Re: GG: Music theorists?

[Robert Clements <clemensr@mailhost.world.net>]

At 16:30 24/10/1996 EDT, Mary Jo Watts wrote:

>The following is an excerpt from a _Canadian Composer_ interview with GG
>(March 1972):
>
>		"...the opening  segment of _North_ has a kind of trio-sonata
>	texture, but it is really an exercize in texture and not a
>	conscious effort to regenerate a musical form.  Three people speak
>	more or less simultaneously...The scene is built so it has a kind of--
>	I don't know if you have ever looked at the tone rows of Anton Webern
>	as distinguished from those of Arnold Schoenberg-- but it has a kind
>	of Webern-like continuity-in-crossover in that motives which are
>	similar but not identical are used for the exchange of instrumental
>	ideas. So, in that sense, textually, it was very musical."
>
>I wish I had a nickel for every time GG mentions the tone rows of
>Webern!  I understand what GG means in relation to _North_, but what,
>for example, might be an "instrumental idea" of Webern's?  How are
>Webern's tone rows different from Schoenberg's?

Last point first: not in any theoretical sense. The _use_ of the tone-row by
Schoenberg & von Webern is somewhat different (see below); but i suspect GG
is using _tone-row_ here in much the same way other people would use the
expression like melody (cf: "Beethoven's melodies as distinguished from
Mozart's"), since the tone-row is to the serialist composition is
(basically) what a melody is to a tonal work (this statement is more true in
the music of Anton von Webern than Schoenberg, by the way).

Working forward: the actual expression used by GG is "exchange of
instrumental ideas"; which gives a clue to what he probably meant in the
passage (much of which borders on gibberish... but then: i've always thought
GG - for all his intellectualising - was a primarily an instinctive thinker
rather than a truly intellectual one, very much like the French filmmaker
Jean-Luc Godard). He _may_ be referring to von Webern's _splitting_ of the
tone-row amongst different instruments in the ensemble; which gives the
effect of making each note (or small group of notes) within the tone-row an
individual _instrumental idea_ exchanged (in a kind of musical conversation)
with other note/instruments in the ensemble. A similar effect (perhaps
easier to recognise; although the music is anything but twelve-tone) is
achieved by Morton Feldman in some of his _advanced_ scores (such as _Piano
& String Quartet_).

The analogy seems kind of woolly to me, though; since the key (if you pardon
the expression) of the exchange of musical ideas in von Webern (as it is in
Feldman) is the _silence_ in which the exchange takes place. There are no
true _overlays_ in his compositions (von Webern's orchestral scores are as
sparse as they are short); as there are in GG's radio documentaries.

(The joke goes: when an ensemble tunes up before playing a von Webern piece,
it's the only time they're all playing together)

I suspect, thought, that (in general) GG is basically speaking symbolically;
& referring more to (or perhaps stumbling more towards) the primary
difference between von Webern's & Schoenberg's _use_ of the tone-row alluded
to above.

For von Webern, the tone-row encapsulated the composition _in the whole_ (in
which sense he was more truly a serialist... the _process_ being the key to
his composition); whereas Schoenberg was more obviously a Romantic composer
who used the tone-row as a method for organising his musical ideas (in this
sense, the process was a _means to an end_ rather than an end in itself).
This is one of the reasons why Schoenberg (as with Berg; or more recent
serialists such as Gerhard & Searle) could write extended works using
_tone-rows_ whereas von Webern never could... if the twelve notes of the
_tone-row_ was (in some quasimystical sense) _the_ composition (as it was to
von Webern), what was the point of developing your musical ideas in any
conventional way? None (that he could see); so he didn't.

(I've found the expression _aphoristic serialism_ useful in describing this
approach to twelve-tone writing elsewhere (the reverse - where more obvious
musical development of the _tone-row_ is used - becomes _romantic serialism_
in this analogy). If the expressions seem useful to anyone else, feel free
to borrow 'em)

If GG considered that the process of overlaying _voices_ in his
radio-documentaries encapsulated the content of the work - plausible - he
was reflecting von Webern's view of the role of the _tone-row_ _in his art_;
& the analogy makes a certain amount of sense.

Otherwise: i'm as bamboozled as you are....

All the best,


Robert Clements
clemensr@mailhost.world.net