ANALYSIS OF TONAL ALLUSIONS IN LACHENMANNS MUSIC THROUGH HATTENS THEORETICAL CONCEPTIONS OF STYLE

GROWTH

Rossana Lara Velzquez Escuela Nacional de Msica

Universidad Nacional Autnoma de Mxico conse_ross@yahoo.com.mx

Abstract One of the aesthetical premises in the work of the German contemporary composer Helmut Lachenmann is to provoke a critical reflection about the way our perception is and has been socially conditioned. In his string quartet Gran Torso Lachenmann conceives tonality with its rules and taboos as well as the classical instruments as the listeners principal framework to be alienated through its interaction with new logics of string instrument performance producing mostly noise. To analyze those adaptations and veiled references to tonality a flexible theoretical framework focused in the principles of style growth in tonal historic music styles was needed. In this paper I present some results of this analysis inspired in Robert S. Hattens musical gesture theory in order to discuss some connections between Hattens theoretical and Lachenmanns aesthetical concern with style growth and adaptation strategies. Moreover I also present the advantages of using open, flexible concepts to distinguish and evaluate complex connections between tradition and modernity in music and arts in general. Keywords: Lachenmann, tonality, Hatten, gesture theory By introducing compositional material and performing techniques that disrupt or contradict the listeners frame of reference related to the concert tradition, Lachenmann associates himself with a long German tradition of critical composition that can be traced back to the 18th Century, when music gains autonomy from its previous decorative and religious functions. Music turned into a very important tool for Enlightenments civilizing project. New music genres and forms are developed, as the inner structure of music itself becomes the focus of attention in the public concert encouraging the listener to new listening behaviors. The formal complexity of music demands from the listener a constant self-reflection, it requests an open-ended development of critical listening continuously confronting conventions and perceptual habits. Through theses arguments, Lachenmann understands (German) tradition in a teleological narrative, not as a conservative but as a revolutionary one. In Lachenmanns view, the history of tonality as the common frame of European music tradition should be regarded as the history of its continuous deconstruction, an open-ended project that should be maintained and not removed from the aesthetical and compositional debates of contemporary music. By recovering this progressive sense of tradition, Lachenmann seeks to counteract the current status of classical tradition, which in his view has been completely devoid of its historical grounds, fetishized and reduced to mere commodity by the cultural industry. On the other hand, he seeks to position himself in face of the postmodern compositional trends of the 1970s, a period that he associates with restoration and stagnation [1].

According to Lachenmann, only a dialectical compositional approach to tonality, taken as the unavoidable condition of listening experience could produce a real change in our preserved listening conventions, reinvigorating tradition while expanding our horizon of aesthetical appreciation to really unknown domains. In short, Lachenmanns poetics assume that in order to alter any convention this has to be necessarily alluded. Accordingly, with his string quartet Gran Torso (1971-72/1988) Lachenmann aims to confront our expectations concerning the string quartet sound by working with the taboos of traditional performance practices. That means: 1) to focus on those traditionally avoided noisy sounds attached to the moment of friction of the bow against the strings. 2) The organizing principles are not grounded in the intervallic relations of pitches, but in the varying physicalenergetic conditions of sound production inherent to the sound quality. 3) To change partially the conventional tuning of the strings, thus altering the automated relation between stopping and resulting pitch. 3) To prevent completely or partially the vibration of strings. By considering the qualities of sound that prevail in Gran Torso, a series of questions concerning the analysis of this piece emerge. What materials and organizing principles in Gran Torso could allude to tonal principles? How can these allusions be recognized as such? How allusions to tonal principles are in turn alienated? To address these questions a theoretical framework focused on the dynamics of historic music styles, genres and forms, as well as on the compositional strategies that propel adaptations, disruptions, transformations in style growth, was needed. Robert Hattens gesture theory to approach historic tonal styles was very appropriate to my inquiry, since the definitions and characterizations of compositional strategies fostering style growth proposed by him allowed me to analyze principles of continuity of tonal tradition in a completely different sound context such as Lachenmanns Gran Torso. On the other hand, Hattens approach gives prominence to the corporeal dimension of sound as an important organizing factor of the compositional work, what was crucial in order to understand the correlations in Gran Torso between the corporeal aspect (i.e., the physicalenergetic conditions of sound production) and the formal-structural aspect. Hatten starts out with a definition of human gesture

rather inclusively as any energetic shaping through time that may be interpreted as significant [...] Note that this definition embraces not only all varieties of significant human motion [...] and perception, but also the translation of energetic shaping through time into humanly produced or interpreted sounds [2].

In addition, musical gestures may be comprised of any of the elements of music, although they are not reducible to them. [...] The elements synthesized in a musical gesture include specific timbres, articulations, dynamics, tempi, pacing, and their coordination with various syntactic levels (e.g., voice- leading, metric placement, phrase structure). [...] they are not merely the physical actions involved in producing a sound or series of sounds from a notated score, but the characteristic shaping that give those sounds expressive meaning [3].

From Hattens classification of strategic functions of gesture, four are fundamental for this analysis: the thematic, the topic, the tropological, and the rhetorical function. The most important function of gesture comes from its thematization; a gesture becomes thematic when it is (a) foregrounded as significant [...] and then (b) used consistently [...] and may be subjected to developing variation as part of a coherent musical discourse [2]. Nevertheless, what is crucial of this definition is that a thematic gesture can be constituted by what might appear as accessory, as articulations and dynamics. Indeed this is precisely the case in Gran Torso, which as mentioned above, is not structured by pitches or particular rhythmic

configurations. Accordingly, as Hatten points out, its modes of its development will result not merely from the developmental calculi of fragmentation, inversion, transposition techniques [...] but from the unfolding of its gestural and implied expressive meanings [3]. Lachenmann himself has finally admitted the pertinence of a concept as thematic gesture to analyze how all these residual components such as variants of bow pressure, actions of different parts of the instrument, bow motion and the relations among them can be easily transferred to compositional processes [and] categories of classic motivic-technique [4]. In my analysis I found six thematic gestures treated in the form of developing variations constituting the principal material of Gran Torso. Because of space limitations in this article I referred only some of them. Other functions of gesture may result through the variation of thematic gestures. Thus, a thematic gesture may have a variety of functions, depending on its treatment and the context where it is inserted. In some variations of thematic gestures it is possible to recognize the presence of archetypical rhythmic configurations, which Lachenmann has abstracted from tonal syntax and we can identify as topics. Leonard Ratner states in his book Classic Music that topics are forms of associative signification. They consist in musical types, and include various stylized dances from the earlier part of the eighteenth-century, which classic music inherited [5]. According to Hatten, topics may involve characteristic rhythmic gestures. Use of topics is significant in Gran Torso for it provides the familiar element to be alienated. Use of topics is then motivated by its tropological potential. A trope may be engendered when typical material is combined in atypical ways [...] Like a metaphor in literary language, a trope is sparked from the collision or fusion of two already established meanings, and its interpretation is emergent [3]. There is another function of gesture classified by Hatten as rhetorical. This rhetorical action is recognized in a sudden reversal, a collapse, an interruption, or a denial of implication. Rhetorical gestures disrupt or deflect the ongoing musical discourse, contributing to a contrasting dramatic trajectory [3]. Since they promote the atypical by disrupting the continuity of a musical discourse hence confronting listeners expectation, they play a central role in Gran Torso. Rhetorical gestures in Gran Torso function mostly to mark the beginning and the end of sections and subsections of the piece, where new variants of thematic gestures are abruptly inserted. Finally, there is an extra function of gesture that Lachenmann himself calls Kadenzklang or cadence-sound. It is the result of an accumulation of the sound energy (a tension process) that concludes with a distention as the energy fades out. It is used in Gran Torso to mark the ends of sections or higher-level gestures. In the following examples I want to show, on the one hand, how the same thematic gesture can be varied to acquire different strategic functions, even simultaneously, which means that by varying some aspect of the same thematic gesture a topic, rhetorical or tropological function might emerge. On the other hand, I want to illustrate how different thematic gestures may have equivalent functions. The same thematic gesture is present in both examples, but varied in a way to produce very different sound qualities with completely contrasting functions. I call this thematic gesture pressed bowing, which is its most essential, identifiable aspect. In Ex.1 the series of pressed bowing impulses played by the first violin with ritardando as well as a dynamic (volume) decreasing al niente delineates the gesture as a cadence. This cadence-sound is reinforced by another thematic gesture, which I identify as arco flautato, played by the cello in the way of a large descending glissando with a decreasing dynamic to pppp. This is an example of two

different thematic gestures with equivalent functions, working together to produce one single cadence-sound.

Ex. 1. Measures 53-58

Ex. 2. Measures 61-64

In Ex. 2 variations of the pressed bowing gesture produce in context a variety of functions. The previous cadence-sound gives way to this new section, marked by a tremolo in the first violin. Two sequential attacks of the pressed bowing with maximal pressure in fff are abruptly introduced as the new motivic variation of this gesture (m. 61). This irruption can be interpreted as a rhetorical gesture that affects the rest of the passage. The tremolo dynamic in the first violin increases to ff adopting a furious character (furioso). With a second irruption of the pressed bowing with maximal pressure (expanded to the second violin, viola and cello) the tremolo figure adopts also the modality of the pressed bowing (m. 63). This emergent gesture might be characterized as a trope (the fusion of a conventional gesture, i.e. the tremolo, with an atypical articulation, i.e. the pressed bowing gesture). This trope also functions as a modulation passage leading the original tremolo figure to a new variant of the pressed bowing thematic gesture (a quintuplet ostinato articulation in fff (quasi Sge, m. 64)). This transition to the new thematic variation of the pressed bowing gesture is reinforced by a second tropological gesture, consisting in a harmonic pitch played by the viola producing a cadence-form (Kadenzklang, m. 63) and the superposition of the pressed bowing gesture with maximal pressure, producing a noisy sound. Finally, because of the previous context we can easily associate this new ostinato variation of the pressed bowing gesture with the production of a slowing-down tremolo. This

example shows how expressively and syntactically rich a single gesture such as the pressed bowing might be. The analysis stresses how heterogeneous and adaptive are gestures significant motivations, what prevents me to naively assign the thematic gestures an essential or single expressive quality. In addition, Hattens definitions of strategic gestures allow analyzing principles of continuity of historical compositional strategies (generation and development of motivic-thematic material inspired by the gestural conditions of sound production) in completely contrasting musical contexts with quite different gesture material, as it is the case in Gran Torso, by means of which the very definitions and identity conditions of such historical gesture strategies are interrogated, modified, and expanded. In addition, theoretical and analytical tools must be understood as open concepts to distinguish, comprehends, and evaluate veiled and complex connections between tradition and modernity in music and arts in general. This obviously implies also that the very analytical or theoretical concepts can be redefined. According to the music philosopher Lydia Goehr [6],

open concepts have most been described as: i) not corresponding to fixed or static essences; ii) not admitting of absolutely precise definitions of the sort traditionally given in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions; iii) intentionally incomplete or essentially contestable because of the possibility of an unforeseen situation arising which would lead us to modify our definition can never be eliminated [...] Continuity is crucial to the functioning of open concepts. [...] Such continuity is guaranteed through the expansion or modification of definitions rather than through their replacement. [...] An open concept sometimes undergoes quite radical shifts in function and meaning, but it does not thereby lose its identity. Its identity is preserved by the continuity that is guaranteed at any point in time if the concepts present use is appropriately connected to its previous uses.

Conclusions The use of open concepts in music analysis is particularly relevant to elucidate principles of change and continuity that construct music tradition as a living and constantly reevaluated practice. I hope this article has contributed to show the possible applications and vantages of an analytical framework grounded in open concepts, to interpret (in this case) how Lachenmann dialogues with the growth principles of tonal historic music styles in a radical piece like Gran Torso. The use of open concepts is an attempt to counteract those methods of music analysis and music theory that privilege the focus on rules over exceptions, thus using music to illustrate guidelines or relatively established and fixed principles that are consisting with previously determined fixed concepts. The use of frameworks grounded in open concepts is on the contrary needed, if music scholars are interested not in reifying music tradition through their analytical tools and theoretical frameworks, but in regarding tradition as a dynamical, living and dissenting practice. References [1] Lachenmann, H. (2004), Composing in the Shadow of Darmstadt, Contemporary Music Review, vol. 23, no. 3-4, p 47. [2] Hatten, R. (2006), A Theory of Musical Gesture and its Application to Beethoven and Schubert, Music and Gesture, p 1. [3] Hatten, R. (2004) Interpreting Musical Gestures, Topics, and Tropes. Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, 2004, pp. 93-94. [4] Lachenmann, H. (2004) Fragen-Antworten, in Musik als existentielle Erfahrung, 2004, p. 197 [5] Agawu, K. (1991) Playing with Signs: A Semiotic Interpretation of Classic Music, 1991, p. 32. [6] Goehr, L. (1992) The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works, 1992, pp. 91-94.