Writings About Music - Volume 2, Issue 1 by TCD Music Society

Writings About Music

ESSAYS, ARTICLES & SCORES Vol 2, Issue 1 – April 2015

This project was made possible with the generous support of

The TCD Association and Trust For further information visit:

www.tcd.ie/alumni/ The Trinity College Dublin (TCD) Association and Trust provide grant support for a wide variety of College projects where funding is not available from mainstream resources. Its committee, with administrative support from Trinity Foundation, is made up Trinity graduates who operate on a volunteer basis. One of the main sources of funding for the TCD Association and Trust comes from the TCD Affinity Credit Card. With over 10,000 cardholders to date, a percentage of the annual turnover on these cards is donated back to College by Bank of Ireland. TCD Association and Trust also host annual social events on campus that maintain and strengthen links between alumni and the College community. These social events are self-funding and often generate a surplus which contributes to funding College projects.

PRODUCTION TEAM Editors Eileen Hogan, Adam Behan, Andrew Burrows, Joseph Bradley Cover art by Adam Bradley Typeset by Eileen Hogan

With thanks to: Philip Hodgins, Caitríona Sheil, and the DU Music Society Central Societies Committee The TCD Association and Trust The views expressed herein are the personal views of their respective authors and do not reflect the views of Writings about Music. Design and Layout © 2015 Writings about Music. Content © 2015 The Contributors/TCD except where otherwise indicated.

From the Editor We on the editorial committee are delighted to present the current issue of Writings About Music! This journal has been revived on a number of occasions in recent years—in 2008 by Dónal Adams and Alon Schab, and in 2012 by Eamonn Bell and Eoghan Desmond—and it is with great pleasure that I announce its re-emergence in 2015. The issue of accessibility is one that has accompanied musicology for many decades, and a primary aim of Writings About Music is to counteract the conception that musicology is an exclusive entity. The journal has attempted to do this by bringing scholarly writing about music to a wide audience in an accessible way. I am proud to say that the present issue continues to uphold this aim and even surpasses previous issues in terms of inclusivity by containing the research of a student of law and politics, Helen McCormack. Her paper, which investigates the political leanings of Dmitri Shostakovich, was greatly received as a presentation to the University Philosophical Society’s Bram Stoker Club and DU Music Society earlier this academic year.

Writings About Music has always comprised high quality and diverse writing, both in terms of topic areas and of styles of approach, and the present issue is no different. The current selection of writings and scores ranges from a modern feminist critique of the operas of Richard Wagner to a graphic composition for piano quartet and electronics, and it is a credit to the authors that each offers an individual and fresh outlook on their given topic. The writings section is framed by papers concerning the much-debated subject of music and meaning, and contains, amongst those mentioned already, an introduction to the beginnings of British copyright law and analytical papers on the music of Igor Stravinsky and Frank Bridge. The opening article is by musicologist Dr. Martin Adams, a distinguished scholar and a beloved friend to all in House 5’s music department, who retires from his position as Associate Professor this year.

The encouraging response from students and faculty this term has been a clear indicator as to how worthwhile the journal is considered by and for our student body. It is exciting to think that individuals behind previous productions have since gone on to become highly successful in the musicological world, with Alon Schab now lecturing in the University of Haifa, Israel and Eamonn Bell currently undergoing a music theory PhD in Columbia University, New York. It has been immensely fulfilling to have been a part of this project during my last months of music studies here in Trinity, and I truly hope that it will be sustained in future years. The production team have been a joy to work with and—as I am sure you will agree—the submissions have been a delight to read.

Eileen Hogan

Table of Contents Vol. 2, Issue 1 – April 2015

Writings Thoughts on Retirement: the Campanile Consort, Eugène Gigout's Toccata, and the Aspirations of Performance MARTIN ADAMS

Musical Works as Musical Texts: Problems, Impact, and Alternatives ANDREW BURROWS

The Emergence of Music Copyrights in Britain JOSEPH BRADLEY

Wagner’s Women SHAUNA CAFFREY

Bergian Influences in the Chamber Music of Frank Bridge EILEEN HOGAN

Stravinsky’s ‘Comments’: A Lifetime of Maximalisation ANDREW BURROWS

A Critical Commentary on the Search for Meaning in Music LAURA EATON

Shostakovich: Composer, Supporter or Dissident? HELEN MCCORMACK

A Comment on the Issues Surrounding “New” Musicology SOPHIE LEE

Scores Etude (excerpt) LUKE SMYTH

Morning Sonata (excerpt) CONOR BUCKLEY

Piano Quartet in a Synthetic Space FERGUS GRANT

Writings The current issue of Writings about Music comprises a variety of scholarly writings, on topics ranging from the stylistic changes of Igor Stravinsky to the issues surrounding new musicology. The first entry, ‘Thoughts on Retirement: the Campanile Consort, Eugène Gigout's Toccata, and the Aspirations of Performance,’ was written for the journal by Dr. Martin Adams, Associate Professor of Music at Trinity College Dublin, who retires from the department this year.

Thoughts on Retirement: the Campanile Consort, Eugène Gigout's Toccata, and the Aspirations of Performance Martin Adams I retire as a full-time member of the Music Department at the end of September 2015. My last lecture was given on April 2nd; and although I have been asked to do occasional things next year I have declined, at least for 2015–16. I need the break; and my ever-supportive wife, Jill, deserves it even more than I.

conductor, via consultation with an experienced artistic advisor. For the first two years that advisor was Colm Carey; and through watching how he worked I learned so much about how to organise a peer-led group of this kind. In particular, I learned the importance of something I find hard—keeping one's mouth shut during rehearsals. Learning that, I also learned how to talk with the conductor (who is chosen by the choir members) in private afterwards. In that way the conductor's authority with the choir remains inviolate.

It has been a privilege and, more often than not, a joy to have worked full-time for 47 years with that amazing thing we call music, and for 36 of those at TCD. There, one of the enduring pleasures has been the recurrent encounters with students, so many of whom have been unafraid to challenge me if I came out with something they disagreed with, and some of whom have been much better musicians than I. The one thing I had over all of them was experience.

Of course, some concerts have been better than others; yet not one of them has failed to achieve that which got the group off to a flying start— singing that evidently strives to do the best for the works on the programme, to achieve insightful music-making that captures a piece's essence, to share in the challenge of working within an ethos that proclaims music to be bigger than we are. Fine distinctions lie behind those issues, distinctions that are especially important for performers whose experience is inevitably limited.

I have learned at least as much from my students as they can possibly have learned from me. The platitude is true because for the lecturer such learning is spread over many years, and therefore is different from, and perhaps more cumulative than, that of the student who works in college for four years or so.

The programme for my last concert as artistic advisor (25th March) included Finzi's Seven Part-songs Op. 17—pieces as challenging as anything Campanile has ever done, and that require acute awareness of the ways in which Robert Bridges's sophisticated poetic structures are served by Finzi's rhythmically demanding music. As a poetically aware singer remarked during the many weeks of rehearsals, Finzi's grip on the details of English prosody was so acute that singing his music was like singing the poetry.

One of the most striking cumulative experiences of that kind, and by far the most rewarding for me, has been to work with the Campanile Consort since its foundation in 2007. At that time I was head of the Music Department, and was approached by two sophisters who wanted to set up a choir of music students, led by music students. I hesitated; but they would not let go. I'm grateful they didn't. After some negotiations with them it all started; and although there have been minor changes, the ethos and practices of the group have proved remarkably enduring.

At the after-concert party a friend observed that, despite the odd bout of wrong notes and other insecurities, the choir always sounded confident and never sounded stretched. In each of those Finzi songs, and in the rest of the programme, it

One of the main aims of the Campanile Consort is music-making that prioritises artistic insight and aspiration. Technique is a means, not an end. The programme for each term is chosen by the

was evident that everyone understood what they were aiming for, and was unfailingly confident in projecting that high aim. To say I was pleased is an understatement.

of artistic imagination and musical understanding far deeper than a number of famous virtuosos among that 20. A recurrent problem with so many of those virtuosos' performances is not so much that they are too fast, as that they are too fast for any pleasure except the one-dimensional sensation of being impressed. Gigout's marking is Allegro, which literally means cheerful or lively—not quite the same thing as fast, and certainly not the same as Presto. (Gigout, with his classicaloriented education would have been well aware of such distinctions.) These fast performances produce drive merely by articulating a sequence of rapidly passing pulses, or just a babble of accurately timed short note-values; they show little awareness of how a flexible command of metre and of phrasing can intersect to produce a long-line motion that breathes. As an organist friend once remarked to me when I commended his unusual ability at sustaining a slow tempo, "It's easy to play fast."

It might be argued that those issues are specific to a student group of this kind. But a recent experience drove home to me the verity of my long-standing conviction that the principles sought when establishing the Campanile Consort are universal to good music-making. I was comparing the many performances (well over 20) on YouTube of the Toccata in B minor (1890) for organ, by the French organist-composer Eugène Gigout (1844–1925). Gigout was an exact contemporary of Fauré, and aged just nineteen was appointed organist at the church of SaintAugustin, Paris. He remained there for the rest of his life. That B minor Toccata is Gigout's best-known composition by far, a lollipop of the great romantic school of French organ-composition. A lollipop is apt for demonstrating the issues I'm raising, precisely because it needs all the help it can get, and can therefore be less forgiving than an indubitably high-art masterwork.

Each of my three preferred performances has a strong sense of accumulation that brings out the strongest qualities of this simple, impeccably crafted lollipop. A tiny-tad faster than the other two is that by Didier Matry, one of Gigout's successors at Saint-Augustin. (He takes almost exactly the same tempo as my preferred recording, by Ben van Oosten on the famous organ of St Ouen Abbey, Rouen. But there's no video of that.) Monsieur Matry's video is a visual education into Cavaillé-Coll instruments and into French modes of organ performance. His subtle variations of tempo (e.g. ritardandos you don't notice because they are so right), the essentially vocal style of his phrasing, his outstanding technique (typical French-organist impassivity), and the wonderful sound of that instrument—all these make his account stand out.

Here beginneth my confession. Comparing these organ performances was a nostalgic indulgence, for I am a lapsed organist. It's a bit like being a lapsed Catholic—once you are one, it never goes away. For that reason, the comparison with Campanile is vivid to me; and I hope it will be to readers who do the listening. (Look on YouTube for "gigout toccata" plus the performer's name. The other 20-plus will crop up.) Therefore I know, first-hand, that Gigout's Toccata is so idiomatic that it is far less difficult to play than it sounds. That idiomaticness is especially evident when it is heard on instruments built by that genius organ-builder Aristide Cavaillé-Coll (1811–1899), whose superlatively imaginative, innovative achievements in tonal and mechanical design and craftsmanship inspired all the organ composers and players of the French tradition, and many worldwide.

Similar strengths are evident in the video (score on-screen) by Matías Hernán Sagreras on the 1912 Cavaillé-Coll/Mutin organ of the Basílica del Santísimo Sacramento, Buenos Aires. But connecting these thoughts most closely to the Campanile Consort is a video from a young Australian musician, Alana Brook.

Of the 20 or so online performances I have compared, three stand out for their insight, for their sense of perfection across time, for the apt use of the instrument and the building in which it is situated. It might be significant that all three performances are on Cavaillé-Coll organs; but for our purposes it is especially significant that one of those three is by a young player with a technique less secure than most of the 20. However, just as the Campanile Consort did with Finzi, she gets just-right those things that are the most important. And in so doing she shows levels

Ms Brook is at the organ of St Sulpice, Paris— the largest organ in France, where Widor was in charge for most of his life (even longer than Gigout at Saint-Augustin), and where Daniel Roth is the current titular (i.e. principal) organist. Monsieur Roth is a notable teacher, and that is what is happening here as he chats, makes recommendations and sometimes helps with registration.

The video is fascinating; but it's all too easy to be distracted by that which is mainly visual—the occasional bouts of physical intensity, the fascinating clatter of the organ's action (it's all working, but is it perhaps a bit tired?), and the organ console's combination of massivity, complexity, and irreproachably ergonomic design. (As always with Cavaillé-Coll, and epitomising a model blend of form and function, the keyboard actions are entirely mechanical. The only things electric are the blower motors and the lights.)

have gone on to work professionally in choral music, and that several participants have told me that singing in the group, or conducting it, proved to be the most challenging and empowering musical experience of their lives.

However, if you listen without visual distraction it becomes obvious that Ms Book plays with an artistic imagination and a depth of musicality that completely transcends wrong notes (of which there are quite a few) and that kind of thing. The ways in which the pedal sometimes leads the manuals' top line, and sometimes vice versa, show that she thinks vocally about the piece's deceptively simple linearity. (It is no coincidence that M. Roth keeps singing.) She hears it before she plays it; and, like M. Matry, she shows a strong awareness of metre, of how sometimes to shape things in groups of two bars (it is in 2/4) and sometimes in groups of four, of how to make those outer lines intersect in question-and-answer so as to achieve drive without driving hard; and all that culminates in impeccable timing of the concluding chords. Deservedly, she smiles near the beginning when M. Roth says "Beautiful tempo!", and at the end. Relief mixed with triumph, perhaps? Whatever—it's absorbing and convincing music-making. That organ performance epitomises what I have always hoped for from the Campanile Consort. And, on the whole, that is what has happened. Working with Campanile has sometimes stretched my emotional energy and my patience; but I have never lost faith in the value of the project—provided it could maintain its artistic ethos. It has done that. And that continuity is a testament to the musical and artistic insight of the members across the years. It has also reinforced to me, and to the singers and conductors, that music is about people, and that producing strong music-making requires strong commitment and discipline. This year Campanile broke their own considerable record by deciding to hold a rehearsal at 7.00am. Everyone was there! In supporting the Campanile Consort I have wanted young people to experience the transcendent power that has kept me loving music more than any other man-made thing, and that will keep me engaged for however many more years I have left. Best of all has been the fact that several of the conductors and singers

Musical Works as Musical Texts: Problems, Impact, and Alternatives Andrew Burrows Works of music in the Western art tradition are predominantly viewed as being texts: fixed, permanent, defined objects. This essay will consider some of the implications of this viewpoint, and suggest an alternative.

musical work as being at least that which is in the score.5 In this setup, it is the role of an interpreter (typically a performer) to undo the ‘distortions’ to the musical work required by the act of writing it down—which is to say, to interpret the notation.6 The audience is thus presented with the performer’s opinion of what the work really is: the “true” text of the composition. However, different performers often create different sounds from the same score.

While I do not limit my description of a text to that which is written down—the score—it is clear that having a system of notation allows for this viewpoint.1 It can describe elements of a musical work in a fixed (by virtue of its being written down), permanent (so long as a score can be preserved), and defined (once it is being used in a culture where the symbols have an agreed meaning) way. However, it is not infallible in any of these respects. The score of a work changes, being subject to the vagaries of editors, copyists, performers, and others. Stanley Boorman has pointed out many of the problems with copying scores from manuscripts or other scores, stating that a received score is in fact ‘a definer of a specific moment in the evolving history of the composition,’ showing that scores are not as fixed as we sometimes think they are.2 Furthermore, symbols are often poorly defined, and their meaning can change. Thus, what is implicit to a reader of a score at one point in history may be indeterminable to a reader of the same score at a different point.

This demonstrates that our reliance on a score to provide a representation of a musical text has fundamental problems, which affect the way we perceive (and even conceive of) a musical work—both because the score itself is unreliable, and because trying to discover the “true” musical work from the score is problematic in itself. I would like to move past the issues of the score for the moment, though more will arise later, and consider the impact of the belief that a musical work is a text. One of the inevitable consequences of musical works being texts is the canon: a body of works which, by some standard, are judged worthy of preservation and repeated use. Naturally, this standard will be set by the works already in the canon. Until recently, for example, this valuejudgement was on the basis of organicism and unity in a work: ‘Masterpieces diversify unity’ wrote Alan Walker in 1966.7 Things have changed somewhat since then, with Ruth Solie pointing out that critical theory is now more focused on the ‘perception and understanding by a more “democratic” audience’ of a musical work, and that theorists now try to explain idiosyncratic or individual elements within a

These facts raise several issues when it comes to making the leap from a score to the sounding music. Urtext scores try to solve the problem of scores changing, though doubts have been expressed about the validity of the endeavour and its results.3 A bigger issue, though, is how one goes from the score, with its ambiguities, necessary omissions, and implicit nature, to the work of music.4 Some writers view the text of a

This question presupposes the existence of a “musical work” which exist outside the score. I don’t wish to enter the debate as to whether such an entity exists: I will assume that it does. 5 Edward T. Cone, ‘The Pianist as Critic,’ in The Practice of Performance: Studies in Musical Interpretation, John Rink (ed.) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 24153 (244). 6 Roy Howat, ‘What do we perform?’ Ibid, 3–20 (3). 7 Alan Walker, An Anatomy of Musical Criticism (London: Barrie and Rockliff, 1966), 26.

The existence of a system of notation is also a consequence of the perception of musical works being texts, since the writing something down requires the existence of a text to write. Thus, issues in musical thought which derive from the score itself are also a consequence of this perception. 2 Stanley Boorman, ‘The Musical Text,’ in Rethinking Music, Mark Everist and Nicholas Cook (eds.) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 403–423 (414–20). 3 Stanley Boorman, ‘Urtext,’ in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell (eds.), 2nd edn, vol. 26 (London: Macmillan, 2001), 163–4.

work.8 Nevertheless, many of the works that most people are familiar with, either through hearing them or through study, still exhibit a significant amount of organicism.

of expression have been different to those of the select few whom we have accepted. While I am not saying that canons are a bad thing in themselves, it must be remembered that they do not paint the whole picture. They venerate a particular version of the past, and they ‘reduce a complex, plural, and contested history to a mythically unified construct.’13

In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the performance canon was entirely made up of a diverse range of modern works. Nowadays, though, if one goes to a typical concert, the vast majority of music will be over a century old, representing a small number of “great” composers, whose work can often be placed in context with reference to the other “great” composers. Thus, we have a chain of composers from Bach (and more recently his antecedents) through Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Strauss, and Mahler. This small number of white, male, German-speaking composers (essentially what Stravinsky, over fifty years ago, described as the ‘German stem’ of music and musical judgement) 9 make up the backbone of the currently-performed instrumental repertoire.10

Another problem with the view of a musical work as a text is that it stops being viewed as a flowing series of events, and instead starts to take on an architectural quality. Music, to paraphrase Goethe, becomes frozen music: an edifice occupying a single space, rather than an experience moving through time. This is partially a result of recordings, since a work can be listened to repeatedly and conceived of as a whole, and it also partially derives from the existence of scores, since they are spatial, and so can be taken in architecturally.14 Since the ‘identification of musical substance with what can be notated […] is an assumption built deeply into discourses that surround [Western art music],’ this results in an architectural understanding of music.15 For example, what Meyer calls style analysis is interested in demonstrating how particular compositions fit into general frameworks.16 Once a work is fixed into one form or another, it becomes all about its form: it is a manifestation of an architectural entity, fixed in musical space, and thus nontemporal. As a result of this, ‘comprehension of the whole [becomes] a prerequisite for appreciation of the part.’17 The view that this is the primary way of appreciating music is not agreed with by all. Jerrold Levinson, who believes that music is experienced as a series of concatenated moments, writes about how ‘one cannot perceive the form of such a musical composition as a whole, one can only conceive it.’18

Certain composers are excluded from the canon, since their work does not fit in to what is considered as “canonic.” Marcia J. Citron, for example, has studied how women composers have been excluded. This is partially because of their historical social standing, since they were not in a position to compose full-time, to publish, or to be involved with church music, but also because their work tends to be (though not necessarily is) differently put together to that of male composers.11 Similarly, McClary claims that Schubert’s music reflects his homosexuality, and that it is as a result of this that his music (and Tchaikovsky’s) has been described as feminine and structurally weak. She concludes that, if we accept that their sexuality had an influence on their music, then we start to view the music as being ‘defective.’12 Thus we see that the canon tends to exclude composers whose aims, backgrounds, and means Ruth Solie, ‘The Living Work: Organicism and Musical Analysis,’ in 19th-Century Music 4/2 (Autumn 1980), 147– 56 (156). 9 Igor Stravinsky and Robert Craft, Dialogues (London: Faber & Faber, 1982), 30. 10 The pedagogical canon includes composers such as Palestrina, from whom we learn the rules of counterpoint, and Mozart, from whom we could learn about sonata structure. This canon does not tend to change but to increase. Thus Palestrina has remained a steady feature for centuries. The studied canon coincides in many ways with the performance canon. 11 Marcia J. Citron, Gender and the Musical Canon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 11. 12 Susan McClary, ‘Constructions of Subjectivity in Schubert’s Music,’ in Reading Music: Selected Essays, Ashgate Contemporary Thinkirs on Critical Musicology Series (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2007), 169– 97 (174). 8

Robert Walser, review of Disciplining Music: Musicology and its Canons, Katherine Bergeron and Philip V. Bohlman (eds.), Music and Letters 75/4 (November 1993), 569–72 (569). 14 As I noted above, the existence of scores also derives from the notion of musical texts. 15 Nicholas Cook, Beyond the Score: Music as Performance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 17. 16 Leonard B. Meyer, Explaining Music: Essays and Explorations (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973), 7. 17 Edward T. Cone, ‘Three Ways of Reading a Detective Story—or a Brahms Intermezzo,’ in Music: A View from Delft, Robert P. Morgan (ed.) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 77–93 (86). 18 Jerrold Levinson, Music in the Moment (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997), 20.

Perhaps the view of music as being architectural is best summed up by analysts like Lendvai, who writes about the music of Bartók, claiming that climax points are reached at points that correspond closely to the Golden Ratio or the Fibonacci sequence.19 The premise is that, since these two entities exist extensively in nature, and are often found in aesthetically pleasing architecture, they should also be relevant to musical proportions. However, some of his calculations require adapting the music, for example the addition of an extra empty bar at the end or the completion of a half bar at the beginning.20 Furthermore, his argument doesn’t take into account changes in tempo, and it doesn’t follow that what is pleasing in architecture will be pleasing in music. Most of all, though, it does not take into account the way in which people listen to music, and the way we perceive time when listening, which is quite different to how time actually moves. This sort of analysis leaves the temporal aspect of time out, a consequence of viewing music as a text, both since the analysis is essentially an analysis of what can be seen of the score, not what is heard, and because it relies on an architectural view of music, occupying a point in space rather than existing as a flowing object.

demonstrate large-scale connections in a work— is necessarily a bad thing, or one which cannot help a listener to understand a work. I do, however, think that this sort of analysis is only a means to an end. A nontemporal study is useful, so long as its findings can then be applied to a temporal understanding of the work.) The issue of time in music runs more deeply than the perceptual level. Music is a way ‘to organize our sense of time.’24 Writers have shown how differing conceptions of time have resulted in different organisations of music. Karol Berger writes about how, say, a Bach piece (whose material undergoes little or no transformation in the course of a piece, hence the piece is not a function of linear time) and a Mozart piece (whose material is shaped by where it occurs in the piece, so that knowledge of where one is in a piece is a prerequisite for understanding, making the piece is linear in time) display different characteristics of time. He notes how the change in how musical material is presented in time coincided with a change in how time was viewed in society, from cyclic to linear, though (I think wrongly) stops short of making this ‘a claim about causality.’25 Jonathan D. Kramer writes about how the people of Bali do not perceive temporal processes as linear; similarly, Balinese music is nonlinear.26

In fact, time plays an important role in the perception of a musical work: ‘the feeling that music is progressing or moving forward in time is doubtless one of the most fundamental characteristics of musical experience.’21 The fact that music is a succession of events in time, whose order matters (in most cases), means that it is ‘pure process,’ rather than something which is a single point.22 Meyer’s view of music is one of implication, in which a listener’s prior knowledge of style and each musical event generates implications and expectations for what will follow, with meaning and value being contained in the realisation and frustration of these implications.23 This relies on the order of musical events, not just their existence. (I do not wish to suggest that analysis of music which is nontemporal—say that which seeks to

Thus we have seen that the perception of a musical work as a fixed, architectural object rather than part of a temporal flow—a consequence of being a musical text—is fundamentally at odds with both a listener’s experience and the formation of music. I mentioned above that our conception of a musical work is closely linked to what can be notated. This identification is at the root of another problem. Since our notation is better at recording pitches but is ‘downright crude with respect to notation and worse yet with respect to timbre, […] our work on pitch organisation overwhelms our work on rhythm, to say nothing of timbre.’27 This is not to say that our notation is

In fact, these two concepts are related to one another, since the ratio between any two successive members of the Fibonacci sequence becomes increasingly close to the Golden Ratio (approximately 1:1.618) as one moves further through the sequence. 20 Ernö Lendvai, Béla Bartók: An Analysis of his Music (London: Kahn & Averill, 1971), 22, 28. 21 Edward A. Lippman, The Philosophy and Aesthetics of Music (Lincoln: The University of Nebraska Press, 1999), 40. 22 Monroe C. Beardsley, Aesthetics: Problems in the Philosophy of Criticism (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World Inc., 1958), 338. 23 Leonard B. Meyer, ‘Meaning in Music and Information Theory’ and ‘Some Remarks on Value and Greatness in Music,’ in Music, the Arts, and Ideas: Patterns and

Predictions in Twentieth-Century Culture (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1967), 5–41. 24 Simon Frith, ‘Towards an Aesthetic of Popular Music,’ in Music and Society: The Politics of Composition, Performance and Reception, Richard Leppert and Susan McClary (eds.) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 133–150 (142). 25 Karol Berger, Bach’s Cycle, Mozart’s Arrow: An Essay on the Origins of Musical Modernity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), 9. 26 Jonathan D. Kramer, The Time of Music (New York: Schirmer Books, 1988), 24. 27 Don Michael Randal, ‘The Canons in the Musicological Toolbox,’ in Disciplining Music: Musicology and its Canons, Katherine Bergeron and Philip V. Bohlman (eds.) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 10–22 (13).

particularly good at recording pitch: it does not take into account the ‘minute variations which are deliberately cultivated by performers’ when presenting a musical work.28 Essentially, our notation pigeonholes musical events.29 Thus, when we analyse, we must avoid the temptation of identifying objects in the score since they do not correspond to what actually happens in the music. Instead, we must focus on identifying musical objects: to take a trivial example, if we are in a C major, functional, tonal space, and we see the pitches G, B, D, and F, the important thing about those pitches is not what they are in themselves, it is that they form a dominant 7th chord. While they look like four particular pitches on the page, they are certainly not experienced as such, particularly since their intonation will depend on the instrumentalist(s) involved. Thus, analysis needs to rely on identifying musical objects, not just reading what is in the score. This relies on two things: first, a willingness by the analyst to answer questions of identification musically, rather than empirically, and second, objects having names to allow us to talk about them. Admittedly, this causes the significant vocabulary of analysis, which can be daunting to someone coming to it new. However, having names for objects does have the advantage of improving cognitive ease. 30

Music is essentially a set of relationships. Different writers have differing views on what relationships are important. A theorist might tell you that the only important relationships are those which are purely musical, while Christopher Small, in his thought-provoking book Musicking, sets out his belief that any relationship in the act of ‘musicking’ is important—including one’s relationship with fellow listeners, the performers, and the concert hall itself.32 Though I believe his idea has merit, I do have reservations. Firstly, it reduces the music to a sort of “social prop” in which the music itself is incidental to the coming together of people, something which (in Western art music at least) is not necessarily true.33 I don’t think that this attitude covers all of what music can do, and certainly does not cover the value of professional music-making. Secondly, he claims that the relationhips in music ‘model the relationships of our world, not as they are but as we would wish them to be.’34 This is only sometimes true. How, for example, do we reconcile this view with the normal relationship between the first and second theme in a sonata that Small describes: the secondary, feminine theme disrupts the ‘logically ordered world’ of the masculine theme—an expression of male dominance which, in many cases, overcomes the ‘aberrant feminine antagonist.’35 Surely this is not a relationship that we wish continued to exist.

A final problem arises directly from the perception of musical works being texts. Because they are viewed as being fixed, permanent, defined objects, they are perceived as being suitable for scientific study. Thus, theorists often use works to demonstrate the validity of their own theories, rather than trying to tell us something about the music.31

I would like to suggest that music has the power music to affect, influence, and inform members of a society, which derives from its immanent content.36 This view is not new: in fact, it is a near-constant feature of musical thought throughout civilisation. Plato’s Republic describes how certain modes can inspire warriors, while others are suitable for those involved in peaceful voluntary work. 37 For a long time, music has been viewed in religious circles as having the power to inspire someone, as Calvin put it, to ‘praise God with a more

Thus far, I have discussed the problems with and impact of musical works being viewed as texts. Now I will present an alternative view, and indicate its advantages.

Cone, ‘The Pianist as Critic,’ 245. Nicholas Cook, A Guide to Musical Analysis (London: J. M. Dent and Sons Ltd, 1987), 225. 30 Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow (London: Penguin Books, 2011), 3–4. 31 Cook, A Guide, 228. 32 Christopher Small, Musicking: The Meanings of Performance and Listening (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1998). 33 I do not wish to deny the social effect of music as a means of drawing people together—particularly in an amateur setup, where choirs and instrumental groups are often made up of people from diverse backgrounds who might not otherwise interact. This is an immensely powerful and valuable part of our culture. 34 Ibid., 50. 35 Ibid., 170. 36 Some may disagree with me, saying that anything that we view as being internal to the music is actually something 28

that has been conditioned in us, and that any meaning thus comes from outside the music. While I accept that conditioning is how meaning comes to be understood, I believe that, because the music was written to be heard in the context of a particular culture, it is assumed that the conditioning has happened, and thus meaning lies within the work. The notion that the musical work contains no meaning, that the meaning depends on our own conditioning presupposes that the musical work was created in a vacuum, and that we experience it differently, because of our conditioning, to how it was intended. This is another example of how scientific method—which relies on the rejection of conditioning and the attempt to approach an object on its own terms—can mistakenly be applied to music. 37 Plato, ‘Republic,’ in Source Readings in Music History, revised edn, Oliver Strunk and Leo Treitler (eds) (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1998), 9–18 (10–11).

vehement and ardent zeal.’38 Richard Taruskin writes about how the Taliban, Nazis, and Soviets have all attempted to limit music because of its effect on society.39

It is clear that two listeners need not perceive the same meaning in the same piece. Thus, my view of musical meaning rejects the notion of a work of music being a text, relying on the notion that a work is not well-defined or permanent: meanings can be found in it, rather than one meaning existing in it, and the potential meanings can change from time to time.

In spite of this, most people do not tend to think of music in this way any more. Music as an agent of social change is a concept foreign to twentyfirst century listeners. Lawrence Kramer writes an account of the New York Philharmonic’s concert in Pyongyang in North Korea, and expresses the opinion that, if the audience had thought about the implications of the music in the right way (and if Lorin Maazel, the conductor, had not made several blunders in his programming and comments), it could have made them think about their state in a new way.40 Yet it probably did not occur to any of them to think about the music in any other way than as an interesting event, being the first cultural exchange between North Korea and America, and I don’t think it would occur to many people in the Western world either.

Meaning in this sense cannot be shown to exist. Lawrence Kramer writes that interpretation is at its best when it lies between the extremes of dogmatism and empiricism.41 In fact, the greatest challenge facing interpretation is dogmatic empiricism: the argument “if it can’t be proven, then it cannot be true” being misapplied to art.42 If musicologists can get away from this, and engage with the idea that the real power of music lies not in its formal structure, but derives from its social setting and how a listener perceives its meaning, then it is possible that others will begin to engage with music in the same way, will consider its potential, and will believe in its impact. Only if this engagement happens music can be returned to a central place in our culture, since then it will be seen to have relevance to our lives.

Why not? Why, if we acknowledge that cultures in the past recognised that, for them, music could influence thought (or at least express some mode of thought, a difference of degree, not of kind), do we not view it in this way? I think it is in part because of the perception in musicological circles of music as an object, whose meaning (if it is allowed at all that music can have a meaning) is contained in and can be extracted from the text. I would like to suggest a different viewpoint, one that is essentially a synthesis of Christopher Small’s view of music as being the sum of relationships between elements of a musical performance and the view of “new musicologists” that music contains far more information than a purely musical analysis might reveal. I believe that music is both expression of the composer’s situation and a means of eliciting the perception of meaning in a listener. Meaning, for the listener, does not come out of the music and into their consciousness; rather, their consciousness is aroused by the content of the music. Of course, the composer’s expression may well inform the listener’s perception of meaning, but it need not limit it. The listener’s perception of meaning is based on the music itself, informed by the setting, the performers, and other relationships, as well as the listener’s disposition.

Jean Calvin, ‘Geneva Psalter: Foreword,’ ibid., 364–6 (365). 39 Richard Taruskin, ‘The Danger of Music and the Case for Control,’ in The Danger of Music and Other Anti-Utopian Essays (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009), 168–80 (168–71). 38

Lawrence Kramer, Interpreting Music (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011), 280–85. 41 Kramer, Interpreting Music, 3. 42 This argument has caused several other of the problems which I have laid out above.

The Emergence of Music Copyrights in Britain Joseph Bradley The limited monopoly afforded to a copyright holder in itself has always been a contentious balance of interests. It is clear that in order to stimulate and support creative work there must be some economic incentive. However it is also in the general interest of the public to have a wide variety of music and other creative works available to the public. Although they are generally considered mutually reinforcing goals, the balance and the direction to which it should lean lends to a range of complications.

twenty-one years. The other printing patent granted in similar terms was that for the printing of the psalm-book, which was later subsumed by the English Stock of the Stationers' Company. 1 However, this patent reaped little economic reward for Byrd or Tallis, and only a handful of publications were printed during this time that would have come under the remit of the patent. Music printing was not at this time seen as a commercial undertaking given the little demand and the technical complexity involved in music printing. Nevertheless, it marks an important step towards copyright law that two of the necessary changes had occurred: music printing was in developing stages and intellectual property was being acknowledged in some respects. The alternative to the Royal Privilege emerging in the mid-sixteenth century was to obtain the right to print a new book by permission from the Stationers' Company Wardens and, when approved, by registering ownership of the book in the Company's register. Whilst both of these early examples certainly mark a move towards copyright in the modern sense, they still protect the physical manifestation of the intellectual property in the form of book and reprinting rights, and do not protect the authorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s right to determine the reproduction or distribution of his works.

To understand the relationship between copyright law and music, it is necessary to understand the early beginnings of copyright and music. This essay will offer a brief outline of the emergence of copyright in Britain and Ireland from early Elizabethan and Jacobean forms of copyright to the eighteenth century, and the development of more well established forms of international copyright through the nineteenth and twentieth century. There is evidence of the existence of laws dealing with something like intellectual property rights in Medieval and Roman times, including an order to Columba to return a copy of a psalter that he had surreptitiously written and the Roman Laws governing the works of understanding, but these examples do not resemble our modern conception of copyright law. It was not until the eighteenth century that music was first firmly established as a legal entity.

The publication of The Schollers Purgatory, Discouered in the Stationers Common-wealth by George Wither, in which he attacked the Stationers' Company, has been described as the 'first extended demand for authorsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; rights' in England.2 Wither's dispute with the Stationers' began when he was granted a patent in 1623 under King James I to print his Hymns and Songs of the Church, which was aimed at providing an alternative to the Sternhold and Hopkins Psalter and contained tunes by Orlando Gibbons. The patent was unusually generous in one particular proviso which stated that the copies should be bound up with every copy of the existing metrical psalm books, which were printed by the Stationers' Company. The Stationers' were

Three factors coincided in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England that provided the necessary environment for copyright in music, viz. the development of music printing and publishing, the rise of the middle-class and musically literate, and an acceptance of the concept of intellectual property. An example of an early form of copyright is the Royal Privilege granted to William Byrd and Thomas Tallis in 1575 by Queen Elizabeth I. This privilege or patent was in the form of a music printing and publishing monopoly in England that lasted Hunter, David, 'Music Copyright in Britain to 1800,' Music and Letters, 67/3 (Summer, 1986), 269 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 282 (270). 2 Kirschbaum, Leo, 'Author's Copyright in England before

1640,' Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, (1946), 46.

perhaps justified in their opposition to the patent and launched attacks on Wither's personal ability. Eventually, the patent was oppressed and, devastatingly for Wither, a second patent was opposed and disallowed by the House of Lords.3 In The Schollers Purgatory, Wither argues that the Stationers showed no concern for the rights of authors, saying that they did not consider what an author might have gained if he had bestowed the same ‘tyme, charge, & industry in other professions'.4 He puts forward a case for an author's copyright that they might benefit financially from their labour.

properly protected under the Act, but the rise of the musically-literate middle-class meant that the demand for printed music went from almost nonexistent to sufficient to warrant some sort of economically viable industry, strengthening the case for music copyright laws. In theory, music books were protected under the first Act, yet the fact that they still had to be registered with the Stationers' Company is indicative of authority it held, and so it was almost completely ignored. J.C. Bach was awarded a Royal Privilege for music printing and, along with C.F. Abel, petitioned strongly for copyright protection for composers. Bach brought a Chancery case against James Longman in 1773 involving unauthorised editions published by Longman. Around the same time, the landmark case of Donaldson v Beckett was being heard at the House of Lords. In this case, it was acknowledged that the booksellers until lately had not 'concerned themselves about authors, but had generally confined the substance of their prayers to the legislature, to the security of their own property.'9 The House of Lords in Donaldson v. Beckett held that copyright in published works was not perpetual and was instead subject to statutory limitations. J.C. Bach saw this case as an opportunity to use his influence to petition the House of Commons and obtain a clarification of the uncertain status of music under the Act of Anne. The petition seems to have been an overall failure and the House seemed satisfied with the Act as it stood. However, Bach's case at last came before the Lord Chief Justice and was much more successful than the petition. The Lord Chief Justice Mansfield declared that the Act of Parliament was not limited to letters and if it were to exclude music then by the same logic it would exclude mathematics which is also conveyed by signs and figures.10 Thus it was concluded that there was no ground for omitting music from the remit of the act. Consequently, compositions were protected for fourteen years from publication with a possible fourteen-year extension thereafter. This marks the birth of music copyrights in Britain.

Until the end of the eighteenth century in England, the procedure for an author proceeding to publish simply involved the once-off sale of a manuscript, after which the author usually forfeited all rights to his work. In some cases, the consideration involved a financial payment and, in others, it involved payment in the form of a number of copies of the printed book.5 Following this awarding of patents, clauses began to appear in printed books, one of which can be found in Thomas Ford's Musicke of Sundrie Kindes which included the caveat that 'This copye shall never hereafter be printed agayne without the consent of master fford the Aucthor.'6 Royalty payments began around the middle of the seventeenth century for authors, but did not become common amongst composers until the nineteenth century, with John Boosey introducing the royalty system in music.7 At this stage in the history of copyright, composers were still relatively low down on the food-chain of the publishing industry and most of those concerned about copyright were booksellers or binders. There was little financial gain to be made for composers in publishing. However, moving to Georgian times, we see a distinct development of authors' attitudes as can be illustrated by Samuel Johnson's quote that 'no man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.' The Statute of Anne, 1710 marked the beginning of copyright legislation in Britain. It began by stating its purpose as 'An Act for the Encouragement of Learning, by Vesting the Copies of Printed Books in the Authors or Purchasers of such Copies, during the Times therein mentioned.'8 Until 1777 music was not

Pritchard, Allan, 'George Wither's Quarrel with the Stationers: An Anonymous Reply to “The Schollers Purgatory”,' in Studies in Bibliography, 16 (1963), 27–42 (30). 4 Wither, The Schollers Purgatory, 93. 5 Hunter, 'Music Copyright in Britain to 1800,' 271. 6 Ford, Thomas, Musicke of Sundrie Kindes. (London: John Windet, 1607).

Kirschbaum, 'Author's Copyright,' 79. British Library, 8, Anne c. 19. 9 Donaldson v. Becket, London (1774), Primary Sources on Copyright (1450–1900), eds L. Bently & M. Kretschmer. 10 Cowper, Henry, Reports of Cases adjudged in the Court of King's Bench: from Hilary Term, the 14th of George III, 1774, to Trinity Term, the 18th of George III, 1778..., (London, 1783).

7 8

Wagner’s Women Shauna Caffrey The position of women in the operatic works of Richard Wagner has long been the subject of debate. Many regard Wagner’s women as ‘feminist ideals of womanhood,’1 while others argue that they are ‘romantic victims,’2 defined by their self-sacrificing subservience to the men who surround them. Over the course of this essay, the role of women in Wagner’s operatic works will be discussed, with particular attention paid to Romantic stereotypes. In such an examination as this, the question of feminism demands consideration and as such, we will also focus on the feminist nature, or lack thereof, of Wagner’s works.

with her own motif, Wagner shows us that Elsa consciously identifies herself with her saviour and subconsciously identifies with her transformed brother, both of whom are pillars of virtue and sanctity. As such, her identity from her first appearance is defined in part by the two men to whom she is closest.

The first of Wagner’s women to come under scrutiny will be Elsa, the heroine, if the use of such a term is appropriate, of Wagner’s 1850 opera Lohengrin WWV75. Elsa’s first appearance in Lohengrin occurs in Act I scene 2 and is notable for her mute entrance. Suspected of fratricide and interrogated by König Heinrich, she eventually breaks her silence and recounts, in a trance-like state, a dream of the hero who would be her saviour. The hero she depicts is, of course, Lohengrin and in the bars preceding the description of her dream the theme of the Holy Grail is sounded in divided violins, as illustrated in figure 1.1 below. The Grail theme, previously sounded in the overture, is inherently linked to the concepts of purity and sanctity, and its appearance in Elsa’s monologue signifies her own purity and the purity of the hero to come. By signifying the virtue of the hero, the Grail theme takes on a heraldic function and thus presents Lohengrin (here an abstract concept, not yet a physical man) as Elsa views him. The Grail theme is also the foundation for the Swan motif that occurs later in the opera and this reflects upon the swan as a universal symbol for purity and honour. However, as we learn in Act III, the swan that accompanies Lohengrin on his journey is none other than the transmogrified Gottfried, Elsa’s brother. By juxtaposing the Grail theme

Figure 1.1: The Grail Motif, Lohengrin, Act I/2, 89– 92.

The definition of women through their relationship with men is a recurring theme in Wagner’s operatic work and one which hinges on Wagner’s ideals of love and feminity. In Lohengrin, as in Der Ring des Nibelungen, love is a largely destructive force where the heroine is concerned, as she is defined as much by love as she is by the man who she harbours it for. In Richard Wagner’s Women, Eva Reiger assesses Wagner’s female stereotype: Elsa, Elisabeth, Eva and later Brünnhilde—in all these characters there shines through the ideal image of a woman who exists only for man.3

This may appear to be a sweeping statement, but as we will examine in the case of sexual difference, Elsa is not the only heroine in Wagner’s work who is defined by her relationships with men. Nineteenth-century feminist and staunch Wagner supporter, Louise Otto, lauded his works for heroines who broke the gender stereotypes of their time: Her championing of Wagner’s works offers clear evidence that for some emancipated women, Wagner’s works lived up Carolyn Abbate, Unsung Voices: Opera and Musical Narrative in The Nineteenth Century, (New Jersey: Princeton

Laurie McManus, ‘Feminist Revolutionary Music Criticism and Wagner Reception: The Case of Louise Otto,’ 19th Century Music 37/3 (Spring 2014): 161 – 187 (186).

University Press, 1991), 221. 3 Eva Reiger, Richard Wagner’s Women, Chris Walton (trans.), (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2011), 57.

to their progressive designation, not only in dramatic and musical terms but also in their treatment of gender roles. 4

illustrates the importance of sexual difference in the Ring cycle.

A further examination proves that this is not quite the case.

Brünnhilde, as a representation of Wotan’s will and thereby himself, is set apart from the other women that we have encountered in the Ring thusfar. As a Valkyrie, she fulfils a purpose other than that of wife and has the aspect of a warrior, which is a stark contrast to the other female characters excluding her Valkyrie sisters. This, in Wagner’s world, is equated with the traditionally masculine. This ‘masculinity’ gives her a position of relative liberty, for although she is subservient to Wotan, she holds a position that places her as an equal to the lesser male Gods.

In his operatic works, Wagner creates his own feminine stereotype founded on the gender roles of the bourgeoisie, of which Elsa is a perfect example: a totem of virginal purity and piety, subservient, and willing to encompass her man as part of herself. Reiger states that she is, a child of her time—a model woman created in the interest of bourgeois society, who leaves the harsh world of work to her husband and creates a warm refuge for him in the home.5

Although Brünnhilde, the fearsome Valkyrie of Der Ring des Nibelungen who will be discussed in more detail later, may not initially seem to fit this description, the act of presenting Siegfried with her horse, Grane, in the first act of Götterdämmerung WWV 86D is an act of subservience, symbolising the complete sacrifice of her independence and the severing of her final tie to her life as a Valkyrie:

The aspect of the Valkyrie is such that, when Siegfried first observes her, he takes her for a man. This in itself affirms her ‘masculinity,’ and Adrian Daul speculates that, in her truly heroic form, Brünnhilde is a mirror-image of Siegfried: The “man” Siegfried describes before he opens Brünnhilde’s harness may, at least in Wagner’s eyes, be simply Siegfried.9

This further enforces the illusion of strength bestowed upon the Valkyrie—a strength that otherwise is only available to men, with women rendered as commodities in their position as wives. This is also an illustration of Brünnhilde’s definition in male terms, for even as a Valkyrie, her portrayal is defined by the men in her life, first as Wotan’s will and later as the counterpart to Siegfried. The convergence of Siegfried and Brünnhilde’s plotlines marks an important transition in her life, however, for while Siegfried stays much the same, although now having experienced both fear and love, Brünnhilde must sacrifice an aspect of herself. Siegfried’s symbolic removal of her armour is the first instance in the life of the young hero in which he experiences sexual difference, and is simultaneously his first experience of fear.

A strong woman capable of resistance against her own father, here subordinates herself to her husband and freely gives him her horse, the symbol of her independence.6

The acts of subservience and self-sacrifice by these two women speak of the male-centric nature of love in Wagner’s works, in which ‘the man has to be the object of static, constant emotions on the part of the woman, without question or caveat.’7 This is exemplified by the love displayed in Lohengrin, in which Elsa’s ‘“female” weakness’ and curiosity leads to her abandonment and demise.8 This portrayal of love, which parallels hero-worship, elevates the man to a god-like position, the woman becoming his loyal and devoted follower. This Wagnerian feminine ideal is not a sustainable one, for in the dependence of the ‘heroine’ on her hero, she becomes incapable of self-sufficiency. His inevitable abandonment is the catalyst for her demise.

Woman strikes fear into Siegfried’s heart by confronting him with difference, with something that exceeds the narcisstic configuration in which he has persisted with Mime.

The power structures of Wagner’s operas are, like his depiction of love, male-centric and largely founded on sexual differences. The relationship between Brünnhilde and Siegfried (her lover), and Wotan (her father) clearly

For Siegfried, this first encounter with a woman is defined by the otherness of her physicality, and exaggerated by having previously mistaken her for a man. For the audience too, Brünnhilde is defined by her ‘otherness,’ her immortal

McManus, ‘Feminist Revolutionary Music Criticism and Wagner Reception: The Case of Louise Otto,’ 182. 5 Reiger, Richard Wagner’s Women, 61. 6 Ibid., 152. 7 Ibid., 66. 8 Ibid., 64.

Adrian Daul, ‘Mother Mime: Siegfried, the Fairytale, and the Metaphysics of Sexual Difference,’ 19th Century Music 32/2 (Fall 2008): 160 – 177 (170).

‘masculine’ power setting her apart from the 19th century ideals of polite, ‘pure’ femininity.

In assuming the role of a mortal lover, Brünnhilde can now become the Wagnerian heroine. One instance of the true defiance of gender stereotypes exists in Ortrud the ‘witch’ in Lohengrin. Although confined to the position of wife to Friedrich, following their banishment she works toward her own malevolent goals. She is, as Wagner describes, a ‘political woman’ and like Brünnhilde the Valkyrie she is contrasted starkly with the image of the traditionally pure and feminine, in this case Elsa. Wagner describes her political nature as the main source of her failings: A political woman is ghastly… Her ‘love’ can only express itself as hatred for everything living, everything that actually exists. 11

While the above statement is a direct reference to Ortrud, the vehemence of its wording brings into question the opinions of Wagner on the political movements of women in his day, as the opinion expressed by him seems far from a feminist one.

Berta Morena as Brünnhilde c. 1903

Although Wotan has already stripped Brünnhilde of her immortality, Siegfried’s removal of her armour in the final act of Siegfried signifies the completion of her transition to a mortal being by stripping her of her protection and of the masculine aspect that had previously defined her. This renders her presentation of Grane to him in Götterdämmerung all the more poignant, as she releases her final tie to her immortality and independence. Brünnhilde is now left a mortal, if not entirely human, because as a Valkyrie with masculine attributes she cannot fulfil the Wagnerian ideal of a devoted and ‘pure’ woman. As such, Siegfried’s removal of her armour in the final Act of Siegfried not only acts to humanise but to feminise. While Siegfried’s feminisation of Brünnhilde and the revelation of her otherness might seem to estrange the two from one another, Brünnhilde’s transformation to a stereotypically feminine figure allows her to fill a different role: that of mother. As Daul states, ‘the mother’s image dominates the entirety of the opera’s climactic scene’ and in the discovery of a female counterpart, Siegfried conflates the roles of mother and lover, substituting one for the other.

Wagner’s portrayal of women in his operatic works cannot go without the criticism of a modern feminist and it marks the creation of a Romantic stereotype to suit the self-contained patriarchal societies of his works. While there are instances of female independence and defiance, as in the case of Brünnhilde, the heroines involved fall victim, either to the will of the patriarchal figure or to the failings of their own hearts

Finally, when Brünnhilde informs Siegfried that his mother will not return, he is able to substitute her for his mother, the original object of desire.10

Ibid., 165. Richard Wagner, SB IV, 273f in Richard Wagner’s Women, 61. 11

Bergian Influences in the Chamber Music of Frank Bridge Eileen Hogan

Frank Bridge is best known as the teacher and mentor of Benjamin Britten. Bridge’s own life and music, although deeply compelling and sophisticated in its own right, has been of little focus to scholars to this day. This paper discusses the stylistic development of Bridge’s chamber music from 1915 to 1926 and the influence that Alban Berg had on Bridge during those years. Bridge’s increasing interest in European contemporary music and his patronage by Mrs Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge both played major parts in his change of style during this time. His String Quartet No. 3, in particular, contains stylistic elements in common with Berg’s String Quartet, Op. 3, and this is discussed in the third part of the paper.

styles, including those of Fauré, Debussy, Rachmaninov, Berg, Bartók, and Scriabin. His Lament for Strings and the String Quartet No. 2 in G minor were written during this period and demonstrate a deep-rooted Romantic style that was typical of Bridge, but with an increasing chromaticism that was to culminate in his mature works. The influence of Alban Berg becomes apparent in Bridge’s music, albeit in a minimal way, during this period. It is uncertain how well acquainted Bridge was with Berg’s music during this time. It is thought from Benjamin Britten’s account of his composition studies with Bridge that he owned Wozzeck scores as late as 1936, 1 but one can only speculate as to when Bridge first claimed ownership of the score and whether he owned others. He was certainly exposed to Viennese School works during this time. Schönberg’s Fünf Orchesterstücke, Op. 16 was premiered at the Proms in September 1912, three weeks prior to Bridge’s orchestral success, The Sea, but it is still unknown whether Bridge attended the earlier performance. In February 1933, Bridge accompanied the young Britten to a concert at the Queen’s Hall of Schönberg’s Variationen für Orchester, Op. 31. There, the composers met Schönberg—who was conducting the concert— during the interval.2 Both also attended the Alban Berg memorial concert of Lyric Suite excerpts and the Violin Concerto, conducted by Webern, in 1936.3 Scholars tend to associate Bridge’s development into an increasingly chromatic style of composition during this time with the trauma of the Great War.4 Indeed, Bridge was strongly pacifist. His convictions were described by Britten in 1947 as follows,

Frank Bridge in 1921

Middle period and stylistic awakening: Lament for Strings and String Quartet No.2 in G minor Bridge’s middle period of activity dates roughly from 1910 to 1925 and marks a time of great stylistic transition for the composer. Bridge, a Romantic composer by tuition, remained predominantly Romantic in style during this time but explored a variety of new conventions and

The many talks I had with him, indeed everything about him, told me of the utter horror and revulsion he felt about the catastrophe. The seed of discontent [what Bridge described as his ‘emotional spasms’]

Donald Mitchell (ed.), Letters from a Life: The Selected Letters and Diaries of Benjamin Britten 1913–1976, vol. 1 (London: Faber and Faber, 1991), 437. 2 David Matthews, Britten (London: Dent, 1993), 26.

Mitchell, Letters from a Life, vol. 1, 426. Anthony Payne, Frank Bridge: Radical and Conservative (London: Thames, 1999), 48. 4

grew and grew … The whole of Bridge’s musical horizon was now shattered—unlimited possibilities, harmonically and texturally, became possible.5

Bridge began String Quartet No. 2 shortly after Lament’s completion. It was composed for the fourth Cobbett Musical Competition, which offered a £50 prize for the best original String Quartet.8 Despite a four-month-late submission, Bridge won the prize, and the success of the quartet—following alongside his mentiond’honneur-winning ‘Bologna’ Quartet of 1906— was the ‘crowning achievement’9 of his career up until this point.10 The Second Quartet was performed extensively around Britain over the next decade and enjoyed an enthusiastic response.

Furthermore, his works from this period were written during times when his life was heavily affected by war. Many of his music pupils died while serving in the war, including Ernest Bristow Farrar, to whom his Piano Sonata is dedicated. The Lament for Strings is headed by the dedication, ‘To Catherine aged 9, Lusitania 1915.’ The work was written to commemorate the British liner Lusitania, sunk by a German submarine, and the Crompton family, who were travelling in it. At the same time, German land forces began to use lethal poison gas on the Western Front. Thus ensued an unprecedented level of anti-German sentiment in Britain.6 The widow of music publisher August Jaeger changed her surname to ‘Hunter,’ and the Royal House, formerly ‘SaxeCoburg-Gotha,’ changed its name to the ‘House of Windsor.’7 Lament certainly evokes the work of a composer affected and emotionally disturbed by this war. The title may be one indicator, but it also opens with chromatically descending tritones (fig. 1), a distressed cry for a Romantic composer. While there is a certain truth to the assertion that his grief impacted on his increasingly chromatic style during this time (for chromaticism is often employed to evoke grief, and Lament’s dedication lends no ambivalence), it is also possible that his harmonic language was evolving in part from an acquaintance with contemporary music trends in continental Europe.

It is in Bridge’s String Quartet No. 2 that the influence of Berg is first notable. Its expressive quality and the rich harmonic language used are highly reminiscent of Berg’s early works.11 Coolidge patronage and Bridge’s decline in popularity in Britain In 1922, Bridge met Mrs Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, a contemporary-music enthusiast and a generous patron of chamber music, at a party hosted by Mrs Winthrop Rogers, wife of the music publisher. Coolidge had inherited a substantial fortune from a Chicago pork-canning business, and she used her inheritance to support many promising composers and musical events. 12 Coolidge and the Bridges became close friends, and, despite Frank Bridge’s initial reluctance, she established a trust fund to support Bridge from the late 1920s to allow him the freedom to devote himself fully to his composition. This event initiated a period of great activity for Bridge, and he composed the String Quartets No. 3 and No. 4, Piano Trio No. 2, Violin Sonata No. 2, and Divertimenti for Winds in her honour. 13

Fig.1. Chromatically descending tritones used to depict grief, Bridge, Lament for Strings, 1–2.

Donald Mitchell, Philip Reed and Mervyn Cooke (eds.) Letters from a Life: The Selected Letters of Benjamin Britten: 1913–1976, vol. 3 (London: Faber and Faber, 2004), 339. 6 Meirion Hughes and Robert Stradling, The English Musical Renaissance 1840–1940: Constructing a National Music (London: Routledge, 1993), 84. 7 Hughes and Stradling, The English Musical Renaissance, 84. 8 Paul Hindmarsh, Frank Bridge: A Thematic Catalogue: 1900–1941 (London: Faber and Faber, 1983), 87. 9 Ibid., 88. 10 Erik Blom (ed.), Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 5th edn, vol. 1 (London: Macmillan & Co, 1954), 933.

Berg engaged intimately with his compositions and incorporated passages of heightened drama and emotional context, often going to lengths to incorporate intricate detail through the music’s inner workings. The Lyric Suite of 1926, for example, preserves his devotion and love for Hanna Fuchs-Robettin, with whom he was having an affair, through the incorporation of various pitch classes, codes, numbers, and ratios that were of significance to the couple. 12 Rob Barnett, ‘Frank Bridge (1879–1941): Composer, Courageous Revolutionary and Pacifist’ (http://www.musicweb-international.com/bridge/chapt 2.htm, 6 January 2015). 13 Stephan Banfield, ‘”Too Much of an Albion”? Mrs Coolidge and Her British Connections’ American Music 4/1 (Spring 1986): 56–88 (73).

Considering Bridge’s increasing interest and exposure to European contemporary music and the familiarity of the Kolisch quartet with this repertoire, it could be assumed that Bridge was pleased with the ensemble selection. The Kolisch Quartet had performed the premiere of Berg’s Lyric Suite less than nine months prior to Bridge’s quartet, on 7 January 1927,19 and were performing Schönberg’s String Quartet No. 3 two days after it, on 19 September 1927.20 Interestingly, Bridge was not expecting a high-standard performance, as Paul Hindmarsh noted that, ‘the Vienna premiere, by the Kolisch Quartet came off better than Bridge’s intuition promised.’21

Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, Ethel Bridge, and Frank Bridge in 1923

The effect that the Coolidge patronage had on Bridge’s musical style is interesting to consider. It is unclear whether the patronage encouraged Bridge to write in a more radical style. The opportunity certainly exposed him to more contemporary avant-garde music that was emerging in the U.S. and continental Europe and brought him into closer contact with modernist composers than he had been before. Bridge embraced modernism much more so than his contemporary British composers, such as Bax or Ireland. But the extent to which Bridge allowed himself to release into his new mode of expression is likely to have differed without the patronage of Coolidge. Without it, Bridge may have been dependent on commissions that were less welcoming to Bridge’s increasingly AustroGermanic influenced and virtuosic compositional style, especially considering the hostility of the British towards German ideals during this time.

String Quartet No.3 marks the beginning of Bridge’s mature period and the first work written under the Coolidge patronage.14 It was with this work that Bridge became stylistically isolated from his comparatively conservative 15 contemporaries in Britain. The quartet’s composition was notably arduous for Bridge. It was begun in the spring of 1925, but its final completion was not until July 1927. The quartet was premiered on 17 September 1927 by the Kolisch Quartet in Vienna.16 The premier of String Quartet No. 3 by the Kolisch Quartet is of major relevance and coincidence to this study. The Kolisch quartet, set up in 1924 by Rudolf Kolisch, pupil of Schönberg, performed the works of the Viennese School alongside classical masterpieces and adhered faithfully to the principles of Schönberg’s teaching. The quartet’s first-rate musicality and extensive efforts of preparation, as evident from their concert performances from memory, was unique, and the quartet soon became renowned worldwide. A Washington premiere had originally been promised by the Flonzaley String Quartet, a circumstance which gave Bridge the initiative to finish the troublesome final movement,17 but when the score and parts were dispatched, Flonzaley rejected the work outright. Seven months later, Coolidge, who had been supporting the Washington concerts, had prepared for a European tour that was to include Bridge’s quartet performed by Kolisch in Vienna and Pro Arte in Paris.18

Bridge’s popularity in Britain did decline following his transition in style. Likened by Hugh Wood to a Darwinian survival of the fittest, Bridge’s decline in popularity was caused by his ‘own daemon’ urging him ‘to range further in search of a more individual expressiveness.’22 A shift in creative thought on Bridge’s part is clear, for Payne notes that, During the first two decades of his career he seems to have been the sort of artist who quite naturally makes concessions to public taste, and was reputably not the composer, as Cobbett had it, ‘seek to startle or to gain credit (or the reverse) for revolutionary innovations’.23

Edwin Evans, ‘The Coolidge Chamber Concerts’ The Musical Times 68/1017 (November 1927): 996– 999 (997). 21 Hindmarsh, Frank Bridge: A Thematic Catalogue, 138. 22 Hugh Wood, ‘Frank Bridge and the Land Without Music’ Tempo 121 (June 1977): 7–11 (8). 23 Payne, The Music of Frank Bridge, 29.

Hindmarsh, Frank Bridge: A Thematic Catalogue, 138. 15 Ibid., 138. 16 Ibid., 137. 17 Ibid., 138. 18 Ibid., 138. 19 Hugh Wood, ‘Frank Bridge and the Land Without Music’ Tempo 121 (June 1977): 7–11 (10).

Bridge was certainly not making ‘concessions to public taste’ with his Third String Quartet, but neither was he resorting to ‘uglify[ing] his music to keep it up to date,’ as Frank Howes reckoned to be the case.24 He saw the importance and necessity of composing music without compromising for popularity; Britten recalled from his composition classes with Bridge that,

Payne asserted that ‘in the vertical aspects of his textures, Bridge approaches a Schoenbergian pantonality.’28 I suggest that it is the linearity of Bridge’s writing in the quartet that lends a likeness of style to Berg. Both works are melodically driven. Despite the fragmentary nature of the material, the quartets both evolve by way of the destruction and continuous development of its content. Both composers tend not to repeat any material, and this adds to the quality of continuous evolution in their works.29 For example, the introductions emerge in a very fragmentary state of gestural motifs, performed on a single violin (figs. 2 and 3). The motifs undergo continuous growth and, with the addition of the other strings, vary and develop as they are passed from one instrument to another. The linearity of both works is also manipulated to develop elements of motivic acceleration and deceleration (fig.4), which allows for dramatic appeal. This device is usually driven by the cello lines and enhanced by Berg with rapidly fluctuating tempo markings.

…there were, perhaps above all, two cardinal principles. One was that you should try to find yourself and be true to what you found. The other—obviously connected with it—was his scrupulous attention to good technique, the business of saying clearly what was in one’s mind.25

The shift in direction, therefore, seems to have emerged as a creative necessity for Bridge. Bergian Influences in Bridge’s String Quartet No. 3 A paper of this kind would remain insufficient without a deeper focus on the music itself. Some observations of stylistic influence on Bridge’s String Quartet No. 3 will therefore be discussed in the present section, with reference to Berg’s String Quartet, Op. 3. The principle of structural coherency advocated by Schönberg is at the heart of Viennese School practices. A testimony to this is the secondgeneration pupil, Philip Herschkowitz, pupil of Berg and Webern, who refused to teach his own composition pupils without a sufficient grounding in structural analysis first.26 With his Piano Sonata, Bridge realised that a highly structural thought was necessary to order a loosening tonality,27 and this is equally demonstrated in Bridge’s String Quartet No. 3.

Fig.2. Introduction, Bridge, String Quartet No. 3/ I, 1– 4’

Bridge’s quartet consists of three movements. The first is in sonata form; the second, in ternary; and the third, in rondo. There is a large-scale structural concept at play, and the third movement is linked to the first by the re-emergence of its material. Within each movement, it is clear that Bridge had a characteristic way of approaching the composition. Each work’s introductory section builds on a variety of motifs which develop to create a statement of the first subject. Thus, there is a process of motivic evolution constantly at play that is used to construct the larger musical form.

Fig.3. Introduction, Berg, Streichquartett, Op. 3/I, 1–4.

Frank Howes, The English Musical Renaissance (London: Secker & Warburg, 1966), 160. 25 Payne, The Music of Frank Bridge, 6. 26 Dmitri Smirnov, A Geometer of Sound Crystals: A Book on Philip Herschkowitz (Berlin: Verlag Ernst Kuhn, 2003), 62.

Payne, The Music of Frank Bridge, 31. Ibid., 33. 29 Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell (eds.) The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd edn, vol. 4 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 347. 28

Fig. 4. Melodic acceleration in Bridge, String Quartet No. 3/III, 1–6.

Fig.7. Second subject motif, Berg, Streichquartett, Op. 3/I, 63–64.

Payne also observed that ‘Bridge’s harmony grows from the interval structure of his chords.’ 30 The prominent importance of intervallic structure in Bridge’s String Quartet No. 3 is evident from its opening motif. Curiously, the motif, based on the ascending leap of a tritone (fig.5) and its major seventh variant (fig.6), echoes Op. 3 to an almost exact repetition. The difference lies mainly in Berg’s use of a perfect fifth (fig.7) instead of the tritone and major seventh intervals in the Bridge. This imitation is a substantial testament to Berg’s influence on Bridge, whether carried out on a conscious or a subconscious level.

Bridge’s String Quartet No. 3 further echoes Berg’s Op. 3 through the use of extended bowing techniques that serve to enhance the work’s melodic content. Am Steg, or sul ponticello, is used by both composers to give their melodies an unusual quality of sound and is exploited especially in the cello lines of each work (figs. 8 and 9). Although sul ponticello had been in use since the early nineteenth century, with Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 14, Op. 131 (fig. 10) and Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique, Op. 14, and perhaps earlier, the technique is rarely found used to the same effect in the music of Bridge’s generation of British composers, such as Holst, Ireland, Dyson, and Coleridge-Taylor. As a onetime violist of the English String Quartet, Bridge likely allowed his experience as a string player to inform his use of extended bowing techniques.

Fig.5. Opening motif, Bridge, String Quartet No. 3/I, 1–2.

Fig.8. Sul ponticello in Bridge, String Quartet No. 3/III, 478–79.

Fig.6. A variant of the opening motif, Bridge, String Quartet No. 3/I, 10–11.

Ibid., 347.

Fig.9. Sul ponticello in Berg, Streichquartett, Op. 3/I, 41–2.

Fig.12. Rhythmic displacement, Berg, Streichquartett/I, 6–7.

It is therefore apparent that the music of Berg did have an influence on Bridge’s musical development towards his String Quartet No. 3 and that the quartet embraces musical trends of the modernist avant-garde. Nonetheless, Bridge’s string quartet No. 3 is not without the ‘tinge’32 of French Impressionism that most British music, for instance, Ralph Vaughan-William’s String Quartet No. 1, adopted during this time. The lyrical second-subject material of Bridge’s first movement is the product of a composer clearly indebted to Debussy and Ravel (fig.13).

Fig.10. Sul ponticello in Beethoven, String Quartet No. 14, Op. 131/V, 469–472.

With a new tonal idiom comes the need for a new flexibility of rhythm.31 It has already been observed, through the quartet’s similar motifs, that Bridge’s rhythmic tendencies parallel those of Berg. Both Bridge’s and Berg’s quartets also incorporate similar techniques of rhythmic displacement in their first subject material. In Bridge’s quartet the effect is often achieved through the elongation of a triplet’s first and third notes via ties to the preceding and following notes (fig.11). Berg’s displacement is achieved similarly, but instead of triplets he ties notes of various durations (see fig.12). Both frequently use this device across bar lines. Fig.13. Arpeggiated triplets and a vibrant harmonic texture in second-subject material evokes an influence of French turn-of-the-century composers, Bridge, String Quartet No. 3/I, 84.

Bridge’s interest in the music of Schönberg’s School was passed on to his pupil Britten. By the end of 1933, the year he attended Schönberg’s Variationen für Orchester with Bridge, Britten had passed the Associateship at the Royal College of Music and had received a travelling scholarship of £100, with which he intended to travel to Vienna to study composition with Berg.33 The idea was to the distaste of the Royal College of

Fig.11. Rhythmic displacement, Bridge, String Quartet No. 3/I, 6–7.

31 32

Ibid., 347. Wood, ‘Frank Bridge and the Land Without Music,’ 10.

Matthews, Britten, 26.

Music, however, who ensured that the plans did not go ahead.34 It is likely that the eagerness of twenty-year-old Britten to study with the Viennese School composer was influenced by Bridge, whose musical opinions were highly respected by Britten. According to Britten’s biographer, David Matthews, ‘Frank Bridge would certainly have encouraged him to do so.’35 Frank Bridge’s increasing interest in contemporary musical trends from 1915 to 1926 has been investigated during the course of this essay. It has been observed that his change in style was stimulated by his Coolidge patronage and his subsequent exposure to contemporary music in continental Europe and the U.S. and influenced in a significant way by the music of Alban Berg.

Ibid., 26.

Stravinsky’s ‘Comments’: A Lifetime of Maximalisation Andrew Burrows In this essay, I will explore the technique of “maximalisation” as Taruskin defines it: ‘the radical instensification of means toward accepted or traditional ends.’1 I will show that this is a constant feature of Stravinsky’s work, suggesting that his different styles were actually different manifestations of this underlying preoccupation. Maximalisation is the same concept as what David Brown describes as the ‘strain of pastiche’ which runs through Stravinsky’s Russian and neoclassical periods (as well as through Russian culture generally), in which he ‘inspects the originals from his own very individual viewpoint, sometimes merely colouring them in his own manner, but in better works allowing these borrowed styles to fertilise his own creative processes.’2 I believe that this pastiche strain is also manifest in Stravinsky’s serial works.

leave the octatonic collection, he could continue the process, generating the sequence of all possible major and minor thirds. This he described as a ‘leitharmonie’ to represent ‘all that is magical, mysterious or supernatural.’4 Thus, Stravinsky intensified the means of his teacher—extending this alternating sequence of thirds beyond that available from a single octatonic collection—to achieve the same end—representation of the supernatural.

Taruskin discusses maximalisation as it occurs in Stravinsky’s three early ballets: The Firebird, Petroushka, and The Rite of Spring. In The Firebird, Stravinsky maximalised the work of his teacher, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. For example, to represent the supernatural, he used a “ladder of thirds” inspired by a scene in Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera Kashchey the Deathless. Rimsky-Korsakov uses notes from the octatonic collection to form a sequence of eight alternating major and minor thirds, arranged so that the lower note of one dyad is a semitone lower than the upper note of the previous one.3 The chain is broken when, instead of the expected C– E dyad, we hear a C–E flat dyad. The reason for the change is to keep the music within a single octatonic collection.

Igor Stravinsky, c. 1920

The instrumentation in The Firebird also maximalised the work of RimskyKorsakov. Stravinsky described how he ‘tried to surpass [Rimsky-Korsakov] with ponticello, col legno, flautando, glissando, and fluttertongue effects.’5 In this way, he ‘carried the idea of the soundscape to the point where imagery was beginning to break up into a kaleidoscope of rapidly changing colours.’6 This is also true of entirely new effects, including the string harmonic glissandi which were ‘completely original.’7

Stravinsky used the same sequence of thirds, but extended it. By being willing to

Petrushka also maximalises several features of musical style, particularly the octatonic scale. For the first time,

Richard Taruskin, The Early Twentieth Century, The Oxford History of Western Music, vol. 4 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 5. 2 David Brown, ‘Russia,’ in Music in the Modern Age, F. W. Sternfeld (ed.), A History of Western Music, vol. 5 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1973), 21–46 (29). 3 Taruskin, Early Twentieth Century, 153.

Quoted in ibid., 154. Igor Stravinsky and Robert Craft, Expositions and Developments (London: Faber Music Ltd, 1982), 128. 6 Stephen Walsh, The Music of Stravinsky (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 22. 7 Eric Walter White, Stravinsky: The Composer and his Works, 2nd edn (London: Faber and Faber, 1979), 188. 5

‘octatonicism became a tonality in its own right,’ rather than ‘an exotic accessory to more conventional tonal harmony.’8 This octatonicism generates the Petrushka chord: the combination of the C major and the F sharp major triads. This chord, Taruskin shows, is the organising force of the second tableau of the ballet. With it Stravinsky achieves the shape of the ‘departure-and-return scheme associated with the “binary form” and its many derivatives.’9 Thus, Stravinsky is maximalising a long-existing technique by applying to it his version of octatonic tonality.

These examples show that maximalisation is a key feature of Stravinsky’s Russian period. Next, I will talk about maximalisation in Stravinsky’s neoclassical works. Indeed, neoclassicism is based on maximalisation, since it involves taking ‘the balanced forms and and clearly perceptible thematic processes of earlier styles’ and (often, at least) employing ‘some kind of extended tonality, modality, or even atonality.’15 Thus, the concept of neoclassicism is inherently maximalising. Opinion is divided as to when Stravinsky’s neoclassical period started. Vlad writes that his first neoclassical work was Pulcinella, the rewriting of a ballet by Pergolesi.16 Stravinsky said that being introduced to it ‘did undobtedly lead to a new appreciation of eighteenth-century classicism.’17 On the other hand, White describes the Octet as ‘the beginning of this new period.’ 18 Regardless, it is clear that this period made up a significant portion of Stravinsky’s working life: from, at the latest, 1924 until 1951, when Stravinsky wrote his Cantata, his first work to use serial techniques. These years make up nearly half of the time from his first major work, The Firebird, to his last completed one, Requiem Canticles, and maximalisation is a fundamental feature of them. I will use the Octet as an example.

In The Rite of Spring, one of the maximalised elements is folk music. Lawrence Morton describes how prominently pre-existing folk melodies feature in the work.10 (This is in spite of Stravinsky later claiming that the opening bassoon melody is ‘the only folk melody in that work.’)11 This is in addition to original themes that are a constant feature of Stravinsky’s Russian period, and which are modelled on ‘the modal and rhythmic patterns of Russian folk music’. 12 From these, ‘stylistic innovation and renewed technical resources’ are wrung. The primary way of achieving this is by aiming for ‘maximal dissonance,’ while validating his approach by means of ‘ethnographic authenticity.’13

Firstly, some general observations about the work. Its unusual collection of instruments came to Stravinsky in a dream.19 He later claimed that the use of wind instruments rather than, say, strings was appropriate, since they can ‘render a certain rigidity of form’ while strings are ‘more vague.’20 This fits in with Stravinsky’s style of music of the time. Another feature of interest is the second movement, which is a Theme and Variation movement, though it also exhibits features of a rondo, since the Variation A is

Another form of folkloristic maximalisation occurs in The Rite: this time with respect to the plot. The idea of a sacrificial virgin dancing herself to death occurred to Stravinsky when he was composing The Firebird. As Alex Ross points out, no culture other than the Aztecs has ever required the sacrifice of young girls.14 Thus, Stravinsky also maximalised the sacrificial rites of old tribes.

Sadie and John Tyrrell (eds.), 2nd edn., vol. 17 (London: Macmillan, 2001), 753–5 (753). 16 Vlad, Stravinsky, 75. 17 Stravinsky and Craft, Memories and Commentaries, 92. 18 White, Eric W., ‘Stravinsky,’ in Music in the Modern Age, F. W. Sternfeld (ed.), A History of Western Music, vol. 5 (London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1973), 71–94 (79). 19 Igor Stravinsky, ‘Stravinsky: Chamber Music & Historical Recordings,’ sleeve notes for compact disc Sony SM2K 46 297, 1991, 7. 20 Igor Stravinsky, ‘Some Ideas about my Octuor,’ reprinted in Stravinsky: The Composer and his Works, Eric Walter White (London: Faber and Faber, 1966), 574–7 (574).

Taruskin, Early Twentieth Century, 164–5. Ibid., 167–8. 10 Lawrence Morton, ‘Footnotes to Stravinsky Studies: “Le Sacre du Printemps,”’ in Tempo 128 (March 1979), 9–16. 11 Igor Stravinsky and Robert Craft, Memories and Commentaries (London: Faber Music Ltd, 1981), 98. 12 Roman Vlad, Stravinsky, Frederick Fuller (trans.), 3rd edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), 67. 13 Taruskin, Early Twentieth Century, 172–5. 14 Alex Ross, The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007), 93. 15 Arnold Whittall, ‘Neo-classicism,’ in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Stanley 9

repeated after Variation B and Variation D. In this regard, it has been compared to the second movement of Mozart’s Piano Concerto in E flat, K482.21 Finally, the music is organised “monometrically”—that is, rhythm is ‘organised around a subtactile equivalency,’ which is a common feature of Stravinsky’s music.22

movement—which is to say, maximalisation of this style. Other examples of this include the octatonicism present in the second movement of the Octet or the rhythmic inventiveness that Van den Toorn finds in Oedipus Rex.27 Stravinsky’s serial period also contains evidence of maximalisation. The potential reasons for his beginning to write in this style are numerous, including the recent death of Schoenberg, which both removed a ‘psychological obstacle’ and which ‘placed Schoenberg in the past, and thereby brought him into Stravinsky’s field of study.’28 Another possible explanation is the attempt to win the approval of the younger serial composers, including Babbitt and Boulez but, as Straus points out, this does not explain Stravinsky’s persistence with the technique.29 This is particularly true since it took Stravinsky some years to develop his serial technique—something to which I will return—in spite of the fact that no approval was forthcoming. For example, a compliment from Boulez, in 1972, talks of enjoying the works from between 1911 and 1923, and then criticising Stravinsky for his ‘regression’ into the neoclassical style, omitting to mention Stravinsky’s serialism at all.30

The first movement is one of a ‘surprisingly small number of pieces’ in sonata form.23 Its divisions follow closely the usual pattern of sonata form. However, Stravinsky creates a distinctive tonal plan. During the exposition, the music falls a semitone from E flat to D, and in the recapitulation, a semitone fall from E to E flat returns the music to the tonic. Thus, the keys of D and E can be regarded as chromatic upper and lower auxiliaries to the main key. This is further articulated by cadential points which also follow the same pattern. Thus, Stravinsky uses this pattern as a substitute for the usual tonic-dominant relationship, allowing him to ‘recreate and reanimate the sonata form.’24 It is interesting that Stravinsky named the first movement ‘Sinfonia,’—a Baroque moniker—since it is undoubtedly in Classical sonata form. Furthermore, the Baroque features in the movement amount ‘to little more than a few ostentatious trills.’25 Perhaps Stravinsky did not want the work to be measured against the masterpieces of Mozart and Beethoven by claiming it to be a sonata. Alternatively, it is possible that it was a part of what Ross describes as the ‘common enemy’ that was Teutonism in the post-war period.26 The title Sonata is unequivocally Germanic. On the other hand, Sinfonia is an Italian term, and dates from when music was less dominated by German-speaking composers.

Whatever the reasons for his change, Stravinsky took the move to serialism seriously, spending many years developing a technique. Straus describes the ‘remarkable succession of firsts,’ ranging from his first work to use a series, the Cantata, his first work to use a twelve-tone series, Agon, his first work to use twelvetone arrays based on hexatonic rotation, Movements, up until his last completed work, Requiem Canticles, which was his first work to use two different series in

We can see the synthesis of Classical style and Stravinskian innovation in this Marianne Kielian-Gilbert, ‘Stravinsky’s Contrasts: Contradiction and Discontinuity in his Neoclassic Music,’ in The Journal of Musicology 9/4 (Autumn 1991), 448–80 (471). 22 Richard Taruskin, Stravinsky and the Russian Tradition: A Biography of the Works through Mavra, vol. 2 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 1601. 23 Joseph Straus, ‘Sonata Form in Stravinsky,’ in Stravinsky Retrospectives Ethan Haimo and Paul Johnson (eds.) (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1987), 141–61 (143). 24 Ibid., 155–60. 25 Taruskin, Stravinsky and the Russian Tradition, 1600. 21

26 Ross, The Rest is Noise, 77. 27 Pieter C. Van den Toorn, The Music of Igor Stravinsky (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1983), 234–5. 28 Paul Griffiths, Stravinsky (London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd, 1992), 159. 29 Joseph N. Straus, ‘Stravinsky the Serialist,’ in The Cambridge Companion to Stravinsky, Jonathan Cross (ed.) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 149–75 (151–2). 30 Pierre Boulez and Célestin Deliège, Pierre Boulez: Conversations with Célestin Deliège (London: Eulenberg Books, 1976), 107.

conjunction.31 This development spans his entire serial period, and shows that he viewed serialism as an important development.

C D# A F G E C F# D E C# A C G# A# G D# F# C D B G A# E C A F G# D A# C G# B F C# D#

Part of the reason for the development taking so long was that Stravinsky was teaching himself how to write serial music. Schoenberg was in the same situation thirty-odd years previously, which resulted in several half-finished works and long periods of silence. Stravinsky, on the other hand, avoided leaving works unfinished, 32 so completed his early twelve-tone works, in spite of their being somewhat less sophisticated than Schoenberg’s.

These arrays display a fundamentally different conception of the row to that of Schoenberg. Firstly, ‘hexachords […] come to be regarded virtually as independent units.’34 Schoenberg, on the other hand, regarded the row as a complete unit. Secondly, Stravinsky used the row, or several set-forms, contrapuntally, rather than harmonically.35 This is sometimes results in cadential perfect fifths, another feature foreign to Schoenberg. 36

Stravinsky readily absorbed the principles of serial ordering, the notion of the differing presentations of the row through inversion, retrogression, and retrograde inversion being essentially re-presentations of the original, and the idea that a subset of the row, typically of four members, could ‘function as a referential norm.’ Each of these came directly from Schoenberg. However, though he ‘adopted Schoenberg’s point of departure, he moved immediately in very different musical directions.’33 This fits in closely with the ideas of pastiche and maximalisation that remain a feature of Stravinsky’s works through this part of his life.

This way of manipulating a row is particularly Stravinskian. Intervals were very important to him, and they crop up in several places in his writings. For example, he claims that, before he has any musical ideas for a piece, he works by ‘relating intervals rhythmically.’37 He also says that ‘in [his] brain, there are two things: intervals and rhythm.’38 Straus describes how, for Stravinsky, ‘the interval rather than the pitch or pitch-class is the basic atomic musical unit.’39 The importance of intervals is reflected in the rotational array: as Straus pointed out, an intervallic canon is created as one moves through the array.40 Additionally, Stravinsky would automatically ‘compose out the inversion of the generating hexachord’ since the intervals of transposition are the complements mod 12 of the intervals in the hexachord.41 Thus we see that Stravinsky created a new way of treating the row, one which fitted in closely to what he viewed as important in music. This is evidence of pastiche in Stravinsky’s serial works.

The technique that exemplifies this is that of rotational arrays. They were used repeatedly by Stravinsky in his works, and they demonstrate a different approach to developing the tone row in the course of a piece than that of his predecessors. Rotational arrays are formed by taking one of the hexachords of the row, rotating it, and then transposing it so that it starts on the same pitch as the original hexachord. This process is then repeated until all six rotations of the hexachord have been exhausted. For example, if the hexachord is C D# A F G E, then the rotational array will be as follows:

Stravinsky’s approach to composition can perhaps be summed up by his remark that ‘the one true comment on a piece of music is another piece of music.’42 For all his life,

Joseph N. Straus, Stravinsky’s Late Music (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 4. 32 Igor Stravinsky and Robert Craft, Dialogues (London: Faber Music Ltd, 1982), 107. 33 Straus, Stravinsky’s Late Music, 10–11. 34 Milton Babbitt, ‘Remarks on the Recent Stravinsky,’ in The Collected Essays of Milton Babbitt, Stephen Peles with Stephen Dembski, Andrew Mead, and Joseph N. Straus (eds.) (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), 147–71 (162). 35 Van den Toorn, Music of Igor Stravinsky, 388. 36 Straus, Stravinsky’s Late Music, 119. 31

Igor Stravinsky and Robert Craft, Conversations with Igor Stravinsky (London: Faber Music Ltd, 1979), 15. 38 Igor Stravinsky Documentary (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSJQwkBKKBo , 9/1/15), 3:00. 39 Straus, Stravinsky’s Late Music, 82. 40 Joseph N. Straus, Introduction to Post-Tonal Theory, 3rd edn (New York: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2005), 231–3. 41 Straus, Introduction, 231. 42 Stravinsky and Craft, Dialogues, 63.

through all his different styles, he was â&#x20AC;&#x153;commentingâ&#x20AC;? on older pieces of music by adopting and extending their styles, and this why pastiche or Maximalisation plays such an important role in his work.

A Critical Commentary on the Search for Meaning in Music Laura Eaton In the following essay I will address the view held by Carl Dahlhaus and many others that ‘instrumental music purely and clearly expresses the true nature of music by its very lack of concept, object and purpose.’1 I will therefore examine the idea that ‘pure’ music (as distinct from music combined with text) is comprised only of structure that is autonomous in relation to the external world and—in terms of meaning—can only represent itself. Rather than supporting or challenging this suggestion, I aim to highlight problems with the debate and thus propose its fruitlessness. These discussions will include the inadequacies of language both for comparisons with music and for discussing what it means. The nature of meaning will then be raised along with distinctions between its types, in an attempt to clarify the arguments made for and against music’s autonomy. Finally, I will stress the significance of idiosyncrasy in music perception, arguing both why it cannot be avoided and why it should be welcomed in contemporary literature on music.

(meaning intrinsic to the music) and ‘extramusical’ meaning (meaning located outside the music and therefore not a component element of the music itself). Settling on a dividing line could reveal whether or not music as structure is capable of representing more than just itself. There are several barriers obscuring this line, however, with the use of language in musical contemplation being a significant one. Throughout the literature on music there has been a tendency to compare it with language. Writers in the eighteenth century identified instrumental music as the ‘language of the heart,’ referred to by Johann Mattheson as ‘tone speech’ and considered a deficient form of vocal music. This view changed with the appearance of the concept of music’s autonomy to a language above other languages.4 Dahlhaus refers to this tendency as an ‘urge to include [instrumental music] in the central sphere of language.’5 This comparison is misleading when considering how music conveys meaning, however, and its limitations have since been highlighted.

The idea Dahlhaus presents, which comes from central European culture of the nineteenth century, is centred on the view that music as an art form is beautiful and a whole in itself, separate from any ‘extramusical’ meaning (such as text or emotions in the outside world).2 The suggestion has been debated at length since its conception, with dissenters holding the view that analysis of pure musical structure fails to capture all that is interesting about meaning in music.3 Discussions focus on the distinction between ‘musical’ meaning

Kofi Agawu raises distinctions between the two systems in a discussion of musical signification. One such distinction is that while music exists in two planes at once— in succession (melody) and simultaneity (harmony)—language only exists successively. He argues that even in the case of unaccompanied monody there is an implicit contrapuntal dimension that provides the plane of simultaneity; the existence of its equivalent in language is difficult to prove.6 Similarly, there is a

Carl Dahlhaus, The Idea of Absolute Music, Roger Lustig (trans.) (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1989), 7. 2 Ibid., 2–5. 3 Jenefer Robinson, ‘Introduction: New Ways of Thinking about Musical Meaning,’ in Music and Meaning, Jenefer Robinson (ed.) (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997), 3.

Dahlhaus, Absolute Music, 6–9. Dahlhaus, Absolute Music, 9. 6 Kofi Agawu, ‘The Challenge of Semiotics,’ in Rethinking Music, Nicholas Cook and Mark Everist (eds.) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 143– 4. 5

difference between the two in terms of foundational stability. In language, words have a reasonably fixed meaning, whereas in music small units are extremely unstable and rely heavily on context for comprehension; this difference is relevant in terms of the ‘nonconvertibility of systems with different bases.’7 These features render music untranslatable, as ‘no linguistic act can substitute for the musical act.’8

language that we speak and understand, but are incapable of translating.’13 Despite the acknowledgement of this issue in music literature, it is no less pressing. This is because, as Agawu emphasises, the entrance of language into musical discourse is unavoidable: ‘even in the most musical of metalanguages, such as Schenker’s graphic notation, there is no escaping the intervention, at a very basic level, of concepts and therefore of language.’14

Above all, Leo Treitler highlights a distinction between the conveying of meaning in language and music in relation to sign functioning. Whereas in language words and phrases direct attention to concepts outside of and separate from the words themselves, music does not.9 He refers to Anthony Newcomb in asserting that ‘the sign (if we conceive it as such) is not transparent—that is, the sign does not disappear in favor of its function as pointing to the signified.’10 When perceiving music, our focus is on the notes and phrases themselves. Thus, although music may share expressive resemblances with language, the above points suggest that it does not convey meaning in the same way, and therefore the comparison may best be kept at bay when discussing the nature of meaning in music.

Treitler highlights some ambiguities in language that are relevant to the discussion of meaning in music.15 His argument is centred on the distinction between the extramusical and the musical, and he attempts to highlight how these ambiguities obscure the location of this distinction. He asserts that many words in musical discourse do not adhere to the idea (as aforementioned) that music does not act as a transparent sign when conveying meaning, and criticises the use of words with contrasting implications being used interchangeably.16 Two such words are discussed: ‘denote’ and ‘exemplify’. Where a piece of music is said to ‘denote’ a certain quality—such as instability—the implication is that instability is merely an abstraction that music signifies. The word has been emptied of its ‘suggestiveness,’ as the music has simply met conventional conditions for use of the term, which could, in theory, be arbitrary. 17 ‘Exemplify,’ in contrast, implies that the property in question is a property of the music itself. This term, Treitler argues, is more accurate in that it emphasises that the music is not lost in a process of signifying: ‘[music] is never reducible to a play of signs.’18

A more crucial issue is the inadequacy of language for contemplating music. This has been acknowledged previously; Mendelssohn was concerned with ‘the ambiguities, vagueness, and inconsistencies that are inherent in the practice of language communication,’11 and Schumann once stated that ‘the best way to talk about music is to be quiet about it’.12 The distinctions that exist between the two systems result in an obstacle to our understanding of music. Eduard Hanslick summarises the problem by saying that ‘in music there is sense and consequence, but of a musical kind; it is a

A similar issue is the nature of metaphor in language. When a quality is assigned to music (for example, when music is described as ‘mournful’) one could argue that the music does not actually experience

Ibid., 144–5. Ibid., 146. Leo Treitler, ‘Language and the Interpretation of Music,’ in Music and Meaning, Jenefer Robinson (ed.) (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997), 32–5. 10 Anthony Newcomb, ‘Sound and Feeling,’ Critical Inquiry, 10/4 (June 1984): 614–43 (623). 11 Treitler, ‘Language and the Interpretation of Music,’ 27. 12 Robert Schumann, ‘Chopin’s Piano Concertos’ in The Musical World of Robert Schumann, Henry

Pleasants (ed.) (trans.) (London: Victor Gollancz, 1965), 112. 13 Eduard Hanslick, Vom Musikalisch-Schönen (Darmstadt: 1965), 35; see Dahlhaus, Absolute Music, 112. 14 Agawu, ‘The Challenge of Semiotics,’146. 15 Treitler, ‘Language and the Interpretation of Music,’ 23–56. 16 Ibid., 28–9. 17 Ibid., 29–30. 18 Ibid., 35.

8 9

approximate our experience of it. […] Metaphor inhabits a realm where imagination, not logic, rules.24

mournfulness but is merely borrowing its properties, and that therefore music can only be mournful in a metaphorical sense. However, similar processes occur in language when we describe inanimate objects (such as a day) as ‘gloomy,’ and, as Treitler observes, this is never intended in a metaphorical sense.19 This implies that rather than music being incapable of possessing similar qualities, there is an issue with language; it is the adjective ‘mournful,’ rather than its property, ‘that has been borrowed from another domain and fitted, however imperfectly, to those musical properties.’20 Treitler argues that although the meaning of words in language often changes with time (the word ‘style,’ for example, originally represented a writing instrument), words in their new use are not forever identified as a metaphor.21 When dissecting descriptive language about music at a more basic level, one would discover that even the words ‘high’ and ‘low,’ which we treat as literal properties, have been acquired through metaphor from language.22

These issues with language may represent one reason of several as to why music is not as suited to objective investigation as some would hope for. Vital to the discussion of meaning in music is the nature of meaning itself; what exactly is meaning? Leonard Meyer acknowledges that the main challenge with the argument that music’s meaning is intrinsic is explaining how perceived sound patterns become meaningful.25 He sheds light on the debate by introducing a definition for meaning: anything requires meaning if it is connected with, or indicates, or refers to, something beyond itself, so that its full nature points to and is revealed in that connection.26

Accepting this definition, it becomes apparent that meaning cannot reside in any one place; rather, it arises out of a ‘triadic’ relationship between a stimulus, what it is pointing to, and the observer.27 Charles Rosen’s discussion of fixed meanings for musical units is related to this observation. He stresses that music provides information through relationships, resulting in the importance of context for understanding it. He suggests that the misguided search for a fixed meaning for single musical elements—such as motifs—comes (as noted earlier) from a confusion between music and language.28 This demonstrates the futility of attempting to identify intrinsic meaning of a series of tones, and exposes the degree of complexity in assessing meaning in music.

It is thus apparent that the distinction between metaphorical and literal meaning in language is by no means clear. This ambiguity has implications for the location of meaning in music; ‘just as the boundary between metaphorical and literal meaning in language communication cannot be drawn, so the boundary in the duality of the musical and the extramusical cannot be located.’23 Due to the unavoidable role that language plays in musical discourse, the search for this dividing line between musical and extramusical meaning may be in vain. Treitler concludes with the suggestion that it might be more suitable to embrace this kind of descriptive language about music, rather than rashly dismissing it as extramusical and therefore irrelevant to meaning:

A second issue with the arguments in the debate is the failure to specify what exactly musical stimuli supposedly indicate or point to. Meyer distinguishes between two distinct types of meaning; he refers to these as embodied meaning (whereby the stimulus indicates consequences which are of the same kind as itself) and designative meaning (whereby the stimulus indicates

we would do better to accept its authority and learn from it of the multiplicity of ways in which we must approach the interpretation of music if we are to

Leonard Meyer, ‘Emotion and Meaning in Music,’ in Musical Perceptions, Rita Aiello (ed.) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 8. 26 Morris Cohen, A Preface to Logic (New York: Holt, 1944), 47. 27 Meyer, ‘Emotion and Meaning in Music,’ 30. 28 Charles Rosen, Music and Sentiment (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), 14–31.

Ibid., 39. Ibid., 38. 21 Ibid., 41. 22 Ibid., 40. 23 Ibid., 41. 24 Ibid., 46–7. 20

consequences which are different in kind from itself).29 In terms of music, the former would imply that musical stimuli indicate other musical events; this could be the sole meaning in music as argued by Dahlhaus. The latter would manifest itself as extramusical meaning, where musical stimuli point to concepts and objects outside the music itself. Crucial to the debate is the recognition that the presence of one type of meaning does not exclude the presence of another: ‘absolute meanings and referential meanings are not mutually exclusive.’30 Music's autonomy need not be threatened by cultural interpretations of the musical work; both processes can occur independently of one another. This implies the possibility that neither case in the debate need surrender in favour of the other, but that both may potentially be compatible.

music, I suggest that studying musical meaning by investigating idiosyncrasies thereof would be more beneficial. This suggestion is based primarily on the proposition that human participation in music is unavoidable; it may be possible for a work to be autonomous, but only to the extent that nobody is listening to it. Richard Taruskin touches on this idea while discussing complete authenticity in performance, arguing that this cannot be achieved: In the case of notated music there is always a middle man, even if it is only ourselves as we contemplate the written symbols.35

This is because music must always be recreated by someone in order to be retrieved.36 It is here that the role of external influences such as history, culture, and learning cannot be avoided. Robert Philip provides an example of historical differences in orchestral techniques, asserting that these make an accurate historical reconstruction of past recordings unattainable. Differences in playing style are learned and are integral to music performance convention of the time; to counter them would involve an unnatural relearning of habits, not resulting in a truly authentic recording of the music.37 In relation to instrumental music’s lack of concept, Dahlhaus claims that ‘detached from the affections and feelings of the real world, it forms a “separate world for itself.”’38 This may be so, but in order to access this world we cannot remove the human—and therefore influences from the real world—from the equation.

Moreover, recognition of both types of meaning requires learning. Embodied meaning functions as a product of expectation formed from past experience with the musical style.31 The familiarity with conventional practice within a culture grants musical units meaning in terms of their context, resulting in identical units (such as chords) having different meanings depending on their musical context.32 Similarly, designative meanings are only possible ‘as a result of the intervention of layers of conventional signification;’ they require learnt associations with extramusical concepts.33 These observations are significant as they relate to an erroneous assumption in musical discourse, the ‘error of universalism.’ Contrary to this assumption, investigation of music of other cultures has shown that the organisation of meaningful elements in Western music is not universal or natural.34

Context holds considerable importance for our general assessment of meaning. Feld notes that music is perceived with ‘the action of pattern discovery as experience is organized by the juxtapositions, interactions, or choices in time when we encounter and engage obviously symbolic objects of performances.’39 This refers to

The above point relates, lastly, to the role of individual variation in perceived musical meaning. Rather than restricting focus to identifying what meaning is intrinsic to Meyer, ‘Emotion and Meaning in Music,’ 30. Meyer, ‘Emotion and Meaning in Music,’ 6. 31 Ibid., 30. 32 Agawu, ‘The Challenge of Semiotics,’ 145. 33 Ibid., 144. 34 Meyer, ‘Emotion and Meaning in Music,’ 9. 35 Richard Taruskin, ‘On Letting the Music Speak for Itself: Some Reflections on Musicology and Performance,’ The Journal of Musicology, 1/3 (July 1982): 338–49 (340). 29

Ibid., 343. Robert Philip, ‘The Recordings of Edward Elgar: Authenticity and Performance Practice,’ Early Music, 12/4 (November 1984): 481–9 (487–8). 38 Dahlhaus, Absolute Music, 7.

Steven Feld, ‘Communication, Music, and Speech about Music,’ Yearbook for Traditional Music, 16 (1984): 1–18 (8). 39

how we incorporate information in patterns through the use of schemas—mental structures, which organise knowledge in memory into standardised events with which we are familiar.40 The physical external environment is crucial to our encoding of information; the ability to remember information is significantly enhanced when one is in a similar environment to where they first learned the information.41 Our assessments are also affected unconsciously by innumerable other influences, including our mood and priming effects (whereby exposure to objects and concepts around us act as a filter for incoming information, making relevant information more accessible).42 It is therefore reasonable to conclude that context also plays a vital role in how we glean meaning from music.43 Contextual factors not only account for differences between individuals, but also between a single individual’s reactions through time. Once again, this highlights the complexities in the analysis of meaning in music and demonstrates how difficult (if not impossible) an objective standpoint is to achieve. As captured by Nietzsche’s criticism of Western philosophy’s quest for objectivity, ‘that we should think of an eye that is completely unthinkable, an eye turned in no particular direction, in which the active and interpreting forces, through which alone seeing becomes seeing something, are supposed to be lacking; these always demand of the eye an absurdity and a nonsense.’44

interpretations it offers listeners. As Kathleen Higgins observes, ‘music’s relative nonspecificity invites listeners to incorporate it into their own lives.’46 She condemns Hanslick’s characterising of idiosyncratic emotional responses to music as aesthetically insignificant, and suggests that the average listener be encouraged to have more confidence in his or her own musicality.47 Nicholas Cook supports this suggestion, stressing that the marvel of music is its ability to give people with little or no musical education intense enjoyment. He raises the point that even knowledgeable musicians upon listening can miss structurally important features of the music, or often choose not to seek them out when merely listening for pleasure.48 He uses these ideas to question the validity of a method that values form as music’s sole significance and dismisses aesthetic response as irrelevant: ‘to be told that the beauty or significance of a piece of music lies in relationships that one cannot hear is to have the aesthetic validity of one’s experience of the music thrown into doubt; and the manner in which music is described by professionals can only create in the untrained listener a sense of inadequacy.’49 Cross-cultural studies have shown that the Western model of music analysis can exclude important meaningful aspects of music from other cultures. Higgins presents an example of the music of the Kaluli tribe of Papua, New Guinea, the aesthetic aim of which is a layered overlap of multiple voices. This music emphasises temporal, timbral, and participatory features in the context of a performance; it is ill-fitting to the Western traditional approach of

The field of musicology may benefit from an investigation into the multiplicity of ways in which music can gain meaning within a culture. ‘Music is protean and its meanings span the range of human action and experience;’45 it is remarkable precisely because of the infinite range of 40

Daniel Schacter, Daniel Gilbert, and Daniel Wegner, Psychology (Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 176. 41 Ibid., 185. 42 Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011), 103; Ibid., 52–58. 43 North and Hargreaves provide an interesting summary of theories of how music comes to have emotional meaning through extrinsic factors; see Adrian North and David Hargreaves, The Social and Applied Psychology of Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 134–6.

Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, Walter Kaurmann and R.J. Hollingdale (trans.) (New York: Random House, 1967), 119. 45 Treitler, Language and the Interpretation of Music, 55. 46 Kathleen Higgins, ‘Musical Idiosyncrasy and Perspectival Listening,’ in Music and Meaning, Jenefer Robinson (ed.) (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997), 97. 47 Higgins, ‘Musical Idiosyncrasy and Perspectival Listening,’ 93. 48 Nicholas Cook, Music, Imagination, and Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 2–3. 49 Cook, Music, Imagination, and Culture, 1.

structural analysis.50 Goehr similarly suggests that the study of music be expanded and its methods reconceptualised. She criticises the idea of treating music (as a cultural concept) scientifically, arguing that it is neither historically nor ideologically neutral. She objects also to a focus restricted to the musical work, and proposes a general broadening of the study of music: ‘why the focus on classical music? Why the focus on the concept of a musical work? And why not a focus on the concept of music in as broad a sense as it can be understood?’51 With the above I have attempted to highlight the difficulties in the study of meaning in music. These include the inevitable but flawed role of language in musical discourse, and the inescapable influence of human and cultural factors. The resolution of the debate may be still be intangible; however, the issues raised suggest that this may not be possible to change. Moreover, the above points aim to demonstrate the benefits of plausible new angles for the study of music, including a deeper exploration of idiosyncrasy in the perception of meaning. This change of focus may further enhance our understanding of music’s role as an integral part of society and its function as a conveyor of meaning. We may only have scratched the surface of the myriad of ways in which music can come to be meaningful.

Higgins, ‘Musical Idiosyncrasy and Perspectival Listening,’ 92. 50

Lydia Goehr, The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works: An Essay in the Philosophy of Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 78–80.

Shostakovich: Composer, Supporter or Dissident? Helen McCormack This paper was originally presented at a meeting of the Dublin University Philosophical Society's Bram Stoker Club on 1st October 2014, held in association with DU Music Society. At the time of his death in 1975, Dmitri Dmitrievich Shostakovich was the undisputed posterboy of the Soviet Union. His pieces were used for propaganda, Stalinist get-togethers, and one of his pieces, ‘The Motherland Hears, the Motherland Knows’ was even the first tune to be whisteled in space during Yuri Gagarin’s great flight.1 However in 1979, Solomon Volkov, a former student of Shostakovich, published his apparent memoirs. These memoirs portrayed Shostakovich as being constantly at odds with the Commnist regime.2 Yet, the credibilty of these memoirs has been disputed extensively, as it has been claimed that Volkov lifted much of the book’s uncontroversial content from interviews Shostakovich did during his life, writing the provocative passages himself.3 The controversy regarding his private political views rages to this day.4

always inhabitants of the capital. Sofia was a Siberian native and Dmitri Boleslavovich was also born in exile, as his father had been sent to Siberia for allegedly participating in a plot to kill Tsar Alex II. The family also housed Sofia’s radicalised sister Nadia, who was actually an early Bolshevick. This background would no doubt have been conducive to a postitive outlook on Communisim: Brian Morton indeed noted that ‘it is hard to exaggerate the impact of this background on the young composer-tobe.’5

This essay intends to acquaint the reader with what we do know about Shostakovich’s life and the debate surrounding the man, to perhaps afford the reader with a better postition for understanding the politics and the music of this composer. Shostakovich was born in St. Petersburg on the 25th September 1906. His father was the senior keeper in the Chamber of Weights and Measures in St Petersburg and his mother was a pianist. Yet, both were not

Dmitri Shostakovich in 1963

Leonid Maximenkov, ‘Stalin and Shostakovich: Letters to a “Friend”’ in Shostakovich and His World, Laurel Fay (ed.) (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), 46; John Riley, Dmitri Shostakovich: A Life in film: The Filmmaker’s Companion 3 (I.B. Tauris & Co. Ltd, 2005), 52. 2 Solomon Volkov, Testimony (New York: Harper & Row, 1979). 3 Laurel Fay, ‘Volkov’s “Testimony” Reconsidered’ in A Shostakovich Casebook, M. 1

Hamrick Brown (ed.) (Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2004), 22–66. 4 Allan B. Ho and Dmitry Feofanov, The Shostakovich Wars, (http://www.siue.edu/~aho/ShostakovichWars/ SW.pdf). 5 Brian Morton, Shostakovich: His Life and Music, (London: Haus Publishing Limited, 2006), 16; Elizabeth Wilson, Shostakovich: A Life Remembered, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006).

Shostakovich’s first formal musical experience occured when he was eight year’s old. He attended Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera The Legend of the Tsar of Sultan in 1914. Despite his erstwhile unwillingness to take up a formal education in music, his mother set him some scale exercises to do on the piano, and what followed, by all accounts, was an ingenious progression: ‘All Dmitri’s diffidence and awkwardness disappeared when at the piano.’6 In 1917 he wrote Funeral March for the Victims of the Revolution as a response to the February anti-Tsarist revolution.7 Already, it is evident that Shostakovich was espressing his political views through music.

During a visit to Moscow in 1925, where he presented some of his works thus-far, he met his future sponsor, Marshal Tukhachevsky.13 At the time, he was a man of great gravitas in the Communist party. His relationship with Shostakovich was a very important one in Shostakovich’s life, not least because of his patronage, and one to which I shall return later. On the 12th May 1926 Shostakovich’s most ambitious work to date—his First Symphony—was premiered. The piece subsequently propelled the young composer to international fame. 14

At any rate, Shostakovich’s dedication to his music remains unquestionable even in these early years, as he staunchly returned to complete his final exams in 1923 with a bandaged neck after his operation.11 He subsequently began to play piano for silent films in cinemas such as the ‘Bright Reel’ to subsidise himself and his family. 12

The next decade saw Shostakovich become one of the pet composers of the regime as he was commisioned to compose music for film scores, ballets, and incidental music. Shostakovich’s Second Symphony, which premiered in 1927, again displayed his ostensibly Communist leanings, as it was afforded with the patriotic subtitle ‘To October’.15 However, at the same time in 1927, Shostakovich began work on his first opera, The Nose, based on a work by Nikolai Gogol. It tells of a bumptious Tsarist official who must recover his rebelling nose and return it to its former function.16 Some believe that this was Shostakovich monting a veiled commentary on Communism’s failures—indeed, even mocking the powers that were—and hence christened him ‘yurodivy,’ someone who mocks the mighty whilst simultaneously behaving in all other aspects as if unworthy of attention. Such ‘clownish,’ rebellious behaviour is an entrenched idea in Russian culture.17 Audiences enjoyed the opera, but critics were wary of it as, in 1929, the Russian Association of Proletarian Musicians (RAPM), allied with state policies, took over from the previously liberal governing body. The RAPM accused The Nose of being formalist—a euphemisim for a work that was politically/socially dangerous.18 Yet, in 1931 Shostakovich actually went further, denouncing Soviet overtly-affirmative music altogether. Yet, he was not reprimanded. This may be because, perhaps surprisingly, the authorities agreed with

In 1919 at the age of thirteen, Shostakovich entered the Petrograd Conservatory headed by Alexander Glazunov, who took a near paternalistic interest in his progress. Shostakovich was always an ill child, and when his once comfortable family began to suffer the deprivations of the ‘WarCommunisim’ era, Glazunov often applied for extra rations for his student. 8 In February 1922, Shostakovich’s father died of pneumonia. Dmitri continued his studies despite this, and his mother and sister took up jobs as a typist and piano teacher respectively.9 That summer Shostakovich went to a sanactorium in Crimea for lymphatic TB, where he met Tanya Glivenko. They fell in love and interestingly their correspondance affords us a rare insight into young Dmitri’s political views at the time; he supported Communisim, but may have been skeptical about its successful implimentation. These nascent letters fuel the fire of claims that suggest that Shostakovich could have been a supporter of Communism in youth, but a dissident in later life.10

Morton, Shostakovich: His Life and Music, 18. Laurel Fay, Shostakovich: A Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 12. 8 Morton, Shostakovich: His Life and Work, 15. 9 Fay, Shostakovich: A Life, 20. 10 Morton, Shostakovich: His Life and Work, 20. 11 Ibid., 18. 12 Fay, Shostakovich: A Life, 25.

Morton, Shostakovich: His Life and Work, 52. Ibid., 52. 15 Ibid., 18. 16 Ibid., 35. 17 Ho and Feofanov, The Shostakovich Wars, 124. 18 Ibid., 177; Morton, Shostakovich: His Life and Work.

him as they had been planning to reform the RAPM into the Union of Soviet Composers in 1932, which was to become a political mouthpiece.19 Whether this leniancy was rather indicative of Shostakovich’s cosiness with the regime is up to the reader.

turned on their heads by a conversation held between Stalin, Molotov and Shumiatsky (Stalin’s director of cinema), recorded in Fay’s book:

In 1931, Shostakovich began work on his controversial opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsenk. It was premiered in 1934 and had a two year run—it was successful in all eyes. Indeed, in 1934 when Stalin began ordering the imprisonment of prominent artists such as Osip Mandelstam, Shostakovich was uneffected.20 This may be because Stalin favoured Shostakovich, especially his film scores: ‘Stalin’s audience started singing along...’21 ‘Song of the Counterplan... Stalin became fascinated with the song.’22 Yet when Stalin attended a performance of Lady Macbeth at the Bolshoi theatre on the 26th January 1936, he left the theatre before the fourth act.

Stalin: “Thats the crux.. The Art’s Committe should take the Pravda article as a program for musical art..”

Shumiatsky: “Shostakovich can write good realistic music, but on the condition that he is directed.”

Molotov: ‘Thats the point. The article plays right into your hands. ‘27

One could interpret this conversation as evidence that the Stalinist regime were in fact attempting to groom Shostakovich, in particular, to become the poster boy of the Soviet musical movement: an example for other artists, an exemplar for condemnation and rehabilitation, if you will. Indeed, it really is notable that Shostakovich, unlike other artists of the time, was merely condemned, not apprehended like other composers of the time who had appeard as abtruse. At any rate, the conversation at least shows us that he was prominent enough to have attracted Stalin and his officials’ attention for more than just his benign film scores.

According to Morton, he believed that ‘the character of the police chief in the third act was a skit on himself,’23 not to mention the fact that the opera’s theme was malapropos. The opera depicted Lady Macbeth as an oppressed woman whose murder of her husband, father-in-law, and lover’s mistress as sanctified. (Obviously these were not the ideas Stalin would have wanted his people to be exposed to!) The offical reaction was provided two days later in the infamous ‘Muddle instead of Music’ unsigned article in the party’s magazine Pravda. Unsigned articles were widely believed to have been written by the ‘Vozhd’—Stalin- himself.24 It read:

Either way, after the review Shostakovich was practically unemployable. His Fourth Symphony, which was in rehearsal, was withdrawn, and the Composer’s Union began a campaign against him.28 He may have been consoled by the birth of his daughter Galina on the 30th May 1936 and by the words of Marshal Tukhachevsky, who assured him that the dreaded ‘midnight knock on the door’ from the authorities was not imminent.29

From the first minute the listener is shocked by deliberate dissonance[...]To follow this ‘music’ is most difficult; to remember it impossible[...]is coarse, primitive and vulgar. The music quaks, grunts and growls[...] (Lady MacBeth) is depicted as some kind of ‘victim’ of bourgeois society[...]This is playing at abtruseness—and such games can only finish badly.25

However, these promises were not as sound as they seemed, as in June 1937, Marshal Tuckhachvsky himself fell foul of the regime, was subjected to a show trial, and was subsequently shot. Tukhachevsky’s trial was perhaps the most infamous one of the era, as it precipitated Stalin’s policy of liquidating the Soviet army for supposed

A second article appeared ten days later concerning Shostakovich’s ballet Bright Stream.26 Yet, these condemations are Music Academy Online, ‘Dmitri Shostakovich’ (http://www.musicacademyonline.com/composer/bio graphies.php?bid=133, 9 August 2014). 20 Morton, Shostakovich: His Life and Work, 42. 21 Maximenkov, Stalin and Shostakovich, 46. 22 Ibid., 45. 23 Morton, Shostakovich: His Life and Work, 44. 24 Ibid. 25 ‘Muddle instead of Music,’ Pravda (http://www.arnoldschalks.nl/tlte1sub1.html,10 August 2014).

Mansur Mirovalev, ‘Once-Banned Shostakovich Ballet Triumphs,’ The Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2007/06/15/AR2007061501128_p f.html, 8 August 2014). 27 Maximenkov, Stalin and Shostakovich, 47–48. 28 Pauline Fairclough, ‘Facts, Fantasies, and Fictions: Recent Shostakovich Studies,’ Music & Letters, 86/3 (Autumn 2005), 143. 29 Morton, Shostakovich: His Life and Music, 52.

support of exiled civil war leader, Leon Trotsky.30

Yet, in 1937 Shostakovich took a teaching position at the Leningrad Conservatory, becoming a full professor two years later, a promotion that no doubt would not have been afforded to a counter-revolutionary.37

Apparently Shostakovich was interviewed for the trial proceedings and asked to inform on his friend. However, we glean nothing of his poitical persuasions from records, if any, here, as the inspector himself was also arrested during proceedings!31

However, this event still could not be seen as conrete evidence that Shostakovich was in favour of the regime, as his Sixth Symphony, which premiered in November 1939, had an unusual format, and was criticized officially 20 months later. 38 However, again no real retribution seemed to come to the composer, perhaps because of the arrival of the ‘Great Patriotic War’: on June 22nd 1941, Hitler’s invasion of Russia, his ‘Operation Barbarossa’ was put into effect.39 The liquidation of the USSR’s army was a major disadvantage to the Russians, and Shostakovich’s Leningrad was under siege by September 1941.40 Shostakovich, being myopic, joined the auxiliary firemen for the city and was famously photographed for Time magazine in his fireman hat—a literal poster-boy for the regime at war. 41 On the 1st of October 1941 (a week after his 35th birthday) Shostakovich and his family were evacuated to Moscow, where they took the train on to the war capital Kuibyshev, and given accomodation there. Kuibyshev also housed Stalin’s wartime bunker.42 Whether this move was forced, voluntary or even coincidental, is again up to the reader.

The demise of Tuckhachevsky again leaves us with some questions regarding Shostakovich’s loyalties. Could his friend’s death have futher alienated him from the Stalinist regime? Could it have made him more dedicated to the regime, ostensibly at least, and less inclined to go astray again? Shostakovich’s reply to the criticisms was provided in the Fifth Symphony, premiered on the 21st Novemeber 1937 with the description, ‘a Soviet artist’s practical creative reply to just criticism.’32 It is disputed whether these words were written for Shostakovich by a journalist, by Stalin, or by the composer himself in a genuine or even sarcastic tone.33 The symphony was a hit. However, Morton purports that the symphony is full of codes, as Shostakovich decided to include and conceal subversive themes in his music. A two note timpanni motif supposedly represents the menacing Stalin syllabically, whilst the scherzo movement, which sees instruments using call and response imitation across the whole orchestra, seeming is the composer’s representation of the other composers who adhered to the regimes guidelines—they say ‘jump!’ and the artists say ‘how high?’34 The next movement is very despairing in nature, and Morton states that it is dedicated to Marshal Tukhachevsky.35 The finale is the guideline apotheosis the regime demanded of musicians. Morton deems this apotheosis purely saitrical.36

Dmitri Shostakovich at the Siege of Leningrad

Shostakovich had announced on Radio Leningrad his intention to release a dedicated Symphony to his hometown—the Seventh, which was entitled ‘To the City of Leningrad’. It became the symbol of

Victor Alexandrov, The Tukhachevsky Affair (Englewood Cliffs, NJ.: Prentice-Hall, 1964); Fay, Shostakovich: A Life, 99. 31 Ho and Feofanov, The Shostakovich Wars, 127. 32 Richard Taruskin, ‘When Serious Music Mattered: On Shostakovich and Three Recent Books’ in A Shostakovich Casebook, Malcolm Hamrick Brown (ed.) (Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2004), 367. 33 Morton, Shostakovich: His Life and Music. 34 Ibid. 35 Ibid.

Ibid. David Fanning, ‘Shostakovich and his Pupils’ in Shostakovich and His World, Laurel Fay (ed.) (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), 276. 38 Morton, Shostakovich: His Life and Music, 64. 39 Richard Overy, Russia’s War (London: Penguin Books, 1997). 40 Ibid. 41 Morton, Shostakovich: His Life and Music, 29. 42 Ibid., 64. 37

Russian perseverance in WW2.43 Its premiere in Leningrad on the 9th August 1942 was a major operation. As many musicians had already perished in the war, players were called in from the battlefield and even given extra rations. On the night of the performance, military operations were arranged through ‘Operation Squall’—an attack on the German offensive in order to preserve silence for the concert.44 Once more we see signs that Shostakovich was perhaps viewed favourably by the Communist regime.

the cantata Antiformalist Rayok. It is said to contain his true feelings of contempt for the administration.49 He began to write propagandist film scores and cantatas glorifing past events, and won the Stalinist Prize for the oratorio Songs of the Forests about Stalin’s 1948 ‘Great Stalinist Plan for Remaking Nature’: an ambitious, but ultimately unsuccessful plan, that intended on planting trees in Siberia to modify its climate.50 These events appear to indicate that Shostakovich was charting a struggled course, between true artistic expression and the party line, and perhaps even, personal survival.

At the end of 1942 Shostakovich spent time in a sanatorium near Moscow for typhoid. The family settled in Moscow in 1943 as Shostakovich got another prestigous job teaching in the Conservatory. In 1947, Shostakovich became chair of the Leningrad Composer’s Organisation, another prestigous postition.45

At any rate, by March 1949 he was considered ‘rehabilitated’ and was sent to a peace conference in the Waldorf-Astoria in New York.51 Stalin himself appears to have telephoned him before the trip on 16th March 1949. A note to Stalin from the composer referencing this call can be seen in Shostakovich and His World:

Yet, at the same time, he notably wrote the Second Piano Trio, which, according to Morton, was dedicated to those who perished in the Holocaust—a controversal dedication, given the anti-Semitic feeling in the USSR at the time.46 Hence, it appears that Shostakovich was again utilizing his music to express dangerous political views.

the conversation that took place yesterday. You supported me very much [...] I will fulfill my duty. To speak on behalf of our Soviet people in defense of peace is a great honour for me [...] Once again, I thank you for the trust and attention. Yours, D. Shostakovich..52

They seemed to have had many such phone conversations.53 In 1950 he attended conferences in Warsaw, Berlin and East Germany.54

In 1948 a general crackdown on art began under Zhdanov, who was given the duty of directing the Soviet Union’s cultural policy by Stalin. He formulated the infamous ‘Zhadanov doctrine,’ which demanded conformity to Party standards for culture. The Composer’s Union’s leaders were replaced by non-entities, and Zhdanov compared Shostakovich’s music with a ‘dushegubka’—the vans the Nazis used for gasings. Despite Zhdanov’s death in August 1948, Shostakovich appeared again to be in a predicament. In September he was dismissed from all his teaching posts for ‘professional incompetance.’47 According to Yuri Lyubimov, ‘he waited for the arrest at night out in the landing so his family would not be disturbed.’48 He issued a public apology, and (secretly) composed

Stalin died on 5th March 1953, initiating another ‘thaw’ for artistic freedom.55 Previously banned Shostakovich works, such as his Fifth Symphony, were heard again in concert, and he received many awards including the title ‘People’s Artist of the USSR’ in 1954.56 In 1954 he also composed the Festive Overture Op. 96, which would become the theme for the 1980 Summer Olympics. Yet, his Tenth Symphony, premiered in 1953, was again perhaps controversial, as the Scherzo movement was said to a ‘musical portrait of Stalin.’57

Ibid., 67. Christopher H. Gibbs, ‘The Phenomenon of the seventh: A Documentary Essay on Shostakovich’s “War” Symphony’ in Shostakovich and His World, Laurel Fay (ed.) (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), 59. 45 Fanning, ‘Shostakovich and his Pupils’ in Shostakovich and His World, 276. 46 Morton, Shostakovich: His Life and Music. 47 Morton, Shostakovich: His Life and Music, 78.

Wilson, Shostakovich: A Life Remembered, 183. Ho and Feofanov, The Shostakovich Wars, 220. 50 Morton, Shostakovich: His Life and Music, 82. 51 Ibid., 4–5; 82. 52 Maximenkov, Stalin and Shostakovich, 55. 53 Ibid. 54 Morton, Shostakovich: His Life and Work, 82. 55 Ibid., 90. 56 Ibid., 57. 57 Volkov, Testimony, 141.

Under Krushchev artists enjoyed greater freedom, and Shostakovich travelled frequently to England, the US, and other places. But after efforts to have Lady Macbeth reevaluated, he was told it could not be performed. (It would finally be staged in 1963.)58 Here, it seems that Shostakovich was indeed keen to toe the party line, but was not necessarily a favourite with them.

signing on the occasion of the controversial Andrei Sakharov letter, yet his name appeared amoung the signatories anyway. 64 Furthermore, it is noteworthy that Shostakovich’s second wife had been a Communist official. Such a union would obviously be difficult if Shostakovich was secretly a dissident. Nevertheless, they did divorce quite soon after the marriage, so again, it is difficult to decipher whether this marriage was a true union of political preferences at any rate.65

In 1958 Shostakovich began suffering with polio. This affected his right hand, a grevious ailement for a pianist. He broke one leg in 1960, and the other in 1967. He is quoted in a letter:

Shostakovich’s Thirteenth Symphony, a sort of choral symphony based on works by Yevgeny Yevtushenko, including the poem ‘Babi Yar,’ which condemned the killing of Jews in WW2 and the anti-Semitic feeling in the USSR.66 Various events in the late 1940s and the 1950s manifested this antiSemitisim. For example, ‘The Doctor’s Plot’ saw mostly Jewish doctors accused of carrying out heinous crimes—such as poisoning Russian babies, and plotting to overthrow the government.67 The original soloist, Victor Nechipailo, and later Boris Gmyrya, and conductor Mravinsky walked out due to pressure from above. (In the end it was conducted by Kirill Kondrashin, with soloist Vitali Gromadsky.)68 The official box was conspicuously empty at the premiere on 18th December 1962.69 Yet, the symphony was a hit, and Shostakovich was again spared from any retribution. The true reason as to why this was the case is again left to the reader.

Target acheived so far: 75% (right leg broken, left leg broken, right hand defective.) All I need to do now is wreck the left hand59

At least he still had his wry sense of humour! Despite his ill health, he refused to give up smoking and drinking vodka.60 His determination, in light of this ill health, is truly indicative of his supreme dedication to his music. Yet, perhaps most significantly of all for ascertaining his political views was an event in 1960. Shostakovich became a member of the Communist party. This move has been greatly debated, but was it to get his job teaching at the Leningrad Conservatory back? (He was re-appointed a year later.) Was it to get the Fourth Symphony and Lady Macbeth back on the playlist? It has been suggested that his joining of the party at this late stage in his life was rather unusual, especially for an artist of his noterity. It has been even been said that he was blackmailed, or worn down to join.61 His widow, Irina testified that he was blackmailed, however she never would specify with what.62 Others claim that it was simply the act of a lifelong dedicated Communist.63 Afterwards, he also signed official documents condemning other artists. According to his widow and third wife, Irina, Shostakovich went out to avoid

Shostakovich managed to co-exist with the subsequent regimes for the rest of his life, perhaps because his later works were more reflective, rather than subversive, as some historians would claim.70 Perhaps it was just another ‘thawing’ period for artistic license. A little known fact is that Shostakovich visited Ireland on 6th July 1972 to receive an honourary degree of DMus at Trinity College Dublin. He met the then president de Valera, and his Chamber Symphony in C

Morton, Shostakovich: His Life and Music. Dmitri Shostakovich and Isaak Glikman, The Letters of Dmitry Shostakovich to Isaak Glikman 1941–1975, Anthony Philips (trans.) (Ithica USA: Cornell University Press, 2001). 60 Ibid. 61 Morton, Shostakovich: His Life and Music, 98; Ho and Feofanov, The Shostakovich Wars, 36–37; Irina Nikolsakaya, ‘Interviews with his Soviet Colleagues,’ in A Shostakovich Casebook, Malcolm Hamrick Brown (ed.) (Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2004), 154.

Ho and Feofanov, The Shostakovich Wars, 37–39. See generally: Fay, Shostakovich and His World. 64 Ho and Feofanov, The Shostakovich Wars, 108. 65 Fay, Shostakovich: A Life, p. 197–198. 66 Morton, Shostakovich: His Life and Music, 105– 106. 67 Ibid., 77–79. 68 Morton, Shostakovich: His Life and Music, 115. 69 Ibid. 70 Ibid.

minor was performed in St. Patrick’s Cathedral by the New Irish Chamber Orchestra (NICO).71 On the 9th August 1975, Dmitri Shostakovich died following a number of heart attacks and a battle with lung cancer.72 His civic funeral was attended by members of the KGB and Ministry of Culture. The obituary in Pravda dubbed him a ‘loyal son of the Communist Party’ and was signed by 85 dignitaries and officials, including premiere Leonid Brezhnev.73 Shostakovich’s political life has truly ‘been turned into a battlefield.’74 This author adds her own mortar to the field, suggesting that the choice between Communism and dissdence may not have been as black and white as it is considered in much of the literature however: it is very possible that Shostakovich went with the flow when it suited him, and reneged when he felt his liberties too restricted. It is certainly what a rational person in the situation in which Shostakovich found himself may have done. This is but a mere musing however, and this author encourages readers to draw their own conclusions from the murky interpretations of Shostakovich’s life. What is clear, however, is the composer’s unwavering dedication to his music, and the immense contribution that he made to that field.

Fay, Shostakovich: A Life, 273; Professor Timothy O’Brien, interviewed by Helen McCormack, 2011, Email based correspondence. 72 Fay, Shostakovich: A Life, 285.

Ibid. Irina Shostakovich, ‘An Answer to Those Who Still Abuse Shostakovich,’ New York Times, 20 August 2000. 74

A Comment on the Issues of “New” Musicology Sophie Lee Alastair Williams states in his book Constructing Musicology that ‘music is a human construct and demands interpretation.’1 This task of interpretation has been harnessed by “new musicologists,” a term coined to describe musicologists who have moved in an alternative direction of study to those traditionally practised, with the majority focussing on the way music can take on, or appear to take on, a non-musical meaning in accordance with their wider areas of speciality. New musicology insists that each work is inscribed with the interests and prejudices of its origins.2 The musical decisions of the composer are interpreted as political or social allegories, reflecting their opinions (and commonly those of the author) on such aspects as gender, sexuality, and social status, as well as examining specific experiences which may have shaped the composer as an individual.3 Charles Rosen speaks of how this openness to new ideas from other fields ‘infuses a sense of excitement into musicology, a recklessness missing before,’ and so it does.4 The overshadowing knowledge that the definitive intentions of the composer can never be discovered, which in the past caused musicologists to shy away from meaning and to delve into areas warranting the least amount of interpretation, such as the dating of manuscripts, no longer appears to stand in the way of the interpretations of “new musicologists.” This deceptive liberation, however, necessitates the employment of novel methodologies for the interpretation and analyses of works in this manner. These are accompanied by a variety of problems which bring the validity of certain interpretations of the subject matter into question: the imposition of contemporary notions and ideologies on a different era, the use of metaphorical language, the

selective viewing of evidence, and the practical relevance to, and implication for, the performance of music being notable examples. Studies dealing with Schubert’s possible homosexuality and subjectivity in his music is one such musicological topic which is demonstrative of these issues, and this article examines the approaches of musicologists Susan McClary and Lawrence Kramer towards this subject. While this subject matter is specific, the points raised can be shown to be widely applicable to the work of “new musicologists.”

“New” or “critical” musicology, as it is commonly referred to, owes its creation at least partly to Joseph Kerman, who in 1985 published a book Contemplating Music: Challenges to Musicology which critiqued the state of musicology at the time. Discussing the text-based obsessions of positivist musicology and formalist analysis Kerman appealed the need for historical musicology and analysis to move away from their objectivising tendencies and combine to form ‘a musicology orientated towards criticism.’5 He reproached the deliberate policy of musicologists of separating their musical insights and passions from their scholarly work, stating how the study of music history can ‘only too easily degenerate into a shallow exercise’ void of meaningful purpose when it loses touch with the aesthetic core of music, which is essentially the subject matter of criticism.6 This sentiment was echoed by Dahlhaus who during this period similarly expressed a vision of a history of music that could stand up to historical scrutiny and have something to say about the actuality of music.7 These appeals, supported by musicologists including Charles Rosen, ‘Music à la Mode,’ The New York Review of Books, June 23, 1994, 2. 5 Williams, Constructing Musicology, 6. 6 Joseph Kerman, Musicology (London: Collins, 1985), 18–19. 7 Williams, Constructing Musicology, 6.

Alastair Williams, Constructing Musicology (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998), ix. Edward Rothstein, ‘THE NATION; Musicologists Roll Over Beethoven,’ The New York Times, November 26, 1995, 2. 3 Ibid., 2. 2

peacocks.14 A notable feature of Solomon’s essay is that he deters readers from relating his findings to Schubert’s music itself, due to the fact that homosexuality can be understood as a defect, as demonstrated by the descriptions of Tchaikovsky’s works as ‘structurally weak’ and ‘hysterical’ which emerged when his homosexuality came to light.15 Solomon’s hypothesis, however, was later investigated in relation to musical works by two musicologists: Susan McClary, notably in her essay entitled ‘Constructions of Subjectivity in Schubert’s Music,’ which focuses on Schubert’s ‘Unfinished’ symphony; and Lawrence Kramer who in his book Franz Schubert: Sexuality, Subjectivity, Song acknowledges that although Solomon ‘declined to investigate the impact of sexuality on his music, it was inevitable that others would pick up where he left off.’ 16

Edward T. Cone, Charles Rosen, and Leo Treitler, inspired a full-scale application of postmodernist theory to musicology, firmly altering the discipline.8 Through the expansion of the musical canon of works studied and changing methodologies, the boundaries of musicology became more fluid and gained the ability to merge with other disciplines.9 This enabled more interdisciplinary work as musicology was brought into contact with subjects such as social science, political history and gay studies. New musicology’s earliest known exponent was Theodor Adorno (19031969), a German Marxist philosopher who in his writings showed how musical styles could be analysed to reveal political meanings.10 In the 1970s a wider historical perspective was incorporated by Maynard Solomon who in his psycho-biography ‘Beethoven’ demonstrated that changes in the composer's musical style were connected to various crises in his life, and it was Solomon who first hypothesised Schubert’s possible homosexual orientation.11

The primary focus of both McClary and Kramer’s works are to gain an insight into the reason for, and to understand the meaning to be inferred from, Schubert’s alternative solutions in his music to the methods of established formal 17 compositional practice. McClary places emphasis on representation of ‘the self,’ in her discussion; an issue which became prominent in the arts during Schubert’s career.18 Kramer, in contrast, ties Schubert’s idiosyncrasies to certain notions of subjectivity which circulated widely in early Romanticism and thus could be regarded as culturally motivated as opposed to personal.19 Both musicologists, however, emphasise the fact that Schubert’s solutions require him to rework virtually every parameter of his musical language, establishing that Schubert’s deviances were indeed a conscious decision.20 McClary supports her claim that Schubert ‘didn’t slide passively or unwittingly into his

Solomon first raised the subject of ‘Schubert’s possible homosexual orientation’ in his 1989 article ‘Franz Schubert and the Peacocks of Benvenuto Cellini.’12 He suggests that Schubert circulated within a homosexual sub-culture in nineteenth-century Vienna based on information from Schubert’s journal entries, letters sent between Schubert and his friends, and a passage in the diary of one of his friends which reads: ‘Schubert half sick (he needs “young peacocks” like Benv. Cellini).’13 Benvenuto Cellini, a sixteenthcentury Italian sculptor, musician, and soldier had a well-known reputation for homosexuality and Solomon supports his claim through two passages from Cellini’s memoires which infer to young men as

Ibid., 7; Fred E. Maus, ‘What Was Critical Musicology?’ (http://www.radicalmusicology.org.uk/special_critmus/maus.htm, 2 April 2015). 9 Rosen, ‘Music à la Mode,’ 2; Williams, Constructing Musicology, 7. 10 Rothstein, ‘Musicologists Roll Over Beethoven,’2. 11 Ibid., 2. 12 Rosen, ‘Music à la Mode,’3. 13 Ibid., 12; Susan McClary, ‘Constructions of Subjectivity in Schubert’s Music,’ Queering the Pitch: the New Gay and Lesbian Musicology Philip 8

Brett, Gary Thomas, and Elizabeth Wood (eds.) (New York: Routledge, 1994), 205–233 (210). 14 Rosen, ‘Music à la Mode,’ 12. 15 McClary, ‘Constructions of Subjectivity in Schubert’s Music,’ 210. 16 Lawrence Kramer, Franz Schubert: Sexuality, Subjectivity, Song (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 93. 17 McClary, ‘Constructions of Subjectivity in Schubert’s Music,’ 215. 18 Ibid., 211. 19 Ibid., 226. 20 Ibid., 223.

imagery,’ through a quote by Dahlhaus who in an attempt to defend Schubert’s artistry, despite use of negative adjectives, stated that Schubert’s personae were ‘purposely weak and involuntary’.21 This idea is echoed by Kramer who writes in detail about the ingenuity with which Schubert crafted his new harmonic language, describing how his ‘subjective feelings’ had to be ‘constructed painstakingly from the stuff of standard tonality.’22

‘deviance’ of Schubert’s musical procedures which he compares to ‘the facets of a crystal,’ noting that Schubert often ‘shuns dynamic narrative and instead assembles compositions from clusters of similar motives,’ which he viewed as evidence that ‘Beethoven’s celebrated synthesis between dynamic process and subjective identity was unravelling.’27 Through such comparisons Schubert’s music has reached modern day associated with such terms as ‘naïve, passive, selfindulgent, childlike and feminine’ imposed upon it by early biographers and these descriptions provide the starting points for studies focussing on the way music can take on, or appear to take on, a non-musical meaning.28 McClary, for example, states that ‘Solomon and I did not introduce the issue of sexuality into Schubert interpretation: Schubert has long been coded covertly as “effeminate” and downgraded accordingly.’29

The study of the deviances in Schubert’s music from the common compositional practices of the era, such as his structural alteration of sonata form through which he introduced features of song into higher genres such as the symphony, have long been a source of interest.23 Constantly contrasted with the formal and harmonic expansions undertaken by Beethoven, the critical commonplaces regarding deviants in Schubert’s work from the established compositional practice of the great composers of the Viennese Classical tradition are primarily rooted in their presumed inferiority to Beethoven’s solutions.24 Kramer interprets this specular iconography of Beethoven, which can be observed as far back as in Schubert’s obituary by Leopold von Sonnleithner which reads: ‘[Schubert] reposes by the side of Beethoven, whom he revered as his highest ideal,’ in relation to social science as a reflection of the limits of abnormality accepted by society, an example of interdisciplinary interpretation.25 He suggests that Beethoven’s historical success and the skewed comparisons between him and Schubert is due to Beethoven’s original use of expressive and formal deviations that could be recuperated as ‘normative with respect to ideals of musical form or logic’ and that Schubert’s relative failure lies in his use of deviations which appear willing to sacrifice form and traditional harmonic reasoning to ‘sensuous or emotive fullness.’26 This thesis is supported by Theodor Adorno’s unnerved reaction to the

One of the weaknesses of McClary’s application of sexuality to the interpretation of Schubert’s music is that she herself appears to be conflicted as to whether there is enough evidence to support a homosexual reading of Schubert’s music, as demonstrated by her use of vague terminology and occasional contradictory statements. In the forward to the print version of her essay, entitled ‘Prelude 1: Lost It at the Y’ McClary emphasises that without Solomon’s publications she wouldn’t have framed her interpretation in terms of sexuality as she does not believe that one ‘can discern a composer’s sexual, orientation, gender or ethnicity by merely listening to music.’30 In response to Edward Rothstein’s argument that our view of homosexuality in nineteenth-century Vienna is currently unclear and certainly too vague to be able to discern its impact on musical composition, which was written in reaction to a version of the essay which McClary presented at the Schubertiade at the 92nd Street Y, however, McClary retorted that she

Ibid., 223. Ibid., 233. 23 Franz Schubert, Symphony in B minor ('Unfinished') An Authoritative Score, Schubert's Sketches, Commentary, Essays in History and Analysis, Martin Chusid (ed.), Norton Critical Score (London: Norton, 1971), 124–25. 24 Kramer, Franz Schubert, 95.

Ibid., 94. Ibid., 2. 27 McClary, ‘Constructions of Subjectivity in Schubert’s Music,’ 221. 28 Kramer, Franz Schubert, 1. 29 McClary, ‘Constructions of Subjectivity in Schubert’s Music,’ 227. 30 Ibid., 206.

would ‘regard Schubert and Tchaikovsky’s music as important sources of evidence for reconstructing such a history.’31 McClary similarly proposes that Schubert might have been predisposed to producing victim narratives, such as the lyrical subordinate subject in the first movement of the ‘Unfinished’ which ‘is doomed to be suppressed,’ because he experienced alienation as a man whose pleasures were deemed illicit by his social context (Ex.1).32

McClary herself acknowledges alternative interpretations by Solomon and theorist Edward T. Cone who link such narratives to the possibility of childhood trauma and to Schubert’s reactions to his syphilitic condition respectively, and these viable alternatives do little to contribute to her argument.36 Kramer, in contrast, is thoroughly convincing in his expression of the view that Schubert’s homosexual imagination can be understood as consistent with his counter-normative concept of subjectivity.37 His conclusion is based extensive investigation Schubert’s Lieder, some of which, he states, explore an ‘errant’ subjectivity, including Goethe’s ‘Mignon’ which sees a suffering woman resisting compassion and ‘The Lovelorn Miller’ which embodies the choice of a man to live out the implications of a deficient, psychosexually castrated masculinity. 38 He additionally acknowledges that Schubert could not have been ‘gay’ in the modern sense as the sexual identity as opposed to sexual acts was simply unavailable in his time.39 While Kramer avoids imposing contemporary notions on Schubert’s society through this statement, however, he does fail to acknowledge that completion of a sexual act results in a type of sexual identity, albeit very different from the contemporary sexual identity of homosexuals. McClary succumbs to this problem of imposing contemporary thoughts while relating Schubert’s homosexuality to contemporary literature. She states that Schubert’s constructions in which ‘a tragic vision of the world where the self and its pleasures are mutilated by an uncomprehending and hostile society’ parallels narratives produced by many homosexual writers including French novelist, critic and essayist Marcel Proust (1871–1922), French author André Gide (1869–1951), English poet and author Radclyffe Hall (1880–1943), American

Ex. 1. Schubert, Symphony No. 8/I, 44–53

This latter point, however, has subsequently been quashed by both Rosen and Paul Attinello, editor of the Gay Musicological Review.33 In his article ‘Music à la Mode’ Rosen questions the validity of McClary’s interpretation of the alienated composer, suggesting that Schubert could have just as easily attempted to produce deliberately conventional music as opposed to producing something ‘different,’ as can be observed in Schumann’s attempt to make his earlier music seem more normal in his later years when he feared that he was going insane.34 Paul Attinello, similarly rebukes the notion of a particular “gay” sensibility in music stating: If Ravel was gay and Debussy was not: tell me, then, the difference between their musics. One interpretation: a subtle but extensive fracturing of the tonal system on the one hand, and on the other a reinscribing of classical structures, each beneath a sensual surface that appears rather similar. Yet which is which? They seem to be the wrong way around according to my expectations of what “gay” might be.35

Rothstein, Edward, ‘Critic's Notebook; Was Schubert Gay? If He Was, So What? Debate Turns Testy,’ The New York Times, February 4, 1992, 2; Susan McClary to Arts Editor, The New York Times, 25 February 1992, GLSG Newsletter, Paul Attinello, and Frances Feldon (co-eds.) 2/1 (March 1992), 15. 32 McClary, ‘Constructions of Subjectivity in Schubert’s Music,’ 225–26. 33 Rosen, ‘Music à la Mode,’12–13. 34 Ibid., 13. 31

Ibid., 12. McClary, ‘Constructions of Subjectivity in Schubert’s Music,’ 226. 37 Kramer, Franz Schubert, 3 38 Ibid., 3; James Parson, ‘Franz Schubert: Sexuality, Subjectivity, Song by Lawrence Kramer; Schubert Studies by Brian Newbould, Journal of the American Musicological Society 54/3 (Fall 2001), 651–661 (654). 39 Kramer, Franz Schubert, 93. 36

playwright ‘Tennessee’ Williams (1911– 83), and American James Baldwin (1924– 87), whose two novels, Giovanni’s Room (1956) and Another Country (1962) deal with taboo themes homosexuality and interracial relationships.40 All of these writers, however, were born at least fortyone years after Schubert’s death, and did not reside in Vienna. This considerable time difference makes it hard to accept that their opinions on homosexuality are what Schubert is trying to express in his music, and it seems that McClary is, perhaps, hearing what she wants to hear.

of musicology was founded in part as a reaction against the nineteenth-century ‘gushing’ about love and religion, however, these similar methods of description of musical events suggest that it may gradually be giving way to the contemporary counterparts to love and religion: gender and politics.46 The study of the influence of homosexuality on music highlights a number of issues regarding the current function of musicology. In an article ‘Music á la Mode’ Charles Rosen acknowledges that ‘ideally, musicologists ought to write for listeners and performers,’ however, ‘in real life, they write for other musicologists. Because they have to.’47 This is a reflection of the attempt made by “new musicology” to follow in the footsteps of literary criticism. Interpretations of Schubert’s music based upon his possible homosexuality undoubtedly, like all gay studies, are essentially pursued, to a certain level, for the sake of greater acceptance and tolerance of homosexuality, and while such a reading of Schubert’s music will attract a wide audience in our modern day Western society where open homosexuality is well established and the campaign for gay rights is at the forefront of social politics, the extent to which this subject will have an impact on the performance and reception of the music itself appears to be minimal. As demonstrated above by Paul Attinello in relation to Ravel and Debussy, homosexuality does not appear to be attached to a particular sensibility or characteristic, and this can further be established through the comparison of the musical works of openly homosexual contemporary composers such as Tippett, Copland, Britten, Rorem, and Henze between which similarities would be hard to define. Similarly, the notion of whether or not Schubert would have expressed his ‘otherness’ through his music appears to be debatable, creating the necessity to ask what implications would there be for the performer if the possibility of Schubert’s

McClary’s reliance on metaphorical language to express her ideas supports this perception. Edward Rothstein accuses her of using metaphors in her interpretative analysis of Schubert’s ‘Unfinished Symphony,’ which deliberately attempt to frame the work in a contemporary fashion and equates her reading of Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony with ‘lacing [the meaning of the work] up in a corset that distorts its shape and dimension,’ as opposed to letting the meaning expand.41 Charles Rosen states that ‘all metaphors oversimplify’ and that ‘none will be satisfactory or definitive.’42 Rothstein similarly acknowledges that speaking about music always involves metaphor, and that language will always touch on only a part of music's meaning; however he makes the point that ‘the challenge is to find the most resonant analyses and programs, not the most limited.’43 This constricting interpretation can also be observed in McClary’s characterisation of the point of recapitulation in the first movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony as ‘one of the most horrifying moments in music, as the carefully prepared cadence is frustrated, damming up energy which finally explodes in the throttling, murderous rage of a rapist incapable of attaining release.’44 In this instance the abstract comparison reduced the merit of McClary’s notable recognition of extraordinary moment in the work to the point that she withdrew it.45 The discipline McClary, ‘Constructions of Subjectivity in Schubert’s Music,’ 227; ‘James Baldwin: About the author,’ American Masters, 29 November 2006 41 Rothstein, ‘Was Schubert Gay?, 2; Edward Rothstein, ‘Interpretations of Schubert's Sexuality Distort Music,’ The Baltimore Sun, February 16, 1992, 1.

Rosen, ‘Music à la Mode,’ 11–12. Rothstein, ‘Interpretations of Schubert’s Sexuality Distort Music,’ 1. 44 Rosen, ‘Music à la Mode,’ 11. 45 Ibid., 11. 46 Rothstein, ‘Musicologists Roll Over Beethoven,’1. 47 Rosen, ‘Music à la Mode,’ 1.

42 43

homosexuality was verified from further research?48 Would there be any? Musicology currently possesses a much needed recklessness and excitement as a result of the application of postmodernist theory to a discipline that had been grounded in objectivity. Due to the increase in scope which the ability to merge with other disciplines provides, however, it is necessary to acknowledge the implications of the direction in which musicology is travelling and to be careful that the study of music does not become simply an outlet for the extension of contemporary notions of gender and politics, reflective autobiography, or resort back into the descriptive imagery of the nineteenth century.49 Additionally, the nature of the subjects studied reflects just how far the discipline is from being concerned about writing for the primary musical activities of performing and listening, a direction which might be well worth working towards in the future.

Rothstein, ‘Interpretations of Schubert's Sexuality Distort Music,’ 1.

Schubert’s music for piano, four hands, articulating connections between his own experiences as a twentieth-century gay man and the expressive meanings he found in Schubert’s music.’

Maus, ‘What Was Critical Musicology?’ This article describes Philip Brett’s contribution to the discussion of Schubert and homosexuality as ‘reflective biography’. Brett’s work includes the ‘consideration of his own experiences of playing 49

Scores Writings about Music endeavours to provide an outlet for practical new music, written for and by students of the university. This issue contains works by three students: a piano piece by Luke Smyth, a percussive piece for three cellos by Conor Buckley, and a graphic score for piano quartet and electronics by Fergus Grant.

Morning Sonata Conor Buckley

The following is a selection of excerpts.

Vol. 2, Issue 1 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; April 2015 http://writingsaboutmusic.wordpress.com