Spahlinger Political Implications of The Material of New Music
Spahlinger Political Implications of The Material of New Music
Spahlinger Political Implications of The Material of New Music
mathias spahlinger
To cite this article: mathias spahlinger (2015) political implications of the material of new music,
Contemporary Music Review, 34:2-3, 127-166, DOI: 10.1080/07494467.2015.1094212
in the period following the 1968 protests, the question arose of how a transparent music could
be conceived, especially one which it would be impossible to misunderstand, and which would
therefore be protected against political misuse. this was very often the object of discussion. in a
paper delivered at the ‘musik und politik’ symposium held in vienna in 1991, i developed four
political aspects of music: function, content, means of production, and the poetic.
to explain:
function: music composed for ritual and representation, etc, or music composed to
increase productivity, or enable an increase of consumption, either in the workplace,
the cowshed, or the shopping centre.
the methods by which the music is made, its poetry and its style (spahlinger, 1991).
as a composer, i am most interested in the final point. i would like to explore this as posing the
main set of problems for this paper, as well as posing the question of which processes effect
meaning in a new music that can be differentiated from traditional music. i shall devote
the first third of this article to this issue. i will then be in a position to question whether
analogies exist with political thought. i will briefly examine the other three political aspects,
in particular the means of production.
Keywords: Spahlinger; critical composition; new music; politics; parametric music; musical
material
let us assume that in the realm of morality the final distinctions are between good
and evil, in aesthetics beautiful and ugly, in economics profitable and unprofitable.
[ … ]the specific political distinction to which political actions and motives can be
reduced is that between friend and enemy. (schmidt, 2007, p. 26)
taking this definition to be true and valid, my response is that a negative concept of the
political is needed, a concept of the a-political, in the sense that the material of new
music is a-tonal: i.e., reflected in itself. i would like to explore this thought and get
closer to it over the course of this article.
vier stücke (four pieces) for soprano, clarinet, piano, violin, and cello (1975)
one may choose to characterise my vier stücke (spahlinger, 1975b) as examples of para-
metrically determined, post-serial music. they were composed using two main par-
ameters: loudness and density, but without recourse to serial procedures. both of
these parameters are imagined as continuous (from the lowest values to the highest,
i.e. like pitch); both parameters are not divided up into a single scalar order from
which one could create a characteristic disorder by creating a row; instead, they
appear as properties which change gradually.
a crescendo or a diminuendo is assigned to each of these pieces for their duration as
indicated in figure 1. furthermore, a decrease of density or an accumulation of density,
occurs first in the same order and then in the opposite order. therefore there is no rep-
etition in the coupling of the parameters.
everything was done to obfuscate the fact that the same idea has been worked
through four times across the four pieces. each piece has a differently short duration:
34”, 70”, 18”, and 86”. one almost has the impression that the final piece is longer than
all three previous pieces put together (122”), which is not true. despite the fact that for
each piece the dynamics are uni-directional, they are perceived very differently from
each other because the extremes in each piece are very different. the beginning and
ending dynamics are different for each piece and sometimes the same for all instru-
ments and at other times mixed. therefore the middle dynamic for each piece is not
necessarily the midpoint between the loudest and quietest dynamic.
to go into more detail: the first piece begins with dynamics between f and p, after
which it moves towards a unison pppp, moving further towards niente. the middle
value here lies between p and pp. the second begins at niente and makes a crescendo
only as far as pp. the third, the shortest, begins with fff, and at the end many different
dynamics appear which all lie between this fff and p. the middle value is ff. the begin-
ning of the final piece descends, so to speak, into a pool of whispers at pppp which is
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figure 1. vier stücke: formal sketch showing the plan of diminuendo/crescendo for each
movement and indications of dynamics, durations (4 durations, 3 pauses: long pause, as
long as possible, attacca), and densities.
shot through with occasional pp ‘spikes’. both of these dynamic layers are connected by
a layer at ppp. from here on it progresses in waves towards fffff possibile; the middle
value is only mf.
i preferred not to consider the changes in densities as quantities (i.e. objectively)
either before or during composition. i merely wanted to outline the processes discussed
above (decrease, increase, increase, decrease) and in so doing wanted to present an
unresolved contradiction. it is not clear how the masses of transients (or attacks)
together with the durations of the surrounding notes create the impression of
density. the question one must answer in advance is: to enable the perception of a com-
parable and stable density throughout how many short attacks should be removed as
they gradually become long durations? once one has established this neutral middle-
value one can then derive further increases and decreases of density relative to it.
there are, of course, many issues and attributes that influence the perception of
density (for example: dynamics, timbre, degrees of instrumental blending, distances
in both temporal and pitch space, etc, etc) all of which need consideration.
130 m. spahlinger
what purpose does this preoccupation with increase and decrease of density serve? i
can remember my initial reflections: during times when, from the outset, it is anything
but certain that any sense can be made of music, one must, so to speak, offer a super-
abundance of material, a profusion of information from which the listener perceives
‘super signs’ and begins to establish an understanding of what is more and less
important.
during the process of density reduction, the individual details become gradually
more audible; hearing becomes more intentional, and what is heard acquires
implied intention. further reduction of density allows one access to ‘buried’ infor-
mation and, while hearing the much longer durations, one either discovers or
assumes the presence of minimal sonic fluctuations. far more important than the
(at that time quite fashionable) relation with information theory is the keyword
‘open form’, to which i will return.
one remaining question is whether i would prefer to strengthen the unifying prin-
ciple ‘four times the same’, especially given how shrouded and obfuscated it has
become.
the pauses should be performed as differently from each other as possible. they
should be performed differently when compared with each other and in their relation-
ship to the music that they divide. an ‘almost movement’ pause is placed between the
1st and 2nd movements. even if this pause were to be held too long, the fade out of the
clarinet note (played ‘as high as possible’) at the end of the 1st movement and
the fading in of the clarinet note (‘nearly as low as possible’) at the beginning of the
2nd movement could be understood as a technical process. to maintain tension, the
pause before the 3rd movement should be held for as long as possible. the music con-
tinues before the tension between movements dissolves. the exact duration depends
on: the acoustics, the noise from the hall, and the way that the public receive the work.
there is no pause at the end of the 3rd and shortest movement, and because of this, it
may be confusing to know if the 4th movement has actually begun or not, especially
when the fermata on the 24th second could be taken for the pause between those
movements.
open form
if one were to argue that eric satie’s vexations was the very first piece of new music, i
would consider that interesting. whilst the 840 repetitions demanded of a short piece
which, even when played at a reasonably slow tempo, implies a total duration of 28
hours, the score does not contain the least indication of this total duration or anything
like a whole form.
as a consequence of atonality, the residual characteristics of music were exposed.
comparable to this erosion was the discussion of open form in the new music scene
in the 1950’s. this legacy allows one to think that new music is the only music in
which the relationship between the parts and the whole has been fundamentally
changed. this changed relationship can affect all of music’s properties, including
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those that are still yet to be discovered because new music—and this is one of its most
remarkable characteristics—has an infinite number of properties.
if music has formal qualities at all, they can be abstracted from concrete musical
events; these can be named, perhaps they are generaliseable, repeatable, or even re-
composable. the criteria for music’s analysis is its divisibility and its dramaturgy.
from the outset, traditional analysis asks: how many parts does a piece have? if it
has no parts then it consists of one part. the antithesis of this is presented by drama-
turgy. the extreme case would be a music in which everything develops continuously;
the appropriate form of representation would be a fever curve, showing the course of
tension and resolution. division and dramaturgy can never present themselves in a
pure and un-mixed form.
if one were to believe that they had fully understood the A-B-A form by using a
sequence of letters and number of bars there would be a deficit in relation to drama-
turgy, and in understanding the relations of tensions in and between the parts. even
when the degrees of tension do not allow themselves to be precisely quantified, they
are, even according to their type, never identical.
an analogy can be made of a purely sequential form where two climaxes occur one
after the other. even though a dividing line could be drawn (as between sections) it
would not be represented with a vertical stroke but a wavy line (see figure 2).
traditional european music has cultivated a small repertoire of standardised forms
for which the clearest case (for example a 3-part lied-form) has been memorised by
every member belonging to that culture. when a motive or a theme is heard, its
1. in inversions
2. in potential completion
3. in extension
4. in suspensions
5. in alterations
in the following examples the function of the chords within harmonic syntax is modi-
fied, however tonality remains preserved.
1. 2nd chord, figure 3: tonic with the 3rd in the bass: ‘light’ tonic, this stands for
tonal stability (cf. mozart in repeating a sections, or in fixed second subject
group tonal keys). 3rd chord, figure 3: 3rd in the soprano: maybe a conclusion
(haydn, beethoven, op.100, 1st movement) or not.
2. 4th and 5th chords, figure 3: the 3rd and 7th are enough to create a dominant
seventh function. here, the leading note is supported by a dominant seventh
chord underneath, and never with a relative minor, which is almost never
correct.
3. 6th chord, figure 3: a dominant which has been extended upon the 7th, without
the 5th. this intensifies the dominant function. every freely appearing dominant
7th is plausible and can function as a pre-dominant (the supertonic) to a chord
sharing the same scale, or it can introduce a chromatic modulation, because the
3rd and the 7th of the dominant seventh chord clearly define the target tonality
(the leading note and 4th appear once only in the 12 major/minor keys).
4. 2nd chord, 2nd bar, figure 3: a suspended 4th in the dominant seventh.
5. final chord of 2nd bar, figure 3: with g in the bass, and with the tonic missing:
diminished 5th, 3rd, 7th, diminished 9th, augmented 5th. in harmonic language
this is not the dominant but the secondary dominant, or the pre-dominant.
the number of pitches in tonal chords is limited. simple doublings are allowed. the
number of possible shapes soon exhaust themselves. mammals have four limbs,
beetles never have seven legs. if anything is missing it will automatically be completed
in your head.
Contemporary Music Review 135
in contrast to this there are atonal chords: any two pitches can always belong to a
tonal context, a third pitch defines whether a chord is tonal or atonal (when no
other context is given).
1. 3rd bar, figure 3: these four chords are made of the same 3 pitches. however
because they have no common tonal function they create four different
chords rather than inversions of the same chord.
2. 4th bar, figure 3: an atonal chord is never complete, it is never whole in terms of
its being a gestalt. in principle it is always possible to add a further note. from
this perspective no act of completion or of filling in a missing part, as previously
described, takes place.
3. 5th bar, figure 3: an atonal chord can contain 4, 5, 10, or all 12 chromatic
pitches and can still be infinitely extended, as i have done here by using micro-
tonal intervals.
4. it is impossible for a listener to have the impression that a tone in one atonal
chord is a suspension moving towards another one without allowing for a
tonal interpretation to emerge (apart from perhaps in a piece where the same
chords always appear).
5. alterations are equally incomprehensible, and can be understood at best as
tonally embedded particles. either that or they can be understood as a transition
towards another equally autonomous atonal chord.
an atonal chord is a chord and not a chord (analogous to the open conclusion). the
pitches sound simultaneously but do not create a gestalt unit, therefore their simulta-
neity is also called into question. if one were to repeat a tonal chord, and, if after suc-
cessive repetitions this chord were gradually made to arpeggiate, the singular pitches
would still be heard as belonging to this tonal chord rather than as separate pitches.
if the same procedure were applied to an atonal chord, one would hear it dissolve
into a melodic shape much more quickly. but neither is this clear since melodies are
also gestalt units made of pitches and rhythms, that need a gestalt background such
as scale and meter—both of which are also capable of creating gestalts.
atonal chords are both chords and not chords. their pitches can easily be heard in
isolation and can be assigned to other changing categories; such pitches are
‘between categories’ because they are, as schoenberg said: ‘only related to each
other’ (schoenberg, 1976, p. 75).
if the thought truly realized itself [entäußern] in the thing, if this counted for some-
thing and not its category, then the object itself would begin to speak under the
thought’s leisurely glance (adorno, 1997, p. 38).
this quotation from negative dialectics by adorno, can hardly be interpreted as an over
concise apology for cage, for example one that takes the position that once all intention
and expressivity and all other categories are removed, then sound itself is the only thing
136 m. spahlinger
that remains. freedom only begins to exist when, and as far as, determination (whether
cultural or biological) comes to consciousness. this appears to me more likely: it would
be best to consider changing categories, or transitions between these and competing
orders (for example 12 chromatic pitches per octave are nothing other than 12 com-
peting tonal orders) that effect a specific negation of pre-stabilised harmony, (one that,
from the outset, establishes a finalised categorical ordering of the tonal system). the fact
is that this still occurs successfully. despite this, there is still an endless number of tonal
pieces that get performed and composed, in comparison to the number of pieces that
attempt a serious critical discourse with tonality.
i maintain that, beyond pitch, as with all other characteristics of music—even those
that are yet to be discovered—a similar emancipation from a culturally pre-determined
relational system is taking place, similar to the basis of implied pitch relationships (as
far as they at all belong in such a tradition, and were already characteristics of music). it
is impossible for me to exhaust even just the characteristics as they have been listed.
the next musical example (see figure 4) can be heard from the perspective of two
fundamentally changed characteristics of traditional music: the ordering of bar and
metre, and the principle of variation. i would like to say something about the
former and afterwards discuss the latter. bar, metre, rhythm, and tempo mutually con-
stitute themselves in traditional music. without making any difference to arsis or thesis
(strong and weak parts of a measure), the pulse (otherwise represented as 1:1) appears
only as an abstraction (to adjust the metronome) but never appears in music itself. in
new music it is possible to separate these four temporal characteristics, and the pulse—
which, as a sheer mass of equal pulses, creates an a-metric phenomenon—can play a
large role.
i want to draw attention to the fact that i am always concerned with dismantling
hierarchies. the many variations of bar length and metre—heard as unifying principles
in traditional music—allow themselves to be changed from, so to speak, the bottom to
the top via rhythmic modulation and actual variation.
developing variation
without recourse to the history of this concept, i would like to clarify its specific defi-
nition for new music. here it does not refer to the (relatively unsystematic) derivation
of a gestalt from a primary material, neither does it refer to the transition from one
stable ground to another: it refers to transition itself.
i would like to clarify this in comparison with the classical variation cycle. in this
case one is presented with a theme (usually in lied form) the essential characteristics
of which are binding, these being: the form, the implied number of bars, and the har-
monic sequence (i.e. the chord positions determine the highest notes in the melody as
well as the bass line). for the whole cycle the key (whether major or minor), bar, and
tempo can be changed for dramatic reasons.
every variation varies the theme (occasionally not, as in beethoven’s diabelli vari-
ations, op. 120) of the previous variation. every variation has a figuration type
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which is applied to the above named characteristics. the essential characteristics remain
the same, the inessentials are changed. from a historical perspective this is tautological,
since these essential characteristics only became essential because they were considered
‘unifying ideas’ which eventually became binding.
developing variation (or rhythmic/metric modulation—which is nothing other than
developing variation limited to rhythm) presents the extreme opposite of this
perspective.
a beginning is not a qualitative beginning (as little as it is possible for a conclusion to
be a qualitative, or cadence-like end), but it is some kind of beginning. it can be named
(a), whereby the first letter of the alphabet does not imply it as a primary material or
principle (see figure 5). this beginning is gradually altered until it is either possible to
imagine writing a caesura (which, to some extent, remains arbitrary) or until these
138 m. spahlinger
alterations are considered so meaningful to justify the label (a’). this decision is equally
as arbitrary. the variant of (a) can just as well be called (b), which can also be seen as
‘any kind of beginning’. this process repeats itself (and is, in principle, endless), and
after a number of iterations a state is reached in which there is no similarity with
the beginning.
this is not the same kind of transition that is heard in the progression from the 3rd to
the 4th movement of beethoven’s 5th symphony (which also progresses from one fixed
point to another fixed point), which is a purely psychological transition and does not
contain a gram of material from the final movement. on the contrary, i am referring to
a permanent quantitative change that creates a qualitative leap; whether over a short or
long passage no essential characteristic is safeguarded from being transformed into an
inessential characteristic, and the other way around.
does this awaken the association of ‘permanent revolution’? don’t be fooled: the
small steps of a transformation only appear logically compelling; if just one of these
steps were to go in another direction everything that followed could be different.
this process contains no formal implications; it belongs to methods native to the
open form, as does atonality. developing variation addresses expression and represen-
tation, and is not an illustration or an anticipation of reality.
until now, i have presented examples of how certain characteristics in new music are
specifically negated, characteristics that intimately hold traditional music together. i
want to look at the next piece in a similar way, even though it may appear that its con-
cerns are not as fundamental as pitches or rhythmic order—which is the reason i want
to keep the description short.
Contemporary Music Review 139
afterwards, i would like to confront all the musical ‘protests’ towards the tradition,
introduced until now, with the question: how far can they be seen as altered modernist
figures of thought? and how far can they be used for political reflection? following that
(rather like a doppio movimento) i will present two further musical examples to rep-
resent these questions further and, where possible—similar to the insights already
gained (all the while committed to the negation of the tradition)—might open a
more direct political perspective.
this piece has the title gegen unendlich (towards infinity; spahlinger, 1995), and this
addresses the idea that, with the introduction of atonality, a virtually endless number of
pitches become available. the same analogy can also made for rhythm: the loss of a bar/
metric background yields an infinite number of points in time. above and beyond the
sound, both parameters can always be further differentiated. the section under discus-
sion appears after a slow passage that may awaken the impression that the composer is
eager to prove that there are always more pitches that can be heard between two held
pitches (see figure 6).
almost the whole of the second half of this piece (see figure 7) consists of rapid semi-
quavers in a 1:1 pulse (as described above: i.e., without metric stress), with false notes
as deviations. after a certain amount of time, the whole ensemble plays a single tone
whilst maintaining the 1:1 pulse (see figure 8).
if music can prove anything at all (or even if it attempts to, or if it should prove
something), this uni-tone unisono allows an experience where the identity of this
pitch—as with the infinite number of pitch identities in both meanings of the word:
as being identical with itself, and also therefore recognizable—is just as questionable
as the identifiability of other pitches. tones are perceived as having the same pitch
only when—as long as timbre and dynamics are compensated to enhance the percep-
tion of pitch—they are not quite measurably the same. this is also valid for points in
Contemporary Music Review 141
time. without bar/metre articulation, and without the listener knowing what position
is intended in bar and metre, the instruments involved, given their differences of attack
and decay, must not just play a unisono but must, given the intention for the listener,
play simultaneously.
these out-of-focus unisoni are used to make the idea of a gradual decoupling, or
drifting apart, plausible and logical.
the end of the piece addresses the problem of the infinite number of pitches with
disruptive suddenness, in a manner that could be mistaken for positive ordering.
indeed, the basic assumption of every pitch classification is systematically disturbed,
this being the identification of identical pitches with their value in herz (as discussed
above, the disturbance of pitch identification is already due to the infinite number of
pitches).
the fact that the name of a pitch and its frequency may not be identical is an experi-
ence that giacinto scelsi made possible. in his work one encounters either a tone with a
wide vibrato or melisma, followed by a held and lingering tone, which is lent a different
intonation, and as a result one has the irrefutable impression that the music is con-
cerned with the same tone only pitched at a different frequency.
to return to gegen unendlich, one can imagine a notation system with a 6-lined stave
(see figure 9): one that regulates pitch relations. this stave notation shows how pitch
lines break away (in principle these lines run infinitely) from a common pitch; this
142 m. spahlinger
representation is radically different to the well-known stave where the lines run in par-
allel. a second, self-imposed rule is that the courses these glissando lines take—when
equated with the well tempered system—regulate the identity of a pitch when
measured against time. in other words for every point in time i can choose between
six different and precisely defined pitches (see figure 10).
the courses these six lines take are either represented (or not: since pauses have been
included in the rhythm notated above) as short pitches, as glissandos, or both. during
this process, a particularly interesting phenomenon appears, which i made further use
of in my double concerto for bass clarinet, trombone, and orchestra (spahlinger, 1998),
the whole of which is composed according to the same principle. this phenomenon can
be named: ‘point never meets motion’ (punkt trifft bewegung nie). a pitch, as short as it
might be, possesses a certain expansion in time. strictly speaking neither glissandos nor
short tones have, at any point in time, the same pitch, or, as hegel says: ‘motion is the
immediate presence of contradiction’ (as cited in liebrucks, 1966, p. 75).
the following sentence (1930!) is from kurt tucholsky: ‘on account of bad weather,
the german revolution took place in music’ (tucholsky, 1975, p. 346).
i hope you would not imagine me to be so naïve as to believe that atonality is any-
thing like the emancipation, or the democracy, of pitches. relationships between
people are not illustrated by the relationships between pitches, and it is not very pro-
ductive to imagine that one can change one thing and therefore allude to another. so
little about the world can be changed, either as a consequence of music or solely using
it. despite this, i maintain that ‘if change does not take place in thinking, and does not
take place in music, then it does not take place anywhere’.
from this point, heisenberg’s motto that prefaces this article can be criticised. for me,
it does not go far enough. during an experience worthy of the name one undergoes a
sensual sensation, but also an intervention in the sensorium, as well as in its abilities of
reception and perception. above all, when experience is accompanied by theory,
Contemporary Music Review 143
figure 11. cross-form layout of the 54 strings with the conductor placed in the centre.
where possible, the audience are positioned between each arm of the cross.
placed at the back, the 2nd violins sit at the front, the order for the rest of the orchestra
is the same as the first orchestra following the 2nd violins. the same idea is apparent for
the third orchestra only this time the violas are placed at the front, and in the fourth
orchestra (figure 12, bottom) the cellos.
my compositional intention was that all four orchestras can be understood as a gra-
dation of depth in increasing distance to the conductor (see figure 13).
figure 14 foregrounds the relationships between instruments of the same type, here
connected by lines.
each time two instruments are sonically paired, the impression of the sound chan-
ging location (a wandering of sound) emerges. this can be seen in figure 15 from the
bottom-left to the top-right, and is further illustrated in the pre-compositional sketch
in figure 16.
music is not a collection of examples for a lecture on acoustics, nor can it be allowed
to exhaust itself in illustrations from social psychology or communication theory.
music is really concerned with the reality of sound, which is also the reality of the
way we perceive.
the positioning of the ensemble, as described, allows for differentiation in the per-
ception of space, and this leads to many unexpected acoustic surprises; the deep and
148 m. spahlinger
figure 12. und als wir: arrangement of all four string orchestras: i, ii, iii, and iv.
figure 14. und als wir, relationship between instruments across different string groups.
figure 16. und als wir, sketch, translation from above: ‘b) spatial wandering, a) spatial and
temporal proximity compete (konkurrierender zuordnung). trapezoid with singular point or
square? *there are no one-dimensional dependencies (i.e. the lower a pitch, the longer the
duration)’.
loud pizzicati pitches on the same string continue sounding for longer than high and
quiet pitches; changes of instrumentation allow one to hear unexpected jumps of
location in the decay of the sound.
the perception of regular rhythm is either irritated or disturbed, according to the
way that positions in space are changed.
in the context of the theme the following is important:
in stereo technique (see figure 17) it is generally well known that spatial listening is
determined by the inter-aural time difference of sound, i.e. the time difference for
sound to reach each ear. a sound from the left side arrives at the right ear later. due
to the layout of the musicians, and where the audience are seated, the fact that
every other listener hears differently will (hopefully) be understood by all. vertically
aligned notes that, according to the score, should sound simultaneously may actually
be heard and perceived as sounding together for a person who happens to be sitting in
a straight line and at an equal distance between the two players. from another angle,
non-simultaneously notated music can be heard simultaneously, and vice-versa, and
this leads to all imaginable variations of spatial effect.
the ideal position for the listener of this piece is to sit at the periphery. there, inter-
personal listening can be perceived: one can listen, and imagine at the same time what
the sound must be doing from the perspective of those sitting in other locations.
i would like to alert your attention to the fact that this experience cannot be made
with traditional music. if we heard metric music from an extreme position (for
instance from seat no.1, row 1, i.e. at the very front and the outermost edge) these
Contemporary Music Review 151
figure 17. und als wir, sketches, translation: ‘measurement = parameter. here the left
column concerns qualities, the right column concerns objective measurement as par-
ameter. pitch—frequency (instead of qualities of scale relation). loudness—amplitude.
duration— (a-metric). timbre—(colouration, timbre is n-dimensional). pitch-spatial
location: traditional = venetian polychoral writing. serial = pitch-spatial location (12
locations). given: ideal listening position, stereo position. contradiction: simultaneity’.
effects would be noticed uncomfortably, but after a little while they begin to be blended
out, and soon become understood as ‘unintended’. in all its characteristics, traditional
music is always heard as ‘what is intended’, but never according to what actually
sounds.
as described above, once all interpretation has been removed, the reality is not what
remains. clarity cannot be achieved, nor should it be wished for: language, or language-
like music, demands both understanding of the specific idea and understanding of the
contextual meaning. otherwise it is only about signals that release stimulative reactions,
similar to our likeliest relatives in the animal kingdom.
during this music, the listener can hear (either consciously or unconsciously):
152 m. spahlinger
1. the fact that a rigid idea of the subject-object relationship (as mere counter-
parts) does not represent reality (left of figure 18)
2. that the subject-object relationship takes place within the subject (middle of
figure 18)
3. that the subject is a part of, and intercommunicates with, society (right of figure 18)
i now come to the final musical example. perhaps, in order to contribute something
that clarifies the relationship between music and politics, i have, almost exclusively,
concentrated on the poetics of music. i hope this is for good reasons. everything
about art has the idiosyncrasy that a large portion of what is represented focuses on
the means of representation. a still-life perhaps depicts something, which means
that it cannot simply be replaced with a signpost that says: ‘fruit, vegetable, exotic
fruit’. a large amount of attention is directed upon the manner in which a work is
painted, as well as upon the way in which it could be perceived. it is also directed at
the observer. reflecting on the means of portrayal and understanding is also the
same as the higher reflection of the object. i would think that, for example, an
extra-musical content, which could be transported by music remains locked in a
superficial relation to new music when it has not been conceived from within its
own specific characteristics and parameters (traditional music has always behaved
merely as expressive interpretation of content).
mechanical repetition—for example, that which proceeds in a self-contained way
and does not have syntactical caesurae, or formal implications—can be the content
of new music (as far as i am concerned this could be of alienated factory workers,
which, by the way, i attempted in my work morendo (spahlinger, 1975a) for orchestra).
at the same time—and this brings me to the next related aesthetic problem—mechan-
ical repetition addresses a closely related aesthetic problem which can be found in
autonomous music. this occurs in alban berg’s lyric suite for string quartet at the
end of the 5th movement, and it occurs far more convincingly than, for instance,
the portrayal of mechanical repetition in arthur honegger’s pacific 231. due to the
pre-conceived harmonic taste of its composer, this futuristic piece (pacific 231) does
not even touch upon the problem: mechanical juxtaposition (i.e., interlocking gear-
wheels) implies that it would do so, and that it must be possible for equally considered
doppelt bejaht, (twice affirmed) studies for orchestra without conductor (2009)
doppelt bejaht (spahlinger, 2009) consists of 24 concepts which can be played by
(almost) any mixed ensemble. a performance can begin and end anywhere.
the instructions and performance rules are only sometimes as simple as the charac-
ters assigned to them (see above). this version of the score, with its secondary and
additional performance instructions, was conceived for a symphony orchestra,
especially one experienced in performing new music.
Contemporary Music Review 157
figure 21. translation: a) everything (can be combined) with everything, hence: b) principal
invertibility, [exception: falling tennis ball, an example of individual time (eigenzeit)], c)
endless continuum.
every number (of the 24 concepts) has a graphic score containing all the regulatory
information. this is made more precise with accompanying text, and sometimes
pitches or rhythms.
03. klangband/band of sound: tones: long and less long, that combine to create
chords that change slowly and constantly. no melodies or motives are allowed, no
tones are allowed to connect (to create a melody), and no rhythms either (see
figure 22).
04. field of points: only short, damped, and ‘strangled’ sounds, and also those
sounding like cracking branches, etc. in the final third (of this number), very short
and audible pitches should emerge (see figure 23).
05. infinitely many tempi: all play regular pulses (1:1), every player in their own
tempo. tempi should be chosen that bear a ‘dissonant’ relation to each other. they
figure 22. doppelt bejaht: graphic score of 03. klangband; band of sound, or infinitely many
pitches.
158 m. spahlinger
should either be almost the same as each other, or almost the same as a doubling
of tempo. simple tempo relations (such as 2:3, or 4:5) should be avoided (see figure 24).
17. point never coincides with motion: glissandos should be gently articulated by
short notes at the same pitch. this can also be executed by one player: e.g. left-hand
pizzicato while playing arco glissando. after a while the short notes remain heard but
without their glissandos (instead the glissandos are ‘felt’, see figure 25).
15. ritardando moltissimo: this is to be played either on one pitch or on pitches that
create a cluster chord. the durations of whole ritardando passages should be extremely
different, lasting between 4 seconds—2 minutes, or longer. with a longer ritardando
passage it is crucial that everyone play their individual ritardando according to as
Contemporary Music Review 159
natural a progression as possible, so that the listener cannot predict if the eventual
pitches heard return in the same exact sequence, or if they have a different sequence
(see figure 26).
branching: further ‘branches’ are given at the end of each number; three possibilities
allow a pathway through all 24 concepts (see figures 27–30). for shorter performances,
it is possible to avoid playing single numbers. repetitions are very much desired, and,
during longer performances, are unavoidable. this should communicate to both the
musicians and the listeners the experience that not only are there many different poss-
ible versions, but also the perception that what occurs before and after is not cause or
effect, and that a changing context makes the ‘same’ into the ‘dissimilar’.
field of points: due to the limitation of pitches, this number can make a transition
towards a single pitch, towards the hommage to scelsi which from the beginning, and
for a long time, consists of one single pitch. field of points can, by way of a gradual
introduction of 5th and 7th harmonics lead to the number entitled flageolette (harmo-
nics) 5 and 7.
the world premiere of this cycle was performed by the south west german radio
symphony orchestra (swr) of baden-baden and freiburg. it had the character of an
orchestral installation, where the public could come and go as they pleased. each musi-
cian was allowed a break, while the other musicians continued playing. the total dur-
ation of this performance was just under 4 hours.
one performance (which was more a concertante performance and much shorter)
took place at the 2012 darmstadt summer courses. it was performed by the berlin
ensemble splitter orchestra as a single ensemble. this ensemble usually performs not
only without a conductor but, as a rule, without a composer either. the approximately
24 musicians that comprise the ensemble consider themselves as composer/perfor-
mers, and perform their own ideas, concepts, and compositions. in this sense, they
are making political music, because their means of production have been so altered
that no musician has sole responsibility to make decisions over the others. further-
more, everyone is empowered, and given a position which involves them in making
aesthetic decisions—not decisions made by the majority (which merely represents a
victory of the majority over the minority) but in consensus, or in which the dissension
becomes both the content of the expression and the object of representation.
field of points also prepares the beginning of competing orders.
in its simplest case, competing orders (see figure 31) means that (as can be seen from
the graphic notation) two alternating pulses are presented, each playing in the gaps of the
other. by shifting the relations of the dynamics, it is never clear if both pulses create a
metre, and it is also impossible to ascertain which of the pulses is the arsis or thesis.
figure 32 shows the sequence: competing orders, followed by branching.
there is no era that has gathered as much knowledge about its history as our era.
never has so much music by dead composers been performed. also, in popular
music, traditional musical material is constantly present, even when presented in a
‘modernist outfit’ and, as i maintain, without a minimum of historical consciousness,
160 m. spahlinger
figure 27. doppelt bejaht: branching (verzweigung) and field of points. this first example
shows how field of points can be followed by one of three different numbers, here numbers
11, 15, and 16.
162 m. spahlinger
and, at the same time, without entering into any aesthetic debate or discourse with the
current state of our world.
the suspicion is justified: our music culture (even we don’t have high expectations of
this term) is hopelessly backward-looking. this in turn influences new music. almost
never or nowhere are the specific characteristics of new music that i have identified
addressed; neither in the majority of cases, nor with an awareness of the problems
that belong to them.
mostly composers, for whom the models of thought of new music have remained
foreign, help themselves to expressive topoi from the past: they force music to
express something that its material cannot deliver.
despite this i also have to say:
i do not know what new music is. it is not a style.
164 m. spahlinger
during times of undaunted avant-gardism (or the remnants of it), one may want to
postulate a zeitgeist, or possibly a global world zeitgeist. in a similar vein it was said:
that which can call itself music is only that questions whether it is (still) music or
not. everything that takes it for granted that it is music, is quite definitely not.
(attributed to heinz-klaus metzger)
Contemporary Music Review 165
figure 32. (a) doppelt bejaht, example of 10. competing orders followed by … . (b)
branching.
this is a sentence i would ascribe ironic distance to. i would like to consider this: new
music is not a mother tongue. a child must first learn to sing all meine entchen (all my
ducklings: a typical german nursery song) properly in tune (as well as have internalised
the notes of the scale, and perhaps also the harmonic implications of a melody) before
the child learns about the fact that accidentals are notated before pitches, and before it
is exposed to the shock of understanding for the first time that the steps of the scale are
not (despite what one might think) the same size!
i believe it is very significant that most of us cannot remember what we felt when we
either heard or played the chromatic scale for the first time: the bad infinity, where one
can always say ‘+1’, that can never find closure.
not to mention the n-dimensionality of timbre and noise.
style is a societal category. it has the effect of being definitive and exclusive. therefore
it is bound by both social peculiarities and biases. style, in the conventional sense of it
having a national, regional, class, or group identification, or a sociolect, etc, is not
specific to new music. this is why, and even more so, personal style has become obso-
lete in new music. new music is not a style, at best it is a method that does not have
‘problems of translation’ that can be applied to all styles in the world (very much in
contrast to what is taken for granted about an epoch or a geographic region).
166 m. spahlinger
new music’s method of self-questioning can be applied to every music. it has been
practised for the past 100 years. that should be long enough to allow the understanding
that the radical self-questioning of one’s own cultural evolution must be included if
one wants to—in the political sense, a-politically—make strangers or enemies into
friends.
disclosure statement
no potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
notes
[1] in german there are two words for ‘reality’: realität (the objective world independent of con-
sciousness, whatever that could be), and wirklichkeit (the reality of consciousness). the latter
sense is intended here.
[2] in reality, as understood by wirklichkeit, appearance (schein) and being (sein) are inseparable:
the negative is the opposite of itself, and remains in motion.
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