Contrapuntal Thinking

Contrapuntal Thinking

By Paul Paccione Pre-concert lecture delivered at Radford University on March 24, 2005 I would like to speak to you tonight about my composition, L’aura amara, for soprano, clarinet and violin, the first verse of which you have just heard performed. I hope that I am able in my discussion of this work to convey to you a sense of its musical language, its structure, musical technique and aesthetic meaning. At the same time, I hope that I am able to situate this work within the context of your own university theme of conflict resolution.

The term “resolution” itself has meaning in a number of different art forms. In a play or a story, it is the point at which the main dramatic complication is worked out: the outcome of the climax of the play or story. In the visual arts, resolution is the process of making distinguishable the individual adjacent parts of an object, bringing them into clearer focus. In both of these instances, resolution is the by-product of some form of agreement or clarification.

The term “resolution” is also an integral part of the technical language of tonal music.

The resolution of conflict is a unique characteristic of much of the tonal music written prior to the twentieth century. In the tonal music of the18th -19th century, and of the Classic/Romantic tradition (Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Mahler) conflict resolution is the basis of the musical expression and an essential component of the musical language.

A characteristic feature of the style of each of these individual composers is the means by which the resolution of musical conflict is achieved. The resolution of conflict in the music of Haydn is always in complete decorum, somewhat similar to a gentlemen’s agreement. In Mozart, particularly his operas, conflict is presented as a symptom of human comedy, whose resolution is achieved through pure artifice. Beethoven’s conflicts are on a more monumental scale. The pianist and great Beethoven interpreter Claudio Arrau has noted that no matter how great the struggle, in the end, Beethoven always wins. Mahler’s conflicts are internal, frequently self-inflicted, and although eventually there is some form of resolution to his conflicts, Mahler emerges from the struggle with more than a few bruises.

In the language of tonal music, musical conflict is the by-product of the clear distinction that is made between both the dissonant (conflicting) and consonant (resolving) elements or sounds in the music. In tonal music, resolution is the progression of a dissonant element to a more consonant element. The dissonant elements of tonal music are, sooner or later, obligated to resolve to more consonant ones. The principles by which 1

dissonant sounds progress to more consonant sounds were determined by common practice. All of the previously mentioned composers shared a common musical language, and worked within this common practice system. Each in their own individual way expanded upon it. The composer’s increasing individual needs for subjective personal expression eventually brought common practice tonality to its demise.

As the tonal language evolved, the dissonant elements in music were expanded upon by means of chromaticism, to include pitches outside of the original tonality. This process culminates in increasingly large-scale forms of dissonance and areas of conflict within a musical composition.

Thus, in tonal music resolution can occur on different and often simultaneous levels of the musical work and in varying degrees: from note to note, chord to chord, phrase to phrase, and section to section. The expressive heightening of the varied dissonant elements and their subsequent resolution are important factors in determining tonal structure and form. This process reaches its dramatic and expressive culmination in the instrumental sonata forms and symphonies of the 18th and 19th centuries.

In late romantic music towards the end of 19th century, particularly in Wagner, dissonance plays an increasingly more exaggerated and prominent role. Dissonance is no longer bound by the principles of consonant resolution and becomes increasingly selfsufficient. This leads to the breakdown of the tonal system and the birth of musical modernism which occurred at the beginning of the 20th century.

In describing the contradictions that are inherent in any system of thought, the writer Umberto Eco has written: A system must have a contradiction to undermine it, for a system is a structural model which arrests reality for an instant and tries to make it intelligible. But this arrest, necessary for communication, impoverishes the real instead of enriching it. The model is of value only if it stimulates an advance to a new level of understanding, a level on which it then seems inadequate.

The birth of modernism at the turn of the twentieth century casts into doubt all prior assumptions about consonance and dissonance in music. With the “emancipation of the dissonance,” as proclaimed by the composer Arnold Schoenberg, the traditional conflict between consonance and dissonance in music loses its expressive/dramatic function and its understood meaning. The breakdown of the functional tonal system eliminates the usual distinctions that were traditionally made between the more stable consonant intervals (octave, fifth, thirds and sixths) and less stable dissonant intervals (seconds, fourth, tritone, sevenths). Given the “emancipation of the dissonance,” dissonance is no longer under the obligation to resolve to a consonance. The composer Igor Stravinsky addresses this new condition in the following statement: 2

Having become an entity in itself, dissonance neither prepares nor anticipates anything. Dissonance is no longer an agent of disorder and conflict than consonance a guarantee of stability and resolution.

Thus, important new questions and conflicts arise for the composer: How does one replace the dramatic implications of the tonal language? Is this type of dramatic unfolding necessary to a piece of music? How can a composer create a specific coherence as authentic as the old tonal system?

These questions result in new intensified conflicts regarding the relationship between: 1) musical form and content, 2) subjective musical expression and objective musical technique, 3) the horizontal and vertical dimensions of music, 4) musical tradition and progress.

The two important figures at the beginning of the 20th century who sought unique and different ways in which to resolve these questions were Arnold Schoenberg and Igor Stravinsky. Their music is both a culmination of the past and at the same time a break with it.

For both composers the past was a source of inspiration and at the same time a burden.

No longer working within a shared common practice, the conflict between the past (tradition) and the present (progress) forms the basis of their music. This conflict is the result of a shared ambivalence towards the past - a respect for the past, yet at the same time an obligation to move toward the future.

The contemporary literary critic Harold Bloom describes the ambivalence of modern artists (in particular, poets) towards their artistic ancestors as one of anxiety, anger and repression. For poets, the poem is a “psychic battlefield” upon which the poet and his predecessors struggle. Bloom is not necessarily interested, however, in reconciliation.

For Bloom, the relation to the past is by its very nature one of struggle and conflict. It is of no real importance whether old and new are reconciled and synthesized, or whether they are locked in battle - the work itself (the poem, painting, musical composition, etc.) is the struggle.

In the music of Schoenberg and Stravinsky, their struggle with the past is worked out compositionally through the conflict between both old and new elements, and use of the newer elements to revise and make new the old ones. Both composers willfully reinterpret, or “misread” (to use a term borrowed from Bloom) the traditional elements in tonal music in accord with their own musical concerns.

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How can the modern composer create a specific form of coherence as authentic as the old system of tonality? Schoenberg’s frequently misunderstood formulation of the 12tone method is the result of his own search for a precise technique that could reconcile and rationalize (structurally from the inside) the new densely chromatic musical landscape with that of the great Viennese musical tradition of the past. Schoenberg and his disciples, particularly Anton Webern, sought ways for unifying all the elements of a composition, particularly the horizontal and vertical dimensions of a composition, structurally from a single organic core (the musical idea, interval, motive, or the 12-tone row).

Stravinsky’s reconciliation with the past follows a different path. Through the incorporation and revision of the traditional elements of tonal music (juxtaposing and recombining them in new ways), and through the appropriation of various stylistic musical features from the past and in particular those of classicism, Stravinsky achieves an integration of classicism and modernism. Stravinsky works out his conflicts with tradition from the outside of the music - through musical style - and Schoenberg from the inside of the music - through the musical idea.

The reverberations of the crisis in musical language at the beginning of the twentieth century are still being felt today and have yet to be resolved. This lack of resolution is not necessarily negative. Today, each individual composer must find a unique and personal way of resolving the various problems and conflicts inherent in musical composition.

The philosopher and music scholar Theodore Adorno has written that “New music has to create its own space from within itself.” That is to say, a musical composition has to make sense in its own right and in terms of its own needs. Today more than ever, the composer is compelled to discover authoritative compositional principles that emanate from within the work itself.

The contemporary art critic Clement Greenberg viewed this tendency toward internal critique as the very essence of modernism. In an essay entitled “Modern Painting” Greenberg writes: The essence of modernism lies, as I see it, in the use of the characteristic methods of a discipline to criticize the discipline itself - not in order to subvert it, but to entrench it in its area of competence. Modernism criticizes from the inside, through the procedures themselves of that which is being criticized... What had to be exhibited and made explicit was that which was unique and irreducible not 4

only in art but in each particular art. Each art had to determine, through the operations peculiar to itself, the effects peculiar to itself.

“To imbue the outer world with mystery,” wrote the poet Ezra Pound, “ requires a rigorous technique.” What is often required in music are very precise technical means for expressing what are often very mysterious and ephemeral ideas and emotions, the fulfillment of which can only find their proper expression in music. Technique is a fulfillment of the demands that the musical material imposes on the composer.

One of the conflicts within modern music is the struggle to identify and reconcile objective technical principles with the freedom and absolute priority of a personal vision.

Composition reconciles stylistic experimentation and critical awareness, compositional freedom and musical remembrance.

Let us turn to the role played by counterpoint in this process. From medieval times until the present, polyphony, or the articulation of simultaneous sounding events, was, and continues to be, an inherent property of musical expression; and counterpoint remains the principle means by which composers consistently structure polyphonic music. The principles of counterpoint are based on the autonomy of distinct, simultaneously sounding independent voices. These voices must come together, in agreement, to form a unity.

Counterpoint is a principle of organization. It is the means by which one voice enters with a musical “point” and is countered or imitated, either melodically, rhythmically, or both, by another voice. Counterpoint is a means for achieving balance, the means by which the composer can obtain architectonic control over his material, and produce a unified yet varied whole.

Contrapuntal technique is the means by which the horizontal (melodic) and vertical (harmonic) dimensions of music are interwoven and organized. It is the way in which musical time and space are articulated - the logic of music. Contrapuntal thinking reconciles and coordinates the synchronic (the fixed, the vertical) and the diachronic (the mobile, the horizontal) dimensions of the music. It is the structuring of sonorous temporal planes in relation to one another. Counterpoint reconciles the fixed and the fluid.

The fluidity with which the simultaneously sounding voices are unfolded is achieved by means of precise measurement in pitch interval, time interval, and registration. The goal of this precision is the natural and fluid unfolding of the different voices.

Imitative counterpoint (where one or more voices are imitations of each other) consists of the simultaneous blending of the past, present and future of a musical composition the way in which one voice contrasts with another sounding voice in the present, and 5

simultaneously is an echo of that other voice’s previously sounded past . Each voice provides the other with new material, thus ensuring a constantly varied stream of musical ideas. Contrapuntal listening is the ability to separate out the different independent voices simultaneously while also listening for their interrelationship.

Now with this background and context in mind, let’s consider the piece L’aura amara.

I first learned of the 12th-century troubadour/poet Arnaut Daniel through the 20thcentury modernist poet Ezra Pound - through both his essays on troubadour poetry and his translation of a number of Daniel poems. Very little is known of Daniel’s life and only two of his melodies have survived. In the 26th Canto of the Comédia, Dante encounters Daniel in Purgatory. It is interesting to note that Daniel is the only person in the Comedy who Dante allows to speak in his own vernacular, that of Provençal. Dante refers to him as a “greater craftsman” (“il miglior fabbro”). Using the same phrase from the Comédia, T.S. Eliot would dedicate The Waste Land to Ezra Pound. Both modernist poets would frequently turn to the distant past as justification for their own inventions in modern language.

The medieval troubadours were lyric poets who flourished in the South of France (Provence) in the 12th and 13 centuries. The word “troubadour” is extracted from the verb “trobar” - meaning both “to invent or compose verse,” and “to find a song.” Troubadour poetry is stylized and contains a high level of artifice. Writing in Provençal, most of their lyrics pertain to courtly love in its various aspects. The basis of courtly love is, in itself, extravagantly stylized: it is aristocratic, ritualistic, secret, adulterous, unattainable, and literary. The troubadour’s task was to distinguish himself (frequently through actual competition) in a highly conventionalized language. The troubadour is simultaneously both the subject who acts upon song, and the object upon whom song acts. It is through song that the troubadour resolves both the conflicting nature of the language and his own inner conflicts.

Like Schoenberg and Stravinsky, Arnaut Daniel comes at a time when the conventions within his language were beginning to become outworn. Daniel’s own poetic style is highly individualized and he paves the ways for the Italian poets Dante and Petrach.

His verse is composed of complex metrics, intricate rhyme schemes, and words frequently chosen more for their sound value than their meaning (frequently combining elements from both Latin and Provençal ). He is the inventor of the “sestina,” a poetic form still employed by poets today. Like the modernist writers James Joyce, Ezra Pound, and T.S. Eliot in the 20th century, he put into his poems many words and phrases that are not found elsewhere. Daniel’s words are charged with musical properties. For the Provençal poet, song was a reconciliation of sound and sense - music and words. In troubadour song, words and music are inextricably linked.

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In addition to its musical qualities, what first attracted me to Daniel’s poem was the simultaneously archaic and modern aspects of its language. In Daniel’s poem, the distribution of rhyme sounds is polyphonic. Unlike the more conventional poetry of the time, the patterning of rhyme sounds in L’aura amara do not occur within the stanza itself, but occur between succeeding stanzas, in parallel relationship. This technique has been described as a “polyphony not of simultaneous elements but of something chiming from something we remembered from earlier.”

Regarding Daniel’s rhyme scheme Ezra Pound has noted that: “One might call it a “sort of” counterpoint; if one can conceive of counterpoint which plays not against a sound newly struck, but against the residuum and residua of sounds which hang in the auditory memory.....a sort of horizontal chord instead of a perpendicular chord... an elaboration of an echo.” As in imitative counterpoint, each voice points beyond itself.

In addition to its contrapuntal qualities, the rhyme sounds in L’aura amara make audible the chatter of birds in autumn. Explicit reference to bird song is made in the first verse of the text itself. Although in the remaining verses of the text there is no explicit reference made to bird song, the continued repetition of the chirping sounds, utz, etz, enc, and ortz, in the rhyme scheme, carries on their song for the entire poem.

In setting this text to music I have tried to transform the musical characteristics of the poem into the more manifest melody of music. The vocal setting is, in essence, a musicalization of the poetic line. The sense of movement between the sounds of the words are mirrored in the movement between one pitch and another in the vocal part.

Musical form is an interplay between the particular and the whole - part relates to part as part relates to whole. The parallel rhyme scheme between the six stanzas of the poem is mirrored in the strophic setting of the vocal line - each stanza is a musical mirror of the preceding stanza. In response to the poem’s distribution and use of rhyme sounds, the instrumental setting is highly polyphonic and contrapuntal. It consists of three independent lines of interweaving vocal and instrumental melodies. The musical motives in the clarinet and violin are all derived from the vocal part, and the counterpoint between the voice, violin and clarinet reconciles the metrical regularity of the text with the variety of metrical and melodic patterns that can be derived from the vocal line. As a metaphor for lyric performance itself, there is no more common figure in courtly love song than that of birdsong. In my instrumental setting of the text, the clarinet and violin parts, in imitative counterpoint, are an imitation of the autumn bird’s natural sense of antiphony. Thus art imitates nature, while imitation becomes the formal basis of art.

Another reference to bird song occurs toward the end of the piece in the grace notes of the clarinet part. In addition, these grace notes are a musical reference to the grace notes that appear in the flute part of the final song of Igor Stravinsky’s Three Songs From William Shakespeare.

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The harmonic language is modal - a return to pretonal forms - neither prevailingly centric nor acentric (what has been described in Stravinsky’s neoclassical music as “floating tonality” or “triadic atonality”). In its inflection and structure, the music is built around - a characteristic feature of troubadour song - the reiteration of the falling musical intervals of the fourth and fifth.

Musical language is the sole means through which the composer can come to terms with the music that came before. “ A real tradition,” said Stravinsky, “is not a relic of a past irretrievably gone; it is a living force that informs the present.”

Contrapuntal thinking is the objective working out of the inner connection of things and this type of thinking can be expanded to include not only the internal workings of a musical composition, but that work’s relation to other compositions. In this sense, music history is viewed simultaneously as both an unfolding and constellation of events - an interchange between both synchronic and diachronic historical realms.

In returning to Bloom’s influence theory, every work of art is interpenetrated by other works of art and speaks with a variety of voices in polyphony. The struggle within the work to reconcile the conflicting elements, voices, or influences is contrapuntal.

The poet T.S. Eliot , in an essay entitled Tradition and the Individual Talent, addresses the decisive impact the past has on the present: “What makes an artist original is not where one differs form one’s predecessors but where one’s predecessors appear and assert their immortality through one’s own work.”

My setting of the poem is strongly influenced by the poetry and music of the troubadours (in particular, Arnaut Daniel), and my compositional approach is a synthesis of both the contrapuntal methods of Schoenberg and Webern , and the stylistic and harmonic practices of Stravinsky. In this sense the work on tonight’s program speaks a polyphony of reconciled voices: Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Webern, Arnaut Daniel, and my own voice.

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