Adorno s Theory of Musical Reproduction

Transcription

1 1 Adorno s Theory of Musical Reproduction Adorno struggled with formulating a theory of musical reproduction for much of his life, leaving only notes and fragments after his death which were later edited together by Henri Lonitz and published in The central paradox was: an interpretation cannot be perfect and ultimately fails the work (the musical text), and yet only through interpretation can the work be realised. For the purposes of this paper I will consider the implications of one of the fragments which confronted this paradox: There is no reason whatsoever to consider the sensual sound of music more fundamental to it than the sensual sound of words to language. 1 To approach this controversial and prickly thought at all successfully one soon becomes aware that the very definition of music needs to be considered. Whereas many have always taken it to be along the lines of the organisation of sounds to produce (or reveal) beauty/ emotion / form, Adorno is challenging what is perhaps the least contested word in this sentence, sound. 2 An equally profound repercussion of Adorno s statement is that music would become divorced from its temporality on which it relies for its enunciation of form. The material of sounding music relies upon its form for much of its meaning, in this case understood as structural significance. Whilst one can read such a form from most scores, the temporal experience of the first time repeat, the fermata etc. would be lost. Whilst read music can no longer be bound by its temporality, it is increasingly defined by its spatialisation, i.e. the music is located in the text as an unmediated image of the temporal form. 3 What needs to be born in mind when evaluating Adorno s contest of the need for the sensuous element in music is that music is understood as organised sound in the mind. All art has cognitive elements and the reflexion of the sensual stimuli with these happens in the mind so in a sense the ear can be bypassed. Adorno suggests the sounding of music is unsublimated mimesis, and just as Western society began to read internally it is the legacy and conclusion of music to be read silently. 4 Thus, we must ask ourselves how the writing of musical text works and to what extent it can communicate intentions or meaning, perhaps act as a language in the absence of sound? Music does not communicate in the same way as a poem or piece of prose (which both deal with and in language), it is not capable of signification in the same way because what is said cannot be abstracted from the music. 5 Bearing in mind the comparison with written language, Adorno further clarifies this: To interpret 1 Adorno, T. W., Towards a Theory of Musical Performance, ed. Henri Lonitz, trans. Wieland Hoban (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2006; original German edition, 2001) Note: Adorno admits to using this as a conceptual extreme. He often uses exaggerated forms of each argument to posit his position but that needn t dampen his sentiments or thoughts. Ibid. 5 3 Paddison, M., Performance, Analysis and the Silent Work: The problem of Critical Self-Reflexion in Adorno s Theory of Musical Reproduction, Musikalische Analse und Kritische Theroie: Adorno s Philosophie der Musik (Tutzing: Verlag Haus Schneider, 2007) Adorno, T. W., Towards a Theory of Musical Performance, ed. Henri Lonitz, trans. Wieland Hoban (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2006; original German edition, 2001) 5 5 Adorno, T. W., Music, Language and Composition, trans. Susan Gillespie. The Musical Quarterly, Vol. 77, No, 3 (Autumn, 1993) 401

2 2 language means to understand language; to interpret music means to make music. 6 As Dierks puts it: the musical text is without a signified, it is (and is bound to remain) an enigma. 7 When music is performed, this enigmatic character, the unknowable truth of the work, is briefly heard the enigma is projected from the text into time. It is this quality of music (as oppose to other arts) that means it requires interpretation. When approaching a work the performer has two dialectically linked tasks. These correspond to the localised content (the signs which require an act of mimesis), and to the larger form of the work (the sum of the signs which make up the work s image). Firstly, they must produce the sound: the notes and their articulations. The second facet is to create an x-ray image of the work, to show all the aspects of construction that lie beneath the surface and this is done through the articulation of precisely that perceptible manifestation. 8 Through a dialectical balance of these two elements a performance achieves what Adorno calls sense, confronting and thus revealing the problem of the work, its truth content, rather than senselessly glossing over it with a good tone. In isolation the notated text is meaningless because it is non-signifying and so the essence of interpretation is making the totality of the work. 9 To understand more carefully the nature of interpretation we must turn to Adorno s idiosyncratic expression reproduction, the implication that the work is self-contained in the text and the performer need only play what is written. The work itself is capable of immanent reflexion, that between the socially and historically mediated material and the form of the work. But as we have shown this relationship needs to be revealed: by analysis to find the problem of the work and then by performance as a secondary reflexion between the performer and text. In this sense performance is an act of mimesis or even re-enactment, it reproduces the contours of the work mimetically. 10 The more successfully a musician retraces this melodic-intonational-gestural aspect of [musical] language 11 the more the idea will enter the representation. Adorno even claims the interpreter need not, and perhaps cannot, understand the idea within the work because despite the most thorough analysis it will always retain its riddle-character, which, for Adorno, is a dialectically contingent characteristic of the work Ibid. 403, my emphasis. 7 Dierks, S., Musical Writing and Performance: About Adorno s Theory of Performance, in Mário Vieira de Carvalho (ed.), Expression, Truth and Authenticity: On Adorno s Theory of Music and Musical Performance (Lisbon: CESEM/ Edições Colibri, 2009), 79 8 Adorno, T. W., Towards a Theory of Musical Performance, ed. Henri Lonitz, trans. Wieland Hoban (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2006; original German edition, 2001). 7 9 Dierks, S., Musical Writing and Performance: About Adorno s Theory of Performance, in Mário Vieira de Carvalho (ed.), Expression, Truth and Authenticity: On Adorno s Theory of Music and Musical Performance (Lisbon: CESEM/ Edições Colibri, 2009), Paddison, M., Performance, Analysis and the Silent Work: The problem of Critical Self-Reflexion in Adorno s Theory of Musical Reproduction, Musikalische Analse und Kritische Theroie: Adorno s Philosophie der Musik (Tutzing: Verlag Haus Schneider, 2007) Adorno, T. W., Towards a Theory of Musical Performance, ed. Henri Lonitz, trans. Wieland Hoban (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2006; original German edition, 2001) Paddison, M., Performance, Analysis and the Silent Work: The problem of Critical Self-Reflexion in Adorno s Theory of Musical Reproduction, Musikalische Analse und Kritische Theroie: Adorno s Philosophie der Musik (Tutzing: Verlag Haus Schneider, 2007) 242

3 3 For a purely cognitive engagement one needs a strong understanding of the musical signs and the systems in which they operate. Whilst most musicians have this capacity to a greater or lesser extent, very few could read a complex orchestral score such as Stockhausen s Gruppen ( ) and hope to gain an understanding of the piece comparable, let alone greater, than if they had listened to it as well. Ignoring the obvious charge of elitism, Adorno is speaking from the position that the musical text is ideal, complete in that it contains all possible interpretations within it, at best a performance can be a partial representation of a score a silent reading purifies the work of this limitation. Whilst this paradox has been explored above, there are many works (mostly that succeeded Adorno s lifetime) that cannot be easily objectified as a score because they rely so heavily on indeterminacy of sonic result and/or performer s choices. One such example is works that use prescriptive rather than descriptive notation, prescribing actions the performer should make, rather than describing the resulting sound as standard notation does. Timothy McCormack s Disfix (2008) notates each physical aspect of playing an instrument separately, with varying degrees of subjectivity and a wholly defamiliarising effect on standard performance practice. Fig.1 Disfix, b.91-92, bass clarinet part only. The top stave indicates flutter techniques, the second voice (as a tessitura of sung pitches), the third fingered pitches and the bottom embouchure position. There are effectively no discrete pitches or rhythms as such in this piece. Rather, McCormack sets up unstable situations where the performer must carry out particular physical actions upon the instrument, the resultant sounds sometimes unrecognisable from the notation. The work depends on and is embodied by the interactions between performer and instrument and read silently would not be the same work. Similarly the work of the post-cage experimental tradition often advocates a focus on sounds (instrumental or otherwise) existing for their own sake and embraces a degree of indeterminacy. Paul Klee s idea of rendering things visible rather than reproducing images of things can be transposed easily to this tradition: revealing sounds, placing them under a glass case and in some regards problematizing their position as music. The more a work relies on its sonic materials, such as when the piece solely intends to act as a space for sounds to exist, then the more barren a silent reading will be.

4 4 One of the pitfalls of reproduction that Adorno returns to several times in the opening notes of Towards a Theory of Musical Reproduction is that of Idiom, also understood as performance style, which is closely linked to his concept of Sense (Sinn). He plans to formulate an argument against the cliché that one should be faithful to the spirit, not to the letter. 13 He is aiming here, as in other essays, at the celebrated Italian conductor Arturo Toscanini and similarly slick musicians. Adorno argued that a successful reproduction should strive to make all contextual and structural connections visible, the x-ray image which was posited in the first fragment of his notes. Musicians such as Toscanini, Wallenstein and Horowitz were guilty of senseless reproductions, cultivating what he called the culinary element of musical interpretation, aiming at recording-like performances and prizing a fetishism of smooth functioning without musical sense and construction. 14 In the essay, The Mastery of the Maestro he describes Toscanini s version of Beethoven s Symphony No. 7 : it suffered from an absence of internal tension as if with the first note everything had been decided in advance, as with a gramophone record, instead of gradually coming into being. 15 Adorno felt that there needed to be an element of risk in performance and in reifying performance through such an interpretive approach one denies the dynamic historicism of the work. So in calling for silent music-making Adorno is perhaps referring not just to silent reading but to falling silent (Verstummen) as an act of protest against such senseless reification through mass reproduction and commodification. Adorno s intention was to avoid this reification of fixed significance and move in the direction of non-identity the unforeseen. 16 Idiom serves to sustain the work in the historical moment it emerges from by retaining the dominant way of playing (the style) and approaching the text in a non-problematic way. This negligent tendency is possibly how Adorno interpreted Mahler s aphorism Tradition ist Schlamperei, ( tradition is sloppiness ). 17 Perhaps by avoiding such practices through silent reading and focusing on analysis (technical or otherwise) such ideology can be avoided but would in turn affect the historicism of the work because the idiom is the transient aspect of the work. Conversely the objective significational element is unchanging 18 and the immanent historicity of the work manifests itself by means of a relationship between this and the mimetic and idiomatic elements. Carvalho suggests this relationship serves to highlight the immanent ambiguity of the score (as a problem that needs to be confronted), an ambiguity leaving a void of meaning which is filled by the dynamic idiom and mimetic enquiry. 19 The truth of a work is as historically mediated as the materials that comprise it. Adorno mentions the 19 th century musicologist Nägeli, who considered Mozart too stylistically impure an analysis that was 13 Adorno, T. W., Towards a Theory of Musical Performance, ed. Henri Lonitz, trans. Wieland Hoban (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2006; original German edition, 2001) 2 14 Ibid Adorno, T. W., Sound Figures, trans. Rodney Livingstone (Stanford CA, Stanford University Press, 1999) Paddison, M., Performance, Analysis and the Silent Work: The problem of Critical Self-Reflexion in Adorno s Theory of Musical Reproduction, Musikalische Analse und Kritische Theroie: Adorno s Philosophie der Musik (Tutzing: Verlag Haus Schneider, 2007) Vieira de Carvalho, M., Meaning, Mimesis, Idiom: On Adorno s Theory of Musical Performance, in Mário Vieira de Carvalho (ed.), Expression, Truth and Authenticity: On Adorno s Theory of Music and Musical Performance (Lisbon: CESEM/ Edições Colibri, 2009) Of course there are occasionally minor changes in such absolute values, such as the standardization of concert A in the mid 20 th century, but the historical trend has been toward less change. 19 Ibid.

5 5 heavily biased by its historical context but not incorrect at the time. 20 Such historical truth is also at the ideological mercy of idiom, which distorts the truth of the work predominantly via the objectivist approach of Stravinsky where the notes are the work in its totality; or the reconstructivist, historically authentic approach which subsumes music into its contemporary conventions. Regardless of when a work is from, the problem of the idiom is always present and so the performer must work against the grain of their milieu by mastering a work s construction. 21 What complicates matters further is that the history of interpretation is brought to bear not only on the work itself but also on each subsequent performance. For me, Glenn Gould s 1955 recording of the Goldberg Variations makes most subsequent recordings sound bloated the exclusion of sounding music may negate this history. A similar historical process is at work in composition, as contemporary art becomes increasingly selfaware it becomes aware of its capacity, or as Lyotard saw it, duty to question the rules of art. 22 Recently this has been done by using materials that historically have been kept well away from serious music and by structural or theatrical elements that question the traditional forms or conventions. One such piece is Richard Ayres No.24 (NONcerto) (1995), a debased concerto for alto-trombone and ensemble. What sets this piece apart from many other classical and contemporary concerti is the antihero rather than hero-virtuoso role of the soloist. It begins with the trombonist rummaging in a plastic bag, vainly searching for the right type of mute, a point from which she/he makes little progress. A work such as this relies on its subversion of the concert-performance situation to impart humour and eventually pathos: retained in the text these effects, which I feel are vital to the work, are lost. Of course a work such as this became necessary through the composer s awareness of commodification and expresses itself as a protest against flashy virtuosity which as we have seen is idiomatic, but never the less facilitated by the text. Adorno discusses this theme, noting that the act of performing music has the air of being an advertisement 23, that there are rhetorical aspects to performance that aim to convince the listener that a particular performance is the definitive work. Perhaps the trombonist in Ayres NONcerto is making a similar sort of protest to the act of Verstummen, using silence where a cadenza should be as a gestural-dramatic device. Music that needs no performers can not only transcend problems of instrumental technique but also the pervasive barriers which stem from art s palpable oppression by commodification. Feldman once said: My whole generation was hung up on the 20 to 25 minute piece. It was our clock. We all got to know it, and how to handle it. As soon as you leave the minute piece behind, in a one-movement work, different problems arise. 24 As James Saunders points out, composers are now quite used to having 20 Adorno, T. W., Towards a Theory of Musical Performance, ed. Henri Lonitz, trans. Wieland Hoban (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2006; original German edition, 2001) Vieira de Carvalho, M., Meaning, Mimesis, Idiom: On Adorno s Theory of Musical Performance, in Mário Vieira de Carvalho (ed.), Expression, Truth and Authenticity: On Adorno s Theory of Music and Musical Performance (Lisbon: CESEM/ Edições Colibri, 2009) Lyotard J.F., The Postmodern Explained to Children: Correspondence , trans. Thomas Pefanis (London, Turnaround, 1992) Adorno, T. W., Towards a Theory of Musical Performance, ed. Henri Lonitz, trans. Wieland Hoban (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2006; original German edition, 2001) Universal Edition. Morton Feldman. Wien: Universal Edition, 1998

6 6 duration prescribed to them whereas they may not accept a commission that made demands of, say, tonality. This prescription (which stems from the standardised length of programmed concerts, the manner in which the PRS pay royalties per minute and the desire for the commissioning bodies to get value for money) clearly has an effect on the music being produced and limits autonomy. 25 Paddison argues that maybe the very act of reproduction ignores a historical truth. The necessarily rhetorical and communicative nature of reproduction is at odds with the social-fragmentation of late capitalism where the idea of social wholeness is by now an illusion. 26 In this sense, silent reading need not reconcile the private and the public, thus avoiding such charges of naivety or inauthenticity. Adorno posits that through silent reading the obsolete separation of work and reproduction would be liquidated 27, although this would be achieved by the expulsion of the latter! The development in western classical music, as distinct to oral traditions, is largely due to the development of notation that allowed forms to be fixed as well as complexified. But this development is part of a wider historical process which manifests itself largely through the more socio-economic forces of music such as technology, the dominance of particular ensembles and forms, patronage etc. Now that art has come-of-age there is now a tendency for some composers such as Ayres to confront these forces, mainly in the context from which they arose, i.e. performance rather than reading. Duchamp s Fountain would not be the same work if the art museum had never existed. This is the kernel of the relationship between text and reproduction: performance makes the text a text 28, imbues the text with authority by reproducing it mimetically in time and so facilitating the secondary cognitive reflexion. The text is comprised of signs whose intentionality assumes significance by being reproduced Saunders J., Developing a modular approach to music (Ph.D. commentary, University of Huddersfield, 2003) Paddison, M., Performance, Analysis and the Silent Work: The problem of Critical Self-Reflexion in Adorno s Theory of Musical Reproduction, Musikalische Analse und Kritische Theroie: Adorno s Philosophie der Musik (Tutzing: Verlag Haus Schneider, 2007) Adorno, T. W., Towards a Theory of Musical Performance, ed. Henri Lonitz, trans. Wieland Hoban (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2006; original German edition, 2001) Quoted in Dierks, S., Musical Writing and Performance: About Adorno s Theory of Performance, in Mário Vieira de Carvalho (ed.), Expression, Truth and Authenticity: On Adorno s Theory of Music and Musical Performance (Lisbon: CESEM/ Edições Colibri, 2009), Ibid. 79

7 7 Bibliography Adorno, T. W., Cambridge: Polity Press, 2006; original German edition, 2001) Music, Language and Composition, trans. Susan Gillespie. The Musical Quarterly, Vol. 77, No, 3 (Autumn, 1993) Sound Figures, trans. Rodney Livingstone (Stanford CA, Stanford University Press, 1999) Ayres, R., No.24: a NONcerto for alto trombone (Amsterdam: Donemus, 1999) Barry, B. R., Dierks, S., In Adorno's Broken Mirror: Towards a Theory of Musical Reproduction, International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music, Vol. 40, No. 1 (Jun., 2009) Musical Writing and Performance: About Adorno s Theory of Performance, in Mário Vieira de Carvalho (ed.), Expression, Truth and Authenticity: On Adorno s Theory of Music and Musical Performance (Lisbon: CESEM/ Edições Colibri, 2009) Hamilton, A., Aesthetics and Music (London: Continuum, 2007) Lyotard J.F., The Postmodern Explained to Children: Correspondence , trans. Thomas Pefanis (London, Turnaround, 1992) McCormack, T., Disfix (Unpublished, 2008) Paddison, M., Performance, Analysis and the Silent Work: The problem of Critical Self-Reflexion in Adorno s Theory of Musical Reproduction, Musikalische Analse und Kritische Theroie: Adorno s Philosophie der Musik (Tutzing: Verlag Haus Schneider, 2007) Saunders J., Developing a modular approach to music (Ph.D. commentary, University of Huddersfield, 2003) Universal Edition Morton Feldman (Wien: Universal Edition, 1998) Vieira de Carvalho, M., Meaning, Mimesis, Idiom: On Adorno s Theory of Musical Performance, in Mário Vieira de Carvalho (ed.), Expression, Truth and Authenticity: On Adorno s Theory of Music and Musical Performance (Lisbon: CESEM/ Edições Colibri, 2009) 83-94