Geräuschmusik again ...

Lichtenberg

'It is easy to construct a landscape out of a mass of disorderly lines, but disorderly sounds cannot be made into music.'

'Everything grows more refined and polished: music was once noise, satire was once lampoon, and where we nowadays say Please excuse me, in the old days we cuffed his head.'

— G.C. Lichtenberg (Sudelbücher, A.40, D.83.)

Geräuschmusik ...

Schönberg (self portrait)

Roundabout the middle of his music-life, Schönberg experimented with Klangfarbenmelodien. These were to be strictly timbrous 'melodies'—successions of timbre that qua successions of timbre were not unlike melodies structurally. (And why not Klangfarbenharmonien, simultaneities of timbre that as such were not unlike harmonies?) Consider the following extracts from Schönberg's Harmonielehre (1911):

'If it is possible to create patterns out of tone colours that are differentiated according to pitch, patterns we call "melodies" [...], then it must be possible to make such progressions out of the tone colours [...], progressions whose relations with one another work with a kind of logic entirely equivalent to that logic which satisfies us in the melody of pitches. That has the appearance of a futuristic fantasy and is probably just that. But it is one that, I firmly believe, will be realised ... Tone colour melodies! How acute the senses that would be able to perceive them! How high the development of spirit that could find pleasure in such subtle things!'

Schönberg was a (minor) philosopher of music as well as a (major) composer and theorist. But his ontology is here-and-there wanting. Speaking in the manner of the Aristotelians, melody is a formality (as is harmony), whereas timbre is a materiality. And the timbre of a melody (or of a harmony) is logically accidental. (That is not to say that it is unimportant.) A Klangfarbenmelodie is thus a mix-up of ontological levels, a sort of category mistake. Twentieth-century music is full of such errors. After Klangfarbenmusik came Geräuschmusik. And today we have Christian Wolff (et al) telling us that 'no sound is preferable to any other sound or noise.' Ah, if only Chapelmaster Bach knew then what we do now, about this egalitarian levelling of sounds and noises—how much toilsome labour it would have saved him! The modern composer need only load his scattergun with note-shot, stand twenty paces from the page, aim (optional), and fire.

Theory in theory is to follow after practice, both logically and temporally. But in the twentieth century theory ran on ahead, and even to places that practice could not possibly go. Geräuschmusik is an example. Better theorising would have concluded that noise-music is a contradiction, and that contradictions are not more likely to obtain in music than elsewhere. (Is it noise? Then it is not music. Is it music? Then it is not noise. 'But music is made from "noise." ' And violins are made from trees, yet trees are not violins. The composer has as much formative work to do with his material as does the luthier.) Maybe in this way we can give some credence to the 'Heartless brainiac!' objection.

Heart versus brain ...

Schönberg (by Schiele)

In 1946 Schönberg published an article called 'Heart and Brain in Music,' on the adhockery of the heart-brain dichotomy. (He wrote polemics more so than irenics.) See, Schönberg was constantly accused of a brainiac heartlessness. Readers may now open their copies of Style and Idea, turning to page 53. (Readers without the book are asked to feel especially ashamed of themselves.) Twelve-tone composing, Schönberg is sorry to say, has given him 'the title of constructionist, engineer, mathematician, etc., meaning that these compositions are produced exclusively by the brain without the slightest participation of something like a human heart.' However:

'It is not the heart alone which creates all that is beautiful, emotional, pathetic, affectionate, and charming; nor is it the brain alone which is able to produce the well-constructed, the soundly organized, the logical, and the complicated.'

Some compositions are brainier than others, but all music is brainwork as well as heartwork. And if we call Schönberg a heartless brainiac, mustn't we call Chapelmaster Bach—that sovereign of the ars combinatoria—the same? Don't let's forget, in the earlier eighteenth century Bach was most famous for an arcanum.

Bach's celebrated 'Hudemann' canon (BWV 1074)

So far so good for Herr Schönberg. (NB: His musicianship cannot be questioned. He was an exemplar. Musicasters beware.) There is nonetheless a disanalogy. For where there was a realism there is but a nominalism.

To prove the legitimacy of his heirdom, Schönberg was always at-the-ready. He exhibited documentary evidence, juxtaposing tonal and atonal scoreworks, noting hereditary likenesses. Already tone-rows have their transpositions, cancrizans, inversions, and so on, as in olden-days canonic imitation. And look whether there are not even fugues in twelve-tone scores ... Or are there? We must acknowledge that the terms are not univocal, not monosemous. In Webern's Fünf Canons (op. 16), for example, there are 'canons' but not canons. Take Schönberg himself:

'There is no merit in writing canons of two or more voices, because the second, third, fourth, and further voice has only to begin two or more notes later and there will never occur parallel octaves. And who cares about fifths? ... Even the writing of fugues is a little too easy under these circumstances.'

[Note: A prohibition against parallel octaves is common to tonality and atonality, but the prohibitory wherefores are unalike. Tonally, parallels are prohibited for bringing about untoward monophony, monophony where there ought to be polyphony; atonally, for abetting tonicization, for coming nigh unto tonality.]

There could be less heart and more brain in the 'Heartless brainiac!' objections. But just what is it that's objectionable to the objectors?

More to come.