following the articulation of the church year and according to some special occasions (regular Sunday services, songs for the Blessed Virgin Maria, for various saints, for funeral services). The third edition comprises 327 songs with 218 melodies (some texts were sung to the same melodies, with a remark “ad notam”). 28 The Zagreb bishopric also published very traditional tutorials for choral singing (in Latin): Brevis cantus gregoriani notitia by Toma Kovaˇcevi´c (Vienna, 1701) and Fundamentum cantus gregoriani seu choralis by Mihael Šilobod-Bolši´c (Zagreb, 1760). 29 Zagreb rite was in use since the fourteenth century. More on the reforms in the musical aspect of the Zagreb Rite see in: Tuksar (2019), pp. 9–19. 30 „Inzwischen ist jedoch neuernannten Agramer Bischof aufzutragen, dass er sich gleich bei seinem Antritte der geistlichen Verwaltung seines Bisthums angelegen sein lasse, den angeblichen veralteten Ritus aus dem Chor seiner Cathedral-Kirche zu beseitigen, und dafür den in der lateinischen allgemein bestehenden Gregorianischen einzuführen.“ (a decree from 30 October 1787; cf. Ruspini (1916), p. 325). 31 Batuši´ c (2017), pp. 37–45.

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Bishop Vrhovac was a far-sighted learned person who realized the importance of the national issue—music and language included. In 1813, he edited a proclamation to Croatian parish priests to collect national heritage: Croatian terminology, customs and folk music. When organizing the visit of the Emperor Francis I to Zagreb, he arranged a series of folk dances performed by the noble youth in folk costumes. As a deputy of the Croatian Ban,32 Vrhovac attended the Hungarian parliament sessions in Pozsony, the capital of Hungary, constantly opposing Hungarian attempts to impose Hungarian as the official language,33 or, at least as an obligatory language in schools. Due to his constant strivings towards the protection of a national identity and his multilateral activities for the (not only cultural) benefit of his people, he is considered to be the most eminent forerunner of the national movement.34 Simultaneously, secular musical life in Zagreb experienced its development only in the second half of the eighteenth century, especially with the possibility to organize theatrical performances in permanent spaces. After some temporary stages which were used from the 1780s, in 1797 the Pejaˇcevi´c-Kulmer palace35 was adapted and established as a permanent public theatre that functioned until the opening of the first purpose-built theatre in Zagreb in 1834.36 Here, German opera companies were received, coming mostly from the Austrian towns of Graz, Klagenfurt, etc., bringing standard contemporary operatic repertoire.37 Only in the 1830s did the Croatian language slowly start to penetrate the stage, and music played an important role in that development. These trends led to the premiere of the “first Croatian national opera” in 1846.38

32

The position of the Zagreb Bishop included that function to act as Ban (Viceroy) when the actual Ban—i.e. a secular ruler—was prevented in his function. 33 To fight against constant attempts that German or Hungarian should be proclaimed the official language in Croatia, Croatian Parliament persisted in using Latin in the discussions. The first Parliament speech in Croatian was held by the deputy Ivan Kukuljevi´c Sakcinski in 1843, and it was officially in use since 1848. 34 The preliminary phase of the Croatian National Movement (until 1830) was marked by Enlightened and Romantic ideas that included the “collecting phase” of the national heritage, that became the base for the real National Movement (in 1830s), when the language reform with the standardization of the Croatian official language took place. More on M. Vrhovac and his role in the National Movement see in: Tuksar (2011), pp. 180–182. 35 In 1807, the building was bought by the Zagreb comes Anton/Antal Amadé de Várkonyi (with the financial assistance of the Bishop Vrhovac!), and, accordingly, today the theatre is remembered as Amadé’s theatre. 36 That edifice is now part of the Zagreb Parliament building, and the new theatre, still in use today—constructed by Helmer and Fellner—was opened in 1895. 37 Batuši´ c (2017). 38 Cf., among others, Katalini´ c (2016), pp. 67–80.

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5 Franciscan Music in Slavonia The organization of Franciscan provinces in the eighteenth century experienced many changes and divisions in the Croatian lands and its neighbouring space: because of the Ottoman invasion, the originally large Hungarian province of St Mary experienced divisions in the 17th and the first half of the eighteenth centuries. In 1757, Slavonian Franciscans separated from the Provincia Bosniae argentinae, thus forming the ˇ Provincia S. Ioannis a Capistrano. The head of the province, Friar Grgur Cevapovi´ c (1786–1830), wrote two books on the history of the province. Yet, even before this division, Franciscans in the Kingdom of Slavonia (as a part of the Triune Kingdom of Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia) returned to their monasteries immediately after the withdrawal of the Ottoman Turks at the end of the seventeenth century. Franciscans were the most present and the most popular church order in this region, especially after the abolishment of the Jesuit order and the closure of some monasteries by Joseph II. They supplied their monasteries and churches—above all in the mid-eighteenth century under their general definitor Josip Jankovi´c—with uniform liturgical books commissioned from the scriptorium of the Venetian monastery S. Francesco della Vigna (copyist of some of them was Giuseppe Maria Cordans). However, that repertoire was also abolished with the Josephinian reforms of the 1780s. There were also some fine local copyists in Slavonia; one of them was Friar Filip Vlahovi´c, originating from Kaposvár (Fr. Philippus a Capusuar) and active in the Slavonian monasteries of Velika (as vicar), Stara Gradiška (as guardian), Vukovar (vicar and organist) and Našice (where he died in 1775). Four chant-books copied and illuminated by his hand from 1719 to 1737 are preserved in Vukovar, Požega and Našice and contain masses and church songs in Latin as well as songs in Croatian in the local Štokavian-Ikavian dialect with organ accompaniment. They aimed to facilitate the inclusion and participation of the devotees in the liturgy, who were musically untrained but educated via oral tradition, and thus able to sing these traditional songs. It seems that Filip Vlahovi´c was not only a compiler and illuminator, but also a composer of some masses.39 ˇ The well-educated Franciscan G. Cevapovi´ c, mentioned above, went a step further: he composed a kind of a Singspiel, a series of 23 monophonic songs with texts entitled Josip, sin Jakoba patriarke, according to the Croatian translation40 of the Italian libretto Giuseppe riconosciuto by Pietro Metastasio. The play was premiered in Vukovar in 1819, as a part of festivities honouring the visit of Djakovo bishop Emerik Karl Raffay, and was repeated twice for other audiences. The play was performed by 32 local male and female41 students whose names were listed

39

Županovi´c (1984), pp. 167–169. Aleksandar Tomikovi´c, a Franciscan writer and director of the Gymnasium in Osijek, published there in 1791 the free translation of Metastasio’s libretto Giuseppe riconosciuto (1733), under the title: Josip poznan od svoje bra´ce. 41 It was quite unusual for that time to have girls on the stage, even for a biblical plot. 40

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in the publication of the following year.42 The text and the plot testify the influence of the school drama and Jesuit theatre tradition as well as elements of the folk tradition. The author followed the biblical plot, but also added two fairies: Srimka (from Srijem, i.e. east Slavonia) and Dalmatinka (from Dalmatia), who discuss the importance of singing in Croatian (they call it “Illyrian”)43 and criticize those who sing in foreign languages, thus acting an enlightening role on the eve of the national movement. The printed publication contains the author’s footnotes explaining his ideas of unification of continental and coastal Croatian historical lands. Even the musical part unites the “elite art music”, i.e. themes from European composers44 or European legacy,45 with those taken over from folk songs46 and some of them ˇ seem to be composed in the spirit of folk music, possibly by Cevapovi´ c himself.47 However, this piece for the musical stage raises many questions and demands further musicological investigation. Franciscan music in Slavonia formed only one part of the sacred sphere in this part of the Croatian lands. For example, sources in the town of Osijek, which was transformed during the eighteenth century from a military stronghold to a civic centre populated by military officers, church dignitaries, merchants and various craftsmen, give evidence that the main language spoken was German (mostly because of the ubiquitous presence of German military officers).48 Military musicians participated in making music in the church, and the officers initiated the establishment of the German theatre in the general headquarters building in the fortress. The Slavic component was obvious in the folk tradition, whereas in urban centres it grew stronger only after the mid-nineteenth century.

42

Csevapovich 1820. Under the term “Illyrian” language, the Croatian idea was to unify all ancient Croatian dialects and variants spoken in all Croatian historic lands. Only in 1835 was the official standardized Croatian language established based on the Štokavian dialect of the Dubrovnik literary tradition (although ˇ the Dalmatian Cakavian dialect had its own literary tradition since the late fifteenth century). The term “Illyrian” was forbidden within the Habsburg Empire in 1843, because the officials feared the possible unification of south Slavic nations. 44 Owing to RISM search possibilities, we can state that the song no. 4 (“Od stvorenja tavnog Svita”) has an identical incipit as a chorus (“Attestiam noi qui soscritti”) from the opera La Lodoiska (1796) by Johann Simon Mayr (RISM no. 240003292, 1.14). 45 The song no. 8 (“Lipo ti e od Hebrona”) belongs to the “European legacy” group, and can be identified as an anonymous song “Das gute Kind” (RISM no. 453004923). 46 Franjo Ks. Kuhaˇ c and some other authors pointed out that song no. 1 (“Na hiljadu i osam stotina”) resembles the Slavonian folk song “Mila moja gdje si sino´c bila” (cf. Županovi´c 1990, pp. 105–134). 47 For example, that might be the case with nos. 2 and 3. 48 The first grammar of the local Croatian language was written in German! Cf. Lanossovich (1778) (the second edition appeared in 1789, etc.). 43

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6 Conclusion These four different case studies offer a brief survey of the main topics concerning the Croatian linguistic issue in music of the (prolonged) eighteenth century. Its historical provinces had been disunited since the late Middle Ages and lived through different destinies within different political frames (Venetian Republic, Habsburg Monarchy, independent Dubrovnik Republic) but the main reason for their differences should be traced in their geographical position. A clear demarcation line between the Mediterranean circle of influences and the central-European influence was caused by the proximity of strong political and cultural centres on one hand, and the lack of communication possibilities between the different geographical regions on the other. Thus, it included linguistic issues of the respected regions. (1) In the Republic of Dubrovnik, a respectable literary tradition in the ŠtokavianIjekavian dialect co-existed in sacred compositions along with Latin texts. On the other hand, in the secular sphere it lived in parallel with the Italian language that prevailed in communication and official administration. Later, French was temporarily introduced into everyday life by the Napoleonic troupes between 1806 and 1813, especially after 1808,49 when the Republic ceased to exist. After the Congress of Vienna,50 Dubrovnik and its territory were subdued to the Habsburg administration and its nobility turned their interests towards Vienna,51 but due to the new transcontinental trade outside the Adriatic, its general economic trends were radically diminished. Along with the weakened political and economic role, Dubrovnik lost its 18th-century position as the strongest cultural centre on the east Adriatic. (2) Music in Dalmatia (here in the case of the composer Julije Bajamonti in Split) was composed on Italian texts in art music, while the presence of the Croaˇ tian language with its Cakavian-Ikavian dialect52 can be detected in the church music along with Latin and even Old Church Slavonic textual bases. Early 19thcentury Dalmatia, especially after the Congress of Vienna, experienced the same pattern as Dubrovnik by introducing Austrian culture, while the national Croatian movement centred in Zagreb would reach east Adriatic towns only in the second half of the nineteenth century.

49

Members of the new nobility were predominantly inclined towards liberal French culture— especially some more cosmopolitan noblemen, supporters of the Enlightenment—, and those of the ´ c 1995, p. 179). old nobility were traditionally oriented against it (cf. Cosi´ 50 Some representatives of the former Dubrovnik Republic have tried to re-establish the Republic again, but at that time, the era of such small political entities was surpassed by new bigger and stronger states. 51 For example, Elena Pozza-Sorgo/Puci´ c-Sorkoˇcevi´c, an amateur female composer and pianist who composed six songs for voice and piano on Metastasian-type (Italian) texts in 1816, often visited her husband who stayed for a longer period in Vienna, where he died in 1855. 52 The Cakavian-Ikavian ˇ dialect of the Croatian vernacular language, as well as Church Slavonic tradition, were also present in the peninsula of Istria.

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(3) Civil Croatia traditionally cultivated the Kajkavian dialect of Croatian, and in Zagreb, Varaždin, Bjelovar and on its whole territory, it was in use both in traditional church music of the Zagreb Rite as well as in the vernacular theatre, along with the Latin liturgy. On the other hand, German was the language of the officials, as well as of the theatre guest performances. Only in the first half of the nineteenth century would the strong impulse of the National movement result in the standardization of the Croatian official language, based on the Štokavian-Ijekavian dialect from Dubrovnik that would slowly spread towards the continental parts of the country, and only in the second half of the century would it arrive in the coastal towns. (4) The region of Slavonia was under strong German influence, but the nobility cherished strong contacts with their Hungarian counterparts, often having their estates on both sides of the Drava river, which served as the border towards Hungary. Thus, German was the official language in the secular sphere, including the military, along with rare examples of literature written in Croatian towards the end of the eighteenth century. On the other hand, the Franciscan order, always close to the folk, cherished the Štokavian-Ikavian dialect, characteristic for Slavonia of the time. Some common procedures and characteristics are traced in all four representatives of the Croatian lands, such as the interest in folk traditions by the end of the 18th and early nineteenth centuries. Besides, in all regions the three languages coexisted: the educated circles spoke respective foreign languages (Italian, German, Hungarian, Latin) with already established standards and developed terminology in the arts, sciences and administration. On the other hand, local dialects of Croatian were in use by rural inhabitants, but many members of the upper estates were familiar with them too. It is exactly during this period of the Enlightenment—and especially towards the age of Romanticism, that the idea of collecting, classifying and using national items found its fertile soil, upon which the national ideas would be developed during the first half of the nineteenth century. In the eighteenth century, the use of national elements did not have a self-defining meaning, in terms of national identity, but mostly expressed an interest in the research combined with a sort of local patriotism. These patriotic sentiments were a logical result of the continuous fight for the ‘self’ against the imposition of politically stronger foreign identities, although their cultures were gladly taken over whenever possible, often due to scarce local opportunities, especially in music making. Even the church sphere faced its stratification: in liturgy, the languages were Latin and Church Slavonic of the Croatian variant (in the coastal areas), but church songs were sung and published all over the country in vernacular Croatian of the living local variants. Yet, the church dignitaries and educated monks were those who stood for the national issue, often prior to the nobility. However, having a very thin layer of Bürgertum that would come to the fore at the beginning of the nineteenth century, some members of the nobility stood in at the front lines of the national movement, such as Counts Janko Draškovi´c (1770–1856), Ambroz Vranyczany (1801–1870), and some others.

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Finally, the area of the triplex confinium—used mostly to (imperialistically) demarcate the borders (marked by the rivers Una, Cetina, Krka and Zrmanja) between the Habsburg lands, the Venetian Republic and the Ottoman Empire—, in its cultural reality resulted in a multi-layered space with many types of various local confrontations. However, it was realized less in the contrasting or opposing civilizations at their frontiers, but much more in the co-existence of ideas, habits and intentions that continued to live along their borders.

References Batuši´c, N.: Geschichte des deutschsprachigen Theaters in Kroatien. Verlag der Österreichischen Akademije der Wissenschaften, Wien (2017) Bezi´c, J.: Glagolitic singing. In: Golub, I., Tuksar, S. (eds.) Croatia in the Baroque and the Enlightenment. A Cultural Survey, (Croatia and Dalmatia, vol. III), pp. 727–734. Školska knjiga, Zagreb (2015) Breko Kustura, H.: Sources of ‘Cantus fractus’ from Dalmatia: examples of the transfer, adoption and changes of Italian core repertory in the 18th century. In: Katalini´c, V. (ed.) Music Migrations in the Early Modern Age: People, Markets, Patterns and Styles, pp. 221–229. Hrvatsko muzikološko društvo, Zagreb (2016) ´ c, S.: O slomu Republike i ustroju francuske uprave u Dubrovniku 1808. i 1809. In: Anali Cosi´ Zavoda za povijesne znanosti HAZU u Dubrovniku, vol. 33, pp. 177–203 (1995) Csevapovich, G.: Josip, sin Jakoba Patriarke, Pritiskanjem Kraljevske mudroskupshtine magjarske, Budim (1820) Fortis, A.: Viaggio in Dalmazia, Alvise Milocco, Venezia (1774) Gostl, I.: Julije Bajamonti i poˇceci anglistike u Hrvatskoj. In: Frangeš, I. (ed.) Splitski polihistor Julije Bajamonti, pp. 183–198. Književni krug, Split (1996) Grgi´c, M.: Dr. Julije Bajamonti, glazbenik. In: Frangeš, I. (ed.) Splitski polihistor Julije Bajamonti, pp. 87–117. Književni krug, Split (1996) Katalini´c, V.: How to create a national opera? The Lisinski Case. Imaginary Memoirist Sketches with and Epilogue. De musica disserenda 12(1), 67–80 (2016) Katalini´c, V., Radoš-Perkovi´c, K. (eds.): Luca Sorgo: Memoriae. Transcription, translation and comments by K. Radoš-Perkovi´c, Hrvatska akademija znanosti i umjetnosti, Hrvatsko muzikološko društvo, Zagreb (2021) Katalini´c, V.: Katalog muzikalija u Franjevaˇckom samostanu u Omišu / Catalogue of Music Manuscripts and Prints in the Franciscan Monastery in Omiš, Hrvatska akademija znanosti i umjetnosti. Zavod za muzikološka istraživanja, Zagreb (1991) Katalini´c, V.: The Sorkoˇcevi´ces: Aristocratic Musicians from Dubrovnik. Music Information Centre, Zagreb (2014) Kos, K.: La Traslazione di San Doimo von Julije Bajamonti: Ein Werk des Übergangs. In: Katalini´c, V., Tuksar, S. (eds.) Glazbene kulture na Jadranu u razdoblju klasicizma/Musical Cultures on the Adriatic in the Age of Classicism, pp. 75–90. Hrvatsko muzikološko društvo, Zagreb (2004) Lanossovich, M.: Neue Einleitung zur slavonischen Sprache, Divald, Osijek (1778) Miklošiˇc, F.: Ueber Goethe’s Klaggesang von der edlen Frauen des Asan Aga. Geschichte des Originaltextes und der Übersetzung. In: Sitzungsberichte der Kais. Akademie der Wissenschaften. Philosophisch-historische Classe, vol. 103, issue 2, pp. 413–490. In Commission bei Karl Gerold’s Sohn, Wien (1883) Miloševi´c, M.: From the Periphery to the centre and back: the case of Giuseppe Raffaelli from Hvar (1767–1843). In: Guzy-Pasiak, J., Markuszewska, A. (eds.) Music Migrations in the Early Modern

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Age: Centres and Peripheries—People, Works, Styles, Paths of Dissemination and Influence, pp. 151–160. Liber Pro Arte, Warsaw (2016) Mimica, I.: Mjesto Julija Bajamontija u hrvatskoj usmenoj književnosti. In: Frangeš, I. (ed.) Splitski polihistor Julije Bajamonti, pp. 199–219. Književni krug, Split (1996) - Boškovi´c’s correspondence with his brother Božo Radoš-Perkovi´c, K.: Luka Sorkoˇcevi´c in Ruder (Natale Boscovich). In: Cavallini, I., Guzy-Pasiak, J., White, H. (eds.) Glazba, migracija i europska kultura. Sveˇcani zbornik za Vjeru Katalini´c/Music, Migration and European Culture, pp. 53–64. Essays in Honour of Vjera Katalini´c, Hrvatsko muzikološko društvo, Zagreb (2020) Ruspini, I. A.: Kanoniˇcka vizita b. M. Vrhovca iz godine 1792–1794. Bogoslovska smotra 7(4), 321–349 (1916) Tuksar, S.: The evolution of the idea of ‘National’ as a multi-level construct. Studia Musicologica 52(1–4), 170–188 (2011) Tuksar, S.: Augustin Kažoti´c, biskup zagrebaˇcki, sakralna glazba i liturgijsko pjevanje. Arti musices 50(1–2), 9–19 (2019) Županovi´c, L.: Centuries of Croatian Music, vol. 1. Music Information Centre, Zagreb (1984) ˇ Županovi´c, L.: Glazbena komponenta u ‘narodnoj igri’ Grge Cevapovi´ ca Josip, sin Jakoba Patriarke. ˇ In: Tadijanovi´c, D., Vonˇcina, J. (eds.) Znanstveni skup o fra Grguru Cevapovi´ cu, pp. 105–134. JAZU, Zavod za znanstveni rad Osijek, Osijek (1990)

Vjera Katalini´c * 1955 in Zagreb, studied in Zagreb (musicology, violin; BA and MA in musicology), Ph.D. in musicology (Universität Wien, with Theophil Antonicek); scientific advisor and director at the Institute for the History of Croatian Literature, Theatre and Music, Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts in Zagreb; full professor at the University of Zagreb, Music Academy, president of the Croatian Musicological Society (2007–2013; 2019-). Fields of interest: Musical culture in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the mobility of music and musicians and their networks; music archives in Croatia. Leader of the HERA project “Music Migrations in the Early Modern Age” (MusMig, 2013–2016); leader of the Croatian Research Foundation project “Networking through Music: Changes of Paradigms in the ‘Long 19th Century’” (NETMUS19, 2017–2021), currently researcher on the CRF project “Institutionalization of modern bourgeois musical culture in the nineteenth century in civil Croatia and Military Border” (2021–2025). Published four books (among them Violinski koncerti Ivana Jarnovi´ca. Glazbeni aspekt i društveni kontekst njihova uspjeha u 18. stolje´cu [Violin Concertos by Giovanni Giornovichi. Musical Aspect and Social Context of their Success in the 18th Century], 2006; Sorkoˇcevi´ci – dubrovaˇcki plemi´ci i glazbenici / The Sorkoˇcevi´ces – Aristocratic Musicians from Dubrovnik, 2014), some 230 articles; (co-)edited 10 proceedings (among them OFFMOZART. Glazbena kultura i “mali majstori” srednje Europe 1750.-1820. / OFF-MOZART: Musical Culture and the ‘Kleinmeister’ of Central Europe 1750–1820 in 1995; The Opera as a High Culture? Discourse on Opera and Operetta during the Late 19th Century, 2012, with S. Tuksar and H. White; Music Migrations in the Early Modern Age: People, Markets, Patterns and Styles, 2016) as well as 8 music scores (by G.M. Stratico, J. Bajamonti and G. Giornovichi).

Franz Brendel’s ‘Symphonic Poem Dilemma’: Tailoring the Vocal-Instrumental Relationship to Fit the ‘New-German School’ Sean Reilly

1 Introduction When music critic and historian Franz Brendel (1811–1868) coined the term ‘NewGerman School’ at the Leipzig Tonkünstler-Versammlung in June 18591 ––officially naming Franz Liszt, Richard Wagner, and Hector Berlioz as the leaders of music’s ‘progressive party’––he introduced an array of problems and paradoxes that have long occupied critics and musicologists alike.2 Perhaps the most obvious dilemma, apart from the question of nationality, was the implication that the future of music would take two parallel paths, in the separate but equal genres of the symphonic poem and the musical drama. Not only did this notion directly contradict Wagner’s idea of the dissolution of instrumental music into the Gesamtkunstwerk, it was also largely inconsistent with Brendel’s own prophecy of the decline of instrumental music, reiterations of which can be found as late as 1857.3 While both Wagner and Brendel found a new appreciation for the possibilities of instrumental music after experiencing Liszt’s symphonic poems, only Brendel would make fundamental modifications to his teleological interpretation of the relationship between vocal and instrumental music.4 His change of course—which followed a performance by Liszt in Leipzig in February 18575 —culminated in a panegyric on the works in his Neue

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Brendel (1859b), p. 271; for an English translation of Brendel’s speech, see Deaville (2009). See Altenburg (2006), p. 11. 3 Brendel (1857a), p. 26. 4 See Wagner’s “Letter about Franz Liszt” (Wagner 1857). Detlef Altenburg points out that the letter did “little or nothing” with respect to the conflict between the flagship genres of the New-German School (Altenburg 2006, p. 11). 5 Brendel (1857b). 2

S. Reilly (B) Leipzig University, Leipzig, Germany © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 H.-W. Heister et al. (eds.), Word Art + Gesture Art = Tone Art, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20109-7_25

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Zeitschrift für Musik (NZfM) in 1858, “Franz Liszt’s symphonische Dichtungen”.6 Here, a rare acknowledgement of previous miscalculations was buoyed by attempts to portray the symphonic poem as an instrumental pendant to the musical drama.7 Rereleased as the monograph Franz Liszt als Symphoniker at the end of 1858,8 the article paved the way for the conceptual birth of the New-German School the following summer. On one hand, Brendel’s efforts to establish equal footing between Liszt’s instrumental music and Wagner’s operas appear rather unproblematic: The move fits logically into the general developments of the decade’s extensive journalistic disputes,9 reflecting both Brendel’s growing enthusiasm for Liszt over the course of the 1850s and his belief that music was moving toward a union with poetry. Apart from this, Brendel had often expressed scepticism about Wagner’s pessimistic views on the fate of the ‘individual arts’ [Einzelkünste].10 On the other hand, it is remarkable for a historian so committed to a linear concept of musical progress to take such an abrupt turn, effectively seeking to defuse the dynamic of a dichotomy that had stood at the center of music-aesthetic discourse over the course of the previous half-century. The following will thus place Brendel’s approach to the ‘symphonic poem dilemma’ under the microscope, examining his strategies for resolving it and the challenges he faced in the process. A larger context will then be considered for a better understanding of his motivations, with the overarching goal of providing a unique perspective of the New-German relationship between the vocal and the instrumental.

2 Foundations: Vocal and Instrumental in Music’s Struggle for Consciousness Brendel’s most explicit remarks about the decline of instrumental music began after 1850, putting them firmly in the context of his reception of Wagner’s essay Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft.11 For example, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony marked the “self-dissolution”12 of instrumental music, it was the “coping stone of this sphere”,13 one which “lies in essence, in principle, finished before us”14 and “has, for the most part, completed the course of its development”.15 In other words, “instrumental music 6 Brendel (1858). The article will be referred to in the following simply as “Symphonische Dichtungen”. 7 Ibid., p. 86, 142. 8 Brendel (1859a). 9 See Roth–Roesler (2020). 10 Müller-Reuter (1906), p. 339; Brendel (1856b), p. 35. 11 Wagner (1850). 12 Brendel (1852a), p. 517. 13 Brendel 1854, p. 13. 14 Brendel (1852a), p. 532. 15 Ibid., p. 517.

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has been reduced to a second-rate phenomenon”,16 thus “the future success of art depends on the prioritization of vocal music”.17 While the influence of Wagner on these proclamations is unmistakable, their origins in Brendel’s thought can be found as early as 1842, well before Wagner played any significant role in his musical views.18 Above all, they derive from Brendel’s version of the idea that music history constitutes an organic whole, which underwent significant elaboration and transformation throughout his life: from the self-organized public lectures that served as a springboard for his career (1841– 1844),19 through to his seminal History of Music (completed 1851) and its subsequent three revised editions (1855, 1860, 1867).20 Consistent throughout is the underlying three-stage structure (sublime-beauty-decay [Erhabenheit-Schönheit-Verfall]), which Brendel––one of music history’s most famous Hegelians––used to describe the path of music from a predominance (Übergewicht) of the spirit (Geist) to one of sensory (sinnliche) material and appearance (Erscheinung), passing through a midpoint of balance (Gleichgewicht) found in the classical beauty of Mozart.21 In correspondence with a succession of “dominance” among genres––church music, opera, instrumental music22 ––the shift is also one from the religious to the profane, and from vocal to instrumental: If church music is rooted in the heavenly realm, descends from the divine to the human, and therefore, with only a servile role of the instruments, depends primarily on the most spiritual material, the vocal [Gesang]; if dramatic music, at home in the world, and therefore emancipating the instruments more and more, achieves on the grounds of the purely human the reconciliation of the divine and the earthly, which is essential to all art; then instrumental music is of the most elementary nature, and signifies the furthest descent of art into this world, into the world of appearances, the furthest separation of the two main elements of beauty.23

Accordingly, the rise of instrumental music in Brendel’s philosophy of history is inextricably linked with the surrender of the spirit to the appearance, the stage of music’s decline. The new imbalance has as a result the contemporary preponderance of formalism and virtuosity. With respect to vocal music, Brendel’s scorn was mostly reserved for composers he saw as degrading the voice to the status of an instrument 16

Brendel (1853), p. 103. Brendel (1854), p. 266. 18 Brendel would later claim to have known only Rienzi when Die Kunst und die Revolution was published in 1850 (Brendel 1855a, p. 315). His few remarks from the time range from cautious enthusiasm for Wagner’s ideas on new opera forms to indifference toward his actual music (Brendel 1845c, p. 59n; Brendel 1846a, p. 72). 19 Schiffner (1843a), p. 34. 20 Brendel (1852a), Brendel (1855a), Brendel (1860a), Brendel (1867a). 21 Brendel (1846c). 22 Brendel (1845b), pp. 64. This succession is consistence with Hegel’s views with respect to his dialectical progression within the Christian-Romantic stage of art, see Nowak (1978), p. 52. 23 Brendel (1846c), p. 178. While the rest of this article is transferred into all editions of Brendel’s History of Music, this specific passage is omitted (Brendel 1852a, p. 149). 17

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through a negligence of the text,24 building melodies he would later label ‘absolutemusical’.25 It goes almost without saying that Brendel––flagbearer of musical progress–– would not stop here. He promptly negates this Mozart-inspired road of “materialism devoid of spirit” with one of “spiritualism” paved by Beethoven,26 imbuing the role of instrumental music in his interpretation of history with ambivalence. Above all, it is the overall historical development of music from objectivity to subjectivity—and, more specifically, the relentless drive toward the latter in Beethoven’s instrumental music—that forestalls the imminent demise of music, clearing the way for it to forge ahead into the future and fulfil art’s fundamental task of “reconciling the divine and the earthly”27 : In the beginning, we see a subjectivity that is still completely attached to the object, which later becomes independent, withdraws to the circle of its own inner being and thereby becomes secularized, and, finally, becomes completely absorbed in itself, reaching a pinnacle; and in this way, at the same time, we have the great spectacle of how the spirit, which has succumbed to the appearance through the dominance of instrumental music, rises again from the earthly and, while the Mozartian school sank into formalism and finally into triviality, strives freely and boldly up to heaven. The content of Beethoven’s instrumental music is that of pure subjectivity in principle, rising up to the divine; the personality that has become free, fending for itself, strives here for free union with the divine source, and celebrates at last, with all the splendor and magnificence of the instruments, victory and union.28

That being said, Brendel did not see Beethoven’s spiritualist path continuing toward endless subjectification, but rather into a process of ‘re-objectification’29 that leads music out of the realm of instinct into consciousness: The “subjectivity taken to the extreme [by Beethoven’s successors] turns into a renewed, and in fact far richer objectivity, the achievement of which is the task of the future”.30 Thus, with respect to 24

“An […] unfortunate state of affairs is […] the ongoing practice of performing German vocal music in Italian. […] It allows the old struggle between the sensual and the spiritual principle in music to continue. Performances in a language which is not familiar to the public as the mother tongue, even if a German translation is provided, degrade the voice almost to the level of an instrument, and interfere with […] the intellectual understanding, the higher penetration of word and sound, favoring instead sensual melodiousness; this is the thoughtless enjoyment of music, which we must work against if possible”, Brendel (1846b), p. 127. 25 The “absolute-musical vocal melody is something in and of itself, even without words” (Brendel 1856a, p. 26), or, a melody that “uses the word as background” (Brendel 1855a, p. 298). 26 Brendel (1845b), p. 67. Mozart’s instrumental music, while establishing an equilibrium between content and form, “made itself comfortable” in the latter. With respect to vocal music, “the superiority he gave music in relation to the text led to a complete negligence of the latter” (Brendel 1845c, p. 110). Accordingly, Brendel would also later label Mozart an “absolute musician” (Brendel 1856c, p. 85). 27 Note 23; see also Brendel (1845b), p. 64 and Schiffner (1843c), p. 20. 28 Brendel (1846c), p. 187. 29 Music as “subjective inwardness [Innerlichkeit]” stands on the path of the spirit in Hegel’s system between objectification in painting and re-objectification in poetry, see Nowak (1978), p. 50 and Nowak (1971), p. 203. 30 Brendel (1852a), p. 516.

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the fate of ‘pure instrumental music’31 as a carrier of musical progress, all roads lead to Rome: While materialism ends in standstill, spiritualism––continuously seeking more clarity in the process of re-objectification––inevitably turns toward the incorporation of text (or, in vocal music, the “more intimate penetration” of the existing text32 ). Although music in Brendel’s philosophy of history must also strive toward clarity independent of the vocal––in the sense of his well-known maxim of “definiteness of expression [Bestimmtheit des Ausdrucks]”33 ––it is “rooted in sensation [Empfindung]”, and its definiteness limited to the “realm of moods [Stimmungen]”.34 Indeed, Brendel describes music’s “main deficiency, especially instrumental music” as “the inability to elaborate its content to the clarity of a concept [Deutlichkeit der Vorstellung]”.35 Music that journeys toward this goal alone embarks on a “futile flight”; any desire to “compete with the definiteness of the word” would mean music must “abandon its foundation”.36 In other words, the conceptual clarity found in words was seen by Brendel as non-translatable to sensations, and only attainable in music through the incorporation of text as a complement: Instrumental music must “call the word to its aid” to provide the “last definiteness”, a step first realized in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony: We see how in Beethoven the word finally wrestles its way out of pure instrumental music, how all instrumental music is no longer sufficient for him, how he calls the word to his aid, how he combines poems with instrumental music in order to produce a completely definite impression, in order to achieve the last still lacking definiteness in instrumental music through the word. […] Schiller’s Ode to Joy truly results from the preceding instrumental music, the word serves the latter and is called to help in order to achieve the last still lacking definiteness.37

Brendel made this cornerstone remark in his first extensive article as editor-inchief of the NZfM, a comparative study of Schumann and Mendelssohn that focussed largely on the development of instrumental music. In an apparent programmatic turn toward the opera in his second major article,38 he offered a glimpse at what he saw as the ideal of this complementary relationship, unambiguously attributing 31

The term is used here in accordance with Brendel to refer to music that does not implement the voice. 32 Brendel (1855a), p. 196. Brendel points to Schubert and subsequent lied composers as moving toward a practical realization of this concept, making the genre an exception to the contemporary decadence in vocal music. 33 See Winkler (2006). 34 Brendel (1849), p. 25. 35 Ibid., p. 23. 36 Ibid., p. 25. While this article is integrated into all editions of Brendel’s History of Music (Brendel 1852, pp. 35ff.), this specific passage is relativized from the third edition on to accommodate Liszt (Brendel 1860a, p. 38). 37 Brendel (1845b), p. 82. 38 A comparison of two passages at the beginning of each of these articles highlights Brendel’s general distinction between instrumental music of the present (subjective, instinctive) vs. vocal music of the future (objective, conscious): “The unboundedness of the subject […] is the characteristic of the modern age, and instrumental music is preferably suited for this. In vocal works, a certain content is given by the text […]. In instrumental music, on the other hand, everything is left

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the instrumental and the vocal to states of unconsciousness and consciousness, respectively: The significance of the orchestra in vocal music is […] its voice as the unconscious power, that which, as Goethe says, ‘walks through the labyrinth of the breast in the night,’ while that which has wrestled its way out into the light of consciousness reaches its appearance in the vocal melody and the word hovering above it; the orchestra forms the basis for this conscious expression, […] adding the mediating states of the soul that do not reach consciousness […].39

This passage—which goes on to describe “the world of instruments” as an “elementary existence”—offers a mirror image of the previously cited remarks on the vocal and the instrumental as “spiritual” and “elementary” material, respectively.40 It is what Brendel called the “true relationship” between the vocal and the instrumental, or, in other words, a re-objectified version thereof.

3 Revisions from the Perspective of Production A key to presenting Liszt’s Symphonic Poems as an equal counterpart to Wagner’s concept of musical drama was Brendel’s assertion in his “Symphonische Dichtungen” that Liszt had established a new ideal with his “definite embrace of the program, the unification of the conscious and the unconscious”, keeping instrumental music “alive for our time and the future”.41 Considering the role outlined above of the relationship between the vocal and the instrumental in music’s struggle for consciousness, it is clear that Brendel would need to make radical modifications to his earlier ideas in order to create equal space for instrumental and vocal music on the spiritualist path blazed by Beethoven; especially with respect to the idea of ‘last definiteness’, and, more specifically, to the role of the Ninth Symphony. The problem, however, was not necessarily the most obvious question of whether ‘extra-musical’ text,42 such as a program, could provide ‘last definiteness’. Brendel’s early use of the term did, on one hand, suggest a closer association with vocalized ‘inner-musical’ text: The original purpose of the Beethoven Ninth passage was chiefly to portray Schumann’s overall development, claiming that his “striving for definiteness of expression reaches its peak when the composer enters the realm of vocal music […]. The lieder are a continuation of his character pieces for piano […], the definiteness of expression that was already present earlier has now reached its conclusion through the text; to the composer’s inspiration.” (Brendel 1845b, p. 64); “Of all the musical genres of the present day, it is opera, in particular, which has a future ahead of it, which can be the bearer of contemporary consciousness and national development” (Brendel 1845c, p. 33). 39 Brendel (1845c), pp. 109f. 40 See note 23. 41 Brendel (1858), p. 142. 42 ‘Extra-musical text’ is used, like ‘inner-musical’ later on, in a neutral sense, text that is not an immanent component of musical reproduction. See also Eggebrecht (1985).

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the melodic element has become independent in the singing voice”.43 On the other hand, he also described Schumann’s use of titles in his piano works as an attempt to add the “last definiteness”,44 echoing a sentiment expressed in one of his earliest publications.45 The bigger dilemma was the transitory status of the phenomenon of ‘last definiteness’ as the point of music’s turn from subjectification to re-objectification. Brendel’s use of the term always referred to the conceptual clarity that came as a result of an instinctive compositional process, a final bit of conceptual clarity added to music that was otherwise overwhelmingly comprised of sensations. Instrumental music that incorporated the vocal in this manner thus constituted a sort of microcosm of— as well as a turning point in—music’s overall struggle for consciousness. Using a program to add ‘last definiteness’ lent instrumental music historical legitimacy while at the same time closing the door on the possibility of equal status with vocal music. The concepts it provided could never be part of the compositional process from the outset, or exist in the equal, symbiotic relationship with sensations that characterized Brendel’s vision of music’s re-objectified state. In other words, program music could never be seen as an artwork of the future. A major revision to the role of Beethoven’s Ninth in the third edition of Brendel’s History of Music from 1860—which, edited soon after the first TonkünstlerVersammlung, was the first edition published after Brendel’s initial concert experiences with the Symphonic Poems––demonstrates well how Brendel approached this problem from the perspective of production. In a passage originally printed in the NZfM in 1848, Brendel reused the above-cited formulation from three years prior, describing the word in the symphony as the “last definiteness”, which “wrestles its way out of pure instrumental music”: […] the connection of the words with the pure instrumental music […] is completely justifiable […], a necessity of the historical development of instrumental music, especially Beethoven’s. Instrumental music progresses from the indefinite to the definite, from a general arousal to the rendering of completely specific states of the soul [Seelenzustände], and thus the word finally wrestles its way out as the last definiteness, not as that which would have already existed before musical creation, but as a result that emerges from the concentration of musical sensations. This is the complete opposite of an increasingly common misunderstanding, which regards the instrumental work as a transfer of conscious concepts into the sphere of music. Those who think like this believe they can approach the work by looking at it backwards, trying to ponder what the author might actually have had in mind when writing a symphony. The word in the Ninth Symphony is secondary, subordinate, that which is added in order to finally lend the last definiteness to the increasingly pronounced sensation.46

This implicit reference to the beginning of the end of instrumental music’s historical relevance became explicit when he transferred the passage verbatim into the first 43

Brendel (1845b), p. 121. Brendel (1845b), p. 91. 45 Brendel (1839), p. 191. Here, Brendel equates Schumann’s use of titles with the aspiration in vocal music (mainly Schubert) to go beyond the expression of the “overall sensation” of the text and develop its “particular side”. 46 Brendel (1848), pp. 51f. 44

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two editions of his History of Music (1852 and 185547 ), placing it in close proximity to the more emphatic remarks mentioned at the beginning of this paper and, correspondingly, into the context of his Kunstwerk der Zukunft reception. Here, he uses Beethoven’s Ninth and the idea of ‘last definiteness’ to counter notions that pure instrumental music can reach the conceptual clarity of words or that a concept can be involved in the composition of ‘valid’ instrumental music from the beginning. In the 1860 edition of his History of Music, the role of Beethoven’s Ninth is flipped, portraying the integration of the vocal not as the necessary destination of instrumental music but as a transition to the concept-oriented instrumental music of the New-German School. Instead of representing “the complete opposite of an increasingly common misunderstanding”, the phenomenon of “last definiteness” is: much different from the direction that has recently broken ground [i.e., the New-German School], in which a more conscious element is indeed simultaneously involved in the creation, insofar as a transfer of conscious concepts into the realm of music takes place to a certain extent. Here, then, the definiteness of the concept is inherently present. On the other hand, at the previous standpoint, it is incorrect, or at least very unreasonable, to ponder what the author might have thought of in a symphony, what conscious concepts he might have based it on. There, everything is still rooted exclusively in purely musical sensation. Not until the works of the newest school, as I said, does a connection to certain concepts take place. In this sense, Beethoven is the man of transition, the one in whom this direction prepares itself, and thus the word in the Ninth Symphony is not primary, as for example in a work of vocal music, but secondary, subordinate, that which is added in order to finally lend the last definiteness to the increasingly pronounced sensation, the result, the solution to the puzzle, not the object that awakes artistic inspiration.48

By juxtaposing the primary nature of words in vocal music with their subordinate role in Beethoven’s Ninth, while at the same time distancing the music of the New-German School from the latter by suggesting that concepts are inherent to its members’ compositional processes, Brendel lifts New-German instrumental music to the status of vocal music. No longer an indication of instrumental music’s demise, Beethoven’s Ninth becomes “the dawn of a new brilliant period, a turning point in the development of instrumental music”.49 As Brendel wrote in his “Symphonische Dichtungen” article, “the conscious idea”, which, in Beethoven, had “emerged as a final result” was taken by Liszt as a “starting point, a basis of the entire creation […]. Out of music as an art of the soul, the idea emerges as an equal, co-creating power”.50 This was certainly a considerable shift: Brendel had already firmly established the double role of the conceptual clarity provided by the ‘last definiteness’—as both a 47

Brendel (1852a), pp. 364f.; Brendel (1855a), pp. 48f. Brendel (1860a), p. 339. The passage is identical to the previous citation up until “concentration of musical sensations”. 49 Brendel (1860a), p. 338. This replaces the claim that Beethoven, from the “technical” perspective had “made a complete mistake” in the fourth movement, because “spirit and material, content and form” had “completely fallen apart” (Brendel 1848, p. 51). 50 Brendel (1858), p. 111, Brendel (1859a), p. 35. In accordance with developments in aesthetic discourse, the sensation-concept dualism is extended in Brendel’s later work to, and often used analogously with that of feeling-idea [Gefühl-Idee/Gedanke]. 48

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result in the Ninth Symphony and a starting point for the progressive movement—in the context of the “dissolution of instrumental music”; namely, by depicting Berlioz’s ‘dramatic symphonies’ as a result thereof. The dissolution, Brendel claimed in the 1855 edition of his History of Music (alluding to the original ‘last definiteness’ passage from 1845 cited above51 ), occurred because “instrumental music alone is no longer sufficient for that which is meant to be conveyed, and consequently, Berlioz had to turn what emerges as a result in Beethoven into his starting point, Berlioz had to place up front, with explicit consciousness, the principle of a connection with poetry, while in Beethoven this only happens instinctively, and only arises as a final point at the end of his development”.52 Here, Brendel builds on more specific remarks on Berlioz’s integration of the vocal into the symphony three years earlier, when he claimed that Berlioz, trapped between an “unworthy opera industry” and a “field of pure instrumental music” that was “essentially exhausted”, had to resort to a “twilight genre” when composing La damnation de Faust and Roméo et Juliette. While Berlioz took “Beethoven’s hint” about instrumental music, he was “not yet able to reach the artwork of the future, the Wagnerian point of view, [he] was pushed to this strange form lying in the middle”. This made Berlioz “one of the most important mediators between Beethoven and Wagner”, leading Brendel to add one more milestone on the spiritualist path from instrumental to vocal: “Beethoven, Schumann, Berlioz, Wagner”.53

4 Complications from the Perspective of Reception Admittedly, this shift was prepared to some extent by Brendel’s “Program music” article in 1856,54 a follow-up to Liszt’s downright manifesto on the topic, “Berlioz und seine Haroldsymphonie”.55 Here, Brendel drew on his own criticism of Berlioz’s instrumental music in the 1855 edition of History of Music, where he had addressed 51

See note 37. Brendel (1855a), p. 282 (italics in original). The comparison finds its parallel in vocal music with Robert Franz and Schubert: Brendel uses the term “explicit consciousness [ausdrückliches Bewusstsein]” to separate Franz from Schubert, as the latter, despite being the first to exhibit “a more intimate penetration of text and melody”, was still guided by instinct (Brendel 1855a, p. 210; see note 32). 53 Brendel (1852b), p. 240. This report of Liszt’s concerts in Weimar was integrated into the same edition of Brendel’s History of Music (Brendel 1855a, pp. 249f.) as the previous citation. While the concert led to a somewhat improved opinion of Berlioz, the article is still largely dismissive of Berlioz’s purely instrumental music: “For Berlioz’s pure instrumental works, at least for many of them, there is hardly any hope of an entrance into Germany; these vocal compositions lie closer, and are perhaps the most important ones” (Brendel 1852b, p. 253). 54 Brendel (1856c). Written one year before the Leipzig concert in 1857, Liszt’s works are noticeably absent from this article. In an excerpt from History of Music published around this time, Brendel writes that he only knows Mazeppa in the piano arrangement (Brendel 1856d, p. 71). 55 Liszt (1855b). 52

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“the question of the justification of Berlioz’s tone-painting, his program music”,56 this time reiterating that Berlioz, among others, had crossed the boundaries separating instrumental music and poetry with compositions in which “the center of the work of art is no longer in the sensation but in the concept”.57 Brendel saw this step— despite the “invalid” results58 —as historically necessary, tracing it back to the ‘resultstarting point’ paradigm of ‘last definiteness’ in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony,59 thus extending the symphony’s role as a turning point for a concept-oriented compositional process to the realm of pure instrumental music.60 Nevertheless, while Brendel’s transfer of the ‘result-starting point’ paradigm to developments within instrumental music made it easier to later add Liszt to the end of the spiritual path—using Berlioz as a link not only to Wagner but also to Liszt61 —it also underlined his long-expressed ambivalence toward ‘extra-musical’ texts from a reception perspective, anticipating the virtually insurmountable hurdle he would face in his attempt to elevate the symphonic poems to the level of the musical drama two years later. Throughout his career, Brendel was persistent in his belief that instrumental music had to stand on its own; while a general educational level was necessary for an accurate understanding,62 the composer could never expect the listener to be familiar with a specific concept guiding the composition. This position can be traced back to his early criticism of Schumann’s Carnaval for piano as an “aberration”, a “witty [geistreiche] characterization”, from which, though it is “interesting” for the listener, “the sensory perception [Empfindung] receives very little nourishment, it is predominantly the intellect that is occupied […]. The very fact that the work presupposes knowledge, acquaintance with these persons, in order to be understood, robs it of the general effect, and withdraws it from the generally human sphere”.63

56

Brendel (1855a), pp. 255f. Brendel (1856c), pp. 88f. 58 Ibid., p. 91. 59 Ibid., p. 87. 60 In a sense, Beethoven’s Ninth replaced the Pastoral Symphony, which Brendel had previously used as a turning point within the development of instrumental music, justifying “musical painting” in the name if “definiteness of expression”. Due to the incorporation of “external depictions in his works”, Beethoven had left “the realm of pure Tonkunst” (Brendel 1850, pp. 242f.), here in the sense of ‘absolute music’ (see note 25), not pure instrumental music. 61 Brendel adds Liszt to the succession mentioned above (note 53) in Brendel (1860a), p. 532. In the last edition of his History of Music, Brendel re-emphasizes this: “[Berlioz] forms the mediating link between Liszt and Wagner on one side, Beethoven, Schumann, Mendelssohn on the other” (Brendel 1867a, p. 564). 62 Brendel (1855b), p. 90. 63 Brendel (1845b), p. 91; Brendel’s description of Carnaval as an “aberration [Abweg]” goes back to 1839 (Brendel 1839, p. 191), and is echoed in 1856, when Brendel links the piece with Berlioz for having “crossed the boundaries of instrumental music” (see note 57). See also Ramroth 1991, p. 106. 57

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In countless allusions to Hegel’s “delicately drawn boundaries of musical beauty” thereafter,64 Brendel continually pointed to the limits of instrumental music, the most imminent danger for which was a reliance on ‘extra-musical’ text that could threaten the unity of sensations and compromise the actual musical experience. Indeed, it seemed that the full potential of programs was exhausted in the function of ‘last definiteness’ as described above: providing a touch of conceptual clarity to a musical experience rooted in instinct and sensations. This is also consistent with how Brendel began his description of program music in his “Symphonische Dichtungen”: The program is merely a point of reference for the imagination. Music’s specific characteristic of expressing that which is unspeakable through words remains its most beautiful and greatest aspect. But the completely indefinite should be directed, the wandering phantasy should be guided to a certain object, just as the painting only receives its last definiteness through the title, through the caption.65

However, Brendel was also well aware that this position would not hold water in light of his argument that Liszt was an equal counterpart to Wagner; or, more specifically, that the concept could play a primary role in instrumental music, not only in the compositional process but also in the experience of the listener. He thus found himself flirting with a compromise of his normative ideal of musical beauty in the passage that followed, where he opened up to the possibility that the program was, in fact, a part of the piece itself and could function as door to its understanding: Just as Wagner opened up a new ideal for opera through his poetry, so too did Liszt through his programs, through their subjects, which supplied the music with new material. […] Now I am indeed inclined to go a step further in the concessions that I make to program music than I have in the past, and if I previously established as a principle that the program may only appear as an encore, precisely to bring a greater definiteness for the imagination, then I would now even think of it as belonging, to a certain degree, to the work of art itself, and would therefore find it permissible for it to provide a first approach, an entrance into a piece of music […].66

The ambiguity with which Brendel would later describe how this approach was supposed to work with respect to an actual musical experience is perhaps the best indication of his inability to truly commit to the idea.67 At the very least it is clear that, for Brendel, a program could never compete with the vocal when it came to complementing musical sensations with conceptual clarity. A good illustration of Brendel’s belief in the superiority of ‘inner-musical’ text with regard to the musical experience can be found, for example, in his reaction to Liszt’s Faust Symphony in 1857: 64

Hegel (2018), p. 209; eg., Brendel (1845d), p. 174; Brendel (1850), p. 249; Brendel (1852b), p. 238. 65 Brendel (1858), p. 86. 66 Ibid., Brendel (1859a), pp. 12f. 67 Two years later, Brendel said the program should first be used as a “point of orientation”, should then be forgotten during the listening experience, and finally returned to afterwards (Brendel 1860b, p. 77). Later, he claimed that the program’s “only aim is to prevent the vague wandering of the phantasy” but that one should also look for the subject in the music (Brendel 1866, p. 254). See also the above-cited reference to “the wandering phantasy” (note 65).

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It is the incorporation of these words and the corresponding treatment of them that not only gives the work its conclusion, but, in fact, first allows for the understanding of it. Even now, I believe that this third movement marks, at the very least, a step beyond the previous boundaries of instrumental music. If this step taken alone seems daring, it finds its justification in the final chorus, as it is here that the work is elevated into the realm of thought, culminating in this intellectual apex, providing the explanatory solution for the third movement. Without this conclusion, this Mephistophelean Scherzo is a witty […] piece of music full of original characteristic sound effects, which, taken alone, however, […] would hardly be accepted by the public. It provides the key and foundation for the intellectual element within, which goes beyond the purely musical sphere. Thus, this conclusion is a true sunrise and I can only compare my delight with that which I felt when the poetic meaning of the 9th Symphony became clear to me for the first time. In truth: The idea [Gedanke] is generated here out of the instrumental as in the 9th Symphony, but in a new and creative way, not by imitation.68

Just like the “witty characterization” in Schumann’s Carnaval, Liszt’s Scherzo had, for Brendel, crossed the boundaries of instrumental music and was incomprehensible for the listener; however, while the door to understanding Schumann’s purely instrumental piece remained locked, “robbing it of a general effect”, the ‘innermusical’ text of the Faust Symphony, the vocal, provided a key, creating an effect comparable to that of Beethoven’s Ninth. To use Brendel’s sunrise metaphor, the light provided by ‘extra-musical’ text would never be strong enough to reach all the way to the actual musical experience and uncover an otherwise dark landscape.

5 Vocal and Instrumental: Separate But Equal? It is thus no surprise that Brendel, faced with the dilemma of justifying the symphonic poems, would hold fast to a fundamental separation of instrumental and vocal music,69 depicting the former as governed chiefly by the laws of nature, the latter by the relationship to the text. Instrumental music in Brendel’s view progressed by means of “negation of the natural”,70 continually modifying an abstract framework of logic [Verstandesgrundlage] inherent to human disposition. Vocal music needed to address this framework of logic while at the same time modifying the other framework provided by the text in the sense of his previously developed theory of “melody of

68

Brendel (1857c), p. 123. Brendel’s strict separation between inner- and extra musical text represents a significant distinction from Berlioz, who saw the program acting just like a text in opera (Eggebrecht 1985, p. 69); and Liszt, who believed that “music has more than one reference point for uniting with the interests of the idea [Gedanke]. The vocal can do it through the choice of its texts […] the instrumental can do it through programs” (Liszt 1855a, p. 220). See also Liszt (1855b), p. 42, where he vaguely suggests that program music could function as a means of uniting the vocal and the instrumental. 70 Brendel (1858), pp. 121f. This has been handled on multiple occasion in the literature; e.g., Determann (1989), pp. 167f. It is only worth adding here that the idea goes back to Brendel early lectures, where it is used to describe Beethoven (Schiffner 1843c, p. 19; Brendel 1845a, p. 11). See also Brendel (1855b), pp. 81f. 69

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speech”.71 This basic differentiation between vocal and instrumental music––established in Brendel’s “Symphonische Dichtungen” and elaborated upon extensively in his “Preliminary Studies on Aesthetics” in 186072 ––remains, for the most part, neutral toward the relationship between vocal and instrumental music with respect to historical-philosophical status. Nevertheless, there are indications that Brendel was hesitant about establishing an absolute equilibrium between the two: Vocal music was “more complicated”73 due to the need to deal with two separate frameworks; and, in a rather striking passage from Franz Liszt als Symphoniker that draws a strict line between Liszt the instrumental and Wagner the vocal composer, Brendel even refers to Liszt as a “specific musician”: Liszt’s particularity [Eigentümlichkeit] consists in the fact that he holds on to a specifically musical core, while Wagner makes music serve his dramatic purposes, unconcerned about what it requires as such, i.e., as an independent art. Thus, Liszt is to be considered more as a specific musician, even if, as with Wagner, the poetic side has received a predominant importance in comparison to the earlier musical work. And this is quite in order: Pure instrumental music would cease to exist if it did not follow certain independent laws; dramatic music, on the other hand, can only receive the form of its composition from the text. Thus the difference between the two composers is conditioned by the nature of the genres in which they create, the musical drama on the one hand—instrumental music on the other.74

Even if the term “specific musician” is not always used as a straightfoward criticism in Brendel’s work, it does carry a negative connotation with its implication of one-sidedness.75 At the very least, its use in connection with Liszt, whom Brendel was simultaneously declaring the torchbearer of musical progress, seems rather out of place. To understand the baggage of one-sidedness that instrumental music carries in Brendel’s work, it is necessary to briefly look beyond Brendel’s aesthetic and historical theories to his utmost practical concern, reforming musical life. Here, the ideal of the musical drama plays a much smaller role in relation to the spheres that were most familiar to him, concert life and pedagogy. For example, it was the potential of vocal music as a path to Brendel’s ultimate ideal of a “general education [allgemeine Bildung]” that tipped the scale away from instrumental music: An exclusive occupation with instrumental music is always something very one-sided, just as is, on a higher level, a study that is limited to music alone, one that does not take into account the other arts, especially poetry. I would venture to say that he who only focusses on instrumental music will always be characterized by a certain lack of consciousness, 71

Brendel (1856a). The article presents Brendel’s own theoretical and historical considerations on the Wagner-inspired theory developed by fellow New-German Louis Köhler. 72 Brendel (1860c), pp. 141ff. 73 Ibid., p. 143. 74 Brendel (1859a), p. 41. The passage was originally a footnote in “Symphonische Dichtungen” (Brendel 1858, p. 111), which refers back to his use of the term in connection with Liszt earlier in the year. 75 In one of the most extreme examples, Brendel calls “specific musicianship […] the cause of depravity und emptiness in our arts” Brendel (1852a), p. 540. See also Roth-Roeser (2020), p. 402. Liszt, for his part, distances himself from the term (Liszt 1855b, pp. 51f.).

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he will not work his way out of a dull weaving of feelings, especially if other means of education are not at his disposal. The whole field of vocal music must therefore be called upon as a supplement as much as possible. Singing is what makes music truly internal, both technically and spiritually, and a comprehensive and harmonious musical education seems hardly conceivable without it.76

Here, in a passage written well after the urgency to justify aesthetic equilibrium between Liszt and Wagner had ebbed,77 we also see how the vocal-instrumental binary as one defined by respective states of consciousness plays out in a practical context. With respect to concert reform, vocal music was indispensable in fulfilling the public’s demand for enjoyment and variety—a justifiable one in Brendel’s eyes. The “consequent one-sidedness” of purely instrumental symphony concerts could help “avoid” the chaos and confusion plaguing modern concert programming, but it could never “eliminate” the problem, as “voice is to the concert what the eye is to the face, the sun to the landscape”.78

6 Conclusion: The Indispensable Institutional Perspective In sum, it is evident that Brendel, despite his enthusiasm for Liszt and corresponding efforts to elevate the symphonic poems to the level of Wagner’s operas, was unwilling to fully commit to a vision of the future in which instrumental music is completely on par with vocal music, which also begs the question: To what extent was Brendel’s approach to the ‘symphonic poem dilemma’ a simple reflection of aesthetic reevaluations? Granted, Brendel’s first comprehensive experience with Liszt’s symphonic poems in February of 1857 marks both the beginning of his adulation for the pieces as well the end of new references to the demise of instrumental music. Leaving it at that, however, would suggest that Brendel was more a passive witness to music history than an active participant in its development, ignoring two key aspects of Brendel’s career that also played a role in his approach to the ‘dilemma’: First, the relationship between Liszt and Brendel was not a one-way street but rather, a “reciprocally beneficial association”79 ; and second, Brendel was not just a music writer but also a music organizer, a role which, though it may receive less attention in musicological literature, was arguably the most influential aspect of his multi-dimensional career.80 Mutual dependence between these two aspects culminated in Liszt’s and Brendel’s co-founding of the Allgemeiner Deutscher Musikverein (ADMV), and it is in this 76

Brendel (1867b), pp. 113f. Not only was the New-German School well-established by this time, but large-scale vocal works by Liszt had also eased the conflict. “Die Legende von der heiligen Elisabeth” was presented in the fourth edition of History of Music as “a brilliant counterpart to what Wagner has achieved in the field of opera” (Brendel 1867a, p. 408). 78 Brendel (1856e), p. 117. See the article by Martin Thrun in this volume. 79 Deaville (2012), p. 380. 80 The present author’s forthcoming dissertation on Brendel’s career as a music organizer seeks to fill this gap. 77

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context that the symphonic poem dilemma must also be considered. The financing of the 1859 Tonkünstler-Versammlung—which marked not only the conceptual birth of the New-German School but also the beginning of the organization of the ADMV— goes back to a request by a seasoned music patron, Fürst Constantin of HohenzollernHechingen, for advice from Liszt on where his money would best benefit the cause of musical progress.81 What was presumably an informal recommendation by Liszt that he trust the sum to Brendel turned into an extensive endorsement sent to Constantin on August 18, 1858, coinciding with Brendel’s “Symphonische Dichtungen” published two days later.82 Brendel then sent a memorandum to Constantin in mid-November outlining five goals he would like to achieve with the money, one of which was the organization of a Tonkünstler-Versammlung.83 This would revive his hopes of establishing an interregional society for music professionals that could hold large-scale music festivals in accordance with its annual assemblies, a cherished ambition that Brendel had pursued a decade before but was unable to get off the ground. In the end, Constantin not only financed the assembly, but committed to granting Brendel an annual sum that he could use as he saw fit. On December 10, just weeks after Brendel’s memorandum, the NZfM announced that Brendel’s “Symphonische Dichtungen”, which was not originally intended for reprint, would soon be released as a separate monograph.84 The first advertisement for Franz Liszt als Symphoniker was then placed in the opening issue of the NZfM in 1859, and thus in direct proximity of the official announcement of the Tonkünstler-Versammlung, scheduled to take place the following summer.85 Considering this last-minute decision to republish “Symphonische Dichtungen” after settling the finances for the TonkünstlerVersammlung, it is apparent that Brendel wanted to make sure there were as few reservations as possible about the aesthetic unity of the soon-to-be anointed leaders of the New-German School. It may be impossible (at least at the present state of research) to verify a specific interdependency between the conception and realization of the TonkünstlerVersammlung and the origins of Brendel’s Symphonic Poem article; at the very least, however, it is important to note that Brendel did not stand empty-handed after his unabated praise for Liszt. On the contrary, Brendel’s relationship with Constantin, mediated by Liszt, enabled him, more than ever, to take an active part in what he saw as the most urgent issue of the time, a comprehensive reform of musical life. The close correlation between the timelines of development in the TonkünstlerVersammlung and the “Symphonische Dichtungen” article is also a reminder of the essential role institutions play in the development of aesthetic ideas, a key to understanding Brendel’s work and influence. In this respect, Brendel’s ‘symphonic poem dilemma’ is, above all, an indication of the characteristic trait lying at the foundation 81

See Reilly (2022), pp. 53f. Liszt (1893a). 83 Lucke-Kaminiarz (2006), p. 223. Liszt indicated his approval of the memorandum on 2 November 1858, providing him with Constantin’s address, see Liszt (1893b) p. 311. 84 [Anon.], (1858). 85 Intelligenz-Blatt (1859), p. 12. 82

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of his impact on music history, namely, an ability to balance aesthetic ideology and organizational reality, and to reap the benefits of their mutual dependency.

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Brendel, F.: Programmmusik. In: Anregungen für Kunst, Leben und Wissenschaft, vol. 1, pp. 82–92 (1856c) Brendel, F.: Franz Liszt. In: Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, vol. 44, Issue 7, pp. 69–71 (1856d) Brendel, F.: Thesen über Concertreform. In: Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, vol. 45, Issue 10, pp. 97–99; Issue 11, pp. 109–111; Issue 12, pp. 117–119; Issue 13, pp. 129–131 (1856e) Brendel, F.: Die Tonkunst und ihrer Stellung zur Gegenwart. In: Anregungen für Kunst, Leben und Wissenschaft, vol. 2, pp. 16–30 (1857a) Brendel, F.: Franz Liszt in Leipzig. In: Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, vol. 46, Issue 10, pp. 101–105 (1857b) Brendel, F.: F. Liszt’s neueste Werke und die gegenwärtige Parteistellung. In: Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, vol. 47, Issue 12, pp. 121–124; Issue 13, pp. 129–133; Issue 14, pp. 141–144; Issue 15, pp. 153–159 (1857c) Brendel, F.: F. Liszt’s symphonische Dichtungen. In: Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, vol. 49, Issue 8, pp. 73–76; Issue 9, pp. 85–88; Issue 10, pp. 97–100; Issue 11, pp. 109–112; Issue 12, pp. 121–123; Issue 13, pp. 133–136; Issue 14, pp. 141–143 (1858) Brendel, F.: Franz Liszt als Symphoniker. Merseburger, Leipzig (1859a) Brendel, F.: Zur Anbahnung einer Verständigung. In: Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, vol. 50, Issue 24, pp. 265–273 (1859b) Brendel, F.: Geschichte der Musik in Italien, Deutschland und Frankreich von den ersten christlichen Zeiten bis auf die Gegenwart, 3rd edn. Matthes, Leipzig (1860a) Brendel, F.: Liszt’s symphonische Dichtung “Les Préludes” und ein Urtheil von A. W. Ambros. In: Anregungen für Kunst, Leben und Wissenschaft, vol. 5, pp. 76–78 (1860b) Brendel, F.: Vorstudien zur Aesthetik. In: Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, vol. 53 Issue 13, pp. 105–108; Issue 17, pp. 141–144 (1860c) Brendel, F.: Ueber Programmusik. In: Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, vol 62, Issue 30, pp. 253f (1866) Brendel, F.: Geschichte der Musik in Italien, Deutschland und Frankreich von den ersten christlichen Zeiten bis auf die Gegenwart, 4th edn. Matthes, Leipzig (1867a) Brendel, F.: Geist und Technik im Clavier-Unterricht. C.F.W. Siegel, Leipzig (1867b) Deaville, J.: Franz Brendel’s Reconciliation Address. In: Grey, T. (ed.) Richard Wagner and His World. Princeton Univ. Press. Princeton et al. (2009) Deaville, J., Cicora, M. (transl), pp. 311–332 Deaville, J.: Franz Liszt and Franz Brendel. Playing the field of Cultural Production in mid-century Germany. In: Musik – Ästhetik – Politik. Detlef Altenburg zum 65. Geburtstag, A., Schröter, et al. (eds.), Studio-Verlag, Sinzig, pp. 379–389 (2012) Determann, R.: Begriff und Ästhetik der Neudeutschen Schule. Ein Beitrag zur Musikgeschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts. Valentin Koerner, Baden-Baden (1989) Eggebrecht, H.H.: Was heisst ‘Aussermusikalisch’?. In: Dahlhaus, C., Eggebrecht, H.H. (eds.) Was ist Musik? Heinrichhofen’s Verlag, Wilhelmshaven et al,. pp. 67–78 (1985) Hegel, G.W.F.: Vorlesungen über die Aesthetik, vol. 3, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt a/M 11th edn. (2018) Intelligenz-Blatt. In: Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, vol. 50, Issue 1, pp. 11f (1859) Liszt, F.: Marx: Die Musik im neunzehnten Jahrhundert. In: Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, vol. 42, Issue 20, pp. 213–221, Issue 21, pp. 225–230 (1855a) Liszt, F.: Berlioz und seine Haroldsymphonie. In: Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, vol. 43, Issue 3, pp. 25–32; Issue 4, pp. 37–46; Issue 5, pp. 49–55; Issue 8, pp. 77– 84; Issue 9, pp. 89–97 (1855b) Liszt, F.: Letter to Fürst Constantin von Hohenzollern-Hechingen, 18 August 1858. In: Franz Liszt’s Briefe, 8 vols., La Mara (ed.), vol. 1, Breitkopf & Härtel, Leipzig, pp. 307–309 (1893a) Liszt, F.: Letter to Franz Brendel, 02 November 1858. In: Franz Liszt’s Briefe, 8 vols., La Mara (ed.), vol. 1, Breitkopf & Härtel, Leipzig, pp. 311f. (1893b) Lucke-Kaminiarz, I.: Der Allgemeine Deutsche Musikverein und seine Tonkünstlerfeste 1859– 1886. In: Altenburg, D. (ed.) Liszt und die Neudeutsche Schule, pp. 221–235. Laaber-Verlag, Laaber (2006) Müller-Reuter, T.: Ein Brief Franz Brendels an Franz Liszt. In: Die Musik, vol. 6, Q.2, pp. 337–340 (1906/1907) Nowak, A.: Hegels Musikästhetik. Bosse, Regensburg (1971)

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Nowak, A.: Religiöse Begriffe in der Musikästhetik des 19. Jahrhunderts. In: Wiora, W. (ed.) Religiöse Musik in nicht-liturgischen Werken von Beethoven bis Reger. Bosse, Regensburg, pp. 47–58 (1978) Ramroth, P.: Robert Schumann und Richard Wagner im geschichtsphilosophischen Urteil von Franz Brendel. Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main et al. (1991) Reilly, S.: The New-German School and the ‘retreat to the court’: reconciling conflicts between claims of autonomy and reliance on noble patronage in the early years of the Allgemeiner Deutscher Musikverein (1859–1868). In: Jardin, E. (ed.) Financing Music in Europe. Brepols, Turnhout, pp. 51–78 (2022) von Roth, D., Roesler, U. (eds.): Die Neudeutsche Schule – Phänomen und Geschichte. Quellen und Kommentare zu einer zentralen musikästhetischen Kontroverse des 19. Jahrhunderts. Metzler/Bärenreiter, Berlin et al. (2020) Schiffner, A.: Hrn. F. Brendel’s musikgeschichtliche Vorlesungen zu Dresden im Winter 1842–43. In: Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, vol. 18, Issue 9, pp. 33f.; Issue 10, pp. 37–39; Issue 12, pp. 45–47 (1843a) Schiffner, A.: Aus Dresden [Die Vorlesungen von F. Brendel]. In: Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, vol. 18, Issue 23, pp. 90–92 (1843b) Schiffner, A.: F. Brendel’s Vorlesungen. In: Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, vol. 19, Issue 1, pp. 1f.; Issue 2, pp. 4f.; Issue 3, pp. 9f.; Issue 4, pp. 13f.; Issue 5, pp. 19f.; Issue 6, pp. 21f. (1843c) Wagner, R.: Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft. Wigand, Leipzig (1850) Wagner, R.: Ein Brief von Richard Wagner über Franz Liszt. In: Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, vol. 46, Issue 15, pp. 157–163 (1857) Winkler, G.: Der ‘bestimmte Ausdruck’. Zur Musikästhetik der Neudeutschen Schule. In: Liszt und die Neudeutsche Schule. Altenburg, D. (ed.) Laaber-Verlag, Laaber, pp. 39–54 (2006)

Sean Reilly *1981 in New Jersey, USA, studied viola at the Musikhochschule Lübeck and the Haute école de musique de Genève – Neuchâtel, after which he worked as a tutti violist in the Magdeburg Philharmonic. He received a Master’s degree in musicology at the Institute for Musicology of Leipzig University in 2017 with the thesis “‘Felix möchte lieber mit Orchester komponieren’. Zur Instrumentation in den großbesetzten geistlichen Vokalwerken von Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy: Ideologien – Interpretation”. Currently he is pursuing a doctoral degree in Leipzig with a study of Franz Brendel’s career as a music organizer. Research for this project, in particular on Brendel’s role as founder and president of the Allgemeiner Deutscher Musikverein (ADMV), was supported by a Weimar-Stipendium of the Klassik Stiftung Weimar. He works in Leipzig as a research assistant and part-time lecturer, and is a contributor of book reviews for Die Musikforschung. His research on the finances of the ADMV will be published in the article “The New-German School and the ‘retreat to the court’: Reconciling conflicts between claims of autonomy and reliance on noble patronage in the early years of the Allgemeiner Deutscher Musikverein (1859–1868)” in the forthcoming volume Financing Music in Europe from the 18th to the Early 20th Century (ed. by E. Jardin, Brepols, Turnhout). Apart from his research, he is active as a freelance violist and translator/editor of academic texts.

Lyric Prose and Melodrama as Forms of Opposition to Nazi Barbarism. Viktor Ullmann’s the Lay of the Love and Death of Cornet Christoph Rilke, for Speaker and Piano (Theresienstadt 1944) Hanns-Werner Heister and Monica Tempian

Ullmann’s melodrama reveals complex relationships between text and context, between words and instrumental music, models of semantic concretization of the music through allusion and quotation, including questions of troping, and at one point even a multi-layered, polyphonic troping. Music, literature and the arts are an integral part of the discourse which asserts the Geist und Macht—spirit and power. Accordingly, art defies particularly the misuse of power to anti-human purposes, to manipulation, repression, terror, torture, war, genocide etc.—a long list. Even if unfortunately the power too often overwhelms the spirit, any resistance has an intrinsic and not seldom social power. Under the extreme conditions of the Nazi concentration camps, music—first and last the singing together— carried a great power, capable of strengthening the prisoners’ own humanity.1 The artists of the Holocaust were powerless victims, but still powerfully resisted Nazism with their art; they were to be exterminated, but made themselves immortal through their works.2 Blatter’s and Milton’s evaluation is of course more of a metaphor, as, despite the art they created, these artists were still victims. Nevertheless, she does have a valid point when she states that studying the works of Holocaust victims implies awareness of their motivation for creating art. Looking at Holocaust art without considering the circumstances of its making is not only impossible, but pointless. 1

About the range of functions see e.g. Fackler (2000).

H.-W. Heister (B) Prof. retired of the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg, Rosengarten, Lower Saxony, Germany e-mail: [email protected] M. Tempian School of Asian and European Languages and Cultures, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand e-mail: [email protected] 2

See Blatter and Milton (1981).

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 H.-W. Heister et al. (eds.), Word Art + Gesture Art = Tone Art, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20109-7_26

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1 Text and Context. Nazism, Concentration Camps and Transit Camp Theresienstadt There are different motifs in the motivation for Viktor Ullmann’s 1944 musical setting of Rainer Maria Rilke’s The Lay of Love and Death of Cornet Christopher Rilke (1899) and in the work itself—an epic poem known as a cult book of the German soldier in the two World Wars.3 Theresienstadt was not a “ghetto” but served as a transit camp for those deported to the extermination camp Auschwitz/Birkenau, in particular for the Jewish population of Czechoslovakia, but also as a “model Jewish settlement” for propaganda purposes. This was one of the reasons why Theresienstadt saw an outpouring of culture—under unimaginably difficult conditions, always in the shadow of death.4 Having begun underground, this cultural activity was later allowed to flourish openly, because it provided the Nazis with a propaganda vehicle to deceive the outside world about the conditions in Theresienstadt, which was portrayed to the Red Cross as a “model camp” during their decisive visit in June of 1944.5 Behind the façade created by the regime, however, the prisoners were subjected to the same hardships and brutalities as existed in the larger concentration camps, including disease, starvation, torture, executions and the frequent transports to the extermination camps in the east.6

Viktor Ullmann, born on January the 1st, 1898 in Teschen, was one of the ‘Theresienstadt artists’, having been deported there on September the 8th, 1942. The melodrama The Lay of the Love and Death of Cornet Christoph Rilke after the prose poem of the same name by Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926)7 Cornet was, alongside the 3

A new edition in 1912 as number 1 of a new series, the Insel-Bücherei achieved high circulation and popularity. According to the Langemarck myth, the “young” regiments had the Deutschlandlied on their lips and “Rilke’s Cornet in their knapsacks”. Cf. Joachim Güntner: Manipulation der Massen (http://www.nzz.ch/2006/07/08/fe/articleE9B9M.html), Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 8. Juli 2006. Although both are lies, the Deutschlandlied appears as a constant, the spiritual content of the knapsack however as a variable (in revolutionary France it was still the marshal’s baton)— most importantly, it guarantees the devotion of the German “warriors” vis-à-vis the British-French “hucksters” (as the economist Werner Sombart notes). Thus, as a substitute for the Cornet’s love and death, also Goethe’s Faust or Hölderlin’s poems fulfil their duty in the knapsack. For “Langemarck” see for instance Ludwig Renn (the young soldiers were bombarded by their own artillery): Arnold Friedrich Vieth von Golßenau (Ludwig Renn), in: Kurt Kläber: Der Krieg. Das erste Volksbuch vom großen Krieg, Berlin 1929, o.p.; also Kurt Gerron, after Lewinsky (2011, p. 101). 4 The very extensive literature on Theresienstadt can be mentioned here only in brief. Special merits has the collection musica reanimata. 5 The Theresienstadt film Der Führer schenkt den Juden eine Stadt [The Führer Gives a City to the Jews] (1943/1944) was fabricated to deceive the international public, for instance for a Red Cross inspection—and this public was only too happy to be deceived. The director of the film was Kurt Gerron, famous for his participation in the premiere ensemble of the Threepenny Opera and as a film director. The original title was: Theresienstadt. Ein Dokumentarfilm aus dem jüdischen Siedlungsgebiet [A documentary film from the Jewish settlement area] (18.8.-11.9.1944). Schultz (2010, p. 8). On this subject see Margry o.J. 6 Gwyneth Bravo: Viktor Ullmann, http://orelfoundation.org/composers/article/viktor_ullmann/, accessed 4 June 2022. 7 Critical analyses among others Simon (1974), Wagner-Egelhaafs (1988), Krüger (1997/1998).

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7th Piano Sonata, his last opus, completed in July 1944. On October 16, he and his first wife together with fellow composers Haas, Klein and Krása were deported to Auschwitz, two days later, on October 18, they were murdured in the gas chambers. Before his deportation, Ullmann had entrusted his works to the head of the ghetto library.

2 Thanatos and Eros. Ullmann’s Motivation Behind the Composition of the Cornet It is known that Ullmann was fascinated by Rilke’s poem during his years at high school already—the curious mix of poetry and prose, lyric and drama and the poem’s linguistic qualities sparked the young adolescent’s interest in the poem. The qualities are mainly “death kitsch” (“Todeskitsch”), romanticised transfigurations of war, interweaved with love and death. Formally and verbally striking are the smooth transitions from prose into poetry, into metrically regular verses even with end rhyme. This somewhat artisanal poetry has an ambivalent effect on the musical setting. On the one hand, it is in a sense too much “poetry” and thus hardly in need of the additional poetry of sound art. On the other hand, the ‘poetry’ of the regular verse-rhythm is at odds with the ‘prose’ tendency of the ‘saying’—the characteristic ‘recitando’ of the melodrama. Even so, there are various melodramas in rhymed and stanzaic texts. In the case of the military rank of the cornet, the acoustic realms of tone art combine with the visual as a language of gestures: the audible trumpet-like cornet as the signalling instrument8 and the visible signalling flag are both assigned to the military officer.9 At that time of Ullmanns youth, Rilke’s Cornet, written 1899, was already a cult book in Europe. Inspired by a seventeenth century family chronicle, the young poet Rilke recounts in his debut poem the story of one of his—appropriated—ancestors, who died at a young age during the Ottoman–Habsburg wars. Rilke’s construct of a noble ancestor appears to correspond to what Sigmund Freud described as “The Family Romances” in 1909. The child realises that the parents are emotionally not 8

See the contribution of Lasse Fankhänel in the present volume. Even though with regard to music, one may be tempted to assume a direct relation, the military rank of the cornet is not directly connected to the trumpet-like musical instrument (which belongs to the horn instruments, from the Latin cornu = horn). Instead, it does relate to the function as a signalling instrument—like the standard, the “flag”, which is primarily the subject here and which, in Rilke’s work, is carried triumphantly senseless into the enemy’s troops at the end. “The military rank Kornett/ cornet (in both German and English) is derived from the French cornette and was the rank designation in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries for the youngest officer in the cavalry (here also often the standard officer) […]. It corresponded to the ensign in other troop categories or to the cadet in the artillery.” (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kornett_Offizier 1 Aug 2013). As pars pro toto it is deducted: “The cornet […] is a s a term used in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries for the cavalry as each company carried a standard analogous to the ensign of the infantry” (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kornette 31 May 2013; accessed 2 Feb 2014). 9

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fully available and thus fantasises about having different parents of higher social standing. The issue of better parents is easily extendable to ancestors in general. At the beginning of World War I, Rilke’s poem was to be found in the combat pack of many German and Austrian soldiers—a hardly surprising fact, as the identification with the protagonist enabled the overcoming of the soldiers’ own fear of death, and the aestheticization of war concealed its futility. Ullmann too had the Cornet sent to him during his military service. The book was one of the most read texts in Wilhelmine Germany, and remained a popular, even revered work of heroic literature until 1945. The Cornet Christoph Rilke dies a death that is part of life, completing and crowning his existence; it is both exhilarating fulfilment and blessed alienation. The magic of this story lies in the hero’s early death, which makes his short life twice as beautiful and meaningful.10

Rilke can certainly not be accused of having deliberately written propaganda literature; he rather hit a certain Zeitgeist at a time when megalomaniac fantasies were rampant in Germany, and the ideologies of regained national strength propagated by the state tied in perfectly with the myth of individual heroism presented in the Cornet. A critical evaluation of Rilke’s position regarding the reception of his work is nevertheless necessary: In retrospect, it seems rather irresponsible that he judged the literary quality of his youth poem critically, calling it a ‘youthful folly’, yet avoided a serious reflection on the impact that his book had on his contemporaries. In a letter to literary critic H. Pongs, dated 17 August 1924 for example, Rilke dismissed the allegation of having written the Cornet for the purpose of so-called ‘spiritual mobilisation’ by stating that he ‘received’ this early work ‘by dictation’ in a moment of inspiration: … the Cornet was the unexpected gift of a special autumn night, written down in an unbroken flow by the light of two candles flickering in the night-wind; it was caused by the wandering clouds obscuring the moon …11

Here Ullmann, who could compose very quickly—which was occasionally criticized as superficial—might have seen a motivating kinship. The productive reception of Rilke’s Cornet reached well beyond World War I into the years of the Second World War, via musical settings, translations and illustrations. Kasimir Paszthory was in 1914 the first composer to set the work to music as a melodrama at the beginning of WW I.12 “Rilke felt the words of his text were music enough, and objected in general to settings of his poem, but he paradoxically gave Danish composer Paul von Klenau (1883–1946) permission to use it”,13 who set the poem in 1918 as cantata for Baritone, mixed choir and Orchestra. Kurt Weill 10

Irene Betz: Der Tod in der deutschen Dichtung des Impressionismus (1936), qtd. in Simon (1974, p. 286). 11 Quoted in Krüger (1997/1998). 12 The work was mentioned in the long list of Musical War Armament (Musikalische Kriegsrüstung) by Arthur Seidl, a well-known musicologist at the time. Allgemeine Musikzeitung (AMZ), vol. XLII, 1915, pp. 278f, 289f, 302f, 314ff, 327, 339f, 351f, 364f, 380f, 390f, 403f, 417f, 432f, 494ff, 506. 13 Review by Stephen Eddins. https://www.allmusic.com/album/paul-von-klenau-die-weise-vonliebe-und-tod-des-kornetts-christoph-rilke-mw0001396431 (2007), accessed 13 June 2022.

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composed a symphonic poem in 1919; in the mid-1920s, Hans Krása, one of the Prague composers later interned in Theresienstadt, considered the Cornet as an opera subject; Frank Martin’s setting is for Alto and chamber orchestra 1942. Even after 1945, several musical settings followed worldwide, including Douglas Lilburn’s composition for voice and string quartet, written 1950 for a Wellington recital of the Berlin-born refugee actor Maria Dronke. In Theresienstadt, a group of Czech artists had the work translated, likely for a spoken theater performance. Around this time, Ullmann, on the other hand, was motivated by the death of his friend, the young composer Siegmund Schul on June 2, 1944. The decisive impulses appear to have sprouted from two Sondermeldungen (special announcements), which spread via the information system of the “ghetto”: the news of western allies’ landing (June 6th) and the start of the major Soviet offensive (June 22nd), sparking hopes for an imminent liberation. In the wave of euphoria that erupted because of the hoped-for liberation, Ullmann wrote his Cornet in barely more than three weeks. This turned out to be in fact an illusion for many, including for Viktor Ullmann and his wife.14 There are various possibilities for Ullmann’s choice to setting the rather war-and-death-exalting text to music. Firstly, as already mentioned, he admired Rilke and the Cornet in particular—Ullmann was 14 years old around the time of the Cornet’s publication by the renowned Inselpublishing house in 1912; and he was 16 upon the beginning of WW I. The text was hence tied to his youth memories and a rather romantic phase in his own biography, thus providing a contrast to the desperate situation in Theresienstadt. 2 He was acquainted with the military aura through his father and from his own experience. As an assimilated Jew, his father, Maximilian, was able to pursue a career as a professional officer in the army of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In World War I he was promoted to colonel and ennobled. [Viktor,] after completing his Kriegsabitur, facilitating his early graduation from the gymnasium in May 1916, Ullmann enlisted for voluntary military service and was sent to the Isonzo–Front, after initially serving in a garrison in Vienna. Decorated for bravery for his service in the war, Ullmann was made a lieutenant in 1918.15

Also in this respect, the cornet was a transfiguring memory of youth, although Ullmann would doubtlessly have developed a somewhat different position on the war in the quarter-century between the Habsburg regime and the Nazi regime. The question of noble descent, as mentioned, is another almost manifest motivic connection between Rilke’s text and person, and Ullmann as a person. Rilke’s framing introduction for example can be found as a prologue-text of Ullmann’s score. The text is performed as No. I by the speaker only, before the music rises:

14

In extenso see Schultz (2010). Cf. Bravo n.d. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Ullmann, 4 May 2022, and Gwyneth Bravo: Viktor Ullmann, http://orelfoundation.org/composers/article/viktor_ullmann/, accessed 4 June 2022.

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On the 24th of November, 1663, Otto von Rilke16 / of Langenau-Gramitz / and Ziegra / was invested at Linda with that portion of the estate of Linda left by his brother Christoph, who had fallen in battle in Hungary; he was, however, required to sign a deed of reversion / according to which the investiture would be null and void / in the event that his brother Christoph (who, according to the death certificate presented, had died as a Cornet in Baron von Pirovano’s17 Company of the Imperial Austrian Heyster18 Cavalry Regiment) should return…

While the noble ancestry is only a family romance “family novel” in Rilke, it is a reality for Ullmann since his father indeed belonged to the Habsburg aristocracy, at it’s periphery, by nobility of merit or personal nobility, a lifelong one, tied to the person and not hereditary. 3 The ‘romantic’ coupling of love and death, explored, even exploited by the whole opera history, and typically, nearer to Rilke, by Wagner as well as by Verdi, and evoked by Rilke in his poem, may have lent itself to a new reworking with different accents, given Ullmann’s situation: starving, surrounded by death, and certain of more or less imminent death, which had nothing romantic or heroic about it—the work of art has thus a compensatory effect. Death was also the explicit, central and essential theme in a preceding work, the opera The Emperor of Atlantis. In Rilke’s Cornet, the evocation of love does not exclude eroticism and sexuality. Similar to the Hussites’ Eucharisty as reenactment of the Last Supper, which, contrary to Catholicism, consists of bread and wine not only for the priests but also for the laymen, love in Rilke’s poem takes the dual form of erotic and courtly love,19 16

The questionable historical authenticity of this document (or “document”) may be verified by Rilke experts. 17 “In 1651, the imperial colonel Johann Jakob Pirovano owned the Schaben and Perglas estates”. They belonged to the municipality of Dasnice (German “Daßnitz”) in Bohemia, north of the Slavkovský les (Slavkov Forest) on the left bank of the Eger near Sokolow and Šabina (German Schaben) on the right bank (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%A0abina, 3 Jan 14). 18 Rilke’s archaic spelling of Heyster for Heister seems too much of a historicised good thing. The exact identity of the named person cannot (as of yet) be established with certainty, yet the most probable candidate is Gottfried von Heister (Baron, 1609–1679, later Vice-President of the Imperial Court War Council). He is mentioned as a lieutenant colonel and commander of a regiment—in 1636/1637 in connection with field marshal Ottavio Piccolomini-Pieri, Prince P. d’Aragona, Duke of Amalfi (1599–1656), whose headquarters were in Düren around this time. (http://www.30jaeh rigerkrieg.de/piccolomini-pieri-ottavio-furst-p-daragona-herzog-von-amalfi-i/, 17.2.12) (Düren is located in the Rhineland on the left bank of the Rhine, one of the areas where the Heister clan was concentrated). His son Si(e)gbert Count Heister (1646–1718), who also followed a military career, later became a Habsburg field marshal, while his brother Hannibal Joseph (†1719) became an imperial major general and commander in Croatia. Siegbert only began his military career at the age of 18 (1665), which rules him out as a terminus post quem non for the year 1663; the same is probably true for his brother. (Data according to https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigbert_Heister, 8.3.14, as well as article “Heister, Siegbert Graf” by Wilhelm Edler von Janko in: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, herausgegeben von der Historischen Kommission bei der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, vol. 11 (1880), pp. 676–677, Digital full text edition in Wikisource, http://de.wik isource.org/w/index.php?title=ADB:Heister,_Siegbert_Graf&oldid=1685972) All accessed 1 April 2014. 19 In Minnesang poetry in times of feudalism, “high” and “low” love (two types of Minne) were a common dichotomy.

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so to say as erotic instead of religious utraquism.20 Both of these also occur in Viktor Ullmann’s work. Interestingly, the key-scene in Rilke’s poem with the ‘dark’, ‘young woman, bloodied and naked’, tied up and raped by men of war, whose ropes Cornet Christopher hacks through, is omitted by Ullmann, possibly to spare his suffering fellow camp-prisoners more, not only aesthetic, horrors.21 The baggage train scene, with a certain (subtly envious) contempt for the vulgarity of the lowly, on the other hand, is explored quite fully. In both cases, however, it is a matter of lowly rather than lofty love. Noblesse ne pas oblige. The two kinds of love are however combined in the episode of the romantic night the Cornet and the ‘White Countess’ spend together before the attack on the castle, in which both lose their lives—the countess burning to death, the Cornet impaled by the Turks’ sabers. Eroticism and love, one could say, at least made sense, unlike the senseless deaths by the Nazis, although there is some ambivalence to be noted as well: love in lieu of war, but death almost as an atonement for the acting out of love, which is detrimental to the community, as the Cornet misses the decampment with the flag because of his night with the ‘White Countess’. 4 The scene with the grieving ‘old woman’, the Cornet’s mother, at the end as epilogue of the poem might have been seen as an anticipation of the grief over the prisoners’ own death. 5 There are several themes and motives as well as individual scenes in Rilke’s text which were developed by Ullmann into references to the situation of NS-War, and Concentration camps, and especially of the Theresienstadt prisoners. Overall, Ullmann’s arrangement can be seen as a significant intervention in the structure of the original text. One method of referencing is per negationem. Ullmann omits some passages that could have been of disturbing or unsettling effect. Ullmann’s careful selections from Rilke’s text means for example, that he omitted the pointless heroic ending with the soldiers’ triumphant but senseless charging into enemy troops.22 He also leaves out the following text, although it—or perhaps even more: because it—is about music, as he possibly had not found a suitable troping. (6) WATCH FIRE. You sit around and wait. Wait for someone to sing. But you’re so tired. [...] kissed the little rose, and now she may continue to wither on his chest. Von Langenau saw it because he can’t sleep. He thinks: I don’t have a rose, none. 20

This was the position of the Hussites, especially their “moderate” wing, the “Utraquists” in the early fifteenth century and later among the Protestant movements in the sixteenth century. In extenso e.g. Marcus Wüst: Utraquisten. In: Online-Lexikon zur Kultur und Geschichte der Deutschen im östlichen Europa, 2014. ome-lexikon.uni-oldenburg.de/p32761, 13 Aug. 2021, accessed 6 June 2022. 21 With the strumpets on the large Landsknecht drum, he remains contemplative. Only with the “Countess” does he become active: the decisive night of love (in which the act is executed, unlike the middle act of Wagner’s paragon Tristan). Underneath the heroic surface, a concealed comedy is unveiled when the hero throws himself, as it were, in his underpants, onto the horse and to his death. 22 The action of charging triumphantly, and not infrequently futile, into the middle of the enemy’s troops, the leader ahead, here with the standard, appears to echo Germanic battle tactics, which lived on not least in the more effective cavalry attacks. Roman cohort tactics could easily intercept and condemn them to failure.

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Then he sings [sc. that of Langenau]. And that’s an old sad song that the girls sing in the fields at home, in autumn when the harvests are about to end.

And he left out this passage because of the keyword “autumn”, even connected with “harvest”: This was too much associated with the deportations to the extermination camps in the autumn, which from the Nazi point of view could be understood as harvest. 6 Furthermore, the historical context of the Cornet signals that Ullmann intended to take a political stance with his composition. The historic key background in Rilke’s poem is the Habsburgs’ fight against the Turks. The parallel between the Ottoman Empire’s attack on Europe and that of the Nazis’, a little bit conventional, can be drawn, and supports the idea of Ullmann’s composition being completed as an act of opposition against barbarism23 —certainly including that also the Western Soldateska of the Cornet’s companions behaves barbarically, literarily degusted and encapsulated by him, but not actively proclaimed. As with the fight against the Turkish Muslims, the fight against the Nazis was also about defending the good old “Europe”—as exemplarily ennobled by Stefan Zweig in exile. Admittedly, also the Nazis aimed to defend it above all against the “Jewish Bolshevism” as a new “Fortress Europe”24 under German supremacy, under the condition that the Jewish population was expatriated or annihilated and the Slavic population enslaved, as a step further towards world domination. Ullmann however places the said old Europe before the “Great War” 1914–1918. This is further reinforced in the scene mentioning all the nations fighting against the Ottomans. Ullmann places particular emphasis on the keyword ‘Bohemian’,25 thus signalling his own identification with the old Habsburg supranational ‘identity’26 and his critique of the new Prussian-stamped ‘Great German’ (“Großdeutschland”) identity of the “Ostmark” (aka Österreich) and the ‘Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia’. The nations and regions are in detail: [Ullmann, 1, IV.] Herren, die aus Frankreich kommen und aus Burgund, aus den Niederlanden, aus Kärntens Tälern, von den böhmischen Burgen und vom Kaiser Leopold. these gentlemen who come out of France and out of Burgundy, out of the Netherlands, out of Carinthia’s valleys, from the castles of Bohemia and from the Emperor Leopold.27 23

Another historical parallel plays a role here: the parallelisation of the 30 Years’ War and the Nazi era as two of the worst phases of German history is commonplace in Nazi-critical literature of exile and inner emigration—and also compositionally, as in Karl Amadeus Hartmann’s opera Simplicissimus (1935) and his Gryphius cantata Friede Anno 48 (1936). Rilke’s Cornet, however, set somewhat later in 1663, is still linked to the 30 Years’ War through army commanders and others. 24 As emphasized e.g. by Friedrich Tomberg (2012); see also Opitz (1988). 25 See below Fig. 6. 26 Ullmann was oriented towards Vienna and even became a pupil of Schönberg. Generally, the majority of Bohemian and then Czechoslovakian Jewry before and after 1918 voted for German rather than Czech. For further details, see, among others, the pianist Alice Herz-Sommer in Fogt (2014). 27 https://stephenmitchellbooks.com, accessed 2 June 2022.

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The main mass is therefore Habsburg. Yet there is also an opponent of the Habsburgs, namely France. France historically took a liking to ally with the Turks, especially in the seventeenth century as it was wedged in a pincer between the Spanish and Central European Habsburgs. In Ullmann’s own historical situation however, France, like Czechoslovakia, was a country occupied and opposed by the Nazi’s “Greater German Reich” and therefore welcomed as an ideal ally. 7 Finally, and perhaps in the end almost most importantly, something of Ullmann’s motivation is revealed retrospectively from the motivic-thematic analysis (see below): There are numerous words in Rilke’s text that can act as keywords, as a kind of trigger of word art for tone art by referring to the special situation in Theresienstadt, to being imprisoned in a camp, with sadness as a keynote, but also some flashing sparks of hope. The keyword “mother”, for example, already appears almost as a leitmotif in Rilke, and Ullmann composes it at least hinted at as a somewhat contoured, form-like motif.

3 Text and Text, the Prose-Poem as Song and Melodrama-Libretto: Rilke in Viktor Ullmann’s Interpretation Given the musicality of Rilke’s language, the genre of melodrama seems a fitting choice, although Rilke initially opposed this on the occasion of Pasztory’s setting; however, he had no copyright enforcement options. Ullmann initially planned a musical setting with an orchestra.28 He had to abandon his original plan for pragmatic reasons and composed a piece for narrator and piano instead.29 ‘Pragmatic’ in this context does not mean that it would have been difficult to find talented instrumentalists,30 but rather refers to the time pressure Ullmann was under, as he was expecting his deportation to Auschwitz. Besides other options for instrumentation, both piano and speaking part were easier to rehearse than a singing part.31 Nevertheless, Ullmann stubbornly noted on the title page of the autograph, “for speaker and orchestra or piano”. The piece was performed several times with piano and speaker in Theresienstadt. After completing the composition on 12 July, Ullmann found a couple of outstanding interpreters for his melodrama in the pianist and conductor 28

“The addition was apparently only made later: for speaker and orchestra or piano. […] Viktor Ullmann only orchestrated the first musical piece, the orchestration’s essential features were difficult to decipher but listed in great detail in the manuscript.” (Preface to the score Schott International, Mainz, 48199, p. 4) Yet according to Schultz (2010, p. 11), the orchestration went as far as Part I, No. III, m. 12. 29 In extenso Schultz (2010). 30 There were plenty of them—Ullmann also acted as a quasi-official music critic and was very strict, according to the pianist Herz-Sommer. This matches the equally poignant yet grotesque remark by his wife that he was upset about singers in Theresienstadt not being good enough. 31 “Survivors reported […] several performances which consistently aroused great enthusiasm among the Terezín audience” (Schultz 2010, p. 13).

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Fig. 1 Viktor Ullmann: Cornet, Particell, end of part I. Autograph and transcription, Quoted after Schultz (2010, p. 8)

Rafael Schächter (who had already directed the rehearsals of the planned performance of The Emperor of Atlantis) and the actor Friedrich (Fritz) Lerner. Schächter played the piano part from the particell, an abbreviated score with the voicing, sometimes only sketched, but without it’s full notation in staves, which is often written in four staves—a remarkable achievement in terms of reading technique alone (Fig. 1).

3.1 Melodrama—Text as Trigger Melodrama is a special type of musical setting: it is a speaking to the music instead of singing the music, which only appears here only as a “purely” instrumental “accompaniment”. The genre occurs throughout many cultures of music; it remains nevertheless a borderline case of the relationship between the vocal and the instrumental. It developed as a genre in the late Enlightenment from 1770 onwards, not least through Rousseau. The two main types of the genre are the accompaniment with orchestra, the other with piano only. One motive reflected on the not particularly artistic but widespread assumption that speaking was more “natural” than singing. Humperdinck, Schönberg (Gurrelieder, Pierrot lunaire) or Alban Berg (Wozzeck, Lulu) developed transitional forms of speaking with various degrees of implied pitch and rhythmic fixation: the “bound” melodrama. Viktor Ullmann leaves it as plain, non-rhythmicized speech. Due to the melodrama’s reduction of the vocal to speech, a non-musical recitando, only the instrumental subsystem of the work is available for semantic concretization to the point of troping. He even went so far as to remark in the

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autograph: “The indicated text distribution” only reflects “the approximate concurrence”.32 Yet there certainly are semantic relationships between text and music, and even quite precise correspondences between text and melody, between word and tone art, which manifest compositionally, appearing repeatedly in an unconsciously-latent and musically motivated manner instead of the fuzzy and indistinct relationships. The sheer text-word operates here as a trigger and provides cues of signification, which are then instrumentally executed.

3.2 Wordless Person-Related Number Semantics The semantics of numbers without words serve as a substitute or an equivalent of the trope of the instrumental with words.33 Whereas Rilke’s poem unfolds in one single part, Ullmann divides his melodrama into two parts. The first part is further subdivided into 5 movements and encompasses the monotonous ride through the Hungarian plains, and the plot up to the arrival at the castle, whereas the second part includes the feast at the castle, as well as the night of love and the Cornet’s death. Ullmann then adds to the 7 movements of the second part an eighth one,34 which is the only one with a title: Finale’ This movement functions as an epilogue; and no. I can be regarded as either a prologue or an introduction. Depending on the classification of movements, this results in two semantically loaded numbers, one positive and one negative: 12 and 13. In the calculation of the calendar and time, which is based on the hexagesimal system, the 12 is a central number. The octave is for historical, ideational motifs divided into 12 semitones in the European tradition. It thus also becomes the sacred number of the twelve-tone technique, which Ullmann’s interim teacher (1918) Schönberg had decisively developed. 1, IV has 72 measures, or 6 × 12, and we encounter the exact same number of bars in 2, II. It would substantially overstrain the belief in the “absolute” music to explain all these parallel semantic choices of the composer as coincidence. Ullmann even levels up the game of number semantics by incorporating a number equivalence related precisely to 12: 1, VI has 24 (=2 × 12) bars, of which the digit sum is 6 (=12/2). Ullmann’s awareness of number semantics is manifested by the fact that he dedicated his Cornet composition to his wife on her 44th birthday. The title page of the Cornet autograph reads: Zum Geburtstag meiner Elly, die “immer mit dem Jahrhundert” geht. / 27.9.1944 (For the birthday of my Elly, who “always keeps up with the century”)

The 4 suggests a certain entirety—the 4 cardinal directions, the 4 elements etc. The 8 doubles the 4 and is thus, among other things, the symbolic number for 32

Preface to the score Schott International, Mainz, 48199, n.d., p. 4. To ‘troping’ see Heister, Introduction in the present volume. 34 The four fingers of the two hands together amount to 8. A “new” group of numbers begins with the thumb, the “nine” (in Latin novum and novem, in German neu und neun), then the 10. 33

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Fig. 2 Finale, part 2, VIII, mm. 8–11. Here the lament topos is triggered and emphasized by the keyword ‘to see an old woman cry’/‘eine alte Frau weinen sehen’

completeness and completion, which takes on a particularly high emotional charge in Ullmann’s case, since it was constantly uncertain whether he could still complete a work. It is, therefore, probably not an accident that the first movement of the second part has exactly 44 bars, neither that we find a waltz beginning in the second movement at bar 44. In both cases the text evokes the happiness of a time of rest, a time of celebration, dance and love, after having satisfied one’s hunger. The use of number semantics via gematria, such as the assignment of numbers to letters, following the alphabet (or the alphabets) as ordinal numbers, as in A = 1 etc., comes a bit closer to a real verbal trope. It appears without music, but in a prominent place: the dedication. E, the initial of Elly, is gematrical 5. The first part has 5 movements. Further semantically relevant numbers result from other bar counts.35 His name Viktor Ullmann has 12/2 + 7 letters, making a total of 13. The general unlucky number 13 acquires thus a personal poignancy. In Cornet, it occurs at least once as the digit sum of the 76 bars of the second movement in the first part. And in 1, III, in m. 39, a double bar separates a part: 3 × 13.

3.3 Connotative Semantics Through Intonations and Topoi Ullmann embedded the free, rhythmically and diastematically unbounded language into a diverse, dramatic and painting or speaking music, which includes elements of genres as march, Czech furiant and Austrian waltz, as well as traditional musical topoi, such as the descending semitone of lament, often coupled with the ‘mother’leitmotiv. Beginning with the repetition of the semitone of lament h b b a (B# Bb, Bb A), Ullmann continues the phrase of lament to e, even beyond the traditional range of the fourth till the f (m. 10) (Fig. 2).

35

In principle, the counting of bars follows the decisions of the composer. Therefore, bar numbers can be and have abundantly been applied semantically, since the European music of high feudalism and ever since musical notation with scales and later bars existed.

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Furthermore, as component of the connotative semantic tone-painting elements such as the imitation of bugle calls are used to evoke the monotonous horse ride across the Hungarian plains, as well as a great variety of intertwining motifs. The complete realization and musical effect of the tone colour dimension would emerge only with the use of the orchestra; Ullmann’s piano version therefore appears in many respects as what it ultimately is: a piano reduction. Idiomatics or pitch and harmony are altogether atonal, no longer tied to the majorminor tonality. Ullmann combines elements from Schönberg, Stravinsky, Bartók and probably Hindemith to create an independent, austere musical language with a striking metric-rhythmic variability. Despite the atonality, there is even a bit of a shadowy classic key characteristic with the slightly alienated “heroic” key of E flat major, featured prominently by Beethoven’s “Eroica”, at the very end. This could be read as an antinazi conversion.36 Even his opus-specific motifs possess different degrees of delineation and clarity. As already pointed out by Schulz, the “hidden network of subtle connections” is overshadowed by an “outer layer with, in part, extreme contrasts of musical expression”,37 ranging from lyrical melodic arches to dramatic sound clusters. Distinct motivic and thematic recapitulations form large-scale arches and link the individual sections. In the manner of a sonata or symphony coda, the short and compact Finale (2, VIII) concisely summarizes numerous motifs and thus forms a further formal arc. Like the “riding” motif, several others also recur in variable recapitulations, often several times. The leitmotif of ‘horse-riding’ in Part 1 for example, is repeated in the concluding sections of both parts (1, V as well as 2, VIII—there then, according to the plot and text, “more slowly than in No. II”: “a courier from Baron von Pirovano rode slowly into Langenau” (Fig. 3).

3.4 Connotative Semantics Through Musical Prosody. Genres, and Metres A noticeable and special case is the 5/4 m. On the one hand, it is embedded in the frequent changes of metres, based on the example of Igor Stravinsky’s in particular, but on the other hand, it expressly characterizes certain passages. It is the basis of the entire part 1, IV, the scene with the train and vulgar sexuality including booze— “wine or blood”. If the assignment to the—with negative connotations—“lower”, including the corresponding musical-moral evaluation, appears fairly clear here, in other passages the 5/4 time appears in a prismatically more diverse light. In the 5/8 variant he runs through the escape through the burning lock (2, V and the increased haste in the two following parts). But it also appears prominently in the “Mahl”/“Fest” 36

Cf. the apotheotic but under the surface ambivalent ending in this key for Schönberg’s antinazi Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte (Lord Byron) for String Quartet (Orchestra), Piano and Reciter op.41 (1942/1943). 37 Schultz (2010, p. 12).

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Fig. 3 Cornet, 1, II, mm. 1ff. and Finale (2, VIII), mm. 1ff

scene 2, II, again as 5/8), here in a clearly positive context. A common denominator would be movement (especially external), between dance, orgiastic and panic. Which compositional models Ullmann is referring to cannot be clearly clarified due to a lack of sources. But some things are obvious. For the negative side, the Mars movement from Gustav Holst’s orchestral work The Planets could have been the godfather, more neutral for the walking movement the ritornello-like promenade movement in Mussorgsky’s Pictures of an Exhibition, and for the positively festive and at the same time national the Czech people—Tanz Furiant, significant in Smetana’s opera The Bartered Bride, which was also performed in Theresienstadt. Another facet in full ambivalence offers the ballad Prinz Eugen, der edle Ritter (the noble knight), very widespread and well-known in German-speaking countries. It deals with 6th of the (Habsburg-Ottoman) Turkish wars in 1717 after the time of the Cornet, notated in 5/4 time. Musically the closest to the Cornet is the dance movement of Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 6 “Pathétique” (1893), the II. Allegro con grazia, by its 5/4 time meant as a dragging, limping waltz. In Ullmann’s Cornet 2, II, the feast, a waltz in 6/8 time develops sluggishly from a 5/8 time (Fig. 4). At first halting, then orgiastic with the typical gestures and melodic topoi of the waltz genre, the dance movement finally also officially becomes a Valse (the above mentioned m. 44). As in the scherzo movement of his 7th piano sonata, here Ullmann quotes a melody from R. Heuberger’s Vienna operetta Der Opernball (first performance 1898),38 for him probably also a reminiscence of the “good old days”39 —there with a caption explicit naming the quoted work, here without, with espr.[essivo], 38 39

As chance would play it—which Ullmann brings into play—the year of his birth. Kolben (2004, p. 29).

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Fig. 4 Cornet, 2, II, mm. 1ff

Fig. 5 Cornet, 2, II., mm. 44ff. + Richard Heuberger: Der Opernball 40

(expressively) marked and transposed to other pitches. This begins not by chance at the cue “warm women,” as a four-bar model, then varied many times (Fig. 5). Another traditional genre, the march, on the other hand, has—in Ullmann’s actual conditions nearly naturally—negative connotations. An “exposure of a march that is for all intents and purposes overrun by the action”41 can be found upon the late awakening from the night of love—“But the flag is not present” (2, VI, mm. 1–12).

40 41

Score Schott International, Mainz, 48199, n.d., and quoted after Kolben (2004, p. 29, Fig. 20). Schultz (2010, p. 10).

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Fig. 6 Cornet, 1, II., mm. 40ff. and Hussite Chorale42

3.5 Denotative Semantics Through Word-Ferrying Quotations and Polyphonic Quotation-Combinations One of the semantically remarkable passage in Ullmann’s Cornet, illustrating the idea of music as a form of opposition to Nazi barbarism, is the quote43 from the Hussite Chorale that follows discreetly in response to the above mentioned cue ‘from the Bohemian castles’/‘von den böhmischen Burgen’. Ullmann counterbalances the very forceful Hussite chorale in the bass with charming, almost “shmaltzy” waltz gestures in the right hand—possibly as a camouflage and an allusion to the ‘Austrian’ cultural heritage. The chords are all tonal in themselves, but do not follow a tonal harmonic logic and thus appear in a somewhat awkward lighting (Fig. 6). Deciding to what extent the anti-Nazi allusions had to be concealed to avoid prohibitions or punishments, and to what extent they could be expressed in an overt manner was always going to be a balancing act for Theresienstadt composers. Some facts however made that risk calculable. Firstly, the prisoners of Theresienstadt, in particular those who were involved in the so-called ‘Freizeitgestaltung’ or ‘leisure time’, had a much better music education than their guards. Secondly, the knowledge of repertoire differed significantly: The Czech Jews knew their national repertoire well and, in addition, also the Austro-German one; the German guards barely knew their own. The same is true for Jewish and Yiddish music. The Hussite Chorale has been the battle song of the Bohemian Hussites since the Hussite Wars that followed after Jan Hus’ death by fire in 1415. And it became a national symbol utilised by many Czech composers, including Dvoˇrák and Smetana, as well during Nazism period as a symbol of resistance and hope with transnational

42

Score Schott International, Mainz, 48199, n.d., and quoted after Kolben (2004, p. 30, Fig. 25). On the position and function of the quotation in the system Cantando/Sonando see Heister, Introduction.

43

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Fig. 7 “Chorale of Leuthen” (“Nun danket alle Gott”) + BACH + Hussite chorale. Piano Sonata No. 7, IVth movement Thema, Variationen und Fuge über ein hebräisches Volkslied. Final part: Fuga. Allegro giocoso energico, mm. 109f. Quoted after Kolben (2004, p. 30, Fig. 25)

relevance.44 This is probably best illustrated by the German composer Karl Amadeus Hartmann and his Concerto funebre for Solo-Violin and String Orchestra of 1939, composed during his period of ‘Inner Exile’ in which he protested against the ‘Munich Agreement’ of 1938, with which the Western powers had handed Czechoslovakia over to the Nazis. Viktor Ullmann quotes the Hussite Chorale also in his Piano Sonata No. 7, his last sonata, in its final movement—a characteristic troping via quotation. In this sonata, Ullmann develops a multi-layered, polyphonic troping. He furthermore combines the national Czech quote with two ‘German’ quotes: the widely quoted Bach-motif and the chorale ‘Now all give thanks to God’/‘Nun danket alle Gott’ (1636). The latter is quite ambivalent, as it dates back to the Seven Years’ War and Prussia’s victory in the 1757 battle, and is best known as a popular militaristic-national battle song—the ‘Choral von Leuthen’—‘The chorale of Leuthen’. The chorale was sung in Sedan in 1870, at the mobilisation in Berlin and the Battle of Tannenberg in 1914, and in March 1933 at the “Day of Potsdam” in the garrison church, where the alliance of the traditional Wilhelmine military powers and large-scale industrial powers with the Nazis as a new power was celebrated45 (Fig. 7). Ullmann specifically modifies the Nun danket (Give thanks now). The chorale receives an upbeat with a fourth, while in the original “Nun danket alle” (“Give thanks now, everyone”) is declaimed on the same note—it is a characteristic of this beginning, which, following the repetition of the second verse, also returns in the beginning of the third with this single-note declamation, until reappearing in the 44

C. Bianchi (without page) describes Ullmann’s Cornet, along with the 7th piano sonata and The Emperor of Atlantis as “la composizione più resistenziale”, the most resistant composition. 45 Cf. Fischer (2007) (without pagination).

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Fig. 8 Piano Sonata No. 7, IVth movement, Thema, Variationen und Fuge über ein hebräisches Volkslied. Final part: Fuga. Allegro giocoso energico, mm. 109f. BACH + Hussite Chorale + Slovak national anthem. Quoted after Kolben (2004, p. 26, Fig. 9, p. 29, Figs. 22 and 23)

transposition a fourth lower. The original mono-tone melody refers to closure and calm or rest; yet Ullmann’s upbeat with the fourth reveals a typical sonando signalling motif shared e.g. by the Marseillaise and the Internationale, which means beginning and appeal46 (Fig. 8). The BACH quotation appears in the inner voice, but in a deformed, distorted form47 as Bb A C# C: the last two letters are altered. The structure of − 1 + 3 − 1 is similar to and yet distinct from the genuine − 1 + 2 − 1 (Here, as in the following, 1 means semitone, + upwards, − downwards, analogous with other intervals). It continues with the transposition and variation of the original BACH-motto before moving into the figuration of F# E G F#, or − 2 + 2 − 1. The distortion of the particularly “German” BACH counteracts the “Choral von Leuthen” with its nationalistic celebration of victory and, transposed from past to present, the German “national-socalist” certitude of victory. It suggests a special “irony” (Petit 2022) that, instead of sequentially progressing forward, the BACH here circles back onto itself at the second appearance, returning to the initial note. Along with the B-A-C-H motif, the chorale here symbolizes the German and the national-Protestant sphere”,48 but inverted and transposed into the negative. Later in the work, Ullmann quotes the BACH again (mm. 138), again with an anti-Nazi point, and explicitly names the cipher in the notes. This time, Ullmann counterpoints and confronts the “Germanic” sequentially directly with the Jewish-Hebrew, with the Hussite Chorale—and, via the theme of the Rachel song, with allusions to Slovak national anthem. The BACH is transposed, thereby intervallically distorted, and ends fragmented at the third occurrence with the slightly lamentable three-tone semitone descent, already inherent in the sigh motive of the B A anyway (Figs. 8 and 9). Strangely enough, the Slovak hymn contains the “Chorale of Leuthen”, as a prosodic allusion as in the pitch sequence. Ullmann must have been as aware of these similarities at his time as the author is today. In any case, what remains at the 46

In his Hitlerchoräle (Hitler Chorals) of 1933, Brecht placed a NS-critical parody of this chorale at the beginning. Cf. Fischer (2007). 47 In extenso see Petit (2022). 48 Fischer (2007).

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Fig. 9 Piano Sonata No. 7, Variationen über ein hebräisches Lied. Final part: Fuga. Allegro giocoso energico, mm. 109f49 Fig. 10 Slovak national anthem + “Chorale of Leuthen”

end is not the German-national but the Slovak-national—once again an anti-Nazi statement in the composition (Fig. 10).

3.6 Melodrama as a Quasi-Song—Tendency to Set the Text to Music Instead of Troping Despite the genre-related restrictions of the “musical setting” in melodrama— speaking, not singing—, there are several instances of Ullmann applying this model. A few fragments and example cases must suffice here. In the first case, speech and instrumental accompaniment do not sound synchronously, but successively, word first than music50 —one of the possibilities of correlation in melodrama. Here, in a relationship of prima and seconda volta,51 the instrumental subsystem echoes exactly prosodically as a troping and in the magic three-times the four-syllable “Wein oder Blut” (“wine or blood”) (Fig. 11). A second example presents the “Reiten, reiten” (“Riding, riding”) with which the music to the recitation begins. Rilke already reproduces the real process with 49

Score Schott International, Mainz n.d.. Cf. the old opera discussion: “Prima la musica, poi le poesie” and vice versa. 51 About terms see Heister, Introduction in the present volume. 50

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Fig. 11 Cornet, 1, IV., mm. 65ff

monotonous word repetitions. The mono-tonous instrumental figuration in the left hand is on the one side an iconic mimesis of clattering hooves, yet on the other, it can be easily lyricized with the word “reiten”. This troping is doubled in the interplay with the echoing tones of the right hand. Ulmann composes a considerable multiplication of monotony: no less than 2 + 4 repetitions of “riding” in each hand per measure, plus 4 more in left–right alternation, making a total of 20 repetitions of the 2 syllables of the 1 key word in 2 measures. The four tone pattern of the instrumental system is a paradoxical non-sung col canto respectively colla voce to the spoken words (See above Fig. 3, mm. 1ff; here the continuation, mm. 4, Fig. 12). A third example is revealed in the sentence “"Bild. Man hat zwei Augen zuviel.” (One has two eyes too many). The keyword “Bild” (“view” or “image” (m. 31) motivates a phrase that connects the waltz gesture (change to 3/4 time!) with the Lamento-gesture (mm 31f). But the iconic-gestural connotative mimesis is complemented by the poiesis with the denotative latent troping of the spoken but not sung text in the instrumental system: The sentence plus fragments “Bild. Man hat zwei Augen zuviel. Nur in der Nacht” (“View. One has two eyes too many. Only at night”) merges (the two appoggiaturas excluded) exactly into the notes of the melody of the right hand and could easily be sung. The melody in the descant of the instrumental Fig. 12 Cornet, part 1, I., mm. 4f

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Fig. 13 Cornet 1, II., m. 31ff

system is a simultaneous quasi-troping, a non-sung col canto respectively colla voce to the spoken words52 (Fig. 13). The fourth and last example is a different type of the intertwining of text, music, and context, of history, present, and future. Here Ullmann combines allusion, quasiquotation and quasi-setting to music. Into the long stretch of the beginning, the textually defining motif of “Reiten” (“riding”), Ullmann had incorporated an outstanding motif. Its first variant occurs in “Nirgends ein Turm. Und immer dasselbe Bild.” (Nowhere a tower. And always the same view), dolce ma marc.[ato] (part 1, II, mm. 29ff). In mm. 28f. directly preceeds the “well”, which only slightly exceeds the level of the steppe. Here the tone set of BACH is easily recognizable in the music, and reconstructible by permutations. Cb = B#, m. 29 initiates in the sigh motif of the descending semitone Bb A, again continued by A Ab. Then with the interval structure major second upwards, fourths downwards, i.e. +2 −5, Ullmann exposes a three-tone motive here in 1, II, which then pervades the work as a leitmotif. It appears for the first time at the keyword “Turm” (Nowhere a tower) m. 29. The analogy is convincing: The tower rises out of the dull plain of the steppes, just as the motive rises as a figure out of the previous dull single-note accompaniment in the bass on F. This, too, changes for a short time. Simultaneously with the “tower” motif, Ullmann moves the organ point to F, which has been sustained in eighth notes through all the previous 28 bars, from the bass register to the higher octave and embeds it in tightly packed chords (mm. 29–34). What is not present in the text and in the imagined reality represented therein becomes compensatorily present in the music (Fig. 14). A particular and striking case for troping and multiple motivation is the motif developed from the three-tone structure to the four syllables (“Nirgends ein Turm”, m. 29f., see above Fig. 14) for the three syllable keyword “Es kann sein” (It may be), m. 44. In retrospect, this sentence turns out to be the text for the troping of the instrumental motif (Fig. 15). Again the minor second, but this time upwards (eb1 e1 b#) instead of the large second as in the two previous variants, i.e. +1 −5. This bar 44 (!) is strangely isolated—at first this is the only sentence spoken, and it is followed by a long lonely speech of the music and no text. Considered in its wider textual context, the phrase is the answer to the preceding question about the path to follow. Ullmann, however, 52

The additional cb1 in the right hand, repeated in the left (mm. 31) might be troped with “Bild”.

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Fig. 14 Cornet 1, II., m. 28ff

Fig. 15 Cornet, 1, II., mm. 43ff

turns it into an independent motif. Succinctly and laconically, relentlessly pounding, the motif is repeated several times, albeit with variation, instead of +1 −5 as +1 − 3. The two-bar motif is repeated with increasing acceleration: The tightening of the tempo, accelerando, is intensified by an inner acceleration through the halving of note values: 2× half notes, m. 44ff., 2× quarter notes, mm. 47f., 2× quaver notes, mm. 49f. This striking repetition at short intervals, might first hint at a vague hope for an improvement of the situation in summer ‘44’ even for survival. At the same time, however, the almost ubiquitous semitone of the lament is somewhat hidden in the chords, here mm. 49f. a total of 4 times as e eb, amplified on the 2nd and 4th times with the lower third c cb. The twice-played diminution is in the pitches similar to the motif of lament at bar 31 and 36.

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Fig. 16 Cornet, 1, II., mm. 49ff

And the music continues monotonously in the depth of the bass region. Scepticism prevails in the end: The overpowering monotone pedal point or drone F, which is recurring stronger than in the initial part, has rather negative connotations (Fig. 16). The leitmotif itself has a double motivation. It refers to Beethoven as well as to Ullmann. Many music lovers will with “Es kann sein” as Ullmann be reminded of Beethoven’s “Es muss sein!” (It must be!), the famous three-note motif of the String Quartet No 16, op. 135, his last substantial work. Beethoven’s full heading for the IV movement is a miniature program: Der schwer gefaßte Entschluß (The hard taken decision:) Grave, ma non troppo tratto (Muß es sein?/ Must it be?)53 —Allegro (Es muß sein!/It must be!)—Grave, ma non troppo tratto—Allegro (f-Moll–F-Dur). Beethoven had written to a music patron he could have the parts of the quartet, but only if he paid for borrowing them. The patron replied “If it must be”. Beethoven answered with the canon “Es muss sein” (It must be; WoO 196), approximately around 1 August 1826. In October 1826 he included the canon as motto in the last movement of his last String Quartet op. 135. In op. 135, the “Muss es sein?” is initially presented in a Grave by viola and cello, and repeated in increasing intensity. In a sudden change the violins set off with the “Es muss sein!” motif, now Allegro in the parallel major key. The phrase is inscribed in the canon as a vocal textualization like in the score of the string quartet. Both times, then, the word is manifest and not merely latent. In Ullmann it is almost manifest, though not explicitly notated (Fig. 17). Ullmann does not quote the “It must be!” verbatim, but refers to it through allusions. His motif shows some similarity to the double structure of question and answer, call and response. He assembles both encaptically together. Connecting with Beethoven are, first, the similar text, second, the identical number of syllables in the two texts, third, the very similar prosody, fourth, the similar intervallic constructs, and fifth, one might say, the motto function of the movement, explicit in Beethoven and presumable in Ullmann. In Beethoven, the prosody is fixed, and also fixed as an upbeat pattern in the music as “It ‘must be!” From the word-language accent pattern, however, it remains in a certain suspension. In the German sentence melody an downbeat accent pattern is just as possible. Prosodically, the accent pattern ‘Es ´muss ‘sein als ´Es kann ´sein 53

Cf. the preemptive hints in Heister, Introduction in the present volume.

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Fig. 17 Beethoven: String quartet op. 135, Motto of the IVth (last) movement54

is decisive for Ullmann’s translation of Rilke’s text into music. The scansion of the downbeat interrogative version he mounts into the scansion of the propositional sentence. Whatever the relationship to Beethoven’s motto: with his own scansion of Rilke’s text, Ullmann very often latently tropes the motto motif whenever it emerges more recognizably. Beethoven uses two different interval structures for the repeated “It must be”: + 4 −5, +3 −5. Thus, the ending with the descending fourth is invariant. No chance: Ullmann articulates +1 −5 the first time—thus also with him the ending with the descending fourth. In Beethoven, the question has the tones g e ab, −3 +4. In Ullmann, the quasi-question or its equivalent is simply a preceding three-note structure: b f# c, −5 +6. The −5 is also found here, only in the “wrong” place. Ullmann permutes the pitches and their sequence. Nevertheless, here the differences are considerably greater. But the second tone (Ullmann) or the third tone (Beethoven) is in both cases a semitone above the first. The reference to Beethoven’s motto is evident. The reference of the motto to Ullmann’s person is less so. But it most probably exists. The bridge is formed by the name: the number of its letters and the translation of the latent solmization syllables and tone letters contained in it into pitches.55 The name Viktor Ullmann results in pitches above C: mi = E, do = C, re = D, la = A, thus the set C D E A. As a musical soggetto cavato56 Ullmann then configures primarily d e A, +2 −5 (as, for example, ab bb f to “Nirgends” m. 29), or d e c, +2 −3. The concrete intervals are variant, usually major or minor second up, fourth or tritone down; the up-down structure is invariant, guaranteeing consistency of shape. Vik-tor Ull-mann has 4 syllables, like “It must be” and “It can be,” so it fits in that 54

Score Ludwig van Beethovens Werke, Serie 6, Band 2, Nr.52 (pp.189–206) Plate B.52. Breitkopf und Härtel, Leipzig n.d. [1863]. 55 Such is considered “speculative”, i.e. negative from the positivist-factualist or formalist point of view, which sticks to what is written in the notes and describes what is obvious anyway. 56 To the term see Heister, Introduction in the present volume.

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respect. He contracts this four-number like the 4 pitches of the solmization set into the 3 notes of the leitmotif. Thus, the reference to the name only explains the potential, not the pitches themselves. In Ullmann’s Cornet the question ‘Muss es sein?’—‘Must it be?’ is not answered by Beethoven’s categorical imperative ‘Es muss sein!’—‘It must be!’, but substituted by the open potentialis of Rilke’s ‘Es kann sein.’—‘It may be.’ The former sentence here would denote death, the latter life: Had the ‘second front’ of the Western Allies opened earlier and had thus come in time to relieve the pressure on the Soviet Eastern Front, many Jewish, Soviet and other Eurasian lives would have been saved. Admittedly, this is a bold interpretation of Ullmann’s musical motif and as personal as contextual motivations. However, Ullmann blazes a trail in that direction with his striking multiple variations and repetitions of this motif in particular (See above Figs. 15 and 16) In various transpositions, that is, other pitches, Ullmann introduces the motif of ‘Es kann sein’—‘It may be’, without words, no less than 6 times (mm. 44–50). The mentioned rhythmical acceleration and metrical diminution after the decisive bar 44 “kann sein”, may be an allusion to the hope that the Red Army as a liberator should and would come accelerated, shortened, “diminished” in time: The imagined (and dissapointed) expectation becomes imaginary-real in the music. Ullmann uses a wordless trope here. But it is a—latently remaining—textualization, as conveyed by the already varied allusion to Beethoven’s motto “It must be” and his own hesitant motto “It may be”. The keywords “Aber wir haben im Sommer Abschied genommen” (But we bade farewell in summer), as well as “Es muss also Herbst sein” (It must hence be autumn) (mm. 56f. and 63f) point to the autumnal transports to the extermination camps. Also in m. 47 the plaintive, slacked-out minor seconds down as a quasi-answer do not indicate too high hopes for better things, just as little that the movement ends in the lowest register with the tritone span E Eb Db C 1 b (mm. 70–76 in pppp and expressly—verklingend—fades away. All this is obviously very complex. There are multiple syntactic, semantic and pragmatic connections between the individual motifs. There is a multiplicity of links between the composition itself and Ullmann’s reality of 1944. And there is still much, here remaining unsaid and wordless and reaching beyond the scope of the topic, to explore and to analyze.57

57

We would like to thank Mariama Diallo, who translated various supplementary text passages and thus contributed considerably to the completion of the contribution and thus played a significant role in helping to ensure that the manuscript was delivered on time.

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References Bianchi, C.: L’Andante della Sonata n° 5 op. 45 di Viktor Ullmann. Una testimonianza da Theresienstadt In: Philomusica online. Università degli studi di Pavia. Rivista del Dipartimento di Musicologia e Beni Culturali, vol. 5(1) (2006). http://riviste.paviauniversitypress.it/index.php/ phi/article/view/05-01-SG02/55#_ftnbio. Accessed 14 July 2014 Blatter, J., Milton, S.: The Art of the Holocaust. Routledge Press, New York (1981) Bravo, G.: Viktor Ullmann (n.d.). http://orelfoundation.org/composers/article/viktor_ullmann/. Accessed 4 June 2022 Fackler, G.: “Des Lagers Stimme” – Musik im KZ. Alltag und Häftlingskultur in den Konzentrationslagern 1933 bis 1936. Mit einer Darstellung der weiteren Entwicklung bis 1945 und einer Biblio-/Mediographie (= DIZ-Schriften, vol. 11). Edition Temmen, Bremen (2000) Fischer, M.: Nun danket alle Gott. In: Populäre und traditionelle Lieder. Historisch-kritisches Liederlexikon (2007). http://www.liederlexikon.de/lieder/nun_danket_alle_gott/, 16 Oct. 2012. Accessed 6 June 2022 Fogt, M.: “Musik macht den Menschen reicher”. Eine Erinnerung an Alice Herz-Sommer. In: Musica Reanimata - Mitteilungen vol. 83, pp. 7–21 (2014) Hájková, A.: Prisoner Society in the Terezin Ghetto, 1941–1945. Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Toronto (2013). https://hdl.handle.net/1807/97111. Accessed 8 May 2020 Karas, J.: Music in Terezin 1941–1945. Beaufort Books, New York (1985) Klein, H.-G. (ed.): Viktor Ullmann: Materialien (Verdrängte Musik, vol. 2). von Bockel Verlag, Hamburg (1995) Klein, H.-G. (ed.): Viktor Ullmann: Die Referate des Symposions anlässlich des 50. Todestags 14.– 16. Oktober 1994 in Dornach und ergänzende Studien. (Verdrängte Musik, vol. 12). von Bockel Verlag, Hamburg (1996) Klein, H.-G. (ed.): “Lebe im Augenblick, lebe in der Ewigkeit”. Die Referate des Symposions aus Anlaß des 100. Geburtstags von Viktor Ullmann in Berlin am 31. Oktober/1. November 1998. Pfau-Verlag, Saarbrücken (2000) Kolben, R.: Viktor Ullmanns 7. Klaviersonate. In: Musica Reanimata – Mitteilungen, vol. 52/53, Okt./Dez. 2004, pp. 20–33 (2004) Krüger, B.: Die Weise von Liebe und Tod des Cornets Christoph Rilke. Buchkult und Kultbuch in den Weltkriegen (parapluie. elektronische zeitschrift für kulturen · künste · literaturen, vol. 3 (1997/1998). http://parapluie.de/archiv/unkultur/cornet/. Accessed 14 Feb 2014 Kuna, M.: Musik an der Grenze des Lebens. Musikerinnen und Musiker aus böhmischen Ländern in nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslagern und Gefängnissen. Zweitausendeins, Frankfurt a. M. (1993) Lewinsky, Ch.: Gerron. Roman. Büchergilde Gutenberg, Frankfurt a. M., Zürich and Wien (2011) Margry, K.: Das Konzentrationslager als Idylle: “Theresienstadt”—Ein Dokumentarfilm aus dem jüdischen Siedlungsgebiet (n.d.). http://www.cine-holocaust.de/mat/fbw000812dmat.html. Accessed 14 Feb 2014 Müller, M., Piechocki, R.: Alice Herz-Sommer. “Ein Garten Eden inmitten der Hölle”. Ein Jahrhundertleben. Droemer, München (2006) (reprint 2011) Opitz, R.: Europastrategien des deutschen Kapitals 1900–1945. Pahl-Rugenstein, Köln (1977) Petit, E.: Musique, religion, résistance à Theresienstadt. In: Les Cahiers Maria Szymanowska. Musicologie org, no 2 printemps 2022 (2022). https://www.musicologie.org/publirem/petit_elise_mus ique_religion.html. Accessed 30 May 2022 Philipsen, C., Omonsky, U. (eds.): Das Melodram in Geschichte und Aufführungspraxis: XLIII. Wissenschaftliche Arbeitstagung Michaelstein, 9. bis 11. November 2018 (= Michaelsteiner Konferenzberichte, vol. 87). Wißner-Verlag, Augsburg (2020) Postlep, N.: “Kulturlager” Theresienstadt? Historischer Ort im Spannungsfeld von geschichtlicher Realität und stilisierter Präsentation. Inauguraldissertation zur Erlangung des Grades eines Doktors der Philosophie, Fachbereich Gesellschaftswissenschaften und Philosophie der PhilippsUniversität Marburg (2010)

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Schultz, I.: Viktor Ullmann: Leben und Werk. Bärenreiter, Kassel (2008) Schultz, I.: Ein Melodram aus Theresienstadt. Viktor Ullmanns “Die Weise von Liebe und Tod des Cornets Christoph Rilke”. In: Musica Reanimata - Mitteilungen, vol. 71, März 2010, pp. 7–13 (2010) Simon, W.: Rainer Maria Rilke. Die Weise von Liebe und Tod. Texte und Dokumente. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt a. M. (1974) Tomberg, F.: Das Christentum in Hitlers Weltanschauung. Wilhelm Fink Verlag, München (2012) Ullmann, V.: 26 Kritiken über musikalische Veranstaltungen in Theresienstadt, with a preface by Thomas Mandl edited and commented by Ingo Schultz. von Bockel Verlag, Hamburg (1993) Wagner-Egelhaafs, M.: Kultbuch und Buchkult. Die Ästhetik des Ichs in Rilkes Cornet. In: Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie, vol. 107, pp. 541–556 (1988) Zweig, St.: Die Welt von Gestern. Erinnerungen eines Europäers. Bermann-Fischer, Stockholm (1944) (new edition), S. Fischer, Frankfurt a. M. (1982)

Hanns-Werner Heister, Prof. Dr. Phil., * 1946 in Plochingen/Neckar (BRD, BadenWürttemberg). 1965–1977 Musicology, German studies and Indo-European studies/linguistics in Tübingen, Frankfurt a.M. und Berlin (University of Technology), 1977 Ph.D. in musicology in Berlin (University of Technology, with Carl Dahlhaus: Diss. published 1983 as Das Konzert. Theorie einer Kulturform [The Concert. Theory of a Cultural Form], 2 vols., 1993. 1970– 1992 freelancer, 1992–1998 Professor for history of music and music communication at the Musikhochschule “Carl Maria von Weber” Dresden, 1998/99–2011 Professor for musicology at the Hochschule für Musik and Theater Hamburg.—Themes of research and publications: Methodology of musicology; aesthetics, sociology, history, and anthropology (in particular music and human perception, origins of language and art) of music; political, popular music, new music, jazz; music and musical culture in Nazism, resistance movement and exile; aesthetics and history of music theatre; media/technology and institutions of music culture; music analysis; music and: other arts, psychoanalysis, play, maths, cybernetics, fuzzy logic; gardening. Books Jazz (1983); Vom allgemeingültigen Neuen. Analysen engagierter Musik: Dessau, Eisler, Ginastera, Hartmann [Of the Universal New. Analyses of engaged Music: …] (2006); (photographies by Ines Gellrich) Un/Endlichkeit. Begegnungen mit György Ligeti [In/Finity. Encountering Görgy Ligeti] (2008); Hintergrund Klangkunst [Background Sound Art] (2008; publ. 2009); Heinz Gellrich—ZeitenWegeZeichen [Times, Paths, Signs] (2014); (Ed. and main author) Die Ehrenmitglieder der Staatstheater Stuttgart 1912–2018. Theatergeschichte in Porträts [The Honorary Members of the Stuttgart State Theatres 1912–2018. Theatre History in Portraits] (2018); Music and Fuzzy Logic. The Dialectics of Ideas and Realizations in the Artwork Process (Studies in Fuzziness and Soft Computing, ed. J. Kaprzyk, Vol. 406) (2021); Musik und Fuzzy Logic. Die Dialektik von Idee und Realisierungen im Werkprozess (2021). TastenTelegraphieTelephonie. Musikalische Modelle und technisch-industrielle Medien (in preparation, 2022). Co-editor of (among others)Musik und Musikpolitik im faschistischen Deutschland [Music and Music Politics in Fascist Germany] (1984); Komponisten der Gegenwart [Contemporary Composers] (loose leaf lexicon, since 1992, Jan. 2022 70 deliveries); Zwischen Aufklärung & Kulturindustrie [Between Enlightenment and Cultural Industry] (3 volumes, 1993); Musik und. Eine Schriftenreihe der Hochschule für Musik und Theater [Music and] Hamburg (since 2000).— Editor of among othersMusik/Revolution [Music/Revolution] (3 vols., 1996/97); “Entartete Musik” 1938—Weimar und die Ambivalenz [“Degenerated Music” 1938—Weimar and Ambivalence], 2 vols. (2001); Geschichte der Musik im 20. Jahrhundert [History of Music in the 20th Century], Vol. III: 1945–1975 (2005); Zur Ambivalenz der Moderne [On the Ambivalence of Modernity] (series Musik/Gesellschaft/Geschichte), 4 vols., Vol. 1 2005; Vol. 2–4 2007. Bd. 5 2012; Zwischen/Töne. Musik und andere Künste [Over/tones. Music and other Arts] (series since 1995). More see www.Hanns-Werner-Heister.de.

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Monica Tempian, Dr. Phil., is a Senior Lecturer in German in the School of Languages and Cultures for German language, literature and culture since 1996, first as a Ph.D. trainee and assistant of Professor Hans-Jürgen Schrader at Geneva University (Dissertation 2002, “Ein Traum, gar seltsam schauerlich…”. Romantikerbschaft und Experimentalpsychologie in der Traumdichtung Heinrich Heines (2005).), and since 2006 as a lecturer in German at Victoria University of Wellington. Her research focuses on the inter-related areas of Diaspora and Exile Studies, Memory Studies, Multicultural Literatures and German-Hebrew Studies. The international reach and interdisciplinary orientation of her work is suggested by her book publications: Minnie Maria Korten. Ein Schauspielerleben rund um die Welt (2015); [co-edited with Simone Gigliotti] The Young Victims of the Nazi Regime: Migration, the Holocaust, and Postwar Displacement (2016); [coedited with Hans-Jürgen Schrader] Manfred Winkler. Haschen nach Wind. Die Gedichte (2017)— an annotated complete edition of poetry by Winkler; Maria Dronke. Glimpses of an Acting Life. Extended English translation of Minnie Maria Korten. Ein Schauspielerleben rund um die Welt (2021) (2017); many journal articles and book chapters. All these publications aim to spur continued engagement with forced migration crises, the destructive impact of political extremism, and human rights debates. The international standing and impact of her work is reflected in international awards and grants, including a 2016 Research Fellowship at the Ludwig-MaximiliansUniversity Munich, a 2016 Research Grant for University Academics and Scientists awarded by the German Academic Exchange Services (DAAD).

Pedagogy and Music Education

Language and Gesture as a Music Educational Opportunity on the Path Towards the Expressive Interpretation of Vocal and Instrumental Music Silke Lehmann

1 Introduction This anthology addresses the relationship between the vocal and the instrumental by examining the aspects of word art and gesture art in music. This article takes a music educational perspective.1 It is the responsibility of teachers of voice and of musical instruments to enable people to express themselves musically. The high significance of music for humans is reflected in anthropological findings that suggest music has a spiritual function, that it can be a means by which to relate to the beyond. Magicians, shamans, medicine people, priests, and monks sing, make music, and dance.2 As music educator Michael Dartsch notes, the consolidation of tribal or group cohesion is a central aspect of musically influenced forms of action in cultic practices; Dartsch also refers to the human need “for feelings of euphoria, for the transcendence of the boundaries of everyday life and of the individual.”3 Karl Heinrich Ehrenforth compellingly states, “As it is to be assumed that human cultures have never nor will ever forgo music (in its broadest sense) and thus will always take an interest in the sharing and acquisition thereof, the work of music education will always be tied to the anthropological constant that humans cannot live without music.”4 This is where music education comes into play—teaching people to make music. This is no easy task, as anyone who has witnessed music school recitals, amateur orchestra performances, or even private performances at home in front of the 1

This article and all direct quotations from German language sources were translated into English by Ursula Martyn-Ellis. 2 Suppan (2016ff., n.p.). 3 Dartsch (2016, p. 17). 4 Ehrenfort (2016ff., n.p.), emphasis S.L. S. Lehmann (B) University of Music and Drama, Rostock, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 H.-W. Heister et al. (eds.), Word Art + Gesture Art = Tone Art, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20109-7_27

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Christmas tree, let alone those teachers responsible for such performances can attest. Difficulties producing adequate sound, intonation problems, and deficits in rhythmic interpretation are inevitable when learning to play music. The path to relatively secure proficiency or even perfection requires a considerable tolerance for frustrations in the beginning, patience over long periods of time, and perseverance in the pursuit of differentiation abilities and accuracy. Peter Röbke emphatically addresses the dilemma of how musical expression requires a certain level of motor control of an instrument (or the voice), stating, “We want to help people acquire technical skills, the usefulness of which will not become apparent to them until they are able to use them to make music—which they can only really do once they have acquired the necessary skills.”5 Teachers can introduce tone exercises, scales, and etudes in a well-planned didactical manner, yet the danger remains that learners may become demotivated. Motivating lessons for beginners depend on their initially less developed technical motor skills being put to use in a creative context. This is because the development of sound differentiation enables learners to express emotions and to communicate with themselves and with others.

2 The Building Blocks of Childhood Development in Movement and Language Singing, dancing, and making music are not only closely connected forms of action, but also an ideal field of activities to foster emotional balance, tension reduction, and conflict resolution. Over the course of human evolution, this ability to interact and express ourselves helped individuals to successfully integrate into groups, as “the simultaneousness of singing and movement creates cohesion, because in that moment every participating individual has a concept of what is going on in the others. And that is very important.”6 Communication with others is a basic biological function of making music, with evolutionary roots in the animal kingdom.7 Parent–child bonding and language acquisition are also based on means of expression similar to music.8 The special approaches that can be derived from the areas of language and gesture for educational and interpretational processes of making music will be examined in the following chapters. For this purpose, a fundamental look at the development of movement and language and their shared connection to the field of gesture is worthwhile. Both the handling of an instrument and the differentiated articulation and vocalisation of speech and singing require purposeful motor control. Reflexes and mass movements already present at the time of birth develop only very gradually into purposeful 5

Röbke (2015, p. 14). Kreutz (2015, p. 24). 7 Merker (2015). 8 Papoušek and Papoušek (1981). 6

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movements.9 So-called stereotypes—movements of the extremities, head, or torso repeated with rhythmic regularity—are an important step in this process. Frequently observed examples are kicking, rocking or waving.10 As this type of movement is redundant, it requires only limited motor control but is at the same time highly emotionally charged: “It stands out not only for its frequency but also for the peculiar exuberance and seemingly pleasurable absorption often seen in infants moving in this manner.”11

2.1 The Musical Potential of Stereotypes The developmental psychological function of stereotypes is particularly noteworthy in the context of music: They represent a transitional stage between reflex movements and voluntary motor activity, meaning these rhythmically regular actions have a training effect for future differentiated movements. The context for these forms of movement is also of interest to music education: stereotypes are triggered by interactions with caregivers (or other communication partners), when interest is shown in objects or objects are played with.12 What is more, the behavioural biologist Esther Thelen was able to demonstrate that especially those children who were held, cradled or rocked less and were thus exposed to fewer stimuli and addressed less show a higher tendency towards stereotypes. This suggests that movements repeated with rhythmic regularity can be considered compensatory self-stimulation. Thelen was also able to show that caregivers consider children expressing stereotypes to be agitated and thus quickly give them attention.13 “Rhythmic stereotypes are important for physical, psychological and social processes—and thus impact people in their entire being.”14 Musical sound gestures (e.g. clapping, leg slapping, finger snapping or stamping), but also actions on musical instruments can be traced back to these very early movement patterns. The joy of moving and making music expressed in the field of body percussion is related to these earliest emotionally charged movement patterns.

2.2 From Babbling to Rhythm Syllables Stereotypes also appear in the context of important developmental steps in the process of language acquisition, when syllables are doubled or concatenated to form so-called 9

Lehmann (2007, 44 ff.). Thelen (1981). 11 Ibid., p. 238. 12 Ibid., p. 239. 13 Thelen (1981, p. 242). 14 Lehmann (2007, p. 47). 10

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canonical babbling,15 for example ‘mama’ or ‘babababa’. In addition to cognitive performance, speech is based on motor functions—and connecting or concatenating identical syllables may also represent a transition from reflexive and random movements to controlled actions. Playing music while simultaneously illustrating and categorising it by naming syllables is a cross-cultural practice. Rhythm syllables can be found in music originating in India, Korea, and Africa16 and often serve artistic, spiritual and educational purposes all at the same time. In music education practice, the system created by Zoltán Kodály is used most frequently,17 but the syllables introduced by Edwin Gordon are also widespread.18 Regardless of which syllables are used, they represent an ideal framework that not only enables intuitive action, but also eases the transition to conventional music notation and a mathematical understanding of note values.19 At a later point, cognitive strategies can be used to build on the illustrative syllables. Just as sound gestures represent an opportunity to make music with relative motor ease, working with rhythm syllables and their patterns offers the same in relation to language. In this way, once again, (articulatory) movements, emotions and cognition are connected.

3 Gesture and Communication Communication always includes movements that go beyond those of the articulatory apparatus, namely gestures. Gestures can support or even entirely replace verbal communication. As with stereotypes, gestures are both early ontogenetic and phylogenetic expressions of life, observable in the pointing gestures primates make.20 The crucial characteristic of gestures is that they do not represent purposeful action, but are used to express something. They are movements charged with meaning that “refer to something beyond themselves: They initiate or accompany a process of creating and communicating meaning.”21

15

Buschmann et al. (2020, p. 16f). Flatischler (1984, p. 100 ff.), Giger (2013, p. 106 ff.). 17 Lehmann (2007, p. 189). 18 Süberkrüb (n.d.). 19 Lehmann (2007, p. 216 ff.). 20 Berg (2018, p. 157). 21 ibid., p. 155. 16

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3.1 The Importance of Gestures for Language Acquisition As early as in the 1970s, the psychoanalytically oriented linguist Norbert Freedman researched the importance of movement in the language acquisition process, in particular the connections between gestures and mental representations. He was particularly interested in “the transformation of image and experience into symbolic form”.22 According to Freedman, a distinction must be made between mental ‘representation’ and ‘representing’—the action or activity, which “involves the experience of a motor act”.23 Movements that accompany language, ultimately used by everyone to a greater or lesser extent, serve to sort thoughts and maintain speech flow, to find and place symbols (i.e. words) corresponding to experiences or objects. Freedman differentiates between two types of gestures. The first type categorises gestures with which an individual touches their own body, for example in response to a question that is difficult to answer. In such situations, children in particular will scratch their heads, stick fingers in their mouths or rub their arms or legs. These “body-focused movements”24 serve the “confirmation of the existence of the self during communication”.25 The second type of gesture can be provoked if a child is asked to describe, for example, a hammer or a vase. The child will involuntarily make movements typical for the use of the object or to imitate its shape. Freedman speaks here of “object focused movements”.26 Thus, gestures support mental representation, the link between reality and language symbols. Norbert Freedman speaks almost poetically of the musical potential of the inseverable connection between language and movement, stating, “Any sample of a communicative interchange between two people (as seen for example on video tape), allows us to witness a dance, a dance in which torso, hands, and head move in rhythmic accompaniment to speech—a dance where, during pausing, there occurs a retrenchment and a focus upon the self.”27

3.2 Gestures in Music-Making Movements Just as the production of language, the production of music is always bound to movement: keys are pressed, strings plucked or bowed, holes and keys are opened or closed. In this context “all technically necessary movements already have a gestural potential.”28 In contrast to pressing computer keys, the movements of playing musical instruments are conscious and purposeful processes with the intention of producing 22

Freedman (1977, p. 109). Ibid., p. 110. 24 Ibid., p. 113. 25 Ibid., p. 114. 26 Ibid., p. 113. 27 Ibid., p. 110. 28 Berg (2018, p. 159). 23

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a certain sound quality.29 In other words, vocal or instrumental music-making movements are more than just motor actions; they can be considered gestures. In addition, these gestural movements are embedded in a process of creating meaning—they serve interpretation. However, it must not be ignored that while instruments do provide expressive potential, they also require movements in their use (e.g. a position change, a quick intake of breath) that may impair the desired expression.30 This fact should be paid special attention to in instrumental or vocal lessons. Teachers are well advised not to challenge learners too much, either motorically or cognitively. Music can only be performed joyfully and with creative intent if the level of the musical material is manageable. Finally, gestures have a communicative, signalling function,31 for example when a player gives a cue or wants to quicken or slow the tempo. “The joint execution of temporal structures in music is only possible on a level of subtle physicality: Movements have to […] relate to one another, interlock, be permeable for participating musicians’ signals.”32 This ability for interpersonal communication, so-called entrainment, will be examined more closely in the following section.

3.3 Entrainment as a Phenomenon Based on Motor and Affect Synchronicity Entrainment is a concept based on the assumption that joint actions of several individuals are subject to involuntary temporal and spatial coordination. This coordination does not necessarily occur consciously; it can also arise entirely unconsciously. Entrainment processes can often be observed in people tapping their feet, nodding their heads, or moving their entire bodies to the pulse of music they hear. Within their first years, children begin to jump or sway to music. Even singing a simple song in a group requires these intuitive coordination processes. In addition to the physical component, the process also has an emotional one: “A second component of entrainment derives from the mutual sharing of an affective state between individuals. Authors have even spoken of a kind of affective ‘synchrony’, although we prefer the term entrainment in order to distinguish the temporal and affective components while encapsulating the essence of both.”33 Anyone who has made music in an ensemble, a choir, a band or an orchestra is familiar with the emotional quality of this sense of togetherness: “Affective entrainment involves the formation of interpersonal bonds […] and is related to the pleasure in moving the body to music and being in time with others”.34 Music education processes—which are the focus of this article—are fundamentally interactive processes; they always include an interpersonal level. Even 29

Ibid., p. 160. Ibid., p. 161. 31 Ibid. 32 Ibid., p. 163. 33 Phillips-Silver and Keller (2012, p. 1). 34 Ibid. 30

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in one-to-one lessons, two people interact with one another. Especially in the fields of elemental music practice or pre-school care, movement and gesture songs are just as important as first choreographed forms of movement such as circle dances. Preverbal levels of information are of particular importance in the earliest phases of life, when verbal language is either not yet available, or available only to a limited extent. Thus, when parents sing while cradling their infants to sleep, this simultaneously enables “address, bonding, and first musical experiences”35 and fulfils fundamental basic needs for sensory perception, interaction and communication.

3.4 The Concept of Communicative Musicality Turning now to the perspective of instrumental music education, Wolfgang Rüdiger also emphasises the close connection of the physical body and the experience of music, which has its roots in the affective interaction and communication of the parent–child relationship. Rüdiger goes so far as to define musicality entirely from this perspective, formulating the concept of communicative musicality as a “metaphor for the original connectedness of humans in sound, sight, touch and movement”.36 Ultimately, our bodies enable us to both empathise with fellow human beings and to enjoy sharing musical actions and a musical culture with them. Rüdiger refers to the “archetypical sources of music: movements and pulsations, cries and sound gestures, steps and jumps, looks, facial expressions, gestures, dialogue.”37 At the same time, he laments the fact that children in beginner lessons are frequently unable to transfer the inherent expressive potential of physical movements and gestures to their musical instrument and asks, “Why do so many students appear to be cut off from their natural impulses for expression and movement when they pick up a violin or a bassoon?”38 Rüdiger suspects the answer lies in processes of socialisation and upbringing, which tend to be more rationally oriented and pay too little attention to sensory perception, bodily sensations, and active forming of expression. In order to determine whether this explanation is sufficient, it is worth taking a fundamental look at music-related learning.

4 Music-Related Learning at the Intersection of Cognition, Emotion and Motor Challenges Learning can be viewed as an activity “that is anchored in the learning subject itself and cannot be manipulated from the outside. It must always be self-driven and occur 35

Hellberg (2019, p. 37). Rüdiger (2018, p. 138). 37 Ibid., p. 140. 38 Ibid. 36

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through individual effort for the phenomena being learned to acquire meaning.”39 The goals of the skills to be learned in instrumental and vocal education, as well as in the field of elemental music practice involve sensory, motor, cognitive, and emotional aspects. These areas are not strictly separable. No movement can occur without sensory perception—processing information includes not only stimulus processing via afferent nerve pathways leading to the brain, but also an efferent direction running towards the muscles.40 And no reflection can be had, no thought conceived, without it acquiring an affective hue.41 The physical body lies at the core of both processes, “as any biological developmental progress, including thought, recognition and invention is based on movement, be it real or remembered, be it concrete physical action or merely imagined.”42 The same is even more so true of practice, the ‘special type’ of learning that is so significant to the active use of an instrument or the voice. Furthermore, it is a physical process that not only produces technical ability, but also “involves the subjective sense and musical meaning of what is practiced, as well as emotion and expression.”43 Above, Wolfgang Rüdiger was quoted lamenting the fact that children in instrumental lessons are so rarely able to activate their physical potential for expression and integrate it into the movements necessary for playing an instrument. Rüdiger assumes the cause lies in musical socialisation that overemphasises the passive consumption of music on the one hand and theoretical approaches on the other. This assumption, however, disregards both the complexity of the handling of instruments and the realities of motor development. Playing an instrument requires differentiated and distinctly fine-motor movements of the hands and fingers. However, in motor development, it is gross motor movement near the longitudinal axis of the body that is initially successful. The ability to control peripheral body parts such as hands and, more importantly, fingers matures only gradually.44 In addition, music-making movements require not only coordination, but also endurance, strength and speed. In sports science, motor learning ability is said to be best between 10 and 13 years of age.45 Movement speed also has to develop, “increasing steeply and linearly until age 12.”46 Yet it is not unusual to begin instrumental lessons at the age of six or seven— sometimes even earlier. In this context, it is important to keep in mind that motor learning is not only subject to the effects of practice, but also depends on processes of maturation.47 Physiotherapist Britta Holle, who specialises in early development, emphasises the responsibility in the assignment of a task, stating, “We have to be able to see whether a movement looks natural and judge what stage of development 39

Gruhn (2018, p. 16). Ibid., p. 29. 41 Ciompi (2005). 42 Gruhn (2018, p. 27). 43 Ibid. 44 Lehmann (2007, p. 45). 45 Witte (2018, p. 91). 46 Witte (2018, p. 92). 47 Lehmann (1995, p. 433). 40

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it corresponds to. We have to learn to observe the movement patterns of the hand in detail. If the hand does not act naturally handling a particular material, then said material is not suitable for that child at that point in time.”48 When working with children with delayed development, the principle is not to train the movement considered to be in need of development, but rather the precursors to it. Children, for example, not crawling on all fours in an appropriate manner for their age group are encouraged to belly-crawl on their abdomens. Once these precursors have matured, the desired new skill of hands-and-knees crawling emerges as if by itself. The concept of precursors should also be a guiding principle in instrumental music education.

5 The Didactics and Methodology of Interpretation Processes So far, it has been established that both language and movement serve the purpose of communication and are thus closely related. It has become equally clear that both areas are characterised by emotions, which themselves can be expressed through gestures and sounds. These gestures and sounds can be interpreted as music—or at least as behaviour similar to music making. Furthermore, the concept of communicative musicality is based on the assumption that the roots of the phenomenon of music lie in expressions of life such as sighs, gestures of triumph, and calls. The responsibilities of music education, or more specifically instrumental and vocal education were also outlined at the beginning of this article—it enables people to incorporate music into their lives and express themselves musically. This may be considered a challenge, for (differentiated) expression through the voice or an instrument requires a minimum level of technical skills. The described developmental and psychological phenomena surrounding movement and language provide a veritable treasure trove of ways to equip learners with the required technical skills.

5.1 Songs as a Musical and Gestural Introduction to Music Making After first expressions of life, such as crying, whooping, babbling, and calling, songs represent both an early form of music making and a “cultural tool or system of signs with which emotional states can be changed or induced.”49 The linking of movement and language can be found in various lullabies, movement songs, game songs, and gesture songs. Songs like ‘Zeigt her eure Füße’ (Show me your feet) and ‘Zwei kleine Wölfe’ (Two little wolves) illustrate activities or objects.50 Just as Norbert 48

Holle (1993, p. 52 f.). Stadler Elmer (2015, p. 15). 50 Busch and Müller (2016). 49

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Freedman’s work describes, these types of songs support inner representation, and thus promote language acquisition. At the same time, involving the body intensifies subjective experience and conveys sensory impressions that can be transformed into self-expression. Elemental music education offers differentiated methodological approaches for the “staging of aesthetic spaces of experience”.51 Michael Dartsch describes the musical and interpretative potential of the simple St. Martin’s Day song ‘Laterne, Sonne, Mond und Sterne’52 (Lantern, sun, moon, and the stars), which is one of many songs traditionally sung in German-speaking regions during St. Martin’s Day processions, as children walk through the streets after dark carrying colourful, often self-made lanterns. It is possible to recreate similar shining lights in the darkness in a classroom, which in turn can lead to improvisations with light and dark timbres. Self-made lanterns and a St. Martin’s Day procession—be it an actual, physical procession or merely an imagined one—can have a highly emotional impact, which can then culminate in an expressively sung rendition of the song. An instrumental performance of the melody, which would be challenging for primary school pupils with their level of fine-motor skills, would also benefit from this type of framework.

5.2 Sound Gestures and Rhythm Syllables as a Gateway to Music-Making Processes A further type of action also rooted in elementary music practice is body percussion, also known in German as ‘Klanggesten’ (sound gestures). Further above, reference was made to stereotypes—movements repeated with rhythmic regularity that mark the transition from reflexes to purposeful motor control. As with stereotypes, sound gestures also connect musical actions (rhythm or the beat) with the increased concentration, self-awareness and willingness to communicate described above. In terms of evolutionary biology, these behaviours are anchored deeply within living beings—even primates express themselves by drumming on their chests. The accompaniment of the voice with the body’s own means of expression, such as clapping and stamping is a cross-cultural phenomenon which enables an implicit understanding of form, dynamics and phrasing.53 As mentioned above, these rhythmic movements both elicit and reflect obvious pleasure. The fact that music, language, and movement are connected is considered selfevident in elemental music practice. Yet how can the findings above be put to use in instrumental education? First of all, the rhythm syllables mentioned above should be taken into account. They offer an easily accessible motor and cognitive approach to music making and at the same a gateway to understanding abstract notation. In Zoltán Kodály’s system, the rhythm syllables are complemented by specific hand 51

Dartsch (2019, p. 19). Dartsch (2010, p. 64 f). 53 Kugler (2020). 52

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gestures that illustrate pitches and thus interval shifts. Here, too, a connection is forged between the body and the mind. Theoretical facts are visualised and made literally tangible. When combining spoken rhythm syllables with the execution of sound gestures on the beat, even a child can make two part music on its own. With regard to technical issues on an instrument (or with the voice) it can be assumed that entrainment will occur, meaning whenever people interact with each other musically, an unconscious synchronisation will take place and movement behaviours will be imitated and adjusted. The younger or more inexperienced a musician is, the more a teacher should take the opportunity to play along themselves. It goes without saying that teachers should gradually reduce this orientation towards imitation learning as the learners’ skills develop. While a teacher might initially play along in unison, later on, finger snapping on the beat or gestural accompaniment of increasing intensity and accents may be sufficient.

6 Conclusion: Musical Interpretation from the Very Beginning The nature of artistic interpretation is inherent to even the earliest of musical activities. For music making is always a concrete sensual experience of sonic material that is mimetic in nature and thus carries meaning.54 At any level, it is the physical body that is central to this. It simultaneously executes the movements of music making and is the receptor for any accompanying sensory impressions. Musical interpretation is based on the earliest of human movements, such as breathing, crying, grasping or pointing. From the perspective of developmental psychology, language, gesture, and music are inseparably connected. Thus, word art and gesture art are not contradictory to each other, but—on the contrary—represent viable and interconnected approaches for music-related educational processes. Communication, expressive capabilities and emotional affinity can be deemed prerequisite and fundamental to the human condition; because, after all, humans cannot live without music.

References Berg, I.I.: Gestisches Lernen. Gesten in der Musik: Bewegung – Kommunikation – Kognition. In: Gruhn, W., Röbke, P. (eds.) Musiklernen. Bedingungen – Handlungsfelder – Positionen, pp. 155–176. Helbling, Innsbruck, Esslingen and Bern-Belp (2018) Brandstätter, U.: Vorwort. In: Brandstätter, U., Losert, M., Richter, C., Welte, A. (eds.) Darstellen und Mitteilen. Ein Handbuch der musikalischen Interpretation; aus Anlass des 60. Geburtstages von Ulrich Mahlert, pp. 9–10. Schott Music, Mainz (2010) Busch, B., Müller, S.: Plädoyer für das Singen im Kita-Alltag. Frühe Bildung 5(3), 142–149 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1026/2191-9186/a000269 54

Brandstätter (2010, p. 9).

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Buschmann, A., Bockmann, A., Sachse, S.: Sprachentwicklung im Überblick. In: Sachse, S., Bockmann, A., Buschmann, A. (eds.) Sprachentwicklung. Entwicklung – Diagnostik – Förderung im Kleinkind- und Vorschulalter, pp. 3–44. Springer, Berlin and Heidelberg (2020) Ciompi, L.: Die emotionalen Grundlagen des Denkens. Entwurf einer fraktalen Affektlogik. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen (2005) Dartsch, M.: Vom Kinderlied zum Mozart-Duett. Interpretation im Anfangsunterricht. In: Brandstätter, U., Losert, M., Richter, C., Welte, A. (eds.) Darstellen und Mitteilen. Ein Handbuch der musikalischen Interpretation; aus Anlass des 60. Geburtstages von U. Mahlert. Schott Music, Mainz, pp. 61–72 (2010) Dartsch, M.: Zielsetzungen der Instrumentalpädagogik. In: Busch, B. (ed.) Grundwissen Instrumentalpädagogik. Ein Wegweiser für Studium und Beruf, pp. 17–32. Breitkopf & Härtel, Wiesbaden (2016) Dartsch, M.: Didaktik künstlerischen Musizierens. Für Instrumentalunterricht und Elementare Musikpraxis. Breitkopf & Härtel, Wiesbaden (2019) Ehrenfort, K.H.: MGG online, Art. Musikpädagogik. Geschichte der Musikerziehung. Zur Einführung. In: Lütteken, L. (eds.) (2016 ff.). www.mgg-online.com/mgg/stable/11962. Accessed 26 November 2021 Flatischler, R.: Die vergessene Macht des Rhythmus. Ta Ke Ti Na – Der rhythmische Weg zur Bewußtheit. Synthesis, Essen (1984) Freedman, N.: Hands, words, and mind: on the structuralization of body movements during discourse and the capacity for verbal representation. In: Freedman, N., Grand, S. (eds.) Communicative structures and psychic structures. A psychoanalytic interpretation of communication. Plenum Press, New York (The Downstate series of research in psychiatry and psychology, 1), pp. 109–132 (1977) Giger, P.: Die Kunst des Rhythmus. Professionelles Know How in Theorie und Praxis. Schott, Mainz, London, Berlin, Madrid, New York, Paris, Prague, Tokyo and Toronto (2013) Gruhn, W.: Dimensionen eines musikbezogenen Lernbegriffs. Annäherung an einen gar nicht so selbstverständlichen Sachverhalt. In: W. Gruhn, P. Röbke (eds.): Musiklernen. Bedingungen – Handlungsfelder – Positionen. Helbling, Innsbruck, Esslingen and Bern-Belp, pp. 16–47 (2018) Hellberg, B.: Koordinationsprozesse beim Musizieren im Instrumentalen Gruppenunterricht. Waxmann (Perspektiven musikpädagogischer Forschung, 11), Münster (2019) Holle, B.: Die motorische und perzeptuelle Entwicklung des Kindes. Ein praktisches Lehrbuch für die Arbeit mit normalen und retardierten Kindern. Beltz/Psychologie Verlags Union, Weinheim (1993) Kreutz, G.: Warum Singen glücklich macht. Psychosozial-Verlag, Gießen (2015) Kugler, M.: Körperperkussion (Body Percussion/Klanggesten/Sound Gestures). In: OrffSchulwerk-Lexikon (eds.) Orff-Schulwerk Gesellschaft Deutschland e.V. (2022). https://orff-sch ulwerk.de/lexikon/koerperperkussion-body-percussion-klanggesten-sound-gestures/. Accessed 4 February 2022 Lehmann, S.: Aspekte motorischer Entwicklung und ihre Bedeutung für den frühen Blockflötenunterricht. Tibia 20(2), 431–438 (1995). https://www.moeck.com/uploads/tx_moecktables/1995-2. pdf_S._431-438.pdf. Accessed 15 January 2022 Lehmann, S.: Bewegung und Sprache als Wege zum musikalischen Rhythmus. Electronic Publ (epOs music, 5), Osnabrück (2007) Merker, B.: Warum wir musikalisch sind – Antworten aus der Evolutionsbiologie. In: Gruhn, W., Seither-Preisler, A. (eds.) Der musikalische Mensch. Evolution, Biologie und Pädagogik musikalischer Begabung. Georg Olms, Hildesheim (2015) Papoušek, M., Papoušek, H.: Musikalische Ausdruckselemente der Sprache und ihre Modifikation in der “Ammensprache“. Sozialpädiatrie 3(6), 294–296 (1981) Phillips-Silver, J., Keller, P.E.: Searching for roots of entrainment and joint action in early musical interactions. Front. Hum. Neurosci. (6) (2012)

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Röbke, P.: Lösung aller Probleme? Die “Entdeckung” des informellen Lernens in der Instrumentalpädagogik. In: Ardila-Mantilla, N., Röbke, P. (eds.) Vom wilden Lernen. Musizieren lernen – auch außerhalb von Schule und Unterricht: Schott Music, Mainz, pp. 11–29 (2015) Rüdiger, W.: Körperlichkeit als Grunddimension des Musiklernens. Begründungen und Beispiele. In: Gruhn, W., Röbke, P. (eds.) Musiklernen. Bedingungen – Handlungsfelder – Positionen. Helbling, Innsbruck, Esslingen and Bern-Belp, pp. 130–154 (2018) Stadler Elmer, S.: Kind und Musik. Das Entwicklungspotenzial erkennen und verstehen. Springer, Berlin (2015) Süberkrüb, A.: Edwin Gordons “Music Learning Theory”—eine Einführung. Edwin E. Gordon Gesellschaft (n.d.). https://www.gordon-gesellschaft.de/edwin-gordons-music-learning-theoryeine-einfuehrung/. Accessed 21 January 2022 Suppan, W.: MGG online, Art. Musikanthropologie. Musizieren und Musikhören. Musik und Kult. In: Lütteken, L. (ed.) Kassel, Stuttgart, New York (2016 ff.). https://www.mgg-online.com/mgg/ stable/14715. Accessed 24 November Thelen, E.: Rhythmical behavior in infancy. An ethological perspective. Dev. Psychol. 17(3), 237– 257 (1981) Witte, K.: Grundlagen der Sportmotorik im Bachelorstudium. Springer Spektrum, Berlin and Heidelberg (2018)

Prof. Dr. Silke Lehmann teaches Music Education at the Rostock University of Music and Drama. For many years she taught children and adults recorder and elemental music education. Her doctoral thesis focused on the link between speech, rhythm and music (“Bewegung und Sprache als Wege zum musikalischen Rhythmus”, Epos, Osnabrück, online: https://www. epos.uni-osnabrueck.de/books/l/lehs007/pages/index.htm). Other research interests encompass the interfaces between instrumental pedagogy and elemental music education, group music activities as well as music geragogics.

Mutism—Paralinguistic Expressions as Replacement and Equivalent for Speaking Hanne Susanna Heister

1 Introduction—Music, Speaking, Silence Music as a combined art/skill is with regard to production an art/skill of voice (vocal music) as well as an art/skill of hands (instrumental music). But what if one of these two basic skills in their preartistic appearance as a verbal language from one person are not produced at first glance? If someone also does not use their skill of voice in everyday communication apart from the actual skill simply does not speak? Here it is the talk of children with mutism. These children stand out because of their lack of speaking, their silence. However, the German saying “speech is silver, and silence is golden” is not always strictly true: A permanent silence from children in diverse situations and towards many fellow human beings is perceived by the latter […] not as virtuous but as socially anomalous.1

The respectively individual silence/silencing has therefore always at the same time a social dimension. Who is silent separates themself from everyday life and society. Be it to find peace or to create distance. However permanent silence leads to a societal isolation, as our speech/language is our most important social tool to enter an interdependence with our environment.2

However, silence does not equal silence. Silence varies interculturally.3 Therefore, depending on personal and institutional context, in one culture in specific cases 1

Bahr (2006, p. 11). Harrasser et al. (2008, p. 13). 3 Cf. Hansen and Heidtmann (2013, p. 3f). 2

H. S. Heister (B) Rosengarten, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 H.-W. Heister et al. (eds.), Word Art + Gesture Art = Tone Art, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20109-7_28

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speaking can be deemed as impolite and socially inappropriate, which leaves silence as a more suitable option. Silence has different values in various cultures and societies: In the West, silence is perceived as unpleasant, pauses in conversations are seen as having nothing left to say to each other. There is almost a social obligation to say at least something. On the other hand, in the ancient Orient, silence is viewed positively, and is not feared. When many people are silent, then it for example signifies, that no one wishes to speak or that there is a general consensus on a certain issue.4

Silence can be differentiated by intentions, reasons, and motives in a notwanting-to-speak, not-being-allowed-to-speak, not-being-able-to-speak, and finally not-expecting-anything as a habitual feeling of futility in communication.5 Reasons for silence and becoming silent can be determined positively or negatively. Generally, the prerequisite is a certain higher level of excitation and affect. It is emotionally charged moments that can silence a person. For its part, silence causes in many moments a certain tension. There is silence to express positive emotions—in intimate moments, at excitement, emotion, and joy, to express compassion and condolence through a silent handshake, embrace or something similar, or even to just not destroy the moment or atmosphere. On the other hand, silence can also be a defence, or rather a rejection and disregard, embarrassment grief or hatred and hostility—for example by way of not reciprocating a greeting or, but also when one is offended, the reaction can often be silence. Such uncomfortable feelings of tensions can be ended by talking. However, this is hardly possible for mute children. The mute child keeps silent, and the uncomfortable feeling persists.6

2 Mutism—Definition Children with mutism are organically able to speal, to use their skill of voice, but are silent in certain situations or even permanently. Mutism is therefore a psychologically caused silence, predominantly in children (rarely also in teenagers and adults) without organic damages to the language, speech, or hearing system. Thus, it is not essentially a language or speech disorder, but a communication disorder. The designation “mutism” is derived from the Latin adjective “mutus”, which means mute,7 or rather the noun “mutitas”, meaning muteness. Within academic literature mutism was not always called the same. There were many terms for being silent consistently. In 1877 the term “Aphasia Voluntaria” from the doctor Kussmaul emerged. Only a few years later, Gutzmann translated the term into German as 4

Bahr (2006, p. 99). Cf. Bahr (2006, p. 102). 6 Cf. Hansen and Heidtmann (2013, p. 3f). 7 Cf. Bahr (2006, p. 19). 5

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“Freiwillige Stummheit”,8 meaning voluntary silence. Tramer named “the ‘nonspeaking in humans’ as mutism”9 in 1934. He already then differentiated between the elective and total mutism. Also Schoor spoke of a difference in “partial” and “universal silence”10 in 2002. Today, in most cases selective mutism and total mutism are most commonly used, whereby selective mutism is the common form in pathology. Total mutism can occur as a consequence of psychological diseases or through severe depression and is a rare form of mutism.11 Whereas affected persons of total mutism are completely silent, affected people of selective mutism are solely silent in certain situations, opposite of certain people or at certain places. There are international classifications of psychological disorders for the diagnosis of psychological diseases, in which selective mutism is featured under the figure 6B06 as an independent anxiety disorder in catalogue ICD-11.12 The disorder has to persist for at least one month and has to lead to severe problems in education or social life. Of this condition, only elective mutism was featured in ICD-10 of the WHO 2012. The term “elective” and “selective” can be used synonymously. However, the term “selective mutism” has prevailed against “elective mutism” in the last few years. The term “elective” is steadily becoming more uncommon, as it suggests from the English term “election”, that silence is voluntarily chosen.13 The assumption that a selectively mute child has voluntarily and independently chosen their silence is rightfully viewed as outdated nowadays.14 The designation “selective” accentuates that not-speaking is only prevalent in certain situations and opposite of certain people. In any case it is not a deliberate, free choice of effected people, with whom and in which situation one speals: “Not the affected person determines in which situation they talk, but the situation dictates it”.15 However, also the term “selective” tends to imply voluntariness, or rather conscious selection and choice. Perhaps more appropriate appears the designation “situational”, as it accentuates the not-speaking as dependent on special situations, which includes individual people, institutions, places and time periods. Selective, or rather situational mutism involves a disorder, which is characterised by not-speaking in certain situations. This does not originate in a damage of certain organs; the ability to hear and to speak is existent in principle. Nevertheless, language cannot be applied in some situations.16 Bahr identifies selective mutism as “a permanent, recurring silence in certain situations […] and opposite of certain people […],

8

Cf. Katz-Bernstein (2011). Dobslaff (2013, p. 17). 10 Katz-Bernstein (2011, p. 24). 11 Cf. Katz-Bernstein (2011, p. 24f). 12 Cf. Emmerling (n.d.). 13 Cf. Gabarni Ballnik (2009, p. 21). 14 Bahr (2015, p. 15). 15 Hartmann and Lange (2010, p. 13). 16 Cf. Mutismus Selbsthilfe Deutschland e.V. (2008, p. 14). 9

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even though the ability to speak is existent”.17 The counterpart to this is the actual restriction in the ability to speak in akinetic mutism—a reduced drive disorder without paralysis symptoms, which leads to remaining stationary and being unable to show emotions but also to not-speaking. In opposition to akinetic mutism, selective mutism is neurotic rather than neurological. The selectivity of speaking pattern is supposedly dependent on the emotions of the respective person. Language may already be acquired but is partially not used due to fear of speaking.18 The ability to communicate verbally was sometimes not acquired enough or strongly disturbed through traumatic events to such an extent that language can only be applied in certain contexts. Often it is the intimate, trusted circle within this context. As the disorder is on a communicative-pragmatic level, it is therefore a speech development disorder,19 which is not verbally induced, rather psychologicallycommunicatively. “Selective mutism is therefore a disorder of verbal communication”.20 However, Dobslaff names especially the symptoms “mutism […] as a pronounced form [as] a rather rare speech impairment. The prominent symptom of this disorder is the current, situational and largely free from own will speech inability, even though the affected person has the necessary phonetic competence”.21

3 Verbal Language as Spoken Language What is the interrelation between vocals and instrumentals within mutism? Is the vocal part really completely missing in children with mutism? Do these children solely use the art of their body language or not even this? Speaking works differently with varying sounds in each language. A sound is therefore a part of a language. Sound consists of echo, just as other noises. Humans create these sounds with their breath, their vocal cords as well as with their mouths. Within the mouth, it is especially the lips and tongue that are the organs of speech, and therefore the natural instruments of humans.22 Even though we are physiologically able to create a great sum of sounds, generally speaking even an endless amount, however in each language only a certain extent is used. In most languages sounds are differentiated between a vowel and a consonant. A vowel is defined as a sound, in which its articulation air can unhinderedly escape from the oral cavity, as a result the speech apparatus does not narrow or close, as

17

Bahr (2015, p. 14). Cf. Gabarni Ballnik (2009, p. 15/22). 19 Cf. Gabarni Ballnik (2009, p. 17f). 20 Gabarni Ballnik (2009, p. 18). 21 Dobslaff (2013, p. 9). 22 Cf. Das Klexikon (2022). 18

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is the case with consonants.23 This already reveals the origin of the word in Latin “vocalis”, translated amongst other things as melodious. The breath flow is hindered or blocked in the case of consonants. An example for this is the B, in which the breath is pressed through the lips.24

Consecutive sounds become syllables, out of which in turn words consist of. Syllables are the smallest phonetic group in a natural flow of speech, and therefore build a speech unit. Certainly, every language has their own rules for the structure of syllables, but some are universal: A syllable always has to contain exactly one core. Usually, it is a vowel or a double vowel (diphthong). It is for this reason, that vowels are present in every syllable. As vowels can sound by themselves, they are also called “Selbstlaute” in German. On the basis of this special placement of a syllable at the core, children in Germany are taught vowels (or vowel letters) under a different name. In which way each class is taught this, is dependent on the textbook of the school, as well as the playful preferences of the teacher. Many know vowels as kings, vowel kings, king letters or letter kings, by way of which it is referred to historically outdated monarchic structures, archaically and subserviently, in which nothing functions without a king. A syllable without a king is not possible, the kings have an inherent significance—this is learned by children early on. This preference of royal implementation of letters could also be based on the many stories which can be told as well as the decorative design possibilities, in which silver crowns are drawn above vowels. Further there are vowels as captains, which are supposed to represent the bosses in vowel boats. Here, language is played with, and a story with the help of the most important terms is created. Also, through this, children are supposed to realise that without a captain, no vowel boat can be on the water, in reverse in each vowel boat belongs a captain. Similar strategies apply to the teaching through the term pilots, as for example in the textbook Karibu: The Karibu spelling chart accompanies children from the start of learning sound-oriented writing of the first words and sentences. The spelling chart is divided into three parts, which are differentiated by their position in the ufo (dome, belly, feet). Through this, children can orient themselves easier and have further help dividing the sounds. Separated in the […] dome of the ufo are vowels (pilots). Already with the means of the writing ufo, the speical placement of the vowels are supposed to be accentuated. The “vowel pilots” are sitting like “real pilots” in the dome and “steer” the ufo.25

The fact that some teachers teach children the vowels as Klingerbuchstaben (sounding letters) or directly as vowels, might be based on the simplicity of self-explanatory term of a sounding letter or a sound, that is in itself “loud”. Either way, children learn significantly easier with a reference to the everyday world and playfully. An example for this stems from a teacher, who tells her pupils a story of an astronaut, 23

Cf. Geldschläger (2022). Cf. Das Klexikon (2022). 25 Meinhardt (2016, p. 5). 24

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who flies to the different planets and gets to know the beings, who always only know one specific vowel, the one that belongs to their planet. The beings of planet “Ö” spöök önly löke thös önd dö nöt knöw önyöther vöwöl. The children laugh hysterically and immediately recognize the language phenomenon. […] The story ends in the kings having to reach an agreement on how they can justly distribute the placements in a language, so that every vowel king from every planet can be happy.26

Vowels are therefore loud in themselves, children with mutism are not audibly loud but they are loud by themselves. And as themselves they are rather pianopianissimo— as silent as possible. The term vowel can be derived from the word “vox”, Latin for voice, which these children in many of these contexts do not use.

4 Becoming Silent in Para-Linguistic Expression—Between Vocal and Body Sounds, as Freezing of Facial Expression and Gestures and as a Reduction in Movements But do vocals in mute children really not appear because they are not spoken—more precisely they do not use their voice? The originally only situational refusal of any vocalisation at all is tending to be total. Sometimes even body sounds are being suppressed, such as coughing, laughing, crying, clearing one’s throat or sounds while breathing.27 Ultimately, the mute child suppressed all sounds that are expressed through the mouth, thus the vocal in the broadest sense. Therefore, the silence of mute children is the forgoing of any active expression.28 Silence as avoidance of expression can therefore go beyond communication in the sense of talking or gesturing, and go as far as instinctive body expressions, which the children try to suppress to the best of their abilities. Silence as non-communication, or more specifically inhibition of expression does not only limit itself to the dimension of acoustics. It can even refer to visual forms of communication, as “some children also freeze in their physical expression and in their facial expression in a significant way”.29 In the context of verbal language silence also often means not-writing. It is in this respect a general non-expressing-oneself. Mute people act in a way the ideology of “absolute” music from autonomous, non-verbal, instrumental music claims it does not say anything. Mute children can display varying forms of refrainment and fear of para-linguistic expressions as symptoms of mutism. Selective mutism, is, as mentioned, characterized by not-speaking in certain situations. In ICD-10 of WHO 2012 the disorder condition was defined through the selection of speech, often because of emotions.

26

Westermann Bildungsmedien Verlag (2016). Cf. Titzer (2012, p. 24). 28 Cf. Raue (2015). 29 Raue (2015). 27

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Often, selective mutism is related to “[…] special personality traits, such as social anxiety, social withdrawal, sensitivity or resistance […]”.30 Similarly, to phobias, this also has the tendency to generally extend more and more extend. A fundamental fear of contact is often found here. Mute children often even shy away from touching animals, electrical appliances or moving machinery or other things. Even the general motor skills of these children are at times conspicuous. Even though they are usually quite skilled in motor activities, nevertheless a certain insecurity, reluctance and even lack of interest is visible.31 Another significant characteristic in children with mutism is a pronounced shyness, which is usually expressed through withdrawal and adaptation, to remain as inconspicuous as possible. However, overcompensated, aggression can also be shown.32 Lesser-Katz (1986, 1988) […] examined over a period of two years fifteen mute children in Chicago and noticed that most of these children, namely twelve, were not only silent, but were also “willfährig” ([engl.] “compliant”), shy, passive, insecure and almost “frozen” in front of strangers. […] The smaller, second group, comprised of three children, who showed opposing behaviour. Lesser-Katz calls this behaviour a fight response […], with which the concerned people expressed hostility. They were supposedly aggressively avoidant, avoiding activity at home as well as at school and keep a great physical distance so that it is difficult to even get into contact with them. For both groups mutism is solely a symptom, with which children create a protective barrier against situations they cannot manage.33

This polarisation was also noticed by Rösler: “About a third of all people affected by mutism are aggressive, hyperactive and show expressive, conspicuous mimicgesticulatory behaviour”.34 Katz-Bernstein extends these two types to “four kinds of mutistic behaviourisms”: 1. They “fossilize” or “freeze” when spoken to directly. 2. They are silent and have a general restrained and withdrawn behaviour. 3. They behave more or less normal, but do not speak. Sie verhalten sich mehr oder minder normal, sprechen jedoch nicht. Verbal language and speaking loudly are to be avoided, whereas children are willing to communicate gesticulating. 4. The more defensive, hostile and aggressive behaviour is accompanied by a stubborn and “demonstrative” seeming silence.”35 Most of the examined children isolate and withdraw themselves in their respective groups, are therefore a passive part of the group. Autoaggressive mannerisms such as nail biting, thumb sucking or pulling out hair are prevalent in about half of the children. Noticeable are also concentration and performance, as well as mood swings.36 30

Katz-Bernstein et al. (2012, p. 16). Cf. Dobslaff (2013, p. 50 f). 32 Cf. Bahr (2006, p. 138). 33 Bahr (2006, p. 23). 34 Rösler (1981, p. 188). 35 Katz-Bernstein (2011, p. 65). 36 Cf. Rösler (1981, p. 188). 31

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The mentioned anomalies in behaviour appear often also in mixed forms and are therefore not clearly distinguishable. It varies greatly if the respective affected person goes as far as avoiding any form of body sounds, such as sneezing or coughing. The ambivalence of wishing of having the ability to speak is almost paradox and having to deny oneself of this wish. Speaking can be a great temptation for the silent person, as it is the most common form of communication. Nevertheless, avoiding to speak is a big strain.37 Silence can therefore refer to contradictory reasons: as a result of a damage to self-control, as a result of too much self-control, as a sign of self-strength and silence with the goal of reducing self-control.38 The polarisation as found by Bahr (2006) and Katz-Bernstein (2011) within the type of group of self-withdrawal and the type of aggressions, can also be found in another analogue form in individual children. Both is an expression of fear, insecurity, insufficient affect regulations: “Many of these children […] often have trouble dealing with the changing of doses and regulation of familiarity and unfamiliarity in changing contexts.”39 Extraordinary in the behaviour of children with mutism is that there often tends to be a “passive of active-expansive conducted assertiveness, or rather a centring of their needs and person”40 within intimate surroundings, within the family circle. This can express itself in many ways. For example, the child can refuse participation in housework, only eating certain foods or completely ignoring certain family members. Often the grandparents are the ones being ignored.41

5 Mutism as Emotional Silence—Uncommunicated Fear Between Withdrawal and Aggression A substantial part of symptoms is bundled in fears, which are simultaneously the most important causes for mutism (see below). According to Rösler (1981), mute children show symptoms of fear in 90.6% of cases.42 People with mutism are generally shaped by fear, as well as insecurity. This is shown in tensions and cramping within affected people, which are visible externally and can be caused by emotionally burdened experiences. These experiences are stored in the body, so that the reaction of organism serves as a defence, in order to avoid threats that are deemed mangeable and factual.43 Fear can be expressed through vocal pitch and tone of voice. However, mute children only speak in situations of fear, if at all, only partially or in a whisper. 37

Cf. Katz-Bernstein (2011, p. 25). Cf. Bahr (2006, p. 63). 39 Katz-Bernstein et al. (2012, p. 17). 40 Hartmann and Lange (2010, p. 23). 41 Cf. Hartmann and Lange (2010, p. 23). 42 Cf. Rösler (1981, p. 188). 43 Cf. Bahr (2015, p. 32). 38

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The whole demeanour of themself can change, just like their smell. Often, sweat is produced in times of fear, and their gaze changes, in a way that the children do not look into other’s eyes, but rather into air. Their gaze is short and hectic. Gestures can also change, by for example clinging tightly onto objects.44 In mutism fear is also often accompanied by a heavy effect of shame, which aggravates everything, so for example a child is ashamed of an actual failure in speaking. Belonging to shame are also signs of disappointment in oneself, self-blame and a feeling that can best be described as ‘wanting the ground to swallow oneself up’. Shame cannot also be clearly distinguished from embarrassment; the transitions between both phenomena are certainly seamless.45

Often mute children use other forms of communication. One cannot not communicate, as every kind of communication (not only with words) is behaviour and just as one cannot not act, one cannot not communicate.46

What is meant by this is, that we send messages to our environment even without words but always with our body, our gestures and facial expression. Gestures, such as isolated head movements in order to answer questions or pointing gestures in order to express wishes, are often used by mute children. Additionally, made up languages and head movements can be means to communicate.47

6 Sociocultural Causes of Silence It is assumed that the origins of selective mutism are generally polyetiological. “This means that there is not only one cause responsible for the silence of a person, but rather multiple factors come together and subsequently form the disorder.”48 The exact causes for mutism are not explicitly clear. Possible causes can be: – Familial dispositions for a restrained communicative and social behaviour. – Sociocultural elements (e.g. development-inhibiting environmental influences). – Individual, rather long-term, habitual psychological elements (e.g. anxiety/depression). – Individual, rather psychogenic elements (e.g. stress). There are many causes that can lead to selective mutism. Though significant elements can be psychosocial.49 44

Cf. Bahr (2006, p. 115). Bahr (2006, p. 163). 46 Watzlawick (n.d.). 47 Cf. Schulz and Sarimski (2011, p. 127). 48 Herrmann (2008, p. 8). 49 Cf. Dobslaff (2013, p. 10). 45

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Familial elements are e.g., overprotection (mutism is parentally supported, in order to protect the child against external influences). Alternatively, the child reacts with mutism to familial conflicts and tensions or lack of affection, warmth, care and support.50 Silence can in this context and against this background also “[be]” a desire to return to few words and “objectless phase of primary narcissism [even more when the] child has become strongly frustrated in their symbiotic and narcissistic needs.”51 It is popular to explain mute circumstances with “genes”. However, it is much more likely, that the children simply adopt relevant behaviourisms from family members. Mutism may be one of the transgenerational traumas, that is often passed on and adopted through multiple generations. It is hardly possible, that a mutism gene can be found. Mutism can “[be] viewed as a family neurosis, in which the relation between the parents as well as the relations between children and parents, especially the noteworthy interdependency between mothers and children are to be tackled.”52 Often character traits in relation to familial circumstances can be quantitatively summarized to a degree: – – – – –

Fear/anxiety: 50–100% Shyness/timidity/passive withdrawal: 63–100% Delays/disorders in speech development: 50–66% Noteworthy Mother–child-relationship, especially overprotectiveness: 50–100% Marital/familial disharmony: 50–58%53

However, it is important that none of these factors causes selective mutism. When examining the factors, solely external appearances can be assessed, how it appears to outsiders. An awareness of the silence, and therefore also the attempt of an explanation can be helpful for parents and pedagogues.54 It can be beneficial for parents and pedagogues when the silence receives a designation, in order to develop an appropriate handling with the silent child and to work on the treatment. Various stress factors constitute a higher risk for mutism. The fact that selective mutism can be traced back to stress can be explained by that not-speaking is simply in certain situations and opposite of certain people. Stress can be caused by the separation of the childhood home or separation from any other type of security, as this can be viewed as threatening, which furthers silence. Also, in this case fear plays a big role. This behaviour can develop in early childhood and also the disposition for it is relevant, which can cause a higher willingness of fear.55

50

Cf. Bahr (2006, p. 37). Bahr (2006, p. 33). 52 Bahr (2006, p. 73). 53 Cf. Bahr (2006, p. 44). 54 Cf. Bahr (2015, p. 20). 55 Cf. Bahr (2015, p. 28f). 51

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A kind of stress that is deemed as unmanageable or uncontrollable by the body often results in helplessness. “It results in a destabilisation neuronic interconnections under an increased production of the adrenal gland hormone.”56 Mutism can be caused by traumatic events.57 Fear in addition to trauma enter an alliance. Mutistic reaction can be an instrument to suppress certain memories.58 Therefore, for example it can also be about a family secret, which is supposed to be hidden from the outside world.59 A state of fear as an acute reaction is a private experience of an uncomfortable agitation (excitement), which cognitively goes alongside self-serving thoughts (concern) and causes certain behaviourisms and expressions (e.g. avoidance of certain situations, tense posture, weakened voice, changed facial expression). Anxiety is a personality trait in which the readiness for fear has become chronic: one “remembers” having reacted fearfully and therefore develops a “memory for fear” […].60

Another possible cause for selective mutism is speech disorders, which precede mutism.61 The mutistic reaction can be a primary device to hide communicative inadequacies.62 Behind mutism a speech disorder can be hidden. Stammer, speech development disorders such as dysarthrophonia and dyspraxia appear in about 50% (24 of 52 cases) of children whose therapy I accompanied.63

Mutism in school can also have various causes, such as: Expression of a general rejection of school64 ; expression of a massive and/or persistent overload outside of school; expression of a strategy to gain benefits during lessons65 ; “a flight reaction […] with which children try to keep the bond to their mother”.66 Oftentimes selective mutism appears when children enter kindergarten and therefore are separated from their intimate and familiar surroundings. It is normal when a child is silent or shy for the first three months. However, if this behaviour extends three months, it does not correspond to a normal development and should be examined further. Usually, shyness subsides, just as silence in the first three months, through the extending familiarity which is succeeded through exchanges between pedagogues

56

Bahr (2015, p. 29). Cf. Katz-Bernstein (2011, p. 69). 58 Cf. Dobslaff (2013, p. 37). 59 Cf. Bahr (2006, p. 37). 60 Bahr (2006, p. 157). 61 Cf. Katz-Bernstein et al. (2012, p. 16). 62 Cf. Dobslaff (2013, p. 36). 63 Katz-Bernstein (2011, p. 68). 64 Cf. Dobslaff (2013, p. 34). 65 Cf. Dobslaff (2013, p. 37 ff). 66 Bahr (2006, p. 23). 57

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and the child, experiences of being seen by and seeing other children, and participation in games and other activities. The former unfamiliar contexts, surroundings and people are therefore becoming more familiar.67 A silence in the first three months does not represent an anomaly. However, if this behaviour persists for longer than three months, combined with the affected people showing at least one of the four behaviourisms, the assumption can be made that mutism in the child has occurred. In this occasion it is important to observe whether the therapist—or other people who work with the child, as for example special needs teacher—feels a discomfort which could be attributed to the silence of the child. Additionally, it is important to observe, whether the child shows no attempts to break the silence, builds trust or sticks to their behaviourisms.68 Oftentimes puberty is used as a chance to correct early wrong-headed developments. Regarding this, Bahr reports: I am asked very often, whether selective mutism recedes over time. Fundamentally, it appears to me, this disorder can, if not already overcome by targeted support during childhood, be improved at the end of puberty at the latest; at least there are very rare reports of elective mute adults.69

Nevertheless, generally (psycho) therapy or special needs interventions as early as possible are needed. As a result of silence, relevant functions of speech are no longer or only partially used. If persisting long-term, this negatively effects selfdevelopment.70 As silence in mutism is based on an anxiety disorder, that not only communicatively but also socially restricts the behaviour of an affected person and can lead to general personal development stagnations, it is absolutely vital to treat mutistic symptoms.71

7 “Nonverbal Dialogue Skills”—Alternative Forms of Communication as a Therapeutic Device Against Silence Furthermore, a nonverbal form of communication establishment can be useful, when speaking in front of a person is not yet successful. This can for example include written forms, by writing little messages. Additionally, painting pictures can help mute people to express themselves. It is important regarding pedagogical measures to create a connection between “competences and performances […], nonverbal and verbal possibilities, resources, and development opportunities”.72 67

Cf. Katz-Bernstein (2011, p. 66). Cf. Katz-Bernstein (2011, p. 65). 69 Bahr (2015, p. 15). 70 Cf. Dobslaff (2013, p. 9). 71 Harrasser et al. (2008, p. 7). 72 Feldmann and Kopf (2016, p. 179). 68

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Additionally, teachers should “visualise which communicative performance commitment already exists”.73 Only in this way an appropriate assessment can be made what can be demanded of the silent child and how overload and insufficient workload can be dealt with.74 It is necessary to assess the competences of the child and react accordingly. However, it is important to keep in mind, that “[m]utistic children […] [are] generally neither more stupid nor smarter than “speaking” children. However, silent ones are often more sensitive and observe more precisely”.75 Every action that can be assessed as a communication attempt, can be supported, no matter whether they happen verbally or nonverbally, in order to positively strengthen motivation for action. Thus, it is especially important in the handling of mute children to appear emotionally supportive. At first, it is appropriate to gain access to the child on a nonverbal level, in order to subsequently build on it. Nodding or head shaking can therefore be important communication devices, as well as mimic-gestural expressions, as for example the pointing to certain objects or the writing of a number using fingers. “Nonverbal dialogue skill”76 is an agreement here. Additionally, the use of cards with a written message or a symbol, which have a corresponding meaning can be suitable. Thus, the child can for example signal through an exclamation mark that they have finished the task. It is also useful to create units, that require movement, to also give the child the chance to participate nonverbally. Pantomime or statues could be methods to realise this.77 Furthermore, it is helpful to look the silent pupil into the eyes, as nonverbal communication can also be achieved through eye contact, as well as body language. To communicate with a silent child can be creatively strenuous for a teacher.78 Thus, communication with a pupil must be assessed individually, which form of communication might be most suitable to the silent child. Greeting or name games can help the child to speak in a playful way, just as imitation games, partner games or games with hand puppets. These kinds of games as “speaking” is almost equivalent to the “playing” of instruments analogue.79

8 Music as Therapeutic Nonverbal Form of Communication Initially the production, generation of sounds as a nonverbal quasi-instrumental form of communication builds a transition to the application of real musical instruments. 73

Bahr (2016, p. 211). Cf. Feldmann and Kopf (2016, p. 179). 75 Hartmann and Lange (2010, p. 35). 76 Harrasser et al. (2008, p. 12). 77 Cf. Feldmann and Kopf (2016, p. 186). 78 Cf. Harrasser et al. (2008, p. 13). 79 Cf. Bahr (2006, p. 85). 74

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Silent children react very differently to the challenge of creating sounds. While it is difficult for one child to create any sounds from chimes to noises, other children solely avoid creating oral sounds.80 This form of communication can contribute to speaking, as here already the first structures are being made obvious, which are also relevant to verbal communication. The creation of sounds is also a first step in the direction of speaking. Furthermore, in this way contact with silent pupils can be created in a playful way. The use of musical devices can create the opportunity to simultaneously start on a behavioural, psychotherapeutic as well as communicative level. A nonverbal first contact in the form of musical activities can reduce pressure on affected children and open new dialogue possibilities, is initiated. In the further course, this can be selectively developed and transferred to vocal action.81 The speciality in a musical therapeutic approach is the possibility to express oneself through the medium of music nonverbally and being able to get into contact. This appears especially promising for the work with mutistic children, as a first contact can be developed without burdensome verbal pressure of communication. Therefore, there can be silence and simultaneously a mutual exchange through the medium of music. Similarly, through making music together being able to keep eye contact, to express oneself emotionally, or to enter a musical dialogue can be developed step by step. Through music children can playfully and without words learn how to react to a dialogue partner that they usually would not dare to speak to and are able to send a message. Just as important can be the experimental use of one’s own voice. This is possible in musical therapy, by experiencing the voice as a bodily instrument. Oftentimes this can be the catalyst for the first verbal expressions.82 From the viewpoint of the relationship between the musical vocals and instrumental, this is almost paradox. However, from a viewpoint of daily communication, mediating both meaning and sense it is logical. Especially in smaller children the excitement for instruments is big. Through this, nonverbal communication can take place. Either this occurs through demonstration and imitation, like in a verbal dialogue, by asking a question and another person answers or through a joint form of dialogue. A musical game can already make oneself more self-confident after a short period of time. This is expressed through for example in a more dynamic and longer way of playing, and an increased motivation for playing by oneself.83 A musical therapeutic intervention has to be combined with other interventions, in order to sustainably change the childish behaviour in the child’s living environment. Inclusion of attachment figures outside of the family belongs to this, in order to systematically strengthen speaking attempts in everyday life, and to systematically

80

Cf. Katz-Bernstein (2011, p. 154f). Künzel and Sallat (2020). 82 Cf. Schulz and Sarimski (2011, p. 122). 83 Cf. Schulz and Sarimski (2011, p. 130). 81

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support the child handling fear inducing social situations. The achieved progressions through possibly music improve the conditions for these interventions.84 The tone of music is not like the tone of words that is opposite of the silence, it is parallel to the silence. It is as if the tones lead over the silence, as if they are moved on the surface by silence. Music is silence, that dreamingly begins to sound. Music gives the soul a wideness, in which the soul can be without fear.85

Through music and sounds blockades can be broken. Even when the art of voice, the vocal, is only used selectively or situational by mute children, they communicate on their own terms. This occurs through the art of hands, by sending signals through their body language, paint something, write, or use instruments. Therefore the vocal is first replaced through instruments by mute children, until in the therapeutic perspective, like in the not contained communication the gesticulated instrumental complements the verbal vocal.86

References Bahr, R.: Schweigende Kinder verstehen. Kommunikation und Bewältigung beim selektiven Mutismus. 4. ed. Universitätsverlag Winter, Heidelberg (2006) Bahr, R.: Wenn Kinder schweigen. Redehemmungen verstehen und behandeln. Patmos Verlag, Ostfildern (2015) Bahr, R.: Selektiver Mutismus im Schulalter: Hilfen für die Beratung in inklusiven Settings und in der Förderschule. In: Praxis Sprache. Fachzeitschrift für Sprachheilpädagogik, Sprachtherapie und Sprachförderung. Heft 3/2016. P. 210–214 (2016) Das Klexikon: Laut. Zentrale für Unterrichtsmedien im Internet e.V., Merzhausen (2022). https:// klexikon.zum.de/wiki/Laut Dobslaff, O.: Mutismus in der Schule. Erscheinung und Therapie. Psychosozial-Verlag, Gießen (2013) Emmerling, I., Emmerling, H.: Selektiver oder elektiver Mutismus. Mutismus Beratungs Zentrum (MBZ), Starnberg (n.d.). https://www.mutismus.net/formen-des-mutismus/selektiver-o-elekti ver-mutismus/ Feldmann, D., Kopf, A.: Theoriegeleitete Förderdiagnostik und -planung mit Hilfe der DiFraMut im Kontext Therapie und Schule. In: Praxis Sprache, pp. 178–194. Fachzeitschrift für Sprachheilpädagogik, Sprachtherapie und Sprachförderung, Heft 3/2016 (2016) Gabarni Ballnik, O.: Schweigende Kinder. Formen des Mutismus in der pädagogischen und therapeutischen Praxis. Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht Verlag, Göttingen (2009) Geldschläger, J.: Vokal (2022). https://wortwuchs.net/grammatik/vokal/ Hansen, B., Heidtmann, H.: (S)Elektiver Mutismus – Schweigen. Unpublished reader, Flensburg (2013) Harrasser, S., Hartmann, B., Lange, M., Seelig, M.: Mutismus und Schule. Tipps für den Unterricht. Mutismus Selbsthilfe Deutschland e.V., Neuss (2008) Hartmann, B., Lange, M.: Mutismus im Kindes-, Jugend- und Erwachsenenalter. Für Angehörige, Betroffene, sowie therapeutische und pädagogische Berufe, 5. ed. Schulz-Kirchner-Verlag, Idstein (2010) 84

Cf. Schulz and Sarimski (2011, p. 131). Picard (2009). 86 For the translation I thank my friend Pia-Sophie Landsmann. 85

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Herrmann, A.: Musiktherapie in der Behandlung selektiv mutistischer Kinder (2008). www.musikt herapie-emsdetten.de Katz-Bernstein, N.: Selektiver Mutismus bei Kindern. Erscheinungsbilder, Diagnostik, Therapie, 3. ed. Ernst Reinhardt Verlag, München (2011) Katz-Bernstein, N., Meili-Schneebeli, E., Wyler-Sidler, J.: Mut zum Sprechen finden—Therapeutische Wege mit selektiv mutistischen Kindern. Ernst Reinhardt Verlag, München (2012) Künzel, L., Sallat, S.: Dissertationsprojekt: Evaluation musiktherapeutischer Methoden für die Kommunikationsanbahnung bei Kindern mit Mutismus. German Medical Science GMS Publishing House, Düsseldorf (2020) Meinhardt, J.: Karibu im Überblick – Bestandteile des Lehrwerks. Westermann, Braunschweig (2016) Picard, M.: Die Welt des Schweigens. Loco, Diessenhofen, Schweiz (2009) Raue, W.: Selektiver Mutismus: Ursachen (2015). http://www.onmeda.de/krankheiten/selektivermutismus-ursachen-108149-3.html. Accessed 19 June 2017 Rösler, M.: Befunde beim neurotischen Mutismus der Kinder. Eine Untersuchung an 32 mutistischen Kindern. Praxis der Kinderpsychologie und Kinderpsychiatrie 30. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht Verlag, Göttingen (1981) Schulz, D., Sarimski, K.: Entwicklungsorientierte Musiktherapie nach Orff mit einem selektiv mutistischen Mädchen – videogestützte Analyse eines Therapieverlaufs. Deutsche musiktherapeutische Gesellschaft (2011) Titzer, J.: Das selektiv mutistische Kind in der Grundschule. Chancen, Möglichkeiten, Grenzen. Diplomica Verlag, Hamburg (2012) Watzlawick, P.: Die Axiome von Paul Watzlawick (n.d.). https://www.paulwatzlawick.de/axiome. html Westermann Bildungsmedien Verlag: Silbenkönige – wichtige Buchstaben beim Schreiben lernen. Westermann Gruppe, Braunschweig (2016). https://www.grundschulschnueffler.de/index.php/ unterrichten/silbenkoenige-wichtige-buchstaben-schreiben-lernen/

Hanne Susanna Heister, *1994 in Eschwege, Hessen, studied German language and literature as well as special needs education at Europa-Universität Flensburg. She completed her Bachelor of Arts in educational sciences with a thesis about mutism within the context of education on the basis of selected case studies. In her master’s degree she specialised in the impairment of language and communication as well as impairment in emotional and social development. The first state examination was completed with a thesis about the significance of bonding and relationships within special education support and emotional and social development. The second state exam was successfully completed at a teacher training college in Braunschweig, where she wrote about respect: the design of a project day for year 8 at a school for mentally handicapped children/special school with a special emphasis on physical and motor development. Since February of 2022 she works at Gutenbergschule Kiel as a special needs teacher.

On the Differences in Children’s Singing and Playing of Instruments Barbara Stiller

The title makes readers assume that the relationship between the vocal and the instrumental in singing and playing musical instruments is special in that it shows differences in the various activities. Following this assumption, the question will be pursued as to what the supposedly different aspects consist of, how they can be diagnosed, and what implications, if any, can be derived from this for an up-to-date music and instrumental pedagogy. Thereby, the explanations are initially based on the assumption that child development in general and musical development in particular (at least for a certain period of life) takes place without a clear separability of vocal and motor activities and that all actions, vocal as well as instrumental, are accompanied by gestural activities. After a brief description of the current situation, it will then be outlined how complex the musical activities can be both for the children making music themselves and for the adults around them and possibly observing them.

1 Children’s Singing and Playing of Instruments Begins at Birth From birth, children are interested in sounds and noises. It is through this anthropologically based interest that they find their individual access to music, voice and language. Already prenatally perceived sound waves, which do include music, lead to memory traces with preferences or also, depending on the emotional and bonding context, dislikes. These are incorporated into the child’s own later activities, as the child processes his or her perceptions with the whole body and senses and expresses

B. Stiller (B) Hochschule Für Musik und Theater Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 H.-W. Heister et al. (eds.), Word Art + Gesture Art = Tone Art, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20109-7_29

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them using their voice and movements.1 Early musical and music-pedagogical activities at home, in parent–child courses at music schools or in the context of the day care centre can have strong, sometimes preventive, effects and support the learning of speech, the controlling of emotions, the coordination of gross and fine motor movements, the orientation in space and time, the development of ideas and memories, the cultural integration, the strengthening of imagination formation forces, etc. In general, infant learning is characterized by a complex orientation to action, which motivates the child to take on new tasks simultaneously with his/her body, senses, mind, and emotions, and to feel confident to be able to handle them. Based on the assumption that all forms of infant action—at least at a young age—can also have aesthetic qualities,2 the assumption can be applied to musical activity that for the child him/herself there is initially no clear distinction between vocal and instrumental activity.

2 Many Forms of Infant Music Making Are Associated with Gestural Actions In the following, I will take a brief look at children’s music making and listening to music: Numerous musical actions are connected with gestural actions, regardless of age. Gestures, usually paired with involuntary or intentional facial expressions, are used as a means of communication in singing as well as in instrumental and bodily percussive music making in many different ways. The gestures are often rhythmically influenced, especially when making music with body sounds. This form of interaction enjoys—thanks to an almost infinite cultural variety also on an international level— great popularity as so-called body percussion. In singing and voice training, gestures are sometimes used to support text or even to replace text in ‘gesturing’ as an artistic stylistic device to point imaginarily (at) something, to suggest movements or to imitate actions. Even objects that are not concretely present are sometimes brought into play gesturally in order to stimulate the child’s imagination notably. Pantomimic activities are often used purposefully and with high technical demands on the gesture itself, especially in the performance of songs, movement designs or in scenic play. In instrumental play, gestural action is almost indispensable: an entry is not perceived without a prior gesture of inhalation or tempo indication, precise interplay requires constant gestural articulation, any kind of instrumental activity is accompanied by gestural coordination, and in chamber music formations or in a choir, pauses until the next entry are literally experienced gesturally. In all conceivable teaching formats concerning instrumental instruction, from beginner’s piano, singing or e-bass lessons, to drumming groups in elementary schools, to the chamber music promotion of gifted students at music schools, musical ideas in the best case always form a 1

Stadler Elmer (2016/2017). Braun and Schorn (2012/2013), pp. 1–3. Cf. also the contribution by Merlin Donald in the present volume.

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closely corresponding unity of physical gestures, corresponding sound gestures and technically correct playing gestures from the very beginning. These ideas are based on complex perceptions in the sense of an inner dialogue, which uses movement, music, images and language as means of communication. Here, all musical parameters can be played with, improvised and created via gestures and facial expressions. As a special means of communication, gestures are sometimes used by the teacher as a corrective to prevent incorrect playing postures or to point out deficits nonverbally. In many cases, even small support measures are sufficient to achieve effects in improving rhythmic stability, playing technique requirements, physical deficiencies, textual gaps or general musical weaknesses. In recent years, the broad spectrum of music education and concert pedagogy has also intensively embraced the targeted artistic use of gestures. Not least because of their often age-unspecific, international and non-linguistic approach to communication, numerous ensembles that play for young audiences nowadays communicate completely non-verbally solely through their musical activities in combination with gestures and facial expressions that support the music. For the sake of completeness, it should also be mentioned that such formats and formations often require a distinctive staging concept including corresponding dramaturgy and direction, in which numerous gestures are elaborately rehearsed. In addition, contact with the audience is often established by means of inviting gestures, in order to motivate them to listen, participate, sing along, or the like. Not least thanks to renowned and internationally active artists such as Bobby McFerrin, the field of concert pedagogical music education has become richer in terms of work with gestures and facial expressions through so-called impromptu improvisations.3 , 4 On the level of vocal impromptu singing, these are mostly so-called circle song improvisations, which are created on the spur of the moment by a so-called facilitator and performed in large groups as spontaneously developed polyphonic vocal music. This is intended more for the performers themselves than for a listening concert audience and musically sometimes shows similarities to traditional gospels or ritual songs, which are known from African countries. As with many ad hoc improvisation methods in the instrumental and vocal field, call and response procedures are just as important as repetitions, endless loops, etc. In the orchestral field, comparable gestural impromptu improvisations have their origin in the method of sound painting, originally coined in 1974 by Walter Thompson in Woodstock and New York as a universal, multidisciplinary sign language for composing in real time.5 Whatever comes forth can be performed simultaneously by instrumentalists, singers, dancers, actors, and visual artists. In 2022, the original form of sound painting comprises more than 1500 gestures, which, assigned to different parameters, are available to the sound painter in order to indicate to the performing artists in a conducting manner which playing material or which playing activities are required of them ad hoc. In the meantime, there exist numerous variants as a sign language for ad hoc music-making with large and diverse 3

McFerrin (2022). Läubin (2020, pp. 187–190). 5 Thompson (2022). 4

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preformed groups under various proper names such as impromptu orchestra, Ward method6 drum circle,7 circle singing, live arrangement etc. Worldwide, there exist many projects in various forms that have set themselves the goal of forging new paths in the organization of large acoustic sound bodies. Some ensembles place particular emphasis on conducting themselves, with each member using gestures and hand signals to take the lead themselves and shape musical structures out of the blue. The fact that especially the methods based on vocal activities often and traditionally pursued aural education and music teaching goals, and thus still show borrowings from solfège and solmization, is mentioned here only for the sake of completeness. Instead of emphasizing differences between vocal and instrumental performance, the aforementioned concepts rather work with the fact that physical and vocal activities form a complementary unity, which in the best case can lead to well-being and high artistic quality. This adds to the complexity of the question of how special differences between children’s singing and instrumental playing can emerge or develop from standard musical activities.

3 On the Interplay Between Proprioception, Self-perception and External Perception In many instrumental pedagogical contexts, the approach is still quite deficit-oriented, with the teacher concentrating on remedying deficiencies on the basis of diagnosed deficiencies. In the following, with reference to the given topic, special attention will be paid to the resources that children possess innately in terms of vocal, linguistic, motor, instrumental, mimic and gestural abilities and that they proactively integrate into their play. To compare vocal and instrumental activities, we will describe how they use these resources in different contexts with different weighting. It should be explicitly emphasized that such an approach always involves social and psychosocial skills of individuals and groups acting together. When it comes to the description of differences in singing and instrumental music making, the reader will probably quite naturally assume the external perspective of the author. However, the fact that a child’s proprioception and self-perception can sometimes differ greatly from adults’ perception of others will be mentioned in more detail below. Perception of one’s own self that is as precise as possible generally plays a key role in music-making for the formation of music-related consciousness and thus also for a resulting professional and personality-forming self-confidence. When making music and singing, through continuous repetition and practice of the interplay of the senses directed outward (visual, auditory, olfactory, tactile) and inward (proprioceptive, gustatory, haptic), a body schema develops which is necessary for the respective musical activity and which, at best, correlates both psychophysically and mentally 6 7

Ward-Zentrum Cologne (2022). Hull (2022).

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with the corresponding body (self) image.8 This body image in turn is decisive for the way outsiders see someone or hear someone under musical aspects. Since each person is unique in his or her individual perception, self-image and external image can never be congruent.9 This is supported by the fact that people are perceived by others solely through the external senses, while the acting person perceives himself/herself sensory-physiologically through an interaction of his/her external and internal senses. The function of the so-called mirror neurons, which are assumed to be involved in imitative behavioural patterns between two people and possibly also empathic reactions, does not change in principle. With regard to singing, the predominantly internal human voice can lead to more complicated correspondences of self-perceptions and external perceptions than is the case with instrumental music-making, which sometimes can be perceived more completely via the external senses alone. The greater the difference, the more different the thought patterns generated during self-perception and perception by others. Who decides what is perceived as music? Adults tend to perceive children’s singing more directly as a musical act and to perceive musical experimentation as music only when it is structured, ordered and rhythmically repeatable. In terms of music teaching scenarios, this implies that the musical abilities and performance of one person should correspond as much as possible with the assessment of the other person, so that selfperception and perception by others can correspond as closely as possible for the sake of a successful musical education. At this point, a first possible difference between singing and instrumental music making can be predicted in the degree of agreement between self-perception and perception by others.

4 A High Level of Musicality Can Emerge Early from Free Play: Play and Imitation as the Main Activities of Infant Music Making It was already described at the beginning of this paper that children are musically active at the moment their ears become awake to the noises, tones and sounds of the world around them, and that they use them to explore and create new things. This is the very basis of their inherent interest in acoustic phenomena. The younger the children are, the more directly their exploration and play is accompanied by movement, which sometimes turns their music-making into a motor activity in that sound perception triggers movement and movement causes sound, which in turn can lead to essential experiences of self-efficacy and enables adults to grasp the musical creative potential of children’s actions.10 In addition to the described opportunities for free, improvisational exploration of material that is musically significant for 8

May (2021). Ibid. 10 Beck-Neckermann (2016, p. 7). 9

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children, however, they also need stimuli for copying and imitation from the very beginning. According to Stadler-Elmer, the latter is important in early childhood for the development of numerous cultural skills and, in combination with free musical play, is crucial for the acquisition of musical conventions.11 Improvisational activities can give rise to play structures and musical ideas that are repeatable and that the children and music educators can resort to during the next musical play contact.12 In this way, a repertoire of common improvisational games and creative ideas can emerge that has arisen directly from the joy of exploration, love of playing and expressive movement of the children themselves and may only require imitation by the adults who keep them in mind.13 The need and willingness to imitate parents, other children, and other experts identifiable as such by the child may be one of numerous reasons why children can initially learn to sing much more autodidactically and to a higher degree of maturity than they (can) teach themselves complex procedures for mastering traditional musical instruments beyond free play. In addition, as already indicated, adults sometimes perceive children’s singing much more immediately as a musical act and respond to it more directly than to free, exploratory play with sounds and noises. While children’s singing is perceived as cute or beautiful and prompts adults to react spontaneously, they may perceive free exploratory play as crude, loud and thus possibly also disturbing.14 At this point, a second potential difference between singing and instrumental music making can be predicted in the autodidactic capabilities of acquisition between exploration, copying, and imitation on the grounds that adults often respond to children’s singing in a more immediate and responsive manner than to exploratory play with sounds and noises.

5 Singing and Instrumental Playing Have the Same Roots in Terms of Developmental Psychology In order to get to the bottom of the question to what extent and at what point infant instrumental playing and singing can actually be separated, it is essential to take a look at developmental psychological conditions with regard to voice and language acquisition. How does the child develop his or her ability to communicate with regard to musical activities, which are the key developmental lines, and which of these can be attributed to inter- and intra-individual developmental differences with regard to singing and instrumental play? Explorative play as a basis for musical development has already been discussed. I will now go on to show what influence such play and 11

Stadler Elmer (2000, p. 146). Busch and Müller (2016, pp 142–149). 13 Beck-Neckermann (2011, p. 25). 14 Beck-Neckermann (2011, p. 12). 12

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interaction experiences can have on the acquisition of language and thus also of singing. The basic assumption is that verbal language can emerge from nonverbal activities through playing with sounds, noises, rhythms and tones, since nonverbal musicmaking, singing only on syllables (vocalises, scat), singing in nonsense language, verbal singing and verbal language correspond directly with each other. After all, they are related in many aspects and yet can trigger generally and music-specifically different experiences and effects.15 Numerous characteristics can be identified16 as common features of music and word language—this is just different with gesture language because of the other, primarily optical medium: Both are media of expression, which are prosodically based on the design of rhythms, timbres, phrasings, pitches, etc. Individual words can be emphasized, stressed, and statements thus made more precise, so that the “how” determines the “what”, i.e. the content.17 If a sentence is spoken twice, it does not have to sound the same it can achieve different effects and possibly even have a different connotation in a new context. Both instrumental music and singing are based on fading sound waves, which develop and fade away again into nothingness with the end of what is sung or played. Children need a receptive ear for their perception in order to be able to develop their own potential of musical and oral interactions. When singing songs, musical and linguistic activities optimally complement each other. While when making music and singing to oneself, it can be his or her own ear that motivates a child to engage in musical activity, functionally spoken language usually targets the presence of resonating dialogue partners in an interestdriven manner. Already in babyhood, children are able to grasp the emotional content of the reference person’s vocalizations from prosody alone.18 Their tonal qualities can lay the foundation in the child for a later choice of instrument or the need to sing in a choir. Voice experiments and explorative games with the speaking and singing voice using sounds, rhythms, tones, noises, syllables, words, sentences, vocalizations and nonsense language are essential for this. Musical-artistic design aspects should always be in the foreground when children test their abilities by babbling, stuttering, sticking out their tongues while singing, contorting their faces, inventing their own nonsense actions, etc.19 In terms of brain physiology, psycho- and sensorimotor functions, almost the entire human perceptual apparatus is in action, which means that “the whole brain is dancing”.20 At this point, a third potential difference between singing and instrumental musicmaking becomes apparent: A verbal, a vocal and a non-verbal musical expression can, due to prosodic perceptual nuances, bring about different processes of experience and cognition, which in young children can point the way for later decisions regarding the choice of an instrument or the choice of the field of singing. 15

Beck-Neckermann (2011, p. 14). Beck-Neckermann (2011, pp. 7–8). 17 Schröder (2016, p. 6). 18 Kupetz (2014, pp. 110–111). 19 Schröder (2016, pp. 5–7). 20 Wehner-v. Segesser (2008). 16

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6 Cultural Similarities Despite Character Differences in Songs from All Over the World Why do even young children often intuitively feel the need to rock their feet, sway their bodies back and forth or even dance when they hear rhythmic sounds? This supposedly intoxicating effect of music still puzzles brain research today. This is based on the fact that only humans, among all mammals, seem to be capable of moving adequately to the rhythm of music (although this assumption is, of course, based solely on human perception).21 While musical parameters such as volume, tempo, pitch and timbre have similar effects on the physical and emotional state of arousal of people all over the world, individual preferences for certain sounds, melodies and rhythms are often determined by the cultural context.22 Music can thus have a healing, dancing, lullaby or love song effect without boundaries and independent of cultures even though individual musical tastes certainly know limits.23 Analyses of songs from all parts of the world, including song-like chants of pygmy peoples, confirm that songs in particular have universal characters in that they follow universal patterns.24 In comparable contexts, people all over the world use similar types of music with uniform characteristics. Songs for dancing, for example, are always faster and more rhythmically characterized than cradle songs and lullabies, while songs intended to contribute to healing are melodically less varied than, for example, dance and love songs.25 To what extent the proven universal human musicality can be assumed to rest on common pillars beyond songs also in pure instrumental pieces will be explored in a next step and in even more cultures.26 Nursery rhymes are a typical example of an everyday ritual which has its meaning in the regulated performance itself. After all, nursery rhymes, as one of the first ritual cultural forms with which children grow up, are regulated in terms of their linguistic and musical elements in such a way that a kind of well-formedness can already be achieved for young children.27 Whether the gestures used in the celebration of these songs also have a universal character as a specific art form can currently only be speculated. At the time of the survey outlined above, this question was not a subject of investigation. At this point, a fourth potential difference between singing and instrumental music-making can be predicted in that songs have already been shown to have universal characters as they follow universal patterns. Whether music can achieve

21

Ibid. Mehr et al. (2020, p. 17). 23 Müller-Lissner (2015). 24 Mehr et al. (2020, p. 17). 25 Mehr et al. (2020, p. 17). 26 Mehr et al. (2020, p. 17). 27 Stadler Elmer (2015, pp. 77–83). 22

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similar effects in the manner of a universal language for less functionally composed instrumental music can so far only be a matter of speculation.

7 Singing Can Result in Anxiety-Inducing Effects A concert for preschool children and their families is dedicated to the theme of winter. Between thematically relevant traditional works by Vivaldi, Leopold Mozart and Debussy, as well as two atmospherically arranged nursery rhymes for listening and singing along, the frost spirit Cold Genius from Henry Purcell’s opera King Arthur enters the stage during a short instrumental introduction, singing dressed in a long, icy-looking coat his face painted white. Immediately the mood in the audience is turning, some children begin to cry loudly and in panic seek the laps of their parents. Pure fear can be observed, fear of a heroically singing man with a great voice, great facial expressions and great gestures of excellent vocal quality. While the energy-laden instrumental introduction still met with great approval from the young audience, the same music, interpreted by an artfully acting singer, unfolded a frightening effect on numerous children. A few minutes earlier, the entire hall had been singing happily together. However, this was a type of singing that the children know from their everyday lives, just as they can draw on everyday experiences when listening to the instruments. The solo aria, on the other hand, is completely foreign to them; the strongly acting singer appears to the children as a danger-inducing threat, although the composition as such does not contain any threatening elements in the form of extreme frequencies, electronically distorted effects or rhythmic throbbing. Older children may rate certain music as good precisely because of its supposedly scary effect. However, the reaction mechanisms of young children described above are anthropologically inherent and based on their cultural imprints. So, at this point, a fifth potential difference between singing and instrumental music making emerges. Vocal and instrumental performances can result in different effects on children despite comparable compositional criteria. The timbres of the human voice can create atmospheres in a particularly intimate and immediate way that rather than being immersive create a strong desire for detachment. While instrumental music-making is experienced by listeners as energetic, classical art singing—no matter how excellently performed—can have anxiety-provoking effects on young children, leading to inner defensiveness and emotional dissonance.

8 Singing Instead of Playing During Instrument Tuition When during instrument tuition a child plays a passage on his/her instrument and the teacher says, “Please put your instrument aside for a moment and sing the passage first”, the scenario seems to be clear: singing and playing the instrument are clearly

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separated, vocal and instrumental can be perceived and observed independently of each other. Such practice purposes, as long as they do not involve texted songs or texted melodies from instrumental works, are usually independent of sung text and often present themselves when difficulties arise in the child’s playing of the instrument that the teacher hopes the child will be able to overcome by asking him or her to sing. Predominantly, the difficulties diagnosed will be melodic, intonational, phrasing, or rhythmic problems that can be attributed to a lack of imagination. Less frequently, they are probably motor or instrument-related deficits, for which other tasks would be more predestined. At this point, a sixth potential difference between singing and instrumental playing can be predicted in that singing melodic contours can lead to a better understanding of musical passages, which can be attributed, among other things, to the immediacy between the voice and its performer.

9 Conclusion In conclusion, what do the described scenarios have to do with the relationship between the art of words, gestures and sounds in singing and playing an instrument, which is to be defined for music-making in childhood? Children experience sonic phenomena early on in their own actions. In addition, they experience the perception and feedback of others as a reaction to their supposedly musical activity. This can be more or less intense for every child and every caregiver. Usually it is the supposed experts who know how to identify musical potentials in the intrinsically motivated, improvisational play of the children and how to further shape them musically. Children’s singing, on the other hand, can be quickly and immediately perceived as such by many caregivers and can be taken up for joint creative processes. Lyrics in songs sung by children enable them to detach themselves from the present and the context. Already with single melodic fragments, but especially also long strophic and narrative songs, aspects can be thematised that lie in the past or in the future, that happen in distant places or that will never (are not supposed to ever) become reality. In comparison, instrumental music played or heard by oneself, always triggers situational emotions, associations, memories and imaginations. This can be reflected upon together, yet the effects reMayn individual and usually subjective.28 Much of the described activities and possible applications take place intuitively, universally and socially standardized. Numerous fields of action in music education and music mediation offer for this, through their per se transdisciplinary action, numerous possibilities and approaches to act specifically gesturally and to communicate artistically through gestures. A closer look reveals a complex network of different artistic and pedagogical disciplines, which instrumental and vocal pedagogy as well as music education, concert pedagogy, elementary music education, rhythmics, etc. use in different ways as an immanent art of gesture in their respective 28

Beck-Neckermann (2011, p. 8).

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fields. To this end, it seems to be increasingly indispensable that the training at music colleges, in addition to the classical range of subjects such as vocal pedagogy, voice training, choral conducting, speaking and speech training, also offers an expanded canon of subjects with rhetoric, story-telling, creative writing, philosophizing with children, etc. as a special form of speech and language art. In addition, it would be a research desideratum for subsequent generations of music educators to once again more intensively pursue the theoretical-scientific connections and differences between vocal and instrumental activities, which are only rudimentarily sketched out here from lived practice.29

References Beck-Neckermann, J.: Musikalisch-sprachliche Aktivität bei Kindern bis Drei. Musik wird Sprache. Deutsches Jugendinstitut e.V. https://www.dji.de/veroeffentlichungen/literatursuche/det ailansicht/literatur/13199-musik-wird-sprache.html (2011). Accessed 20 May 2022 Beck-Neckermann, J.: Der Musik der Kinder Raum geben und sie in ihren musikalischen Aktivitäten begleiten. In: Kulturelle Bildung online. https://www.kubi-online.de/artikel/musik-kinder-raumgeben-ihren-musikalischen-aktivitaeten-begleiten (2016). Accessed 20 May 2022 Braun, T., Schorn, B.: Ästhetisch-kulturelles Lernen und kulturpädagogische Bildungspraxis. In: Kulturelle Bildung online. https://www.kubi-online.de/artikel/aesthetisch-kulturelles-lernen-kul turpaedagogische-bildungspraxis (2012/2013). Accessed 22 May 2022 Busch, B., Müller, S.: Plädoyer für das Singen im Kita-Alltag. Musikpädagogische Anmerkungen zur Entwicklung und Vermittlung eines vielfältigen Liedrepertoires. In: Frühe Bildung, 5(3), pp. 142–149. Hogrefe-Verlag, Göttingen (2016) Hull, A.: The art of drum circle. www.villagemusiccirclesglobal.com (2022). Accessed 22 May 2022 Kupetz, M.: Mitfühlend sprechen: Zur Rolle der Prosodie in Empathiedarstellungen. In: Hartung, M.: Prosodie und Phonetik in der Interaktion—Prosody and phonetics in interaction, pp. 87–114. Verlag für Gesprächsforschung, Mannheim (2014) Läubin, E.: Gruppenimprovisation/Stegreifimprovisation. In: Dartsch, M., Meyer, C., Stiller, B.: EMP kompakt. Kompendium der Elementaren Musikpädagogik, pp. 187–190. Band 1 Lexikon, Helbling-Verlag, Innsbruck/Esslingen/Bern-Belp (2020) May, J.: Selbstbild und Fremdbild. Zwei Seiten einer Medaille. www.karrierebibel.de (2021). Accessed 22 May 2022 Mehr, S.A.: Universality and diversity in human song. Cross-cultural analysis of song. HHS Public Access. Published in final edited form as: Science. 2019 November 22; 366(6468). https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aax0868. https://europepmc.org/backend/ptpmcr ender.fcgi?accid=PMC7001657&blobtype=pdf (2020). Accessed 10 May 2022 Schröder, B.: Sprachförderung durch Musik im Kindergarten. Theoretischer Hintergrund, Fallstudien und Praxisbeispiele. Wissenschaftlicher Aufsatz. Grin-Verlag, München/Ravensburg (2016) Stadler Elmer, S.: Spiel und Nachahmung. Über die Entwicklung der elementaren musikalischen Aktivitäten. Nepomuk, Stuttgart (2000) Stadler Elmer, S.: Kind und Musik: Das Entwicklungspotenzial erkennen und verstehen. Springer, Berlin/Heidelberg (2015)

29

For the translation I thank Elke Keilhofer-Schmidt.

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Stadler Elmer, S.: Fachdidaktik der Künste. Musik im Kita-Alltag: Qualifizierung von Betreuungspersonen. https://www.phsz.ch/forschung/bildungsforschung-und-fachdidaktik-alt/ fachdidaktik-der-kuenste/projekte-fachdidaktik-der-kuenste/ (2016/2017). Accessed 13 May 2022 McFerrin, B.: Bobby McFerrin. www.bobbymcferrin.com (2022). Accessed 22 May 2022 Müller-Lissner, A.: Grenzenlose Melodien. In: Der Tagesspiegel 08.01.2015. https://www.tagesspie gel.de/wissen/musikwissenschaft-grenzenlose-melodien/11203280.html. Accessed 22 May 2022 Stegreif e.V.: Stegreif-Orchester. www.stegreif-orchester.de (2022). Accessed 22 May 2022 Thompson, W.: Soundpainting. Die Kunst der Echtzeit-Komposition. http://www.soundpainting. com/home-de/ (2022). Accessed 21 May 2022 Ward-Zentrum Köln e.V.: Die Ward-Methode. Ein systematischer und lebendiger Weg zur Musik. www.ward-zentrum.de (2022). Accessed 22 May 2022 Wehner-v. Segesser, S.: Das Gehirn tanzt selbst wenn der Körper ruht. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung. https://www.nzz.ch/das_gehirn_tanzt__selbst_wenn_der_koerper_ruht-ld.537047 (2008). Accessed 13 May 2022

Barbara Stiller, Prof. Dr., * 1969 in Bremen, studied elementary musical and instrumental pedagogy at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg, majoring in violin until 1996, followed by studies in educational science at the University of Hamburg. After a period of professional activity at the Staatliche Jugendmusikschule Hamburg as well as the Jeunesses Musicales Deutschland in Weikersheim, she accepted a call to the Hochschule für Künste Bremen in 2002 and was appointed professor at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg in 2007 with the concert pedagogical topic “Erlebnisraum Konzert. Prozesse der Musikvermittlung in Konzerten für Kinder (Experience space concert. Processes of music mediation in concerts for children”). Barbara Stiller teaches instrumental pedagogy, elementary music pedagogy and music education and she heads the Institute for Musical Education in Childhood, where she conducts research on topics of musical-cultural education and lifelong learning in artistic-pedagogical contexts. As a guest lecturer, she accepts invitations to give lectures and workshops and is involved in committees and juries throughout the German-speaking world (e.g. for the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, as a representative of the music education division for the Beethoven Jubilee Society BTHVN2020, as a co-spokesperson for the committee on artistic-pedagogical courses of study of the Rectors’ Conference of the German Music Universities, as a spokesperson for the working group Elementary Music Education Germany, etc.).

Gesture Language and Dance Art

Hostility to the “I” and Sign Language: Hölderlin’s Poems at the Window and the “Playing of Strings” of the Hours Jacky Carl-Joseph Paul

1 Introduction Hölderlin was neither mentally ill nor did he fall silent following his forced “psychiatric” treatment of 1806. Rather, under conditions of intensified political repression, he sought new modes, methods and codes of communication with “un éloquent silence” (Paul 2020) in order to disseminate his political-poetic ideas both further afield and in even more intense, socially conscious ways. The new language simultaneously serves as camouflage, as a “concealed way of writing” (Dolf Sternberger) or a ‘concealed way of speaking’. He therefore reduced his verbal language to the sparse and bare, even tending towards decidedly cold, abbreviated verses and gnomic sayings that contrast sharply with the earlier hymn-like exuberance. Such reduced language, a kind of consciously “restricted code”, is by way of compensation complemented by a physical, gestural language that is often—also in the literal sense— expansive. This includes, again as concealment, exaggeratedly subservient gestures such as bows and the like. Everyday, non-verbal, in practice “instrumental” processes such as opening the window can serve, in stylised form and likewise exaggeratedly contoured, as symbols and symbolic equivalents for verbal language, in this case an “Into the open air!”. Even the recently in 2020 celebrated “Hölderlin Anniversary” has done practically nothing to alter the “Hölderlin case”: now as then, the second half of his life is viewed under the stigma of pathological symptoms. The incriminating judgements have if anything increased over the years. As evidence of the poet’s mental illness, repeated reference is made to the growing simplicity of his way of speaking, the emblematic stereotypy of his images of nature, the convulsive window-opening and, last but not

J. C.-J. Paul (B) Faculty of Philosophy, University of Poitiers, Poitiers, France e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 H.-W. Heister et al. (eds.), Word Art + Gesture Art = Tone Art, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20109-7_30

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least, the disappearance of the “lyrical I”1 : there was even regular mention of ego dissolution and schizophrenia. It has clearly been overlooked that a similar form of ego-denial is also attested in the case of an author held in high esteem by Hölderlin, whose name he chose as a pseudonym in his last years: “Buonarroti”. In the latter’s case, however, this peculiarity was not interpreted as a pathology, but merely as a sign of humble restraint with the aim of avoiding any violation of the sacrosanct principle of equality.2 The question therefore arises: Should the absence of the lyrical I, his simple-minded, banal way of speaking and repeated gazing out of the window be interpreted as symptoms of a mental dulling in the later Hölderlin? Did these characteristics of his later poetry appear suddenly, for example, after he was allegedly “struck by Apollo”?3 ? Or are there already portents in the earlier poems that reveal and explain these “peculiarities”?

2 Hölderlin and the Lyrical I This reference to the missing “I” in Hölderlin’s late poetry seems to overlook the fact that the poetic creation is actually by no means necessarily connected with an I-statement. It was only with the advent of modernism, and especially around the middle of the eighteenth century, that the I came more and more to the fore. Sentimentalism, Sturm und Drang, Classicism and Romanticism all erected monuments to the ego. Works that focus on the I (e.g. autobiographies, heroic anthems or confessions) are among the most popular genres. Even several decades after the Promethean revolt of the Sturm und Drang era, Goethe did not shy away from his confession in Dichtung und Wahrheit with the telling subtitle: “Aus meinem Leben [From my life]: “Alles, was daher von mir bekannt geworden, sind nur Bruchstücke einer großen Konfession… [All, therefore, that has been confessed by me, consists of fragments of a great confession…]”.4 This was a hugely momentous sentence for the decades to come, as it made the boundary between the biographical and the fictional or lyrical I extremely fluid. Literary criticism and literary examination lapsed into a detailoriented “biographism”, more interested in the lives of poets and writers than in their works. This is of course all the more so for a poet like Hölderlin, who writes using a deeply coded language. Time and again, the lyrical I and the biographical I were confused, especially as commentators, misled by the strikingly elegiac and melancholy sounding titles of his poems (Menon’s Lament for Diotima, The Farewell, Tears, etc.) and the unprecedentedly enigmatic conciseness of his language, felt compelled 1

Gonther (2010, p. 273). Schiappa (2008, p. 164). Buonarotti, Hölderlin’s chosen pseudonym in his later life, not only refers to Michelangelo, as conjectured in the Hölderlin (1992), Hanser edition (III, p. 701), but also to Filippo Buonarroti (1761–1837), revolutionary and freemason, one of the leaders of the Conspiracy of Equals (1796). See Paul (2014, p. 47 f.). 3 See Letter to C. U. Böhlendorff, November 1802. Hölderlin (1992), Hanser II, p. 921. 4 Goethes Werke, Hamburger Ausgabe, Vol. 9, p. 283. 2

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to illuminate the work through the life and, in turn, the life through the work. From this emerged an image of the poet that was marked by the “blackest melancholy” and “madness” (Waiblinger). Unfortunately, this ignored both the word of the “original thinker”, who warned his readers against the “insufficiently conventional”5 form of his language, as well as the “mischievously droll”6 smile of the poet who, with biting irony—emulating the highly revered Klopstock7 —not infrequently concealed what was really meant behind what was apparently said. This explains why, using addresses8 or allusions, Hölderlin repeatedly invites his reader to seek the “deeper spirit”9 or the “[more] secret meaning”10 behind the ostensibly simple nature of his verses. Poems such as Menons Klagen um Diotima [Menon’s Lament for Diotima], Thränen [Tears] or Der Kirchhof [The Churchyard] are thus anything but simple concessions to that period’s preference for I-centred laments. In contrast to the wording of the titles, the very last verses constantly reveal an ardent commitment to eternally new-greening life: “Leben will ich dann auch! Schon grünts! […] verjüngt leben die Hoffnungen all [I too want to live, forever green […] to be alive in all our hopes again]”.11 Even in his later creative years, his work is permeated by a tireless struggle for an “own life” that stands in stark contrast to those who are friends “with the dead”12 : no lyric of mourning, but no lyric of love either. For Hölderlin, as he wrote in a letter to his publisher Friedrich Wilmans, “love songs are always a tired flight”, preferring instead “the high and pure rejoicing of songs of the homeland”.13 What he means by “songs of the homeland” should not, however, be equated with a narrow-minded patriotism or even nationalism: rather is meant “the beloved soil of the fatherland” that opens his novel Hyperion. This “soil of the fatherland” is precisely that Heimath of which he sings some years later in the eponymous poem upon which his “love” for the “earth”14 and “mankind” is based: not a limited love for a single individual, i.e. for an “I”, but a love for all humanity: “My love is the human race…”.15 When the word “love” is encountered in Hölderlin’s poems, it is in most cases a “love for mankind” that is meant: Menschenliebe [love for mankind] or Menschenfreundschaft [friendship for mankind], as in

5

See Preamble to Friedensfeier. Hölderlin (1992), Hanser I, p. 361. Homburger Folioheft, Hanser I, Hölderlin (1992), p. 419. 7 Klopstock, Die deutsche Gelehrtenrepublik, ihre Einrichtung, ihre Gesetze. Geschichte des letzten Landtags. Klopstock (1962), p. 901. 8 See the foreword to Friedensfeier. Hölderlin (1992), Hanser I, p. 361. 9 Das Unverzeihliche. Ibid. p. 192. 10 Heimkunft. Final version, Ibid. p. 371. 11 Menons Klagen um Diotima. Ibid. p. 294. The same is true of Thränen, whose final word is “nachleben [survive]” and which, in the cyclical structure of the Nachtgesänge, leads to the more cheerful prospects of An die Hoffnung [To Hope] (Hölderlin (1992), Hanser I, p. 441). 12 Der Kirchhof . Ibid. p. 919. 13 Letter of December 1803. Hölderlin (1992), Hanser II, p. 927. 14 Heimath. Hölderlin (1992), Hanser I, p. 395. 15 Letter to his brother, September 1793. Hölderlin (1992), Hanser II, pp. 507–508. 6

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the later poems from which the word “Liebe” disappears altogether and, to avoid any misunderstanding, is replaced by “Freundschafft [friendship]”. Hölderlin’s poetry constantly tends towards the “general”16 and is to be understood neither as poetry of the I nor of pains of the heart, but rather as joyful song—an “attunement” and a “harmoniousness” with the great concert of nature, as in the final visions of Hyperion17 : Lebendige Töne sind wir, stimmen zusammen in deinem Wohllaut, Natur! Wer reißt den? Wer mag die Liebenden scheiden? [We are living tones, we sound together in your harmony, nature! Who can split that asunder? Who will cause lovers to part?]

In this seemingly peaceful idyllic image of nature, however, there remains a subliminal dissonance that suddenly and shrilly resounds a few years later in the cycle of the Nachtgesänge. This dissonance like a rupture splits the “sacred-sobering” purity of eternally renewing life in two and causes the harmonious idyll of nature, which only knows “der Liebe Gesez [the law of love]”,18 to topple over into an eerie world of walls, weathervanes and the clang of warlike weapons: Hälfte des Lebens.

The Middle of Life.

Mit gelben Birnen hänget

With yellow pears full-laden

Und voll mit wilden Rosen

And covered with wild roses

Das Land in den See,

Land slips into lake,

Ihr holden Schwäne,

You swans alluring,

Und trunken von Küssen

And drunken with kisses

Tunkt ihr das Haupt

Dipping your heads

Ins heilignüchterne Wasser.

In sacred-sobering water.

Weh mir, wo nehm’ ich, wenn

Ah me, where will I, when

Es Winter ist, die Blumen, und wo

The winter’s come, find flowers, and where

Den Sonnenschein,

The sunshine and

Und Schatten der Erde?

The shadows of the earth?

Die Mauern stehn

The walls all stand

Sprachlos und kalt, im Winde

Speechless and cold, the wind-caught

Klirren die Fahnen.

Weathervanes clatter.

The selfish ego appears in “Ah me” like a fatal curse and, as in Rousseau,19 is presented as the cause of the tragic turn in human history that has divided life into two opposing halves. For Hölderlin, the I is “absolute and dogmatic”,20 thus entailing 16

See letter to his brother, September 1793. Ibid. pp. 507–508. Hölderlin (1992), Hanser I, p. 760. 18 Friedensfeier. Ibid. p. 364. 19 J.-J. Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men. (1755). According to Rousseau, the first man to declare “this is mine” ushered in a period of inequality in human history. 20 Wenn der Dichter einmal… Hölderlin (1992), Hanser II, pp. 91–92. 17

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absolutism (“I am the state”) and dogmatism (“I am who I am”). It is not only in these stanzas, written as late as 1803, that Hölderlin’s critique of the I takes on such clear outlines: this was already articulated in 1788–1789 in a fragment that begins with the revealing words: “Ich hasse mich… [I hate myself…]”21 —words that unmistakably echo Pascal’s famous dictum: “The ego is hateful”.22 In contrast to the Frenchman, however, Hölderlin not only takes aim at the human ego but also at the ego contained in the Bible that, in its boundless arrogance, sets itself up as the highest pure spirit and sole creator of man and the world. For Hölderlin is firmly convinced that “keine Kraft monarchisch ist im Himmel und auf Erden [no power is monarchical, in heaven or on earth]”.23 Throughout his life, Hölderlin resolutely opposed the exclusive claim to dominance of “I am I” or “I am who I am”, not only when confronting Fichte’s philosophy of the ego: “Wie kann ich sagen: Ich! Ohne Selbstbewusstseyn [How can I say: I! Without self-consciousness?]”.24 His excerpts from Jacobi’s letters on the teachings of Spinoza (“Thought is not the source of substance; rather, substance is the source of thought”25 ) also indicate the extent to which for him the belief in an all-powerful pure spirit had become questionable. In his letter to his brother of March 1801, he did not mince his words, clearly asserting that God was, “per se, not an I”.26 The absence of the lyrical I in the later poems is thus surely not to be interpreted as a symptom of schizophrenia, but rather as a protest against an egocentrism and a selfishness, against an egoism that would suffocate any philanthropic feeling and any humanity in the heart. The thinking I is no longer the sole bearer of the universal power of creation; the spirit is no longer “in the beginning”, no longer “at the source”, no longer floating in airless heights, but is “at home” and visible in a body—“fulfilled in men”.27 A new piety should now prevail, one that no longer relies on the pseudo-truths of an I that imagines itself to be “omniscient” but rather on a knowledge that we draw from the visible world: “Lo! We are the ones, we…”. Man should turn away from dwellings “built high in the air”28 and return home, “Wo sich vergnügt der Mensch umsieht in den Gefilden [Where man gladly surveys the fields]”, back to the homeland in the “here” and “now”:

21

Ibid. p. 78. Blaise Pascal: Pensées diverses II, fragment 5/32 (Lafuma 597, Sellier 494). That Hölderlin knew Pascal’s work is shown by a quotation in the register that he wrote to a friend (Hölderlin (1992), Hanser II, p. 972). This quotation is also attested by an author—Jacobi—with whom Hölderlin was familiar. We are however certainly not wrong in assuming that Pascal’s writings were also obligatory for theology studies at the Tübingen Stift. 23 Letter to Isaak von Sinclair, 24 December 1798. Hölderlin (1992), Hanser II, p. 722 f. 24 Ibid. p. 49. 25 Ibid. p. 43. 26 Ibid. p. 898. The phrase “an sich, kein Ich” is of course emphasised by Hölderlin himself. 27 Brod und Wein. Second version. Hölderlin (1992), Hanser I, p. 381. 28 Der Frühling (Wie seelig…) Hölderlin (1992), Hanser I, p. 922. 22

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Heimath.

Homeland.

Und niemand weiß

And nobody knows

Indessen laß mich wandeln

In the meantime let me walk

Und wilde Beeren pflüken

And pick wild berries

Zu löschen die Liebe zu dir

To erase the love for you

An deinen Pfaden, o Erd’

On your paths, O earth

Hier wo ———

Here where——— […]

[…]

jezt aber unter hohem

but now under high

Gewölbe der Eichen…29

Vaults of the oaks…

3 In the Beginning Was the Word? The questioning of the purely spiritual I as the “beginning” and “source” of the world not only has devastating consequences for the credibility of the opening book of the Bible, but also for the opening verses of the Gospel of St John (I, 1 2 3). Not only were the fundamental postulates of the creation story jettisoned (“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth…. and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters” (Genesis I, 1)), but the testimony of the first disciple (“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”) also lost all credibility. As Herder had already demonstrated in 1770 in his Abhandlung über den Ursprung der Sprache [Treatise on the Origin of Language], language is no longer of divine but rather of human origin. Language is no longer the inviolable, sacred invention of a higher, fleshless spirit, but the product of a flesh-and-blood human being, at home in the world of things—it is Cicero’s words, Vocabula sunt notae rerum, that serve as a motto for Herder’s treatise. Words and language are no longer the expression of final, eternal, unchanging truths: they are in constant development, subject to the eternally changing conditions of human ages and human history. Everything that has been asserted so far about the creative word—i.e. poiesis in its original sense—must be critically examined and redefined. And this is exactly what Hölderlin does in a fragmentary ode with its revealing title and programmatic content that foreshadowed the future: Die Sprache — In the storm speaks

Gott.

God. […]

29

Language —

Im Gewitter spricht der

Heimath. Ibid. p. 395.

[…]

Hostility to the “I” and Sign Language: Hölderlin’s Poems …

nicht singend

not singing

Du sprachest zur Gottheit,

Thou spakest to the deity,

aber diss habt ihr all ver-

yet this you have all

gessen, daß immer die Erst-

forgotten, that the first-

linge Sterblichen nicht,

born are not always mortals,

daß sie den Göttern

that to the gods they gehören.

503

belong.

Gemeiner muß alltäglicher muß

More common must, more ordinary must

die Frucht erst werden, dann wird

the fruit first become, thus to be

sie den Sterblichen

eigen30

one with the mortals

This programme, drafted around 1800, defines a new concept of lyrical language. The capitalised Du, which actually appears in an earlier draft as Ich, is intended to bid farewell to the lofty goals of his previous first works in order to strike out on new paths. The “fruit” of poetic inspiration “must” (emphasised twice) become “more common” and “more ordinary”. The poet should no longer only be concerned with appealing to the “gods” or to the higher-ups, but should also be accessible to “mortals” in order to—as the esteemed Klopstock said in his Einleitung zu den geistlichen Liedern [Introduction to the Sacred Songs]—“become useful to the greatest number”.31 Hölderlin’s criticism was undoubtedly directed primarily against Schiller, who is apostrophised shortly afterwards as “Gods nurtured you, young man”.32 This is surely an allusion to Schiller’s 1791 review Über Bürgers Gedichte [On Bürger’s Poetry] and his pejorative view of the emphatically vernacular orientation of Bürger’s poetry. At the same time, Schiller argues for a formally sophisticated conception of art that, in its preference for the “selection of a nation” and restraint vis-à-vis the “masses” or the “great throng”, unmasks Weimar classicism as elitist class art. In contrast, Hölderlin strives from the very outset to liberate poetry from the tradition-conscious artistic rules of the “wise counsellors”33 and “masters”.34 Since the loudly proclaimed Ich hasse mich…. lyrical language should no longer be an expression of the “zorngen Sehnsucht [angry longing]”35 of a conceited ego, but should become “more common and more ordinary”, i.e. transform itself into the “song” of a poet who has “felt and appropriated the communal soul that is common to all and peculiar to everyone”36 and who has in mind all mortals as the goal of his art. The elitist “I” lyric is now to be replaced by a vernacular “we” lyric. Lyrical language becomes a collective “song” 30

Hölderlin (1992), Hanser I, p. 235. Klopstock: Ausgewähllte Werke, Klopstock (1962), p. 1010. 32 Hölderlin (1992), Hanser I, p. 236. 33 Der Jüngling an die klugen Rathgeber—a poem that was not published by Schiller even after moderating corrections (see Hölderlin (1992), Hanser III, p. 96). 34 An die jungen Dichter. Hölderlin (1992), Hanser I, p. 193. 35 Ich duld’ es nimmer… Ibid. p. 75. 36 Wenn der Dichter einmal des Geistes mächtig… Hölderlin (1992), Hanser II, pp. 77–100. 31

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for the community. A correction in the second version of Dichtermuth [The Poet’s Courage] in fact makes it clear that the original “poets of the people” are to develop into “singers of the people” who no longer hover in the higher spheres of the spirit, but happily dwell “among the living/Where so much gathers, joyful and pleasing to all,/Open to everyone…”37 : poetry that wants to be “useful” by promoting joie de vivre, conviviality and openness, and that “gladdens men’s hearts”.

4 A New Language of the Heart and of Sentience As described in detail in the final section of his poetological draft entitled Wink für die Darstellung und Sprache [Hint for Representation and language], Wenn der Dichter einmal des Geistes mächtig ist… [Once the poet has mastered the spirit….],38 a “new reflection” is to assert itself in the linguistic creative process, one that “gives back to the heart all that it has taken from it”39 and rehabilitates life and sentience.40 In every “Augenblik [blink of an eye, i.e. instant]” a new language is to be invented that is dependent on the unique “instant”, the unique moment, but at the same time—the word is also to be understood in its original, literal sense—a new language that is dependent on the “blinking” of the “eyes” of the poet, who “looks around in his world” and now places what he perceives at the centre of the process of linguistic and artistic creation. A “blink” of the “eyes” that is no longer the creation of an omnipotent thinking I, but rather the product of a “sentience [Empfindung]” that is rooted in the psychic-organic and in which his entire inner and outer life, his inner and outer nature are harmoniously united into a “creative act”.41 Only when man no longer walks through nature “blindly” but “with open eyes” can he create something “living”, as the “creative power” is “not the work of human hands” but can only be sought in eternal nature.42 This desire to open one’s eyes to the world of nature that is perceptible to the senses once more occurs in his commentary on the “picturesque views of the Rhine”.43 The particular interest in a publication that belonged more to the realm of the plastic arts than to literature shows the decisive importance that Hölderlin attached to the eye, to seeing and to perceiving nature, as the particular value of these views [Ansichten] depended on: ...whether they are purely and simply lifted from nature, so that nothing unseemly and uncharacteristic is included on either side and the earth maintains a proper balance against the heavens so that even the light, which denotes this balance in its particular relationship,

37

Dichtermuth (second version), Hölderlin (1992), Hanser I, p. 284. Wink für die Darstellung und Sprache. Hölderlin (1992), Hanser II, p. 96 ff. 39 Ibid. p. 98. 40 Ibid. pp. 98–99. 41 Das untergehende Vaterland… Hölderlin (1992), Hanser II, p. 76. 42 Letter to his brother of 4 June 1799. Ibid. p. 770. 43 Letter to Leo von Seckendorf of 12 March 1804. Ibid. p. 928. 38

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need not be askew and charmingly deceptive. It depends very much on the angle within the work of art and on the square outside of it.

The “angle” and the “square” are, however, important for “the vanishing lines inside and the frame outside the picture”44 but are also vitally necessary for “views” that, as with Spinoza,45 aim at an objectively “geometrical” representation of the world. The painter may not add anything foreign, “nothing unseemly and uncharacteristic”. Genuine art no longer grows out of an ego’s higher yearning [Sehnen] for hubristic supernatural ideals of beauty, but is based primarily upon seeing [Sehen46 ], on the eye of the painter or the draughtsman, who orients himself to laws appropriate to the human capacity for thought and perception. Hence “angles” and “squares” are necessary to situate the simple beauty of nature once more within the framework of a worldly dimension appropriate to man and to re-establish the “proper balance between earth and heavens”. Only when man obeys the scientifically objective laws of optical perception and no longer places nature in a subjectively “askew and charmingly deceptive” light will he be able to see that everything in nature is in “proper balance” and that there is no difference in rank, no hierarchy, no opposition or conflict between heaven and earth: away with the deceptively subjective construct of the artificial-artistic illusion, therefore, and back to the true beauty of genuine sensory perception! For Hölderlin, the change of perspective hoped for in the “Ansichten des Rheins [Views of the Rhine]” naturally applies not just to the visual arts. He had held a closely related “view” a few years earlier, when he tried to redefine the tasks of poetic “singing” in a draft letter to Böhlendorff.47 After the “shocks and stirrings of the soul” experienced in France, he had returned to the “nature of the homeland” and now lived in an area where “all the holy places of the earth together surround one place and the philosophical light around my window is now my joy”. Only the view through the “window” can help one to find inner balance and joy in life: such a view, freed from the restrictions and commandments of the “absolute and dogmatic” I, permits participation in the euphonious sounds of the sacred life of nature through the senses and the body. Gazing through the window thus ultimately proves to be a gesture that is secretly hostile to dogma, one that rehabilitates the “viewing” of nature in the “philosophical light” as the actual source of all creative activity. If when writing verses in his old age the poet kept using the same sign language— gazing through the window, sometimes accompanied by a sudden opening, he certainly had soundly calculated reasons. For, after his forced confinement in a

44

Hölderlin (1992), Hanser III, p. 554. Spinoza, Ethics. The title itself alludes to the “geometric” method: Ethica. Ordine Geometrico demonstrata. 46 The necessary change from “yearning” to “seeing” is also alluded to in the final verses of the late poem Das fröhliche Leben: “Geh’ ich heim zulezt, haushältig, / Dort nach goldnem Wein zu sehn”. Hölderlin (1992), Hanser I, p. 917. 47 To Casimir Ulrich Böhlendorf, November 1802. Hölderlin (1992), Hanser II, p. 920 ff. 45

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clinic, where obligatory Bible readings were used to try to exorcise his “enthusiasm for undisguised paganism”,48 it was perhaps more advisable not to say too clearly what lay hidden behind the “Blick ins Freue [gazing into joy]”,49 the pledge to “free nature”,50 indeed to the “holy all-living Mother Nature”.51 He therefore thought it better to resort to a cautious language of signs and symbols, which also had the advantage of supplementing the human modus exprimendi with a component consisting of the senses and the body: in other words, a spiritually weak, emphatically body-related non-verbal communication as the expression of a coded message: Poor is the spirit of the Germans, in the more secret meaning.

Thus there is nothing pathological per se about Hölderlin’s gestures; they are merely, according to Sinclair, the outlet for “a mode of expression adopted for carefully considered reasons” that, even in his later period, appeared as a coherent poetic programme in the so-called “Poems at the Window”.52

5 The Poems at the Window and the Song of the Hours The new poetic language seems to be realised in the “Poems at the Window” in that the “instant”, hitherto understood primarily in visual terms, regains its temporal dimension. The instant becomes a “moment” in which all opposites, i.e. (as already indicated in Hyperion’s final letter53 ) all “dissonances” are washed away by hastening, healing time.54 The gaze through the window and the instant unite to form the “allconstraining moment to which and in which, negatively and for this very reason, expressively and through the senses, all pieces mentioned refer and unite […]”.55 This moment is described as a harmonious unification of the “opposites”. Contrasts and conflicts are transformed into the peaceful alternation of “the weaker and the stronger”, combining into the “euphony” of “the bright and the quiet”, where form and substance “both in slowness and in speed finally unite negatively in the standstill of movement […]”. This language, in which the living elemental forces of landscape and time pulsate rhythmically, unites the simple, “common” and “negative” into a 48 Ernst Zimmer in: Fernand Gustav Kühne, Hölderlin und sein Wahnsinn. Frankfurter Ausgabe, Vol. 9. p. 479. 49 Ernst Zimmer, Brief an einen Ungenannten. Ibid. p. 327. 50 Albert Diefenbachs Besuch 1837. Ibid. p. 329. 51 Wilhelm Waiblinger, Friedrich Hölderlins Leben Dichtung und Wahnsinn. Ibid. p. 314. 52 Regarding the term “Fenstergedichte” see Oelmann (1996, p. 201 ff.). 53 “Wie der Zwist der Liebenden, sind die Dissonanzen der Welt. Versöhnung ist mitten im Streit und alles Getrennte findet sich wieder [The dissonances of the world are like lovers’ tiffs. There is reconciliation in the middle of strife, and all that’s apart comes together again].” Hölderlin (1992), Hanser I, p. 760. 54 In the first and third versions of the Diotima poem a pun-like association quite obviously refers to the “eilend [hastening]” and “heilende [healing]” effect of time. See Paul (2011. p. 50 f.). 55 Wenn der Dichter einmal… Hölderlin (1992), Hanser II, p. 100.

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poetic “euphony”, in which the word becomes music, a joyful song, and the poet becomes a “singer”,56 : “For all is good”57 and “We know not evil”. “We know not evil”.58 As a prelude to the great masterpiece, the Homburger Folioheft,59 which remains in fragmentary form, “joy” is even declared in Heimkunft [Homecoming] to be the basic principle of the new lyrical tone: I speak foolishly. It is [simply] joy.

A joy that unites all men and all hours of the day in a harmonious feeling of love for life upon returning home: But a playing of strings lends all hours their tones,60

The new lyrical “tone” becomes a “euphony”61 and a “resounding”.62 The poet seeks in the sonority of his verses to reproduce the deeper harmonics of life in time. No rule-bound aesthetics that are alien to nature, no convention, no I, nor any God will determine the poetic statement in the Poems at the Window. The only rules that govern the late “Views” and the “Prospects” of the window landscapes are the laws of the “Father of Time or of the Earth”.63 This explains why his very last stanzas, signed “Scardanelli”, were conceived as a cycle64 based upon the circle of the seasons and consisting of 24 short poems like the 24 h of the day. What is particular about this cycle is that the “image of the times” adopts a quite new emphasis: the climax of the year is no longer Winter, in whose hallowed “night”65 the “Glimmer / Of splendid nature” and the “Splendour of the season…” are “over”,66 but rather Spring with the dawn of a “new day” that frees mankind from the dark “twilights” of the “distant heights” and laughingly lures it down to the “new day” and to new “joys”.67 The Poems at the Window moreover avoid every rational construct as “unseemly and uncharacteristic”, i.e. alien to nature: causal and final clauses are replaced by temporal clauses, often even by a simple succession in paratactic order. This was always interpreted as a symptom of debility in the old poet, whereas his main concern was to take account of the dictates of time. The same applies to the lyrical form: the accent is now on the natural “euphony”, on the simple “alternation of the weaker and 56

Dichtermuth: “Wir, die Sänger des Volks [We, the singers of the people]”. Hölderlin (1992), Hanser I, p. 284. 57 Patmos (first version) Ibid. p. 449. 58 Muth des Dichters. Ibid. p. 241. 59 Homburger Folioheft. ‘Frankfurt Edition’ Supplement III p. 29. 60 Heimkunft. Ibid. p. 30; Hölderlin (1992), Hanser I, pp. 370–371. 61 Wenn der Dichter… Hölderlin (1992), Hanser II, p. 100. 62 Ibid. p. 98. 63 Anmerkungen zur Antigonä. Hölderlin (1992), Hanser II, p. 372. 64 See Paul (2014). 65 Der Winter. (Das Feld ist kahl…) Hölderlin (1992), Hanser I, p. 929. 66 Der Winter. (Wenn sich das Jahr geändert…) Hölderlin (1992), Hanser I, p. 933. 67 Der Frühling. Ibid. p. 935.

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the stronger”, on the “slowness and speed” of the unifying “moment” that should be audible in the tempo of the stanzas and the rhythm of the verses. It is not so much the complicated verse and stanza systems of strict rule-bound aesthetics that are suited to this, as the simple verse and stanza types that are popular in folk songs with their closeness to nature. Even rhyme, for a time shunned by Hölderlin, is now rehabilitated. The tonal-aesthetic motivations are of course prominent: at the same time, however, the entire expressive and allusive richness of the rhymes is mobilised to place image and sound in the service of a subliminal message, whose explosiveness only becomes apparent against the backdrop of the events of the time. Thus the recurring rhyme of “betrachten-achten [“regard” in both senses, i.e. viewed/esteemed]”68 : viewing is a form of regard that recognises nature in its very own sacred truth and no longer degrades it to the pitiful product of an arbitrary creation from nothing. And when “Ende [end]” and “vollende [perfect, consummate]” rhyme with each other, this is immediately followed by a “Werden [becoming]” that, on “Erden [earth]”, resurrects a “Leben [life]” full of “Streben [striving]”. What now resonates in the rhymes is a descent—“herunter [downwards]”69 and “hinunter [down hither]”70 — that “munter [blithely]” leads to a transition, in whose “Rauschen [rushing]” a “Vertauschen [exchange]” is in ferment, which sounds rather risky in the context of the German Vormärz, i.e. the years prior to the Revolution of March 1848. The gaze through the window Imperceptibly turns into a gaze into the “open air”. The view from the window becomes a “view” of a freer, happier future: Ein neues Leben will der Zukunft sich enthüllen,

A new life will reveal itself to the future

Mit Blüthen scheint, dem Zeichen froher Tage,71

With blossoms it shines, the sign of happy days

New spring days come “from the depths” of earthly elemental forces and evoke a new spirituality in mankind with a joy that aspires to “new words” in “poetry and songs”:

68

Wenn aus der Tiefe kommt der Frühling in das Leben,

When from the depths spring enters into life,

Es wundert sich der Mensch, und neue Worte streben

Men marvel and new words aspire

Aus Geistigkeit, die Freude kehret wieder

From their spirituality, and joy returns

Und festlich machen sich Gesang und Lieder72

And poetry and songs appear in festive guise

Höheres Leben. Der Frühling. (Wenn neu das Licht…) Der Frühling. (Der Tag erwacht…) Ibid. pp. 926, 930, 936. 69 Der Frühling. (Es kommt der neue Tag…) Ibid. p. 935. 70 Der Frühling. (Wenn neu das Licht…) Ibid. p. 930. 71 Der Frühling, Hölderlin (1992), Hanser I, p. 935. 72 Der Frühling. Ibid. p. 936.

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Such “Gesang und Lieder [here: poetry and songs]” invite all mankind, equally and fraternally together with the “highest” and the “best”, to “festivals” that are no longer in the shadow cast by aristocratic crowns, but in the splendour of “wreaths”, the wreaths of blossoms that were popular at the Bacchus festivals held in the midst of sacred nature: Erhaben sind die Berge, wo die Ströme glänzen,

Sublime are the mountains, where the streams shimmer,

Die Blüthenbäume sind, als wie mit Kränzen,

The trees are in blossom as if with wreaths,

Das junge Jahr beginnt, als wie mit Festen,

The young year begins as if with festivals,

Die Menschen bilden mit Höchsten sich und Besten73

Mankind learns with the highest and the best

The new spring of these “festivals of the best” undoubtedly echoes the democratic festivals (those of Wartburg and Hambach) that—modelled on the popular festivals of the French Revolution—were held in pre-1848 Germany and where students and their professors played a leading role. As in Plato’s Symposium, such festivals contain considerable educational potential as, contrary to the book-learning that is so removed from life, the festivals teach people sociability, hospitality and human friendship, turning them into “higher beings who can exist in human society”.74 In contrast to conventional poetry, then, the “playing of the strings” of the hours is no longer synonymous with transience, death and lamentation, but rather with seminal, joyful poetic song that heralds the advent of a new age characterised by a genuine philanthropic togetherness. From the window, The Prospect ultimately proves to be the prospect of a coming spring that, free of conventions, dogmas or doctrines, free of the arbitrariness of any selfish ego, allows mankind to participate in the great spring festival of nature—but only if man is able to leave his “dwellings”75 in distant skies:

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Die Aussicht.

The Prospect.

Wenn in die Ferne geht der Menschen wohnend Leben,

When into the distance vanishes man’s life of dwelling,

Wo in die Ferne sich erglänzt die Zeit der Reben,

That distance where gleams the time of vines,

Ist auch dabei des Sommers leer Gefilde,

Is also where lies the summer’s empty realm,

Der Frühling. Ibid. See register entry “Für einen Unbekannten [For a person unknown]” [Tübingen, 1840]. Hölderlin (1992), Hanser II, p. 975. 75 See Der Frühling (Wie seelig ists…): “Wenn eine Wohnung prangt, in hoher Luft gebauet… [When gleams a dwelling, built in higher air]” Hölderlin (1992), Hanser I, p. 922. 74

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Der Wald erscheint mit seinem dunklen Bilde;

Then the forest appears, with its dark image;

Daß die Natur ergänzt das Bild der Zeiten,

That nature completes the image of seasons,

Daß die verweilt, sie schnell vorübergleiten,

That she lingers, quickly gliding over them,

Ist aus Vollkommenheit, des Himmels Höhe glänzet

Comes from perfection, the heights of heaven gleam

Den Menschen dann, wie Bäume Blüth’ umkränzet.76

Upon men then, just as leaves wreathe the trees.

6 Conclusion Far from being simple products of the “mechanical craftsmanship of the sick poet” (Oelmann), the “Poems at the Window” are the “thauige Früchte [dewy fruits]” of a poetic inspiration that, in their “mischievously droll” way, smilingly directed their ironic darts against the religious, political and cultural conventions and traditions of the time, all the while holding out the prospect of the dawn of a new, more humane, more harmonious historical era. And it is certainly no coincidence that the last two poems written by Hölderlin just a few days before the end of his life are entitled “Der Frühling [Spring]” and “Die Aussicht [The Prospect]”.77 In them he proclaimed— prudently using the image of a flower—a spring that would arrive only a few years after his death and that would go down in history in 1848 as the “Springtime of Nations”. This was his legacy,78 one that has become more relevant today than ever before.

References Goethes Werke, Hamburger Ausgabe. Hamburg 4th edn., Christian Wegner Verlag, Hamburg (1961) Gonther, U., Schlimme, J.E.: Hölderlin und die Psychiatrie (Schriften der Hölderlin-Gesellschaft, vol. 25), Psychiatrie-Verlag, Köln (2010) Hölderlin, F.: Sämtliche Werke und Briefe (3 vols.), edited by M. Knaupp. Hanser, Munich and Vienna (1992) (abbreviated: Hanser) Frankfurt Edition Hölderlin, F.: Sämtliche Werke. ‘Frankfurt Edition’. Historical-critical edition, edited by D. E. Sattler. Frankfurt am Main and Basel, vol. I, II, or III (1983–1999) (abbreviated: Frankfurt Edition) 76

Die Aussicht. Hölderlin (1992), Hanser I, p. 938. The conjecture of the Frankfurt Edition (Den Menschen [men] instead of Dem Menschen [man], p. 226.) appears more likely. 77 Der Frühling. Ibid. p. 222. Die Aussicht. Ibid. p. 226. 78 See Paul: Hölderlins Vermächtnis.

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Klopstock. F. G.: Ausgewählte Werke. Hanser, Munich (1962) Oelmann, U.: Fenstergedichte. In: Interpretationen. Gedichte von Friedrich Hölderlin. Reclam, Stuttgart (1996) Paul, J. C.-J.: Arm ist der Geist Deutscher. Geheimerer Sinn. Hölderlin: Eine Gegendarstellung (Beiträge zur Kulturwissenschaft vol. 23). Athena-Verlag, Oberhausen (2011) Paul, J. C.-J.: Hölderlins Vermächtnis: Der “geheimere Sinn” des Scardanelli-Zyklus (Beiträge zur Kulturwissenschaft vol. 33). Athena-Verlag, Oberhausen (2014) Paul, J. C.-J.: Vanini: un poème oublié de Hölderlin. In: Recherches Germanistiques, 50–2020, pp. 25–43 (2020). https://doi.org/10.4000/rg.4542 Schiappa, J.-M.: Buonarroti l’inoxidable. Editions Libertaires, Paris (2008)

Jacky Carl-Joseph Paul, * 1941; studied Classical Philology and German Language and Literature at Poitiers, Toulouse and Bonn; doctoral thesis on “Zyklische Bauprinzipien in G. Trakls Gedichtsammlungen”. Lecturer in German literary poetry at the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Poitiers. Publications on Hölderlin: “Arm ist der Geist Deutscher. Geheimerer Sinn.” Hölderlin: Eine Gegendarstellung. (Oberhausen, 2011. In German); Hölderlins Vermächtnis: Der “geheimere Sinn” des Scardanelli-Zyklus. (Oberhausen, 2014. In German); Hölderlin face aux “Cerbères” et “Chiens de la nuit” (Saint-Martin de Bonfossé 2019. In French). Vanini: un poème oublié de Hölderlin (in: Recherches Germaniques n° 50, Université de Strasbourg, 2020. In French).

Writing, Dancing and the Art of Embodiment Marion Kant

1 Introduction On 1 October 1851, Heinrich Heine wrote an open letter to Benjamin Lumley, director of Her Majesty’s Theatre in London in which he went public with his anger that his ballet libretto Dr Faustus. A Dance Poem had not been brought to the stage. During their meeting in London in 1846, Heine had received a contract and soon after had completed two libretti for further development: Die Göttin Diana (The Goddess Diana) and Der Doctor Faustus (Doctor Faustus). Heine saw two causes for their non-realization: the public obsession with the Swedish nightingale Jenny Lind, and the efforts of the conservative and vindictive ballet masters in Lumley’s establishment who undermined Heine’s ballet offers. At the time, they were Jules Perrot, highly successful choreographer traveling across Europe and Russia, and Paul Taglioni, son of the most famous contemporary European choreographer, Filippo Taglioni, and brother of the most famous contemporary European ballerina, Marie Taglioni. Heine accused one or both of treating his libretto as a “dangerous innovation that a poet should compose a libretto as up to that point only dance monkeys of his kind, perhaps in collaboration with a paltry literary soul, had put together such a thing.”1

2 Heine and Ballet Who should be blamed for the failure to realize Heine’s ballets? Lumley, the choreographers or Heine? M. Kant (B) Pembroke College Cambridge, Cambridge, UK e-mail: [email protected] 1

Heine (1987, p. 79).

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 H.-W. Heister et al. (eds.), Word Art + Gesture Art = Tone Art, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20109-7_31

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Lumley’s reluctance to develop Heine’s ballet stories had to do with fear of censorship and moral outrage, but also hesitancy to invest in expensive stage designs that would have to satisfy the intricate imagination of the poet’s scene sets. Lumley would have been guided by the predictability of a commercial hit. The choreographers, Perrot as well as Paul Taglioni, neither of whom were narrowminded, were never really commissioned to start work on Heine’s libretti. Both went on to write and stage their own Faust ballets: Perrot in 1848 in Milan and Taglioni in 1850 in London and 1852 in Berlin. Taglioni called his one-act work Le metamorphose du diable and turned it into a full-length work as Satanella oder Metamorphosen for the Royal Ballet in Berlin. It featured a female dancing devil, like Heine’s Faustus. Heine alleged plagiarism. A lengthy battle for compensation and acknowledgment ensued. In order to secure an afterlife for his ideas, Heine made sure to have his libretti published as literary works. Both were preceded by introductions, and in the case of Faust, the letter to Lumley and a long explication of the history of the Faust myth, his own research and interpretation of the various sources. Heine’s libretti enlighten us on his understanding of dance as a social factor, and on the arts interacting and responding to history and each other. They circumscribed the potentials of modern ballet, as Heine saw them, and acknowledged the theater as force for public debate, reflection on the state of contemporary society and a space for political negotiation. In Heine’s opinion, the words for his ballet were stolen and the movement that was to grow from them never emerged. But a new word, “Tanzaffe”, “dance monkey”, was coined. It was an insult that had a concrete target: choreographers. But it became more than that; it was the invention of a social, cultural and aesthetic type: “a monkey trained to dance on demand…”,2 someone intellectually dependent on others, a puppet on the strings of someone superior or more intelligent. Choreographers as “dance monkeys” were unable to think for themselves, pre-programmed, limited people. In Heine’s view, they needed the intellectual guidance of a poet.

3 A New Conflict Heine decried Perrot and Taglioni for defending the outdated convention of the choreographer as writer-librettist as well as performer. They wielded too much power and acted in sheer self-interest. Neither Perrot nor Taglioni, like most choreographers, were averse to co-operation with librettists and integrated written works, ranging from novels to dramas or poems, as inspiration for a new choreography. Perrot’s Faust was based on Goethe’s play. One of Taglioni’s ballets, Sardanapal, first performed in Berlin in 1865, closely followed Byron’s tragedy. The Perrot-Taglioni-Heine controversy contains a range of conflicts that arose out of the commodification processes that dictated the capitalist market and increased the 2

Grimm (1937, pp. 21–121).

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tension between economics and aesthetics: division of labor, institutional collaboration with distinct boundaries of responsibilities or rights, the author as an economic category, copyrighting of intellectual work to guard public recognition, a work of art as an aesthetic and economic unit and source of income, the artist’s presence and occupation of the public sphere, to name a few. The Heine-initiated battle was about money and publicity as much as it was about intellectual rigor and aesthetic originality. The theater as vital part of the public sphere was a space in which conservation of ethical codes or need for social changes could be observed, articulated and debated. Heine thus planned his involvement carefully, and specifically by writing ballet libretti. The hierarchical structures and political agendas of performance venues were in flux, bourgeois audiences considered theaters and opera houses as their space for social action and interaction. The theater was the place where contemporary political and aesthetic clashes played out, where national interests were presented and contested through complex stage narratives and plots. Benjamin Lumley represented a new class of theater manager who operated according to the rules of market forces. Success meant financial success, profit had to be made otherwise an institution would not survive. Opera and ballet works that wanted to appeal to an audience had to fuse political, aesthetic and economic interests. Lumley thus planned his successes carefully. The performance of the ballet piece Pas de Quatre in 1845, or the engagement of Jenny Lind in 1847 are examples. The Pas de Quatre, with the choreography of Jules Perrot and music by Cesare Pugni, featured some of the best known ballerinas together on stage: Marie Taglioni, Carlotte Grisi, Fanny Cerrito and Lucile Grahn. (Fanny Elssler, Taglioni’s main rival, was absent.) The ballerinas performed themselves as well as an abstraction of themselves. That was an enormously fascinating aspect of the bourgeois individual self. The Pas de Quatre reframed the concept of “narrative” for its time, it was a work that turned the complex ballet stories in which the ballerinas usually appeared into plots of living social types, quasi biographies or auto-biographies. This ballet introduced a new genre (or reintroduced the divertissement or divertimento as a modern adaptation), the abstract ballet. Personal narratives were condensed into and as social projections of the “woman”. Pas de Quatre did not rely on an extravagant libretto; it grew directly out of movement codification. Marie Taglioni became the sylphide beyond La sylphide; Carlotta Grisi became Giselle beyond the same-named ballet. This was a new approach: a lose personalised plot suspended between reality, metareality and dream. These roles merged a choreography with an individual interpretation and, through the movement aesthetics created by choreographers and ballerinas, transformed the genre of ballet. Ballet and ballerinas embodied an abstract philosophical idea and united it with the reality of beautiful female flesh. Ballets made corporeal narratives public. They transcended existing and created new ideals which led to sensations and sensations brought in money. But these sensations were not random, they touched on contemporary sensibilities and shaped public discourse, like the Pas de Quatre.

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Eventually, Lumley’s London theatrical enterprise was no longer economically viable and collapsed. But before he went broke, he had the brilliant idea to commission Heine for a new ballet.

4 Theatrical Realities Why Heine? Two works defined contemporary romantic ballet and gave it its basic identity, structure and thematic orientation: La sylphide of 1832, with a libretto by Adolphe Nourrit, music by Jean-Marie Schneitzhoeffer, and the choreography by Filippo Taglioni, and Giselle of 1841, with a libretto by Théophile Gautier and JulesHenri Vernoy des Saint-Georges, music by Adolphe Adam and the choreography by Jean Coralli and Jules Perrot. This new structure grew out of the mediation between libretto, music and choreography. The themes circled around the fate of women, with a danced reality created by ballerinas that ultimately defined the new aesthetics of ballet. Giselle, based on a few paragraphs from Heinrich Heine’s Elementargeister (1837), investigated how elemental, pagan spirits managed to escape Christian persecution by inhabiting folk tales, myths and thereby influenced popular thinking. Heine recounted one such tale, that of young women who love dancing, are betrayed by their suitors, die and are condemned to withdraw into the spiritual world. What they love is their undoing, dancing turns into a lethal weapon and eternal punishment. But these “dead bacchantes”,3 as Heine called them, take revenge. They are beautiful and irresistible, they are dangerous and all men they meet between midnight and one o’clock will fall for them and be danced to death. Gautier had amply credited Heine as literary inspiration and source for Giselle, not least in an open letter after the premiere of the ballet in Paris. Lumley, after procuring Perrot, one of the Giselle choreographers, for the Pas de Quatre, then took the next logical step. He believed that one success builds on a previous triumph and calculated that Heine’s engagement for a new ballet would guarantee the next major attraction. Heine’s fascination with the physicality of language, with linguistic and philosophical expressibility, the symbolic and concrete social consequences of movement, his ongoing investigation into the relationship between language and music run through many of his works. He was a prolific music and art critic, just like Gautier. Criticism, the new market component for evaluating, promoting and commodifying art was a vital entry point into the politics of the public sphere. As critics, both artists used their reviews as political devices to shape the public discourse. Both recognized that one of the overt political problems of their time, beside the Jewish Question was the Women’s Question. They both accepted that female emancipation and feminism were political movements and integrated assertions and implications of this question into their writing. Ballet was particularly suited to discover the social space of and 3

Heine (1987, p. 19).

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place for women, and La sylphide and Giselle attested to and substantiated this fact. Politics, economics and aesthetics met at the cultural cross-points that theater could (and still can) construct and nourish like few other art forms. The physical and spiritual, emotion and reason, matter and soul confronted each other and brought human stories, experiences and desires to life on stage. Heine’s two ballet libretti address several aspects of emancipation and civic liberation: both combined the Women’s Question with the problem of religion and secularization, with the philosophies of body and mind. Heine followed the evolution of literary heritage, the Faustus myth and Greek and Roman sagas, and discovered them as embodiments of emancipated epistemology and female corporeality. When the Diana libretto4 was prepared for publication in 1851, Heine called it Ein Nachtrag zu Die Götter im Exil, a postscript to his examination of The Gods in Exile, sent into exile by Christianity. The essay is an assessment of the role of religion in contemporary society, the pressure to believe or the freedom to disbelieve. Heine followed the arrival of Christianity, and wrote about its destructive and deadly path to power in Europe and the German romantic fixation on religion (first traced in Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland and Die romantische Schule, 1835). In all works mentioned so far, Heine, who introduced the term “emancipation” into the contemporary debate, investigated the rights of human beings (that followed the declaration of the Rights of Man in 1789) in relation to religion, citizenship, women, Jews and sensuality. He connected human rights to physical and metaphysical freedom, emancipation, equality and self-determination. He wrote that “the emancipation of the people was the great task of our life and we have struggled and bore nameless misery for it, at home and in exile.”5 He fought the noble and holy “war of liberation of humanity”6 and asked what the great task of his time was: “It is emancipation. Not only that of the Irish, the Greeks, the Frankfurt Jews, the Blacks in the West Indies or other similarly oppressed peoples; it is the emancipation of the whole world.”7 This concept of emancipation could be laid out most convincingly in ballets and he intended to provide their written basis. Libretti booklets and pamphlets were customarily printed and distributed on the evening of the opera or ballet performance. They included title and place of performance, listed the characters populating the ballet, the dancers dancing them and then offered an extensive description of the plot, structured in acts and scenes, as encountered on stage. The booklet could contain dialogue, it could indulge in minute details of action or costume. Most importantly, it was a guide to the piece. Printed libretti were parallel comments to what was happening on stage. They could be a short 30 pages or run to 90 pages and include prints of the dancers or the stage set. Libretti not only stood at the beginning of the ballet invention but continued to be 4 David Conway suggests that Richard Wagner’s Tannhäuser Bacchanale was inspired by Heine’s Göttin Diana. Conway (2019, pp. 345, 504). 5 Heine (1982, p. 30). 6 Höhn (1997, p. 234). 7 Heine (1986, p. 69).

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present during the process of production in the theater and consumption by the audience. They were the point of departure for composer and choreographer as well as the literary, intellectual guide through the thicket of narrative and characters for the observer. These booklets were explanatory novellas that accompanied the musical and danced narratives. What distinguished Heine’s libretti from others of his time? Not much. He had understood the principles of a libretto and stuck to them. Like most libretti of the mid-nineteenth century, Heine’s own ballet books were elaborate, complex stories with deep characterizations of plot and figures. That he claimed to have incorporated the historical Faust myth and popular performance traditions more accurately than Marlowe or Goethe is of no relevance here, but helped to elevate ballet. He further stressed the interaction between dance, i.e. organized bodily movement and the devil. For Heine, dance and ballet were maneuvers toward anti-Christian actions, resistance to and rejection of Christianity and all other religions. In self-deprecating manner he called his Faustus libretto “a meagre” outline of how dancers should move and behave on stage, what the music (to be composed by Cesare Pugni) should sound and the stage decorations should look like.8 Like Gautier, he was the poet who took ballets as psychological projections and dreams seriously: poetry inspired movement, sometimes movement inspired poetry.9 As we know, choreographers were “dance monkeys”, not poets. The responsibility to imbue ballets with meaning therefore lay with writers. Heine’s libretti did not contradict the performance customs of the time. They were neither too complex, overly complicated or too demanding. Lumley’s verdict that Heine’s stories were “impractical” and their “execution an impossibility”10 was a lame excuse. The theater can produce any kind of illusion. If it can let Mozart’s Don Giovanni go to hell under thunder and lightning, if it can create angelic and hellish scenes for Meyerbeer’s Robert le diable, if it can let sylphs fly across the stage, it could have produced Mephistopheles, Faust and Helena in any interior or exteriorized space.

5 Poetry into Dance Heine offended sensibilities in a different way: his ballet libretti concentrated on “the revolt of the realist, sensualist love of life against the spiritual old Catholic asceses that forms the core of the Faust saga… ”.11 Heine’s anti-Christianity and his association of secularism with female emancipation were the offensive attitudes that proved unacceptable.

8

Heine (1987, p. 101). Cf. Lee (2016). 10 Lumley (1864, p. 199). 11 Heine (1987, p. 110). 9

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Gautier had faced a similar problem with his original Giselle libretto. He, like Heine, had gone too far in his social and corporeal portrayal of women and his implicit attack on religion and marriage. He did not collaborate voluntarily with Vernoy de Saint George, he was forced to compromise in order to see Heine’s ideas reach the stage and did so in order to rescue “la jolie morte”,12 Heine’s beautiful elemental spirit, in the ballet called Giselle. Heine would have had to re-negotiate the dancing gods of antiquity and the dancing devils in Faustus, which was unlikely to happen. For Lumley it was easier to drop the whole undertaking. In Faustus, the devil appears in female form and as a dancer; idyllic and satanic dances drive the entire narrative. Diana points to the rebirth of the sensuality of antiquity. Both ballets are contributions to Heine’s theory of physicality and his new movement aesthetic. They are explorations of his philosophy of democracy, social justice, and his insistence on the primacy of the word as the carrier of philosophy. Heine’s libretti are attempts to physicalize words, to anticipate and verbalize physical movement. He dealt with the contradiction of the concreteness of the body in movement and the intellectually vast abstractness of words by being as explicit about the philosophical background of the narrative as possible. He knew that the body in movement is not a metaphor and that a physical, danced reality could be frightening and intimidating. It revealed the terrifying logic of his philosophy in the embodied form of the moving female dancer. Here is one example how the relationship between written word, music and movement in Giselle operated: Heine wrote of the betrayed dancers as “dead bacchantes” and Gautier, following Heine, let Giselle as pagan spirit be punished as “a vampire of dance”.13 She joins the vengeful women, the wilis, sent out to destroy every man who crossed their path, thereby posing a mortal threat not only to the individual man but the patriarchal social order. These “dead bacchantes” represent extreme ecstasy and extreme destruction. Their intoxication, with love, desire and sexuality, leads to merciless behavior; it is the eroticism of their dancing through which they express retribution and through which they kill. Words translated into music and movement took a fascinating turn. This was not about a simple illustrations of the libretto, but about its complementation and enrichment. At the end of act II, Adam composed against the libretto. He quoted from Gluck’s opera Orpheus and Eurydice and thereby indicated that Giselle, by protecting her lover Albrecht from being danced to death, had evolved into one of the “blissful spirits” [“glückselige Geister”] that join into a “Reigen”, a happy round dance. She had earned her ascent into Christian heaven. The choreography hovered between the libretto’s damned and the music’s redeemed spirits. Giselle saves Albrecht who escapes death when the bells strike one o’clock. To the Gluck quotation, she bends down to her lover to say a final farewell; he carries her back to her grave that is adorned with a cross. Giselle disappears down into the underbelly of the stage. Whether she, who has already committed a mortal Christian sin by

12 13

Gautier (1877, p. 273). Les beautés des opera (1845, p. 10).

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killing herself in suicide, eventually will rise to the heavens is left unanswered. The performance contained three contradictory dimensions of interpretative possibilities. In answer to Gautier’s letter, Heine criticized the Parisian version of Giselle14 as too tame. It was nice to see his idea put on the ballet stage. But the composer Adam had not encountered the magic of the runes and the power of real, elemental dancing when he had travelled to Norway. At the Royale Académie de Musique, too much tradition was being preserved; that institution was engaged in conserving and reinstating a Christianized version of dance. It was exiling the pagan spirits yet again, and smelt of the Gallic church.15 Only Carlotta Grisi had captured the character of the elemental spirits. She was the “orange among the dancing potatoes”,16 she alone had approximated that danced pagan lust and devastation that Heine and Gautier had envisaged. Heine wanted to see the lust and destruction that had not found its way into Giselle in his Faust ballet and told Lumley that “You will find my ballet excite a furore beyond all our expectation, and even take a place in the annals of the drama.”17 And he then asked Lumley to explain the “subject of the Witches Sabbath” to his choreographer and “to make the Duchess dance a frightful, grotesque pas de deux with the infernal Goat. The Duchess would thus be the Domina of the fête, …, but I do not think one could venture to go so far in such a fashionable theatre as yours.”18 The “Tanzaffe”, whether Perrot or Taglioni, needed someone, here Lumley, to further explain what Heine’s intentions were and how he should choreograph the passage, incorporating the impossible as doable. Heine’s Duchess first appears in act II of Faust. She is a witch, a magical devilish creature. She reappears in act III during the Witches Sabbath. Lumley was to make sure that the dances between Faust and the Duchess are forms of sexual intercourse and that the Duchess reaches every possible level of ecstatic, orgiastic pleasure of “passion”, “wild love”, “tender lies”, “self-satirising lasciviousness”.19 The choreographer was then to make Faust feel disgusted by the lecherousness of the Duchess. She had not managed to completely seduce him and will be punished by the devil with an unfulfillable desire, bottomless despair and finally forced into sexual acts with the satanic he-goat. After bestiality, the scene ends with the public rape of the unconscious Duchess. All this was to be a “gruesome burlesque sacrilegious satanic mass”.20 Lumley hid his fears of gross ethical transgressions behind official reservations of technical obstacles and whoever’s intellectual limitations. Heine’s scenario was

14

Heine (1988, p. 154). Heine (1988, p. 155). 16 Heine (1988, p. 154). 17 Heine (1972, p. 250). 18 Heine (1972, p. 252). 19 Heine (1987, p. 87ff). 20 Heine (1987, p. 93). 15

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supposedly too complicated for the choreographer and too complex for the audience.21 As mentioned, that was a pretext, he was unwilling to take the risks of too much moral offence in his “fashionable theater”. Satanic masses or deviations of Christian, mainly Catholic rituals had been put on stage previously: act III of Robert le diable took place in the ruins of an abandoned cloister. The disgraced, sinister, diabolical nuns emerge from their graves to seduce Robert with gambling, drink and sex. The dances of the sylphs in La Sylphide or those of the wilis in act II of Giselle could easily be interpreted as pagan rites. These performances rested on the contradiction between the appearance and movement aesthetic of the female protagonists in innocent white costume who enacted narratives through highly controlled movement codes on the one hand, and the underlying ideological message of female social domination that had to be reined in on the other. The power of women determining their own lives was never completely obvious, it was always veiled. But it was clear enough to provoke alarm in Lumley or official censors. In most ballets, women were punished for their audacity to strive for independence and reject marriage. Sexual acts were suggested not shown. Though it would have been possible to realize Heine’s ideas within the theatrical customs of the time, his depictions of the dangerousness of the female per se had gone a step further, too far. In addition, his sense of collaboration designated the choreographer to an interpreter of ideas, not as a carrier of his own. A choreographer had to submit to the supremacy of the philosophy and the word of the poet. Gautier found a balance and compromised. Though Heine was never asked to negotiate, his contentious publication history and willingness to attack the integrity of his opponents preceded him, and rather than enter into yet another antagonistic clash, Lumley cancelled the ballet plans.

6 Conclusion Heine’s dreams of realizing the embodiment of his philosophical juxtaposition of the Hellenistic sensuous human body as “eternal blossoming ideal of grace and beauty” versus its ascetic, spiritual Judeo-Christian confinement22 did not make it to the stage during Heine’s lifetime. It was taken up by choreographers and musicians in the twentieth century. The fight over whether “Tanzaffen” or poets should compose ballet libretti continued into the twentieth century. The narrative approach still very much defines modern ballet, with philosophically driven plots of human existence or thick stories of conundrums of the human condition. Modern dance, emanating from Germany in the early twentieth century, had an easier solution: dance must focus on itself, it must not let any other aesthetic force, neither poetry, written work or music, drive movement logic. Mary Wigman’s absolute dance, declared in 1921,23 did away with libretti altogether and the “Tanzaffe” 21

Neuhaus-Koch in Heine (1987, p. 696). Heine (1987, p. 110). 23 Wigman (1921, pp. 1–2). 22

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lost meaning as all artistic responsibility lay with the choreographer only. With no collaboration efforts to battle through, the question of supremacy of word, music or movement was resolved and the performer-choreographer took total control. Towards the end of the twentieth century, that stance mellowed. But the notion that it is the modern or post-modern moving individual who dominates all aesthetic coordinates stands in stark opposition to the institutional labor-division of the ballet tradition. The assumption that meaning in dance begins with extra-corporeal thought will lead to the view that dancers or choreographers are fundamentally “dance monkeys”; the assumption that meaning in dance has to reject extra-corporeal thought and that significance resides in the body only, will lead to political and aesthetic autocracy and totalitarianism. A happier medium will have to be fought for over and over again.

References Conway, D.: Heinrich Heine’s Faust Ballet Scenario 1846–1948. In: Fitzsimmons, L., McKnight C. (eds.) Oxford Handbook of Faust in Music. OUP, Oxford et al. (2019) Gautier, T.: Théâtre. Mystère, comedies et ballets. Charpentier, Paris (1877) Grimm, J.W.: Deutsches Wörterbuch (1937). https://woerterbuchnetz.de/?sigle=DWB#1. Accessed 02 Feb 2022 Heine, H.: Letter to Lumley 03 May 1847, Briefwechsel, Heine Säkularausgabe, vol. 22. AkademieVerlag, Berlin/Paris (1972) Heine, H.: Düsseldorfer Ausgabe (DHA). In: Windfuhr, M. (ed.) Sämtliche Werke. Hoffmann und Campe, Hamburg. Reisebilder, vol. 7 (1986). Elementargister, Die Göttin Diana, and Der Doktor Faustus, vol. 9 (1987). Lutezia, vol. 13/1 (1988). Geständnisse, vol. 15 (1982) Höhn, G.: Heine Handbuch: Zeit-Person-Werk. J.B. Metzler, Stuttgart (1997) Lee, A.: The Romantic Ballet and the Poetic Imagination. Dance Chronicle vol. 39, no.1, 32–55. Taylor & Francis Abingdon Oxfordshire (2016) Les Beautés de l’opéra ou Chefs-d’ouevre lyriques. Soulié, Paris (1845) Lumley, B.: Reminiscenes of the Opera. Hurst and Blackett, London (1864) Neuhaus-Koch, A.: Entstehung und Aufnahme des Doktor Faustus. In: Düsseldorfer Heine Ausgabe, vol. 9. Hoffmann und Campe Hamburg (1987) Wigman, M.: Der Tanz als Kunstwerk, Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, vol. 60, no. 57, 1–2. Norddeutscher Buchdruck Berlin (1921)

Marion Kant, Dr. phil., * 1951 in Berlin (DDR) is a musicologist and dance historian. She has taught at the Universities of Pennsylvania and Cambridge. Her research focuses on the emergence of modern ballet in the nineteenth and modern dance in the twentieth century, on how ideologies, religion and philosophies shape dance and movement cultures, on Nazism, racial theories in the arts and anti-fascist exile. Her publications include: Hitler’s Dancers. German Modern Dance and the Third Reich. With Lilian Karina. 2003/2004; The Cambridge Companion to Ballet. Editor. 2007; The critical writings of Artur Michel. Ed. Frank Manuel Peter/Gertje Andresen/Marion Kant. 2015; Ein westfälischer Jude in der preussischen Armee. Isaac Löwenstein aus Rietberg-Neuenkirchen und sein Tagebuch 1821–1823. 2021. Then in What Sense Are You a Jewish Artist? Conflicts of the “Emancipated” Self’. In: Oxford Handbook of Jewishness and Dance in Contemporary Perspective. 2021: German Gymnastics, Modern German Dance, and Nazi Aesthetics. 2016. Anti-fascist theater and dance in Californian exile. Jewish Culture and

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History. 2016; „Was bleibt“? The East German dance avant-garde 1930–1960. Chapter 8 in: New German Dance Studies. 2012.

Dance and Text Configurations Nele Lipp

1 Introduction At the latest since medieval book design, the combination of text and image has been an integral part of our cultural modes of communication. However, with the exception of the largely forgotten form of the ballet de cour in the seventeenth century, in which information about the action and the actors was spoken in addition to the dance, the dovetailing of text and dance has no correspondingly long tradition supported by consensus. This is mainly due to the fact that the French ballet reformer JeanGeorges Noverre (1727–1810) in the eighteenth century elevated dance as a technique of wordless storytelling to an aesthetic ideal. He explained this in his Lettres sur la danse et sur les ballets1 for contemporaries and posterity. However, in connection with his performances he could not entirely manage them without words. In order to make it easier for the audience to understand the silent narration, he conveyed the actions underlying his ballets d’action in printed programs, which probably made him the inventor of today’s often verbose program booklets in the theater. According to Noverre’s ideal, dance should now only follow music as an acoustic partner, and its steps and gestures should only be coordinated with it. Apart from music, he only used painting as a field of reference.2 This concept has remained the basis of all dance training and the general understanding of the genre of dance to this day. If we were to absolutize this and say that the essence of dance is to communicate without words, this would be an untenable generality. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, there have been numerous examples that refute this. They show astonishing facets of dynamic interplay between spoken and written texts with the arts N. Lipp (B) Auf dem Sand 16, 21271 Hanstedt, Germany e-mail: [email protected] 1

Lyon/Stuttgart 1760; Wien 1767; Paris 1783; St. Petersburg 1803/04 (expanded edition), Reprint New York 1967; Paris 1807 (expanded edition). 2 For more details: Lipp (2015), pp. 41–46. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 H.-W. Heister et al. (eds.), Word Art + Gesture Art = Tone Art, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20109-7_32

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of movement, adding or interweaving them. In order to fan out these configurations in their objectives and procedures, their diversity and their intentions, a few typical examples will be described here.

2 Writing not on Paper but in Bodies An aspect of the configuration of word and dance that is quite different from Noverre’s view can be found in the period from 1890 to 1930 in the results of the dynamic relationships between poets of Symbolism and protagonists of early Modern Dance. Symbolic aesthetics, emphasis on the imagination, and a penchant for dreamlike scenery had an influence on European dance at the turn of the century that should not be underestimated. During this period, poets were developing content for the stage that required almost no words. They had received inspiration for this from dancer personalities who were able to fascinate poets to such an extent that the latter were able to create ideas for dance performances from their encounter with them alone. The poetic designs of performances thus created were then to be expressed directly in the dancing bodies. In fact, this gave rise to a theater of body language that soon took hold of wide circles in Europe. For example, the Italian poet Gabriele D’Annunzio cooperated with the French dancer Ida Rubinstein, the Austrian poet Hugo von Hofmannsthal with the Viennese dancer Grete Wiesenthal, the Irish poet William Butler Yeats with the Japanese dancer Michio Ito and the English choreographer Ninette de Valois in a completely new and astonishingly international art form. The Frenchman Paul Claudel wrote poetry for the Ballets Suédois and the Ballets Russes with their dancers from Russia, Georgia, Poland, Italy, Spain and England, who transported the newly developed cooperative aesthetic through tours as far away as the USA. The symbolist poets, always the initiators of these projects, were fascinated by the enormous expressivity of the dancing bodies developing at that time through expressive dance, by bodies that communicated more than the words of the poets could express. In contrast, dance benefited from new content, themes, and stimuli. Since it repeatedly dealt with sinful, death-related themes, delicate, pale women spreading a melancholy aura were favored as dancers. Statuesque stillness and expressive poses were discovered as a means of depicting inner agitation. Poets were electrified by the idea that they had discovered a new genre, one for which they accordingly invented their own terms. Yeats spoke of plays for dancers, Hofmannsthal of wordless plays (wortlose Spiele), Claudel of poèmes plastiques. D’Annunzio called his corresponding plays mimodrammi. Thereby, each of them found a somewhat differently structured approach to this form of configuration of text and dance. But they were all united by an interest in the interweaving of the art forms and in the active and creative collaboration of language-art and movement-art. For D’Annunzio, who found in the dancing body the whole spectrum from animal passions to sublime dreams, it was not printed words on paper but moving and

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statuesque bodies in space that were to be animated by his poetry. Besides the actress Eleanora Duse and the dancer Isadora Duncan, it was above all the Russian dancer and much-discussed androgynous beauty Ida Rubinstein (1885–1960) with whose help he was able to approach his ideal. The composer Ferruccio Busoni (1866–1924) attempted a characterization of this non-conformist and oscillating personality when he wrote: “I shall see Mme Rubinstein, of whom it is said by one that she cannot speak but can dance; by another that she has a beautiful body, but cannot dance, by a third, that her body is not womanly, therefore not beautiful.”3 This description reveals that a dancer whose charisma varied in such a way had to correspond to D’Annunzio’s ideal, despite or precisely because of her nonconformist contradictions. And so, in 1911, in the choreography of Le Martyre de Saint Sébastien, he made the body of this by the way highly educated intellectual a place to which he inscribed his poetic poetry (Fig. 1). But how should it be concretely possible for dance to embody texts without the intention of speaking? This had to be based on the belief in or the longing for a possible fusion of the arts, as was known from Richard Wagner’s concept of the total work of art (Gesamtkunstwerk). Referring to this, albeit in denial of the dominant role of music advocated by Wagner, Stéphane Mallarmé4 had developed a complex theory about the metaphor of the dancer as a symbolic figure writing with the body, of which he said: “Her poem is their understanding and their interpretation, however, is expected to involve a deep poetic instinct”.5

3 Dance and Text as a Political Statement With the artists’ colony on Monte Verità near Ascona, a place of origin of modern dance was also established from about 1910 by Rudolf von Laban.6 Artists, thinkers and fantasists of the most diverse stripes met here, as had been brought back to consciousness since Harald Szeemann’s legendary exhibition of 1978 Monte Verità Ascona—the Breasts of Truth and numerous subsequent publications. In 1913, Laban’s class for dance-sound-word also took place in his summer school for the art of movement in the midst of their lively exchange. Here there was much experimentation, for example with breathing sounds and voice sounds initiated by movements, or with poetry rhythms of the texts he and his students invented. The results thus created became the starting points for small dance sequences and choreographies.

3

Fleischer (2007), p. 30. 1842–1898, French symbolist poet, author of the poem L’Après-midi d’un Faune. Debussy’s work of the same name was choreographed and danced by Vaslav Nijinsky in 1913. 5 Fleischer (2007), p. 8. 6 1879–1958, dancer, choreographer and dance theorist. 4

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Fig. 1 Georges Goursat: Caricature of Gabriele D’Annunzio and Ida Rubinstein, ca. 19117

Even when for example Mary Wigman (1886–1973),8 a student and occasional assistant of Laban, later distanced herself from these experiments. Nevertheless, they still had a future through other students of Laban. Finally, they even became appropriate means to oppose themselves and prevail against the rules of classical ballet. In this sense, Laban’s proposals, who taught in Zurich during winter, resurfaced in 1915 in the thereabouts established Cabaret Voltaire. A place in which the Dadaists, headed by Hugo Ball,9 protested against those they denunciated as the cause for war, the bourgoise order and their forms of artistic expression, with means from all areas of arts. Therefore, in 1916 Ball performed there with Karawane (Zug der 7

Quoted from Fleischer (2007), p. 43. This protagonist of expressive dance did not only aim to free herself in a vocal-literary sense but even from music in the context of dance, which she not only expressed in her dances, but also with her paper To free dance, to pure art (together with Suzanne Perottet). 9 1886–1927, author and co-founder of Dadaism. 8

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Fig. 2 Karawane, 1916, Rekonstruktion 1967 (screenshots from Dada, 31’)11

Elefanten), his rhythmically recited sound poem, which based on the flow of the language could have futuristic predecessors in Russian or Italian. A reconstruction of the performance in 1967, realised by participants10 at the time, furthermore shows a combination of the performance, including dances reminiscent of Laban’s dancesound-word and his technique of extensive arm sweeping, which further proves his influence. On stage of the Cabaret Voltaire, striking cubistic picture-text fragments were added to the construction as well as backstage including the recited words jolifanto bambla “ofalli bambla…. In this way spoken and written texts overlapped with the dance in acoustic, moving and spatial synchronisation (Figs. 2 and 3). The special use of text and language in dance in the twentieth century originated from the Zurich performances in such a way, that it burst through dance conventions of the ruling class, not only aesthetically but also as a political event. Less rebellious and more aesthetically inspired were the formally motivated works of the Belgian dancer Akarova,12 who in 1923 in her Lettres dansantes dissembled text fragments into letters. For this purpose, Marcel-Louis Baugniet,13 who had experience as a designer of combining text and picture posters, designed a costume with sewn on letters, in which even shirts and head dresses were visible as written

10

Reconstruction of Karawane through Greta Deses and Marcel Janco with Gabrielle BuffetPicabia, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst etc. 11 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkl92oV1kMc. Accessed 15 January 2022. 12 1904–1999, Marguerite Acarin, Belgian dancer, choreographer, painter and stage designer, student of Raymond Duncan and important representative of Belgian modernity, who, parallel to Ballets Russes turned against naturalism and realism in her own theatre in Paris with experimental syntheses of arts. 13 1896–1995, painter, interior designer and designer, one of the most important representatives of Belgian avant-garde.

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Fig. 3 Karawane, 1916, Rekonstruktion 1967 (screenshots from Dada, 31’)

elements. With head and torso as centre of her angular-geometric arm and leg movements, Akarova performed her, even in a conventional sense, illegible dance-letters as a text which dances around a room in the form of unusually combined letters (Fig. 4). Whether they were private letters, protocols, or urgent reminders, the interpretation of it was left to the audience. In any case, they were letters from a dancer who, since symbolism, wanted to convey the virulent synaesthetic issue of the modern avant-garde to her audience.

4 A Novel as Choreography Choreographers now and then, mostly in the last third of their lives, spend their time with writing. They compose texts in which they deal with similar topics as dancing performances on stage. Their materials are mostly dealing with dance-historical or dance-theoretical topics. They write diaries, memoirs, and biographies, which was especially in fashion in relation to the history of Ballets Russes, Modern Dances more specifically German Dance and Modern Dance.14 It was rarely novels that were written. In this regard, the novel-like memoires of Isadora Duncan are famous, to a lesser extent the novels of the socially critical thinking Polish dancer Jo Mihaly are known.15 However, these do not represent a configuring connection of dance and text. In Duncan’s case, it is a sightly fable style of text, which stylises the life of a dancer into a novel and in Mihaly’s case, the texts are written in the form of a novel, representing her dances as well as socially critical episodes. 14 15

Z. B. Duncan (1928), Benois (1941), Nijinsky (1953, 1981), Taylor (1987), Graham (1991). Z. B. Mihaly (1927).

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Fig. 4 Marcel-Louis Baugniet: costume design for Akarovas Lettres dansantes, 192316

On the other hand, the choreographer Maurice Béjart17 wrote a novel in 1963, which very differently motivated, it was specifically structured in connection to a part of a dance evening and choreographed by himself. At about the middle of his life, 32 years after the start of his dancing career and composed at the pinnacle of it, Béjart describes his literary-dancing-like approach as follows: Lors de mes premières tentatives d’écriture, j’eus soin de préciserser les mots et des phrases dansaient sous ma plume comme des jambes ou des bras exécutant une figure à la fois élaborée et spontanée, et que mes livres n’étaient pas autre chose que des „ballets de mots“, images, impressions, cadences, rhythmes, conçus en union avec mes chorégraphies.18

He titled his novel Mathilde ou le temps perdu (Fig. 5) and prefixed the following aperçu: You lose the war, your money, your friends… You lose your illusions, your hair or your face, You often lose your mind… You also lose your faith, …………………………………………………………… But you never lose your time.19 16

https://blog.imagesmusicales.be/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/akarova-dansant-2-keer-102 4x746.jpg. Accessed 18 January 2022. 17 1927–2007, French-Swiss dancer, choreograph and ballet director. 18 Béjart (1994), p. 9. 19 “On perd la guerre, son argent, ses amis…/On perd ses illusions, se cheveux ou la face, /On perd souvent la tête…/On perd aussi la foi, // Mais on ne perd jamais son temps.” Béjart (1994), p. 15.

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Fig. 5 Maurice Béjart: Mathilde ou le temps perdu, first edition 196320

You can never lose your time? Mathilde loses it anyways? What is this contradiction supposed to mean? It is the friction of the novel with the prefixed comment, you can never lose your time, which constitutes the tension of the text. Thus, Béjart could have meant the moments between jumping and falling in dance, in between which endless micro movements are at play in attempts to gain balance, movements which the dancer cannot lose in this respect, as they are a part of their dance, but are also vanished before they even appear.

20

https://www.edition-originale.com/fr/litterature/editions-originales/bejart-mathilde-ou-letemps-perdu-1963-55214. Accessed 24 January 2022.

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But who is Mathilde? Where does she jump to and where does she fall to? At first, the reader might assume she is a dancer, but it is not that simple. Research in the works of Béjart has shown, that a part of it is existent in his three-part ballet Wagner ou l’Amour fou21 conceptualised in 1963 and premiered in 1965 at Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels, which bears the name Mathilde. It took Béjart two years to bring the novel Mathilde onto stage as a choreography. And it is solely part of a dance evening. Besides Mathilde, the other parts are named after Wagner operas, which are all inseparable from Wagner’s life, his suffering and the related substantiated passions. Often women appear to him like drugs, who enable him to create his compositions. The composer transfigured them into figures of his operas. One of them was the author Mathilde Wesendonck,22 with whom he shared a romantic love that has not come to life, which ended suddenly and therefore their existence, their time was lost. It was this episode, that inspired Béjart to the choreography-novel and to the novel-choreography. From the eight chapters Prélude, L’ange, Immobilité, Dans la serre, Duo, Douleurs, Rêves, and Mort, the underlined titles are named after titles from Wesendonck’s poems, which Wagner had set music to in 1857/1858 and let Béjart sing on Mathilde. This way the poetic texts also had a part in the dancing. As an equivalent to this, on the poem-related novel paragraphs quotes from her verses can be found and in which rhythmically structured words La Musique…, La Musique…, La Musique…, La Silence between individual paragraphs are positioned. Béjart also describes routes, steps, and time units, incorporates repetitions and variations into the novel text and speaks of lined-up shoes, from which readers can deduce past or future steps. A novel such as this one, structured content wise and dramaturgically analogously aimed at a choreographic approach, in which dance and text converge linguistically and graphically, was an absolute novelty and is an example for how dance can choreographically flow into literary texts and bestow it with a literarily moved and moving form. Mathilde is an exception in its two appearances and a very special prime example for the configuration of dance and text.

5 Synchronicity of Text and Dance Back to the development of Laban-Ball-Akarova, which was a prelude to more steps in the combination of dance and text, a combination which had meanwhile been taken over by the New York Judson Dance Theater and had resurfaced in the 1960s in the US and 20 years later in (Western) Europe. However, the integration of language into dance, if it did not involve singing, still meant a deviation from traditional codes, 21

Named after L’Amour fou, essay collection of the same name about films, sculptures, and books, in which the subject of romantic love is broached, 1934–1936 written by André Breton. 22 1828–1902, wife of a wealthy merchant. The couple very generously supported the composer financially. On the side a platonic love relationship between him and Mathilde developed, however it ended in 1858 due to jealous interventions of the wife Ehefrau Cosima Wagner.

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in which form it was at most tolerated within dance cabaret interludes. For Modern Dance it was nevertheless desirable to subversively differentiate themselves from ballet. Similar to performances in dadaism, not only a longing for holistic nature played a role but also overcoming linear narrative styles. In 1973 Kenneth King,23 US-American dance philosopher and dancer of postmodernism, performed a solo on the occasion of Festival d’Automne in Paris in which he worked with the intertwining of movement and text on stage. One of his starting points was initially an idea known from expressionism and symbolism, in which dance is a totally theatrical experience. Like in this instance, King was not interested in the narrative of language, he was neither enthusiastic about an abstract dance of letters such as Akarov, nor the cumulation and political statements of such a combination like Hugo Ball but was interested in the momentum of structural similarities of sounds, their structures and interpretation in combination to the purpose of movements that form dance into a language, comparable to words and sentences. King obtained his motivation, unlike his predecessors, from philosophical and neuropsychological interests on simultaneous and interactive actions. Dance researcher Katja Schneider described his performance in the following: “Fast, repetitive movements accompany monologues in his plays about philosophical issues, language plays, and tongue twisters.”24 His movements were mixed with various styles of dancing and compiled in an abrupt discontinuous sequence. Texts as well as dances were initially disassembled by him into individual elements. He implanted tones and sounds into these syllables and improvisations and variations of styles into dances, in order to subsequently combine everything newly as well as perform it in a high tempo at the same time. King intended to generate new meanings in this way. Printed out, these texts are reminiscent of language plays by Lewis Carroll, of Dada experiments by Hugo Ball or cybernetic, fragmental deconstructions by Oswald Wieners. For example, they looked like this: !(cele(CERE)bration: WORDS & EXEORCISES-fir-tHEdie(EYE)ing:KING).25 Surprisingly, during the solo the audience was not surprised by King’s peculiar combination of syllables and sounds which he performed dancingly. Apparently, the unsettling experience was also not the speed of presentation, but most of all it was the at the time astonishing combination of dance and text of a talking dancer. Subsequently the texts were merely the second confusing circumstance, the special type of a dancingly performed presentation and the tempo of his way of speaking. Therefore, one of his managers advised him to add music to his words, as this would apparently create a greater opportunity to organise a European tour which stood in total misjudgement of the artistic concept and the importance of this performance. However, King was convinced that the time was not right for an understanding of the significance of kinetic cogito, his thinking, recognition, and practice of the

23

*1948, dancer and choreograph. He collaborated with Andy Warhol, Jonas Mekas, Meredith Monk and other interdisciplinary artists and dancers of postmodernity. 24 Schneider (2016), p. 9. 25 Banes (1987), p. 184.

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configuration of language and movement. Nevertheless, his contemporaries reassured him that he conveyed a “comprehensive poetic experience” 26 to them. In 1992 the well-read dancer put his thoughts and findings from stage onto paper under the name Writing in Motion. He prefixed his book with Friedrich Nietzsche’s saying, whom he admired: Dancing in all its forms cannot be excluded from the curriculum of all noble education; dancing with the feet, with ideas, with words, and, need I add that one must also be able to dance with the pen?27

6 From Reading Matter to Speaking Dancer The French dancer and choreograph Jero“me Bel28 has centred theatre aesthetic question in his workings since 1992. After a conventional dancing career, he searched for answers to his questions about the meaning of theatre and the objective of performing with the help of comprehensive and sophisticated readings within the writings of Marcel Duchamp, Roland Barthes, Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault and Louis Althusser. The absurd and humorous plays of the dance artist who views himself as a dance philosopher similarly to King are not developed in the studio but at a desk. Their topics are located between physique and philosophy. Within them he systematically dismantles, though differently than King, the conditions and conventions of theatre, the rules of reception and aspects of a sensual presence of the actor on stage. Bel implements his findings, which he gained from readings of philosophical and literary works, into the examination and personal redefinition of individual elements of theatre and their choreographic means and codes. Thus, for example he, in relation to scenery, decided that it should not consist of anything else but the four letters of compass directions, n for north, s for south, e for east and w for west, each positioned accordingly to the display on a compass on the empty black stage area. He justified the minimalist stage setting on the basis of theatre always withholding real-life space coordinates, in so far as it does not refer to its real location in the world but refers to an unreal imaginary world. According to Bel during an interview,29 this is supposedly an analogy to the historical and societal place of writing as described by 26

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_King_(dancer). Accessed 24 January 2022. Twilight of the idols (Götzen-Dämmerung), 1988. Here quoted King (2003), p. VIII. 28 *1964, important representative of dance conception. 29 Jérôme Bel interviewed by Christophe Wavelet, 1994. 27

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Fig. 6 Jérôme Bel: Nom donné par l’auteur, 199432

the post structuralist and semiotician Roland Barthes in Am Nullpunkt der Literatur.30 Therefore, he aimed to bring awareness to his stage as a room grounded in reality within the given geographical coordinates. The awareness for the geographical and the also related social coordinates supposedly belongs to every performance. In 1992 Bel designed his first dance project: Nom donné par l’auteur (Fig. 6). The name for it was found in a dictionary of synonyms, as he was looking for the word title. The performance was realised in 1994 within the festival Skite in Lisbon together with the dancer Frédéric Seguette and was also the result of an extended reading. Therein, ten everyday objects, such as a vacuum cleaner, a carpet, ice skates, etc., offered motives for small everyday movements. These real, originally not meant for stage objects from the daily material world31 served him as a dictionary for the development of his utmost sparingly and always-connected-to-objects movement-vocabulary. If this can only be understood with the help of conceptual thought experiments as such and can only be interpreted intellectually, they nevertheless existed, ambitiously encapsulated within Nom donné par l’auteur, but could not be preserved ad finitum on this level. In any case, Bel choreographed a four-part biography- cycle after Nom donné par l’auteur from 2005 to 2009, in which dance and text were now clearly visible and audible, allowed to appear side by side on stage. Therein, four selected personalities, dance virtuosos, who produced brilliant performances in various styles, reported anecdotally their lives and their experiences, their knowledge and careers in coherent recited texts. They presented, similar to Ballet de cour, biographical statements and short descriptions of various training methods and role interpretations. They presented texts, which were recited in alternating phases from speaking and dancing. Even snapshots of an artists’ dressing room were part of it. Bel titled these solos 30

Barthes (1953). In addition, Bel was inspired by the reading: La V(?)ie matérielle: Marguerite Duras parle à Jérôme Beaujour by Marguerite Duras (Gallimard, Paris 1994), the novels Les choses (Juillard, Paris 1965) and La Vie, mode d’emploi (Hachette, Paris 1978) by Georges Perec. 32 www.dontpaniconline.com/magazine/arts/jerome-bel-interview. Accessed 26 September 2013. 31

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according to the dancers’ names, who bodied it at times chattering, at times dancing in front of the microphone. The artists involved were Véronique Doisneau in 2004, a primaballerina of Corps de Ballet at the Parisian Opéra, who was close to retirement, the Portuguese dancer Isabel Torres in 2005, who dances choreographies by Marius Petipa and Vaslav Nijinsky, Lutz Förster in 2009, a temporary companion of Pina Bausch and finally Cédric Andrieux, who reported from his long-standing collaboration with protagonists of Modern Dance such as Trisha Brown and Merce Cunningham. The cycle was a kind of extended Pas de Quatre33 of the twenty-first century, in which a look back at the last hundred years of dance was virulent. Each performance represented a certain dance period, while in the historic Tanz zu Viert (four-way dance) one dancer respectively represented a specific form of virtuosity. Bel found in his biography cycle a form which combined dance and dance story. It succeeded to bridge the gap which still prevailed within the difficulties of transmission from a danced artistic form, even in times of film, video and digitalisation as well as traditional written recording, whether descriptive or theory building, and left disturbing elusive elements of incompletion.34 Bel himself used the ideas of a dancer standing behind a microphone in 1998 in The Last Performance (Fig. 7) and 2001 in The show must go on. But not him alone used this set, though in which the microphone was soon replaced by immaterial microports. Bel’s conceptual dance gave many choreographers the opportunity to experiment with variations of playful configurations of dance and text. It got to the point that integration of speaking into dance became a new code of contemporary dance. Thus, since 2003 Richard Siegal35 experimented with dialogues, overlaying vocals, onomatopoeic monologues, distorted voices, moving writing projections and speech recognition programs, which produced projections which moved according to the dancers. In 2008 in each respective visual part in Siegals Homo Ludens and 2012 in the solo Black Swan (Fig. 8) moving writings were projected onto the back panel or shown on screens. Singing parts of Black Swan were translated through a speech recognition program into writings and were made visible on the back panel of the stage. In © oPirates tweets were posted and the content was simultaneously visibly projected or shown on screens. Much needs to remain unmentioned in this exemplary selection, not only the choreographs by Pina Bausch, in which like in 1977 in Blaubart featured screamed, laughed and danced words and sentences, utilised to enhance emotions, or Bernd Roger Bienerts in 2010 who used texts translated into sign language, from which his choreography Signings developed, by way of the emblematic movement or the 33

The ballet Le Pas de Quatre is a silent, non-narrative choreography of the French choreographer Jules Perrot. It was premiered in 1895 in Her Majesty’s Theatre in London. He designed it in order to mediate the endless arguments between the four big ballerinas of romantic ballet. They had to perform together in it, whereby each could show their special talents and therefore was instantly comparable to the others. 34 This problem was vividly depicted by Leifeld (2015). 35 *1968, US-American dancer, choreographer, dance theorist and media researcher, who focused on physical experiences in connection to thought processes, also connected to digital fields.

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“ me Bel: The Last Performance, photo Herman Sorgeloos, 199836 Fig. 7 Jéro

Fig. 8 Richard Siegal: Black Swan, 201237

Canadian choreographer Crystal Pite, who around 2018 used his own texts as the basis for examples in The Statement. The possibilities of epistemological interest in configurations of dance and text are far from being exhausted. It remains interesting to follow whether and how the 36 37

From: Siegmund (2006), p. 337. http://thebakery.org/repertory/black-swan/. Accessed 20 January 2022.

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variations of these reciprocal relations are maintained and/or varied aesthetically, literarily, neurophysiologically, technically, and politically against changing cultural and social backgrounds.38

References Banes, S.: Terpsichore in Sneakers. Post-Modern Dance. Welseyan University Press, New England, Hanover (1987) Barthes, R.: Le Degré zéro de l’écriture. Seuil, Paris (1953) Béjart, M.: Mathilde. René Juillard, Paris (1963) Béjart, M.: Le Ballet des Mots. Les Belles Lettres/Archimbaud, Paris (1994) Benois, A.: Reminiscences of the Russian Ballet. Putnam, London (1941) Brandstetter, G.: Tanz-Lektüren. Körperbilder und Raumfiguren der Avantgarde. Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main (1995) Duncan, I.: Memoiren. Almathea-Verlag, Zürich, Leipzig, Wien (1928) Fleischer, M.: Embodied Texts. Symbolist Playwright-Dancer Collaborations. Editions Rodopi, Amsterdam, New York (2007) Graham, M.: Blood Memory. Washington Square Press, New York (1991) King, K.: Writing in Motion: Body Language Technology. Wesleyan University Press, Middletown (2003) Leifeld, D.: Performances zur Sprache bringen. transcript Verlag, Bielefeld (2015) Lipp, N.: Tanz und Bildende Kunst. Aspekte der Wechselbeziehung. Athena, Oberhausen (2015) Mihaly, J.: Ballade vom Elend. Verlag der Vagabunden, Stuttgart (1927) Nijinska, I. (ed.): Nijinska. Early Memoirs. Faber and Faber, London (1981) Nijinsky, R. (ed.): Waslaw Nijinskij. Der Clown Gottes. Ein Tagebuch. Gallimard, Paris (1953) Ochaim, B.: Akarova. Living Geometry. In: tanzdrama, Heft 22/23, pp. 28–30. Jürgen Forster Verlag, Hamburg (1993) Schneider, K.: Tanz und Text. Zu Figurationen von Bewegung und Sprache. K. Kieser Verlag, München (2016) Siegmund, G.: Abwesenheit. Eine performative Ästhetik des Tanzes. William Forsythe, Jérôme Bel, Xavier Le Roy, Meg Stuart. transcript, Bielefeld (2006) Taylor, P.: An Autobiography. University of Pittsburgh Press, Private Domain (1987) Van Loo, A. (ed.): Akarova. Spectacle et Avant-Garde. Entertainment and the Avant-Garde, 1920–1950. Archives d’Architecture Moderne, Bruxelles (1988)

Nele Lipp *1948 in Hamburg, Dr. Phil., interdisciplinary working artist and dance scholar. Studied acting at the Hamburger Schauspiel-Studio Frese and art at the HfbK Hamburg with Gerhard Rühm, Franz Erhard Walther and Bazon Brock. Free dance/art productions at the Hamburg Kunsthalle, the Osthaus Museum Hagen and at the EXPO 2000 in Hanover, among others. 1985/1986 performances with Ertanzte Bilder at the invitation of the Goethe-Institut in Italy, Spain, Canada and the USA. Work as a freelance author. 1993 Doctorate with Michael Diers and Gabriele Brandstetter: Tanz + Bildende Kunst. Aspekte der Wechselbeziehung (published 2015). 1997 co-founder of the association KOIÏNZI-DANCE e.V. for interdisciplinary art. Stagings, lectures, publications, organization of festivals, conferences and exhibitions.

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Translation Pia Landsmann and H.-W. Heister.

Fine Art

Danse Macabre and Its Interpretation in Vocal and Instrumental Music, in Literature, and Visual Arts Monika Fink

1 Introduction During the last decades of the twentieth century intermediality became established as a pivotal research area in cultural studies and the science of art. One might take the 1986 statement of Gilles Deleuze as a guiding principle, according to which there is no piece of art not rooted in or continued in other arts.1 No art form and no piece of art is ever without prerequisite. The reciprocation and interplay of the arts can lead to eclectic and multi-faceted statements of art. The danse macabre is the epitome of an intermedial subject, in which visual arts, literature, and dance interlink. With its origin being mural paintings in cemeteries and on church walls, the danse macabre became widely distributed in the form of woodcarvings with accompanying texts via printing.2 The danse macabre genre of art thus consists of a textual and a visual layer which came into existence simultaneously.3 The verses that were added to the visual portrayal can either be sermons or dialogs featuring single persons or status groups in interaction with Death. The interplay of the visual and the textual layers creates a reciprocity that defines the aesthetic perception of the medieval danse macabre. Pictorial and textual designs complement each other: The verses describe the pictures, and the pictures display the atrocious and sometimes—as is particularly the case with the danse macabre collection by Hans Holbein the Younger—sociocritical and empathic aspects of death. As one of the elementary arts (“elementare

1

Le cerveau c’est l ‘écran. Entretien avec Gilles Deleuze, in: Cahiers du Cinéma, 380, 1986, p. 28, see Schmidt (2011), p. 157. 2 Link (1993), p. 12. 3 Hafellner (2018), p. 33. M. Fink (B) Institute of Musicology, University of Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 H.-W. Heister et al. (eds.), Word Art + Gesture Art = Tone Art, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20109-7_33

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Grundkünste”)4 dance and the dance-like posture of both single persons and Death himself enhance the intermediality of the presentation. According to Irina Rajewsky’s theory (although initially developed in literary studies yet applicable to the science of art and musicology as well) this represents one of three subcategories5 of intermediality, namely the combination of two or more media types. Another subcategory, the change of media,6 is the natural result of adapting works of art referring to and reflecting visual and/or textual danses macabres like screen adaptations or musical renderings of paintings. Since the mid-nineteenth century and increasingly in the twentieth century up to the present day danses macabres have been a source of inspiration for composers: as a theatrical play, as a pantomime, as a non-scenic musical rendition of danse macabre texts, as a scoring of more recent danse macabre literature,7 and as instrumental and vocal compositions referring to visual renditions of danse macabre.8 Visual sources of inspiration date from the fourteenth century to the present day. The percentage of solely instrumental danse macabre compositions is comparatively small.9 One of the first compositions is the 1849 “Danse macabre” by Franz Liszt, inspired by a fresco by Francesco Traini. Examples of other instrumental compositions from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries include works inspired by Totentanz von anno 9 by Albin Egger-Lienz by Karl Senn (1938), Maria Hofer (1943), and Gerhard Schedl (1980), works inspired by Hans Holbein the Younger’s danse macabre by Ina Boyle (1936) and Cesar Bresgen in various renditions (1946– 1966), inspired by Herwig Zen’s Füssener Totentanz by Rainer Bischof (1999) or by Markus Lüpertz’s picture cycle Totentanz by Marcell Feldberg (2007).10 The vast majority of danse macabre compositions includes a textual source and most commonly the human voice as a pivotal element. The following paragraphs illustrate the relationship of vocal and instrumental music in relationship to other arts and its relevance for the danse macabre theme in more detail, focusing on the compositions based on the Basler Totentanz, Lübecker Totentanz, and Emsdettener Totentanz.

4

Heister (2019), p. 89. Medienkombination – Medienwechsel – Intermediale Bezüge. See Rajewsky (2002), p. 15. 6 Rajewsky (2002), p. 16. 7 Compare to Massenkeil (1993), p.265. 8 Monika Fink Datenbank Musik nach Bildern. www.musiknachbildern.at. 9 This refers to compositions inspired by pictures in total. Instrumental works outnumber vocal works by far. Compositions referred to as “danse macabre” but without references to visual art (e.g. Camille Saint-Saëns ‘s “Danse macabre” (1874)) are disregarded in this context. 10 For more information on danses macabres with references to visual art see: www.musiknachbil dern.at. 5

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2 The Basler Totentanz in the Compositions by Burkhard Kinzler, Frank Martin, and Arthur Honegger The series of woodcarvings by HAP Grieshaber (i.e. Helmut Andreas Paul Grieshaber) inspired the composer Burkhard Kinzler to musically reflect on the danse macabre theme as well as the woodcut-like language of the danse macabre verses. Grieshaber himself learned about the images of the Basler Totentanz, which is depicted on the interior cemetery wall of the Basel Dominican monastery (demolished in 1805), in 1965 during his journey to Switzerland. The composer had received an illustrated book edition of the Basler Totentanz (which originated around 1470) that initiated his interest in this topic. Grieshaber focuses on the original two-person configuration of man and Death in his Basler Totentanz. Death is juxtaposed in opposition to various representatives of church and state as well as to different representatives of occupational groups and status groups. This representation of the population is typical of danse macabre renditions and illustrates the egality of everyone in the face of death. The text is arranged in dialog form; Death speaks first, followed by the respective figure. Kinzler’s enthusiasm for those texts inspired him to compose the Totentanz von Basel, an oratorio for soloists, choir, and small orchestra from 1989 to 1991 during his years as a student of church music.11 This composition is vital for Kinzler’s emergence as a composer despite its status as an early work. Kinzler tries to imagine dodecaphony in terms of church music in order to make the choral parts doable for amateur choirs as well.12 The composition consists of three instrumental sections dedicated to aspects of time: Prelude (time itself), Intermezzo I (mortality), and Intermezzo II (eternity). The first six verses of Matthias Claudius’ poem “Motet” provide the mottos for the instrumental sections. However, these lyrics are not melodized but used as sound13 : Prelude (time):

Der Mensch lebt und bestehet Nur eine kleine Zeit

Intermezzo I (mortality):

Und alle Welt vergehet

Intermezzo II (eternity):

Es ist nur Einer ewig und an allen Enden,

Mit ihrer Herrlichkeit Und wir in seinen Händen.14

The prelude and the instrumental interludes illustrate the merciless expiration of time—enhanced by the constant ticking of a metronome. Instrumental music thus 11

Cast: soloists: bass (Death), tenor, baritone, soprano; four-part mixed choir; orchestra: flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, strings (3/3/3/2/1), percussion. 12 I would like to thank the composer for providing parts of the handwritten score. 13 https://www.abipur.de/gedichte/analyse/24745-motet-claudius.html. Accessed February 10, 2022. “Man lives and exists / Only a little time//And all the world passes away/With its glory//There is only/One eternal and at all ends,/And we in his hands.” (Transl. H.-W. Heister).

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becomes an acoustic gesture. The vocal passages characterize individual social and professional groups of the Basler Totentanz that are summarized into groups (e.g. church and state, reputable professions, musical professions, merchants, servants, or family) and depicted in “images” that comprise a total of nine parts.14 The bass solo voice represents Death. Kinzler uses texts from the Basler Totentanz as included in the printed edition with the copperplate prints by Matthäus Merian (1625).15 How text is dealt with in this composition is reminiscent of Baroque style. The individual characters are framed by a rhythmical-gestural musical context that intends to represent their personality, their status, and their profession. Hereto following a few examples: The first image depicts the privileged classes – namely pope, emperor, and empress – meeting Death: Todt zum Bapst: Komm heiliger Vatter werther Mann/ Ein Vortantz mueßt jhr mit mir han: Der Ablaß euch nicht hilfft darvon/ Das zweyfach Creutz vnd dreyfach kron.16 According to his status the pope is characterized by tempus perfectum, the perfect, divine triple meter, and a pseudo-Palestrina-style. The emperor is represented by a French-style overture in dotted rhythm. The empress, finally, as the highest envoy of secular power, dances a solemn saraband with Death himself. In the second image Death talks to the lawyer (“Es hilfft da kein fund noch hoffieren/ Kein Auffzug/ oder Appellieren: Der Todt zwingt alle Geschlecht/ Darzu Geistlich vnd Weltlich Recht “).17 This part is dominated by a singing voice declaiming the text with great rhythmical freedom. Image number three is about Death meeting the “Chorpfaffe” (priest), accompanied by a dodecaphonic canon and a motet-like setting. In image number four Death comes for the “Krueppel” (cripple) (“Hincke auch her mit deiner Krucken”)18 to the music of a passacaglia. The meeting of Death with a young man in image number six is characterized by a foxtrot rhythm, his meeting with a child by a lullaby. The onomatopoetic and sound-symbolic characterization of all professional groups and classes throughout all images includes the choir and the instrumental part, too. Thus, it is not only voices but instruments that characterize the individual figures of the danse macabre. Another musical rendition of the Basler Totentanz has existed as a manuscript only for a long time, namely the one by Frank Martin, choreographed for the Basle 14

The prelude and the final image frame the images one to eight. https://www.totentanz-online.de/laender/schweiz/grossbasel-zerstoert.php. Accessed February 25, 2022. 16 “Come holy father noble man/ You must have a dance with me: The indulgence does not help you/The twofold cross and threefold crown.” (Transl. H.-W. Heister). 17 “There is no help in finding nor courting/No procession/or appeal: Death compels all ranks/furthermore spiritual and secular law.” (Transl. H.-W. H.). 18 “Limp also here with your crutch.” (Transl. H.-W. H.). 15

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Münsterplatz and premièring in its year of origin, 1943.19 Additional performances took place from 1990 onwards.20 The work appeared in print in 2014. Irrespective of its time of creation in the middle of World War II the work focuses on the traditional, empathic-sympathetic Death. Frank Martin created music for the theater performances that deliberately contrasts strongly with current events. A professional dancer impersonates Death; his actions are supported by twelve pantomimes. In this danse macabre vocal and instrumental music represent the clerical and secular spheres with vocal music standing for the celestial realm and instrumental music denoting earthly life. In eight scenes Death meets humans and robs them of their lives. According to premiere reports seven persons of different social classes were led up a staircase to the afterlife.21 The encounters of man with Death are accompanied by boys’ choir and small string orchestra. The a-cappella part in section number three with the folksong “Der grimmig Todt” (The fierce death)22 and part eight with the anthem “Aus tiefer Not” (Out of deep misery) (choir with string orchestra) are references to 16th-century body of song. This “celestial” vocal music contrasts with “secular” instrumental music, in which a jazz ensemble plays various dances (bourrée, foxtrot, march etc.). The use of Basle drums is a nod to the Basle Carnival. Perhaps the most famous musical rendition of the Basler Totentanz is the one by Arthur Honegger and Paul Claudel. Inspired by the message of the images of both the Basler Totentanz and the danse macabre by Hans Holbein the Younger Claudel created partly French, partly Latin poetry. This work in turn inspired Honegger to compose his La danse des morts for narrator, vocal soloists, choir, and orchestra, a composition with more reference to Claudel’s poetry than the danse macabre images. The libretto does not include danse macabre texts or the figure of a dancing Death. The second part of La danse des morts consists of a sung dance movement with different instrumental and vocal ensembles with simultaneously declaimed text sets, including references to “memento mori” and dance tunes like “Sur le Pont d‘Avignon” distorted into a danse macabre song. The refrain of the Carmagnole – a symbol as song of the French Revolution – is used as well.23 A focus on the multifaceted use of the human voice in “La danse des morts” reveals that Honegger employs the single speaking voice whenever one person speaks on behalf of someone else, whereas the solo singing voice expresses the emotion of individual man.24 The unisono choir, too, shows the juxtaposition of impersonal speaking versus personal singing. Singing, however, remains monotonous whenever it expresses a wisdom that man hardly has any access to e.g. as can be seen with “que tu es esprit”. The singing becomes increasingly melodious whenever the people can identify with the common utterance 19

Frank Martin, Ein Totentanz zu Basel im Jahre 1943. For boys ‘choir, string orchestra, “Basler Trommerl” (Basle drum), jazz band, dancers, and performers. 1943. 20 See Massenkeil (1993), p. 267. 21 Ibid. 22 Frank Martin also uses this melody in his church cantata “Et la vie l’emportra” (1974). Compare to Billeter (2004), p. 310. 23 Ibid. 24 Bruhn (2004), p. 186.

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e.g. “que tu es poussière” or whenever the people can become active.25 The “tidiness “ of homophony therefore signifies the divine when used a-cappella, but may easily turn into the mundane and all too human when accompanied by coarse arrangements. Man’s uncertainty shows in polyphony with contrapuntal and imitating parts. This culminates in the chaotic climax of the danse macabre.26

3 The Lübecker Totentanz in the Compositions by Walter Kraft and Christoph Georgii The Lübecker Totentanz, composed by Walter Kraft27 in 1954, is an interacting framework in which text, music, danse, and theatrical performance concur.28 Kraft’s visual stimulus for his work is the Lübecker Totentanz Fresco by Bert Notke, created in 1463 in the Chapel of St. Marien,29 depicting 24 representatives.30 The composer also included his personal experience with the bombing raid of Lübeck in 1942 and the mass death in its wake. The original danse macabre fresco was completely destroyed during this airstrike. Only the photographic documentation by the Lübeck architecture and art photographer Willem Castelli gives us an idea of the original work. Kraft’s composition is characterized by a number of sound symbols and musical death configurations, which are always put in relation to life i.e. musical phrases symbolizing life.31 The whole oratorio is structured by the opposition of life and death, which itself is represented by specific figures and persons. According to Walter Kraft,32 the music itself is characterized by two mutually exclusive concepts, specifically the diatonicism of major and minor mode, church

25

Ibid. Ibid. 27 Walter Kraft, Der Lübecker Totentanz: ein geistliches Spiel mit tanzenden Gestalten nach dem alten Gemälde-Fries von St. Marien. For five solo voice, two choirs, boys ‘ choir, organ, sixteen instrumentalists, one narrator, dancers, and personae mutae, with words from the Revelation of St. John, the four gospels, psalm no. 122, multiple anthems and spiritual songs. Autographic score (1954): https://digital-stadtbibliothek.luebeck.de/viewer/image/1551271624195/1/. Accessed February 21, 2022. 28 The most in detail study of this widely unknown work still is the one by Patricia Stöckemann. See Stöckemann 1994. 29 Leßmann (1999), p. 22. 30 Complete modern and lower german text Schlott (1840). Cf. Hartmut Freytag: Der Totentanz der Marienkirche in Lübeck und der Nikolaikirche in Reval (Tallinn). Edition, Kommentar, Interpretation, Rezeption, Böhlau, Köln-Weimar-Wien 1993, pp. 132–339, downloadable https://st-marienluebeck.de/file/1222364, 2 Nov 2021, accessed: 22 May 2022. 31 Stöckemann 1994, p. 73. 32 Ibid. 26

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modes and tonal centers representing life and the disruptive elements (”klangzersetzendes Element “)33 of dodecaphony, bitonality, clusters, and tritones representing the realm of death. Ostinati and drone with their character of inexorability are used as symbols of death, too.34 The composer selects unrelated Bible verses from the apocalypse and the gospels for vocal and textual parts and includes anthems and spiritual songs in the sense of congregational singing. Kraft uses various techniques of adaptation that refer to different contextual significance. Hymns are integrated in distinct passages in altered form (e.g. numbers 4, 14, 21) or as quotations (e.g. numbers 15, 16b, 18a, 20).35 As far as spiritual songs36 are concerned, the songs “Es ist ein Schnitter, der heißt Tod” and “Der grimmig Tod mit seinem Pfeil tut nach dem Leben zielen”37 with its quodlibet-like connection in the 12th stanza play an essential role.38 The symmetrical structure of “Der grimmig Tod” evokes the connotation of a nocked arrow in a bow, the arrow shooting with deadly force from the center i.e. the song’s B part. This would well correspond with the apocalyptic notion of Death as a shooter and hunter.39 The use of both songs within the context of Kraft’s composition as a whole acts as a musical illustration of Christian death symbolism and an expression of man’s equality before death. Thus, the song lyrics expand the musical semantics of Kraft’s composition by an additional, meaningful component. Christoph Georgii’s Danse Macabre—harking back to Hugo Distler—is proof that the Lübecker Totentanz still is an inspiration for composers in the twenty-first century. In 1934, Hugo Distler was inspired by the Lübecker Totentanz to compose his a-cappella motet Totentanz for “Totensonntag” (the last Sunday before Advent commemorating the dead). The textual source is a selection of verses from the Cherubinischer Wandersmann by the Baroque poet Angelus Silesius. The poet Johannes Klöcking (a friend of Distler’s) created additional, dialogical verses: short chorus verses consisting of melodically and rhythmically condensed material represented by Distler without further development. Distler’s composition in turn inspired the jazz pianist Christoph Georgii and his ensemble to create the jazz suite Totentanz, which premiered in 2015 on the eve of “Totensonntag” in the Bayreuth parish church.40 Although this composition is purely instrumental, text plays an important role. All titles of the eleven-part suite41 hark back to Angelus Silesius’ reflection of the transience of life. Georgii interprets and modifies the original by means of jazz to create 33

Ibid., p. 74. Ibid., p.162. 35 Ibid., p. 83. 36 Ibid., p. 86. 37 “There is a reaper called Death” and “Grim Death with his arrow does aim at life”. 38 Ibid., p. 93. 39 Ibid., p. 92/93. 40 Christoph Georgii: Das überlichte Licht – Jazzsuite. July 1, 2016: https://christophgeorgiitrios ite.wordpress.com/2016/07/01/totentanz/ Accessed February 20, 2022. 41 Lass alles was du hast - Was trotz’st du dann soviel - Das überlichte Licht - Der Leib - Die Seel’ ist’s, die nach Hause reist - Der Reiche dieser Welt - Das kurze Nun - Du musst auch überwinden Noch kleiner als klein - Auf, auf, der Bräutgam’ kömmt - Keine wahre Ruh. 34

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his own examination of life’s fugaciousness. Since Distler’s tonal harmony resembles modern jazz characteristics in many aspects his work is an opulent source of inspiration for jazz improvisations. Distler’s original harmonies and motifs are taken up and transferred to the present. The soli of saxophonist Uwe Steinmetz lead to stirring plaintive cries and the lamenting melodies by bassist Ralf Schwarz. The lamentations uttered by the human voice are transformed into instrumental voices and fade away in the church interior.

4 The Emsdettener Totentanz in the Composition by Friedemann Graef The Emsdettener Totentanz project represents an extraordinary interaction of text and music and is based on Fritz Möser’s danse macabre cycle (1962). Möser’s picture cycle (texts by Hans-Jörg Modlmayr) stands out because of its unique, subtly psychological view of the age-old danse macabre theme and inspired composers Friedemann Graef and William Thomas McKinley to create their Emsdettener Totentanz, which premiered in 1992.42 Fritz Möser’s danse macabre consists of ten illustrations reminiscent of medieval cycles due to their bold simplicity. Upon closer inspection, however, the pictures open a window on an increasingly complex, synesthetic world,43 in which the observers perceive a mirror image of their very own condition and endangerment in different stages of their lives. The first three pictures are dedicated to the vulnerable human being and his/her fight with the surrounding matter. The following pictures address the transience of life with the topics of the songs “Es ist ein Schnitter”, “Mitten wir im Leben sind”, and the medieval sequence Dies irae, all of which are incorporated in the composition by Graef and McKinley.44 The last pictures point to a transcendence into the afterlife. The observers perceive Death next to, behind or in front of their own mirror images. According to Fritz Möser, one can only see death and learn that one is no longer alive yet may still physically be alive. Thus, death becomes less terrifying; it is only the actual or possible mirror image that may scare us.45 Friedemann Graef’s first part in the Emsdettener Totentanz—“Bald seid ihr im Garten”46 —refers to this idea of the omnipresence of death. This composition shows 42

The Emsdetten Danse Macabre consists of the following parts: Friedemann Graef: Bald seid ihr im Garten (chamber symphony), Hans-Jörg Modlmayr: Emsdettener Totentanz (spoken poems), William Thomas Mc.Kinley: Emsdettener Totentanz (chamber cantata). 43 Hildegard Modlmayr Heimath, Fritz Mösers Totentanz. CD-booklet Emsdettener Totentanz, MMC recordings, Woburn 1998. 44 Included in the movements 2, 3, and 4 with Graef and in Prelude I, II, and III with McKinley. 45 Hildegard Modlmayr-Heimat, Der Künstler. http://www.edition-hm-heimath.de/html/der_kun stler.html. Accessed February 20, 2022. 46 Friedemann Graef, Bald seid ihr im Garten. Chamber symphony for the Emsdetten Danse Macabre for saxophone quartet, string quartet, percussion and three solo voices.

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a four-part structure that the composer interprets as a symbol of the crucifix: introduction—“Mitten wir im Leben sind”—Dies irae—“Es ist ein Schnitter”. Graef assigns an almost programmatic role to the human voice that translates sound into the antithesis of life and death. The composition is designed as a chamber symphony with singing voice yet is conceivable without singing as well. The voice represents life and humanity per se that again and again is “disturbed” and finally falls silent in death.47 The singing voice also involves textual elements that both warn and soothe. A purely instrumental introduction with violin and percussion (with onomatopoetic “bone rattling” by the marimba) is followed by abstract offstage sounds of multiple vibraphones superimposing the pulsating dance of vibraphone and marimba. A string quartet alternates between a distorted hymn and dissonant disruptions. The voice joins in with “Mitten wir im Leben sind” for the first time, but is again and again disturbed and interrupted by the instruments. This illustrates how life is not a peaceful, continuous stream but a series of disruptive events. In “Mitten wir im Leben sind” the performers saw up wood, toss and crush metal and plastic pieces, and tear paper. The text “Die Welt zerfällt” (the world crumbles) is to be taken literally. Events calm down as a call for mercy and a kyrie eleison with echo sound offstage. The third part—dies irae—begins and ends with paddling in a water tank. The monodic, Latin chant is interrupted by the string quartet in the form of a “Figurenlauf” (a stylized procession); this can be observed in reality e.g. in Nuremberg or Cracow. With Graef a single saxophone player emerges, plays some rattling phrases with percussive sounds while rotating and vanishes again. This happens four times. The fourth part is the song “Es ist ein Schnitter”, presented in quite traditional harmony in vocal and instrumental variations.

5 Summary The aesthetic synthesis of death and danse and thus the play with the antithesis of life and death mesmerizes. Its wide use and adaptation exploit the danse macabre theme in multiple contexts like entertainment, advertisement, visual arts, politics, and music. Composers and musicians from all musical genres right up to Heavy Metal and multimedial sound installations refer to the medieval theme, predominantly by including the human voice in various forms and arrangements. The image sources of danses macabres have not lost their topicality even for contemporary musicians, as the performance for 23 Musicians by the US-American musician Matthew Chamberlain based on the Danse macabre by artist Markus Schinwald in a coffin factory in 2021 shows.48

47

E-mail to the author, February 2, 2022. See “Wiener Festwochen laden mit "Danse macabre" zum Totentanz.“ https://www.sn.at/kultur/ allgemein/wiener-festwochen-laden-mit-danse-macabre-zum-totentanz-104785213. Accessed 20 February 2022. 48

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References Billeter, B.: Musiktheorie und musikalische Praxis. In: Sackmann, D. (ed.) Lang, Zürich (2004) Bruhn, S.: Das tönende Museum. Musik des 20. Jahrhunderts interpretiert Werke bildender Kunst. Edition Gorz, Waldkirch (2004) Hafellner, V.: Der Totentanz – ein intermediales Sujet. Eine exemplarische Analyse des mittelalterlichen Totentanzmotivs in Film, Musikvideo, Grafik und Installation seit den 1970er Jahren, master thesis, Salzburg (2018) Heister, H.-W.: Hände und Stimme. Zum Verhältnis von instrumentaler und vokaler Musik. Int. Rev. Aesthetics Soc. Music 50(1–2), 87–104 (2019) Leßmann, Th.: Der Totentanz. Zur motivgeschichtlichen Genese und Aktualität eines didaktischen Mediums des Spätmittelalters, In: Wilhelm-Schaffer, I.: Gottes Beamter und Spielmann des Teufels. Der Tod in Spätmittelalter und Früher Neuzeit, pp. 15–27. Böhlau, Wien / Köln (1999) Link, F.: Tanz und Tod in Kunst und Literatur: Beispiele, In: Link, F.: Tanz und Tod in Kunst und Literatur, pp. 11–68. Duncker & Humblot, Berlin (1993) Massenkeil, G.: Der Totentanz in der Musik des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts, In: Link, F.: Tanz und Tod in Kunst und Literatur, pp. 264–276. Duncker & Humblot, Berlin (1993) Rajewsky, I.O.: Intermedialität, A. Francke, Tübingen/Basel (2002) Schlott, N.: Der Todtentanz in Der Sogenannten Todtenkapelle Der St. Marienkirche Zu Lübeck. Lübeck: Schmidt, 1840. https://dibiki.ub.uni-kiel.de/viewer/resolver?urn=urn:nbn:de:gbv:8:21074531. Accessed 8 May 2022 (1840) Schmidt, W.G.: Was ist ein „Gesamtkunstwerk? Zur medienhistorischen Neubestimmung eines Begriffs. Archiv für Musikwissenschaft 68(2), 157–179 (2011) Stöckemann, P.: Der Lübecker Totentanz in der Komposition von Walter Kraft. Ein geistliches Singspiel vom Tod mit tanzenden Gestalten nach dem alten Gemäldefries von St. Marien. Kraemer, Hamburg (1994)

Monika Fink *1960 in Innsbruck, received her Master’s Degree (M.A.) in Musicology and Art History in 1983, her Doctoral Degree (Ph.D.) in 1986 and the Habilitation in Musicology in 1992. Since 1997 University Professor at the Institute of Musicology, University of Innsbruck, 2007–2013 Chairman of the Institute of Musicology, 2013–2021 Dean of Studies of the Faculty of the Humanities; since 2021 Vice President of the Senate of the University of Innsbruck. Visiting Professor between 2002 and 2011 at the Universidad de Granada, the University of Bristol, the University of Cardiff and the University of Helsinki. Her research is focussed on music iconography, program music and dance music. BooksMusik nach Bildern. Programmbezogenes Komponieren im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (1986); Der Ball. Eine Kulturgeschichte des Gesellschaftstanzes in 18. und 19. Jahrhundert (1996); coedited with Kurt Drexel Musikgeschichte Tirols (3 Vol. 2001, 2004, 2008) and with Lukas Christensen Wie Bilder klingen (2011, 2013); Der Tanz in der Dichtung – Dichter tanzen, coedited with Gabriele BuschSalmen and Thomas Nußbaumer, 2015); coedited with Thomas Steppan Heilige Berge (2021). Since 2006 she built up the databases “Musik nach Bildern” (www.musiknachbildern.at) and Klingende Texte (www.klingendetexte.at).

On Gestures and Sounds in Peasant Scenes by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, and Their Social and Political Enunciations Anabella Weismann

1 Introduction Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c. 1525–1569) is well-known for his “realistic” portrayals of celebrating, intoxicated, and even fighting peasants, who are first of all dance to the tune of bagpipes. But the popular cliché about the “painter of peasants” needs to be analyzed, such as the appearance, that the bagpiper is a simple (rural) musician, and the joyfully dancers are just peasants. In the subtitles of Bruegel’s graphics the portrayed peasants are named as “boeren”. Bruegel’s biographer, Karel Van Mander (1548–1608) also calls in the Dutch original text these painted peasants “Boeren”: … He chose to go and live in Antwerp and entered the guild or chamber of painters there in the year of Our Lord 1551. He worked a great deal for a merchant called Hans Franckert who was a man with a noble, good disposition who liked to be with Brueghel and who daily associated with him very companionably. Brueghel often went out of town among the peasants with this Franckert, to fun-fairs and weddings, dressed in peasants’ costume, and they gave presents just like the others, pretending to be family or acquaintances of the bride or the bridegroom. Here Brueghel entertained himself observing the nature of the peasants – in eating, drinking, dancing, leaping, lovemaking and other amusements – which he then most animatedly and subtly imitated with paint … He knew how to attire these men and women peasants very characteristically in Kempish or other costume, and how to express very naturally that simple, peasant appearance in their dancing, toing and froing and other activities …1

If Bruegel and his friend participated in peasants’ disguise at fairs in Antwerp’s neighbouring villages, then one may assume, that other burgers acted likewise. On account of the inferior quality of Antwerp’s water, local beer in the villages tasted 1

Van Mander 1603–1604, p. 233r.

A. Weismann (B) Stephanstraße 49, 10559 Berlin, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 H.-W. Heister et al. (eds.), Word Art + Gesture Art = Tone Art, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20109-7_34

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better, and it was sold cheaper because of the lower excise rate. Incidentally, the middle-Netherlandish word “boer” meant in the middle of the sixteenth century also “neighbour”, while the peasant, e.g. in the two songs in praise of peasants in Antwerps Liedboek (1544), was named “landtman”2 or as agricola. And Karel Moens hinted with reference to the bagpiper, that in Netherlandish graphic arts of the sixteenth century, the function of the fool, who had to give a moralizing comment about events depicted, was assumed by musicians. They were mostly bagpipers, but occasionally hurdy-gurdy-men, and later violinists and lutenists.3 A bagpiper is quite fitting as indicator for attracting the attention of a beholder: on the one hand, he is acoustically associated with the perception of the open-air instrument’s excessive volume, while on the other hand the drones (bourdon-pipes) may function as complimentary optical clues of arrows.

2 The Kermis at Hoboken The Kermis at Hoboken is an etching with engraving by Frans Hogenberg after a drawing by Pieter Bruegel, dated 1559, and was edited by Bartholomeus De Momper in Antwerp. This collaboration was exceptional, because normally Bruegel worked for the publisher Hieronymus Cock. The village of Hoboken is situated near Antwerp. In 1535 it was added to the property of Nassau. William of Nassau, the Prince of Orange, who after the demise of his first wife, Anna of Egmont, had an extramarital relation with Eva Elinx, a daughter of Emmerich’s burgomaster. This resulted in an illegitimate offspring, Justinus of Nassau, born in 1559. In the same year, William of Nassau, being in financial difficulties, sold Hoboken, under the name of his son, Philip William, to Melchior Schetz, who was a wealthy German merchant, banker and head-treasurer of Antwerp. In 1564, his brother, Gaspar Schetz, was nominated by the ruler Philip II, as treasurer general in the Council of Finances in the Netherlands. At first glance, the depiction of the fair looks confusingly like a picture “teeming with folk”, a “Wimmelbild”: a visual chaos of dancers, drinkers, snogging couples, musicians, archers, visitors of fair-stalls, children playing games, participants of processions, spectators at theatres, as well as urinating and defecating males. This picture needs to be complemented with an imagined acoustical cacophony of squealing pigs, cackling ducks, shrieking women, roaring men, together with strains of bagpipes and hurdy-gurdies. One can detect in the engraving at closer inspection of the leaf a certain moralizing division: on the left of the centrally situated village church an inn is placed, marked by the sign of a Fleur-de-lis. Its landlord just welcomes a pair of pilgrims. In front, males and females dance in circles around a boy and a girl, whereas two bagpipers play, whose drones point at a pediment with wine-jug and plates. In my opinion this 2

Compare “Van den edelen landtman” (no. 176), and “Van den landtman” (no. 201), in: Van der Poel et al. (2004), vol. 1, pp. 396–398, 452–454. 3 Moens 1994, pp. 22–31.

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round dance can be identified as the traditional May dance “‘t patertje”: “A mockfather choses some mock-nun, then kneels down with her in the ring’s midst, kissing her trice, just to dance with her a round in the circle. Then it’s the mock-nun’s turn to select someone from the circle as mock-father. …”.4 On the right side of the inn “Fleur-de-lis”, at middle ground, a procession holding the Cross, marches between fair-stalls to enter the church’s portal. To the right of the church, at the picture’s margin, a larger inn is placed. Its frontage is ornamented with two hunting-horns and a wine-jug, which shows an inserted arrow—hinting to a brothel. In front of the building, a couple is dancing to the sounds of a hurdy-gurdy-man, posing straight beneath the jar. The vielle, at the time of Bruegel was considered as a typical instrument of beggars. A monk from the inside of the guestroom joyfully beckons towards the dancing couple. Inside the top floor, where open windows enable to peep at males and females, who sit densely packed in common at a banquet. From the tympanum a large banner bears the epigram “Dit is de Gulde van hoboken” [This is the Guild of Hoboken], indicating a shooting guild with handheld bows, whose members are lined up in front of the house for a shooting competition. A marksman’s left hand points at the signature “Bruegel” and the beer jar next to a man, clad in bourgeois style, who sits on a bench. Somebody reprimands him with an obvious gesture. Moreover, the marksman’s hand points at the letters “dronckendrinken” [to get blustered] in the lines, added below the picture: “Die boeren verblijen hun in sulken feesten, Te dansen springhen en dronkendrincken als beesten.// Sij moeten die kermissen onderhouwen Al souwen sij vasten en steruen van kauwen.” [The peasants amuse themselves at these fairs, dancing, jumping, and getting plastered like animals. They must celebrate their fairs, whether fast, or perish in the cold.] In front of the inn, with two hunting-horns, stands a covered wagon with a harnessed horse: Inside the covered wagon a male grabs a woman, touching her underneath the skirt. Her wide opened lips signal her screaming and fright, while her left hand points in a reproachful gesture towards the man, who sits between horse and covered compartment. This presumed pimp turns his head backwards, but it remains doubtful, whether he cares about the screaming woman, or about three obvious “candidates”, sitting on a bench next to the shooting guild’s stake with the target. The foremost impatiently gestures towards the pimp, while the next in line, dressed in a bourgeois style, bends timidly against the third man, who obviously encourages him. In the foreground, on the left, playing kids throw walnuts. This is a clear hint for the month of September. Whereas on the right side, a fool leads two children away. In the picture’s background visible is the march of a further procession, with some crossbowmen, who joined in, and two theatre performances, which are crammed with spectators. In the graphic’s initial first state, a man bends down on his knees as he watches the procession passing by, in conformity with the positive reference to Catholicism in the left half of the picture, whereas on the opposite right side between theatre stage and figure of a saint at the procession seven pigs wallow around. The latter may also be perceived as Protestant’s critique against Jesuits, who 4

Compare Bosmans (2002), p. 95.

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in contemporary caricature often were represented as swines or porcine, in Latin “suiden”. In the second state, the kneeling figure and the pigs are missing. Probably for reasons of sales promotion. In consideration of Bruegel’s drawing the Kermis at Hoboken in 1559, and in the same year the village was sold by William of Nassau to Melchior Schetz. One has further to take into account, that in the Schetz family’s coat of arms are three lilies, and two hunting horns in the coat of arms of William of Nassau, then possible personal allusions in the division of the picture are suggestive. In view of such teeming throngs the question arises, which fair in Hoboken was meant? The different scenes hint to the fact, that numerous were depicted simultaneously: firstly, the fair on Sunday after the Finding of the Cross (3 May, compare with May dancing), secondly, the fair on Sunday after Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary (8 September, as walnuts ripen in September), thirdly, the handheld bows guild’s fair at the second day of Pentecost, and fourthly, the fair of St. George on Sunday after 23 April. The crossbowmen in the procession in the background hint to the latter: the St George shooting guild was the association of crossbowmen, as St George is for peasants and hunters their patron saint. But why portrayed Bruegel four fairs as concurrent events? The reason is found in an Edict from the governess Mary of Hungary. In 1531, it prescribed the celebration of all feasts and fairs jointly on the same day, in order to prevent uncontrolled feasting and inebriation. But this Edict was never applied. Then, in 1559, appeared the first large Netherlandish “Plakkaatboek”: De Ordonnancien, Statuten, Edicten ende Placcaten, ghepubliceert in de landen van hervvaerts-ouer, Van weghen der Keyserlicker ende Conijnglicker Majesteijten, which contained a reprint of the Edict of 1531 as well.5 Against this backdrop, the visual Kermis at Hoboken may be read in combination with the letters, added by Bartholomeus De Momper, as an appeal to the new lord of Hoboken, Melchior Schetz, not to apply such a decree. The application of the Edict would not only have resulted in a prescription to celebrate all traditional regional feasts on the same day (as Bruegel depicted), but also, that access to current “topfeasts” was only allowed for inhabitants of the respective places—what would have caused heavy economic disadvantages for them. Such an interpretation is supported by two engravings of other fairs: in 1559, De Momper also published a Peasant Kermis, after the drawing of Pieter Van der Borcht. There is likewise on the leaf’s left side a hectic bustle of dancers, spectators at a theatre performance, and participants of a procession, while on the right side, males and females quarrel and drink together. Dancing is in tune to the sounds of a drummer, who plays a tabor pipe (stamentienpfeiff), and of a bagpiper. In the midst of the picture’s lower section, a woman squats for a pee, whereas the bagpiper points his chanter at her. The letters in the inscription below state: “De dronckarts verblijen hem in sulcken feesten, Te kermissen te ghaenne tsij mans oft vrouwen. Kijuen en vichten en dronken drincken als beesten. Daer ome laet de boeren haer kermisse houwen.” [The drunkards amuse themselves at such feasts. Whether males or females, going 5

Monballieu (1987), pp. 199–206.

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to fairs means nagging and fighting, and heavily drinking, just like beasts. Hence, let the peasants celebrate their fairs.]6 However an etching with engraving Kermis of St. George after Pieter Bruegel, c. 1559 printed by Hieronymus Cock, shows more or less well-behaved manners, with the exception of a fight in the background: couples dancing to the tunes of a duo of bagpipers in front of an inn “dit is in die kro[on]” [This is the Crown]. Above them hangs the banner of the shooting guild St George, bearing an epigram, which tells: “laet die boeren haer kermis houuen” [Let the peasants celebrate their fair!].

3 The Netherlands at the Time of Pieter Bruegel the Elder Pieter Bruegel’s creative period (1551–1569) extends over times, which were conflict-ridden in regard to power and social policies, and to economic and religious policies as well. In the Netherlands, since 1521, Charles V reacted against the rise of Protestantism, with several “Edicts against heretics”, culminating in the so-called Bloedplakkaat (1550). These laws provided the death penalty for heretics and their sympathizers. Likewise, the production, printing, spreading and possession of heretical books or illustrations, accommodation of heretics and participation at their meetings lead to capital punishment. In 1523, two monks, being adherents of Luther, were the first to be burnt to death in Brussels. In 1555, Charles V transferred on his son, Philip II, the rule of the Netherlands. From 1521 to the Peace Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis, in April 1559, Habsburg fought six wars against France, mainly in Italy. In May 1559, Pope Paul IV, by means of the bull Super universas, reformed the ecclesiastical hierarchy and dioceses in the Netherlands: territories of dioceses were diminished and adapted to the country’s languages and provincial frontiers, with the aim of a better control of clerics and reinforcing the Church against the growing Protestantism, and in support of Philip’s policy of centralization. The Seventeen Provinces of the Netherlands were assigned to three ecclesiastical provinces, the archdioceses of Utrecht, Kamerijk, and Mechelen, and these were divided into fifteen dioceses. The archbishop of Mechelen was appointed primate. Philip secured the privilege for nominating bishops. Protests against the reform arose within nobility, clergy and population, as they feared the inquisition’s strengthening. In 1559, Philip returned to Spain. Before leaving the country for good, he invested his half-sister Margaret of Parma as the Netherlands’ regent, and William of Nassau as governor in the provinces Holland, Zeeland, and Utrecht. Philip appointed as prime minister, and thus most influential adviser to Margaret, the jurist and theologian Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle, bishop of Arras, and permanent secretary to Charles V, who was in 1560 appointed archbishop of Mechelen, and in 1561, by Pope Pius IV raised to serve as cardinal. 6

See https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pieter_van_der_Borcht_(I)_-_Peasant_Fair.jpg. Accessed 01 April 2022.

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Margaret’s reign (1559–1567) was marked by serious social and economic conflicts: famine and mass-unemployment, partly as a result of severe winters in 1564/65, and 1565/66, first iconoclasm in August 1566, and in 1566/67 coping with the situation of war. Inside advisory committees acted for the regent, such as Council of State, Privy Council, and Council of Finances,7 the government business was increasingly decided by specialists, to the anger of the great nobility. Among the population further dissatisfaction was caused by the deployment of Spanish soldiers, and the harsh persecution of Protestants by Philip. Since 1561, the nobility started increasingly protest campaigns. In 1563, two letters of protest were addressed to Philip by William of Nassau, Lamoral of Egmont, and Philip of Montmorency, the Count of Hoorn, with the demand to dismiss Granvelle, for he was seen by the opposition of the nobility as the highest representative of the odious Spanish policy. In spring 1564, Granvelle left the Netherlands. On 31 December 1564, William of Nassau made his famous speech in the Council of State, pleading for religious freedom. For Margaret the business of government turned out to be continually more difficult to handle: from Philip she had inherited the task of implementing his political, religious and fiscal measures against growing resistance from the nobility. Actually, she depended on Granvelle, who to a greater extent influenced the governmental affairs. In the wake of wars against France a bleak financial situation was permanent. In 1563, when grain deliveries from the Baltic Sea region failed to materialize, subsequently economic problems and food shortages evolved, which lead to a strengthening of Calvinism, resulting in numerous convictions for heresy. While the greater nobility appealed for mitigation of the heresy edicts, Philip insisted on the inquisition’s escalation. In December 1565, noblemen formed an alliance, the Compromis des Nobles, which, on 5 April 1566, offered a petition to the regent requesting an end to the persecution of heretics, and for summoning the Staten-Generaal (States General of the Netherlands) with the task of finding in consideration of religious conflicts an appropriate legislation. The president of the Council of Finances, Count Charles de Berlaymont, is said to have calmed down Margaret by hinting to her, that the petitioners were only “gueux”, this was adapted by the rebellious noblemen, by calling themselves “Geuzen” thereafter. Margaret promised religious and political concessions. Thereupon an open revolt started: many Protestants returned from banishment; social and economic problems, such as crop failures livened things up, and finally, in August, conducted by radical Calvinists, an iconoclastic movement desecrating churches and monasteries spread throughout the country. Under pressure, Margaret granted the Protestants public preaching, in places where they were held before. Insurrections (in Valenciennes, Tournai) were militarily suppressed. Thus, in May 1567, the situation was consolidated, and order in the country was once again restored. 7

The Council of State decided the policy of the central government, his members were nobles and jurists; in 1559, there were three permanent members: Granvelle, Viglius (jurist), and Berlaymont (nobleman). The Privy Council consisted of jurists, responsible for the execution of government policy. The Council of Finances was formed by three noblemen and three specialists of juristic and financial affairs.

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Nevertheless, in mid-June, Philip sent Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, the Duke of Alba, with ten thousand soldiers to the Netherlands, to restore order, and to punish rebells and heretics by a special court, the Raad van Beroerten, “Council of Troubles”, which people named “Bloedraad”, and to install a modern tax-scheme. On 22 August, Alba marched into Brussels, Margaret stepped down, and at the end of the year, she left the Netherlands, while Alba assumed the regency. Already on 9 September 1567, Alba arrested Egmont and Hoorn, as the leaders of the nobility in opposition, and in 1568, both were decapitated in Brussels. In April 1567, William of Nassau had already retreated to Dillenburg. The “Court of Blood” pronounced 1.100 death sentences and confiscated from 9.000 citizens their property. The new tax-scheme, on which Alba discussed with his advisers since 1567, proposed a single tax rate of 1% on property, a turnover rate of 5% on the sale of real estate, and 10%, the “Tiende Penning”, on movable goods (food, clothes etc.). In January 1569, Philip approved the proposed fiscal policy. The impending introduction of the Tiende Penning, the “Tithe”, caused severe unrest, and historians take it for the main reason of the Netherlandish revolt against Spain. In spring 1568, the military resistance started: in May, Louis of Nassau, brother to William of Nassau, defeated at Heiligerlee a Spanish army; though in July, Louis was defeated by Spanish troops near Jemmingen. In October, William of Nassau started an initial invasion, but Alba defeated him in battle near Geldenaker. So much regarding the historical context of an art production under conditions of rigid censorship.

4 Pieter Bruegel’s Peasant Dance and Wedding Banquet Bruegel’s Peasant Dance is dated between 1567/1568. It portrays a rural fair. Shells of walnuts on the ground, and the picture of a Holy Mother with Child at a tree, hint to Sunday, 8 September, Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. On a village road leading to a church, in front of which some fair-stalls are set up, three couples dance to a bagpiper’s tune. He sits on a bench close to a tippler, and in front of a table, at which are placed a drinking couple and a man with individual features (the client?). Opposite the latter sits a gray-clad man in front of a bread, as he reaches with his right hand longingly for a small jar on the table, the person on the opposite side signals rejection. In front of the table a young mother dances with her little daughter. But the tender gesture of holding her right hand stands in sharp contrast to the bagpiper’s knife, which forms the backdrop to the profile of the girl’s face. This musician is the picture’s most peculiar figure, and gives a clue for the interpretation. As his portrayal appears to be over-sized, then according to the perspective of importance, the status of the most important person should be accorded to him. For a low social status “busker”, he is dressed too fine and lavishly. Playing seated is tonal-technically inconvenient and unusual. The long knife, hanging on his right side, has normally to be carried on the left. The tippler is placed close to him, looking

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into his face—such a distance to an open-air instrument, and likewise for the others, who sit at the table, is unrealistic, because acoustically it would be unbearable.8 The “peasant who is hard of hearing” wears a red waistcoat of moiré-structured silk and a beret with a peacock feather. Obviously, he talks to the musician, and offers him his beer tankard, but the other does not listen to him, or is unwilling. The dancing couple in front is conspicuous in size, behaviour, and dress. The guy drags a reluctant woman to dance with him, with his right hand grabbing her hand inside her left sleeve. At his cap a spoon is affixed, and on his left side a long knife above a bag, at which three golden rings are hanging. His legs and abdomen are misrepresented in perspective and anatomy. The right tip of his shoes is pointed, whereas the left one is circular. The female dancer wears no apron, and on a yellowblack belt a reticule with a key, on which the letter M or H can be read. Behind them, a couple is dancing boisterously, while the other appears to be sad. Above the man’s head hangs a butcher’s shop sign with a cleaver. The hustle and bustle is watched by disgruntled onlookers in the background, while the fool, shouting towards the dancers, points with his arm stretched out to the church, whose nave and westwork being emphasized in perspective as well as in regard to colours, each needs to be seen as independent unities. The picture’s contradictions can be solved, as long as we do not take it for a realistic fair’s portrayal, but as a ‘political allegory’ of the situation in the Low Countries in September 1567: the musician stands for Philip II, to whose tune the people of the Low Countries had to dance, here, the nobility is positioned in the background (on 9 September, Egmont and Horn were arrested). In the picture’s right edge, the duke of Alba pulls Margaret of Parma,9 whom he is going to replace, towards the centre. His attributes are in connection with his tax-schemes (spoon), death sentences (long knife), and confiscations (bag with golden rings). Here, Philip, being Duke of Brabant, is also portrayed as a “boer”, a fellow countryman. Bruegel depicts him as a bad shepherd, spilling innocent blood, what the knife’s scabbard at the little girl’s profile implies. He ignores his advisers, and executes the heresy edicts without leniency. Granvelle seems to be meant as the “ignored adviser”, being indicated by the waistcoat’s fabric and the peacock’s feather (Netherlandish “pau”, for peacock; “paus”, for Pope). Granvelle even kept peacocks in Cantecroy, near Antwerp. Although the Cardinal favoured strict heresy laws, he opposed their rigid implementation. Alba’s unrelenting conduct did not meet his approval. In order to make out Bruegel’s presentation, demands from recipients to move themselves in front of the picture from the left margin to the right margin, in order to catch the perspective of the assemblage of figures. Thus, they dance(d) to the tunes of Philip’s pipe as well. The fact, that such a presentation was not wholly without 8

Compare with the pen-and-ink drawing The epileptics of Meulebeke, a copy after Pieter Bruegel the Elder (about 1565), in: Staatliche Museen, Preussischer Kulturbesitz Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin, Id.-Nr. KdZ 16,672, which proves, that in case of epileptic fits, bagpipers provided an acoustic shock therapy. 9 Take notice of the marguerites at the tree, behind the dancer.

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Fig. 1 Frans Hogenberg after Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Kermis at Hoboken, 1559. Etching with engraving11

dangers, for the painter and the client, becomes evident, in the picture’s left edge, from painting over the portrait-like face of the figure dressed in “beggar’s gray” (compare with les gueux), which was originally featured with a convex nose.10 Her longing gesture may also indicate the double character of Protestant Eucharistic supper with “bread and wine” (Fig. 3). At Wedding Banquet (1568/69), one of Pieter Bruegel’s most famous paintings, absurdly enough, inside a barn, filled with people, sitting close together, a duo of bagpipers plays. Their drones point at lovers, who enjoy themselves on the pile of straw in the background. This amorous detail was probably intended to camouflage the picture’s layers of severe political and religious meaning. The musician in front standing has just interrupted performing, gazing to the picture’s right corner at some acoustic phenomenon further outside, which is obviously glaring and drowns down his tune. Towards the picture’s right edge the wall of straw in the picture’s background gets increasingly brighter. On the right side two dish-porters carry on an old door, taken off its hinges, ten plates, filled with pap, to wedding guests seated at the table. Already four persons eat this pap: a pair, seated on the bench, which is covered with pictures of saints, the boy with the peacock feather at a large beret, in the foreground, 10

Its distinctive form would have made him identifiable for censors. See Oberthaler et al. (2018), p. 269, Fig. 2b. 11 https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bestand:The_Kermis_at_Hoboken_MET_DP818332.jpg. Accessed 17 June 2022.

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Fig. 2 Pieter Bruegel the Elder. The Peasant Dance, c. 1568. Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum12

Fig. 3 Pieter Bruegel the Elder. The Wedding Banquet, 1568/69. Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum13

and to the right, somebody placed outside the frame, so he has to be imagined, who has put down his plate on a chair. Thereby Bruegel suggestively involves the spectator into his picture’s events. 12

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Peasant_Dance#/media/File:Pieter_Bruegel_the_Elder_-_ The_Peasant_Dance_-_WGA3499.jpg. Accessed 17 June 2022. 13 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pieter_Bruegel_the_Elder_-_Peasant_Wedding_-_ Google_Art_Project_2.jpg. Accessed 17 June 2022.

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“Pap-eaters”—Netherlandish “pap-eters” signify in the graphics of Netherlandish Protestant’s leaflets the Catholics, or “Papists”. The saying, “falling into the house with the door” describes an unfriendly or hostile incursion or assault. A person standing in front of the table serves with his right arm a plate of pap to the diners (which none of them accepts), while with his left hand he just lifts off the tenth plate from the door serving as a tray. Considering the board’s unstable position on carrying-poles made of a tree-fork, it must to be expected, that such a board might lose its balance and capsize straightaway, then the plates will fall down to the floor with a rattle. The dog at the head of the table, who had also gazed at the mentioned shining and acoustic phenomenon, gets frightened and jumps up loudly barking. And thus a tumult will start. The spoon at the first dish-porter’s hat is symbolizing tax in kind, being an additional hint to the Tithe, the Tiende Penning. Already in 1567, Alba had discussed its levy with his advisers, among them was Gaspar Schetz. In 1568, tax amendment was made public, and in 1569 assessed. As stated before, among historians prevails the conviction, that plans for introducing the Tiende Penning in the Low Countries was reason for the Dutch Revolt against Spanish rule. When Bruegel depicted on the Wedding Banquet altogether fifteen plates filled with pap, one could assume an insinuation on the restructuring of Netherlandish church provinces in fifteen dioceses under three archbishoprics. Thereby, he combined in his presentation in an ingenious way the contemporary religious conflicts with social and economic issues.14 But what hears and what observes the bagpiper? Alba’s pillaging soldiers or the expected, but lastly frustrated first invasion by William of Nassau, who in September 1568 marched in the Netherlands with an army of 25.000 men, and was defeated by Alba’s troops in October? In the middle of the picture a black-clad man with a green hat is seated at the table. In front of his chest his hand holds a beer jar. He as well, perceives with an astonished and frightened facial expression the acoustic and glaring phenomenon, outside the picture’s frame. This was probably the client and the painting’s primary owner: Jean Noirot, mint-master at the Brabantian mint in Antwerp (1553–1555 and 1562–1572). After the foundation of the Union of Utrecht,15 in 1580, Noirot served as a stand-in mint-master of Zeeland”s new mint. Under the Protestant regime he stayed again in Antwerp till 1584, when he emigrated to Dordrecht, before the occupation of Antwerp by Alexander Farnese. That Noirot and parts of the mint’s personal had at least sympathy for the moderate Protestants is suggested by some events in the mint and in its neighbourhood. For instance, 15 September 1566, opposite the mint, in a barn of St. Michael monastery, which was rented, repaired, and reconstructed, Lutherans celebrated the Eucharistic supper (sic!). And when in March 1567, riotous Calvinists took up arms, and threatened to take over the town, William of Nassau, as Burgrave of Antwerp, asked everyone, “who desired to join the Augsburg Confession, 14

For a further religious interpretation in the spirit of a non-orthodox Eucharistic supper, see Weismann (1992, 2015), pp. 86–92, and Weismann (2016), p. 371. 15 The Union of Utrecht was the federation of the northern provinces and towns in the Netherlands, in reaction to the Union of Arras, founded in 1579 in the Catholic southern provinces.

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and give pledge of loyalty to his king and town”, by hurrying immediately with arms to the gathering in front of the royal mint.16

5 Conclusions Contrary to popular opinion, that Peter Bruegel the Elder’s peasants’ feasts are realistic depictions of genre painting, a closer look into details of his works proves, that they have to be interpreted as multilayered. At first glance their political, religious, and economic social criticism is camouflaged by the morally debasing cliché of the boorish peasant. Such a cliché stands in contradiction to the contemporary literature, where the peasant is praised, for providing nourishment for all mankind through hard labour. For a deciphering of the quintessence of this camouflaged critique, one needs not only to analyze the bearings, movements and gestures of persons in their portrayed context, but also sounds and noises need to be perceived acoustically and within their associations. Likewise the spatial, perspective, anatomic, as well as attributive dissonances and contradictions need to be perceived. About 1559, there appeared in Antwerp three different graphic representations of fairs. They were a reaction to the expected implementation of the edict of 1531, which decreed to celebrate all calendrical feasts on a single day in order to avoid excess. A therein insinuated brutish immorality was on the one side by artists—also as a subject for sales promotion—appropriately put into the limelight, while on the other side through its portrayal, thwarting the religiosity of traditional festive culture as well. Thereafter by the appeal “let the peasants celebrate their fairs!” both aspects are commented in an ironic and critical way, for instance, by some visual references to representatives of the upper classes and their kind of pleasures at holydays. Contrary to etchings and copperplate engravings, both of Bruegel’s painted peasants’ feasts were only perceived by the client(s) and inside a small circle of likeminded. This is indicated by the fact, that the strange and contradictory details of a superficially harmless and merrily holyday-event, reveals the articulated critique of government’s social, religious and fiscal policy under a thorough viewing of its visual, gestural, and associated acoustical enunciations. Such oppositional and heretical contents, camouflaged and wrapped up in stereotypes of boorish peasantry, was for the “insiders” obviously rated as yet insufficiently disguised to escape the attention of censorship: in Peasant Dance a portrait was subsequently modified, and this painting was by Bruegel’s son, Pieter Brueghel the Younger never copied, contrary to other paintings of his father. However, of the Wedding Banquet the son produced four copies reduced in size, yet leaving out crucial and delicate details: now, the musician sneaks a glance at the woman next to the bride, the lad wears a beret without a peacock feather, and the light is flooding from the left.17 16

Compare Van Haecht (1929), vol. 1, pp. 108, 198 and Weismann (2016), pp. 357–375, esp. 368– 371. 17 Compare Erzt (1988/2000), vol. 2, pp. 709–710.

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Nevertheless, just those thematic and artistic inconsistencies in Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s works (have to) draw the eyes of today’s irritating and searching recipients into his charm.18 (Translation Klaus Sonnendecker)

References Bassens, M., Van Grieken, J. (eds.): BRUEGEL in zwart wit. Het complete grafische werk. Catalogue of the exhibition: The World of Bruegel in Black and White, KBR, Brussels, 15 October 2019–16 February 2022. Hannibal, Brussels (2019) Bosmans, W.: Traditionele muziek uit Vlaanderen. Davidsfonds, Leuven (2002) Ertz, K.: Pieter Brueghel der Jüngere (1564–1637/38). Die Gemälde mit kritischem Oeuvrekatalog, 2 vols. Luca, Lingen (1988/2000) Groenveld, S., Leeuwenberg, H.L.P., Mout, M.E.H.N., Zappey, W.M.: De Tachtigjarige Oorlog. Opstand en consolidatie in de Nederlanden (ca. 1560–1650). Walburg, Zutphen (2008) Moens, K.: Muziek in de grafiek uit de Nederlanden in de 16de en 17de eeuw. In: Muziek en Grafiek. Burgermoraal en muziek in de 16de- en 17de-eeuwse Nederlanden. Catalogue of the exhibition, Antwerpen, Hessenhuis, 29 July–30 October 1994, pp. 13–47. Petraco-Pandora, Antwerpen (1994) Monballieu, A.: Nog eens Hoboken bij Bruegel en tijdgenoten. In: Jaarboek van het Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen 1987, pp. 185–206 (1987) Müller, J., Schauerte, T.: Pieter Bruegel. Das vollständige Werk. Taschen, Köln (2018) Oberthaler, E., Pénot, S., Sellink, M., Spronk, R., Hoppe-Harnancourt, A., Haag, S. (eds.): Bruegel. Die Hand des Meisters. Catalogue of the exhibition, Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien, 02 October 2018–13 January 2019. Belser, Stuttgart (2018) Van der Poel, D.E., Geirnaert, D., Joldersma, H., Oosterman, J.B., Grijp, L.P. (eds.): Het Antwerps Liedboek. 2 vols. Lannoo, Tielt (2004) Smolderen, L.: Tableau de Jérôme Bosch, de Pierre Bruegel l’Ancien et de Frans Floris dispersés en vente publique à la monnaie d’Anvers en 1572. In: Revue Belge d’Archéologie et d’Histoire de l’Art /Belgisch Tijdschrift voor Oudheidskunde en Kunstgeschiedenis LXIV, pp. 33–41 (1995) Soly, H.: De brouwerijonderneming van Gilbert van Schoonbeke 1552–1562. In: Belgisch tijdschrift voor filologie en geschiedenis, XLVI, pp. 337–392, 1166–1204 (1968) Van Haecht, G.: De kroniek van Godevaert van Haecht over de troebelen van 1565 tot 1574 te Antwerpen en elders. Ingeleid en toegelicht door Rob. Van Roosbroeck. 2 vols. De Sikkel, Antwerpen (1929/1933) Van Mander, K.: The Lifes of the Illustrious Netherlandish and German Painters, from the first edition of the Schilder-boeck (1603–1604). With an Introduction and Translation, edited by Hessel Miedema, Vol. I: THE TEXT. DAVACO, Doornspijk (1994) Weismann, A.: Was hört und sieht der Dudelsackpfeifer auf der Bauernhochzeit? Bemerkungen über ein allzu bekanntes Gemälde von Pieter Bruegel. In: Kamper, D., Wulf, C. (eds.) Schweigen. Unterbrechung und Grenze der menschlichen Wirklichkeit, pp. 225–245. Reimer, Berlin (1992) Weismann, A.: Pieter Bruegel d. Ä. Rowohlt, Reinbek (2015) Weismann, A.: Wer betrachtet was? Deutungs(ge)schichten der Federzeichnung Maler und Käufer von Pieter Bruegel. In: Heister, H.-W. (ed.): Schichten, Geschichte, System. Geologische Metaphern und Denkformen in den Kunstwissenschaften, pp. 357–375.Weidler, Berlin (2016) 18

This also applies for perceptions in childhood. During my first year at school, a reproduction of Bruegel’s Wedding Banquet was hanging at my classroom’s wall. Each time when gazing at it, I felt anger about the last dish-porter, as his size seemed to me too enlarged and was blocking the view on what I imagined to be really important.

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Anabella Weismann * 1946 in Berlin, Prof. Ph.D. Studied at the Free University of Berlin: history of art, ethnomusicology, statistics and sociology. Taught statistics and research methods in sociology at the University of Berlin (1975–1976 1993–1994), and statistics, research methods and sociology of art/culture at the University of Amsterdam (1976–1996), before being appointed professor of statistics and research methods in sociology at the Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg (1996–2011). Research about: collective mentalities, national identities and political iconography; municipal statistics; sociology of music, sociology of art. Publications (e.g.) Froh erfülle Deine Pflicht! Die Entwicklung des modernen Hausfrauenleitbildes im Spiegel trivialer Massenmedien in der Zeit zwischen Reichsgründung und Weltwirtschaftskrise (1988), Die merk-würdige Geschichte vom Schuster und seiner Sabine: Revolutionssatire – Dienstmädchenmoral – “lustiges Lied” (1993), Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Polyphonie und Aufführungspraxis als Gesellschaftsutopie. Pieter Bruegels Temperantia: eine Petition für religionspolitische Toleranz am Vorabend der Niederländischen Revolution (1997), Die Holländische Tomate - eine Spätfolge des Calvinismus? Über religiöse Wurzeln der Mentalitätsunterschiede zwischen Niederländern und Deutschen (2001), Jugendchöre als Sozialisationsagentur im Wandel der Zeit – Fallstudie Berliner Mozart-Chor (1922–2002) (2003), Wilhelmus van Nassouwe/Ben ik van Duytschen bloet … ‘ – ‚Ich, Willem van Nassau, bin als solcher ein Niederländer’. Zu einigen Ambivalenzen der NS-Propaganda in den besetzten Niederlanden (2007), Ich sehe was, was du nicht hörst. Deutungsdimensionen in Rembrandts Bildrätsel “Musizierende Gesellschaft” (2011), Pieter Bruegel d.Ä. (2015).

Voices, Daily Life Sounds and Instrumental Music as Plurimaterial Forms of Artistic Communication in the Work of Dieter Roth Ina Jessen

1 Introduction The performative use of ephemeral materials at the connecting line of tactilely and visually perceptible materials with fleeting acoustically perceptible elements is the focus of this text. In this context, particular importance is attached to the attribution of value to the respective ephemera in normative, traditional reference. In addition, the sociological level of material diversity is examined. Artistic materials such as paint, building materials, food, waste and other everyday materials, sounds, voices and instrumental music have gradually different transformative properties. In their diversity, they are highly relevant in the work of the GermanSwiss artist Dieter Roth (1967–1972).1 At the interface of the ephemeral, the artistic experiments and forms of expression of these individual, ephemeral materials have been united since the food and decay works of the 1960s. Processes of transformation and a multi-sensual reception characterize Roth’s oeuvre, especially since the emergence of the Melancholischer Nippes (Melancholic Knick-knacks) work phase (1967–1972). In these works, the visual, the tactile as well as the olfactory and thus (at least as a suggestion, since the works are not conceived for consumption by human recipients) the gustatory sensory stimulus are addressed. In the large multi-material works of the 1980s, the levels of reception were supplemented by the auditory stimulus through the integration of voices, instrumental music and everyday noises. In relation to traditional means of painting and sculpture, such sound elements appear

1

In this context, the objects produced between 1967 and 1972 in the Melancholischer Nippes work group, often using chocolate as the primary material, represent a special genre. Cf. Dobke (2002). I. Jessen (B) Art History Department, Hamburg University, Hamburg, Germany e-mail: [email protected] Dieter Roth Museum, Hamburg, Germany © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 H.-W. Heister et al. (eds.), Word Art + Gesture Art = Tone Art, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20109-7_35

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as ephemeral, equal materials in the visual arts. Roth and his collaborators such as his children Björn and Vera Roth documented them with different recording techniques.2 Roth’s artistic research moves as language between voices and sounds as well as conventional materials of the visual arts. This article is dedicated to the investigation of this performative, artistic material research as a form of art and communication between voices, sounds and instrumental music as well as other physical materials. A preceding commentary and a brief insight into Roth’s self-reflection and his field of activity in music form the starting point for the thematic considerations of the work.

1.1 Dieter Roth and Music The universal artist Dieter Roth described himself as five or six Dieter Roths. Yes... one of them is such a drunk, a talker. And such a whore hunter. And then there’s one who’s such a quiet writer, such an ascetic. And then there’s a father who’s always racing around with his children, with tent and car and fishing—yes, and what else is there? Then there’s the painter, who I do mostly in Stuttgart and a bit in Reykjavík, and a musician, who gives concerts with his friends […].3

This description reveals the artist’s diverse spheres of activity and self-referential critiques. When asked whether he preferred one of them to the others, Roth replied: “No, they are all equally difficult, the bandits!”.4 The musician named here and his way of dealing with music was repeatedly the subject of conversations, for example between Roth and Irmelin Lebeer-Hossmann in 1976 and 1979, in which it becomes clear that he had approached music autodidactically and had not formally learned to play any musical instrument, but nevertheless played a variety of instruments. Roth’s autodidactic approach to music led him again and again to value judgements, a continual deciding against external evaluation and thus to a narrowing of the self through his own thoughts as a certain form of censorship: For example, I always thought that music wasn’t for me because I didn’t learn it. To play and so on. And I realized that I can do it without any... Just like that, I go there and take an instrument that I’ve never played before and just play. And I realized: that’s possible, that’s full-fledged. I don’t just imagine that, but that’s what people who know something about it say. And then I realized: there are no sentences, no mastery and no morals. Certainly not in the field of art. So I assume that it’s the same in the other field, the one we call reality.5

2

Due to the fragility of the sound carriers, they were finally digitized and recorded partly for conservation reasons. Roth was aware of the fleeting nature of the medium (magnetic tape), but he did not intend it as ephemeral material. For conservation purposes, the artist supplied copies of his tapes for the Chicago Wall. 3 Wien (2002), p. 20. 4 Ibid. p. 16. 5 Ibid. p. 16.

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The importance of music for Roth is particularly evident in his connection to the Vienna Group and the Fluxus artists. During his encounters with the Fluxus group in New York—such as La Monte Young (*1935), George Brecht (1926–2008), Dick Higgins (1938–1998) or Alison Knowles (*1933)—Roth was very interested in serial music and the atonal. However, he himself “never managed to understand it or anything.” I would have liked to have been a composer, but I couldn’t, everything was blocked by my ideas that I had about music. I thought music was something you could learn, where you could apply certain principles and so on. But I didn’t consider that it is also free. […] I was never avant-garde in music, I was always just the... the... first the lover of classical music and then the would-be destroyer.6

Nevertheless, there was a close artistic relationship between Roth and the Fluxus group, which Gabriele Knapstein sees, for example, in the comparability of the music recordings with Oswald Wiener, Gerhard Rühm, Hermann Nitsch, Christian Ludwig Attersee, Günter Brus, Arnulf Rainer and others for Selten gehörte Musik (1973– 1979)—documented on LP7 —with the Fluxus happenings. According to this, Roth focused on the musical action, in which the visitors did not participate.8 Aspects of Roth’s music as a form of expression and genre were given special attention in the context of the extremely well researched and prepared exhibitions Und weg mit den Minuten. Dieter Roth and Music 2014 and 2015 in Zug and Berlin. As a collaborative project of the Kunsthaus Zug with the Hochschule für Musik/Fachhochschule Nordwestschweiz, the Musikakademie Basel, the Edizioni Periferia (Lucerne) and the Nationalgalerie/Staatiche Museen zu Berlin, this project is instrumental in Rothspecific research. Accompanying the exhibitions is a comprehensive documentation of six publications on the musician and music publisher Roth, photographic evidence, specific concert publications, conversation documentation and editions. The present contribution, on the other hand, attempts a contextualisation of the vocal elements in relation to the instrumental as well as organic materials within concrete material contexts, in which sound in the form of diverse musical and everyday types is consequently considered as a component of an expanded material iconography.

2 Music is Both Theme and Motif in the Genesis of the Work In Dieter Roth’s oeuvre, music is one of the most important elements as a theme, motif and in its (im-)material texture. Roth gave a portfolio of etchings (1966) the title Unterhaltungsmusik. Musical instruments such as the trumpet are reproduced in Stempelzeichnungen and thus firmly integrated into the characteristic repertoire of 6

Ibid. p. 95. Attersee, Brus, Nitsch, Rainer, Roth, Rühm, Steiger, Wiener: Selten Gehörte Musik—Das Berliner Konzert, 3 LPs, Edizioni Lotta Poetica 0730 (1978). 8 Cf. Dieter Roth und die Musik/and Music. Selten gehörte Musik (2014a), p. 250. 7

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motifs in Roth’s specially created alphabet entitled Mundunculum (1967). Beyond the motivic and thus semantic use of music and musical instruments, the actual integration of vocal and instrumental music, voices and sounds is elementary in the context of the work. The sound component became apparent early on in the kinetic works of the early 1960s, which were influenced by Constructivism and Bauhaus and were created in visible contemporaneity with the Fluxus artists. His Op Art experiments, in which Roth addressed visual stimuli in particular and countered their limits, were transformed into actual movement with a tactile level of perception in kinetic objects such as the Drehrasterbild (1960–1992). Since the recipients have to touch the objects in order to play with them, the sensual expansion to include the tactile level is fundamental. Within the framework of this group of works, the first sound bodies were created with the Kugelbild (1991/1992) and the Gummibandbild (1960 idea), in which combinations of materials with wood, metal or rubber bands resulted in tonal, acoustic experiences when played on. Musical contributions in the sense of sound recordings of joint music-making are documented, among others, in the Happenings Selten gehörte Musik (1973–1979), Harmonica Curse (1981), the Quadrupelkonzert (1977) and Splittersonate (1980– 1987). Furthermore, the material music is anchored object-bound in works such as the Lorelei, Langstreckensonate (1978) as well as in the repertoire of the large material objects of the 1970s and 1980s. These include the material works Chicago Wall. Hommage à Ira and Glorye Wool (1976–1984) and Cellar Duo (with Björn Roth, 1980–1998).

2.1 Polysensual Reception Comparable to air or fragrance, a physical, material visibility of music, sounds and noises as material may seem questionable.9 In the assumption that music has a materiality, I align myself with Monika Wagner, who presupposes as the physical basis of materiality that only the vacuum is immaterial.10 Wagner embeds the concept of the immaterial historically and names, for example, the shift in the measurement of value starting from a high, iconon-like material relevance between material “this world and immaterialized beyond” in the Middle Ages.11 According to this, a decline in the importance of material followed in the Renaissance, as the artist’s contribution to the creation of a work of art simultaneously gained in importance and the removal of material in sculpture embodied a dematerialization process that took place through the intervention of the “artist as a second creator” alongside the attribution of worth to the work of art.12 In contrast, the concept of material in this paper is linked to the actual textual nature. 9

Wagner, Rübel, Hackenschmidt (2010), pp. 170–174, s. v. »Luft«. Cf. Wagner (2013), p. 293. 11 Ibid. 12 Cf. Ibid. 10

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Immateriality is a component insofar as acoustic sensory impressions do not in themselves have an organic form, although sounds as sound waves have a physical form that is transmitted through vibrations of various materials. However, they can be experienced visually or tactilely in context, when sound is created by the vibration of a musical instrument as a sound body, or when microphones and tape decks for recording sound embody the presence of sound elements. With regard to acoustic elements such as music, voices or noises, the term sound material or sound element is therefore used, which in turn is primarily constituted by sensual reception perception. Starting from an art purely oriented towards visual experience in Roth’s beginnings, the works since the late 1950s addressed a diversity of modes of reception intellectually and sensually. A dissolution of the boundaries of object forms and their processes (for example, by playing with them), of the use of materials (in the use of food and waste) and of interaction and participation within the framework of collaborations is reflected in the visual, tactile, acoustic and olfactory reception. Immediately before Roth’s experiments with foodstuffs, through which an olfactory component entered his art, essential sensual levels of reception were already formed in his artistic work through the visual, the tactile and the acoustic. This polysensuality immanent in the work reflects the artistic dissolution of boundaries and the negation of a static concept of art. The multiplicity of (im-)material art materials used by Roth and a simultaneity of working rhythms and locations can also be located in this field of tension. The multiplicity in Roth’s creative process manifests itself in the virtuosity and scope of the oeuvre between painting, drawing, an immense printmaking oeuvre, assemblages, jewellery, small- and large-scale sculptural objects, food works, artist’s books, music and video works, photographic objects and objects laid out in diaries, as well as Roth’s dramaturgical and publishing activities. The nomadic way of life between workplaces in Iceland, Switzerland, Germany, Austria and at times other places also underlines the characteristic diversity in Roth’s work. At times, he maintained seven studios that followed a comparable construction model with recurring materials, writing and working utensils, right down to his self-constructed wooden furniture, linking artistic activity with the real narratives of life. His nomadic existence, conceived in the changing places of living and working, is thus banished in the studio situations, as these represent recurring spatial conditions and structures of life.13

2.2 Material Diversity In the works Chicago Wall. Hommage à Ira and Glorye Wool (1976–1984) and Cellar Duo (with Björn Roth, 1980–1989), the interplay of physical materials and acoustic and thus immaterial elements is significant. The interplay of instrumental 13

Roth had permanent studios in Iceland (Mosfellsbaer, Hellnar, Sey∂isfjör∂ur), Vienna, Hamburg, Basel and partly in Zurich, London, Zug and other places. Cf. Dobke (2002), p. 196; Jessen (2019), pp. 173–193, 177.

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music and vocal elements—mostly in the form of voices, conversations or taperecorded sounds—in the context of other materials is exemplified in these works. The investigation of these objects is based on a concept of music as an ephemeral art material whose use is recognized as anti-hierarchical with regard to organic and other materials and which takes up and reflects components of the everyday. The reason for this is the combination of acoustic elements with multi-faceted materials that differ in their nature, material properties and texture in both objects. The distinction between Chicago Wall. Hommage à Ira and Glorye Wool and Cellar Duo (with Björn Roth) lies in the observation, the performance and the collaboration and therefore in the object-specific forms of reception that make it necessary to illuminate both works.

3 Chicago Wall. Hommage À Ira and Glorye Wool, 1976–1984 and Cellar Duo (with Björn Roth, 1980–1989) in Relation A switch is flicked. A low murmur is heard after the recipient—he or she is much more than a viewer in the sense of the concept of collaboration in Dieter Roth’s work— has put the Gesamtkunstwerk into operation.14 It is an audiovisual assemblage. An intermedial work whose presence appears both powerful—due to the expansive visual appearance—and delicate and fleeting, in view of the almost casually perceptible soundscape (Fig. 1). Even before a detail of the picture can be focused, the attention is already captivated by the auditory sensations. From loudspeakers integrated into the twelve picture supports, the individual themes from different tapes sound at a uniform volume.15 Musical instruments, voices, telephone conversations, TV noises, WC or shower as well as rain or whistles resound, accompanied by a hum, click and hiss of the tapes. “The sound pieces are by Dieter Roth, some by Björn Roth.”16 They are all played at the same time from separate cassette recorders, resulting in an overlapping of the different cassette contents.17 Dieter Roth himself remarked, “(t)he volume should have a whisper-like quality to it, so that from 2–3 m away you can just hear the 14

The description of the Chicago Wall is published in: Jessen (2016), p. 339. Cf. Dieter Roth to Michael Menzinger and Peter Käser, 14 January 1985. Due to the ageing process, the materials are affected, so that not all 32 speakers are functional any more. In addition, the other materials in the mural also show damage or signs of age. 16 Dieter Roth to Judith Durrer, presumably 31 March 1985/86 (dat. “31.3.1984”). 17 There are 32 cassette recorders arranged in the object field on the right. Between the twelve screens and the multitude of recorders, the two ring binders are also fixed in a hanging position. One of the ring binders contains a loudspeaker register, which includes Polaroid photos of the loudspeakers, which are also numbered. This register serves as Dieter Roth’s instructions for the technical installation of the mural. In a 1985 letter, Roth instructs the Kunstmuseum Bern to install the outstanding loudspeakers with the help of the ring binder entries. Cf. Dieter Roth to Michael Menzinger and Peter Käser, 14 January 1985. 15

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Fig. 1 Chicago Wall. Hommage à Ira and Glorye Wool, 1976–1984. Twelve part painting, mixed media, seven parts on canvas and five parts on cardboard, 32 cassette recorders, 32 audio tapes (master KMB) and 32 loudspeakers, electrical installation and two ring binders (Din A4, brown; Din A5, black), 230 cm × 598 cm × 18 cm, property of the Kunstmuseum Bern and the Swiss Confederation/Federal Office of Culture Bern

loudest thing. From 1 m away you should be able to hear, albeit extremely quietly, everything on the tape being targeted.”18 It is a barely audible murmur that lively plays around the diversity of pictorial elements—which at first seem en passant and thus appear antithetical to the external effect: The bald self, the hat, grimacing faces, female figures and dogs appear here as recurring motifs, powerful color ornaments and materials refer to the artist’s enormous repertoire. In his intermedial and collaborative material pictures, Roth combines various artistic skills and assembles the picture supports, which are provided with small-scale, seemingly wildly combined paintings, with waste, food, household items or painting utensils, for example. Due to the ageing process, the fragility of these materials and elements is particularly evident today. Some pictorial elements are designed to have a distant effect, other areas are of a filigree nature, so that they become visible and recognizable only at close range. The work refuses to be clearly interpreted, which reveals a charming contrast to its immediate experience. There is movement in the image; a different quality of movement than that of the 1950s and early 1960s, when Op Art and Kinetic Art defined Roth’s oeuvre. From the constructed and geometrically captured movements, Roth’s gestural development progressed in the following two decades to organically and multidimensionally 18

Dieter Roth to Judith Durrer, presumably 31 March 1985/86 (dat. “31.3.1984”).

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Fig. 2 Cellar Duo (with Björn Roth), 1980–1998, boxes with hinged lids, drinking utensils, cassette tapes, radios, oil paint, Acrylic paint, highlighter, electric piano, violin, 200 × 240 × 60 cm, Dieter Roth Foundation, Hamburg

unfolding sculpture that presents the viewer and listener with an inviting chaos and at the same time points to the inconclusiveness of viewing nature as well as art. The Chicago Wall. Hommage à Ira and Glorye Wool was created between 1976 and 1984 during repeated visits to ‘the Wools flat’.19 In January 1985, the Kunstmuseum Bern and the Swiss Confederation acquired the work from the artist, who mounted it himself in the Kunstmuseum and further developed it there.20 His children Vera and Björn Roth were involved in both the creation and the installation. In addition, Dieter Roth prepared an instruction manual for the mural, which is archived in handwritten form in the art museum and contains, among other things, information on volume, technical maintenance and restoration. In the process, “the image […] is not to be restored (but to die a natural death) (Fig. 2).”21 The Cellar Duo is a central material work that is part of the collection of the Dieter Roth Museum in Hamburg. The large-scale accumulage is made up of boxes with hinged lids, drinking utensils, tapes, tape decks with recording and erasing functions 19

Cf. Ibid.; Cf. Dobke 2002, p. 129. Cf. Dieter Roth to Peter Käser, 5 March 1985. 21 Dieter Roth to Judith Durrer, 31 March 1985/86 (dat. “31.3.1984”). 20

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(which, however, were removed to allow the sound tracks to overlap), microphones, various electric pianos (from children’s toys to home organs), a violin, workshop utensils, oil and acrylic paint, pens, glue tubes, Polaroid material, photographs. Dieter and Björn Roth worked on it in different places between 1980 and 1989, collecting the materials and fixing them in the installation, as well as making music on this oversized recording device. The recording of piano and violin playing, flanked by tones, voices and noises, attests to the musical process that took place at the object. These acoustic components, just like colors, plastic elements, food or photographs, are to be evaluated as art material, which in combination of the various materials constitute a whole or the respective work of art and here the Cellar Duo. Since Roth recorded the piano and violin playing by means of the integrated tape deck and the tapes, the performative act of the work becomes clear. The (im-)material components of physical and sound material as well as the performance can thus not be separated from each other and are to be considered equal and anti-hierarchical in their reception.

4 Conclusion Due to the use of echoing sound materials, the factors of chance and time are important components of artistic authorship. This goes hand in hand with the negation of claims to preservation and concepts of an everlasting work of art. Moreover, processuality, immediacy and the dissolution of an acoustic material are capable of questioning traditional patterns of reception. Sounds, for example, are ephemeral and can be described as fleeting in this essential quality—just like organic materials whose processes of decomposition reach the point of dissolution. If we speak a word, for example, the sound fades away immediately after it is uttered. To integrate music, voices or everyday sounds in a permanent installation like Chicago Wall. Hommage à Ira and Glorye Wool or the Cellar Duo, a strategy for preserving sounds is therefore fundamental. In various works, Dieter Roth has chosen to record instrumental music, voices and sounds through the use of cassette recorders. These serve both to record and to play back the sound elements. In the genesis of the work, Roth assembled these recorded, acoustic everyday documentations, including the necessary technical means, with his painting, which in turn can be enriched by various materials such as painting utensils, notations, small everyday objects or even food. The viability of defining music as ephemeral and in relation to paint, wood, instruments or other elements as equal art material is therefore given. Through technical documentation and digital preservation, however, the naturally ephemeral nature of vocal and instrumental sounds, of voices and everyday noises is robbed of its ephemeral quality. As recipients and in the sense of collection and preservation interests, we are thus able to continually perceive Dieter Roth’s multimedia and sensual works in their entire complexity. However, we deliberately do not cross the dissolution and the threshold to the death of a work of art through its transformation and non-durability (just as in the case of objects of decay as in the acoustic works),

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but actively retain it in our cultural memory. Roth has laid the foundation for preservation through his own documentation and conservational guidance for the care of his installations. The acoustic materiality in his works is thus meant to persist and at the same time reflects the evidence of its attribution as an equal art material.

References Dobke, D.: Melancholischer Nippes, 2 vol. König, Köln (2002) Dieter Roth und die Musik/and Music. Selten gehörte Musik. Exhibition Catalogue, eds. Edizioni Periferia, Kunsthaus Zug, Hochschule für Musik/Fachhochschule Nordwestschweiz, Musik-Akademie Basel, Edizioni Periferia, Pliezhausen (2014a) Dieter Roth und die Musik/and Music. Discography, eds. Edizioni Periferia, Kunsthaus Zug, Hochschule für Musik/Fachhochschule Nordwestschweiz, Musik-Akademie Basel, Edizioni Periferia, Pliezhausen (2014b) Dieter Roth und die Musik/and Music. Harmonica Curse, eds. Edizioni Periferia, Kunsthaus Zug, Hochschule für Musik/Fachhochschule Nordwestschweiz, Musik-Akademie Basel, Edizioni Periferia, Pliezhausen (2014c) Dieter Roth und die Musik/and Music. Quadrupelkonzert, eds. Edizioni Periferia, Kunsthaus Zug, Hochschule für Musik/Fachhochschule Nordwestschweiz, Musik-Akademie Basel, Edizioni Periferia, Pliezhausen (2014d) Dieter Roth und die Musik / and Music. Selten gehörte Gespräche, eds. Edizioni Periferia, Kunsthaus Zug, Hochschule für Musik / Fachhochschule Nordwestschweiz, Musik-Akademie Basel, Edizioni Periferia, Pliezhausen (2014e) Dieter Roth und die Musik/and Music. Disklavier, eds. Edizioni Periferia, Kunsthaus Zug, Hochschule für Musik/Fachhochschule Nordwestschweiz, Musik-Akademie Basel, Edizioni Periferia, Pliezhausen (2014f) Dieter Roth und die Musik/and Music. Splittersonate, eds. Editzioni Periferia, Kunsthaus Zug, Hochschule für Musik/Fachhochschule Nordwestschweiz, Musik-Akademie Basel, Editzioni Periferia, Pliezhausen (2014g) Jessen, I.: Dieter Roth. Chicago Wall. Hommage to Ira and Glorye Wool, 1976–1984, In: Frehner, M, Locatelli, V. (eds.) Kunstmuseum Bern. Meisterwerke. Hirmer Verlag, Munich (2016) Jessen, I.: Mapping a World. Zur Tischmatte von Dieter Roth. In: Augart, I., Jessen, I. (eds.) Metabolismen. Nahrungsmittel als Kunstmaterial, pp. 173–193. Hamburg University Press, Hamburg (2019) Roth, D.: Letter from Dieter Roth to Judith Durrer, presumably 31 March 1985/86 (dat. “31.3.1984”). Archive of the Kunstmuseum Bern, work dossier, attachment with operating instructions (1985/86) Roth, D.: Letter from Dieter Roth to Michael Menzinger and Peter Käser, 14 January 1985a. Archive of the Kunstmuseum Bern, work dossier (1985a) Roth, D.: Letter from Dieter Roth to Peter Käser, 5 March 1985b. Archive of the Kunstmuseum Bern, work dossier (1985b) Roth, D.: Unique pieces. In: Dobke, D., Glozer, L. (eds.) Edition. Hansjörg Mayer, London (2002) Wagner, M., Rübel, D., Hackenschmidt, S. (eds.): Lexikon des künstlerischen Materials. Werkstoffe der moderne von Abfall bis Zinn, Beck, München (2010) Wagner, M.: Das Material in der Kunst. Eine andere Geschichte der Moderne, Beck, München (2013) Wien, B. (ed.): Dieter Roth. Gesammelte Interviews. With an epilogue by Barbara Wien and a text by Thomas Schmit, Mayer, London (2002)

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Ina Jessen, * 1987 in Flensburg, received her doctorate 2019 with her dissertation A german Painter. Otto Dix and National Socialism. Her current research project is dedicated to Dieter Roth’s Schimmelmuseum (Hamburg). She is leading curator of the exhibition Dix and the Present (2023/24, Deichtorhallen Hamburg) and co-curator for the exhibition Pressed. Sqashed. Squeezed. Dieter Roth and Printmaking (2022/23 Falckenberg Collection). Besides university teaching since 2015 Jessen was research assistant for Prof. Françoise Forster-Hahn (University of California, Riverside) and the Art History Department (Hamburg University). Her lectures, academic articles and editorships include contributions on classical modernism, contemporary art, the politics of art, Eat Art and material contexts.

Cinematography and Technical Media

Diegetic and Background Music in the Cinema: Differences Between the Uses and Functions of Vocal and Instrumental Music Roberto Calabretto

A reflection on the uses and functions of music and of the voice within moving images necessarily implies a semiological premise that allows us to clarify our approach to these problems. In this way we will try to define what is meant by diegetic music and commentary music, sometimes referred to as extradiegetic, and then to apply these categories to a specific field of investigation that we have delineated around the cinema of a number of directors and, in particular, of Federico Fellini. We will therefore begin by defining the terms of our journey.

1 Diegetic Music and Commentary Music The traditional semiological theories of cinematographic music, based on a linguistic model of analysis of the literary text, have resulted in the identification of two functions: Diegetic and Extra-diegetic music, or music belonging to the internal and external levels. As Sergio Miceli clearly writes: An internal musical event is defined as produced in the narrative context of the scene/sequence. Its presence can be manifest or deduced from the context. [...] An external level is defined as a musical event that acts as an accompaniment or more often as a commentary, in any case not produced within the narrative and as such not shared by characters and spectators, but addressed exclusively to the latter.1

1

Miceli (2009), pp. 643, 649.

R. Calabretto (B) Department of Languages and Literatures, Communication, Education and Society (DILL), University of Udine, Udine, Italy e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 H.-W. Heister et al. (eds.), Word Art + Gesture Art = Tone Art, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20109-7_36

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Within such a dialectic, the traditional functions of a soundtrack can be interpreted for which music and vocals can concretely be part of the cinematographic story or accompany a sequence or comment on it, attributing to it meanings that images do not per se possess. A situation that Pier Paolo Pasolini sought to describe in this way. I can empirically say that there are two ways to ‘apply’ the music to the visual sequence, and then to give it ‘other’ values: there is ‘a horizontal application’ and ‘a vertical application’. The horizontal application occurs on the surface, along the images that flow […]. In this case the added ‘values’ are rhythmic values and give new, incalculable, strangely expressive evidence to the mute rhythmic values of the edited images. The vertical application (which technically takes place in the same way), while also following, according to linearity and succession, the images, in reality has its source in a place other than in the beginning; it has its source in the depth. So more than on the rhythm it acts on the meaning itself.2

His cinema of poetry enhances the vertical application when he uses the pages of the classical repertoire, those of Johann Sebastian Bach first and foremost, which project the images into horizons of meaning completely unknown to them. Think of what happens in Accattone’s famous brawl with his brother-in-law in the dust in which the scenes of struggle and violence are commented on by the music of the St. Matthew Passion Bwv 244 Passion according to Matthew which affords these images a sacredness. But the modes of the sound commentary also involve a series of compositional strategies for which music, since the dawn of silent cinema, has put in place a series of correspondences between musical situations—at a melodic, harmonic and rhythmic level—and cinematographic ones, then codified in the very famous ‘Musical Film Libraries’ of Giuseppe Becce, Erno Rapeé, Edith Lang, George West and many others. If some vision poets, such as Robert Bresson in his Notes on the cinema,3 will seek to limit if not deny the comment functions of the music, others, such as Michelangelo Antonioni, will exercise true vetoes.4 The traditional functions, supported by the omnipresent thematisme that acts at the fundamental level of soundtracks, have never been questioned and the seventh art continues to entrust music to an important role in the interpretation of the cinematographic story and to the definition of its protagonists. In such a context, the traditional dichotomy between the two levels of the soundtrack—internal and external—attributed to diegetic music a simple contextualising or setting presence, contrary to the actual commentary exercised by the extradiegesis. A division which is misleading and which can be denied simply by considering how in many films the presence of a gramophone or of a musical performance can perform the role of an actual commentary within the cinematic soundtrack. In this regard, Alessandro Cecchi clearly writes: 2

Calabretto (1999), p. 271. «No accompanying, supporting or reinforcing music. Niente musica» (Bresson (1992), p. 31). Italics are present in the original text. 4 See Antonioni (1994), pp. 41–42. 3

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To remain coherent with these premises, the theory should make it possible to maintain a clear distinction between diegetic and narrative: Diegesis, in the sense of a reality established by inference starting from the data of perception, should remain separate from narration, or how such reality is presented on screen. Moreover, the objective contents of the narration (what is represented, the signified) should maintain its primacy with respect to the modalities of the secondary and subjective narration (representation, the signifier). This distinction, deriving directly from the propositional conception of film language, connects up with a topological interpretation of the diegetic/nondiegetic relationship, which presupposes a juxtaposition of specific places.5

Within the cinematic narrative, therefore, the diegetic-extradiegetic opposition must be rethought and, in our opinion, resolved within a single horizon of signification, as we will seek to demonstrate in our brief reflection.

2 The Diegesis A confirmation, from this point of view, comes from Ingmar Bergman’s filmography, literally filled with instrumentalists and musical situations of various kinds that are reflected in the script to create an extremely complex game of mirrors. In Sarabande (2003), for example, the structure of the father’s dialogues with his daughter recalls the musical one while the division into chapters of the story aligns with the segmentation into fragments of the entire Bach’s masterpiece, whose complexity and harmonic instability are similarly linked to what is experienced by the characters of the drama. Even the accentuation of the pauses and breaths in the performance of the piece seems to be reflected in the silences and pauses of the performance. Also in Federico Fellini’s cinema we often come across bands, wandering players who appear in a fairy tale—think of La strada (1954)—characters struggling with trumpets, miniature violins and accordions. And then there is E la nave va… (1983), in which a group of singers must bury the ashes of soprano Edmea Tetua, defined by the screenplay as «a voice», and sing grotesquely deformed Verdi choirs, and Prova d’orchestra (1979) in which the music and the protagonists, singular caricatures of that mysterious creature that is an ensemble of musicians, take on a very precise metaphorical value of reality, becoming a symbolic premonition of an imminent catastrophe, as indeed is often the case in Fellini’s cinema. A diegetic sound object that recurs insistently in many films assuming precise symbolic values and, in some cases, becoming the metaphor of the same film of which it becomes part, is the disc. In Mamma Roma (1962) by Pier Paolo Pasolini a «shy, cheerful, rogue, Cha-Cha-Cha»6 on the radio and the famous O violino tzigano from a gramophone mark the first moments of Ettore with his mother, intent on teaching the steps and movements of the dance to his son, singing that same melody. The physical relationship between Mamma Roma and Ettore is in fact symbolised by this melody which becomes the bearer of the love that the mother has for her child. 5 6

Cecchi (2010), p. 4. Pasolini (1993), p. 261.

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Instead, O violino tzigano will become the theme of this love and, not surprisingly, in the course of the story we will find it on an external level where it becomes an actual commentary. In other films, instead, stereo music signifies a state of strangeness, of lack of communion between individuals. Just think of certain situations present in the cinema of Marco Bellocchio or of Michelangelo Antonioni. And in I pugni in tasca (1965), in the central sequence of the tavernetta, we find a number of youths struggling with a Hully-Gully. This dance, which should express joy and happiness, actually reflects a very different condition: The youths dance rather wearily and, precisely in this situation, Ale is confronted with his loneliness and the inability to relate to others. Far from being a simple contextualising presence, the music that comes from a musical performance or from a record therefore takes on very specific commentary functions similar to those of extra-diegetic music.

3 The Particular Status of the Cinematographic Voice Within the soundtrack of a film, the voice takes on a particular status. Michel Chion, in his La voix au cinéma,7 introduced two key words that are fundamental for our research: “vococentrism”, to underline the position of central interest of the voice with regard to the other sound elements of a film; and “acousmatic”, to highlight the mysterious power of the voice when it is not coming from a body visible on the screen, from the off screen, therefore. He then distinguishes between the subject voice that resonates within us as if it were “our voice” and is achieved by adopting the maximum proximity to the microphone and the absence of reverberation and the object voice that coincides with the space that surrounds a character in the film of which it becomes it’s inner voice and is technically manipulated, with mixing, filters and various post-production manipulations, in order to make it’s sound unreal. As for example happens in Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960) in which the object voices—those that Marion seems to hear while fleeing in a car—are manipulated in order to make them unreal and in contrast with the subject ones, especially that of the mother who presents herself without any echo or sound reverberation. These two types, which involve different uses and functions of the voice in the filmic context, freely cross the two levels of cinematographic narration, entering into dialogue with all the elements that combine to create a shot. In Federico Fellini’s cinema the voices have a special status. As it is well known, Fellini refused direct recording and used, during the dubbing phase, voices different from those of the actors that played on the set. «I feel the need to give the sound the same expressiveness as the image—the director had declared -, to create a sort of polyphony. This is why I so often object to using the face and voice of the same actor».8 From this, real scores are born in which the different voices not only come 7 8

Chion (1982). Fellini (1983), p. 82.

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from different stylistic registers but also overlap each other in contrapuntal dialogue, displaying different kinds of timbres within porous sound textures imbued with great visionary strength. Just think of the Casanova by Federico Fellini (1976), the voices of whose characters adhere to their bodies in an extremely vague and free form both in space and in time. Sometimes these voices end up being baroque and excess, as is the case in the irreverent and apotropaic “fescennini veneziani” of the opening scene of the film that come from an out of sound field that is so intrusive that it overlaps the jubilation of the party, and in the same Cantilena londinese that pervades the space surrounding the bathtub of the giantess and of the dwarves.

4 A Common Horizon of Signification From what we are seeing, it is clear that the distinction of narrative levels from which we started turns out to be very fleeting in the context of the horizon of signification of the cinematographic story in which the levels themselves intersect and overlap and often create crossroads in which the maximum of the interactive potential of a soundtrack with the filmic image lies. In this context, once again the words of Miceli help us to resolve this dichotomy by hypothesising a mediated level in which the different sound presences of a film converge and mutually integrate. Miceli writes: Having in mind the mechanisms that preside over the creation of a visual or sound subjective [...] it is easy to find a similar process in the mediated level, with which we have the privilege of accessing the musical sensations that the character “listens to” within themselves, provoked by a memory or an emotion. In order for the intervention to be unequivocally defined as a mediated level, however, it is necessary that in an earlier phase of the filmic narration the character could have heard, even casually, that same music internally, having thus assumed consciousness and memory, or that that music is undoubtedly connected to them.9

In fact the presence of this level allowed Miceli to attribute to music the function of a character that featured a singular narrative value which, in the filmography of a number of particularly inspired directors, such as Krzysztof Kie´slowski (La double vie de Véronique 1991, and Trois couleurs: Bleu, 1993), Roland Joffè (Mission, 1986) and especially Fellini, was raised to the highest levels. Of the many scenes we could refer to in the filmography of Fellini, what springs to mind is the very famous one of the carnival party in I vitelloni (1953). Here we find an orchestra that is playing at full volume a clownesque can-can, typical for Rota, to accompany the dances of the party. Up to this point the music appears on a more intimate level and effectively emphasises the festive and evasive atmosphere that accompanies these events. Alberto, one of the young men, is dancing in the middle of the dance floor holding a bottle of sparkling wine. When the party is coming to an end, exhausted and drunk, he leaves the room; now we only hear the disjointed 9

Miceli (2009), pp. 654-655.

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sound of a trumpet repeating deforming the tune of the can-can. At this point he begins a delusional monologue: In a moment of lucidity, he realises his own failures and his own condition as an outcast. It is at this point that the music stirs, manifesting the psycho-physical state of the protagonist. The disjointed sound of the trumpet, no more lively and clownish than it was in the opening of the party, reveals his sad existential condition that Alberto now seems to want to reject; at the exit of the hall he tries to silence the trumpet player, who has become his alter ego, with an angry and dishevelled gesture. Also in La dolce vita (1960), Le notti di Cabiria (1957), Otto e mezzo (1963) whose soundtrack helps to focus the depths of the film’s structure, and above all La strada, the music does not have a simple and traditional contextualising function, of accompaniment or commentary: It is rather an actual character, as is the case with the «Tema di Gelsomina».

5 Gelsomina e La Strada by Federico Fellini In this film we find exemplified what they have defined as a “single horizon of signification” in which, around this theme, the music and voices of this Fellini masterpiece converge. Let us then follow the events of this theme whose first appearance, as often happens in the practice of film music, is found during the scrolling of the opening titles. It then unfolds inside the stable when Gelsomina looks at Zampanò, completely absorbed in trying on the trousers that have been given to him. At that point she begins to hum softly, almost without realising it, a melody she had heard some time before. Excited, she tells Zampanò: “Do you remember it? … how beautiful she was, Zampanò? That day, in the rain, from that window…” . Noting the total indifference of her companion, Gelsomina, in her gloom, resumes humming in her thin voice “the seventeenth-century melody [in reality it is the Andante della Serenata op. 22 by Antonin Dvorak] heard in the town in the rain”.10 This sweet melody seems to be revealed according to the same mnemonic procedure that Rota took possession of when he composed for which he said he was captivated by melodies that surfaced in his unconscious. The theme reappears in a very particular situation, when Gelsomina and Zampanò arrived on the outskirts of Rome to visit Signor Giraffa’s circus. Inside the tent comes the sound of a violin playing, very gently, that melody that Gelsomina had heard on that rainy day and then hummed to Zampanò. Gelsomina follows that sound, as if captivated, and sees a boy who is playing a violin sitting on the back of a chair. He is the acrobat that Gelsomina had seen performing on the evening of her escape and has the appearance of an angel. The theme, still diegetic, this time is played by a solo violin. The phrasing is broad, the notes sung and very vibrated, in an almost pathetic manner.

10

Fellini (1989), p. 213.

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In the nocturnal stillness of the wandering artists’ camp, that motif once again resonates at the end of the circus show and again Gelsomina follows it. She rises and goes in the direction from which it comes: The viewer also enters into a relationship of empathy with the protagonist, as is the case with commentary music. Gelsomina joins the “Matto” (Madman): It is he who is playing, he has lit a fire in front of his car and is sitting on the running board. The theme will recur when Gelsomina and the Madman practise their number which should appear in the evening show and when they say goodbye before Zampanò leaves prison. The theme, this time on an external level, is repeated three times: In the first the singing is entrusted to the violin; the second sees instead the clarinet prevailing while the strings respond as if they were a second voice; the strings always return to being protagonists with interventions entrusted to the harp that give a fairytale hint of magic to the words of the tightrope walker. Gelsomina’s moods are reflected in the rhythmic and harmonic instability of the musical sequence. The tightrope walker then hums a tune invented to greet Gelsomina, removes a chain from his neck and fastens it to the girl’s, then leaves without turning, singing the song again. At this point, the theme is added to her voice, initially performed by violin and cello, then to the whole orchestra, as in the opening credits, to accompany the gaze of the girl who follows the tightrope walker away, holding the tag in her hand. From that moment on, the theme concretely assumes the function of being a character: It reminds Gelsomina of Madman and, not surprisingly, she often plays it, in her wanderings with Zampanò. Thanks to the teachings of Madman, Gelsomina found the only way to express herself in music. The notes take over the words, in the same way the trumpet seems to be a metaphor for the little wanderer: It is a humble and apparently clumsy instrument, but which in her hands can create very touching melodies. After Gelsomina was abandoned by Zampanò, the theme reappears at the end of the film. Zampanò is walking along a beach and once again hears that melody sung by a girl who is hanging out the laundry and reveals to him that Gelsomina is dead. This news upsets Zampanò who looks up, with the frightened astonishment of the brute who sees the firmament for the first time. He turns his gaze back to the sea. A sob rises in his chest and shakes his body. Zampanò weeps accompanied by the strong embodiment of the theme by the whole orchestra. The events of the “Gelsomina Theme” eloquently represent the ability that music and voice have to take on narrative functions of the highest order, becoming an actual protagonist of the story beyond the simple fictions of accompaniment, commentary and simple diegetic presence. In fulfilling these functions, the musical commentary, given by the resultant of voices, diegetic presences and actual commentary music, assumes characteristics that escape any typing and recall the “absolute present” of operatic dramaturgy that Carl Dahlhaus refers to when he writes: In modern drama the single instant is full of prospective and retrospective references: Far from gravitating to itself, it appears to us first and foremost as a consequence of preterite events and the premise of future events. The single opera scene, instead tends to appear to us as a “pure present”, as an “absolute present” detached from the past and the future.

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In fact, music knows how to “represent”, it knows how to “actualise”, it knows how to fix the dramatic situation in a “timelessness” where perhaps the memory of the past and the expectation of the future even fade.11

It is precisely this type of present that becomes the basis of this, and of many other Fellini films. Gelsomina’s theme, in fact, although substantially referable to the protagonist, is not a simple projection of her ego, but an allusion to a previous poetic fact (it is no coincidence that she hums it to Zampanò). This theme, therefore, is of an allusive nature, that is, it can be entrusted to several situations and “only reveals the dramatic and musical connections in a veiled way”, as Sieghart Döhring rightly emphasised for Puccini’s dramaturgy.12 As often happens in Fellini’s cinema, this very simple melody goes far beyond the traditional categories and functions attributed to the components of a soundtrack and projects the entire filmic narrative into horizons of meaning completely that are unknown to traditional cinematographic semiology.

References Antonioni, M.: Fare un film è per me vivere. Marsilio, Venice (1994) Bresson, R.: Notes on the cinema, translation by Ginevra Bompiani, Marsilio, Venice (1992) Calabretto, R.: Pasolini e la musica, CinemaZero, Pordenone (1999) Cecchi, A.: Diegetic versus nondiegetic: a reconsideration of the conceptual opposition as a contribution to the theory of audiovision, http://www-5.unipv.it/wav/pdf/WAV_Cecchi_2010_eng.pdf (2010) Chion, M.: La voix au cinéma. Cahiers du Cinéma, Paris (1982) Döhring, S.: Opere della maturità: da Madame Butterfly a La Rondine, in Giacomo Puccini, III Act. Percorsi della maturità, theatrical program, La Fenice, Venice (2007) Döhring, S.: Il realismo musicale nella “Tosca”. In: Puccini, Virgilio Bernardoni (ed.), Il Mulino, Bologna, (1996) Dahlhaus, C.: Dramaturgy of the Italian opera. EdT, Turin (2005) Fellini, F.: Intervista sul cinema, edited by Giovanni Grazzini, Laterza, Bari (1983) Fellini, F.: I vitelloni e La Strada. Longanesi, Milan (1989) Miceli, S.: Musica per film. Storia, estetica, analisi, tipologie. Ricordi, Milan (2009) Pasolini, P. P.: Mamma Roma. In: Pasolini, P. P.: Accattone, Mamma Roma, Ostia. Garzanti, Milan (1993) Pasolini, P. P.: Liner notes [without title] of the LP Morricone, La musica nel cinema di Pasolini. In Calabretto, R.: Pasolini e la musica. CinemaZero, Pordenone (1999)

Roberto Calabretto, * 1962 in Pordenone. Associate professor at the D.A.M.S. (Arts, Music and Entertainment Studies Department) of the University of Udine, where he teaches musicology. He is a member of the Board of Faculty for Research Doctorates in Audiovisual studies: cinema, music and communications and the director of the Masters in Film Music Composition of Udine University. He is part of the scientific committee for the “Quaderni di Musica per film” publications, of the research group on Musical Historiography and Film Music of the Levi Foundation 11 12

Dahlhaus (2005), pp. 6–7. See Döhring (1996), pp. 33 – 77; Döhring (2007), pp. 15 - 36.

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of Venice and is in charge of the research project Sacred Music in Friuli between the 19th and 20th Centuries. He has been a member of the Board of Directors of the Giuseppe Verdi Theatre in Pordenone, and was coordinator of the Restoration of Soundtracks on Disk project in partnership with the Bologna Film Archive and headed the local office of the Socrates Grundtvig Programme. His work focuses on 20th century Italian music and examines the issues connected with the role of music in audio-visual language, particularly in cinema. He has published monographic works on Robert Schumann, Alfredo Casella and Nino Rota, on music in the poetry of Andrea Zanzotto and in the cinema of Pier Paolo Pasolini, Michelangelo Antonioni, Andrei Tarkovsky, Luchino Visconti, Alain Resnais and other directors. He has recently edited The Sonorous Screen. Music for Films which was glowingly received.

Music and Film—Accompaniment or Relation. The Vocal and the Instrumental in “Film Music” Dietrich Stern

1 The Film as Mounted Media Since only 140 years mankind owns an universal media of self-mirroring, identification and sometimes self-reflection—the film. It is accessible to the big majority, contrary to traditional arts like theater, art, opera and literature, which widely exist for elites. Different to them film combines optical and acoustical elements of narration on the same data carrier, the classical film strip or the digital media. Theater is a three-dimensional living synthesis of the arts. The fully developed film including music, speech and images copies the living world with two dimensions in the optical projection and three in the acoustical. The broken, mounted material of the film can only fragmentarily represent “reality” or “life”. The imagination of the spectators always has to complete it by its own work of projection. The technical unification of sound and image on the media however led to the common opinion that film mirrors human life in its entity, so that cinema, TV or streaming would give to the consumer “the whole life”. One element however of this, as it is assumed, “natural” reflection does not fit into the illusion of reality at all: the so called “film music”. Its contribution to the representation comes from another space which can be called “off camera”. Even if music is recorded “on camera” as an element of the shot and the scenery or situation, it will be divided from the image, when it gets saved, and mounted to it again, when it gets edited and projected. In this sense every music becomes “off camera” through the process of editing. The technical separation can be used to transpose a realistic music into a non-realistic commentary from the acoustical “off” dimension. The Coen Brothers are masters of this seemingly accidental procedure. In the film Blood Simple (1984) an almost dead person is driven to his macabre funeral, while the car radio plays cold and cynically “Vamos a bailar”. Choosing such “coincidences” the Coens formulate a sarcastic D. Stern (B) Mainz, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 H.-W. Heister et al. (eds.), Word Art + Gesture Art = Tone Art, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20109-7_37

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commentary to the story by using the commenting “off” quality of music in the “on” situation. A pair of terms, which is popular in the present film music discussion, “diegetic” (element of the scene) and “non-diegetic” (added from outside), becomes obsolete by this example. “Diegese” exactly means the whole narration including every element of image, speech, sound, music and acting. It is the result of the production in total. A carefully chosen music as element of the scene is in the same sense “diegetic” as an added music from outside. The widely used terms seem to be arbitrary and in no way useful. But they reflect a custom in mainstream filming: music is seen as a flavor enhancing addition to the story, added to the finished film, and not as an integral element of the sound and image montage, which includes the whole “diegeses”. In every case music breaks the illusion of naturalistic mimesis (which also the film itself cannot pretend). But this break of reality by a fantastic element is widely accepted without a doubt in the media world and is often not even recognized. However, the optical and acoustical “appropriation of reality”, which film realizes by means of shooting, mounting and projecting, does not result out of an integral entity as well as it does not produce it.1 The optical and acoustical shooting or recording changes objects, movements and behaviors, or even better: negates them into a completely different state of material as light and electronic impulses. The possibilities of editing are almost infinite now. Music recording means the same process than shooting the pictures. So the “shooting” of noise, sounds and music submits them to the same process. Film then reconstructs a new relation of tonal levels together with gestural levels like pictures and action. The originally natural relation of acoustical and optical levels becomes an artistic one. To understand its universal function in the “era of technical reproduction”, film has to be divided into its elements. The gestural of the images and the tonal emanation of the music allow the question, in which relation these fundamental levels of human culture can be seen in the film. To follow only popular customs of “accompaniment” in this question will not suffice. Accompaniment is just the consequence of commercial habits, as the history of film music clearly shows, nothing more. The contradiction between film as a popular media and film as a work of art however did not allow to find an original form of sound film including music (with exceptions). This relatively new form of human communication consists of many accidental features. But we lost the productive wondering about this form in a rather short time.

1

Nicolas Born wrote in 1972: “Du kannst nicht davon leben/mit der Wirklichkeit zu konkurrieren. (You cannot live from/competing with reality).” In: Das Auge des Entdeckers, quot. from: Süddeutsche Zeitung, 6.4.2022.

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2 Turning Around the Primary Relation of Tone and Gesture We can assume that before the era of technical reproduction the tone, call, cry, word or melody—by voice or by an instrument—were primary in human cultural activity, and that gestures, movements or images were accompanying these elementary expressions. To go back to pre history: One of the earliest music instruments from caves of the “Schwäbische Alb”, nearly 40.000 years old and made of a vulture bone, produces a scale like the pentatonic. If this scale has adapted human singing from vocal to instrumental, cannot clearly be found out today. The melodic structure of flute sounds compares to human singing. But otherwise the well organized air waves take distance from the voice by fixing tones in objective structures or figures (gestalten). They keep the voice and ban it in the instrument like a fly in the amber. The same happens, when “lieder” or song intonations occur in instrumental music. The movements in the flute melodies may have created an inner movement complementary to the banned movements of the early cave paintings, which sometimes remind to film images.2 On the other side we may have an even older instrumental expression of body percussion, foot stomping or tapping, which already has been proved with primates and other animals. Both forms of expression keep gestural contents. The flute is able to imitate gestures of hunting, beating and running as well as peaceful gestures like bowing, embracing or a calm walking (“andante”). War attacks can be announced by drum beats. The Japanese film director Akira Kurosawa kept scenes form the traditional N¯o theater in his films. There the gestural content of music turns to new impulses for the scenic action. One violent beat of the war drum, some painful high tones of the flute are followed by silence. Here the movement of the actor can speak for itself. This creating and inspiring of scenic movement by a very sparse music is far from “accompaniment”. Music sets free its gestural power. We can also assume that in pre historic cultures music inspired and released movement and dance, just because of its energy and inner movement. The gestural side of music corresponds with its intellectual and spiritual potential. Even very early systems like the pentatonic scale give music the objectivity of structured air waves. Gestures are not just imitated but translated into musical language. From there stems mental practice and training in music. Together with movement, dance and gestural language the training of the mind, sometimes through meditation, may have enabled ritual and magic functions. The Japanese theater still keeps remembrances of magical representations.3 In his attitude towards “film music” Kurosawa started with imitations of western or Hollywood-like uses of music. The collaboration with the Japanese avantgarde composer T¯oru Takemitsu (1930–1996) in the film 2

Werner Herzog, Die Höhle der vergessenen Träume (The Cave of the Forgotten Dreams). History Films 2010. The film presents the vulture bone flute, but considers it necessary to give the amazing strong and moving images in the Chauvet cave an accompaniment of emotionalizing music, which is weak and weakens also the attention of the eye. 3 Sergej Eisenstein received important inspirations for his theory of independence of sound and image from traditional Japanese theater, particularly from the highly stylizided N¯o.

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Ran (1985) enabled him to listen to the activating, non-empathic archaic power of traditional Japanese music and to use it for stronger functions than accompaniment. In the light of the early relation of action and music, as it is assumed here, it looks strange, even absurd, that music in films today has to accompany action or dialogue. This change of importance from accompanying gesture to accompanying sound is not naturally given. It is the consequence of a distinct comprehension of aesthetics, which was born in the nineteenth century, adapted in the silent film and worked out to a full range in the Hollywood film. The sources of these aesthetics are at least partly commercial, originated out of the urge to “impress”, because the story, the narration or presentation did not seem to be impressive enough by itself. If a man runs down a street (on the screen), and an orchestra accompanies him, telling again “run! its dangerous!”, this is far from any artistic logic. It can only be justified by the concern that the image does not look dramatic or dangerous enough. JeanLuc Godard revealed the absurdity open in his film Sauve qui peut (la vie) (1980). A tragic traffic accident is accompanied by tragic opera music. A badly hurt man lies on the street. The camera follows the wife and daughter, who indifferently go away, and there stands the orchestra. When we see it playing, the music starts to take the dominance in the scene immediately. The pictures of the leaving woman and child become illustrations of the self-pitying tragic of the man, which is contained in the nineteenth century music (Amilcare Ponchielli, La Gioconda, “Suicido!”). Thus Godard deconstructs the mechanism of accompaniment, which he seems to consider as useless when it is not aware to the public. On the other side he wins a moment of autonomy for the music, in which it can sum up the inner drama of the film with its original, independent means of expression, or, as Godard would put it: means of impression (procedure of imprinting subjective marks into the artistic material).4 The gestural character of the instrumental music is one of a pathetic, tragic moving down. Thus it forms the essence of the scene, while the scene itself is the gestural explanation of the musical statement (Fig. 1). Many theories about the relation of eye and ear try to vindicate the subaltern role of accompanying music as naturally given. They overlook the fact, that “accompaniment” is just a habit, established only since about 90 years. Nevertheless, the majority of books about “film music” wants to fix this habit as given and ontologically unchangeable. The Aesthetic of Film Music by Zofia Lissa from 1965 established this conventional and superficial sight of the artistic levels in film till today. Most common are statements, that the ear is the older sense and in such a way connected to archaic levels of emotion and to dreams, trance and moods. The eye as the younger sense would be stronger related to intellectual processes and outside events. Biologistic hypotheses go so far to claim, that the ear hears enemy and danger and is the passive sense, which warns and urges to escape, and that the eye distinguishes and finds the booty, and so stands for conscience, aggression and cognition.5 Such theories forget, that there is a fundamental difference between hearing and listening. The second is as well an action of conscience. Imagining a good conversation between two friends 4 5

Godard (1981, p. 45). Hirsch (2013, p. 18).

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Fig. 1 Amilcare Ponchielli: La Gioconda. IV/2, Monologue of the Gioconda. The keyword “Suicidio”, suicide begins with cis2 , thus the appellative6

6

G. Ricordi, Milano, Plate B.B. 533, p. 482 (n.d., ca.1904).

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makes clear how listening is very near to thinking and co-thinking. The active resonance of the listener contains all the intellectual awareness, which is often attributed to the eye. A ranking of the senses in regard of the film doesn’t really make sense. To separate intellectual work from emotional work just continues the separation of art from science, which dates from the nineteenth century and gives art the subaltern role of pure experience, amusement and adventure. It ranks then as something for leisure, contrary to work, business and fight for survival. But there is no necessity to exclude cognition from “event”, as well as cognition and emotion must not be separated regarding the active work of the senses in art and film reception. Acoustic events can be as present and powerful to an awake conscience as optical attractions, and even more, if the mind is actively involved. Already in the uterus the ear builds up communication to voices, sounds and musical objects. Relation to acoustic objects stays then a basis for any listening reception, if it is conscious or not. In the short history of technical reproduction of music however this reality of objects to the ear sense seems to have been forgotten in the aesthetic discourses. Most of the discussions limit themselves to the impact or, even simpler, to the effect of music, but they mix up this surface quality with the essence of music. The concept of an invisible emotional accompaniment, which keeps out of the conscious recognition, arises out of the invisible, technical reproduction of music on wax, vinyl, tape, film strip, CD or internet streaming. The invisibility led to an increasing non-listening. The overwhelming flood of pictures today caused an also overwhelming flood of noise, sounds and music. But the ear sense started to neglect the acoustic attractions, because the eye couldn’t see them. Thus we face an amazing paradox: the original dominance of the acoustic event changes to a subaltern role of “underlining “. The originally underlining gesture occupies dominance and forces music with its universal vocal and instrumental qualities of spirit, movement and emotion into the role of a pale shadow of music. The necessity of such an underlining element does not put an advantageous light on the other elements of the film. Mistakes or weaknesses of script, directing, editing, so to speak of the whole “diegese“, have to be covered by an emotional surrogate. The accompanying essence of gestures and images reveals itself involuntarily, when text or dialogue is merely doubled and illustrated by pictures. Empty sequences in the narration have to be filled by agitating moods of a functional “music”, which loses its musical qualities, because it simply has to work as a stimulant for the reception. The doubling of the different tiers of representation weakens the awareness for each separate element. The more “film music” functions as a kind of “dope” for the narration, the more it fixes its own meaninglessness. On the other side the separation of a functional element for so called “emotion” reveals a mistaken sight of film narration. Spectators would in this sight receive films without music as pure information without emotional participation.7 The disrespect for the art of the images, the script or the acting is astonishing, but even experienced film composers share this opinion. The universalized accompaniment by music in feature films, documentary films, series and every TV production continues in every day life in elevators, waiting loops and broadcasting news. Information may be boring, dry or stressful. It is 7

Hirsch (2013, p. 18).

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boosted by a musical background, to make it more agitating. The boosting may give a feeling of importance or excitement, but weakens the precise content and a clear, conscious treatment of the information. The musical dope itself lacks of any meaning and is completely overheard. A feeling of indefinite agitation ends in dispersion. So functional underlining and enhancement damages every single part of the performance. Such mechanisms of doubling without independent quality of the collaborating elements are not ontologically given. They developed as consequences of narrow, uninspired and commercial media concepts. I hope, I can demonstrate in opposition to them some successful examples of music in film, where autonomy creates a strong performance enriching and extending the film performance.

3 Equality of Music in the Early Film The first sound film experiences began around the year 1903 with the so called “Tonbilder” (“sound pictures”) of Oskar Messter. He synchronized gramophone records with a film projector by an electric motor. The record was the primary media. The film illustrated what was recorded, mostly a song or an aria. The singers where just shown and underlined their musical interpretation by gestures, which they also used on stage. The sound recording became visualized and kept its dominance in connection with the moving pictures. The following short height of the silent film however delivered for music an extreme ambivalent role. On one side the lack of original sounds allowed an integral, well structured composition, in which music stayed independent to the screen. On the other side the film on the celluloid strip lost contact to the music, which met only late and often by accident in the cinema as life music. The demand, that music had to fit to the film, could only very imperfectly fulfilled with ad hoc compiled pieces. Nevertheless the longer growing films demanded that music had to follow them in every shot and sequence as well as in the whole dramaturgical construction. This was the moment for the use of always returning stereotypes in music. Catalogues and collections helped cinema musicians to find something “fitting”, and fitting could only mean doubling. Guiseppe Becce established his “Kinothek”, a catalogue sorted in emotional clichés, which repeated habits of expression from the late romantic. Even Richard Strauss was asked, if his music could be used for such catalogue music. He agreed. The stereotypes, under which Strauss’ music was put into the stock, were, among others: “love desire”, “passion”, “liberation”, “upswing”, “cheers”, “despair”, “torture scene”, “vision”. All these stereotypes of expression may have originally contained mimetic imprinting work into the music material. As habitual “costumes” of expression they later could only trigger reflexes. Their repetition in several films caused more and more indifference. In such a way the musical expression was reduced to absurdity. The sound film continued the use of stereotypes in a larger scale. Music departments in Hollywood produced music strictly according to emotional catalogues or even used pre-fabricated “stock music”. Today the download of “sounds” for every use in films or home picture shows follows the same principle. If people look at their holiday photos, they automatically get some

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“happy” sounds for accompaniment, to upgrade their holiday feeling and to suggest, that they had really nice experiences. This also leads to a possible standardization of feelings, or at least to a standardization (and reduction) of the ability to express feelings. “Film music” today is far from genuine feelings. With few exceptions it triggers just well known reflexes, mostly unnecessarily. If we look at the images, the silent film reached to an artistic height in a very short time of around 15 years. A new, highly elaborated and dramatic language of moving pictures was originated by the work of directors like Eisenstein, Pudowkin, Gance, Lang, Murnau and many others. As Rudolf Arnheim put it: “Few years sufficed to make a fairground amusement a serious art.”8 The gestural power of the image increased dramatically. The intention to compare with the original power of the acoustic level led many directors to an extreme expressive language of the pictures. Far opened mouths, distorted faces, grand pathetic gestures, unconventional perspectives of the camera and sometimes very fast cuts in the montage suggested optical pendants to acoustical drama and power. In the same time, between 1913 and 1930 a revolution of musical techniques and languages took place. But expectations, that the revolution of the images could meet with the revolution of the music, were disappointed. Only few original compositions for long films like The New Babylon by Dmitri Shostakovitch (1929), L’Assassinat du Duc de Guise by Camille SaintSaëns (1913) and Im Kampf mit dem Berg (In Fight With the Mountain, 1921) by Paul Hindemith proved to be equal to the movie in their artistic value. Film directors, even on the avantgarde side, had no sense for the possibilities of a radical expressive modern musical language. Maybe they feared, that it could be too strong for the twodimensional projections. It also may be, that many directors clung to a nineteenth century concept of drama and emotion and wanted to revive the great forms of traditional opera and theater. No doubt this was a demand of the production and management departments, which on the other side were not ready to finance original music of quality. As the composer Arthur Honegger said in regard of his daring and impressive seven hours long music compilation for Abel Gances La Roue (1923): “The only permissible form [of music in film] is the original composition for one special film. Unfortunately this is difficult to realize because of the routine and customs of the cinema operators, who don’t see the necessity of a precisely composed score.”9 He saw the possibilities of modern music underestimated. The form of the silent film could have enabled independent music of value to support and even carry the images, as it happened in the upper mentioned films. Traditional ideas of impression and empathy in a closed drama however didn’t allow such open relations between sound and image. The film form in its openness tended to epic ways of 8

“Wenige Jahre genügten, um aus einem Jahrmarktsvergnügen eine ernstzunehmende Kunst zu machen.” Arnheim (1979/1932, p. 227). 9 Transl. D.S. Gazette des Sept Arts, Feb. 1923, quot. from: Booklet of the music and film reconstruction, Musikfest Berlin 2019. (“Die einzige zulässige Form ist die einer speziell für den ganzen Film hergestellten Komposition. Leider ist das noch schwierig zu realisieren wegen der Routine und der Gewohnheiten der Betreiber der Kinos, die die Notwendigkeit einer gezielt komponierten Partitur nicht einsehen … ”).

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narration more than the film makers understood, and would have allowed to music a wide scale of productive possibilities. A solution for the conflict between images and music in the dramatic narration seemed to be the form of the ballet. Here music literally carries the motion. Chaplin composed a lot of music, when he adapted his silent films in a new sound film version. Easy, not very demanding, with operetta and dance associations, this music seems to inspire and move the acting on the screen, so that it resembles to gestural acting in the ballet. Elements of pantomime amplify this impression. Hanns Eisler helped his friend Chaplin with some instrumentation and arrangements. The sketches, which Eisler noted to the film Circus (1928) in 1947, show impressions of light, comedic gestures and a humor similar to that of Chaplin. The thorough technique of composition however enables a deeper occupation with the character of the “tramp”. Eisler transposes arm movements, the way of walking, sudden turnarounds, in general a mood of surprise and joyful play into his autonomous and worked out musical language (Fig. 2). Thus the musical commentary is more than a simple accompaniment or an imitation. Eislers instrumental music has a gestural quality in the sense of Bertolt Brecht. It is able to present attitudes of a theater or film character with a certain distance, so that the character becomes transparent. In contrast to an aesthetics of empathy with the emotional expression of the character or the film Eisler shows the behavior of the tramp and by that communicates his inner motifs. This method also contains some self reflection as a mark of the dramaturgy. A similar quality of characterization in the theatrical play can be found with Mozart, naturally in a different historical style. Unfortunately, Eislers citation by the “Committee for Unamerican Activities” stopped the work on the film Circus. It stays open, if the gestural quality would have been too strong for the acting of Chaplin, or if it would have inspired and promoted it. Only an experimental montage of some sequences could bring clarity in this question. Eislers high dramaturgical intelligence speaks for the second. Music, which carries the pictures like in the ballet, occurs later in the work of the Italian composer Nino Rota, in films like I Clowns, La Strada or Romeo and Juliet. Even the famous space ships in Kubricks Odyssey 2001 dance to the Donau Walzer of Johann Strauss. Far more difficult became the role of music in films, when it had to underline dramatic action. Its function now was not clear. Had it to be subaltern and low, so that it could not disturb the film, like many filmmakers demanded? Or had it to double dramatic emotions, what in most cases did not seem necessary? In avantgarde films like The Deserter by Pudowkin (1933, his first sound film) or Armored Cruser Potemkin (1925) by Eisenstein the music did not decide, what function it would take. The result was a relatively neutral accompaniment. Edmund Meisel in Potemkin used a moderate modern motoric language corresponding the world of the machines. Jurij Schaporin in The Deserter mixed up marching characters for soviet optimism as well as for suppressing actions of the German police. Both compositions lacked of precise dramaturgical thinking. The consequences of functionalizing under the demands of the “drama” can be recognized. Music reduced its possibilities of an elaborated language to leave the whole attention to the optical performance. In a certain way avantgarde filmmakers neglected their own demands of independence

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Fig. 2 Hanns Eisler: Septett Nr. 2 (Circus), mm. 1–410

and worked primarily on the optical side without much care to the acoustical side. Also in the process of production the film came first and the music last, after shooting and mounting. This ranking counts till today, although a more open sequence of production is imaginable and was realized in film history. Sergio Leone developed the concept of his films together with the composer Ennio Morricone. Immediately Morricone started to write the music. With the finished composition Leone started 10

Verlag Neue Musik Berlin (GDR) (1958).

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the shooting of the film. Musical autonomy with precise relation to the idea of the film inspired and animated the pictures. The animated avantgarde film before 1933 in Germany took musical “blue prints” to organize the abstract moving forms on the screen. Oskar Fischinger, Hans Richter, Walter Ruttmann and others marked their “compositions” as “Visual Music”. A discrepancy was inevitable—the use of a likewise outdated, late romantic music contradicted to the modern optical language of abstract forms. This prevented a convincing gestural relation between optical forms and musical language. From the film and music experiments at the “Baden-Badener Kammermusiktage” (Days of Chamber Music, Baden-Baden, 1928) we have only one really successful example of a new composition for an abstract animated film: Opus III by Walter Ruttmann with music by Hanns Eisler. Eislers “Passacaglia” is much more than a simple accompaniment of Ruttmanns moving triangles, quadrangles or brush swipes. It translates the optical impulses into musically autonomous “gestalten”, with which the composition then starts to work. Again Eislers keeps an independent attitude towards the screen, one of curiosity and awake interest. The music increases the openness for the optical forms without leaving its autonomy. Thus the “Passacaglia” fits well as first movement of Eislers Orchestersuite Nr. 1 op. 23 for the concert (Fig. 3). Almost every film composition of Eisler became concert music. The works for Kuhle Wampe (1932, director: Slatan Dudov, script: Bertolt Brecht) and Niemandsland (1931, director: Victor Trivas) also were easily transformed into concert suites. Certainly he was involved into the conceptualization of the films from the beginning. With songs, ballads and choirs Eisler helped to realize an epic form of music theater in these very early sound films, without damaging the free and epic film form. Vocal elements promoted an even more comprehensible contribution of the music to the subject of the film. There was no question, if music had to “accompany” something. The integral montage of sound and image made this question obsolete.

4 The Term “Counterpoint” The first theoretical reflections of the beginning sound film began in 1928 with Sergei Eisenstein and Vsevolod Pudovkin. They demanded the counterpoint of image and sound, because no element of a composed work of art should double or accompany another. It seemed that this term could lead out of the non-productive dilemma of accompaniment. Eisenstein visited Japan in this year and was impressed by the nonempathic relation of music to the scene in the traditional Japanese theater. “In the Kabuki (theater) it is impossible to talk about ‘akkompagnement’. Just as well you cannot say, that by walking one leg would ‘accompany’ the other, or the diaphragm would ‘accompany’ the legs.”11 With this view Eisenstein was near to the epic music theater, which Brecht and Weill were just developing. The new music theater of Igor Stravinsky since the 1910s had already separated music from action and singing from 11

Eisenstein (1928, p. 10f).

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Fig. 3 Hanns Eisler, Suite für Orchester op. 23, Nr. 1 Passacaglia, mm. 1–1512

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movement. How far Eisenstein and Pudovkin were aware of the precise meaning of counterpoint in music, is not clear. They seemed to use the term in a more metaphoric way. Nevertheless they didn’t misunderstand the term like film music theorists in the 1970s, who thought, it were pure contradiction of music to the pictures. Preferring a doubling underlining these theorists could not see the genuine dialectics of real counterpoint. Two or more elements correspond in a way, that the “otherness”, the difference is just the essence of their unity. Thus musical counterpoint is exactly working. Two voices produce their unity by separating and being the other of each other. Here the comprehension of Eisenstein and Pudovkin ended. In their practical work they looked more and more for parallels between image and music. Another avantgarde filmmaker, Hans Richter, even studied counterpoint with the prominent composer Ferucchio Busoni. He wanted to transpose his studies to the game of abstract forms and figures. But there the “counterpoint” of black and white or round and angular became arbitrary in a certain way. The precise dialectics of the term in a Hegelanian sense was marked later by Theodor W. Adorno and Hanns Eisler in their book Komposition für den Film: “If ever the so emphathically by Eisenstein promoted term ‘montage’ has a right, then in the relation of picture and music …”.13 And a bit further: “The specific moment of unity between music and film lies in the gesture … the reason [for music] exists far less in ‘expressing’ a movement than in initiating it, or more precisely, in justifying it. In the aesthetic impact it is thus a stimulant of the movement, not a doubling, just as well as good ballet music, for instance that of Stravinsky, does not express the feelings of the dancers but keeps them moving. So is, just in the deepest moment of unity, the relation of music to the picture antithetical.”14 From this dialectical point of view it may be clear, that accompaniment of film by music contradicts the elementary conditions of artistic material in film, although nowadays it is often defined as the only possibility of relation. Jean-Luc Godard ironically confessed in his lectures in Montreal, that he would like some musical accompaniment as “ketchup” over the pictures.15 By this he suggested the unspoken question if ketchup is always needed or if it may be eventually unhealthy. Somewhere else he compared functions of accompanying to the role of a lackey or a dog and asked, if we always would like such unwelcome company.16 On the other side Godard wished, that music should be completed by accompaniments of pictures and words,17 13

Adorno and Eisler (2006, p. 64). (“Wenn irgend dem von Eisenstein so emphatisch vertretenen Begriff der Montage sein Recht zukommt, dann in der Beziehung zwischen Bild und Musik.” “Das konkrete Einheitsmoment von Musik und Film liegt in der Gestik… Es ist weit weniger Sinn (der Musik) diese Bewegung ‘auszudrücken’… als die Bewegung auszulösen und, genauer gesprochen, sie zu rechtfertigen… Sie ist also in der ästhetischen Wirkung ein Stimulans der Bewegung, nicht deren Verdoppelung, genau so wenig wie gute Ballettmusik, die Strawinskys etwa, die Gefühle der Tanzenden ausdrückt, sondern sie zur Bewegung verhält. So ist im tiefsten Moment der Einheit gerade das Verhältnis der Musik zum Bilde antithetisch.”). 14 Transl. D.S. op. cit., p. 71. 15 Godard (1984, p. 294). 16 Godard (1981, p. 84). 17 Godard (1984, p. 44).

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so that it could overcome a certain volatile vagueness. The ideas of Godard pick up the discussions from the early sound film. His influence on filmmakers today cannot be underestimated. In his last great, impressive work, Le livre d’images (2018), he wanted an installation of separated sound and screen. The spectators should produce their own mix by walking from the speakers to the screen and vice versa, an idea, which would have pleased Brecht.

5 Vocal Music in the Film Astonishingly the primate of the vocal music in human culture is proved every day in pop music. “Instrumentals” are seldom in this field. Almost always a voice leads the attraction and initiates a communication. It conquers the barrier of inattention more easily. This remark does not only refer to exaggerated emotional forms of singing. Hip Hop for instance seems to be a real vocal outburst of speech. It refers to vocal expression in general. Besides, the songs need only short attention by their length. Video clips try to illustrate the songs and are the complementary gestural interpretation, but the vocal element stays in the center. Instrumental music in concerts requests much more knowledge and endurance. And in film instrumental music is easier overheard than a voice. In the Film Gladiator (2000) the composer Hans Zimmer presents an impressive voice in a fantasy language, sung by Lisa Gerrard. The main character (Russell Crowe) walks through a wheat field. The voice leads to an epic impression of the human condition. It stands for mankind and a peaceful existence, which is threatened by coming wars and fights. The wheat field gives the perfect intensifying counterpoint to the vocal music. The film Troy (2004) shows the defeat of Hector in front of the walls, under the eyes of his family. With the cold face of a winner Achilles tears the corps through the sand. Oriental women voices start a funeral lament, which occupies the attention. The lament of thousands of years about the never ending wars can be heard in these voices, composed by James Horner. The scene itself seems to be just one moment of illustration in this never ending sorrow. Martin Scorsese estimated underlining music as useless and cheap. He thought that a good song could summon up a film, give the essence of it in amplification of the film story. For Gangs of New York (2002) the band U2 wrote a title for the credits, “The hands that built America”, which gave the film an epic end. But in the middle of the story a very short citation of an Irish emigration song summons up the drama much better. While coffins are unloaded in the harbor, new soldiers enter the same ship to be brought into the civil war. A woman voice (Linda Thompson) sings “Paddy’s Lament”, the explanation for the feelings of the young “cannon feed”: “There is nothing here but war, where the murderin’ cannons roar/And I wish I was at home in dear old Dublin”. The Irish folk melody resembles nostalgically the wide landscape of the homeland (Fig. 4).

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Fig. 4 Paddy’s Lamentation (trad.)18 18

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The great soprano vocalise by Ennio Morricone in Once Upon a Time in the West (1986) tells more about the role of the woman (Claudia Cardinale) in the film than her acting in the story. She grows to a mystic figure, in contrast to all the men who have no other idea than to fight and slaughter. In a similar way like Scorsese Godard used songs and chansons as epic stones of interruption or ironical commentaries. The Swedish director Ruben Östlund took some a capella singing into his film The Square (2017). The bizarre character of the voices unmasks the odd background of the art community in Stockholm. Here the vocal music was composed for the film, what happens seldom. Mostly vocal music in films is pre-fabricated as “source music”, contrary to specially composed “score music”. The Coen Brothers use a pathetic Irish hymn of friendship in the film Miller’s Crossing (1990), “Oh Danny Boy”, when the mafia boss starts to extinguish some traitors of his gang. He puts the record on the turntable, listens with a regretful sad face, and at the highest note of the song, at the peak of emotion the car on the street explodes. The detonation explains the exploded feelings of the boss. It has to be restricted, that a voice not always guarantees a better role for film music. German TV productions like to use an US-American pop song, when they want to create a mood of sadness, desire or nostalgia. The action is slowed down, or better: nothing happens. The lyrics cannot be understood and deliver no meaning. A commercial pop product, maybe known to the spectators, is supposed to raise up feelings without any precise content. Vague and exchangeable emotions appeal to the public: don’t you also hear such a song, when you are sad or dreaming? So this is only an appeal to reflexes and always repeated customs, with no effort to give the song a precise motivation or sense.

6 Instrumental Power in the Film As it was already mentioned, instrumental music is much more in danger to be overheard, because it needs more intensive listening. Hans Zimmer created a new Hollywood music style by combining a big classical orchestra sound with elements of rock music, in rhythm as well as in harmony. Attacks of deep drums and basses appeal to the attention, but they also resemble the advertising functions of the fairy ground in early film. Strings and brass instruments, especially french horns, add a noble, overwhelming atmosphere. This orchestra sound can burst into a folk dance like in Pirates of the Caribbean (2003f), when a proud sail ship is setting sails. The dance is not the underlining of the ship’s movement but an interpretation of it appealing to the readiness of the spectators to move with. Even if the style of Hans Zimmer was able to find new attention in the cinema and even if his music is often played in concerts now, he can easily be copied and tends to a certain routine. Especially composed instrumental music today seems the most difficult matter of music in film. Godard also worked with the power of instrumental music by sometimes showing it in the film, as it was mentioned above. In the film Prenom Carmen (1984) the

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Prat Quartet rehearses several Beethoven string quartets. These interruptions of the story seem to move it on. Instrumental music delivers new energy for the ongoing drama, and this can be heard very well, because the rehearsal is shown and not hidden as a vague background. The Austrian director Michael Haneke is influenced by Godard regarding his scrupulous attempt to music. Haneke managed to make an extraordinarily exciting film without any music, Caché (2005), and thus proved his statement, that underlining background music mostly has to cover mistakes or empty passages in the narration.19 This reminds to the early masterpiece of sound film, M by Fritz Lang (1931), which also needed no music at all, except a short whistled motif from “Peer Gynt” by Edvard Grieg. The whistling comes from off the camera and gives the “troll motif” a scary, threatening meaning, just because we cannot see the person, who is whistling, but guess, that he comes nearer. Whistling represents the human voice in a ghostly manner, just between the vocal and the instrumental. Ennio Morricone used it in the film For a Few Dollars More (1965) in the opposite sense, as characterization of the reckless behavior of his hero (Clint Eastwood). Orchestra bells (announcing “fate”), a man choir with rhythmic calls (announcing fight) and a western electric guitar (epic representative of the setting) complete the orchestration, which balances clever between instrumental and vocal elements. To stay with Haneke: His film Code inconnu from 2000 shows deaf-mute young people, who exercise drumming! Obviously they are more than limited vocally. But their instrumental power overwhelms the film at the end and continues into the credits. Drumming as a kind of alarm against the madness of the world takes the initiative. To hear the drums without images at the end of the film makes them more urgent and lasting in the mind of the spectator. Deaf people “hear” the drums with the body. This refers to a most elementary attribute of music, the interaction with the body. People, who can hear however, may concentrate themselves better on the drums, when they see nothing.

7 Résumé To understand music in films as music means an entity of attributes—physical, psychic and mental. “Film music” however often forgets the universal character of music and reduces it to superficial pseudo music. Meanwhile there are many directors, who take care about the role music has to play in their films. The first step, as it could be seen with Haneke (and some of his followers) is the courage to admit silence. To stop the abundance of sounds and cheap music means to create a space for real music. It then can enter the performance like a main character of the film, remarkable, impressive, with clear outlines and communicative strength, neither as “ketchup” nor as a lackey. A sparse appearance seems to be much better than a permanent but overheard accompanying of the pictures. The customary underlining in every day life as well as in the media spoiled the ability to listen in a dramatic dimension. 19

See Cieutat and Rouyer (2013).

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Cinema must newly understand its task to promote a good listening as well as a good watching. The unconsciously influenced spectator is not a good listener. His or her reception becomes poor and one-dimensional. The many levels, on which music can speak, could be answered by a similar multi-dimensional reception. Emotional impacts must not be divided from cognition and active understanding resonance. To read the sense of film cuts is a high cognitive action. To read the sense of music is also a cognitive action, but not meant in an intellectual specialized way but as a complete reception on many levels, the physical, gestural, mental and emotional.

References Adorno, Th. W., Eisler, H.: Komposition für den Film. Last edited by Johannes C. Gall, SuhrkampVerlag, Frankfurt am Main (2006/1969/1944) Arnheim, R.: Film als Kunst. Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main (1979/1932) Cieutat, M., Rouyer, P. (eds.): Haneke über Haneke. Gespräche mit Michel Cieutat und Philippe Rouyer. Alexander Verlag, Berlin/Köln (2013) Eisenstein, S.: Die ungeahnte Naht. In: Idem: Über Kunst und Künstler. Rogner & Bernhard Verlag, München (1977/1928) Godard, J.-L.: Liebe Arbeit Kino. Merve Verlag, Berlin (1981) Godard, J.-L.: Einführung in eine wahre Geschichte des Kinos. Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main (1984) Hirsch, J.: Einige Gedanken zur Wirkung und Funktion von Musik im Film. In: Heiland, K., Piegler, Th. (eds.): Der Soundtrack unserer Träume. Psychosozialverlag, Gießen (2013) Lissa, Z.: Ästhetik der Filmmusik. Henschelverlag, Berlin (GDR) (1965)

Dr. Dietrich Stern, * 1948 in Königswald/Cornberg. Studied school music, musicology, germanistics and history in Berlin (West). Doctorate with Prof. Dr. Carl Dahlhaus at the TU Berlin. Dissertation: Musik und Film: Aneignung der Wirklichkeit. Filmkomposition zu Beginn der Tonfilmzeit (Ms. Technische Universität Berlin, 1981). Composer, arranger, director and theater musician in theaters like Schaubühne am Halleschen Ufer, Ruhrfestspiele Recklinghausen, Schauspiel Frankfurt, Staatstheater Wiesbaden, Landestheater Schwaben and more. Musical Lysistrate and many theater songs. Music critic of the Frankfurter Rundschau and Wiesbadener Kurier. Co-founder of the Hanns Eisler Chor Berlin (West). Editor and author of the periodical Das Argument with volumes about Hanns Eisler, music in the 1920s and 1950s. Film als Anti-Oper. Die Erweiterung der filmischen Handlung durch Musik bei Jean-Luc Godard (1997. Articles about music in films of Coen Brothers, Haneke, Scorsese, Kurosawa, Ozon, Sofia Coppola and Godard, in: Im Dialog: Psychoanalyse und Filmtheorie. Psychosozialverlag Gießen, 2014–2020.

Word Art/Literature and Music

Listening to the Novel Roberto Favaro

1 The Novel as a Sound Space From the interdisciplinary point of view of musicology, which aims to investigate the relationships between music and other artistic languages, the novel—and Italian novel between the nineteenth and the twentieth century above all—can be seen as an actual sound space presenting the reader with a particular complexity.1 Writing conveys sound and musicality on different levels through a polysemic process that acts as a dialogue between elements, or rather as an orchestration. To the musicologist’s eye, the novel appears as an amazingly rich and varied sound reservoir. It is an extraordinary field of investigation, as it offers precious information about the history of musical reception by the society and the other forms of art. It also helps us recreate the history of musical genres in different times and societies and represents a reliable source to learn about customs, places and musical tastes at various stages of their history and development. From a musicological point of view, the novel is attractive for many reasons. For instance, it can be approached as a sound universe, in other words as a music to read. This assumption opens up the view to multiple perspectives and leads our discourse towards the phenomenology of arts, the musical dramaturgy, the sound design, the soundtrack strategy, the sound manipulation of the environment, but it also brings about a new definition of writer, composer and listener. To convey, at least in part, the complexity of this crossroad of instances, refractions, complicity between novel and music, I suggest a few questions: what does it mean listening to a novel? How does the music fit into the flow of written language? What exactly do we listen to in a novel? On which levels do we find the music? Which 1

To read more about novel and music, see Favaro (1993, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2010).

Translated by Federica Lauda. R. Favaro (B) University of Padua, Padua, Italy e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 H.-W. Heister et al. (eds.), Word Art + Gesture Art = Tone Art, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20109-7_38

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music? Only music in a traditional sense? What is a soundscape? And the noises? And the silence? From whose point of view do we listen when reading? And still, can we talk about compositional strategies, sound design and soundtrack? The first point concerns the listening, or rather the listenability of the novel. In the course of its millennial development, writing has progressively perfected its ability to signify, i.e. to translate into alphabetical signs the things of the real and the imaginary world. This has led to the slow but inescapable transition from a predominantly oral culture to one based on the written language. Consequently, the supremacy of the eye prevailed over the dominance of the ear. With the rise of nineteenth-century bourgeois society, the development of writing reached its peak, coinciding with a large diffusion of the semiotic devices, for the authors—with their extensively increased ability to create worlds of words—and for the readers, increasingly able—especially with the acquired silent reading—to make the intangible substance of those imaginary worlds ‘visible’ before their eyes and ‘audible’ within their ears. What we have said so far belongs to the fascinating world of the synesthesia, which occurs when the senses cross, derail, overlap each other. The process of synesthesia here takes place on a homogeneous and centralized ground of signification, the one of writing, and converges in a single sensory field, the one of sight, which allows us to see, smell, touch, taste and, of course, listen to all the things of the world that is being narrated. Roland Barthes talks about the sight as a “signifying’s site” which provokes “an indivision of (physiological) meanings which share their impressions, so that we can attribute to one, poetically, what happens to another”, to the point that “all the senses can gaze and, conversely, the gaze can smell, listen, grope”.2 In short, when reading a text, infinite sensory refractions are created between the plurality of codes and levels of communication. Thus writing also develops specific sound strategies capable of reconstructing, to the eye that listens while reading, the acoustic complexity of an invented world. Italian contribution to the first point of our analysis is extremely important. Twentieth-century narrative, which Gabriele d’Annunzio anticipates by a few years, and which not by chance is directly connected to the best artistic and musical instances of the first European avant-gardes, begins with a programmatic declaration by the Pescara-born writer included in the preface of Trionfo della morte and dedicated to his friend, the painter Francesco Paolo Michetti. Here d’Annunzio puts forward a new idea of novel, or rather the idea of a new kind of novel whose synesthetic tendency is mainly achieved through music, or through the attempt of an extensive musicalization of the text. “Several times we had thought about an ideal book of modern prose”, d’Annunzio writes, “that – having a variety of sounds and rhythms like a poem, uniting in its style the different virtues of the written word – would harmonize all the variety of mystery”, and that “at the same time, together with these accurate signs”, would show “musical elements so varied and effective that they could compete with the great Wagnerian orchestra in conveying what only Music can convey to the modern soul”.3

2 3

Barthes (1985, p. 239). d’Annunzio (1995b, p. 5).

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2 Music in the Flow of Written Words The second point is concerned with the phenomenological peculiarities of the penetration of the musical substance into the narratological texture. In fact, music appears in the text in the form of words that evoke various entities and elements belonging to the world of sound but cannot have the material concreteness of the actually audible sound. The introduction of music into the narrated world, and thus into our reading-listening experience, takes place in the form of words that for many reasons refer to the language of music or to the world of sound, through more or less explicit qualifications by the writer: instruments mentioned or played, voices of atmospheric elements, noises of things and nature, the vocal grain of the characters, actual music (i.e. music really existing) quoted as a discourse and reference or as a real performance, invented music that does not exist in real life, more or less eloquent silences. A musically gifted writer is able to concretize this complex set of musical values on a visual and audible level, leaving, however, ample room for the reader’s free imagination or pre-existing musical experiences. This is a decisive aspect of listening, or rather of the listenability of the novel: the reader may or may not know d’Annunzio’s Wagner, Svevo’s violin and Bach, Grazia Deledda’s tenores singing or launeddas, to give but a few examples, and still he is able to imagine the real sound substance permeating the life of the narrated world. And what if the reader doesn’t know anything of this? This is the point where the extraordinary, unlimited horizon of free interpretative imagination opens up. The fact remains that, as JeanJacques Nattiez says, in any case “the interior, therefore silent, listening presumes the pre-existence of sound”.4 But this is what the adventurous journey of reading implies, especially when it becomes listening. A journey through the sea, which by travelling over and over across the liquid expanse of the text continually reveals new paths, new sounds, because reading a text, as Roland Barthes says, is “a permanent hemorrhage”.5 The differences between real music and its textual representation are to be found in the different temporal nature of the two languages: the real sound lives in the present that separates the already been from the not been yet, it is the slightly excruciating expression of the impermanence of things, it assumes the polyphonic simultaneity of different sound events, it imposes its own temporal process on the general time of all things. On the other hand, the written, narrated, sound undergoes the unmovable diachronic nature of the text, the transiency of the meaning of the word alternated with the one that follows, the impracticability of the simultaneity which is typical of music, to the point that to express two sounds that reverberate at the same instant, more words are needed and therefore more time, as I have just done by writing “two sounds that reverberate at the same instant”: more words in succession have already turned into past what in reality would have been simultaneous, co-present. Moreover, features such as intonation, timbre, speed, intensity remain in an ambiguous indeterminacy, expressed by the writer’s representational ability and delegated to the reader’s imaginative capacity. The experience of reading implies, 4 5

Nattiez (1987, p. 14). Barthes (1989, p. 43).

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as Roman Ingarden6 would say, the process of concretization that takes place in the mode of the imagination. In short, reading means filling in the gaps, refining the indeterminacies, defining the labile and incomplete margins granted by writing. It means recognizing and once again concretizing with one’s imagination the complex and articulated auditory world of the novel, it means giving it a voice. Listening to the novel means to carefully and consciously detect the presence, action, and function of sounds, silences and music within the literary work. It leads us to perceive the narration as an actual and proper sound and compositional space and to recognize its vivid participation in the overall descriptive, poetic and dramatic realization of the different imaginary worlds described by the written words. Thanks to its extraordinary availability, writing allows a sound or a music to come alive in the text and to leave a reverberating imprint in the listening space for as long as it has to remain there, that is, until the writer—or our ability to listen—decides otherwise. Once we overcome this phenomenological obstacle, which concerns the other levels of representation as well, and once the sound has been left free to circulate imaginatively between and within the words of the text, we must consider the salient point of the injection of the musical language into the body of writing and into the world of the novel. By coming into dialogical contact with the other aspects of the narrated reality, this language brings all its lexical, syntactic and material apparatus, that is, the sound with its pitch, timbre, duration, intensity, and its organization into melodies, harmonies, rhythms, structures, and finally the composite set of informative and expressive added values that any music carries with itself.

3 Levels of Sound Reality Another matter of interest concerns the different levels of sound reality that can be found in the novel and that depend on the writing and its reception. Putting aside the soundscape of the real world around us (noises, voices, music) which inevitably surrounds and conditions all our reading experiences, if it is true that the novel sounds while we activate the alphabetical characters with which it is written, by decoding them through reading, it should immediately be noted that this resonance is based on two simultaneous or co-present acoustic and sound dimensions: in fact, while we read, we perceive two cohabiting but distinct sound worlds that could be defined as the music in the novel and the music of the novel or, in other words, as the music represented and the music of the representation. In short, while reading we listen to the sounds that appear in the world of the novel and that diegetically involve the lives of the characters and their composite reality, and at the same time we also perceive, perhaps unconsciously, the sound of the words, the sound of the language, the musicality of the text that serves the purpose of constructing that imaginable world. It would therefore be appropriate to talk about the novel as a kind of music squared, or as a “signifier” music that refers to a “signified” music. 6

Cf. Ingarden (1973).

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There are other examples in Italian fiction, apart from d’Annunzio, which show a formidable compositional aptitude in the field of language, text and writing. I would like to mention at least Carlo Emilio Gadda, and, as for the poetry, the experience of the Novissimi poets Alfredo Giuliani and Edoardo Sanguineti in particular. Talking about the latter, Giuliani says: non può […] parlare senza dilatare enormemente la lingua” making use of parody and a mix of languages to make that “finimondo liquido sintattico che dà subito l’idea della ‘serie’ dodecafonica trasposta nel linguaggio letterario”/“[he] cannot […] speak without dilating the language”; “syntactic liquid cataclysm that immediately suggests the idea of a dodecaphonic ‘series’ transferred into the literary language”.7 As a sum of voices, languages, detritus, linguistic ruins, cultured references and quotations from everyday life, from the deteriorated use of terms and from explicit references to actual music, it seems that Sanguineti, who was directly involved in the musical experiences of the avant-garde thanks to his texts for Luciano Berio among others, gives life to a very particular soundscape which turns into music by creating an ideal acoustic environment formed by a sound space of stratified languages, a dense accumulation of voices that becomes a single writing voice.

4 What Music Do We Find in the Novel? Let’s now come closer to the heart of the matter. The music in the novel is made up of the sum of all the sound elements contained in the narrated world. One hundred years and more of radical music, research, experimentation, emancipation of Schoenberg’s dissonance first and Futurist noise then, the structuring involvement of space by Edgar Varèse, Henry Cowell and Luigi Nono, the assumption of silence—thanks to John Cage above all—as the surface of time that transforms the indeterminate soundscape into an actual musical composition coordinated by chance, lead us to perceive as musical everything that resonates in the novel, including silences and language. But it is more than just our dynamically mobile cultural horizons that facilitate the free interpretation—in this case a listening interpretation of a given artistic work. In many cases (and this happens so many times in the Italian literature) it is the writers, or someone on their behalf within the life of the novel, who guide us in this direction, who make us perceive all the elements that sounds deliberately compositional and functional to the dramaturgy of the work. The musical material in the novel can be schematically divided into two distinct but overlapping areas: music in the traditional sense and music generated through a compositional transfiguration of the soundscape. Silence, that sometimes appears with a powerful expressive efficacy, lies between these two areas of musicality. In general, with regard to the actual music mentioned in the novel, we can say that from time to time this music, with greater or lesser dramaturgical awareness by the writer, operates a special action of enrichment of the emotional and psychological background of the narrated world, bringing into that 7

Giuliani (1961, p. XXVI).

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universe the set of rhythmic, timbric, melodic, harmonic values etc. represented by the musical piece or reference used in the novel, depending on the writer’s ability or intention, as well as on the dramaturgical necessity of the represented scene. In some cases, music has a purely decorative function, or it is used to evoke an element of environmental contextuality, in other words, its function is to describe a given place and situation. But even in these cases, as in any soundtrack, a process of interference is triggered between what we can see (imaginarily) of that world, and the sounds that resonate, albeit only incidentally. In many other cases, instead, the music is a character, a factor of deliberate participatory action in the story, it functions for all intents and purposes as a soundtrack. In any case, music penetrates the narratological texture by explicit deliberation of the writer, who chooses those sounds, those poetics, those sentimental and expressive inclinations, those authors instead of others. Doing so, he operates according to the modes of the soundtrack indeed: by bringing that given music, with all its baggage of history, aesthetics, poetics, expression and content, into contact with the story, the drama and the experience of the novel, he creates a counterpoint of reciprocal conditioning, to the point that the same music which is being used, conditioning the atmosphere of that world, receives new light and turns into something new thanks to the human events and emotions in which it is involved. On a cinematographic level, it is what happens to Beethoven and Rossini in A Clockwork Orange, so fiercely transfigured by Stanley Kubrick in their original essence. On a literary level, apart from Tolstoy’s Kreutzer Sonata, by Beethoven again, let’s think of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde used so differently and therefore so differently acting in Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks and d’Annunzio’s Trionfo della morte. Johann Sebastian Bach’s Chaconne quoted by Italo Svevo in a famous episode of La Coscienza di Zeno is a particularly eloquent example of the transformative effect of music and its dramaturgical action. Bach appears in the novel in the form of an actual performance. The violinist Guido Speier—it is the narrator himself, Zeno Cosini, who tells us about it through his critical listening8 —gives a “modernized” and somehow romanticized reading of this music piece, not only with the aim of showing his own violin skills, but also to create a more sentimental expressive temperature useful to his plan to seduce the young Ada Malfenti. In short, the music that appears in the novel is contaminated with the fragrance, the flavours, the psychological and emotional inclinations of the new world that hosts it. And so, Guido Speier’s version of the Chaconne rightfully enters the long list of transcriptions and rewritings that this piece has undergone in the real history of music from the eighteenth to the twentieth century. However, the matter is more complex and concerns the use of pre-existing music in the vibrant and articulated texture of the novel. Speier interprets the Chaconne just the way Zeno remembers it and reports it to us through the stream filtered by his consciousness, that is to say, just as Svevo makes his character write while he himself writes the novel, giving the Chaconne his final compositional touch. It is no longer even music squared. It is 8

“Bach” Zeno says to Guido Speier “is so unassuming in his means that he doesn’t contemplate a bow handled like that.” Svevo (2003, p. 129).

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Bach-Speier-Cosini-Svevo’s Chaconne. Lastly, we should also add the name of each one of us who, reading those narrated violin notes, gives them the voice he wants, the stylistic imprint he feels. Having said that, there is no doubt that the area on which the novel, and Italian novel in particular, expresses its most extraordinary effects of musicalization and sound inventiveness is the one of the compositional, i.e. explicitly musical, use of the soundscapes that pervade the narrated scenes. The writer devoted to the musicalization of the text, either through his own direct narrative action or through a character’s listening, deliberately manipulates the ambient sounds, transforming them into actual music that affects the auditory and emotional sensitivity of those who live in the novel and of those who, like us, are absorbed in and enveloped by it throughout the reading. It is not a forced interpretation that leads us to read the normal environmental sounds according to the strategies and effects of musical creation. Here the author performs an action of extraordinary compositional interest, acting on the acoustics and shaping it according to his creative strategies in order to dramatize the narrated events through sounds. Among the many possible examples in Italian literature, let’s consider d’Annunzio’s experimental musicalizations in Il Piacere (1889) or in Vergini delle rocce (1895), where the writer uses his compositional strategy to obtain from the aquatic sound of the fountain a harmonic vision similar to Debussy’s contemporary inventions—“È un effetto di sonorità prodigioso. Pare l’artificio di un musico. Credo che un armonista attento troverebbe qui il segreto di accordi e di dissonanze sconosciuti. Ecco una scuola incomparabile per un orecchio delicato”/“It is a prodigious sound effect. It sounds like the artifice of a musician. I believe that a careful harmonist would find here the secret of unknown chords and dissonances. This is an incomparable school for a delicate ear”9 —or again, in Il Fuoco (1900), with a page whose exceptional modernity goes far beyond the most advanced and radical musical currents of that time, transforming the wind and the bells of Venice, its buildings and its many polyphonic voices into a musical flow. One could hear the cadenced sound of the machine, at times the mocking laugh of the seagulls, and already the dull howling coming from the Grand Canal, the vast moaning of the shaken city. [...] Is this not an immense and indefinable musical desire that Venice is so full of? All noises are transformed into expressive voices there. Listen! At the impetuous blow, the city of stone and water began resounding like an immense organ. The hiss and the roar turned into a kind of choral imploration that rose and fell rhythmically. “Can your ear not perceive the line of a melody in this chorus of moans? Listen!”10 9

d’Annunzio (1995b, p. 91). d’Annunzio (1989, pp. 351–353). S’udiva il rumore cadenzato della macchina, a tratti il riso irridente dei gabbiani, e già l’ululo sordo che veniva dal Canal Grande, il vasto gemito della città percossa. […] L’acqua strepitava contro le travi dello sbarcatoio, l’ululo irrompeva dal Canale come dai meandri delle caverne, le campane di San Marco sonavano a vespro; ma il romore confuso perdeva ogni realità immediata e pareva infinitamente profondo e remoto come una lamentazione dell’Oceano. […] “Non è un desiderio musicale questo di cui Venezia è piena, immenso e indefinibile? Tutti i rumori vi si trasformano in voci espressive. Ascolta!” Al soffio impetuoso la città di pietra e d’acqua s’era fatta sonora come uno smisurato organo. Il sibilo e il rombo si cangiavano in

10

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Finally, let’s come to the silence. Some writers make use of it with a musical attitude, as if it were a strategic void, an absence that makes the fullness that follows and precedes it eloquent and more significant; for others it as a privileged area of non-sound within which the signs of some distant arcane mystery show themselves diaphanously; lastly, there are those who consider the silence a sort of opening, a wound made on the surface of the time narrated, like a Lucio Fontana’s cut from which a universe of compressed expressiveness is finally free to flow out. Some examples: “Nel silenzio crepuscolare una voce liquida e forte risonò, simile al preludio di un flauto”/“In the silence of the twilight a strong and limpid voice resounded, like the prelude of a flute” (G. d’Annunzio, L’innocente)11 “Grandissimo era il silenzio, nella pausa: tale che nel percepirlo io mi sgomentai davanti all’immensità delle cose mute ch’esso abbracciava”/“The silence was vast, in the pause: so vast that in perceiving it I was daunted by the immensity of mute things that it embraced” (G. d’Annunzio, Le vergini delle rocce)12 “Voci lontane vibravano nel silenzio, e a lei pareva di sentire ancora le voci della tanca”/“Distant voices vibrated in the silence, and it seemed to her that she could still hear the voices of the tanca” (G. Deledda, Marianna Sirca)13 !; “Gli occhi acuti guardarono lontano, verso l’orizzonte vaporoso, mentre la rude anima assorta sentiva voci arcane vibrare in quel gran silenzio di deserto”/“His piercing eyes looked far out towards the misty horizon, while his harsh soul was absorbed by the sound of arcane voices vibrating in the great desert-like silence” (G. Deledda, Elias Portolu)14 ; “2000 granate protese strappare con schianti capigliature tenebre zang-tumb-zang-tuuum-tuuumb orchestra dei rumori di guerra gonfiarsi sotto una nota di silenzio”/“2000 grenades stretched forth to snatch the tresses of the twilight zang-tumb-zang-tuuum-tuuumb orchestra of noises of war swelling under a note of silence” (F. T. Marinetti, Zang Tumb Tumb)15 ; “Dal viale dei tigli io guardavo accendersi una stella solitaria sullo sprone alpino e la selva antichissima addensare l’ombra e i profondi fruscii del silenzio”/“From the avenue of the lime trees I watched a solitary star light up on the alpine spur and the very ancient forest cluster the shadows and the deep rustling of silence” (D. Campana, Canti orfici).16 “Per intervalli sospesi al di là di ogni clàusola, due note venivano dai silenzi, quasi dallo spazio e dal tempo astratti, ritenute e profonde, come la cognizione del dolore”/“For intervals suspended beyond any phrase, two notes came from the silence, as if from abstract space and time, two notes sustained and deep, like the experience of pain” (C. E. Gadda, La cognizione del dolore).17

una specie d’implorazione corale che cresceva e diminuiva con un modo ritmico. “Non percepisce il tuo orecchio la linea d’una melodia in questo coro di gemiti? Ascolta!”. 11 d’Annunzio (1996, p. 111). 12 d’Annunzio (1995a, p. 112). 13 Deledda (1993b, p. 726). 14 Deledda (1993a, p. 157). 15 Marinetti (1990, p. 327). 16 Campana (1989, p. 37). 17 Gadda (1997, p. 169). For more musical quotes, see Favaro (2010).

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5 What Is the Point of View of the Listening Reader? The sidereal and psychic abstraction of Gadda’s sounds, d’Annunzio’s musicalized waters, Svevo’s violin, Grazia Deledda’s wind, the eloquent silences we have just heard, invite us to ask ourselves: from whose point of view do we listen when we read a novel? This question is highly relevant to the practice of listening to and analysing the music in the novel. Gadda’s protagonist, for example, offers to our ear a wholly subjective deformation of the actual acoustic event, a sunk-within-himself interpretation of the sound he hears. And the others as well activate peculiar forms of reception. We hear the way they make us listen, from within themselves, from their own deviation and psychic instability, we hear the sound filtered through an internal point of view, seeping through a very personal and particular sensitivity. Questioning how the characters in the novels listen, or how the writer or the narrator listens, means exploring in depth the compositional intentions of the novel itself and of the music contained in it. It is useful to qualify the sound space of the book as an acoustic device that contributes to the diffusion of an imaginary sound design and, at the same time, to the possibility of perceiving and understanding it. So, who is listening to what we listen to when we read? Which is the point of view of hearing? Everything starts from the ear of the writer, who makes sure that the narrated worlds are listened to in a certain way. But perhaps, even further, there is the book itself, seen as a particular kind of auricle that collects sounds and conveys them to our listening eye. Once left free to be what it is, the novel allows us to keep for ourselves what we want to hear. Nothing more. From the point of view of narrative determination, the twentieth century Italian novel provides exceptional and highly evolved listeners among its characters, capable of making us hear from a unique, special perspective: analytical and psychoanalytic listeners like Zeno Cosini, listeners prone to nervous pathology as in Gadda’s Cognizione, aestheticising and symbolist listeners as in D’Annunzio, anthropological, archaic listeners, overwhelmed by the perturbing essence of nature as in Marianna Sirca, Canne al vento, Elias Portolu, La madre, Il paese del vento by Grazia Deledda, profound or paranoid listeners as in Almost Blue by the mystery writer Carlo Lucarelli, enchanted listeners as in Buzzati’s Segreto del bosco vecchio, global listeners as in Italo Calvino’s Re in ascolto.

6 Soundtrack In conclusion, the last point is concerned with the specific functions that music may assume in the orchestrative texture of the novel. Referring to the audio-vision, Michel Chion writes: By added value I mean the expressive and informative value with which a sound enriches a given image so as to create the definite impression, in the immediate or remembered experience one has of it, that this information or expression “naturally” comes from what is seen and is already contained in the image itself. [...] The phenomenon of added value is especially at work in the case of sound/image synchronism, via the principle of synchresis,

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the forging of an immediate and necessary relationship between something one sees and something one ears”.18

Similarly to the soundtrack, sound in the novel can act precisely as an added value, as an applied music, as a situation of synchronicity between something that one sees (imaginatively) and something else that one hears in an equally imaginary way. And in this encounter, which takes place along the disconnected line of narrative time, the music brings an enrichment of expression and psychological content, provides elements of temporization and rhythm, underlines and reinforces emotional states, tells with its content something more than feelings, builds intangible acoustic scenographies together with the costumes, the colours, the perfumes, the furnishing styles, the social and historical coordinates of the story. At the very heart of the matter, I think, there is who composes, how much the writer affects the score. But in any case, as Jurij Lotman reminds us in a significant analogy with the words of Chion: The semiotic nature of the artistic text is fundamentally dualistic: on the one hand, the text simulates reality, suggesting it has an existence independent of its author, to be a thing amongst the things of the real world. On the other, it constantly reminds us that it is someone’s creation and that it means something.19

Thus the action of the writer often appears to be fully compositional, i.e. committed to the conscious musicalization of the text aimed at “meaning something”, which is achieved through accurate musical choices suggested by reasons of psychological affinity with the story or by special characteristics of the piece that brings added value on all levels of musical expression and information. For this reason, the novel is a fascinating object of study for musicology because above all, it encourages us to listen to it and receive it as if it were real music for all intents and purposes, albeit resonating in the special mode of fantasy.

References d’Annunzio, G.: Il fuoco. Mondadori, Milano (1989) d’Annunzio, G.: Le vergini delle rocce. Mondadori, Milano (1995a) d’Annunzio, G.: Trionfo della morte. Mondadori, Milano (1995b) d’Annunzio, G.: L’innocente. Mondadori, Milano (1996) Barthes, R.: The Responsibility of Forms. Critical Essays on Music, Art and Representation. Hill and Wang, New York (1985) Barthes, R.: The Rustle of Language. University of California Press, Berkley (1989) Campana, D.: Canti orfici e altre poesie. Garzanti, Milano (1989) Chion, M.: Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen. Columbia University Press, New York (1994) Deledda, G.: Elias Portolu. Newton Compton, Roma (1993a) 18

Chion (1994, p. 5). Lotman (2004, p. 73). Lotman continues: “This double interpretation leads to a game in the semantic field: “reality-fiction”, which Pushkin expressed with the words: My fancy draw sweet tears from […]”, ibid.

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Deledda, G.: Marianna Sirca. Newton Compton, Roma (1993b) Favaro, R.: L’ascolto del romanzo. Mann, la musica, i Buddenbrook. Ricordi, Milano (1993) Favaro, R.: Zwischen Dekadenz und Comic-Strip: Stimmen, Klänge und Musik in der italienischen Literatur des 20. Jahrhunderts. Weidler, Berlin (2001) Favaro, R.: Sound, Music, Writing—The Soundtrack of 20th Century Italian Literature. Boulevard Books, Oxford (2002) Favaro, R.: La musica nel romanzo italiano del ’900. Ricordi, Milano (2003) Favaro, R.: Musiche da leggere—Romanzi da ascoltare. Pagine sonore dalla narrativa italiana del ’900. Ricordi, Milano (2010) Gadda, C.E.: La cognizione del dolore. Garzanti, Milano (1997) Giuliani, A.: Introduzione. In: I Novissimi, poesie per gli anni ’60, a cura di Alfredo Giuliani, Rusconi e Paolazzi, Milano, pp. I–XIX (1961) Ingarden, R.: The Literary Work of Art. Northwestern University Press, Evanston, Illinois (1973) Lotman, J.: Culture and Explosion, ed. by M. Grishakova (= Semiotics, Communication and Cognition 1, ed. by P. Cobley). Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin, New York (2004) Marinetti, F.T.: Zang Tumb Tuum. Newton Compton, Roma (1990) Nattiez, J.-J.: Il discorso musicale. Per una semiologia della musica. Einaudi, Torino (1987) Svevo, I.: Zeno’s conscience. Vintage Books, New York (2003)

Roberto Favaro, * 1961 in Padua, graduated in philosophy at the University of Padua, specialized in musicology at the Humboldt University of Berlin and studied electronic music at the Padua Conservatory. He is the director of the Civica Scuola di Musica C. Abbado, which belongs to Fondazione Milano, and teaches History of Music and Musical Theatre at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan, where he was also deputy director. He collaborates as a visiting professor with the Academy of Architecture in Mendrisio (University of Italian Switzerland) where he held the chair of ‘Sound Space—Sound design’ from 1999 to 2018. As a Distinguished Visiting Professor, he taught History of Music at the Faculty of Design and Arts of the University Institute of Architecture in Venice (Iuav) from 2002 to 2012. He is the artistic director of the Teatro Lirico in Milan, for the opera and classical music areas, and the chief editor of the four-monthly musicology magazine Musica/Realtà, founded by Luigi Pestalozza. In the field of academic research and study he explored the relationship between music and other artistic and communication disciplines, with a particular focus on literature, architecture, visual and plastic arts, cinema and audiovisuals in general. His numerous books includeL’ascolto del romanzo. Mann, la musica, i Buddenbrook (1993); Zwischen Dekadenz und Comic-Strip: Stimmen, Klänge und Musik in der italienischen Literatur des 20. Jahrhunderts (2001); Sound, Music, Writing—The soundtrack of 20th Century Italian Literature (2002); La musica nel romanzo italiano del ’900 (2003); Musiche da leggere— Romanzi da ascoltare. Pagine sonore dalla narrativa italiana del ’900 (2010); Spazio sonoro. Musica e architettura tra analogie, riflessi, complicità (2011), Suono e Arte. La musica tra letteratura e arti visive (2017), Musiche per immagini. Guida all’ascolto di 70 brani che suonando descrivono mondi (2020); Parola, spazio, suono. Il teatro musicale di Adriano Guarnieri (2022).

Still Songs In-Between and Beyond—Reflections on the Musical Dimensions of Paul Celan’s “Todesfuge” and Manfred Winkler’s “Und Die Fiedler Fiedeln” Mariama Diallo

1 Introduction The life and afterlife1 of Celan’s renowned2 “Todesfuge” [Deathfugue3 ] has been marked by its forceful and devastating immediacy, its tragically ill-fated contemporary reception, and the enduring transformative and intermedial impact on other artists, one of whom is German-language writer, translator, painter and sculptor Manfred Winkler, Celan’s preeminent translator into Hebrew, who has only recently begun to be recognised for his artistic achievements by German-language scholarship. The encounter of Celan and Winkler grows far beyond their biographical affinities as survivors of the Shoah displaced from their native Bukovina through a strong darkly musical poetic influence on Winkler that cultivated an intensely productive involvement with Celan’s oeuvre with a particular fascination for his poetic rhythms and cadences, as he stresses in a letter to H.-J. Schrader: Naturally, Celan had a very strong impact on me. I felt this impact particularly forcefully during the translative work—it was a musico-verbal influence that I have seldomly experienced. Since I was still in the early stages of my Hebrew period, the complicated verbal 1 My warmest thanks and gratitude to my supervisor Monica Tempian who gave me the idea for the topic of this article, for their unsurpassable support, knowledge and inspiring Gedankenanstöße. 2 All translations are by the author unless specified otherwise. Texts from Paul Celan and Manfred Winkler have been quoted from the following editions: Celan, P.: Gesammelte Werke in sieben Bänden. Eds.: B. Allemann, S. Reichert, and R. Bücher. Suhrkamp, Berlin (2000), henceforth abbreviated as GW I-VII. Winkler, M.: Haschen nach Wind. Die Gedichte. Eds.: M. Tempian and H.-J. Schrader. Arco, Wien (2017), henceforth abbreviated HW. 3 On the title’s translation into English see Felstiner (1995), pp. 32–33.

M. Diallo (B) School of Languages and Cultures, Humanities & Social Sciences, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 H.-W. Heister et al. (eds.), Word Art + Gesture Art = Tone Art, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20109-7_39

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quality of his poetry flowed from my pen. I was completely dazed by the experience as if they were my poems. […] Celan’s influence on my poetry, since, as you rightly point out, I cite him very often, is of a somewhat different kind, and probably unconscious, since I do not, after all, write ‘celanian poetry’ [...] I had no difficulty a priori with this danger and could comfortably lean on Celan when it tempted me without becoming ‘celanian’”4

This musico-verbal force of Celan’s work that guided much of Winkler’s translative practice also reflects in his own poetry5 where he created vivid dialogical bonds, often playfully unfurling rich intertextual references through motivic, rhythmic and cadential echoes and parallels.6 A remarkable example that illustrates these is presented in his poem “Und die Fiedler fiedeln” [And the fiddlers fiddle]; a cognizant poetic response to “Todesfuge” and to the contemporary misconceptions and accusations that Celan faced from critics after its publication in Mohn und Gedächtnis in 1952.7

2 “And the Music Plays Along”8 Tainted by the disastrous reception of “Todesfuge” in the 1950s and 1960s, many of the conclusions drawn by critics later on have followed the tendency of promoting oversimplified and sometimes quite simply fallacious judgements about the poem’s complex musical dimensions, and the critical, highly ambivalent evocations of music and poetic musicality of Celan’s poetry in general: reaching from claims of an allegedly naïve, Romanticised attitude towards music in his earlier work9 that transforms into the complete abandonment of any kind of musicality in his later poetry, 4

Winkler qtd. in Schrader (2013), pp. 89–90; my emphasis. Reflecting on this impact explicitly in “Ein Baum irgendwo” [A tree somewhere], dedicated to Celan, he writes: “von deinen Gedichten blieb auch/ein hartrhythmisches Silbenfach/der Sprache” [from your poems stayed also/a hard-rhythmical syllable-fach/of language], HW, p. 77. 6 This has been as previously discussed by M. Tempian and H. J. Schrader, cf. Tempian 2015; 2016a; 2016b; Schrader 2013. 7 The poem first appeared in Rumanian translation published under the title “Tangoul Mortii” [Death Tango] in Bucharest in 1947. The first publication as “Todesfuge” in German appeared in the small collection Der Sand aus den Urnen, Vienna, 1948, but was revoked due to numerous errors and misprints. The fugal metaphor in the title emphasises the compromised German tradition (with its musical “masters”, such as Bach and his The Art of the Fugue) within which the poem is locating itself, heightening structural and technical notions. Celan, “Tangoul Mor¸tii”, Contemporanul, May 1947. Translated by P. Solomon; reprinted in Felstiner (1995), p. 29. 8 See Migdal’s “Und die Musik spielt dazu”, Migdal 1986. 9 Rooting from Huppert’s recollection from 1966 of Celan declaring: “Nor do I make music anymore, as at the time of the frequently evoked ‘Todesfuge’ … I now distinguish sharply between poetry and tone art.” As Englund observes, this claim stands in curious tension with a contrary remark by Celan a few years later in which he acknowledges that “these texts are musically assembled and have their own musical dramaturgy too”, even describing himself as “eigentlich Komponist” [actually a composer]; a fascinating and much neglected tension of differentiation and identification that Englund examines in more detail in their study on the intersection between poetry and music, exposing music and musicality as metareflective key principles of Celan’s poetry in his struggles 5

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avoiding any kind of “Musizieren mit den Worten”,10 to short-sighted confusions over the function of musicality that mound in the absolute identification with the notion in question, as countless stubborn attempts to prove the poems are in fact fugue or stretto, literally rather than metaphorically,11 over major misconceptions of the poems as Augenmusik [music for the eye] and examples of pure form, disconnected from and transcending worldly matters and historic reality,12 to the atrocious accusations of aestheticizing and profiting from the horrors of the Shoah, sometimes exhibiting anti-Semitic agendas13 —“Todesfuge” has travelled a long, troubled way. Despite Celan’s cynical reaction to some of the misapprehending comments, the poem’s reception affirmed the potential dangers of poetry that could be perceived as musical, even if it stood in attentively critical dialogue against these notions.14 It may have influenced his aim for sharper distinction between “poetry and tone art” and his refusal to read the poem publicly. Yet, in spite of this afflicting experience and Celan’s contradictory statements on poetic musicality, music remained a recurrent theme and fundamental force throughout his entire oeuvre.15 Working against the often-perceived abandonment of music and poetic musicality in Celan’s poetry, and undeterred by the poem having been famously “lesebuchreif gedroschen”,16 my readings continue from these previous findings that aim to disprove this misconception, tracing some of the dialogical threads that are evoked through the complexly entangled musical dimensions that weave through his poems, and creating connections between Celan’s “Todesfuge” and Winkler’s “Fiedler” poem. for a genuine voice reflective of the experience as a Jewish survivor of the Shoah. Huppert (1988), p. 320; Englund (2016), p. 1ff. (Translations by Englund, modified.). 10 “from the end of the fifties, [Celan] avoided any kind of ‘music-making with words’ whatsoever”, Buck (2002), p. 11. 11 The commonly repeated thought that the poem “is composed in the style of a fugue” (Holthusen, 1954, p. 390) still seems to find unjustified footing for relentless scholars today, not solely ascribing it fugal elements or styles but even trying to unfruitfully prove the impossible, that “the ‘Todesfuge’ is indeed a fugue” with “verbal polyphony”, peaking at bewildering claims, such as that “the poet composed this text for the organ” (Olsen, 2002, pp. 189; 205). See also Englund’s chapter “Play Death Sweeter: Musicality, Metaphoricity, Murder” for their insightful discussion of the poem’s contemporary reception. Englund (2016), pp. 21–54. 12 Blöcker (1959), qtd. in Englund (2016), pp. 27–28. 13 Confrontations, such as Adorno’s famous dictum, it is “barbaric” to write poetry after Auschwitz (Adorno in Kiedaisch, 1995, p. 30) contorted into propaganda, such as Baumgart’s: “Celan’s ‘Todesfuge’, as such, and its motifs […]—all of it composed in a savvy score—did it not already prove too much pleasure of art, of the despair that is made beautiful again through it?” (Baumgart, 1965, p. 48), and similar responses: “the death-cry of the slaughtered, harmonised into perfect verses. […] This beauty of Paul Celan, weighed against the brown doom seems questionable to me”, Schacht, “Auschwitz als Kunstacker” (1965), Die Zeit, p. 47, written as a reaction to a positive article on Celan by Lohner, “Dem Verderben abgewonnen” (1965), Die Zeit, p. 26 (as noted in Felstiner, 1995, p. 320). On these misconceptions see also Felstiner (1986), pp. 251–255 and Emmerich 2000; On the treatment of music see Englund (2016), pp. 21–30. 14 Cf. Englund (2016), p. 25ff. 15 On the intersections between poetry and music in Celan’s poetry see Englund (2016); see also Englund (2009), Neumann (1990), Pöggeler (1993), Seng (1995), Zenck (2003). 16 “Slogged” or “threshed textbook-ripe”, Celan in: Huppert (1988), p. 320.

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Limitations of space prevent a systematic close reading of the entire text, nevertheless, it is hoped that the selected examples support the contention that the polysemous and sometimes paradoxical notions on music in “Todesfuge” create intricate, conflictladen tensions that charge with an immense force against the prevalent, entrenched contemporary apprehensions of music and poetic musicality, deep-rooted Romantic conceptions of musical euphony and transcendence, and German cultural heritage, including the literary tradition in which it is mindfully positioned itself. Through the direct confrontation of music and musicality with the recent horrors of history, and by foregrounding the active lethal role they played in the Shoah, “Todesfuge” charges against music and musicality as an accomplice and political agent, writing itself into Celan’s search for a new poetic language and notions of musicality that can truthfully reflect on the historical moment the poet finds himself in, in rejection of the disjointed burdens of traditional euphony of music and poetic musicality. As he formulates later in response to an inquiry by the Librarie Flinker in Paris in 1958: With gloomy things in its memory and surrounded by a dubious substance, German poetry can, even if consciously actualised in the present of the tradition in which it stands, no longer speak the language that many an inclined ear still seems to expect from it. Its language has become more sober, more factual, it distrust the “beautiful”, it tries to be true. It is therefore [...] a more “precise” language, a language that, among other things, also wants to know its “musicality” to be located in a place where it no longer has anything in common with the “euphony” that still resounds more or less blithely with and alongside the most horrible things.17

3 Celan and Winkler: An Encounter 3.1 In Dark Shades of “Play” Manfred Winkler’s “Und die Fielder fiedeln” delivers a fascinating poetic response to Celan’s “Todesfuge” that sturdily steers against the misapprehending contemporary voices with a profound solidarity and a deep supportive understanding of Celan’s evocations of music in its ambivalent role and significance. Und die Fiedler fiedeln

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 17

… und die Fiedler fiedeln ihres Todes hohe Fugen die lockengeschläften Fiedler mit den langen Bärten der Trauer und des Wahns. ihre Kinder jedoch jubeln und preisen: wir wollen miteinander Haschen spielen und Blindekuh, wir wollen miteinander spielen des Todes hohe Fugen, wir wollen miteinander kreisen um den Ball, wir toten Kinder der Toten.

GW III, p. 167.

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9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18.

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Reich uns deine bleiche Hand des Wahns, Mensch, zu diesem Reigen vor dem offenen Tor, denn uns steht noch eine Ewigkeit bevor. Reich uns deine bleiche Hand zum Spiel vor dem Tor. Ein Abendmann spielt dort die abgrundtiefe Ruh seiner kreisenden Hände wie ein Gebet. Reich uns deine bleiche Hand, Abendmann, unsre Welt ist eine Handvoll Asche in einer aufgehenden Sonne und Saat, von Dunkel umrahmt.

And the fiddlers fiddle

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18.

… and the fiddlers fiddle their death’s high fugues the curltempled fiddlers with the long beards of grief and of madness. yet their children laud and praise: we want to play together catch and blindman’s buff, we want to play together death’s high fugues, we want to circle together around the ball, we dead children of the dead. Reach us your pale hand of madness, mensch, for this roundel in front of the open gate, since for us an eternity still stands ahead. Reach us your pale hand for the play in front of the gate. An evening man plays there the abysmal rest of his circling hands like a prayer. Reach us your pale hand, evening man, our world is one handful of ash in an ascending sun and seed, framed by dark.

The poem is saturated with18 intertextual references not just to “Todesfuge” but also to other poems and translations by Celan, with thematic, motivic, rhythmic and cadential correspondences, echoes and transformations, unveiling aspects of major relevance in the dialogue of musicality between the poets and these two poems. Winkler’s rhythmic and structural correspondences echo the careful, precise structuring of “Todesfuge” that stresses metaphorical analogies with conceptions of musical composition or the technique of a fugue,19 leaving yet enough space for the flexibility of Winkler’s own rhythmic flow and interesting formal and semantic 18

HW, p. 612. Countless scholars have identified elements that remind of the fugal form, such as “rapid shifts between different motifs” (Elleström 1989, p. 135), polysemic repetitive structures, contrasts and oxymorons that have been interpreted as counterpoint or the stretto technique (Buck, 1993, p. 97; Olsen, 2002, pp. 196; 199), and multilingual homonyms as polyphony (Kolago, 1986, p. 143; Neumann, 1990, p. 97; Olsen, 2002, p. 193ff.). However, as Englund asserts, emancipating from

19

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transformations. The “Fiedler” poem comprises 18 verses, exactly half the amount of verses in Celan’s poem. The four shorter stanzas appear to correspond, on the one hand, to the four emphasised beats of Celan’s repeated opening line “Schwarze Milch der Frühe wir trinken sie […]”, which is followed by the mechanically repetitive rising and falling of the verses “wir trinken […] wir trinken/wir trinken und trinken […]”20 in the first, second, fourth and fifth stanzas, with the added “wir schaufeln” [we shovel/dig] in line 4, racing along in the characteristic relentless cadence, unstopped by punctuation. In addition, it connects to the four appearances of “der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland” in the second half of Celan’s poem, quietly echoing the metaphorical weight of its brutal fluency and the systemic and inescapable character of the repetitiveness along with the loaded connotations of mastery.21 Winkler’s use of the same paratactical syntax, which is particularly characteristic of Hebrew, directly continues from the “wir” lines 2, 3, 4 in “Todesfuge” into the “wir” lines 5, 6, 7, 8 in “Fiedler”, impelled by the dialogical continuance delivered in and through his poem that is also implied in the triple dots opening the poem’s first line, foregrounding the importance and influence of the language in both poems22 with several significant transformations: Winkler’s “Fiedler” builds on and carefully juxtaposes his poem to the prisoner’s unrelenting torturous acts of drinking, shovelling, and performing music and dance in the extermination camp, and the notions of complete uprooting from Jewish tradition we encounter in the dark, lethal musicality in “Todesfuge”. The music that the prisoners are commanded to play by the SS guard in Celan’s poem only catalyses their own murders: “He calls out more darkly now stroke your strings then as smoke you will rise into air/then a grave you will have in the clouds there one lies unconfined”.23 The contemporary conceptive Romantic allegories of musical transcendence of the soul, euphony and harmony mutate from the alleviating symbolism into the factual horrors of historical reality, redefining the the suffocating attempts to reconstruct Celan’s poem as a verbal fugue that limit its metaphorical and semantic complexity, interpretations as such have failed in their insistence on these notions not as metaphorically evoked fragments of potentialities of meaning serving a particular function in the poem, but instead as literal affirmations of the musical paradigm. Cf. Englund (2016), p. 35. 20 “Black milk of daybreak we drink it […]”; “we drink […] we drink […]/we drink and we drink it”; translation: Hamburger 2002, pp. 31–33; cf.: “we drink (it)/we drink (it) and drink (it)” translation: Felstiner (1995), p. 27. 21 “death is a master from Germany”, Hamburger 2002, pp. 31–33. Cf. Felstiner (1995), pp. 39–40. 22 Other Hebrewisms in “Todesfuge” can be found in plurilingual syntax and semantics, such as the often-noted paradox of the homonym “ein Mann”, which means “a man” in German but also sounds like “ayin Mann”, meaning “no man” in Hebrew and Yiddish (both languages resound here: the written word of “ayin” in Hebrew, and the Yiddish pronunciation of “ayin”, the latter of which is phonetically closer to the German “ein”). This is quite similar to Winkler’s use of “Mensch” (see below). Both Celan and Winkler make use of this branching and interlacement. See also Englund’s chapter “The Art of the Fugal Poem” in Englund (2016), pp. 30–36; Reichert (1988), pp. 159–169; Olsen pp. 192–203. 23 Translation by Hamburger 2002, pp. 31–33 (my emphasis). As Englund has stressed, the use of the adverb “then” emphasises that “music remains the operative force behind it” (Englund, 2016, p. 29).

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upward motion by the rising smoke of the cremated murdered and poisoned bodies of Jews. Winkler’s Jewish fiddlers are not only deeply embedded in aspects of Jewish tradition, with their preserved “curltempled” appearance and unshaved long beards, even if grown from grief and madness, but we encounter a new dimension of enabled, perhaps even empowered agency that stands against the oppressed and abused acts of music-making in “Todesfuge”, while revealing the trauma of the Shoah as an irrevocable part of Jewish identity. They appear as a united entity of plural fugue fiddling fiddlers, introduced in the assonances and alliterations that reinforce the interconnectivity of the different elements of tradition, kinship and suffering within one another on a morphosyntactic level, beginning with the connected “f, “fi” and “i” sounds that are first contrasted by the heavy “o” assonance before being followed by the combination of “fu” (ll. 1–2), combining the phonetic elements of the fiddlers with the “u” from “Trauer” [grief] presented as having become part of their identity (l. 3). This is further developed through the merging of elements in “lockengeschläften” (“o/ä/f/en”; l. 2), that carries the rhythmic downbeat with the repetitive “en” suffixes until mounding into the visual rhyme of plural nouns (“Fugen” and “Bärten”, ll. 2,3), connecting motifs of old Jewish tradition, with “Trauer” and “Wahn” [madness] joining as new parts of the tradition and aspects of community. This is followed by assertions of their unity through the accumulating resonances of “wir” [we] and “uns” [us], mounting into an almost empowering notion of community. The change from the first voice (ll. 1–4) that, from the outside in third person, observes the fiddlers’ traditional appearances and their children allegedly cheering and praising, into first-person perspectives, voicing the demands of the children in their insistent “wir wollen…” [we want] (ll. 5–8), before shifting into the voices of the growing “us” of the fiddlers, the parents, and possibly all the murdered Jewish Shoah victims (ll. 9–18) guiding us to the end of the poem, affirms this impression.24 The dead children’s persistent demands to pursue ordinary children’s interests, stressed in the alliterative and anaphoric “wir wollen”, followed by the semantically reinforcing “miteinander” [with each other] repeated thrice, reveal a heartbreaking naivety in their inability to grasp the full significance of their death. The variation in line 8 visually imitates the repeated conjugation of “wir wollen” as if transforming the adjective in “wir toten” [we dead (children)] into an intransitive active verb in present tense, as in “we are deading”, describing a state of being actively dead, as opposed to “sterben” [to die] (the act of dying), let alone “töten” [to kill], in a strangely all-encompassing, and yet childish, almost playful notion of death that does not allow them to realise that they have died, as it simply mirrors the “big”, capitalised noun “Toten” [(the) dead] in the same line when referring to their dead parents. The specific games the children long for reveal a dark undertone growing from the fatality of “Musik spielen” [playing music], as they unveil allusions to persecution (catch), to part of the population who during and after the Shoah turned a blind eye of denial 24

Even though the voices of the Jewish prisoners, and also Celan’s violins are plural, the oppressive perspective of the extermination camp officer in “Todesfuge” prevents a reading of this kind of empowered communal unity suggested in “Fiedler”.

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(blindman’s buff), and to the executions (ball/bullet and the roundel). This develops and insists on Celan’s charges against notions of innocent music and musicality: Winkler foregrounds supposedly innocent, “pure” and beautiful elements, such as children’s play, dance, and other musical performances that have long lost their innocence or neutrality, if in fact they ever existed in the first place, as they mingle with the taints of signification from the realities of the Shoah; with abuses through beloved folksongs that were ordered to be sung or performed by concentration camp prisoners as means of ridicule, humiliation and torture, often becoming hallmarks of exterminations,25 notions of beauty (particularly that of beautiful musical “play”) as camouflage and deception, which recalls instances of prisoner orchestras receiving deported Jews in extermination camps such as Auschwitz with joyful songs before leading them to their executions,26 the use of blasting music to drown the noise of gun shots and victims’ screams,27 and orchestral bands forced to deliver musical performances at inspections as an embellished façade of fraudulent beauty and play that helped deceiving foreign delegations28 ringing along; moves played like intricate pieces in a perverse scheme of illusion right in front of the blind(ed) eyes of the public. These allusions are accentuated in the embrace of the rich plurality of semantic meanings of the term “spielen” [to play] as indicated in the parallel syntax of lines 5–6 where “Haschen spielen” [play catch] and “[Fugen] spielen” [play the fugues] open up to the understandings of “spielen” as executing music,29 playing games, along with echoes corresponding to the above, in “to toy”, “to (en)act” and “to pretend”, similar to the English language, while linking back to the etymological roots of the fugue and the Latin and Italian fuga, meaning “flight” or “fleeing”, as well as “ardour”.30 The first voice’s observation from the outside that described the children’s seemingly inappropriate lauding and desiring to play games, turns out to be an unreliable, superficial account in the light of these dark realities, perhaps reflective of the critical reception of Celan’s “Todesfuge” and those who so fatally misconceived the poem in its provocative musical evocations. 25

This included mocking and self-insulting songs, popular German folksongs and children’s rhymes, and famous classical compositions to be sung and performed with orchestras on death marches to the concentration or extermination camps and mass executions, during slave labour and physical torture. Many of these songs connected prisoners to often peaceful and nostalgic memories revealing yet another vicious detail of how music became an instrument of torture, terror and control in the hands of the Nazis. Cf. John (2001), pp. 274–280. 26 As Esther Béjarano who performed in the prisoner orchestra at Auschwitz: “We had to play while the trains arrived and the people were driven directly into the gas. The deported waved to us joyfully, because they thought that a place where there is music cannot be so bad. This was part of the methods of the SS.” Qtd. in John (2001), p. 280. 27 Cf. John (2001), pp. 270–280. 28 “[Foreign delegations] did not see through the insidious design of this murderous stage set, which was decorated with all the props of normality; they did not see that the apparently safe surroundings were faked, nor that behind the wings there lurked the cruellest terror.” (Ulrike Migdal qtd. in John (2001), p. 288). 29 With an interesting accidental reversed semantic correspondence in English. 30 Cf. “fugue”: https://www.etymonline.com/word/fugue#etymonline_v_14235.

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Another interesting detail can be found in the fiddlers not “playing” the strings or violin by means of diversion, but they are fiddlers who “fiddle”31 directly as an intransitive verb in present tense that is juxtaposed to the forced acts of musical “play” that corresponds to the uses of “spielen” in Celan’s “Todesfuge”, where it is exclusively used in connection with the Nazi officer’s commands as the following selections illustrate: er befiehlt uns spielt auf nun zum Tanz/[…] Er ruft stecht tiefer ins Erdreich ihr einen ihr andern singet und spielt/[…] stecht tiefer die Spaten ihr einen ihr andern spielt weiter zum Tanz auf/[…] dein aschenes Haar Sulamith er spielt mit den Schlangen Er ruft spielt süßer den Tod der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland er ruft streicht dunkler die Geigen dann steigt ihr als Rauch in die Luft dann habt ihr ein Grab in den Wolken da liegt man nicht eng.32

The SS officer’s “playing” with the braids of dead Jewish girls and women, followed by the repeated lethal command to keep working, keep playing music and “play[ing] death sweeter” by gently, deadly stroking the violins darker for the “dance” (the forced labour and the deceitfully staged parade) are established in direct anticipation of murder as an inescapable effect. The frequently translated version of Celan’s “Geigen” [violins], which in German bears a strong phonetic resemblance to the word “Galgen” [gallows], carrying with it a suffocated echo of the lethal instrumentalisation of music, into the more ambivalent “stroke your strings” by Hamburger and Felstiner welcomes a reading of an individual musician forced to play the solo violin.33 This detail stresses the experiences in the analogy to the violin solo representing the fiddle of death in Mahler’s Fourth Symphony, where the equivalent term “streichen” [to stroke] is also used, thereby hinting at the forlorn isolation prisoners 31

The terms “Fiedler/fiedeln” connotes both an archaising effect and a derogative one in reference to an unskilled violin player, such as the casual fiddler in Jewish folk music, but also like amateur musicians that formed prisoners’ musical ensembles in concentration and extermination camps, enhancing the fiddler’s identification as victims of the Shoah, while standing in tension to the Totentanz motif (see below). 32 GW I, pp. 41–42. “he commands us strike up [play] for the dance […]/He calls out jab deeper into the earth you lot you others sing now and play […]/jab deeper you lot with your spades you others play on for the dance […]/your ashen hair Shulamith he plays with the serpents/He calls out more darkly now stroke your strings then as smoke you will rise into air/then a grave you will have in the clouds there one lies unconfined”, translation by Hamburger 2002, pp. 31–33. 33 The choice of “stroke” also connotes a potentially violent strike and appears particularly suitable in the contrast of the implied gentleness, reflective on how “murderers could prove to be delicate lovers of music. [As] Fania Fenelon […] reports from Auschwitz: ‘The camp commander Kramer wept when we played Schumann’s “Träumerei”. Kramer gassed 24,000 human beings. When he was tired from his work, he came to us and listened to music. That is what is incomprehensible in the character of the Nazis: they were able to shoot, murder, and gas people and afterwards be so sensitive.’” Qtd. in John (2001), p. 275.

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faced. The solo was tuned one whole tone higher into an eerie, shill and tense tonality, originally subtitled: “Freund Hein spielt zum Tanz auf; der Tod streicht recht absonderlich die Fiedel und geigt uns in den Himmel hinauf”,34 which echoes closely throughout “Todesfuge” in text and motif. Winkler’s underlining of the fiddlers’ unity, agency and identity carefully opposes the forced divide from the perspective of the Nazi officer’s “ihr einen ihr andern” (also paralleling how families, friends and love ones were ripped apart in the Shoah, which is further stressed by the joined parents and children speaking from the same strange ethereal place in “Fiedler”), embraced by the sense of community and tradition that is heightend through affinities to depictions and narratives, such as the representations of shtetl Jews and Hasidic fiddlers35 by Marc Chagall and Sholem Aleichem36 that reinforce these notions. The escalation of lethal innocent “play”, in parallel to Celan’s unveiling of deadly musicality, highlights the problematization of the conflicting ideas and ideological tensions presented in “Todesfuge” and the perceived disconnect of musicality from discursive or political agency.

3.2 This Reigen is not a Reigen The dance of the Reigen takes up the Totentanz (dance of death/danse macabre) motif from the late medieval genre and Mahler’s Fourth Symphony in “Todesfuge” with another few fascinating augmentations. On one level, the circular folkdance37 is used to describe the scene taking place in front of the open gate with the fiddlers fiddling “high fugues” and the children impatiently expressing their yearnings to play games, which is suggested by the use of the demonstrative pronoun “this”, thereby also reaching over to the satiated connotations of deadly “play”38 that are further stressed in the variated syntactic echo and semantically synonymous use of “Spiel” [play] in line 12.39 In support of Celan’s critique, Winkler’s “this” adopts 34

“Friend Hein plays for the dance; Death plays the fiddle quite strangely and fiddles us up into the sky.” Cf. Brown (2003), p. 615ff. 35 Music played a significant role throughout the different streams and movements of Hasidic thought and culture, with music and dance being used to unite the community and inspire religious devotion. 36 As commented by Schrader: “Intersecting images of death striking up the Totentanz [dance of death], the Celanian ‘Todesfuge’ and the shtetl images of fiddling in Sholem Aleichem and [Marc] Chagall”, in HW, p. 829. See also Tempian 2015, p. 102. 37 The ancient round dance is popular in countless cultures and nations. Here, it may evoke connotations to the Rumanian folk dance hor˘a and the Jewish horah as added motifs of Jewish tradition. 38 This is further encouraged through the hint of polysemy in “Reigen”, which usually refers to the roundel dance, but also sometimes to the dance tune, with common compound nouns being “Reigenspiel” (roundel play) and “Kinderreigen” (children’s roundel), cf. “Reigen”: https://www. dwds.de/wb/Reigen. 39 Cf. “Fiedler” ll. 9–10; 12.

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a similar function to the adverb “dann” [then] in “Todesfuge”40 that defines music as a major operating lethal element of the Shoah. At the same time, he expands on the analogy of the torturous repetitive labour as a literal “dance of death” that has mutated into a monstrous reality.41 The dance’s stress on the circular repetitive motion links with the experiences of seemingly endless torture, Celan’s inescapable cadences in “Todesfuge”, the dooming circling around the ball (deadly “play” and deadly bullet) in “Fiedler”, and eternity behind the gate (“Fiedler”, ll. 10–11). At the same time, the dance evokes the Rumanian predecessor of “Todesfuge”—“Tangoul Mor¸tii” [Death Tango/Tango of Death]. Death Tangos referred not solely to actual tangos that prisoner orchestras were forced to perform, but it was used to describe orchestration of death marches and “whatever music was being played when the Germans took a group out to be shot” (Felstiner 1995, p. 30), linking into the abovementioned notions.42 “[T]his Reigen” therefore becomes synonymous for “this Death Tango”, while underlining the plurality of the dialogical existence of “Todesfuge” in translation, also including Winkler’s own, much in correspondence to Celan’s own poetics of poetry as an ever-instable and non-absolute event, always on the move towards meaning; towards an Other.43 In what Englund describes as a dynamic of musico-literary metaphoricity that unveils the “inherent contradiction of the metaphorical copula, always saying simultaneously ‘is’ and ‘is not’, and the act of interpretation as an active confrontation with this dissonance” in the metaphorical claim of “Todesfuge” to be and simultaneously not be a fugue, Winkler seems to follow this intrinsic opposition. In the very first line when referring to the fiddler’s “Todes hohe Fugen”—one is tempted to even directly read “Todesfugen” here—the poem unveils a mutation of the title with the reverberance of height (smoke/grave in the air), while creating several further dissonances in the fugues being fiddled, as opposed to strings being stroked or violins played, and the change into plural, rather than “a” or even “the” “Todesfuge”, thereby pointing at the plurality encompassed in Celan’s “Todesfugen” [Deathfuges]: the published Rumanian translation, the German version in Mohn und Gedächtnis, other translations, and perhaps also transmedial transformations, such as Celan’s recording of the poem for radio that also slightly varies in text from the printed version and heightens different aspects through oral rhythms, tempo, voice and recording quality, as well as other adaptations, defying

40

As above. Even though the Totentanz typically portrayed the universality of death, which is opposed by the specificity of the mass murder in the Shoah, certain aspects are taken up, such as the notion of music and dance luring people into doom or representations of the process of dying as a dance struck up upon the beguiling music played by death or the devil, reverberating as mutated factual manifestations in both poems. Cf. Cosacchi (1955), pp. 1; 12. 42 As Felstiner adds: “For Celan to call the poem ‘Death Tango’ was to annul the dance that fascinated Europe during his childhood—the essence of life as urbane, graceful, nonchalant.” Felstiner (1995), p. 28. 43 As he proclaims in his Meridian-speech: “[The poem] is always on the way. […] [It] aims towards an Other, it needs this Other, it needs this counterpart. […] The absolute poem—no, it does most certainly not exist, cannot exist!” (GW III, pp. 198–199). 41

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the idea of an absolute or ultimate state. In a similar demeanour to the metaphorical function of the fugue in “Todesfuge”, Winkler’s “Reigen” describes the scene in front of the gate, while simultaneously implying that the verses and words describing the scene is a dance, a Totentanz, Death Tango, and a Todesfuge, untangling quiet statements that lead us back to the beginning of this poetic dialogue, claiming: this Reigen is (not) a Death Tango; this Death Tango is (not) a Todesfuge; this (Todes-) fugue is (not) a poem. The poem becomes “a site of dissonance, dependent upon a dynamic of identity and difference, which takes place between the concepts that it brings together and which triggers its high-yielding semantic potential”.44 Winkler’s preoccupation with the tensions between identification and difference demonstrates a strong emphasis on his difference and differentiation: while in Celan’s poem the coerced dance anticipates the shooting and gassing, the Reigen in “Fiedler” ties in with the open gate and the affirmation in line 11: “since for us an eternity still stands ahead.”

4 “Beyond the Humans” The importance of Winkler’s central theme of the in-between and border-crossing, which has previously been explored by Tempian,45 already becomes apparent in the examined spreading in-between these concepts, yet this is even reinforced by the strange liminal sphere from which the dead Jews speak, “in front of the open gate” with “eternity still [standing] ahead”, and an abyssal “Ruhe” [rest, quietude] being played by a pale-handed “Abendmann” (evening man)—a peculiar figure that combines multiple levels of possible representation and signification: on the one hand it may represents death or more precisely the process of dying (as it refers to dusk or evening, rather than night), on the other perhaps a conductor with “his circling hands like a prayer”—a conductor of death “[playing] there the abysmal rest” in an inversion of the idea of musical transcendence, linking it to Celan’s “der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland” and the loaded semantic potentialities, particularly notions of the musical maestro, the SS voice that drives “Todesfuge”, and German “mastery” of systemic mass murder, with the, in this context, alienating simile “like a prayer”, that simultaneously heightens the potential designation to a “Rabbi Meister” or even God.46 Yet another possibility is suggested in the paratactical syntax of lines 9 and 15 (“Reach us your pale hand […], mensch,”/“Reach us your pale hand, evening man,”): the balanced rhythm created through the repetition of “Reach us your pale hand” appearing thrice altogether, always in the same intervals, acting almost like a counter-beat to Celan’s “Schwarze Milch der Frühe”, already 44

Englund draws on Ricoeur’s theories on metaphoricity before applying them to Celan’s interplay of poetic and musical dynamics. Englund (2016), p. 13; cf. Ricoeur (2008). 45 Tempian examines an array of examples of threshold motifs and border-crossings that weave all throughout Winkler’s work. Cf. Tempian (2016b). 46 Cf. Felstiner 1995, p. 39.

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announces an analogism, yet the repeated punctuation that separates first “mensch” and then “evening man” from the rest of the verse, positioning it curiously entombed at the end of the line, implies that the “evening man” and “mensch” are semantically linked. This is even further developed in the bilingual homonym “Mensch”, meaning simply “human” in German, which resounds in the Yiddish word “mentsh” for “a good person”,47 although usually referring to the male term, also used synonymous to “a man”. In this skilful return to Celan’s use of this very homonymic “[k]ein Mann”/“ayin Mann” -contrast, Winkler invites for the interpretation that his “evening man” is this very “(not)man” from “Todesfuge”, supporting the questioning of what makes a “Mensch” a “mentsh”, a “man” a human or humane person or instead perhaps simply an Unmensch.48 At the same time, the syntactical and visual separation of “Mensch” implies an imminent border to humanity and their world of the living to the world from where the voices of the dead fiddlers resound: after their cremated murdered bodies rise as smoke and ashes, they now appear from their dark “grave in the sky” (“Todesfuge”, l.33) where their world has become sinisterly literal “a handful of ash” (“Fiedler”, l.16). It is a world of thresholds located between two distinct states of death: fronting an open gate facing a somewhat solid eternity that stands in front of them, upright, steadfast, rooting from the gate, and bordering the obscure abyss of rest that stretches somewhere below; a world, it seems, “beyond the humans”: Fadensonnen über der grauschwarzen Ödnis. Ein baumhoher Gedanke greift sich den Lichtton: es sind noch Lieder zu singen jenseits der Menschen. Threadsuns over the grey-black wasteland. A treehigh thought

47 48

As well as the English derived “mensch” as an exceptionally good person. Unmensch: someone brutal, cruel or monstrous, often representatives of a fascist regime.

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grasps the lightnote: there are still songs to be sung beyond the humans.49

There are a number of remarkable correspondences in Winkler’s poem”, intended or not,50 as it seems to have taken on the role of this Celan’s “tree-/high thought”—a thought, a poem, an interlocuter,51 rooting from “Todesfuge” and growing beyond— with the fiddlers “grasp[ing]” the synaesthetic “lightnote” in their “high fugues”, along with echoes of the abyssal grey-black wasteland, the motif of the sun in connection with the seeds that one can imagine finely spread over the earth like the thin “threads” of the suns, and the liminal place “beyond/the humans”. It is particularly the combination of the multidimensional height of the fiddlers’ fugues, which can be understood in terms of physicality, being located high up above the abyssal wasteland, and the musical “height” of the register, in echo of Celan’s lightnote that stand out in the light of an interesting observation by Englund with regards to a musical adaptation of “Fadensonnen” by Denhoff titled “Es sind noch Lieder zu singen”: after a compositional display of intense gravitational tensions, “the song grows out of the lightnote”52 into an exceedingly high register, which, as Englund notes “might be heard as located, in a physical sense, beyond the human: not only does it lie far beyond reach of the human voice, but the higher partials in the extreme tremble lie outside the range of frequencies audible to the human ear” (Englund 2016, p. 160; my emphasis). It exceeds thus the heights from the eerie scordatura of Mahler’s fiddle of death (tuned from G-D-A-E to A-E-B-F#), growing through and beyond the “height” of the fugue as reference to the pinnacle of skill and musical “mastery”, beyond the conceptions of musical transcendence that have already been established as lethal, and further beyond the humanly graspable heights of the lightnote, leaving only the fragmented threadsuns and the isolated pitch within human reach. 49

GW II, p. 26. Dated: November 1963 in Paris, first published in Atemkristall (1965), later in Atemwende (167). Cf. Celan (2020), p. 854. Translation by Englund (2016), p. 156. 50 Tempian places Winkler’s “Und die Fiedler fiedeln” within one of two intense periods of writing in German (1963 and 1967) during which the poet showed a deep preoccupation with the trauma of the Shoah, and also worked intensively on his translation of Celan’s poetry into Hebrew. Layout and placement in his folders point towards 1967, making it certainly possible that Winkler had known Celan’s “Fadensonnen”. Email communication of 16 February 2022. 51 On notions of “Gedicht”, “Gedanken”, “Gedenken” and “Danken” [poem, thoughts, remembrance and thanking] see also Celan’s Bremen speech, GW III, pp. 185–186. 52 “The combination of the overall ascent with the downward movement of the individual lines gives the impression of a laborious struggle between the forces, where gravity continuously seeks to hamper the scaling of the keyboard’s register, pulling each entry down to the low C—that is the pitch […] associated with the terrestrial desolation […]. The attempt to reach the lightnote finally succeeds: […] The F# is reached […], the two-note rhythm on the C disappears, so does the low register […]. [T]he anchorage to the musical ground is cut off and the music seems to levitate. […] The song begins on the F#, suggesting a kinship with the pitch towards which the music strove to rise in the middle section: the song grows out of the lightnote.” Englund (2016), pp. 159–160.

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It is perhaps from this far-beyond liminal place that the fiddlers fiddle where we encounter this limited possibility from “Fadensonnen” that acknowledges the need for songs still to be sung; where the fiddlers are able to fiddle Celan’s high lightnote, that evidently lies so far beyond the grasps of humanity, and transform it into song; where we encounter this tightly limited glimpse of hope. It seems that the only possibility for humans lies in the reflection on the fragmented threads that are reached down to them through the acknowledgement of their limits and the openness that allows them a glimpse of the note (never, however, the complete song). Celan’s “Fadensonnen” offers no suggestion that humans will in fact ever be able to sing these songs53 that are still required to be sung. Denhoff even implies a return to the wasteland.54 Winkler appears to align with these suggestions that it is not the human thought that can reach the lightnote: it is the dead fiddlers fiddling in the shadow of the Shoah in the liminal world beyond the humans, and possibly only because they are songs “framed by dark”.55 The only hope for the “Mensch” lies in the grasping for the fragmented threads that they are chosen to be given by the fiddlers. The repetitive demands of the fiddlers to “[r]each us your hand”, appear less of an invitation but more of an urge or last-minute-call for the humans to reach for their dead hands for a glimpse into their world, facing the “handful of ash”, that they have left behind. In spite of the connotations to the Unmensch, the Meister, the unforgettable horrors, there is a suggestion of (limited) convergence in the fiddlers’ demand to humanity to face them, their murdered children, their world of ashes, and take responsibility as the only way forward from the abyss played by the “Abendmann”. Yet Winkler, too hints at this as perhaps truly being “beyond the humans” in their demands for the “pale hand”, suggesting that reaching up can only be achieved in death when it is really already too late. After the entombing “o”-assonances of the verse endings “vor dem offenen Tor”, “bevor”, and “vor dem Tor”, reinforced by the rhyme (ll. 10–12) that mirrors the finality of Celan’s only rhyme in “Todesfuge”,56 the last stanza of “Fiedler” implies a kind of limited hope in the alpha-omega-alpha assonance in “aufgehenden Sonne 53

Scholars such as Wögerbauer have argued that the “singing of songs corresponds to the grasping of the lightnote”, taking for granted that human thought can in fact reach the lightnote. Wögerbauer, “Die Vertikale” pp. 120–121, qtd. in Englund (2016), p. 161. 54 As Englund concludes, “the allusive reappearances of the repeated C, the static rhythm and the bass register suggest a return to the ‘Ödnis’, allowing for the interpretation that the songs located beyond [hu]mankind are, after all, not available to [humans].” Englund (2016), p. 162. 55 As Brecht aptly expressed: “In den finsteren Zeiten/Wird da auch gesungen werden?/Da wird auch gesungen werden. Von den finsteren Zeiten.” [In dark times/will there also be singing?/There will also be singing. About the dark times.] Qtd. in and translated by John (2001), p. 294. 56 “der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland sein Auge ist blau/er trifft dich mit bleichener Kugel er trifft dich genau” [death is a master from Germany his eyes are blue/he strikes you with leaden bullets his aim is true], GW I, p. 42; Hamburger 2002, p. 33. The childlike hackneyed rhyme, deadly in the notions of the “master race” (cf. Felstiner 1995, p. 39), also connotes a sense of bitter nostalgia for both poets in its reflection on the abuses of folksong and the childhood worlds, destroyed in the Shoah. For Winkler who in his earlier poetry wrote poems in harmonic rhymes and rhythms, including two collections of children’s verses, which he later considered “immature fingerexercises”, this may even be accompanied by a self-critical gaze into his earlier poetic practices,

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und Saat” [ascending sun and seed] that reinstates the notion of a return and beginning with a last iambic alpha-stress on “umrahmt”, even if it is irrevocably linked to the “Dunkel” [dark/darkness] it encapsulates,57 with the seeds’ potential to grow from the ashes of the Shoah; a hope not for the “Mensch” or humanity as a whole, but rather for the victims of the Shoah. It is the kind of repetition that reminds of something circular with rounds from one pole to the other, yet never returning to exactly the same place or moment in time; a movement quite distinct from the lethal systemic repetition of “play” in “Fiedler” and “Todesfuge” and the inescapable reiterations of the Nazi detention and murder facilities. It is the movement of encounter, of remembrance, of solidarity; a fragmented glimpse, a traversing “something”, a connection that can be found in the “Wege” [ways, paths] and “Umwege” [detours] of poetry; a kind of homecoming58 in the search for places or areas beyond: None of these places can be found, they do not exist, but I know where, especially now, they should be, and … I find something! […] I find what connects and leads, like the poem, to [a movement of encounter59 ]. I find something—like language—immaterial, yet terrestrial, something circular that returns to itself across both poles while—cheerfully—even crossing the tropics: I find … a meridian.60

5 Conclusion In Celan’s “Todesfuge” musical representations of dance, the vocal, and the instrumental mound into a synonymous whole of deadly “play” with little differentiation between their signification as all actions are commanded by the oppressive SS guard.

while ambiguously reflecting on the conflict of Celan’s “pain-laden rhyme” (GW III, p. 136). Cf. Tempian’s afterword in HW, pp. 844–845; 855. See also Tempian 2015, p. 102. 57 This unveils a soft echo of Celan’s Mandelstam translations, particularly one of the three socalled “Jewish poems”, “Diese Nacht: nicht gutzumachen” in the motif of the black (“Dunkel”) and yellow (“Sonne/Saat”) suns with hints to the powerful last stanza: “Judenstimmen, die nicht schwiegen,/Mutter, wie es schallt./Ich erwach in meiner Wiege,/sonnenschwarz umstrahlt.” [Jewish voices that were not silent,/Mother, how it echoes./I awaken in my cradle,/surrounded by sunblackened rays.] This poem feels especially present in Winkler’s “Fiedler” with the black apocalyptic sun, and SS and Neo-Nazi symbol, and Mandelstam’s “gates of Jerusalem” that disappear in Celan’s translation, becoming simply “vor Jerusalem” [in front of Jerusalem]. Celan (1983), p. 34 (my emphasis). Cf. Cavanagh 1997, pp. 132–133. 58 “Does one take, when thinking of poems, does one take such routes with the poems? Are these routes only re-routings, detours from you to you? [Sind diese Wege nur Um-Wege, Umwege von dir zu dir?] But they are also at the same time, among many other routes, routes on which language becomes voice, they are encounters, routes of voice to a perceiving you, creaturely routes, blueprints for being perhaps, a sending oneself ahead toward oneself, in search for oneself … A kind of homecoming.” Translation by Joris, P. in Celan (2011), p. 11; GW III, p. 201. 59 “Ich finde das Verbindende und wie das Gedicht zur Bewegung Führende” GW III, p. 202. 60 Celan (2011), p. 12. Translation by P. Joris (modified; emphasis in original).

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This would change in his later poetry following the poetic encounter with his “Russian Brother” Osip Mandelstam, where the vocal art of singing61 as well as speaking are more frequently characterised with the potential as an aesthetic form of resistance and remembrance, growing against the notions of being silenced, rooted in the reflection of the darkness and trauma of the Shoah. It unveils the contextual specificity of “Todesfuge”, composed in times when Celan saw no place for notions that implied any possibility for the so recently, so deeply defiled songs that were still deceptively veiled in superannuated Romantic conceptions of musicality, ignorant of their undeniable agency in the Shoah; when, as the poem’s disastrous reception demonstrated perhaps most evidently, not even his pronounced critique was able to stir the contemporary concreted denial and incognisance. Winkler’s “Fiedler” emphasises this challenge of the Romantic sentiment, while still being anchored in the indisputable historical realities in support of Celan. In the light of his intense occupation with Celan’s poetic oeuvre, the trauma of the Shoah and his newfound home in Israel and the Hebrew language,62 he picks up on Celan’s changing notions of musicality through the accumulation of signifiers of agency, the emphasis on elements of Jewish tradition, the motif of the fiddlers, and in the urges in united first-person voices that seem to metaphorically hint at the idea of choral song, even if conscious of the thought that the poetic representation we are offered in “Fiedler”, can only ever arrive at fragmented poetic reflections on the necessity that “there are/still songs to be sung beyond/the humans”. Through its transformations, the poem accumulates into a statement asserting its dissonance and Otherness to “Todesfuge”, much in the sense of Winkler’s claim “I do not, after all, write ‘celanian poetry’”, progressing in the circular returning language movements he gives himself to, to that find “what connects and leads, like the poem, to a movement of encounter” or as Winkler declares: “With each poem, I surrender myself to the image that it urges me to create, and to the music in the language movement.”63 In spite of fundamental differences in their approaches and poetics,64 distinct poetic voices and rhythms, and often divergent notions of musicality throughout their works, Winkler’s transformations in his poetic response embrace Celan’s ambivalent, 61

Cf. Neumann (1988). After his deportation to a Transnistrian labour camp in 1941 and his subsequent forced move from Czernowitz to Timisoara in 1944 during the repatriation of Jews in Rumania, Winkler immigrated to Israel in 1959. Cf. Tempian 2015, p. 104, Tempian (2016b), pp. 93–94; Schrader 2013, pp. 85–86. See also Schrader (2011). 63 “Ich überlasse mich bei jedem Gedicht dem Bild, zu dem es mich drängt, und der Musik in der Sprachbewegung”, Winkler in Winkler & Bergel (2012), p. 269. 64 As Tempian notes, Winkler’s poetic conceptions align with Romantic conceptions, such as Novalis or Schlegel as “his poetry seems to be set in motion less by stringent thought constructs and specific expressive intentions than by tonal or pictorial associations that are sensitively captured and developed […] [acting] as an instrument almost without volition, to give voice to the sensations and images, sounds and sequences of intonation that flow to him unintentionally, and assemble themselves.” Tempian in HW, pp. 845–846. 62

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critical evocations of music with a deep supportive understanding and determined solidarity that resounds in dialogical echoes of remembrance; a darkly encircled hope living in the ashes of the Shoah and beyond the humans, and yet a decisive one for songs of remembrance still to be sung; songs of resistance: still but not silence(d).

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Kolago, L.: “Die ‘Todesfuge” von Paul Celan als literarische Fuge: Zum Problem der LiteraturMusik-Beziehungen. Polyaisthesis 1(2), 139–144 (1986) Migdal, U. (ed.): Und die Musik spielt dazu: Chansons und Satiren aus dem KZ Theresienstadt. Piper, Munich (1986) Moore Olschner, L.: Fugal Provocation in Paul Celan’s “Todesfuge” and “Engführung”. German Life Lett. 43(1), 79–89 (1989) Moore Olschner, L.: Celans poetologisches Verstummen und Weiter-sprechen. Jahrbuch für Internationale Germanistik 43, 57–78 (2011) Moore Olschner, L.: Von der Kontrafaktur. Paradigmatisch-poetologische Resonanzräume zu Paul Celan. John Banville (2006/2008)—Lawrence Norfolk (2000)—Geoffrey Hill (1974/1978). In: Blum-Barth, N., Waldschmidt, C. (eds.) Celan-Referenzen. Prozesse einer Traditionsbildung in der Moderne. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen, pp. 159–182 (2016) Neumann, P.H.: “Lieder Jenseits der Menschen”. Das Motiv des Singens bei Paul Celan und in neuer Deutscher Poesie. In: Das musikalische Kunstwerk: Geschichte Ästhetik, Theorie. Festschrift Carl Dalhaus zum 60. Geburtstag. Laaber-Verlag, Laaber, pp. 767–776 (1988) Neumann, P.H.: Zur Lyrik Paul Celans. Eine Einführung. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen (1990) Olsen, S.: Celan’s “Todesfuge”: The musical dimension of a verbal composition. In: Meyer, M.J. (ed.) Literature and Musical Adaptation. Rodopi. Amsterdam, pp. 189–212 (2002) Pöggeler, O.: Die göttliche Tragödie: Mozart in Celans Spätwerk. In: Jamme, C., Pöggler, O. (eds.) Der glühende Leertext: Annäherungen an Paul Celans Dichtung. Fink, Munich, pp. 67–85 (1993) Reichert K.: Hebräische Züge in der Sprache Paul Celans. In: Hamacher, W., Menninghaus, F. (eds.) Paul Celan. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main, pp. 156–169 (1988) “Reigen”: Digitales Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache. https://www.dwds.de/wb/Reigen. Accessed 11 Feb 2022 Ricoeur, P.: The rule of the metaphor. The Creation of Meaning in Language. (Trans.: R. Czerny; eds.: K. McLaughlin and J. Costello). Routledge, London (2008) Schäfer, M.J., Wergin, U. (eds.): Zeitlichkeit des Ethos. Poetologische Aspekte im Schreiben Paul Celans. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg (2003) Schrader, H.-J.: “Ich lebe in meinem Mutterland Wort”. Sprache als Heimat und Poesieimpuls in deutschsprachiger jüdischer Lyrik der Emigration und in Israel. In: Mittelmann, H., Kohlroß, C. (eds.) Auf den Spuren der Schrift: Israelische Perspektiven einer internationalen Germanistik. De Gruyter, Berlin/Boston, pp. 163–190 (2011) Schrader, H.-J.: Poetische Celan-Reminiszenzen und Erinnerungen an seinen Israel-Aufenthalt 1969 im Jerusalemer Lyris-Kreis, bei Ilana Shmueli und Manfred Winkler. In: Exilerfahrung und Konstruktionen von Identität, 1933 bis 1945, vol. 85 pp. 65–98 (2013) Seng, J.: Von der Musikalität einer “graueren” Sprache: zu Celans Auseinandersetzung mit Adorno. In: Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift, vol. 45, issue 4, pp. 419–430 (1995) Tempian, M.: Zwischenwelten: Manfred Winklers Gedichte der Übergangszeit nach 1959. In: “Literaturen in Wendezeiten” Spiegelungen, vol. 10, issue 2 (2015) Tempian, M.: Sounds and silence. The Post-Shoah Poetry of Israel’s German-speaking Olim. In: Schinkel, V. (ed.) Australian Journal of Jewish Studies. Australian Association for Jewish Studies, Sydney, vol. 29, pp. 136–157 (2016a) Tempian, M.: 2016b: words without borders: the multicultural dialogue of manfred winkler’s poetry. J. Austrian Stud. 49(3–4), 91–117 (2016b) Weimar, K.S.: Paul Celan’s “Todesfuge”: Translation and Interpretation. PMLA 89(1), 85–96 (1947) Wertheimer, J.: “Die Silbe Schmerz”. Paul Celans Sprachsuche nach der Shoah. In: Beisbart, O., Abraham, U. (eds.) Einige werden bleiben—und mit ihnen das Vermächtnis: Der Beitrag jüdischer Schriftsteller zur deutschsprachigen Literatur des 20. Jahrhunderts, pp. 105–123. Bayerische Verlagsanstalt, Bamberg (1992) Winkler, M.: Haschen nach Wind. In: Tempian, M., Schrader, H.-J. (eds.) Die Gedichte. Arco, Wien (2017)

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Winkler, M., Bergel, H.: Wir setzen das Gespräch fort … Briefwechsel eines Juden aus der Bukowina mit einem Deutschen aus Siebenbürgen. Frank & Timme, Berlin (2012) Zenck, M.: “…: es sind/noch Lieder zu singen jenseits/der Menschen”: Vier Kompositionen des Gedichts “Fadensonnen” aus Paul Celans “Atemwende”. In: Buhr, G., Reuß, R. (eds.) Paul Celan. “Atemwende”. Materialien. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg, pp. 267–297 (1991) Zenck, M.: Musikalische Aspekte im Gedichtszyklus “Sprachgitter” von Paul Celan. Zum Gedicht “Stimmen”, pp. 166–174. Schäfer (2003)

Mariama Diallo, *1993 in Berlin, is a Ph.D. candidate in Literary Translation Studies at the Victoria University of Wellington. They completed their B.A. dissertation Uses and Abuses of the Persephone Myth: (Re-)Imaginations of Transformation in “The Homeric Hymns” and Ovid’s “Metamorphoses” at the University of Greenwich (2017) and received the M.Sc. degree in Comparative Literature from the University of Edinburgh in 2021, where they investigated the translative poetic dialogue between Osip Mandelstam and Paul Celan in their dissertation Echoes of Exile and Traversing Waves of “Fremde”: Metamorphoses of Ovidian Exile in Osip Mandelstam’s “Tristia” and Paul Celan’s Translative Reverberations (2021). Their present research centres on the literary potentialities enabled through poetry and translation surrounding the poetic works of Paul Celan, inspecting specifically his translative practices, their interlocution with his poems and poetics, and transformations of his work translated into other language contexts in their Ph.D. dissertation Standing Again(st). Reencounters of Resistance in the Translative Transformations of Paul Celan’s Poetry.

J. M. Coetzee: J. S. Bach—A Reading of Diary of a Bad Year and Summertime as Musical Novels Hilmar K. Heister

1 Introduction: Indeterminacies and Potentials of Musico-Literary Study This musico-literary study discusses correlations between J.M. Coetzee’s Diary of Bad Year (2007) and the music of J.S. Bach, partially extending the argument to Summertime (2009).1 Diary of a Bad Year (DOABY in the following) is divided into two parts and runs in first two then three horizontal sections separated by dividing lines. The top section features 55 essays, the middle section a narrative strain of JC, an ageing writer in the process of composing above essays, later complemented by a lower section narrated by Anya whom he employs as typist. The use of the split page has been widely discussed, but the two-part division of the book has barely been commented on. Prompted by Coetzee’s admiration for Bach and intuitions about fugal form and contrapuntal techniques in DOABY and Summertime, this study explores the structural correlations between Coetzee’s two novels and the music of Bach, in particular The Well-Tempered Clavier (1722, BWV 846–893), the Goldberg Variations (1741, BWV 988), and The Art of the Fugue (1751, BWV 1080). “The interart borderland” constitutes “a potentially profitable area of comparative investigation”.2 But literature imitating music has limitations: “No matter how similar to music purely verbal constructs may be, […] [l]iterary texts cannot transcend the confines of literary

1 Correlations between Coetzee’s writing and Bach’s music have previously been explored by the author in lectures (Heister 2011, 2016), an article (Heister 2012a) and a Ph.D thesis (Heister (2015), pp. 256–261). 2 Scher (1981), p. 160.

H. K. Heister (B) St. Augustine University, Mwanza, Tanzania e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 H.-W. Heister et al. (eds.), Word Art + Gesture Art = Tone Art, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20109-7_40

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texture and become musical texture”.3 Gier called the imitation of musical structures the greatest challenge for writers of narratives [Erzähler] in the twentieth century, attempted in an abundance of shorter and longer narratives.4

1.1 Imaginary Content Analogy Coetzee-Bach An ‘imaginary content analogy’ spans the bridge between Coetzee’s novel and the music of Bach. Lasheras proposes: “An imaginary content analogy imitates music by means of a content that acts as an imitating element.”5 Such analogies “are defined with respect to the procedure that literary texts carry out, not to the musical aspect that is being imitated.”6 Imaginary content analogies require “the text […] to be figuratively the music itself, trying to be its double, acting like it.“7 Coetzee’s DOABY structurally acts like a double of Bach’s Goldberg Variations and The Well-Tempered Clavier, simulating musical forms and techniques of Bach’s music through “implicit correlates”8 in literary prose.

1.2 Intertextuality and Intermediality: Bach in Coetzee, Quintillian in Bach By 2007 Coetzee had published thirteen novels as well as essays and lectures amounting to four volumes. Among the palimpsest of intertexts9 in Coetzee’s writing, some had formative impact on his novels: Foe (1986) is a re-writing of Robinson Crusoe as female first person narration of an added female character; The Master of Petersburg (1993) is a semi-biographical third person narration of a fictionalized Dostoevsky working on The Possessed. Intertexts of Coetzee’s writing are predominantly but not exclusively from the discourses of literary theory, linguistics, philosophy, and history. In Age of Iron (1990) Elizabeth Curren plays first the preludes of Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier (along with Brahms and Chopin), then “clumsily, over and over again, the first fugue from Book One.”10 Curren imagines “heaven as a hotel

3

Ibid. pp. 179f. Gier (1995), p. 78. 5 Lasheras (2019), p. 6. 6 Ibid. p. 3. 7 Ibid. p. 4. 8 Ibid. p. 5. 9 For an introduction to Coetzee’s intertexts see Lopez & Wiegandt 2016. 10 Coetzee (1990), p. 23f. 4

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lobby with a high ceiling and the The Art of the Fugue coming softly over the publicaddress system,”11 plays a recording of the Goldberg Variations,12 and mentions the Matthew Passion.13 In “What is a classic?” (1991) Coetzee, after a discussion of T.S. Eliot, recounts an autobiographical anecdote (South Africa, summer of 1955, aged fifteen) about hearing Bach (here also The Well-Tempered Clavier) for the first time: “I was being spoken to by the music as music had never spoken to me before.” Coetzee calls this a “key event in [his] formation”: In Bach nothing is obscure, no single step is so miraculous as to surpass imitation. Yet when the chain of sounds is realised in time, the building process ceases at a certain moment to be the mere linking of units; the units cohere as a higher-order object in a way that I can only describe in analogy as the incarnation of ideas of exposition, complication and resolution that are more general than music. Bach thinks in music. Music thinks itself in Bach.14

Analogously, Coetzee thinks in literature, and literature thinks itself in Coetzee. The rest of Coetzee’s essay discusses the legacy of Bach and the reception history of his music, including a discussion of J.A. Scheibe’s criticism of Bach. In Youth (2002) John claims “he has found in Western music, in Bach above all, everything he needs.”15 And in Summertime (2009), the “undated notebook fragments” in the final section relate a conflict of John (fictionalized Coetzee) with his father concerning the latter’s preference for opera music sung by Renata Tebaldi as opposed to John’s recently acquired admiration for Bach (the B-minor Mass is mentioned). John secretly scratches his father’s beloved record: “Thus ended Tebaldi, now Bach could reign unchallenged.”16 And finally, in the last part of the Jesus trilogy, The Death of Jesus (2019), the music teachers of young David are named Juan Sebastián and Ana Magdalena Arroyos, “Hispanicised avatars of J.S. Bach and his second wife.”17 A precursor and intertextual reference point for the splitting of the page in DOABY is Josipovici’s short story Moebius the Stripper: A Topological Exercise (1974), in which the page is horizontally split into two, the upper section featuring the story of the male stripper Moebius, the below fiction featuring the struggles of the writer writing the story of Moebius (with appearances of the writer’s girlfriend).18 Coetzee presents a similar triadic cast, but dedicates the upper section to essays and introduces a third section featuring the female voice (Fig. 1).

11

Ibid. p. 25. Ibid. p. 30. 13 Ibid. p. 130. 14 Coetzee (2001), pp. 9–10. 15 Coetzee (2002), p. 93. 16 Cotzee (2009), p. 249. In Intimate Practices: Music, Sex, and the Body in J. M. Coetzee’s “Summertime” (2017) Axel Englund provides on overview of studies on music in Coetzee, and relates Summertime to Leo Tolstoy’s Kreutzer Sonata and to the composers Franz Schubert and Beethoven. 17 Tayler (2020). 18 For a detailed comparison see Meljac: The Use of Horizontal Bars by Josipovici and Coetzee. (2009) 12

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Fig. 1 Composite page in Diary of a Bad Year, pp. 28–29, Harvill and Secker, London (2007)

A different set of possible intertexts are literary attempts at imitating fugue and counterpoint. An example from poetry is Conrad Aiken’s Counterpoint: Two Rooms.19 The poem features an elderly man and woman living in vertically adjacent apartments, topographically imitating the vertical juxtaposition of voices in a musical score. The lines (in 8 stanzas) jump back and forth between him (in the room above) and her (in the room below), both ruminating their mortality.20 It would be quite Coetzeean to invert Aiken’s coupling in DOABY, elevating the woman and giving her a voice, adding a third character to increase complexity: Anya up in Penthouse 2514, JC on the ground floor in unit 108, and boyfriend Alan as jealous interloper. The name Anya and Penthouse 14 (25th floor) correlate alphanumerically to Bach: B-A-C-H = 14; J.S. BACH = 41 = ANYA (ALAN = 2 × 14). Gematria fascinated Bach, as did mathematical proportions. Another interest of Bach was rhetoric, in particular Quintilian’s Institutio Oratoria.21 Three musico-literary intermedial studies discuss the influences of the reception of Quintilian’s Institutio Oratoria on Bach’s conception of the Musical 19

From the anthology The House of Dust: A Symphony (1920) Discussed in Brown (1987). Brown (1987), p. 40. 21 J.A. Birnbaum, contemporary of Bach, noted: “[Bach] is so completely familiar with the parts … which the working- out of a musical composition has in common with the oratorical art that one not only hears him with satisfaction when he discourses on the similarity and correspondence of 20

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Offering (Kirkendale 1980), the Toccata in G-minor (Harrison, 1990), as well as the Goldberg Variations (Street, 1987). Instead of identifying musical structures in literature, these authors identify oratorial structures in music. Music theory being developed in the sixteenth and seventeenth century took into close consideration Quintillian rhetoric (from around 95 CE, Rome). Burmeister (1564- 1629) and Mattheson (1681–1764) adopted and transposed both structure and terminology of Quintilian in their music-theoretical treatises. Harrison emphasizes the dominance of primary rhetoric (i.e. oratory/persuasion) over secondary rhetoric (i.e. literary/surface beauty) in Quintilian.22 Rhetoric is “a means of persuasion” (ibid. 4), and in relation to the fugue Harrison suggests: [T]he task of an oration is to persuade an audience of the validity of the speaker’s point of view, the task of a fugue is to persuade an audience that the musical material can make a convincing and successful composition [...].23

“Self-conscious display of artifice and technique”24 are required in both fugue and rhetorical oration. Quintilian’s concept of “status”, in the sense of a “a conceptualized conflict that generates the need for a persuasive oration and determines its character”,25 applies to the essays of DOABY, all of which present a case and argumentation. In the fictional strains, persuasion and argumentation are featured at a personal level: JC persuades Anya to be his typist, makes a case for her leaving Alan; Anya’s critique of the Strong Opinions persuades JC to write soft opinions; Alan attempts to undermine JC (and delivers a 2-part verdict, pp. 201–205), and Anya’s resistance against Alan grows. Acts of argumentation and persuasion are part of the lifeblood of DOABY, circulating through a larger discourse on shame, dishonour, and redemption. The assortment of essays often appears arbitrary, organized only by the prominently displayed numbering of the headings. Harrison describes how unity is achieved by Bach: The B-minor fugue seems alive not just in the typical descriptive, organic sense of germination and growth, but in the sense that it expresses what can only be called animate personality and character, that it seems to have a motivating will. [...] For fugue achieves artistic success not because it displays a pre-existent unity in every structure, [...], but because its various thematic treatments, harmonic modulations, contrapuntal devices, and so forth interest, convince, and perhaps even amaze, persuading the listener that it has not only displayed but also earned its unity. The rhetoric of fugue consists in this: That structure is also device, motion is also gesture, and that unity is a result, not a source.26

In analogy, through the way Coetzee handles the overall structure, the thematic material, and the narrative development DOABY ‚earns ‘ its unity. both, but also admires the skillful application of the same in his works.” In Spitta’s 1916 biography of Bach, qtd. in: Harrison (1990), p. 1; also qtd. in Kirkendale (1980), p. 133. 22 Harrison (1990), p. 3. 23 Ibid. p. 5. 24 Ibid. p. 6. 25 Ibid. p. 10. 26 Ibid. p. 41.

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Fig. 2 Diagrammatic scheme of the Goldberg Variations28

Butler, Kirkendale, and Street demonstrate how Bach’s compositions included an argumentative response to the criticism of Scheibe, employing structures and techniques described by Quintilian. Street writes about the “extension of the lower register” in the fifth variation of the Goldberg Variations, which brings to mind the varying extension (in numbers of lines) of the lower sections in DOABY. Likewise, the “repeated use of metabasis (crossing of parts) which continually blurs the identity of the two imitative voices”27 relates to the crossing over of voices in the lower sections. In Book II Quintillian classifies three types of arts: Theoretical, practical, and productive (2.17–18); and rhetoric is again divided into three categories: (1) art, (2) artist, and (3) work (2.14.5). The divisions correlate by analogy with the three sections: Theoretical essays (the art), practical writing (JC, the artist), and production (the work of the typist). Whether Quintilian is a relevant and formative intertext of Diary of a Bad Year requires more investigation (Figs. 2, 3).

27 28

This was one of the criticisms of Scheibe; see Street (1987), p. 97. Music Analysis, Vol. 6, No. 1/2 (Mar. - Jul. 1987), p. 131 (1987).

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Fig. 3 Composite page in Diary of a Bad Year, pp. 92–93, Harvill and Secker, London (2007)

1.3 Playing with Genre—Un Autre Autrebiography? Coetzee’s oeuvre features experimental explorations of the novel as a genre, of literary realism, of autobiography, and of fictionalized essay writing.29 Coetzee’s pseudo-memoir trilogy (Boyhood, 1997/Youth, (2002)/Summertime, 2009) challenges the assumption of identity of author and ‚autobiographical ‘ character by inserting minor discrepancies between memoir and biography. Coetzee’s selffictionalization constitutes an attempt to artistically interrogate the ‚confessional mode ‘ and its claim of truthfulness.30 DOABY was published between Youth and Summertime, like an outlier of the trilogy, and also features a fictionalized persona alternatively called Señor C, JC, or just C by Anya; and Alan three times calls him Juan (a phonological bridge from Coetzee to Bach: John-Juan-Johann).31

29 Two previous fictionalized essay novels by Coetzee are The Lives of Animals (1999) and Elizabeth Costello (2003). 30 Confession and Double Thoughts: Tolstoy, Rousseau, Dostoevsky (1985). In: Atwell (1992), pp. 251–293. 31 The pairing John-Johannes also appears in Age of Iron. Coetzee (1990), pp. 147, 171.

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The biography of JC, revealed in tidbits, bears resemblances to Coetzee’s, but with distortions, allowing recognition but preventing identification.32 The title proclaims generic affiliation by using “diary”, intimating that personal thoughts have been written down. The narrative strains of JC and Anya indeed read like diaries, while the super-imposed essays resemble an intellectual diary (notably all essays feature first person narration). However, through juxtaposing the three sections the text transcends the genre of diary and develops the dimensions of a novel. Ogden calls DOABY Coetzee’s “most extended meditation on the genre of the novel and his most thorough retooling of the dynamics of literary creation”.33 The English-language editions of DOABY demonstrated a resistance towards “making any generic prejudgments”: In the first U.S. edition it was qualified as “work of fiction”, whereas the Australian edition describes it as being “not like any other novel by J.M. Coetzee” and “a book about how we choose to read.”34 Also, the U.S. and U.K. editions each contain precisely the same 227 composite pages [which] suggests that the layout was carefully crafted by the publishers, no doubt under Coetzee’s close supervision.”35 An important clue regarding the layout, consolidating that textual juxtapositions of sections were planned by author. The book is divided into two parts: Strong Opinions (1–154) and Second Diary (155–223). The Strong Opinions alludes to Nabokov’s Strong Opinions (1973),36 a collection of essays, reviews and interviews, and by implication constitute the first diary. The essays of the first part are intended for publication (in Germany) and constitute the text that JC and Anya are working on in the lower sections; the essays of the second part are not intended for publication, but are sent to Anya together with a printed copy of the German book before the end of DOABY. Lastly, the book provides a table of contents, as well as notes (only 8 in total) and acknowledgements (sparse, signed JMC). DOABY is not an autobiographical self-interrogation, but rather an experiment about the fusion of fiction of essay.

2 Bach—Music in Literature—Coetzee 2.1 Bach’s Goldberg Variations in Literature In The Art of the Fugue (1751) Bach most expressly articulated fugal form and imitative counterpoint, and Bach’s music has inspired poets and writers of fiction to 32

Cf. Koziol (2008), p. 61; Lear (2010), p. 67; Hahn (2012), p.190; for more detail see Smuts 2012. Ogden (2010), p. 467. 34 McDonald (2010), pp. 485,493. 35 Ibid. p. 494. 36 Mukherjee compares reading DOABY to the reading of Nabokov’s Pale Fire, “in which the poem, commentary and index demand to be read together in a constant shuffling between pages, their interaction a gradual enlightening.” (2007). 33

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attempt literary imitations.37 One frequently featured work of Bach is the Goldberg Variations (1741, original title: Aria with various modifications for the 2-manual harpsichord). The aura of Glenn Gould’s famous recordings (1955 and 1981), and Douglas R. Hofstadter’s Pulitzer-winning speculative study “Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid” (1979)38 magnified already existing trends of intermedial transpositions.39 Gabriel Josipovici’s Goldberg: Variations (2002) is presented in 30 chapters, omitting the initial aria (and its repetition), and tells of writers struggling with their material, similar to JC’s struggles in DOABY. In William Cole’s novel The WellTempered Clavier (2007) chapters bear preludes as titles; the music of those preludes serve as “accompaniment for the increasingly fervid encounters” of the protagonists, a seventeen-year old student and his piano teacher.40 Nancy Huston in her novel Les Variations Goldberg (1981, English translation 1996) uses “Thirty-two vignettes told from thirty-one different first-person perspectives”.41 The novel centres around a private performance of Bach’s Goldberg Variations by Liliane Kulainn, with her husband and twenty-nine guests as attending audience. Lilian brackets the thirty listener perspectives—just as the aria and its da capo in Bach’s Goldberg Variations brackets 30 variations—with the first and last vignette, in which she reveals to the reader that all perspectives were imagined by her. One interesting aspect of Huston’s construction is the simultaneity of all 32 vignettes, since they all occur during the performance of Lilian—though they appear (and must have been imagined) sequentially.42 In Coetzee’s Summertime (2009), the posthumous construction of interviews with people who knew the deceased famous author (fictionalized Coetzee) creates a similar effect of simultaneity; the interviews are presented sequentially, but all focus on the deceased author character in their reminiscences and anecdotes. In this regard Summertime is structurally similar to Huston’s novel: Such a novel does not depict a traditional linear plot progression, with each event building on what has gone before, but rather returns again and again to the same material. Each variation, after all, builds not on the previous variation, but on the theme itself, so that the development of the thematic material is one of accretion rather than progress.43

37

“Fifty years ago a German scholar compiled a list of almost four hundred stories and novels (in German alone) revolving wholly or in significant part around that eighteenth-century genius.” Ziolkowski (2010), p. 625. 38 , Cf. Ziolkowski (2010), p. 638. 39 Ziolkowski’s article “Literary Variations on Bach” (2010) offers an overview, and Ursula Petermann dedicated half of her book The Musical Novel - Imitation of Musical Structure, Performance, and Reception in Contemporary Fiction (2014) to novels “based on” the Goldberg Variations (the first half covers jazz in literature). 40 Ziolkowski (2010), pp. 626f. 41 Petermann (2014), p. 191. 42 Ibid. p. 177. 43 Ibid. p. 173.

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Such palimpsest-like multi-layered narratives “envision a piece of music as a number of performances superimposed on an increasingly elusive and unstable ‘original’,” and the musical novel “layers its content on a structural framework taken in part from music, but which is then fleshed out by textual means” and “intermedially evokes, adapts, and imitates the music, presenting an alternate and supplementary version of it.”44 The essays in DOABY are similarly “a number of performances”, which are organized in the form of theme and variations. The disparate variety of topics covered in the essays of DOABY gains coherence through the imitated musical structure: Art, particularly music, is postulated as one way of giving form to nebulous material, of organizing it and thus making it possible for meaning to be produced. As a result, art can be seen as a kind of parallel to everyday struggles to organize the material of one’s perceptions, as both aim to order chaotic and often unwieldy raw material into a manageable and aesthetically pleasing structure.45

Coetzee’s welding together of opinions with a pseudo-autobiographical fictional strain reflects such “everyday struggles” (many essays respond to contemporary issues, such as Guantanamo Bay, etc.). Using the musical form “theme and variations” of the Goldberg Variations as structural template, “these novels overwhelmingly choose to emphasize individual vignettes, discrete units, rather than a conventional plot.”46 DOABY features mostly short essays (often only one or two pages) and presents the reflections of Anya and JC in short paragraphs, rarely crossing over onto the next pages, thereby appearing as an assemblage of vignettes illustrating facets of the protagonists, their opinions, and their developing relationship.

2.2 The Split Page and Literary Counterpoint 2.2.1

Speculations About the Split Page

Critics and reviewers have failed to provide any rationale for the two-part division of DOBY and the number of essays in each part, but have extensively commented on the use of the split page. A number of metaphors and analogies are employed: The triptych, the hologram, split-screen TV, an archaeological dig, a kind of play, the layers of the self.47 Morales calls it “an example of non-sequential” writing, since a reader is often forced to consider which section to continue when turning the page,48 Tonkin calls it “hypertextual polyphony”, and Gee notes that “the personal stories are made more interesting by their extended, Bach-like counterpoint with the 44

Ibid. p. 211. Ibid. p. 161. 46 Petermann (2014), p. 173. 47 Cf. Morales (2009), p. 44; also Deresiewicz (2008). 48 Morales (2009), p. 44. 45

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essay.” Rutherford suggests: “[C]oetzee re-institutes melancholy as the counterpoint of rational discourse”,49 reading the blank pages as “the gap on the page marking the time when words have failed”50 Using the model of the soul presented in Plato’s Phaedros, Lear suggests a horizontal “dialectic of responsibility” in reading the three sections, and speaks of a vertical “spectacle of embedding” in the addition of fictional strains below, which serve to “draw along parts of the reader’s soul that would not be led by argument alone.”51 Others again have read the split pages in terms of mind–body dualism as a split between intellectual and affective.52 Vanky (2009) reads the three sections “through Sigmund Freud’s structural model of personality, whereby the text will be related to the notion of the super-ego, the ego and the id.“53 Vanky also relates the “intriguing structure of the novel” to “different songs in an opera; sometimes an aria, sometimes a duet, and if Alan joins in, a terzett,”54 reading the characters as musical voices. The most insightful observations in regard to the musico-literary properties of the text have been made by Noiville: The musical metaphor is not gratuitous. On paper, the text really looks like a chamber music score. [...]. He simultaneously writes three stories on three different “staves”. And the reader, he hears at the same time these three voices agreeing or arguing. So much for the form. If we add that each story unfolds in a register of language that is specific to it—a bit like in music, the part of each instrument is written in a different key -, we will immediately take measure of the formal tour de force that this Diary of a Dark Year [title of French edition: Journal d‘une anée noire] represents once again.55

Noiville demonstrates specific knowledge of music, noting the resemblance of the graphical appearance of DOABY to a musical score for three instruments. Noiville also compares the shift of tone in the text to the shift of moods in musical movements (using a symphonic adagio as example) and speculates about possible correlates to shifts of keys. Cadilhac, thinking about symphonic novels, has suggested that “an idea can be translated into major or minor, and the tenses—present, perfect, past—are real keys.”56

2.2.2

Speculations About Counterpoint

Jeff Simon suggested reading Diary of a Bad Year “contrapuntally just as you might listen to, say, one of Bach’s ‚Brandenburg Concertos”, but does not extend 49

Rutherford (2008), p. 176. Ibid. p. 171. 51 Lear (2010), p. 70. 52 cf. Mantel (2008), Harrison (2007), Deresiewicz (2008). 53 Vanky (2009), p. 1. 54 Vanky (2009), p. 6. 55 Noiville (2008), English translation of French original by google with minor corrections by author. 56 qtd. in Brown (1987), p. 174. 50

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the comment.57 Mukherjee marvels at the “ways in which the three strands braid with each other, some of the linkages metaphorical, some gradually illustrative in oblique ways, others musical in how they pick up tones, variations and themes.”58 Mukherjee is one inversion away from identifying the musical form that served as structural model for DOABY. Hahn’s article “Arias in the Prison of Opinion: Coetzee’s Late Novels” (2012) discusses DOABY together with Elizabeth Costello (1999) and Slow Man (2005) in terms of late style.59 Hahn presents close readings of DOABY, notes the “convergences of character and idea, plot and theme.”60 The ‘aria’ is discussed in connection to David Lurie in Disgrace struggling with writing arias for an opera, by extension suggesting that Elizabeth Costello and Slow Man are written in the spirit of operatic arias, but no specific musical correlations are elaborated. Regarding DOABY Hahn commented on “the fugal relationship of its parts and the intricate music of their interplay” in how “the lines of the composition interweave, intricately and revealingly.”61 Brian Macaskill’s essay Recycling Topology as Topos in Music and Narrative: Machaut, Bach, Möbius, Coetzee, Josipovici, and Composition (2013), features three paralell sections (plus footnotes in the margins), emulating the split page technique of Coetzee. Macaskill notes an increase of musical references in Coetzee’s writing since the 1990s: Using compositional motifs figured and grounded in his work at least since the sound of Goldberg Variations in Age of Iron, and especially since David Lurie’s struggle with operatic composition in Disgrace, J.M. Coetzee increasingly turns to music as compositional and thematic resource, turning particularly to that highly refined contrapuntal practice so consummately articulated by Bach’s fugues [...].62

Macaskill also discusses the historical development of the fugue as musical form and suggests the metaphor of the pipe organ (top, manual bass, pedal bass) as correlate to the “three [textual] sites of articulation” of DOABY: “Thus the text scores three voices pursuing one another and fleeing from one another: Opinions beating from above, narrative quickenings from the bass below.”63 Similarly, Peter McDonald speaks of “contrapuntal structure” in the “intricate play of perspectives” in the fictional strains, and notes the “elaborate, fugue-like structure” of DOABY as a whole.64

57

Simon (2007). Mukherjee (2007). 59 See also Wittenberg (2010). 60 Hahn (2012), p. 193. 61 Hahn (2012), pp. 178,193. 62 Macaskill (2013), p. 6. 63 Macaskill (2013), p. 7. 64 McDonald (2010), p. 494. 58

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2.3 Definitions of Musical and Literary Counterpoint ‚Counterpoint ‘ is frequently used in the sense of various voices presented in contrast to each other, the vagueness resulting from intermedial fuzziness in the conceptual transposition of the musical technique.65 Brown speaks of writers “haunted by a desire for counterpoint” being frustrated by “the impossibility of an exact literary parallel”.66 Laitz accurately defines counterpoint in music as the relationship between two or more musical lines (or voices) which are harmonically interdependent, yet independent in rhythm and melodic contour.67 A fugue specifically uses imitative counterpoint, where two or more voices enter at different times, and (especially when entering) each voice repeats some version of the same melodic element, using contrapuntal devices such as inversion, retrograde, augmentation, and diminution, etc. And finally there is double counterpoint, in which the upper part may become the lower part by inversion.68 Echoing Keat’s negative capability, Hahn suggests that “we learn to listen to this novel” in order to appreciate “its inter-twining melodies and motifs.”69 What exactly constitutes a melody in literary text remains vague, but his intuition of listening to the text as if listening to music strikes the right chord. DOABY demonstrates how literary counterpoint can be achieved through a split page that allows voices to run along parallel lines with a dynamic interaction between the parts. Literary counterpoint here is the relationship between two or more voices which are interdependent in a dynamic relation to each other, yet independent in tone and narrative (each voice exercises narrative control). The melodic voices of JC and Anya are presented in the lower section, while the series of essays in the upper section serves as a “constant harmonic framework” as used by Bach in the Goldberg Variations, where it is generated and sustained by the repeating bass line. JC and Anya are the two main voices, playing off each other, repeating each other’s lines of thought, and even featuring broadly within each others discourse in various forms of reported speech and thought. Alan joins later as a third voice, though his narrative control is restricted to reported speech within the narrative domain of Anya. The only other four speaking parts in DOABY might serve as complementary voices: Vinnie (the superintendent), Bella Saunders (the neighbour), Bruno Geistler (Mittwoch Verlag), and Anya’s mother.

65

Urszula Koziol, in her MA thesis “J.M. Coetzee’s Diary of a Bad Year - The Craft of Literary Counterpointing” (2008), surprisingly provides no clear definition or conceptual framework for “literary counterpoint”. 66 Brown (1987), p. 40; cf. Scher (1982), p. 186. 67 Laitz (2008), pp. 96ff. 68 Mann (1987), p. 107. 69 Hahn (2012), p. 192.

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2.4 Fugal Structure and Technique in Summertime The fugue as musical technique has a complicated history and is usually defined primarily through the use of contrapuntal techniques.70 The structure of the fugue may contain the sequence exposition-development-coda: Most fugues open with a short main theme, the subject, which then sounds successively in each voice (after the first voice is finished stating the subject, a second voice repeats the subject at a different pitch, and other voices repeat in the same way); when each voice has completed the subject, the exposition is complete. This is often followed by a connecting passage, or episode, developed from previously heard material; further "entries" of the subject then are heard in related keys. Episodes (if applicable) and entries are usually alternated until the "final entry" of the subject, by which point the music has returned to the opening key, or tonic, which is often followed by closing material, the coda. In this sense, a fugue is a style of composition, rather than a fixed structure.71

Essential for the fugue, as opposed to the canon, is the response of the first subject (also called Dux) at the fifth interval (the quint) by the second voice (now called Comes). While the successive introduction of voices is evident in DOABY in the delayed introduction of Anya in the lower section (p. 25, under the sixth essay fittingly titled “06. On guidance systems”), the structure of exposition, development, and final section (or coda) does not correlate to the two-part division of Strong Opinions and Soft Opinions. But Summertime (2009), published only two years after DOABY, features a triadic structure: It begins with excerpts from Notebook 1972– 75 (exposition), then features five interviews (development), and closes with more excerpts from Notebooks: Undated fragments (coda). The first notebook presents the subject, the deceased author, in a variation of thematic registers (father-son; politics; racism; etc.). This subject is then taken up by the five voices of the interviews and developed, underscored by the constant presence of Mr Vincent, the interviewer (providing a constant frame of reference for all five interviews, like a repeating bass line); though fugues with five voices are rare, two examples by Bach are Fugue No 4 and Fugue No 22 in The Well-Tempered Clavier.72 Themes from the first notebook reappear in the various interviews, and are continued in the final section, brought to conclusion with the death of John’s father. Summertime does not simulate the vertical structures of music, since the five interviews are not arranged in split sections running across pages. In regard to literary counterpoint, Summertime may be read as an attempt of creating a linear literary equivalent to the vertically disposed lines of counterpoint, as polyphonic melodies73 more independent than the voices 70

In Marpurg the “regular” fugue competes with the “strict” fugue, the “ordinary” or “natural” fugue, and the “conventional” fugue. Cf. Mann (1987), p. 57. 71 Cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugue. Accessed 10 April 2022. 72 The mention of a string quintet (mirroring the number of interviewees) by Schubert - most likely not the “Forellenquintet” but the C major string quintet (D. 956, Op. posth. 163) - might be another avenue to explore, although Schubert does not feature as prominently as Bach in the works of Coetzee. 73 For a discussion of Coetzee’s “polyphonic self-narration” see Heister (2012a, b) and Heister (2015).

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in homophonic music (punctus contra punctum). Read in this fashion, Summtertime could constitute a second installment of the musico-literary experiment started in DOABY, with Bach’s The Art of the Fugue (1751) as a template. Bach’s incomplete final work is widely praised as masterpiece, summarizing all his achievements in the musical composition of 14 fugues, presenting in five ‚chapters ‘ five different types of fugues: Simple fugues, counterfugues, multiple-theme fugues, mirror fugues and canons. Considering the slight variations in how the interviewees present material, the five interviews presented in Summertime could possibly be related to these five types of fugues. This speculative hypothesis would need to be confirmed through a more thorough analysis of narrative techniques, modulation of voices, use of tenses, and thematic interplay, all of which are part of the experimental fabric of Summertime.

2.5 Diary of a Bad Year as Musical Novel Relating the organizational structure of DOABY to Bach’s Goldberg Variations and The Well-Tempered Clavier accounts for both the numbered sets of essays and their two-part presentation. The Strong Opinions follow the structural arrangement of the Goldberg Variations, and the Second Diary is modelled after The Well-Tempered Clavier. In the handling of voices across sections DOABY realizes a Coetzeean form of literary counterpoint.

2.5.1

Observations on Design and Layout

DOABY is a musico-literary experiment involving structural transpositions of musical forms and an exploration of literary counterpoint. The design and layout of the book underlines the impression of a musical score. In the British hardcover edition of Harvill Secker, two black composite pages are inserted in the front and back, bracketing the white text pages, slightly creating the effect of a folio or musical score. When leafing through the pages (like a flicker book or Daumenkino), one will see all numbered essay headings in succession, since they are all featured on the right side of composite pages, often (but at irregular intervals) requiring the insertion of blank white pages74 on the left pages when essays finish on uneven pages - comparable to the “coughing” space during live performances of a set of musical pieces. This arrangement might be intended to emphasize that each essay stands for itself, beginning on a fresh page. The fictional middle and lower section run blank along with the essays, underscoring the interdependence of the three sections. Page one features the title of the first part in three lines: One / Strong Opinions [enlarged and bold] / 12 September 2005—31 May 2006. The dates indicate the 74

Coetzee would be familiar with Stéphane Mallarmé, who is also frequently evoked in Coetzee criticism, and the poet’s experimentation with the blank page, as in the poem Un coup de dés jamais n’abolira le hasard (A Throw of the Dice will Never Abolish Chance) from 1897. (Norman 2021).

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production period of the texts, but the lower section begins on a “quiet spring day”,75 meaning that Anya helps only in the final phase of the project, and their work is concluded in between the two parts. The second two lines of the title already signal the split of the text: The bold title signals the essay space (essays are undated and have no time line), the line with dates signalling the fictional strains (which evolve in calendar time). Page 3 features the first essay (01. On the origins of the state), taking up 27 lines with two blank lines added at the end, while the lower section features only 6 lines— 35 marking the maximum amount of lines possible. In the lower section, separated by a dividing line, JC’s first person past tense narration of the first encounter with Anya. While the upper section takes up about half of the page throughout the book, it also frequently infringes on the lower space. The essay 16. On competition marks a notable exception regarding line distribution. It begins with only eight lines on page 73 and in the first line features “One”, imitating the numbering of the parts of the book (this is the only essay with a sub-division). The middle section here contains only 4 lines, but inhabits a third of the page, with about 8 blank lines running down to the bottom dividing line, under which the lower section features 12 lines. Only on this page the balance is shifted in favor of the two lower sections (at a ratio of 8:(4 + 12)), while at the same time it is one of the longest essays in the entire collection running over nine pages. In the essays the integrity of paragraphs is generally preserved, meaning that they do not cross over page borders and short paragraphs are often followed by blank lines running down to the central dividing line. However, beginning on page 60, eleven infractions occur where paragraphs do spill over onto the next composite page, with only one case where turning the page is required to continue reading the paragraph (pp.105–106). A simple explanation would be the playful handling of layout techniques on the side of Coetzee: Establishing a rule and then allowing exceptions and infractions where suitable. The essays are presented in block alignment, resulting in a regular contour, while the lower section is aligned to the left with shifting contours; this fits to the assumption of the essays serving as a constant “harmonic” framework, while the contours of the voices shift continuously.

2.5.2

Structural Correlation I: Strong Opinions and Goldberg Variations

The Goldberg Variations provide the key to the structural arrangement of the Strong Opinions, as they did (more transparently) in the novels of Huston and Josipovici. Coetzee features the final da capo aria as the last essay of the first part: 31. On the Afterlife (pp. 153–154), omitting the initial aria. This essay deviates significantly from the established pattern, in that it does not feature a split page and therefore no lower sections. The fiction is suspended, leaving only the solo voice of the essay, from which the overall framework structure (the essay line) is derived, just as the repeating bass

75

Coetzee (2007), p. 3.

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line in the Goldberg Variations is derived entirely from the aria.76 This essay outlines the central subject of the book, the immortality of Coetzee and his writing, so to say its afterlife: “whoever I am now I will not be then.” (p. 153) Consequently, the essays 1–30 constitute the thirty variations of the aria. Bach’s variations feature toccatas (12) and canons (14), three dances, and finally a 2-part invention.77 Additionally, an overall shape of Aria (variations one to fifteen)—Overture (variation sixteen)—Aria (variations seventeen to thirty) has been suggested, which approaches something of an arch-form with the ‘biggest’ movement in the middle.78 The long essay 16. On competition might function as narrative overture in the lower section, as Alan’s voice is now fully introduced in Anya’s section, leading to the later confrontation between Alan and JC. Yap comments that “[a] view such as this, however, involves a reworking of the concept that there should be a musical crescendo to the finale.”79 While such a crescendo is absent in the Goldberg Variations, in Diary of a Bad Year the first part ends with Anya returning after her resignation and Alan and Anya having a fight, intensifying the plot (like rising action), similar to a musical crescendo. A close listening—nowadays possible with view of the musical score and the keyboard80 —combined with a close reading does not indicate close correlations between the musical variations and the respective essays (and fictional proceedings). Yap comments on how Bach [...] used many of the keyboard forms and genres of his predecessors and brought them to their highest level of compositional realization and contrapuntal development within the framework of a large-scale set of variations [and] took these wonderfully crafted, yet concisely stated works and arranged them in a manner that provides a certain degree of flexibility but never deviates from a set and established pattern.81

A similar degree of flexibility applies to the musico-literary transposition of Bach’s music to Coetzee’s writing.

2.5.3

Structural Correlation II: Soft Opinions and the Well-Tempered Clavier

The Well-Tempered Clavier (1722) consists of 24 sets of a prelude and a fugue, using in ascending order all 24 major and minor keys (C major to B minor). Part TWO of DOABY, the Second Diary, contains 24 essays, underscored by the two 76

“Ironically, the ‘Aria’ of the Goldberg Variations is not the theme but a variation in and of itself, for it serves to accompany a steadily descending bass line that forms the actual basis for the variations.” Yap (2019), p. 54. 77 Street (1987). 78 Yap (2019), p. 11, also table on p. 53. 79 Yap (2019), p. 62. 80 Paul Barton performs both the Goldberg Variations and The Well-Tempered Clavier on youtube with the score running along and with a view of his hands on the piano. Not available for The Art of the Fugue. 81 Yap (2019), p. 62.

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fictional sections. The essays of JC are called “soft opinons” by Anya (193 & 197, in her letter), which through a double pun on “well-behaved” and “controlling one’s temper” relates to the “The Well-Tempered Clavier ”, or similarly serves as analogy of JC being “out of tune” in the first part (on p. 137 he considers how “alien and antiquated” his opinions must seem to Anya), while the essays of the second part feature a newly “tuned” JC, tuned of course through contrapuntal interaction with Anya. As readers we mark the shift to a more personal tone and range of topics, whereas Part ONE focussed mostly on political and philosophical discourse. The 24 essays of part TWO correlate to the respective progression through all 24 keys (major and minor) in Bach’s composition, in that they are presented in progressing thematic pairs: Having dreams (C major)/having fans (C minor), father/under the sign of death (C#), mass emotion in sports/misreporting (D), a photograph of a kiss/the erotic life (E flat), on ageing/idea for a story about elderly academics (E), beautiful France/classics (F), the writing life/the mother tongue (F#), Antjie Krog/being photographed (G), having thoughts/birds in the air (G#), compassion/children (A), water and fire/boredom (B flat), Bach (B major) and Dostevsky (B minor). One might now suspect that each pair contains a duality of literary modes, such as major and minor themes: The mathematical-moral system of essay 17. On having thoughts could be considered a major theme (argument), and the following anecdote about a revengeful magpie (18. On the birds of the air) a minor theme (anecdote). But in other cases such contrast is not apparent. Obvious letter correspondences include France in F major, Erotic in E minor, and Bach in B major, but no consistent pattern emerges. Other correlations between the musical keys and modes and the pairing of the essays remain to be explored. The division of essays and fiction in part TWO enters into a new structural correlation with the music. The succession of prelude and fugue in 24 sets encourages reading the essays as preludes, below followed by the fugal compositions of the voices of JC, Anya, and Alan.

2.5.4

Close Reading I: Handling of Voices in the Middle Section

Towards the end of part ONE the middle section slowly diminishes under essays 23–29, JC receives (handwritten) resignation note from Anya, JC writes an apology note, and Anya returns. During the absence of Anya, JC for once has full narrative control of his section, allowing only for a short dialogue with Bruno Geistler in reported indirect speech. JC’s section runs thin with mostly one or two lines. On pages 146–147 his part is reduced to a single line of narrative prose, running across the composite page. The last essay variation of the part ONE (30. On authority in fiction) begins on page 149. In the middle section Anya reappears (forced by fictional authority) described like a mute pietà “clad all in white”. The single prose paragraph ends with JC’s free direct speech: “Am I forgiven?” In the lower section Anya senses a fracture in her relationship with Alan: “[…] something bad is going on between Alan and me.” On the next composite page, mirroring the earlier single line of JC, in the middle section now single lines of Anya’s reported direct speech on the left,

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and Anya’s free direct speech on the right. Below the escalation of the fight with Alan. An asterisk at the bottom marks the end of the fictional strain of part ONE and indicates a time gap—essay 31 follows and concludes the essay line. Effectively, Anya’s voice has cancelled out JC, and part TWO begins with first two then four blank lines in the middle section. The section remains blank until on page 169 (05. On mass emotion) the narrative of JC resumes to relate the last encounter with Anya, featuring mainly dialogue between the two and a suspended goodbye (until page 190). After that, introduced with one line by JC, and thereby marked as reported ‚writing ‘, starting on page 191 (13. On the writing life) the middle section is occupied by a final letter written by Anya. This clever embedding of voices via forms of reported speech and dialogue, written communication (notes and a letter), and intratextual quotations and cross-references, allows the voices to cross over into the adjacent section—a metabasis in rhetorico-musical terms, which can also result in double counterpoint. Above discussion demonstrates the handling of voices within the two lower sections (Fig. 4).

2.5.5

Close Reading II: Coetzeean Counterpoint in the Lower Section

A close look at the entrance of the lower narrative section in the second part (p. 157, 01. A dream) will be revealing. Just like the first fugue in C major features 4 voices, the entry of the lower fictional section (under 01. A dream) equally features four speakers (voices). Anya’s narrative begins on page 157 in three paragraphs (15 lines), starting with a “knock at the door yesterday morning” and Vinnie appearing in uniform: “A note for you, he says [voice 1]. A note? I say [voice 2]. From the gent in 108, he says. By hand? I say. By hand, says Vinnie, who is nobody’s fool. How strange, I say.” The narrative continues and relates JC’s invitation note verbatim [voice 3] in italics: “[…] Best regards, JC. […].” In the last paragraph Anya shows the note to Alan: “Shall I turn him down? I said.” Alan’s reply [voice 4] comes on the next composite page: “No, replied Alan. We will go. He makes a gesture, we make a gesture in return. That is civility. That is how civility works.” Their dialogue continues onto the next page and finishes there in four separate lines: “I will tell him we can ‘t come. / No, absolutely not. We will go. / You want to go? / I want to go.” (159). The (fugal) subject of this section is “an invitation”, stated first by Vinnie, repeated immediately by Anya. JC’s invitation (subject repeated) is presented in written form (a different literary register). Alan enters with an retrograde inversion of the invitation theme, starting with “No” and “We will go”, which he repeats at the end, and pressed by Anya, adds “I want to go,” concluding the section. The handling of tense begins with “yesterday morning”, indicating past tense, but then continues in present tense narration (“I say”), demonstrating how the narrative voice can simulate immediacy—reading tenses as musical registers does not seem applicable here, but might warrant further investigation. Also, the significant amount of repetitions found throughout in the lower sections is highly unusual for Coetzee. It simulates the musical practice of voices repeating musical themes and

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Fig. 4 Diary of a Bad Year, p. 157, Harvill and Secker

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ideas, additionally it adds a rhythmic quality and generates tempo. This close reading has illustrated several fine points of how Coetzeean counterpoint operates in Diary of Bad Year.

2.5.6

Listening and Reading: Preludes and Fugues, Essays and Fiction

In contrast to the lack of correlation between the sound of the The Goldberg Variations and the first part of DOABY, now the combination of close reading and close listening reveals how the mood and texture of the preludes in The Well-Tempered Clavier correlates to the essays of the Second Diary: 01. A dream—Prelude 1. dreamy arpeggios; 02. On fan mail—Prelude 2. hasty; agitated (like the fan) 03. My father—Prelude 3. pressing, urgent, hectic; some suspense. My admittedly subjective impressions did not match perfectly in all 24 cases (though it did in most). The essays of the Second Diary are overall shorter. The first 31 essays (pp. 1–154) average 5 pages per essay, most extensive essays being 16. On competition with 9 pages, 18. On Zeno and 28. On music with 10 pages each. The second 24 essays (pp. 157–223) average less than 3 pages per essay on average, only the essays 08. On the erotic life and 24. On Dostoevsky extend to five pages. The now shorter essays can be read by turning only one page (four exceptions require a second turning of the page), tempting us to read the essays in full (with the music of preludes), before flipping back one page and resuming the lower narrative (with the music of the fugues); the initially blank middle section nudges us toward such a reading (and listening). DOABY ends with JC’s book published but his health presumably deteriorating, as the lower section narrative of Anya intimates, in which she tells about life after Alan (an asterisk following their last exchange marked the time lapse) and her affectionate worries for JC, while in the middle section the letter finishes on a redemptive note (above essay discusses the rebellion of Ivan in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov). Preceding the final essay 24. On Dostoevsky comes an unrestrained two-page adulation of Bach, beginning: “The best proof we have that life is good […] is that to each of us, on the day we are born, comes the music of Johann Sebastian Bach.”82 JC imagines speaking to Bach and thanking him in person for his music. The section ends: “Do I in this sense choose him as my spiritual father? And what is it that I want to make up for by bringing at last a first, faint smile to his lips? For having been, in my time, such a bad son? ”83 If Bach could see the literary performance of Coetzee in DOABY, might that not bring a smile to his lips? But the final bow is dedicated to Coetzee’s literary “spiritual father” Dostoevsky, in whose shoes he trod when he imagined him wandering through the streets of Petersburg in The Master of

82 83

Coetzee (2007), p. 221. Ibid. 222.

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Petersburg (1993), and who appears again and again in his critical writing—Dostoevsky and the polyphonic narration84 attributed to him by Bakhtin in The Dialogic Imagination (published 1981, written 1934–1941). And in the last essay of Diary of a Bad Year, JC recounts how rereading Dostoevsky made him “sob uncontrollably” when Ivan “hands back his ticket of admission to the universe God has created.”85 But the point JC ends up making about Dostoevsky is that it is the skillful and forceful rhetoric Dostoevsky employs that moves the reader rather than the underlying ethics: “It is the voice of Ivan, as realized by Dostoevsky, not his reasoning, that sweeps me along.”86 While Bach serves as structural-intellectual model for Diary of a Bad Year, Dostoevsky’s handling of voice in literary discourse is the model for the literary counterpoint enacted in the lower sections. Perhaps in a last flourish, Coetzee has arranged the lower sections to be both inhabited by Anya under the last 12 essays (pp. 191–223), and she becomes the emancipatory figure and controlling voice of this literary experiment, supplanting the dry discourse of JC, leaving him only the repeating “ostinato” bass line.

3 Conclusion: The Unlikely Trio of Coetzee, Bach, and Dostoevsky My first intuition on the connection between Summertime and the fugal technique led me to Bach’s The Art of the Fugue (published posthumously in 1751),87 which immediately struck me as closely related to what Coetzee was doing in his posthumous pseudo-memoir. On reading more about the fugue as musical technique and the use of contrapuntal techniques, many turns of phrases and descriptions of musical procedures reminded of similar notions and motions in Coetzee’s writing. Another trajectory is the influence of Quintilian on Bach, which might extend into the work of Coetzee. How much of the The Brothers Karamazov (1879/1880) has found its way into DOABY apart from the name Anya? In conclusion an analytical comment on Paul Celan’s Death Fugue by Horst Petri, who draws a connection to Mallarmé: The [Mallarmé] procedure bears many similarities with music, especially in the way the simultaneity of several lines of thought generates a dynamic synthesis, that as an independent construct overlays the individual lines of thought, comparable to the synthetic auditory effect of a a contrapuntal musical arrangement.88

Coetzee has achieved such dynamic synthesis in DOABY, demonstrating the full potential of literary counterpoint together with a fascinating and complex structural 84

Polyphony features two or more simultaneous lines of relatively independent melody, and might be part of Coetzee’s hybrid repertoire of techniques. 85 Coetzee (2007), p. 223. 86 Ibid. 225. 87 The Art of the Fugue was not completed when Bach died. For a fascinating discussion of the final influences on the manuscript see Milka: Re-Thinking The Art of the Fugue (2017). 88 Petri (1964), p. 55.

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adaptation of the Goldberg Variations and The Well-Tempered Clavier. In an interview with David Atwell in Doubling the Point, Coetzee once stated: “If I were a truly creative critic I would work toward liberating that discourse [of criticism]—making it less monological, for instance.”89 In DOABY the critical discourse is embedded into a fictional framework and thereby loses its monological nature. Morales comments: “The design of Diary of a Bad Year renders a book that is paradigmatic and all embracing. In this book, we find J.M. Coetzee the novelist, the intellectual, the critic and the human being in a kind of synthesis of the multi-faceted figure Coetzee.”90 Do I detect literary cubism?

References Abbott, H. P.: Time, Narrative, Life, Death, & Text-Type Distinctions: The Example of Coetzee’s “Diary of a Bad Year”, In: Narrative, Vol. 19, No. 2 (May 2011), Ohio State University Press, pp. 187–200. https://www.jstor.org/stable/41289296. Accessed 30 March 2022 (2011) Ackerley, C.: Style: Coetzee and Beckett, In: Mehigan, T. (ed.): A Companion to the Works of J.M. Coetzee, Camden House, New York, pp. 23–38 (2011) Aiken, C.: Counterpoint: Two Rooms. POEM, In: The House of Dust: A Symphony. https://www. best-poems.net/conrad_aiken/. Accessed 30 March 2022 (2009, first published 1920) Brown, C. S.: Music and Literature – A Comparison of the Arts. University Press of New England, Hanover and London (1987, first published 1948) Bach, J. S.: The Well-Tempered Clavier. BWV 846–893, Breitkopf & Härtel, Leipzig-Wiesbaden (1722) Bach, J. S.: Preludes and Fugues 1–12, The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1, PIANO + SCORE, Performed by Paul Barton. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2oFjk0HynY4. Accessed 10 April 2022 Bach, J. S.: Preludes and Fugues 13–24, The Well Tempered Clavier, Book 1, PIANO + SCORE, Performed by Paul Barton. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkcPOcxME-Q. Accessed 10 April 2022 Bach, J.S.: The Goldberg Variations. BWV 988, Breitkopf & Härtel, Leipzig-Wiesbaden (1741) Bach, J. S.: Goldberg Variations (complete) with Harmonic Pedal - PIANO + SCORE, Performed by Paul Barton. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLYRAhqExvo&t=5s. Accessed 10 April 2022 Bach, J.S.: The Art of the Fugue. BWV 1080a, Edition Peters (1751) Bach, J. S.: The Art of Fugue, BWV 1080b (1751), performed by MacGregor. https://www.you tube.com/watch?v=Y9OUfBDIGhw. Accessed 10 April 2022 Butler, G. G.: Fugue and Rhetoric, In: Journal of Music Theory , Vol. 21, No. 1 (Spring, 1977), Duke University Press, pp. 49–109. https://www.jstor.org/stable/843479. Accessed 30 March 2022 (1977) Coetzee, J.M.: Foe. Penguin, London (1986) Coetzee, J.M.: Age of Iron. Penguin, London (1990) Coetzee, J.M.: Doubling the Point. Ed. by David Atwell, Harvard UP, Cambridge/London (1992) Coetzee, J.M.: The Master of Petersburg. Vintage, London (1993) Coetzee, J.M.: What is a classic? A lecture, In: Stranger Shores, Vintage, London, pp. 1–19 (2002, first published 2001) 89 90

Coetzee (1992), p. 246. Morales (2009), p. 43.

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Coetzee, J.M.: Youth. Vintage, London (2003, first published by Harvill Secker, London 2002) Coetzee, J.M.: Diary of a Bad Year. Harvill Secker, London (2007) Coetzee, J.M.: Summertime. Harvill Secker, London (2009) Coetzee, J.M.: Death of Jesus. Harvill Secker, London (2019) Deresiewicz, W.: Foes. REVIEW, The Nation, February 7, 2008. https://www.thenation.com/art icle/archive/foes/. Accessed 30 March 2022 (2008) Englund, A.: Intimate Practices: Music, Sex, and the Body in J. M. Coetzee’s “Summertime”, In: Mosaic: An Interdisciplinary Critical Journal, Vol. 50, No. 2 (June 2017), University of Manitoba, pp. 99–115. http://www.jstor.com/stable/45158930. Accessed 30 March 2022 (2017) Gee, M.: 2007. Diary of a Bad Year. REVIEW, In: The Sunday Times, Sunday 2 September 2007. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/diary-of-a-bad-year-k2vt8bcnmhf. Accessed 30 March 2022 (2007) Geertsema, J.: Diary of a Bad Year (2007), In: Mehigan, T. (ed.): A Companion to the Works of J.M. Coetzee, Camden House, New York, pp. 208–21 (2011) Gier, A.: Musik in der Literatur. Einflüsse und Analogien, In: Zima, P. v. (ed.): Literatur intermediaL Musik - Malerei - Photographie - Film, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt (1995) Hahn, R.: Arias in the Prison of Opinion: Coetzee’s Late Novels, In: The Kenyon Review, Vol. 34, No. 1 (Winter 2012), Kenyon College, pp. 176–196. https://www.jstor.org/stable/41304744. Accessed 30 March 2022 (2012) Harlan, M.: Diary of a Bad Year. REVIEW, In: San Francisco Chronicle. https://www.completereview.com/reviews/coetzeej/diary.htm. Accessed 15 April 2022 (2007) Harrison, D.: Rhetoric and Fugue: An Analytical Application, In: Music Theory Spectrum, Vol. 12, No. 1 (Spring, 1990), pp. 1–42. http://www.jstor.org/stable/746145. Accessed 30 March 2022 (1990) Harrison, K.: Strong Opinions. REVIEW, In: The New York Times, Dec. 30, 2007. https://www. nytimes.com/2007/12/30/books/review/Harrison-t.html. Accessed 30 March 2022 (2007) Heister, H. K.: The Sympathetic Imagination of J.M. Coetzee. In: Conference Paper, Interdisciplinary Postgraduate Conference (IPGC), Rhodes University, Grahamstown (South Africa) (2011) Heister, H. K. (2012a): The Sympathetic Imagination in J.M. Coetzee’s Summertime, In: Klein/Heister et al.: Building Bridges—Kuvaka Ukama. A Tribute to Prof. Flora Veit-Wild, Kalliope Paperbacks, Heidelberg (2012a) Heister, H. K. (2012b): Behind every mask another mask—J.M. Coetzee im Spiegel seiner autobiographischen Fiktionen, In: Heister, H.-W. and Spies, B. (eds.): Mimesis, Mimikry, Simulatio. Tarnung und Aufdeckung in den Künsten vom 17. bis zum 20. Jahrhundert. Festschrift für Erwin Rotermund zum 80., Weidler Buchverlag, Berlin (2012b) Heister, H. K.: The sympathetic imagination in the Novels of J.M. Coetzee. Unpublished Ph.D dissertation, Humboldt University, Berlin (2015) Heister, H. K.: Coetzee and J.S. Bach—The Coetzeean Fugue in Diary of a Bad Year and Summertime. In Conference paper, Coetzee’s Other Arts, 18 July 2016, University of the Western Cape, Cape Town (2016) Kirkendale, U.: The Source for Bach’s “Musical Offering”: The “Institutio oratoria” of Quintilian, In: Journal of the American Musicological Society, 33(1) (Spring, 1980), University of California Press, pp. 88–141. https://www.jstor.org/stable/831204. Accessed 30 March 2022 (1980) Koziol, U.: J.M. Coetzee’s Diary of a Bad Year—The Craft of Literary Counterpointing. Unpublished Master Thesis, Department of English, University of Utrecht (2008) Laitz, S.G.: The Complete Musician, 2nd edn. Oxf. Univ. Press., New York (2008) Lasheras, R. G.: On imaginary content analogies in musico-literary imitation. In: CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, Purdue University Press, DOI: https://doi.org/10.7771/1481-4374. 3152. Accessed 30 March 2022 (2019) Lear, J.: Ethical thought and the problem of communication. In: Leist, A. and Singer, P.: J.M. Coetzee and Ethics. Columbia University Press, New York, pp. 65–88 (2010)

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López, M. J. & Wiegandt, K.: Introduction: J.M. Coetzee, intertextuality and the non-English literary traditions. In: European Journal of English Studies, 20:2, pp. 113–126, DOI: https://doi.org/10. 1080/13825577.2016.1183422. Accessed 30 March 2022 (2016) Macaskill, B.: Authority, the Newspaper, and Other Media, including J.M. Coetzee’s “Summertime”. In: Narrative, (January 2013), Ohio State University Press, 21(1) pp. 19–45. https://www. jstor.org/stable/23321835. Accessed 30 March 2022 (2013) Mann, A.: The Study of the Fugue. Dover Publications, New York. (1987, first published 1958) Mantel, H.: The Shadow Line. REVIEW. In: The New York Review of Books, 17 January 2008. https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2008/01/17/the-shadow-line/. Accessed 30 March 2022 (2008) Mars-Jones, A.: Even Nobel winners can make mistakes. REVIEW. In: The Guardian, Sun 26 Aug 2007. https://www.complete-review.com/reviews/coetzeej/diary.htm. Accessed 30 March 2022 (2007) McDonald, P. D.: The ethics of reading and the question of the novel: The Challenge of J. M. Coetzee’s Diary of a Bad Year. In: NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction, (Fall 2010), Duke University Press, 43(3) pp. 483–499. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40959730. Accessed 30 March 2022 (2010) Meljac, E. P.: Seductive Lines: The Use of Horizontal Bars by Josipovici and Coetzee, and the Art of Seduction. In: Journal of Modern Literature, (Fall 2009), Indiana University Press, 33(1) pp. 92–101. https://www.jstor.org/stable/https://doi.org/10.2979/jml.2009.33.1.92. Accessed 30 March 2022 (2009) Milka, A. P.: Rethinking J.S. Bach’s The Art of Fugue. Transl. from Russian. Routledge, New York (2017) Morales, D. C.: J.M. Coetzee’s Diary of a Bad Year: Ethical and Novelistic Awareness. In: miscelánea: a journal of english and american studies, 40 (2009), pp. 43–52 (2009) Mukherjee, N.: Diary of a Bad Year. REVIEW. In: The Times, 01 September 2007. https://www. thetimes.co.uk/article/diary-of-a-bad-year-x3wpnglz03w. Accessed 30 March 2022 (2007) Noiville, F.: “Journal d’une année noire”, de J. M. Coetzee: l’année à trois voix. REVIEW. In: Le Monde, Paris, 30 October 2008 (2008) Norman, J.: Mallarmé: Experimentation with the Relationship Between the Word and the Printed Page. https://www.historyofinformation.com/detail.php?id=3999. Accessed 15 April 2022 (2021) Ogden, B. H.: The Coming into Being of Literature: How J. M. Coetzee’s Diary of a Bad Year Thinks through the Novel. In: NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction, 43(3) (Fall 2010), Duke University Press, pp. 466–482. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40959729. Accessed 30 March 2022 (2010) Petermann, E.: The musical novel: imitation of musical structure, performance, and reception in contemporary fiction. Camden House, Rochester, New York (2014) Petri, H.: Literatur und Musik - Form- und Strukturparallelen. Sachse & Pohl, Göttingen (1964) Quintilian: Institutio Oratoria. Engl. Transl. by H.E. Butler, Heinemann, London (1920) Rutherford, J.: Melancholy and the magpie: Coetzee’s Amoro-Dolorous Duo. In: Kunapipi, 30(2), 2008. http://ro.uow.edu.au/kunapipi/vol30/iss2/15. Accessed 30 March 2022 (2008) Scher, S. P.: Comparing Literature and Music: Current Trends and Prospects in Critical Theory and Methodology (1981). In: Bernhart, W. and Wolf, W. (eds.): Steven Paul Scher - Essays on Literature and Music (1967–2004). Word and Music Studies 5, Editions Rodopi B.V., AmsterdamNew York, pp. 159–172 (2004) Scher, S. P.: Literature and Music (1982). In: Bernhart, W. and Wolf, W. (eds.): Steven Paul Scher— Essays on Literature and Music (1967–2004). Word and Music Studies 5, Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam-New York, pp. 173–202 (2004) Simon, J.: J. M. Coetzee: A man with strong opinions. REVIEW. In: Buffalo News, 30 Dec 2007. https://buffalonews.com/news/j-m-coetzee-a-man-with-strong-opinions/article_5c42 8855-7a8a-5ae0-8af0-8fe2d9e71271.html. Accessed 30 March 2022 (2007)

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Smuts, E.: J. M. Coetzee and the Politics of Selfhood. In: English in Africa, (May 2012), Rhodes University, 39(1) pp. 21–36. https://www.jstor.org/stable/23269001. Accessed 30 March 2022 (2012) Street, A.: The Rhetorico-Musical Structure of the ‘Goldberg’ Variations: Bach’s ‘Clavier-Übung’ IV and the ‘Institutio Oratoria’ of Quintilian Source. In: Music Analysis, Vol. 6, No. 1/2 (Mar.— Jul., 1987), pp. 89–131. http://www.jstor.org/stable/854217. Accessed 30 March 2022 (1987) Tayler, C.: Before I began. REVIEW. In: London Review of Books, 4 June 2020. 42(11) https://www. lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v42/n11/christopher-tayler/before-i-began. Accessed 15 April 2022 (2020) Tonkin, B.: Diary of a Bad Year, by JM Coetzee. REVIEW. In: The Independent, 31 August 2007. https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/diary-of-a-bad-year-byjm-coetzee-463586.html. Accessed 30 March 2022 (2007) v. Zima, P. (ed.): Literatur Intermedial – Musik-Malerei-Photographie-Film. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt (1995) Vanky, A.-M.: The Secret Aria on Shame: An Analysis of Narrative Structure and Theme in Coetzee’s Diary of a Bad Year. Unpublished MA thesis, Dalarna University (2009) Wittenberg, H.: Late style in J.M. Coetzee’s diary of a bad year. In: SCRUTINY2, 15(2), pp. 40–49 (2010) Wolf, W.: (Inter)mediality and the Study of Literature Volume. CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, Volume 13, Issue 3 (September 2011), Article 2. . Accessed 30 March 2022 (2011) Yap, J.: The Goldberg Variations (BWV988): An analysis of musical styles and structural coherence. In: Mahidol Music Journal, 2(1) (March to August 2019), pp. 51–62 (2019) Ziolkowski, T.: Literary Variations on Bach’s Goldberg. In: The Modern Language Review, (July 2010), Modern Humanities Research Association, Princeton University, 105(3) pp. 625–640. https://www.jstor.org/stable/25698799. Accessed 30 March 2022 (2010)

Dr. Hilmar K. Heister, * 1978 in Berlin, studied Comparative Literature, Philosophy, Art History, then African Literature in Berlin (FU/HU). After completing the Ph.D thesis titled The Sympathetic Imagination in the Novels of J.M. Coetzee, in 2015 he moved to Tanzania, and since then teaches literature at St. Augustine University in Mwanza. Publications and lectures include: The Sympathetic Imagination in J.M. Coetzee’s Summertime (2012); Behind every mask another mask – J.M. Coetzee im Spiegel seiner autobiographischen Fiktionen (2012), Coetzee and J.S. Bach - The Coetzeean Fugue in Diary of a Bad Year and Summertime (Conference paper, 2016).

Postface

Music, Word Language, Gesture Language and Artistic Languages in the Field Between Nature—Body—Culture. Results, Interim Results and Future Tasks of Research Hanns-Werner Heister

1 The Missing Word1 With this anthology, we have taken a great leap forward in the search for the missing word and the connections between word art, gesture art and tone art, including their references to word language and gesture language in everyday conversation. Nevertheless: “Close the curtain, and leave all questions open”2 —we could just as well vary the wordplay from Bertolt Brecht’s epilogue to Der gute Mensch von Sezuan (The Good Person of Szechwan, 1938/1943). Brecht, however, does not leave it at such a resignation (and neither do we). Rather, he urges the audience to think and reflect: there must be a “happy ending”: “Dear audience, go on, find your own ending!/There must be a good one, must, must, must!”3 Enquiringly, he already points to answers. “Should it be another person? Or another world?” Just as it has recently re-emerged in discussions, the latter is possible. His play demonstrates that the unsplit “good person” cannot exist within the system of “market economy” upon which the play is based. We may not need to concern ourselves here with the “system change” as a whole that is inevitable also in the interest of the external nature, as the fundamental and “simple thing that is difficult to do” (Bertolt Brecht in Die Mutter/The Mother, 1 Once more again, and hereby for the last time, I would like to thank Mariama Diallo for the translation. 2 “Den Vorhang zu, und alle Fragen offen”; or as in John Willett’s translation: “To close the play, leaving the issue open”. Brecht, B. and Willett, J. (2014). The Good Person of Szechwan (Willett, Trans.). Bloomsbury. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781408167366.00000051. Accessed 20 June 2022. 3 “Verehrtes Publikum, los, such dir selbst den Schluss!/Es muss ein guter da sein, muss, muss, muss!” or as translated by Willett: “Ladies and gentlemen, in you we trust:/There must be happy endings, must, must, must!” (as above fn. 1).

H.-W. Heister (B) Rosengarten, Niedersachsen, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 H.-W. Heister et al. (eds.), Word Art + Gesture Art = Tone Art, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20109-7_41

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Fig. 1 “O word, thou word that I lack.” (Sinks to the ground in despair). The last (composed) words of Moses in Arnold Schönberg’s incomplete oratorial opera Moses and Aron, 1924/1930, II/5.4 Similar to Schönberg’s melodrama cycle Pierrot lunaire (1912), the singer-speaker declaims a typical recitando, here in the fashion of a “bound melodrama” with fixed and even notated pitches, which shall only be outlined in the performance. They are however of semantic and syntactic relevance. 1. Schönberg doubles the descending semitone of the lament as an amplification (c#1 c1 , c1 b#). 2. The fall in melody from e1 to A reflects in a metaphorically iconic manner on both the physical process of “sinking […] to the ground” and the psychological act of “despairing”—a musical correlate to ideophones and phonosemantics5 in word language. 3. Although not in fact intended as a cantando melody, Schönberg does notate tones, namely a total of 6 different ones (c# = d flat), which is a hexachord and thus half of a dodecaphonic row—apparently without direct derivation from the row on which the work is based. 4. This highly condensed ending passage reveals how word and the—almost, but not quite—toneless musical “melody”’ interact with scenic instruction for motion and mimesis of emotion: word art, gesture art, and tone art united

1930). What does seem necessary, however, as the contributions to this book have shown once again, is a change in the social and societal subsystem of music: in the reflections on and the science of music. New and additional answers have been found for various questions in this context: particularly, the question of the semantics and sigmatics of music and its ties to reality, questions about the internal system of correlations between different musical components, and at least rudimentarily, questions about the relationship of music and other arts and its position in the system of the arts (Fig. 1).

2 On the Ideology of the “Absolute” Music As our collection demonstrates once again, music is neither abstract nor asemantic or “absolute”. The so-called “absolute” Music, hallucinated as devoid of all references to reality including that to the word as representing the real and the semantic, is often equated with ‘autonomous music’. This is however something quite distinct, real and not fictitiously ideological. It is music in its own right, not serving single, partial purposes but general ones, such as the “Humanisierungsfunktion” (“humanisation purpose”, Manfred Naumann), and which is accordingly perceived as a significant work of art for its own sake.6

4

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moses_und_Aron, 19 January 2022. Accessed 8 May 2022. See above Heister, Introduction in the present volume. 6 In extenso see e.g. Heister (1983). Informative overview about historical developments: Bonds (2014). 5

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The extreme pervasiveness of these unattainably fantastical attributions of “absolute” music, which emerged as a Romantic resignation during the Restoration against the French Revolution and intensified from 1815 onwards, root as an inheritance from the mental and ideological turn of the times—initially as a reaction to the 1848 Revolution in the German−speaking bourgeoisie, which failed not economically but politically and socially. Under the banner of “Kunstreligion” (“religion of art”), art, and music in particular, became a refuge for the imaginarily true realization of ideals of an equal, free, brother- and sisterly society, the material realization of which proved impossible within the framework of the bourgeois social order that was already largely established. In order to optimize this compensatory and utopian role, art had to distance itself as far as possible from the societal mimesis and refrain from concrete references to it as much as possible: “Musica pura” instead of “musica impura”, pure and subtle as opposed to the pollution of reality—a contraposition used programmatically by Henze with terms by Pablo Neruda.7 The word and word art represented a closer and more direct relationship to reality since, as last resort, word-language is the general meta-language for both artistic and artificial languages. Thus music could, at least ideologically, even if not thoroughly out into practice, embody the beautiful—purified from the word and from the staining pollution of reality’s dissent, which based itself on domination rather than freedom and the appropriation of unpaid surplus-labour of the majority within the own population, while also outreaching to nations Of Foreign Countries and People (Von fremden Ländern und Menschen, according to Schumann, Kinderszenen op. 15, No. 1, 1838). The conditions of abolishing references to reality appear to be particularly easy to realise in music, for their mimesis of reality is not material and denotative, but predominantly connotative. This does, however, not exclude, but rather include concrete mimesis that also refers to individual facts. This is often mediated through the means of the word. About half of all music is vocal music and thus a combination of word art and wordless, instrumental music. And in instrumental music, as elucidated throughout the anthology, there are the inherent genetic nonverbal language forms of communication, namely gesture language and gesture art, located right behind it. After all, it is often not manifestly but realistically and effectively connected with word art. The Viennese music critic Eduard Hanslick captured the ideology of “absolute” music in a particularly refined and elegant way in a polemical but substantial, thoughtful and witty study in 1854. His and many others’ paralleling thoughts easily spread internationally due to circumstantial similarities, and they are still widespread today far beyond their German-Austrian origins—hegemonical as ever in the “better circles” of the “classics”, in variations multiplied by modernity and postmodernity, without having to explicitly refer to the paradigm of “absolute” music—certainly not in the field of popular music. Hanslick legitimized the elitist exclusion of word-bound music, stubbornly playing the case of an incomplete, asymmetrical hegemony of the paradigm of instrumental music against certainly often truncated populist attitudes:

7

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here the connoisseur and the layman are quite decidedly different. While the latter preferably seeks the comprehensible expression of feeling or imagination in music and prefers to turn to vocal music, the connoisseur usually loves instrumental music in its artful treatment of all its melodic and harmonic forms and interweavings.8

The very concept used by Hanslick is based on the chicanery of categorially excluding vocal music from the outset, and implementing this idea almost fanatically. Without further reflection, a subsystem of the subsystem is declared, instrumental music as the paradigm of the whole subsystem of sound art, and whatever can be derived from this skewed premise is ultimately codified with a drastically reduced conception of music. [N]ur was von der Instrumentalmusik behauptet werden kann, gilt von der Tonkunst als solcher. Wenn irgendeine allgemeine Bestimmtheit der Musik untersucht wird, etwas so ihr Wesen und ihre Natur kennzeichnen, ihre Grenzen und Richtung feststellen soll, so kann nur von der Instrumentalmusik die Rede sein. Was die Instrumentalmusik nicht kann, von dem darf nie gesagt werden, die Musik könne es; denn nur sie ist reine, absolute Tonkunst. […] [O]nly what is true of the [instrumental music] is true also of music as such. If we wish to decide the question whether music possesses the character of definiteness, what its nature and properties are, and what its limits and tendencies, no other than instrumental music can be taken into consideration. What instrumental music is unable to achieve, lies also beyond the pale of music proper; for it alone is pure and self-subsistent music.9

Curiously, Hanslick’s fundamental idea is a radicalisation of Romantic notions tracing back to formulations developed before 1848. The actual field in which the essence of music [das Wesen der Musik] reveals itself most completely remains [...] instrumental music. Here the text falls away, and the dominion of music is limited to its own circle.10

Hanslick supports his argument of production- and product-aesthetics, inconsistently enough, with one for the aesthetics of reception and effect. [M]an wird stets einräumen müssen, daß der Begriff »Tonkunst« in einem auf Textworte komponierten Musikstück nicht rein aufgehe. In einer Vokalkomposition kann die Wirksamkeit der Töne nie so genau von jener der Worte, der Handlung, der Dekoration getrennt werden, daß die Rechnung der verschiedenen Künste sich streng sondern ließe. No matter whether we regard vocal music as superior to, or more effective than instrumental music — an unscientific proceeding, by the way, which is generally the upshot of onesided dilettantism — we cannot help admitting that the term “music,” in its true meaning, must exclude compositions in which words are set to music. In vocal or operatic music it is impossible to draw so nice a distinction between the effect of the music, and that of the words, that an exact definition of the share which each has had in the production of the whole becomes practicable.11 8

Hanslick (1885, p. 45). Hanslick (1885, p. 45). Hanslick (1854). 10 Lange [O.] 1844: Die Berliner Sinfonie-Soiréen. In: Berliner musikalische Zeitung 1 (1844), no. 6, (unpaged) (1844), quoted after Thrun’s contribution in the present volume. 11 Hanslick (1885, p. 45). 9

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Particularly concerning the effect, it is not “purity” but effectivity that it comes down to with mixtures and combinations of different arts decidedly enriching and deepening specific art-effects. The anti-realistic ideology codified by Hanslick was itself so effective, logically within the frameworks of ‘ideological relations’, that also the conventions of the sophisticated, demanding philharmonic concert type were oriented accordingly. Martin Thrun describes the central circumstances: Lange started from the premise that pure instrumental music represented (“revealed”) the actual music (“the essence of music,” “the innermost essence of art”) and projected the principle onto demands on programming. This entailed the far-reaching consequence that vocal music was not only accorded a subordinate rank, but that it was to be eliminated from the programs altogether. The ‘Gewandhaus type’, which also did not disdain soloistic accompaniment, was given the almost honorable status of an “ordinary concert”, aimed more at “amateurs” than at “connoisseurs”. On the other hand, symphony soirées shone thanks to social distinction, as if they were addressed to “connoisseurs” or, as Eduard Krüger expressed it in reference to art-religious dictions, to a “Pietisten-Clubb” […].12 “Pietistic! that is […] entering the Kunsthalle with earnest piety, with holy need, and not leaving a finger’s breadth of space to the intrusion of the mob either”.13

At the same time, the high bourgeois “Kunstreligion”, which does after all take art seriously, is still better perceived than bourgeois religious art, let alone the neglect or contempt of the arts by the late bourgeois. Rabidly but consistently, Hanslick even moves beyond the mere exclusion of vocal music from the concept of music, with the desire to banish the following two types of defilement of tone art, which I previously outlined as ‘caption’ in the Introduction, along with other connections to the word (or image) as components of reference to reality: Sogar Tonstücke mit bestimmten Überschriften oder Programmen müssen wir ablehnen, wo es sich um den »Inhalt« der Musik handelt. Die Vereinigung mit der Dichtkunst erweitert die Macht der Musik, aber nicht ihre Grenzen.14 An enquiry into the subject of music must leave out even compositions with inscriptions, or so-called programme-music. Its union with poetry, though enhancing the power of music, does not widen its limits.15

As subject without quotation marks, Hanslick finally pertains to something very different with a quid pro quo in a paradoxical conceptual volte-face; the subject’s counterpart: Tönend bewegte Formen sind einzig und allein Inhalt und Gegenstand der Musik.16

Unfortunately, much of the statement’s substance gets lost in the present translation: 12

Thrun’s contribution in the present volume; the quotations in Thrun: Lange 1844, no. 6, unpaged; Krüger, E.: Etwas aus dem Pietisten-Clubb. In: Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 11 (1844), vol. 20, pp. 113–114, 119–120 (1844). 13 Krüger (1844, p. 114) (Emphasis H.-W.H.). 14 Hanslick (1854, p. 15). 15 Hanslick (1885, p. 45). 16 Chap. III. Hanslick (1854, p. 31).

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The essence of music is sound and motion.17

In order to maintain the significant distinction between ‘content’ or ‘subject’ and ‘object’, a literal, perhaps not ideal English formulation seems more appropriate: Tonally animated forms are the one and only content and topic of music.

3 What Is to Be Done? The different contributions to our book illuminate various aspects, close gaps, and bring new facets into the scientific and scholarly discussion that are perhaps rather unusual in the context of the question of the relationship between the vocal and the instrumental. And yet, as ever, the challenge remains to further explore this enormous topic in a deeper, broader, more exhaustive and detailed way. Fully measured and thought through to the end, it reaches far beyond the edges of music and art in general. Interdisciplinary research and cooperation are indispensable here. Once again, an aphorism by the Enlightenment philosopher Georg Christoph Lichtenberg can be transferred from his subject chemistry to the sphere of music: those who only understand something about music, do not really understand it either. The misery of interdisciplinarity is also due to the ever-increasing specialization of the sciences among themselves and within the individual disciplines and the growing isolation from one another. “Cross-disciplinary sciences” such as materials science, cybernetics, semiotics, fuzzy logic, neurosciences and others counteract this trend. Interdisciplinary cooperation is not only difficult from a factual point of view but additionally, it does not usually promote careers. And the growing gap between the poetry of applications for funding and the everyday prose of actual research diverges even more than the doubled ‘poetry’ in the correlation of ‘Normal state’ and ‘Other state’, just like in the correspondences of word language and gesture language to word art, and both manifestations of gesture art.18 It is a case of too much too little cooperation. Those who nevertheless dare work inter-disciplinarily either by themselves or in small groups, “sitzen zwischen den Stühlen” or simply fall between the cracks—not however on the sofa like the liberals, who have been complaining about this since about 1968 at the latest, but between the natural sciences, humanities, and social sciences on the bare floor. It is however precisely the kind of essential cooperation required for real and intervening progress in science, and it may need to be pursued in small groups or individually. Declarations and trite declarations of intent are not enough. The realization of real interdisciplinary cooperation is hard work. It probably is most successful in groups in which those who struggle with what they do not understand in the respective foreign discipline can receive personal clarification where needed. In itself it remains difficult nevertheless. 17 18

Hanslick (1885, p. 67). See the Introduction in the present volume.

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To emphasize: We ourselves with the present volume did not succeed in the inclusion of all aspects of interdisciplinarity in its entirety as would have been desirable and thus did not cover the topic in its full breadth and depth. What we have achieved is not little, but it is too little. Much remains to be done. To conclude but certainly not close the curtain of the discussion let us name and mark certain tasks—desiderata, research fields, and interdisciplinary interconnections. They are not entirely new as such, yet they contain a wide array of uncharted territory with still discernible blank spots on the scientific map. Even though the list is hardly complete, it can be further filled in by continuing to think on and beyond in the course of further work. These following sketches of ideas are still nowhere near a research program. The development of such a program will in itself be a considerable part of future research. We can imagine the research subjects, along with the corresponding academic disciplines as being arranged in more or less concentric circles or in vertical layers. Fundamentally, both the structural-systematic dimension and the historical-genetic dimension must always be considered, such as literary theory conjointly with sociology of literature and the history of literature and language. Additionally, the relationship to and embedding within the three spheres of reality, namely in nature, spirit and society, must always be taken into account. Hereof, the axis of nature and society, of nature and nurture, is of substantial relevance, which becomes particularly evident when regarding ‘language’ as a specifically human achievement: in conjunction with thought and work, it forms the fundamental anthropological trinity. 1. Music and other arts stand at the centre, and, alongside the by now sufficiently acknowledged triad that gives the collection its title, also the visual arts and their medial affiliations to photography and film, the latter already inclined towards the Gesamtkunstwerk, which is evidently realised in theatre, architecture and garden art, as well as in the art of virtual reality. 2. One level below or an extended circle we encounter everything concerning language and sign systems of all kinds, including “biocommunication”, from the babbling and flailing of babies to the language of mathematics. 3. These systems in turn are media, such as the arts, media contents of social and cultural forms, moving between the baby rattle, picture book and picture newspaper, between camera obscura and the internet. A brief mention to be made here also of computers and “digitalisation” or more precisely computerisation. 4. Languages and media are essential for our communication. As the sphere of communication, it forms a relatively independent social sphere, as both an opposite and a complement to the sphere of production, within which the aforementioned work stands at the centre. Technology, theory of technology and history of technology are just as much a part of the subject as labour and labour history. Both material and intellectual labour are indispensable as the basis of art production, whether with brush and palette or hammer and compass or drums and whistles. 5. Communication requires not solely material forms, but it also bears bioanthropological prerequisites. It requires a system of (human) senses. It requires a system of (human) senses. Psychology, physiology and anatomy, especially the

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interactions of hearing and sight, and of hands and voice, stand at the interface of biological and social matters. Within the interplay of motoric and sensory functions, of motivation and emotion, the dialectic of body and soul, of nature and culture, of matter, consciousness and society emerges. Relevant keywords such as “body” and more recently “embodiment” refer to compensatory tendencies towards media-based, and digitally further intensified desensualisation, especially in the field of communication and the arts. 6. Evolutionary theory offers first and foremost overarching aspects in this field of the development of body and consciousness, of body and soul. It supports the mutual illumination of phylogeny and ontogeny, which is essential for the study of anything related to language. Overarching aspects generally arise secondly, from the perspective of intersocial and intersectional relations and correlations, initially of classes and strata, added by race and gender relations, binary plus nonbinary, differences in age and generation, differences according to psychosocial and medical conditions and others. As indicated, other ideologies and aesthetics apply within popular culture and art, and in the field of “high culture”. Issues such as the—controversial—“restricted code” or “simple language”, which cements market-compliant educational differences even in well-meaning accommodations, reside and belong here just as much as the (in terms of historical dimensions) often rapid shifts in and transformations of languages, the emergence of creole languages, or the extinction of languages or artistic genres such as the Afro-American “field holler” and the “work song”—from a social standpoint certainly not a pity insofar as to their rooting in US slavery and the former prison system, which has still not much improved—what counts artistically can compensate in corresponding art, for example in jazz. Thirdly, the intercultural approach and the inclusion of the international diversity of cultures, artificial languages and natural languages result in overarching aspects and expanded insights. The same applies to the extraordinarily broad field of music geography aka “ethnomusicology”, which was originally called “comparative musicology” and thus avoided the ultimately pejorative connotation of “ethnic” tribal cultures versus “high cultures”.19 This is easily transferable to other hyphenated “ethnologies”, such as “European ethnology”, which means nothing other than the study of lower-class cultures in Europe up to about the Ural. Finally in the fourth place, the applied arts offer overarching aspects, for instance in connection with graphics and design, as well as applied sciences such as medicine, many technical sciences, general pedagogy, art and music pedagogy. It is neither to be expected nor probable that the research outlined here will necessarily yield fundamentally new or different findings than those already discovered by ourselves and others. What can however be expected, is a deepened immersion and a more thorough and preliminary explanation of the previous finds and findings. And as difficult as it may be research practice, genuine interdisciplinary collaboration 19

For terminology cf. Heister (2014).

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is once again imperative here—a merging of thought and research in the different disciplines, methods, materials and modes of thought.20

4 The Word Found A central question in all this, as often emphasised, is that of the word: not only in music but in all the arts. Here is one of the pivotal points for the “wechselseitige Erhellung der Künste”, the “mutual illumination of the arts” (the historian of literature Walzel 1917), a programme still valid. Corresponding research is developing theoretically the actual empirically real unbinding of real-world language, first in music, and followed by the other arts, of music as a full-fledged language and not just “language” in quotation marks in and through science, just like it unveils in Eichendorff’s lyrical gnomics as the poetic transformation of reality through the poetic, evocative word and the discovery, unbinding and unfolding of the beautiful, including “song” as the musically beautiful, manifest in reality. Wünschelrute Schläft ein Lied in allen Dingen, die da träumen fort und fort und die Welt hebt an zu singen, triffst du nur das Zauberwort.21 Wishing-Wand A song sleeps in all things around Which dream on and on unheard, And the world begins to resound, If you hit the magic word.22

20

My project, which has been in progress for a long time also has its place here. It will deepen what has been explored here, including the authors’ respective preliminary work. On the one hand, it reaches further back for this into evolution and history, and on the other hand, further out into the aesthetics of art and the system of the arts: Voice and Hands. Origins of Speech, Sign Language, and the Arts (working title). With this, something new, perhaps even fundamentally new, will be elaborated, which in turn is likely to stimulate further research. (Scheduled for publication in 2024.). 21 Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff, 1835, published in 1838 in the Deutscher Musenalmanach with the title Wünschelruthe, given by Adelbert von Chamisso. 22 Translated by Natias Neutert, quoted after https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W%C3%Bcnschelrute, 2 April 2022. Accessed 8 May 2022.

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References Bonds, M.E.: Absolute Music: The History of an Idea. Oxford University Press, New York, NY (2014) Goldschmidt, H.: Musikverstehen als Postulat. In: Sammelband Musik und Verstehen. Aufsätze zur semiotischen Theorie, Ästhetik und Soziologie der musikalischen Rezeption, pp. 67–86. Arno Volk, Köln (1974) Hanslick, E.: Vom Musikalisch-Schönen. Ein Beitrag zur Revision der Ästhetik der Tonkunst, p. 15. Breitkopf & Härtel, Leipzig (13.-15. Auflage 1922) (1854) Hanslick, E.: The Beautiful in Music. A Contribution to the Revisal of Musical Aesthetics, 7th ed., enlarged and revised (Breitkopf & Härtel, Leipzig 1885). Translated by Gustav Cohen. Novello and Company, London (1891). https://archive.org/details/beautifulinmusic00hansiala. Accessed 22 May 2022 (1885) Heister, H.-W.: Das Konzert. Theorie einer Kulturform, 2 vols. F. Noetzel, Wilhelmshaven (1983) Heister: Zwischen Physik, Physiologie und Philosophie. Die fünf grundlegenden Fragestellungen der Musikwissenschaft. IRASM (Int. Rev. Aesthet. Sociol. Music) 45(2), 213–242 (2014) Walzel, O.: Wechselseitige Erhellung der Künste. Ein Beitrag zur Würdigung kunstgeschichtlicher Begriffe. Reuther & Reichard, Berlin (1917)

Hanns-Werner Heister, Prof. Dr. phil., * 1946 in Plochingen/Neckar (BRD, BadenWürttemberg), has five children and is married to Karin Heister-Grech. Studied 1965–1977 Musicology, German studies and Indo-European studies/linguistics in Tübingen, Frankfurt a.M. und Berlin (University of Technology), 1977 Ph.D. in musicology in Berlin (University of Technology, with Carl Dahlhaus: Diss. published 1983 as Das Konzert. Theorie einer Kulturform [The Concert. Theory of a Cultural Form], 2 vols., 1993. 1970–1992 freelancer, 1992–1998 Professor for history of music and music communication at the Musikhochschule “Carl Maria von Weber” Dresden, 1998/99–2011 Professor for musicology at the Hochschule für Musik and Theater Hamburg.—Themes of research and publications: Methodology of musicology; aesthetics, sociology, history, and anthropology (in particular music and human perception, origins of language and art) of music; political, popular music, new music, jazz; music and musical culture in Nazism, resistance movement and exile; aesthetics and history of music theatre; media/technology and institutions of music culture; music analysis; music and: other arts, psychoanalysis, play, maths, cybernetics, fuzzy logic; gardening. Books: Jazz (1983); Vom allgemeingültigen Neuen. Analysen engagierter Musik: Dessau, Eisler, Ginastera, Hartmann [Of the Universal New. Analyses of engaged Music: …] (2006); (photographies by Ines Gellrich) Un/Endlichkeit. Begegnungen mit György Ligeti [In/Finity. Encountering Görgy Ligeti] (2008); Hintergrund Klangkunst [Background Sound Art] (2008; publ. 2009); Heinz Gellrich – Zeiten, Wege, Zeichen [Times, Paths, Signs] (2014); (Ed. and main author) Die Ehrenmitglieder der Staatstheater Stuttgart 1912–2018. Theatergeschichte in Porträts [The Honorary Members of the Stuttgart State Theatres 1912–2018. Theatre History in Portraits] (2018); Music and Fuzzy Logic. The Dialectics of Ideas and Realizations in the Artwork Process (Studies in Fuzziness and Soft Computing, ed. J. Kaprzyk, Vol. 406) (2021); Musik und Fuzzy Logic. Die Dialektik von Idee und Realisierungen im Werkprozess (2021). Tasten, Telegraphie, Telephonie. Musikalische Modelle und technisch-industrielle Medien (in preparation, 2022). Co-editor of (among others): Musik und Musikpolitik im faschistischen Deutschland [Music and Music Politics in Fascist Germany] (1984); Komponisten der Gegenwart [Contemporary Composers] (loose leaf lexicon, since 1992, Jan. 2022 70 deliveries); Zwischen Aufklärung & Kulturindustrie [Between Enlightenment and Cultural Industry] (3 volumes, 1993); Musik und. Eine Schriftenreihe der Hochschule für Musik und Theater [Music and] Hamburg (since 2000).— Editor of among others: Musik/Revolution [Music/Revolution] (3 vols., 1996/97); “Entartete

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Musik” 1938 - Weimar und die Ambivalenz [“Degenerated Music” 1938—Weimar and Ambivalence], 2 vols. (2001); Geschichte der Musik im 20. Jahrhundert [History of Music in the 20th Century], Vol. III: 1945–1975 (2005); Zur Ambivalenz der Moderne [On the Ambivalence of Modernity] (seriesMusik/Gesellschaft/Geschichte), 4 vols., Vol. 1 2005; Vol. 2–4 2007. Bd. 5 2012; Zwischen/Töne. Musik und andere Künste [Over/tones. Music and other Arts] (series since 1995). More see www.Hanns-Werner-Heister.de.