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.