MUSIC: A VIEW FROM DELFT EDITED BY ROBERT P.

MORGAN
AUTHOR: EDWARD T. CONE
What is the relation of content to form in this particular work in its historical context? What, if
anything, does this work communicate? (Important question)

The problem of musical meaning is of course only one aspect of the problem of meaning in the
ne arts. A Universal answer is impossible. Art remains stubbornly speci c.
It is possible to almost endlessly study one set of data with the pro t and delight of a constantly
renewed sense of discovery.
It follows that no critical formulation can ever be nal.

Music: A View From Delft. Essay 1

The paining View of Delft by Vermeer is an objective, realistically detailed representation that was
not deeply moving. But why did the picture generate such great attraction?

On whatever aspect one concentrates, in the case of the view of Delft one nds visual coherence.
Crucial for painting is the tension between abstract and representational form. The two structures,
abstract and representational, must be more than parallel. They must be fused by mutual analogy,
so that they become two ways of looking at one single, basic structure: TWO POINTS OF VIEW
EITHER OF WHICH CAN BE INTERPRETED AS AN ANALOGUE OF THE OTHER.

We could apply these principles of polar tension, of fusion by mutual analogy, and of saturation to
music.

1. The unity of the musical composition must be perceptible within the medium: it must be
heard.
2. The apparently simple surface of some music may conceal great richness.
3. Since music is a temporal art, certain possibilities are open to it that are unavailable to
painting. It makes possible the development of an idea that initially seems uninteresting, but
that grows in interest with time -> Beethoven? Haydn? Thematische Arbeit? (My view.
Remember this, it’s very useful)
4. Time permits the development of the tension between the detail and the whole in a new and
important way. The appearence of each detail is an occasion for suspense: how will it be
related to its context? How will the context t the whole? Traditional tonality was fortunate in
having at its command a system to control suspense: one of the tasks of the atonal idiom has
been to nd substitutes of analogues for its powerful e ect.

Assuming that music can express emotion I shall try to determine a few of the consequences
(Cone) .

It is possible and frequent in the case of the best program music for the composer to ignore the
more literal aspect of his subject and to use it purely as a suggestive source of musical thought.
If the composer instead insists on implying a program in the fullest sense of the word, and if he
actually needs such a stimulus to his musical imagination, what is the positive danger?
Why should we not nd in the music the same kind of added textural dimension as that a orded
by a subject in painting? A PAINTING DOES NOT MOVE IN TIME, and the entire scene and design
are equally before our eyes as we look at it. Music instead, as it moves through time, must make
its formal relationships clear from moment to moment. For most listeners it is task enough to
assimilate these as they ow by. The program insists that the listener follow it as well, an
independent verbal structure, and at the same time try to relate it to the musical form -> what
happens is that the hearer concentrates on the music (the program is super uous) or he
concentrates on the program, in which case he is taken out of the music.
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We can and do hear words and music together as forming some sort of unity that ideally includes
the meaning and the sound of the words.

Whatever the composer may wish to do besides in the way of accompaniment, of illustration,
background, Is well and good; but if he forgets that the voice is the one element through which
the unity of the song is manifested, he jeopardises all, as Wagner did: too often his orchestral ow
usurps the primary role to such an extent that the e ect is only one step away from that of
melodrama. The voice still sings, but only to convey the words, losing its musical function.

Baroque Arias, moreover, have a purely musical unity (but that’s it). The words are treated as a
pretext for the exploitation of the vocal instrument (are you sure? Monteverdi, Peri, Euridice etc
etc? Check)
The successful song is one more example of the principle of analogical fusion.

Too much activity in music and lyrics at the same time may lead to the fatal division of the
listener’s attention.

The operatic superiority of Verdi to Wagner is indicated in some measure by his SIMPLER, more
IMMEDIATELY APPREHENSIBLE, and HENCE THEATRICALLY more SUITABLE STYLE. At a rst
glance, an aria like La Donna È Mobile may seem too simple. But in music, and opera especially, a
relatively unpromising idea may be in a state of SUSPENDED SATURATION, depending on future
developments to make its import clear. This aria’s virtue is that it will be immediately grasped and
retained by the audience. The simple-minded tune should break upon the audience with the full
horror of Rigoletto’s own realisation.

It is not simply the combination of elements that gives opera its peculiar fascination: it is the
fusion produced by the mutual analogy of words and music, an union further enriched by the
visual action.

So, what advice has Delft to o er us today?

- The Golden Age of Functional Tonality (Bach-Handel-Mozart-Haydn-Beethoven-Schubert)
witnessed a synthesis of all musical elements into forms as self-su cient as any that music has
ever known. The tension between detail and whole was brought into equilibrium, and musical
suspense was under complete control. Melody, harmony and rhythm were integrated into a
rich, multidimensional whole.
- Previous Golden Ages (Renaissance Polyphony and Gregorian chant) had depended on the
shaping power of word to a larger extent.
- There were indications of what was to come (after the golden age of tonality) even in
Beethoven, whose employment of rhythmic motives sometimes seems overemphatic to those
who prefer the exquisite balance of Mozart, and in Schubert, whose sense of proportion
sometimes failed him in his recapitulations.
- The disintegration was proceeding in other ways as well. The Romantic conception of a melody
was an important indication. For composers of this period, it was independent of harmony,
accompaniment, texture and even of rhythm (witness the thematic transformation some of
them were so fond of). These other elements often seem to be regarded as mere decorative
adjusts, and one melody could appear in many garbs.
- Debussy cut the tenuous thread still holding the musical elements together, so that rhythm and
melody could develop independently of harmony. What this meant was that they developed at
the expense of harmony, which became static and coloristic, an aspect of newly important
dimension of timbre.
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The trend toward abstraction is a dominant one today, and an unhealthy one for art. The devices
criticised here introduced in the hope of achieving a perfect unity within the 12 tone system have
resulted in producing a unity but outside the medium, in the realm of arithmetic. In some of the
serial compositions written today the application of the tone row itself has become so abstract
that it is no longer felt as form-building force. In this case, the listener perceives chaos, then the
composition is only nominally music.

Rhythm is the most fundamental of musical dimensions and the most vital. It has never submitted
for long to the fetters of formulation and schematisation.

MUSICAL THEORY AS A HUMANISTIC DISCIPLINE

Musical Theory referred to harmony, counterpoint, analysis and orchestration.

Music is now classi ed among the humanities.
If music is found today among the humanistic rather than the scienti c disciplines, is it not
properly only the study of its history and literature that belongs there? Should theory be placed
among the mathematical sciences?

- Theory is indispensable to train composers, and for many this is the real importance of the
subject. It furnishes a rigorous, quasi -scienti c background for further musical studies.
- Music theory nds analogues in many other elds commonly held to be humanistic.
- Traditionally humanistic disciplines (History, literature, other arts etc) all require as background
certain technical disciplines that because of the nature of their inquiries and the rigorousness of
their methods should properly be referred to as sciences. Any distinction between historical
sciences and humanities, to be useful, must be made on a basis of general approach to subject
matter, rather than of subject matter itself.
- The subject matter of the humanities embraces all human activities and all records thereof. The
humanistic approach is concerned with the study of these activities and records as concrete
expressions of human thought and embodiments of human values.
- The humanist when is confronted with the presentation of a new theory, facing the same mass
of evidence and inference asks “What was this man trying to say and why was he trying to say
that?” Less concerned with objective truth. A fallacious theory is as useful as any other,
provided only that it reveals the attitude that called it into being.
A WORK OF ART IS BOTH AN AESTHETIC AND HISTORICAL DOCUMENT. It can never purely
regarded as either. One approach uses history to clarify the meaning of the individual work,
another approach uses the work to enlarge our view of history.

- One of the prime functions of theoretical instruction is to educate the ear; and no potential critic
or scholar, whether professional or amateur, can a ord to risk insu cient or inadequate training
of this kind.
- Is it possible to adopt an humanistic approach to music theory itself? Is it possible for the
student to derive from his exercise in harmony, counterpoint, and the rest, values analogous to
those gained from classics, history and philosophy?
- The awareness of style is neither more nor less than the ability to think in music, whether in
ones own terms or in the language established by one of the great composers of the past.
- In the late works of Beethoven we nd details of voice leading that violate all orthodox
procedure. In the QUARTET OP 131, for example, there are parallel 5ths that resist every simple
explanation. In the Piano Sonata 106 there are agrant parallel octaves. These passages arise
only rarely, and only in response to the needs of the situation. Beethoven, by violating a
particular style – the traditional one based on classical voice leading – gained the essence of
style itself: the oneness of technique and expression. (The union, the unity)
- So, the real importance of theory form the humanistic point of view resides in its direction
toward the appreciation of the meaning of style itself, rather than in its narrower historical or
practical orientations.
- Orchestration would be an integral part of the compositional process.
- Remember that strict counterpoint, four-part harmony and the like have their part to play but
they are only abstractions that have a pedagogical function.
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 ALFRED NORTH WHITEHEAD: STYLE IS THE ULTIMATE MORALITY OF MIND.
Style is the repository of the values of logical cogency, coherence and economy.

ANALYSIS TODAY

- Analysis cannot apply to certain types of composition in vogue today -> Cage’s Music for Piano
21-52: Boulez’s Structures or Stockhausn’s Klavierstück XI, where improvisation is given such
free rein that it actually creates the form of the work anew at each performance. Thus,
Klavierstuck XI does not exist as a single composition and cannot fruitfully be treated as one.
The relationship of all such versions to the abstract idea of the piece as a whole, and he
decision as to the aesthetic value of such an experiment = - these problems can be argued
endlessly.

THREE WAYS OF READING A DETECTIVE STORY - OR A BRAHMS INTERMEZZO

From the writer of a Mystery we expect a high degree of precision.

We reread the mystery classics not for story but for style, portrayal of character, comment on
society etc.

The second reading is controlled by consciousness of the structure underlying a recounted series
of events. It is a reading in which one’s mental reconstruction of Version A serves as a continual
gloss on version B. This reading admits of no emotional involvement of the part of the reader. This
reading aims to an analysis.

So: First reading = purely experiential . Second reading is an analysis (not necessarily structured):
the trajectory of the events is now zigzag, or even discontinuous, constantly shifting back and
forth between the planes of memory and experience.

Third reading - Doubly trajectory moving on two levels: one fully conscious and one at least partly
suppressed. Primary level - the reader follows the narration, but this time he is in a position fully to
enjoy the journey, because he is aware of the direction and each event along the way.

The third reading is therefore an ideal rst reading, the ideal reading.

First-hearing analysis, except perhaps at the most super cial level, is a contradiction in terms.
In the second hearing analysis, does scant justice to our experience of hearing a composition in
real time.

A single chord can have no function: functions emerge only during the course of a progression.
Composers play with the resulting ambiguities, and one of the great joys of the Third Hearing is to
become fully aware of them.

In his Intermezzo Op 118 No 1, Brahms has developed Beethoven’s opening incident into a full-
edged mystery story. The mystery concerns the identi cation of the tonic. The key is neither F
major as suggested by the opening sonority, nor the C major of the rst cadence and of the
reprise. THE KEY IS A MINOR.

Te rst hearing turns out to be a peculiarly unsatisfactory a air. The listener is unaware of the tonal
problem until late in the piece, when his perception of the key relations requires an unexpected
reorientation. A second hearing will be informed by a synoptic analysis.
A successful Third Reading of Op 118 No. 1 will accept neither the deceptive shifting of the First
Reading nor the structurally precise but empirically unrealistic unity of the Second.
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 Just how much a performer should allow himself to draw on his store of memory varies from work
to work, even from moment to moment within the work.

Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony: When the motto theme, which once before has tried
unsuccessfully to take over the course of he movement, returns for a second time, it is obviously
launching a surprise attack.

Chopin’s Fantasy Op. 49 - Sforzato diminished 7th shatters the dreamy atmosphere of the central
B major section, the pianist should try to convey a sense of his own shock.

This ambiguity raises a problem of performance in wider context.Should a performer anticipate

the deceptive resolutions or should he try so far as possible to let them take him unawares?
Should the performer share his astonishment with his auditors or is he trying to spring a trap on
them?

THE OLD MAN’S TOYS: VERDI’S LAST OPERAS

Verdi was one of the giants.

Thanks to recent performances, new reprints and recordings, we can observe in detail the slow
and steady growth from youthful rawness through the visor of the middle period to the re ned
splendour of Aida. The nal steps, however (to Otelllo and Falsta ) could have been taken only by
an imaginative intellect of the highest order.

In Otello and Faltsta subtlety (delicatezza) has replaced melodic inspiration. Faltsta is
considered by Shaw a meaningless puppet show, written for an old man’s amusement.

Verdi admitted to the Mayor of Parma that he was writing Faltsta for his own amusement in
moments of absolute leisure, without any de nitive goal in view.
However, Verdi wanted to write a comic opera for almost 50 years.

Verdi was not unusual to have long-range plans. This suggests we must respect the earlier works
as rougher embodiments of the same musical and dramatic conceptions that are found, re ned
and freed of inessentials in the later masterpieces.

His revision of Macbeth for the Paris Performance proves it.

Although he never wrote a libretto, Verdi was always a dramatist. His opera was also from the
beginning based on a sound aesthetic.

The change of style of the late works is a result of waning inspiration, the arti ce has replaced
creativity. George Bernard Shaw thought this was true already in Aida and attributed the richness
of that opera’s orchestration to the composer’s attempt to make up for the dying up of
spontaneity and fertility.

In actuality, we nd more invention in these works.

“Di quella pira”, “La Donna è mobile”, “Di Provenza” -> one motif is elaborated by sequential
repetition and simple modi cations to ll out the entire form.
The phrases are now subjected to real development: they appear in constantly new relations and
in ever more varied forms.

Falsta , Act 2, Scene 1: The corni co motif is not dropped after its initial presentation by Falsta :
it is kept as a constantly recurring thought beneath Ford’s ensuing monologue.

Such is the rich orchestral treatment Verdi a ords a simple calendal phrase:
- Two orchestral statements of it introduce the arioso, with the second nishing on a dissonant
deceptive cadence
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 - Later, an altered harmonisation leads into dark, abbreviated, chromatic sequences, reduced to
only three tones, used ultimately to form the crescendo to the outburst “O Matrimonio: Inferno!”
Other melodies, destined for purely vocal expansion, display a exibility of line, a variety of
counter and a rhythmic subtlety unknown to his earlier style.

Desdemona’s opening appeal in Act 3 of Otello - the second half of the initial phrase corresponds
rhythmically to the rst half, but the syncopation adds new potential energy which is admirably
discharged by the embellished cadence.

Such complex relations between motifs, words and mood indicate a concentration of expression
beside which the more extended linear beauty of the earlier aria seems super cial.
CONCENTRATION - THAT’S THE CLUE. The aria of LA TRAVIATA is compressed into the short
arioso passage of Otello.
Verdi’s diluted arias contain much less music than their own space, so he learns concentration.

DIFFERENCES BETWEEN WAGNER AND VERDI

Keeping in mind that perhaps Wagner taught Verdi more than the latter realised, especially in
concentration.
- Most of Wagner’s expressive details are harmonic progressions
- Verdi’s expressive details are melodies
- Even at his most nearly Wagnerian, in the kiss motif from Otello Verdi remains primarily a
melodist.
“Opera is opera, symphony is symphony” - Verdi to Pyccini. Verdi recognised that melody and
song are one and never forgot the important of the voice; on the other hand, Wagner came to
think more and more in terms of the orchestra, since he was interested in the expressive
possibilities of harmonic colour.

Verdi carefully observes the condition which prevent the submersion of the voice.
LA TRAVIATA - MEETING OF RIGOLETTO and SPARAFUCILE
Sparafucile SCENE
The orchestration, with its single muted cello and double bass projecting an unnatural high
melodic line against a background of plucked strings and woodwinds is striking, yet simple and
remains almost unchanged throughout the scene. Once the listener has grasped the pattern, he
can continue to perceive it almost subconsciously while he devotes his attention to the voices and
the action.
True symphonic style would create a texture so interesting and self-contained that it would
completely absorb the ear.
- The vocal parts, recitative-like, contrast with the formal melodic structure of the
accompaniment but they never con ict rhythmically.

In Wagner, as in Verdi, when we expect an aria we are given one, but by the orchestra and not by
the singer. Example: Brünnhilde’s plea in the last act of Die Walküre. The orchestra achieves here
its greatest eloquence, and its transformation of the earlier tentative ‘pleading’ motif into a
de nitive major form requires our total attention.

Verdi’s orchestration is transparent even at its most opaque; to do so he learns to produce the
most startling e ects by the most economical means. A tendency already apparent in
RIGOLETTO
Orchestral attention: the entire e ect of the instrumentation is focused in one salient detail, to
which all others are subordinated.

Increased mastery of this technique leads to the glowing translucency of Aida.

Veri also adheres at all time closely to the two human sources of music: song and dance. When
the voice is not predominant, the body is. Easily grasped rhythms suggestive of physical motion
and re ecting to the human characters on the stage.
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Wagner - pure sound. This is a new ideal which becomes increasingly important during the
nineteenth century, as interest focuses more and more on the coloristic motifs.
Verdi even in his later works refused to yield to this. As a writer for the stage he knew that the path
of pure musical colour leads to dehumanisation.

The concept of leitmotiv should remain foreign to Verdi. For the Wagnerian leitmotiv is
independent of its surroundings - it can be freely transplanted without losing its e ect. Verdi
introduces movable phrases much more sparingly.

Sheer sonority can neither organise a large - scale instrumental work nor present human action in
terms of the human voice.

Edward T. Cone calls Verdi a music dramatist rather than an opera composer precisely because of
this control of both verbal time and musical tempo. Verdi’s early correspondence with the
librettists Cammarano and Piave makes clear to what extent he was responsible for the choice
and shaping of his own plays.

BEETHOVEN’S EXPERIMENTS in COMPOSITION: THE LATE BAGATELLES

The bagatelles op 119 and op 126 are two collections quite di erent in origin. Op 126 was
apparently composed at one stretch, in 1823-24, and was published in 1825. The pieces were
planned as a unit: they were sketched on an integral group of leaves where Beethoven called
them a Ciclus von Kleinigkeiten .
The Op. 119 was more heterogeneously conceived. Published in 1823.
It seems that all the ‘new’ bagatelles were based on much older material.
Op 119 is a collection, rather than a cycle. Each piece can be seen as a solution to a speci c
compositional problem or as an experiment with an unusual technique. Beethoven could try
something new in a settings at once relaxing.
Although the pieces developed from youthful ideas, they display suggestive subtleties.

The problem addressed in the later sets concern some of the fundamentals of musical
composition.
Op 119 No 10 ( A major). It is a miniature (probably the shortest piece Beethoven ever completed).
It attempts to make a complete piece out of the repetition of a single period, consisting of two
four-measure phrases -> two phrases that compose a mere V-I sequence.
Bagatelle No. 9 (A minor) is also a very short one: compact three-part song with no coda,
displaying tonic, dominant and Neapolitan supertonic.

Op 119 No. 11 -> Despite the lack of obvious thematic return, the e ect is one of a three-part
song form. The middle section provides immediate harmonic contrast

A dislocation in the opposite sense, by which an originally initial phrase becomes part of a
consequent, conceals the reprise in the Allegro motto of the Sonata in A at Op 110. There the
return to the tonic is e ected in m. 25, but the thematic recapitulation (mm29-32) enters only as
the last member (b) of an eight-measure group articulated as 2+2+4 measures.

The same principle in yet another guise governs the false reprise in C major that interrupts the
development of the opening movement of the Quartet in E at op 127. The dislocation consists
here in the juxtaposition of the maestro introduction with the cadence of the allegro period that
normally follows, the main body of that period being omitted. Thus mm. 135-47 correspond to
mm. 1-14, without mm. 6-11.

SCHUBERT’S UNFINISHED BUSINESS

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 We cannot hear forward; yet music is lled with commitments to the future - the expectations on
whose satisfaction, immediate or delayed, its continuity depends. And although the listener is
denied the power of prediction, he is granted the pleasure of anticipation and the joy of
recognition when a long-postponed ful ment arrives

Beethoven was a master of musical gestures that, by demanding eventual formal or rhetorical
completion, make e ective pledges for the future.

It was probably form Beethoven that Schubert learned how rhetoric and form can mutually
support each other in situations involving subsequent attention to business temporarily left
un nished.
Cello Quintet Op. 163 - the opening movement strongly suggests the in uence of Beethoven’s
procedures, although I ( the author) doubt whether Schubert had any speci c model in mind.

Schubert’s music is often much less outspoken.

Such delayed realisation is all the more likely when the work in question is well known to us.

The Allegro Moderato of the B-minor symphony begins with a phrase so familiar that we rarely
appreciate its enigmatic character. The opening melody in the low strings raises many questions.
Is it an extended introductory upbeat? Is it an independent thematic element?
The de nitive statement toward which the music evolves shows the melody in another litght, and
that arrives only in the CODA.

When the coda presents an unaltered version of the introductory phrase, the rst since the
exposition, the cadential formula at last takes its place above the prolonged F#. By doing so it
reveals a new and conclusive shape: the famous melody is not an 8 measure phrase ending on an
extended dominant, but a nine-measure phrase resolving to the tonic.

In the Andante con moto of the same symphony, the coda again, and even more e ectively,
returns to an introductory idea. It does not only supply a missing resolution, but it also expands
the idea in a direction that could not be anticipated. ]The coda radiantly trascends all previous
limitations.

Introductory phrases are not the only ones to receive unforeseen explanatory or expansive
treatment. Sometimes an apparently well-constructed and usable theme undergoes a later
transformation that reveals such unexpected formal beauty and expressive power that the new
version sounds like the de nitive statement of which the original was only a preliminary sketch.

Joseph Kerman has pointed out that many of Beethoven’s codas, especially those of the middle
period, e ectively attend to previously un nished business:
Again and again there seems to be some kind of instability, discontinuity, or thrust in the rst
theme which is removed in the coda… In addition to [the coda’s] harmonic function it has a
thematic function that can be described or, rather, suggested by words such as ‘normalization’,
‘resolution’, ‘expansion’, ‘release’, ‘completion’ and ‘full llment’.

Certainly the same kinds of terms can be applied to the Schubert codas we have been examining.
Full llment and completion probably apply to the rst movement of the B minor symphony:
expansion to the second. Generation might also be even more accurate.

One can look at these operations from another point of view. There is one word that covers them
all, for there is one activity that subsumes them all: criticism. When a composer returns to earlier
material to complete it, clarify it, reshape it, or the like, he is not merely winding up un nished
business. He is also calling attention to the fact that the original version is, for certain purposes,
inadequate, incomplete, unclear or imprecise. He is criticising it.
That CRITICISM is an act of appreciation, not judgement. The critical ear is one that fully
appreciates both the object of its attention and the potentialities of that object. The critical
composer is one who can actualize those potentialities.
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 CRITICISM and COMPOSITION, then, ARE NOT NECESSARILY DISTINCT. As Edward Wind
states:
These age-gold enmities between artist and critic, their historical quarrels and recriminations, are
perhaps but an outward re ex of a perennial dialogue within the mind of the artist himself.

Richard Poirier: “Critical reading is simultaneously a part of the performance of writing, and to
some degree it has always been”.

The critic is often accused - sometimes justly - of inventing instead of discovering meaning: of
claiming to nd in a work of art a signi cance that he has in fact introduced.
In similar fashion, one might argue that the process by which the composer appears to criticise an
idea by exposing its hitherto hidden import may be illusory.

If the critic can convince us of the relevance of his interpretation, then it is valid. If the composer
can persuade us to accept his suggestion, then that is the way it is. And so it is with Schubert:
when he reworks a musical idea, he convinces us that he is letting us hear what was there all the
time, although we could never have discovered it for ourselves.

SOUND AND SYNTAX: AN INTRODUCTION TO SCHOENBERG’S HARMONY

By sound and syntax cone means to distinguish the two aspects of harmony: chordal vocabulary
and harmonic progression.
Third aspect to consider: succession -> it is concerned with connections at the most detailed
level: the speci c chords chosen, the accessories decorating them, the voice leading, the
comparative complexity of their sonorities.

How do the sound and the syntax a ect each other, and what kinds of permissible chord
succession result?
An important criterion is the speci c chordal vocabulary when recognising a piece. Better, the
vocabulary of characteristic sonorities, since it might include a number of simultaneous
combinations of tones that would not qualify under some theoretical rubrics as chords.

Classical theory from Rameau on has tried to show that tonal syntax is based on the relations
among normals: even the most complex progressions can be ultimately reduced to one that
consists of connected triads in root position.

Schenker has o ered a more convincing alternative. It is one that builds tonal syntax even more
rmly on normal ground.

Classical tonality displays a consistency of sound, syntax, and succession - a synthesis based on
a characteristic vocabulary that includes the triad as normal.
As the late Romantic style developed in the 19th century it appeared increasingly to question the
assumptions underlying this synthesis. The triad became progressively less characteristic of the
sound of this music.

COMPARING the opening of Fingal’s Cave with that of Tristan und Isolde
Mendelssohn relies on a succession of normals, modi ed by simple dissonances immediately
resolved.
The Wagner example sounds completely di erent, and is completely di erent
- A chromatic melodic line supported by a succession of dissonances stretched almost to the
breaking point, achieving a resolution only on a conventionally deceptive triad modi ed by an
appoggiatura. Sound and syntax are here in a state of the gravest tension, and an extraordinary
genius like Wagner can only just hold them together.

Schoenberg came to maturity during this critical period in the development - or the decline - of
the tonal style. The system had arrived at the point where such success was hardly possible, for
the search for new harmonic resources was pushing beyond the limits of the tonal realm.
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 It was his gradual realization of this situation that made him a seminal gure of 20th century
music; it is the re ection of this gradual realization that makes his works so fascinating.

There are at least three kinds of inconsistency of which the early Schoenberg is guilty:
- Inconsistency between sound and succession
- Inconsistency between succession and syntax
- Inconsistency between sound and syntax
Op. 2 No. 2 Schenk mir deinen goldenen Kamm
The cadence at mm5-6 fails because even such a short passage has conditioned us to expect
each member of a fth-succession to be adorned with a dissonance.

Succession and syntax come into con ict in Op 3No 2 Die Aufgeregten. The introduction, through
its combination of rhetorical gesture (recitative declaration supported by powerful chords and
rhythmic motives) and harmonic progression, appears to be preparing for a tonic G minor. The
resolution is instead deceptive: the body of the song begins in a tentative F minor.

Op 6 No. 1, “Traumleben”, might be heard as a regretful, nostalgic farewell to the 19th century. It
develops a serene, uncontested E major. The rst phrase comes to rest on an authentic cadence:
the dominant of that cadence is anything but typical. It states simultaneously the boundaries of
the rst vocal phrase, a minor ninth that is one of the most prominent melodic and harmonic
intervals in the song. The melodic resolution of the dominant is by a diminished 4th already subtly
prepared by one in mm2.

At least one other song, No 10 (Op 15), establishes a triadic normal. Here is another important
departure from tonal principles. Schoenberg no longer considers it necessary to end on the
normal - even when it is a triad.

The distinction between normal and non normal nals must be observed as well when, as in most
Op 15, the normal is dissonant. Like consonant normals, dissonances my be established at the
outset. No. 13 for example develops by a series of neighboring motions from its opening sonority,
to which the last measure of the song returns.

A recent review of a performance of Schoenberg’s music compared the composer to “ a man who
gives up a pro table life as a banker to go exploring the South Pole”. Cone considers this
a rmation wrong. Schoenberg is in fact a mountain climber who, approaching the timberline,
realizes that he must give up the protective cover of the forest. But the ground beneath his feet is
still the same solid earth.

THE USES OF CONVENTION: STRAVINSKY AND HIS MODELS

The persistent vitality of conventional patterns in music has often been noted. One advantage of
their use is clear: in an art both abstract and temporal they furnish signposts to aid the listener,
who can neither turn back nor pause to look around him.
The acceptance of conventions presents another possibility. A composer may deliberately defeat
the expectations aroused by the speci c pattern followed; the resulting tension between the
anticipated and the actual course of the music can be a source of aesthetic delight. This is the
way Stravinsky has used conventions - stylistic as well as narrowly formal - of the past, but it is
important to realize that composers of the periods of interest to him have also played with their
own conventions.

An element necessarily associated with any departure from accepted norms: surprise.
Haydn clearly intended the drumbeat in the “Surprise” Symphony to shock, and no doubt
Beethoven was counting on more subtle reactions of the same kind when he began a symphony
on an apparent dominant seventh and a concerto with a piano solo.
Can these e ects escape being greatly diminished and even nulli ed by successive hearings?
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 Is it possible for audiences today, after long familiarity, to experience to any degree the sensation
of violated propriety apparently calculated by the composers?

When shocks occur under these circumstances, they are never so violent as before, but they
register their artistic e ect nevertheless.
The element of surprise is after all of minor aesthetic interest.

Haydn’s liberties with patterns he himself had so notably helped to establish are of two kinds.
In some cases they may arise apparently from the exigencies of the musical material.
In other cases the composer seems deliberately to play with the form - to use the pattern itself as
a subject for creative development.

This treatment is a closer analogue to Stravinsky’s, and for this reason the author chose for
analysis the nale of the Quartet Op 54 No. 2

The introductory character of the opening motif is immediately thrown into question by the exact
balance of the eight-measure period that it initiates.

Stravinsky’s preoccupation with the contrast between idioms of earlier periods and those of his
own is obvious in works like Pulcinella, based on BORROWED MATERIALS.

Symphony in C.
Unlike Haydn, Stravinsky could expect his audience to be more familiar with the musical language
of the past than with that of the present.
The traditional framework is emphasized here: the classical orchestral layout, diatonic melodies,
metric regularity, apparent harmonic simplicity, typical patterns.
At the same time, any expectations of a work easily comprehensible in a comfortably familiar
idiom is defeated by certain immediately perceptible features:
- distinctive instrumental sound
- Persistent but mild dissonance
- Sudden harmonic shifts
- Peculiar heterophonic part writing
Stravinsky’s intention is serious: he confronts the evoked historical manner. The result is a
complete reinterpretation and transformation of the earlier style.

The Classical balance of phrases and periods, so carefully adjusted to the demands of functional
tonality, become here an analogue for the organization of Stravinsky’s own kind of diatonicism.
Stravinsky’s sections – rhythmically persistent, harmonically static, melodically circular – reward
the hearer to make the comparisons leading to just such measurement.

Stravinsky, approaching the Classical from outside, as a historically de ned manner, super cially
follows its convention more closely than Haydn.
The in uence of his personal idiom, however, is so strong that the resulting reinterpretation goes
far beyond that of the earlier composer. Result: a transformation of his model.

The contrast between Schoenberg and Stravinsky is roughly analogous to the one involving
Haydn. Schoenberg, like haydn, modi ed the conventions and extended the techniques of his
musical language from within - from the vantage round of one who had played a preeminent role
in the shaping of the language in the rst place. Stravinsky, approaching each from without,
reinterprets and transforms it so radically to t his own needs that it remains only super cially
related to the original.

What Stravinsky has demonstrated convincingly is the feasibility of putting manneristic elements
to good use in the service of a powerful style.

With Stravinsky, as with Haydn and Schoenberg, the contrast between the expectations aroused
by the accepted conventions and the actual use which they are put produces tension - but with
stravinsky, the resultant pull is in a di erent direction.
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 STRAVINSKY: THE PROGRESS OF A METHOD

For many years it was fashionable to accuse Stravinsky, like Picasso, of artistic inconstancy: of
embracing a series of manners instead of achieving a personal style. Today it is becoming
increasingly clear that Stravinsky has been remarkably consistent in his stylistic development.

Each apparently divergent phase has been the super cial manifestation of an interest that has
eventually led to an enlargement and a new consolidation of the artist’s technical resources.

This paper examines the apparent discontinuities that so often interrupt the musical ow in
Stravinsky’s works.

From Le Sacre du printemps onward Stravinsky’s textures have been subject to sudden breaks
a ecting almost every musical dimension: instruments and registrar, rhythmic and dynamic,
harmonic and modal, linear and motivic.

Such points of interruption in scores like Le Sacre and Les Noces are meant to be analogous to
corresponding actions on the stage - their origin is primarily extra musical and practical then.

However, these devices are constantly exhibited in the abstract “Symphonies” which would
indicate that the method was musically important to stravinsky.

Interruption is only the most obvious characteristic of a basic stravinsky technique comprising
three phases:
- Strati caition: the separation in musical space of musical areas juxtaposed in time; the
interruption is the mark of this separation. In most cases there is at least one element of
connection between successive levels.
- Strati cation (INTERLOCK) sets up a tension between successive segments. When the action
in one area is suspended, the listener looks forward to its eventual resumption and completion.
The delayed satisfaction of these expectations occasions the second phase of the technique:
the INTERLOCK. Consider two ideas in alternation: A1 B1 A2 B2 A3 B3. One musical line will
run through A1, A2, A3; another will correspondingly unite appearances of B.
- Synthesis: some sort of uni cation is the necessary goal toward which the entire composition
points, for without it there is no cogency in the association of the component areas. This is
however seldom as explicit as the original strati cation -> it often involves the reduction and
transformation of one or more components, and often the assimilation by one of all the others.
This process is not necessarily always placed at the end of a movement.

There are other 2 devices the composer uses for mitigating the starkness of the opposition
between strata:
- Use of a bridge: an area with a life of its own, as its future development shows. Although acting
as a bridge, it reaches forward to its next appearance in the interlocking pattern.
- Divergence: the division of an original single layer into two or more.
The symphonies are the most thoroughgoing of Stavinsky’s works in the employment of the
technique.

Stravinsky kept re ning his method, as the Serenade in A and the Symphony of Psalms show.

IT was suggested at the outset that Stravinsky has never relinquished the method of composition
outlined here. A cursory glance at almost any typical piece written before his present twelve-tone
period will bear that out. A
An analysis of the rst movement of the Symphony in Three Movements, for example, becomes
much easier if the principle of strati cation is applied. The introduction furnishes the basic
material of successive divergences forming got important areas of the movement and also returns
at the end to complete its own line and to synthesize the whole.
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 It is also possible to nd the same principles at work in the twelve-tone pieces.

In Movements for piano and orchestra instrumental di erentiation becomes the source of
strati cation -> the piece features pointillistic melodies, complete harmony exploitation of
chromatic scale, exible rhythm free from obvious obstinate patterns.
Third movement: one level initiated by the piano, one by oboe and English horn, one by harp and
trumpets.

The layout of the full score symbolizes Stravinsky’s approach: a notational scheme that suggested
the one used in this analysis. The entire work also shows evidence of a single plan of orchestral
strati cation working its way through all the movements.
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