PREFACE

Goethe wrote that “architecture is frozen music” And so I posit that music is melting architecture Whose lava-like glow rockets a spotlight Onto the neglected majesty of the castles within us.

LUCIEN ZELL1

This is not a music history textbook. This is a book that delves deeply into the craft of composing itself, the structures and strategies used by composers to arrive at an ordering of their sound world, and their responses to the world that surrounds them, or, in other words: the trifecta of analysis, historical context, and philosophical context behind the written music.

The book is intended for composers, professional musicians, and music lovers who crave to know how composers operate. My presupposition is that the reader has sound knowledge of traditional music theory and of music history. I only give biographical details of a composer or an era when this is especially relevant to a composer’s musical choices. As I have chosen to give analyses and process descriptions, the number of composers I mention is limited. However, I give in-depth analyses of the most representative works from each period after 1910. For an informative overview of the history of music since 1910 I recommend Alex Ross’ book The Rest is Noise.

1 In Tiny Kites (Dos Madres 2019).

In the twentieth century, theory becomes an important, sometimes even the most important factor in the field of composition, frequently running ahead of the sounding results. To find examples of this, we only need to look at the analysis of Stockhausen’s Gruppen for three Orchestras (Chapter V, 5.3). Up until the twentieth century, music theory always followed behind the practice in attempting, sometimes decades later, to find a perception-based explanation and ordering in the new music.

The principal method to arrive at the insights articulated in this book is in the first place the analysis. Although this makes the text less accessible for the interested layman it is unavoidable if we actually wish to reach the core of this art form, which is by nature rather abstract. My chosen methods of analysis are: - A description of the working process, the ordering of the musical parameters and the strategies that are chosen by the composer as guidelines to reach these ways of ordering. All composers know how vitally important they are. Just putting a pitch on the paper and then hoping to find the next pitch is a totally hopeless way of working. - When zooming out from the actual details of the work, my next question is: why does it sound as it sounds? Every composer works within a given tradition, which puts pressure on the composer to aim for a certain sounding result. This tradition can be the tradition of a whole century, like it was in the nineteenth century, or a quite recent one, perhaps the developments of the last year or even only the mighty voice of the composition teacher. However long or short or circumstantial, for a young composer these traditions work as a powerful guideline, sometimes impossible to escape. I am interested in both the circumstances which led to the musical choices and the parameters of that musical style. - Behind all that music, there are socio-political pressures, which sometimes quite unconsciously, sometimes overpoweringly heavily play a role in the stylistic choices of a composer. The stylistic choices in the happy sixties in Germany and the Netherlands were made in quite another setting from those made by the composers who had to work under the terrifying shadow of Stalin. But philosophical and political ideals could be of great influence too. Looking at all these aspects in detail, I hope to get rid of the false belief, that composers are special people because they are born with an inner CD collection with all their works already written.

And then, there is still one question left:

- Zooming out completely, we finally encounter the listener, the one at the receiving end of the line of communication, as art is a form of human communication; in my opinion the highest developed, most playful, emotional and fulfilling form of communication. The one that makes up for the violent mess we collectively make of our existence on this beautiful planet. To stretch its importance, my first chapter is devoted to that listener. How do we perceive music as human beings, why do we remember it, love it, hate it, why does it make us cry or make us believe we are turned into better persons?

And why is some of it called Art?

The music of the twentieth century consists of so many different schools that any book about it must severely limit itself. The number and variety of masterpieces of twentieth-century music literature alone far surpasses that of the nineteenth century! I was therefore obliged to make firm choices and in doing so I have tried to thoroughly study the most distinctive works. This means that, to my great regret, many fascinating works and individuals that equally defined this extremely rich era were left out. The book is already voluminous enough as it is… I did not have the intention of writing this book from my perspective as a composer. Still, all analyses say something about the person who does the analysis, even though I have tried to be objective. On the other hand: a book without opinions may become rather dull.

Finally, this book meets the constantly recurring demand by students, to whom I have with great pleasure taught the course ‘analysis of new music’ over the past twenty years. Time and again they insisted that I should put my classes in writing and during the final year before my retirement I was no longer able to resist their call. This book intends to answer the most diverse questions, questions that kept coming up: what are the main streams; how did composers arrive at their, sometimes extreme, positions; how can we understand the analytical writings of hardliners such as Stockhausen, Boulez, and Xenakis? And they wanted analyses that give insight as to why the notes that there are, are there.

Thanks are due to the rightholders, who gave permisson to reproduce the many musical examples; a full list is given in the Acknowledgment chapter.

The students’ intelligent questions and their heart-warming involvement have made this book necessary for me to write. I owe a debt of gratitude to my former employer, Codarts University of the Arts Rotterdam, which not only enabled me to spend much time on writing the

book during the final year of my tenure, but also financed the English translation. A special thanks to Rob Broek.

I also thank the critical readers, in the first place the brilliant composer, and former master student of mine, Adam Hakooz. I thank Ben van der Sluijs, lecturer Cultural Philosophy at Codarts in Rotterdam who casted a critical eye on the philosophical backgrounds, Hertzog Booyse, music copyist, editor and arranger who did the numerous examples and of course publisher Bèr Deuss, who dared to take the risk of publishing this book, critically commented on the text, and made sure that it became the fine publication it is.