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Identity and Difference: Essays on Music, Language and Time
This volume is a collection of essays based on lectures given at the Orpheus Institute in Ghent at various occasions over the last four years.Two of our five distinguished authors are British, three are Germans. Two are prominent composers and both keen and provocative writers about music; one is a musicologist and daring critic who specializes in contemporary music. There are also two philosophers and Adorno specialists that deal with such fundamental and highly complex matters as music and language, and music and time.All authors subscribe to the same seriousness of purpose, so that you may find reminiscences of one text in the others, which will make for a fascinating read. Moreover, this book is all about the current state of music, about thinking, speaking, and writing about music in the immediate aftermath of that stirring and fascinating twentieth century.
192 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2004
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March 20, 2015
This book edited by Jonathan Cross collects five essays on music, language and time. Each was originally a lecture given at the Orpheus Institute, the Belgian graduate school for music, in the first years of the new millennium. Albrecht Wellmer’s “On Music and Language” grapples with Adorno and Lachenmann, while Richard Klein contribues "Theses on the Relationship Between Music and Time”. However, I was particularly interested here in the contributions of the editor and two contemporary composers whom I greatly enjoy.
Jonathan Cross’s opening essay deals with the pitfalls of writing about living composers, noting how while the composer is alive he can often set the discourse, and discourage discussion of things he’d rather keep secret. Those working after the composer’s death from free access to archival materials can have a wider, more balanced view. Thus Benjamin Britten’s homosexuality was little talked about by his contemporaries, and a comment by Harrison Birtwistle on a Dowland quotation in his music was unquestioningly taken up by virtually all commentators. (There is in fact quite a bit on Birtwistle in this essay). Cross also notes that anyone writing about living composers takes part in the process of canon formation; perhaps certain 20th-century masterworks are considered masterworks because they were considered analyzable and drew more attention from commentators than other composers’ works (e.g. serial Schoenberg versus serial Stravinsky).
Jonathan Harvey’s “The Genesis of Quartet No. 4” describes his Fourth String Quartet, a stunning work where the quartet’s amplified playing and an electronic part are spatialized, sent flying in the air around the audience through speakers, and the form reflects the Buddhist cycle of reincarnation and ultimately liberation. Here Harvey describes the architecture of the piece and some of the whizbang technological devices he employed. It is written in a fairly acccessible tone (there are no samples from the score, so one need not even read music). While the piece has been explored in some detail in a series of videos from the University of London’s School of Advanced Study on YouTube, this straightforward description by the composer will interest Harvey fans.
Helmut Lachenmann’s contribution has two titles, a short one and a long one, but they are both somewhat misleading for what you get, so, I’ll not even mention it. What Lachenmann does offer here is an in-depth account of his own views on aesthetics and his personal approach to composition. Lachenmann elucidates some of his own works (the use of “temporal grids” in them, for example) as well as provides fresh commentary on pieces by Beethoven and Webern to point out similarities with his own practice. In spite of his avant-garde language, Lachenmann is extremely aware of the classical tradition, and the breadth of his familiarity with the canon as shown here is impressive. Lachenmann tried here to put into words things that are rather ineffable, and his language can be difficult at times, but any Lachenmann fan is sure to have an expanded appreciation of his music – both in general and in certain specific pieces – after reading this.
Jonathan Cross’s opening essay deals with the pitfalls of writing about living composers, noting how while the composer is alive he can often set the discourse, and discourage discussion of things he’d rather keep secret. Those working after the composer’s death from free access to archival materials can have a wider, more balanced view. Thus Benjamin Britten’s homosexuality was little talked about by his contemporaries, and a comment by Harrison Birtwistle on a Dowland quotation in his music was unquestioningly taken up by virtually all commentators. (There is in fact quite a bit on Birtwistle in this essay). Cross also notes that anyone writing about living composers takes part in the process of canon formation; perhaps certain 20th-century masterworks are considered masterworks because they were considered analyzable and drew more attention from commentators than other composers’ works (e.g. serial Schoenberg versus serial Stravinsky).
Jonathan Harvey’s “The Genesis of Quartet No. 4” describes his Fourth String Quartet, a stunning work where the quartet’s amplified playing and an electronic part are spatialized, sent flying in the air around the audience through speakers, and the form reflects the Buddhist cycle of reincarnation and ultimately liberation. Here Harvey describes the architecture of the piece and some of the whizbang technological devices he employed. It is written in a fairly acccessible tone (there are no samples from the score, so one need not even read music). While the piece has been explored in some detail in a series of videos from the University of London’s School of Advanced Study on YouTube, this straightforward description by the composer will interest Harvey fans.
Helmut Lachenmann’s contribution has two titles, a short one and a long one, but they are both somewhat misleading for what you get, so, I’ll not even mention it. What Lachenmann does offer here is an in-depth account of his own views on aesthetics and his personal approach to composition. Lachenmann elucidates some of his own works (the use of “temporal grids” in them, for example) as well as provides fresh commentary on pieces by Beethoven and Webern to point out similarities with his own practice. In spite of his avant-garde language, Lachenmann is extremely aware of the classical tradition, and the breadth of his familiarity with the canon as shown here is impressive. Lachenmann tried here to put into words things that are rather ineffable, and his language can be difficult at times, but any Lachenmann fan is sure to have an expanded appreciation of his music – both in general and in certain specific pieces – after reading this.
Displaying 1 of 1 review