Kandinsky's Yellow Colour in Von Hartmann's and Schnittke's Music

ISSN: 2353-7094 advisory board dr Vaclav Kapsa (Akademie věd České republiky) dr hab. Aleksandra Patalas (Uniwersytet Jagielloński w Krakowie) prof. Matthias Theodor Vogt (Institut für kulturelle Infrastruktur Sachsen) dr hab. Piotr Wilk (Uniwersytet Jagielloński w Krakowie) editorial staff Katarzyna Babulewicz Marek Dolewka (Editor-in-Chief) Michał Jaczyński Róża Różańska Maryla Zając cover design and typesetting Klaudia Kosińska Joanna Wróbel proofreading Jolanta Bujas Agnieszka Gaj abstracts' translation Paulina Sochacka KMM UJ Editiorial Staff address Koło Naukowe Studentów Muzykologii UJ ul. Westerplatte 10 31–033 Kraków [email protected]

This publication is supported by the Council of Scientific Student's Organisations of the Jagiellonian University (Rada Kół Naukowych UJ). Table of Contents

Introduction 5

M. Hanáková, I. Dobbelaere, H. Sechehaye 7 The sersera of the guembri: anthropological approach to the device in the context of Gnawa diasporas in Brussels and Morocco

Neda Kolić 29 The Sound of Yellow: Kandinsky’s yellow colour in von Hartmann’s and Schnittke’s music

Marija Simonović 47 The phenomenon of reciprocal mirroring of Bachelard’s study L’eau et les rêves: essai sur l’imagination de la matière, Debussy’s Des pas sur la neige and Thaulow’s La Rivière Simoa en hiver

Marlene Priller 61 An examination of Clara Schumann’s musical salons and the research problems that occurred Shorena Metreveli 75 The musical and liturgical aspects of the great feasts of the Church services inserted in the Great Lent

Dominika Micał 89 Rhetorical figures and rhetorical strategies in The Minotaur by Harrison Birtwistle

Marek Dolewka 115 Silence as a symbol of death in the reflection of Gisèle Brelet and Tōru Takemitsu

Bionotes 129 Introduction

Between 22nd and 24th April 2016 “The 7th International Conference- Competition for Students in Musicology” was held in Tbilisi, Georgia. The event, organised by Vano Sarajishvili Tbilisi State Conservatoire, attracted BA, MA and PhD students from 11 academic centres, including Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Georgia, Poland, Russia, Serbia, Tunisia, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America. The aim of the Conference-Competition was to exchange information between students from different countries, to establish professional contacts and to develop cultural relations based on the commonly believed importance of science. The topics discussed by participants in their papers ranged from, among others, music history, theory, aesthetics and analysis to ethnomusicology. Issues of methodology and interdisciplinary studies were points of discussion as well. Each paper has been evaluated by the international jury, consisting of influential professors, among them Maria Teresa Arfini (Italy), Nino Barkalaya (Russia-Georgia), Georges Bériachvili (France), Inna Naroditskaya (USA), Svimon (Jiki) Jangulashvili (Georgia) and Tamaz Gabisonia (Georgia). Their precious remarks were a perfect opportunity for young scientists to polish their research skills. This particular issue of “The Jagiellonian University Young Musicologists Quarterly”, No. 30 (3/2016) combines some of the papers presented during forgoing Conference-Competition and therefore brings them to the wider public. As the participants of this Conference-Competition we would like to thank the organizers for their hospitality, kindness and the unique atmosphere of this well-organised event.

Maryla Zając Marek Dolewka

Martina Hanáková, Itzana Dobbelaere, Hélène Sechehaye

Masaryk University (Brno), Université Libre de Bruxelles, Jean Monnet University

The sersera of the guembri: anthropological approach to the device in the context of Gnawa diasporas in Brussels and Morocco

1. Introduction

Gnawa is an ethnic group said to have originated from Black West African slaves who were brought to Morocco in the 16th century. Cur- rently, Gnawa is not only a matter of ancestry and blood relation. It is a complex identity that carries various meanings. Indeed, being a Gnawa is also related to music, someone who plays Gnawa music can be considered a Gnawa. Among their instruments, there is a fretless percussive spike lute with three strings called the guembri. At the very end of its neck, there is usually a little hole for the input of the metallic timbre-modifying mechanism: the sersera.1 It is a detachable

1 The transcription of the Arabic words follows the paper Transcription in written Arabic by Bo Isaksson, professor of Semitic Languages in Uppsala University, [online] http://www.lingfil.uu.se/digitalAssets/168/168451_3transc ription-of-arabicen. pdf [accessed: 04.05.2015].

7 The Jagiellonian University Young Musicologists Quarterly, No. 30 (3/2016)

idiophone consisting of metal loops or rings fixed around the edges of a metal sheet. Even though this piece of metal is mentioned in literature, the sersera has never been the main focus of any study. If it is still made and carried by musicians, it is almost not used anymore. Musicians usually keep it in their house or inside a case.2 The object itself still seems to have an importance, but the sersera has nearly become musically obsolete. By collecting musicians’ explanations on reasons for abandoning it, this paper aims to find out how the timbre- modifying mechanism is used and conceptualized by the culture it belongs to. This analysis was done among the Gnawa diaspora in Brus- sels, a community interested in the preservation of its traditions in its new environment. We compared these observations with interviews conducted in Morocco (Marrakech and Rabat) by one of the authors of this article, Martina Hanáková. In order to offer the new information collected among Gnawa, the article is divided into three parts: firstly, an introduction to the guembri and the sersera based on existing literature. Secondly, we will discuss our field observations and the reasons given by each of the interviewed musicians concerning the obsolescence of the sersera. To conclude, these two parts are going to be compared in a discussion.

2. General information

2.1. The guembri

The guembri (also spelled and called gimbri, gmbri, gnibra, gombri, guinbri, gunbrii, guniibrii, gogo, hajhuj; the last word in Moroccan dialect stands for “there are two [strings]”)3 is a Moroccan fretless percussive spike lute with three strings (see Example 1). The wooden base (wajh) of the instrument is coated with camel throat skin; three strings (awtār) from goat intestines are attached to the three spikes (masṭara) right next to the sound hole (l-fumm, literaly “the mouth”),

2 This affirmation is based on what we noticed in Brussels and in Morocco (see below for the circumstances of collecting the information). It was also confirmed by the ethnomusicologist Tom Beardslee, who did his research on the square Jamaa El Fna in Marrakesh. 3 Apparently, according to musicians that were interviewed, there were originally only two strings on the instruments.

8 M. Hanáková, I. Dobbelaere, H. Sechehaye, The sersera of the guembri…

at the upper end they are tied with leather bands around the oval neck (makhzina). Contemporary musicians usually use an iron tuning mechanism instead of the ties. One of the strings, the middle one, is shorter and inserted in the middle of the neck. The tuning is not fixed4 but there are stable relations between each string: an octave between the lowest and the middle one and a fourth between the middle one and the highest. The wooden bridge (hmmāl) is removable. Guembris are deco- rated in many different ways, e.g. by hanging various types of beads on the neck, with henna drawings on the leather surface or with shell embroidery on lace or velvet. At the very end of the neck, there is usually a little hole for the metallic timbre-modifying mechanism. When Gnawa play the lute, they say that the lute “speaks” (itkellmū).5 The instrument plays an important role in the ritual musical drama called the lila (“night”) or the derdeba, performed by Gnawa people. These events take place in the presence of an audience and the structure of the ritual is firmly Example 1. Guembri © mim, Photo S. Egan established, with hidden rules,

4 Thoughm’allem Hicham admits that he has three types of tuning depending on the performance context (Interview with Hicham, June 2015, Brussels.) 5 J. Pouchelon, Les Gnawa du Maroc: intercesseurs de la différence? Étude ethnomusicologique, ethnopoétique et ethnochoréologique, Paris 2015, p. 142.

9 The Jagiellonian University Young Musicologists Quarterly, No. 30 (3/2016)

though the contents of the performance differ from one lila to another.6 These happenings relate to the connection with spiritual world; in the case of Gnawa, it shapes cooperation with saints and supernatural beings called the mluk. During the ritual, a m’allem (the music master) plays specific melodies on the guembri, which are becoming musical codes for the beings who respond by taking possession of the initiates. An anthropologist Zineb Majdouli attended one lila and described the role of the guembri as follows: “The most coveted place is the one that is exactly in front of the guembri. The instrument calls the tune by attracting the mluk in the dance area and leading the trance.”7 The guembri plays the most important role in the whole process and participants take a great care of the instrument. It could take the form of bringing offerings to it, purifying it, sprinkling it with milk and orange blossom water and so forth.8

2.2. The sersera

Thesersera is named after the sound it makes, “srsrsr”. 9 It is also called the rîsha, which means “feather”, in relation to its shape. Each guembri has its own sersera because the hole on the top of the neck is not always of the same diameter. Moreover, the sersera is often made by the same person who made the guembri (the m’allem himself or somebody else). The metal in use can be iron or aluminium10 and it does not have a decorative purpose (see Example 2). The number of holes and rings

6 More details on the exact course and other information in: M. Sum, Music of the Gnawa of Morocco: Evolving Spaces and Times, Vancouver 2012, pp. 42–63, 71–84, 101–111, 193–272. 7 Translation: B. Comblez, La place la plus convoitée est celle qui se trouve exactement en face du guembri. L’instrument est le maître du jeu, c’est lui qui attire les mlouks dans l’aire de la danse et c’est lui qui conduit la transe. [Z. Majdouli, Trajectoires des musiciens Gnawa: Approche ethnographique des cérémonies domestiques et des festivals de musique du monde, Paris 2007, p. 46]. 8 M. Sum, Music of the Gnawa of Morocco: Evolving Spaces and Times, Vancouver 2012, pp. 51, 126–7, 219. 9 As the qraqab and the tbel. 10 Information has been taken from an enquiry, answered by Omar’s cousin. February 2015, Rabat.

10 M. Hanáková, I. Dobbelaere, H. Sechehaye, The sersera of the guembri…

is not important according to all the Gnawa we interviewed.11 They choose their number depending on the sound they want.12 To get to know the origin and the history of this device, we refer to the work of an ethnomusicologist Eric Charry. In his article Plucked lutes in West Africa: an Historical Overview, he explains the similarities between plucked lutes in West Africa,13 which are distinct from those of North Af- rica. The guembri of the Gnawa would be a geographical exception. Indeed, from the organological perspective the Gnawa lute is similar to plucked lutes of West Africa. The so-called category “plucked Example 2. Sersera © mim, Photo S. Egan lutes in West Africa” includes instruments carrying many different names and varying in a few aspects, but sharing morphological characteristics. Among them, Charry mentions: “Most lutes have a removable buzzing and jingling device made of a flexible metal plaque with small metal rings attached to it, which is inserted into a slit in the far end of the neck. This kind of device is consistent with a widespread African practice rooted in an aesthetic that values a buzzing or jingling sound which frames the particular sound of the instrument.”14 Ac- cording to history of the Gnawa people and the resemblance to West African lutes, it seems quite plausible that the guembri was made in

11 Although Viviana Pâques mentions that the number of rings should be sixty- four which corresponds of the number of pieces in which a body can virtually be broken up during a trance process and then be gathered by the sound of the guembri and the sersera. (V. Pâques, La Religion des esclaves: recherches sur la confrérie marocaine des Gnawa, Bergamo 1991, p. 284). 12 Rida, September 2015, Brussels. 13 E. Charry, Plucked Lutes in West Africa: an Historical Overview, “The Galpin Society Journal” 1996, Vol. 49, pp. 3–37. 14 Ibid.

11 The Jagiellonian University Young Musicologists Quarterly, No. 30 (3/2016)

Morocco by the Gnawa after they arrived there. Beside the fact that the removable metal piece can be found in West African lutes15 (and also in djembes16), the sersera in Morocco has been mentioned in the subject literature for a very long time. The Danish consul Georg Høst, who went to Essaouira in 1760, and later became a close friend of the Moroccan emperor, writes:17

[…] Gnawa guitar, which is used only by the Blacks. It is played with the fingers. At the upper extremity a thin metal plate with rings inserted which gives off a strong noise.18

Some old illustrations, for instance the Two Studies of a Moorish Musician drawn by Eugène Delacroix in 1832 show the sersera as well. Therefore, it is more than likely that the sersera has been used since the arrival of Gnawa in Morocco. What is not known is how often it was used.19 Even concerning contemporary use, nobody mentions the fact that the rattle has fallen almost entirely out of use. Similarly, if the existence of the sersera is mentioned in the literature, the spatial and temporal context is missing.

15 For pictures and mention of the metal idiophones on West African lutes, see: E. Charry, Mande Music, Chicago 2000. This device is also found on other instruments such as djembes or fiddles: see R.M. Stone, Music in West Africa, New York and Oxford 2005; B. Surugue, Contribution à l’étude de la musique sacrée Zarma Songhay (République du Niger), Niamey 1972. 16 E. Charry, Mande Music, Chicago 2000 and R.M. Stone, Music in West Africa, New York and Oxford 2005. 17 G. Høst, Nachrichten von Marokos und Fes, im Lande selbst gesammlet, in den Jahren 1760 bis 1768, Kopenhagen 1781. 18 “Getara genaua (getara genawa), die gleichfalls allein von den Negern gebraucht wird… sie wird nur mit den Fingern berührt, das oberste ist eine dünne eiserne Platte mit Ringen besetzet, die ein starkes Geräusch geben” (In Collaer and Elsner, 1983, p. 168-170). The quote is translated from German by Eric Charry in E. Charry, Plucked Lutes in West Africa: an Historical Overview, op. cit., p. 22. 19 We suppose that it was not an obligation to play with sersera even though it was used more often than it is nowadays. According to the British musicologist Henry George Farmer “in the more primitive types the upper extremity of the neck is quite plain, save perhaps for the addition of a metal ferrule” which means that there were ancient guembri without the hole (H.G. Farmer, A North African Folk Instrument, “Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland” 1928, Vol. 1, p. 28).

12 M. Hanáková, I. Dobbelaere, H. Sechehaye, The sersera of the guembri…

Apart from the chronological aspect, there is the question of its function. Concerning this point, we found some specific descriptions, including practical and symbolic ones. Jean During20 says: “the rattles of the Gnawa lute (guembri) which tremble when the spirits are there” refer to the spiritual function of the guembri; the same idea recurs in the work of Viviana Pâques21 and of Antonio Baldassare, who states that the sersera corresponds to the head of the guembri and that its sound attracts the spirits. Additionally, Baldassare emphasises the Gnawa’s search for contrast in timbre, between “warm” and “cold” sounds corresponding to the non-metallic and the metallic materials (the tbel versus the qraqab and the guembri’s strings versus the sersera).22 Moreover, Pierre-Alain Claisse in Les Gnawa marocains de tradition loyaliste23 points out:

When he approaches the sacred repertoire, mluk, the music master extracts from the soul of the hajuj an iron plate with rings called the “tongue” [lisān], sarsala, of the spirit sleeping inside the soundbox. Sitting on the top of the instrument, this resonator with the high-pitched rattles allows connection with the bass of the guitar. Moreover, the hajuj [another name for the guembri] vibrations can be heard from very far, even in the presence of dozens of pairs of qraqab.

Two ideas can be extracted from this excerpt: first, the anthropo- morphic perception of the lute (the sersera viewed as a tongue, and the idea of soul) and the practical use of the sersera which helps the

20 Author’s translation: “[…] les sonnailles du luth gnawa (guembri) qui frémissent lorsque les esprits sont là” (J. During, Hand Made. Pour une anthropologie du geste musical, “Cahiers d’ethnomusicologie” 2001, Vol. 14, p. 63). 21 V. Pâques, La Religion des esclaves, op. cit., p. 219. 22 A. Baldassare, Musique et danse des Gnawa. La lila/derdeba comme hypertexte, in Chlyeh Abdelhafid (dir.), Casablanca 1999, pp. 90–92. 23 Author’s translation: “Lorsqu’il aborde le répertoire sacré, mluk, le maître de musique extrait de l’âme du hajuj une plaque de fer bordée d’anneaux appelée la “langue”, sarsala, du génie endormi au creux de la caisse de résonance. Surmontant alors le manche de l’instrument, ce résonateur permet de faire connexion tonale des basses de la guitare avec les aiguës des crotales. De surcroît, les vibrations du hajuj s’entendent au loin, même en présence de dizaines de paires de crotales” (P. Claisse, Les Gnawa marocains de tradition loyaliste, Paris 2003, p. 99).

13 The Jagiellonian University Young Musicologists Quarterly, No. 30 (3/2016)

guembri to be heard among the qraqab.24 Finally, Pouchelon, for his part, explains that the guembri gathers the three living kingdoms: animal (camel skin, goat guts), vegetal (the wood) and mineral (the metal of the rattle). From this point of view, the sersera is important because it completes the systematic categorisation of the guembri as a coherent assembly of the living manifestations of the elements. Pouchelon suggests a sub-Saharan origin for that animist conception.25

3. Fieldwork

3.1. Materials and methods

This study is based on the information and sounds collected during the fieldwork that took place in Marrakech, Rabat and Brussels. One of the authors, Martina Hanáková, carried out a month-long fieldwork in Morocco in February 2015. She had the opportunity to interview four players of the guembri, however, most of the information comes from interviews with one of them called Omar. He replied to some questions in consultation with his cousin, who manufactures musical instruments, including the guembri. In parallel, in Brussels four m’allems (Karim, Hicham, Rida, Rachid26) were interviewed. All of them grew up in Morocco and arrived later in Europe (Belgium; and France – Rachid). These men are recognized by the Gnawa community in Belgium as m’allems and all the Gnawa musical activities in Brussels are organized around them. They are also recognized in Morocco as m’allems and so, they play in Belgium and in Morocco. Karim and Rida are descendants of two very famous m’allems. In Belgium, due to an audience more interested in concerts than in the lila, they are more active on the secular scene than on the ritual scene. They play for lila ceremonies, concerts, parades, neighbourhood festivities or Moroccan weddings. At Moroccan events, they are asked to play other styles of Moroccan

24 Unfortunately, the author does not quote the source of the information. Therefore, we do not know if he collected it from interviews with musicians, if he read it somewhere or if these are his own hypotheses. 25 J. Pouchelon, Les Gnawa du Maroc, op. cit., pp. 162–163. 26 See Appendix 1 for information concerning the place, date and circumstances of the interviews.

14 M. Hanáková, I. Dobbelaere, H. Sechehaye, The sersera of the guembri… music, which results in widening of the repertoire of the group to Moroccan music.27 Beside the m’allems, we spoke with a dozen Gnawa in the “Arts & Folklore Gnawa” Café, the headquarters of a non-profit organisation founded by Mohamed-Saïd Aksari and the m’allem Rida in order to give their activities (lessons, presentation in schools, shows for elderly) a formal context. In addition, one of the researchers attended some rituals in Brussels in 2014.28

3.2. Observations: Musicians’ words

Among the interviewed m’allems, Rachid and Karim claimed they never use the sersera. In Morocco, Omar’s guembri did not even have the hole for it. However, after his encounter with Martina, who mainly focused on this part of the guembri, Omar decided to make one. Hicham and Rida said they sometimes put it on. In this section, we offer a list of reasons and the circumstances mentioned by the musicians for the use and non- use of the rattle. To make it clearer for the reader, we do not mention who said yes or no; but we illustrate the text with a table summarizing the ideas according to the speakers. “M” is for Morocco and “B” for Brussels (see the names and circumstances of interviews in Appendix 1). Reasons to use the sersera:

m1 b1 b2 b3 b4 b5 To give rhythm X X X X X To add noise X X To create contrast in the timbre X X X X To increase the volume of the guembri X X X To create special atmosphere X To call the spirits X X X To create contrast in the materials used X X Because “I like [it]” X

27 H. Sechehaye, S. Weisser, Les Musiciens gnawa à Bruxelles: une reconfiguration culturelle, "Brussels Studies" 2015, Vol. 90, [online] http://www.brusselsstudies. be/medias/publications/BruS90FR.pdf [accessed: 23.09.2015]. 28 Lila in June 2014, and Lila in January 2015.

15 The Jagiellonian University Young Musicologists Quarterly, No. 30 (3/2016)

Reasons not to use the sersera:

m1 b1 b2 b3 b4 b5 Because of the amplification X X X X X Not to attract the spirits X To have a clear sound X X Because of the evolution of the style, X X X more sophisticated than before Because it is replaced by the qraqab X X and it is not heard Because of the evolution of performance circumstances (before, inside and intimate X X X X contexts; now, outside and bigger contexts) Because it is old-fashioned X

3.3. Reasons to use the sersera

The sersera is used to increase the sound of the guembri and to add rhythm and noise to the music. This added metallic sound provides contrast in timbre. Indeed, Hicham claimed that: “It is a high sound and the bass can go out.” Thus, the sersera contrasts with the guembri. In the same way, Rachid mentioned the complementarity in the sounds as well as in the materials: the contrast between “warm” and “cold”.

Guembri is warm. Wood is warm. Guts and skin are warm, too. The qraqab and the sersera are cold. The metal is cold. Warm needs cold and cold needs warm. They are complementary.

Another reason mentioned by the musicians Karim and Hicham is the tradition. Both interviewees said that the sersera was always used in the past and that it came from West Africa. Hicham also mentioned the fact that the device is still used in Africa, not only on lutes but also on djembes “to create an atmosphere.” Discussing further this particular atmosphere, it transpired that it is created by the presence of spirits. Rachid also explained that the sersera is used to call and attract the spirits. This is the reason why the m’allem who still uses the sersera puts it on for special occasions

16 M. Hanáková, I. Dobbelaere, H. Sechehaye, The sersera of the guembri… such as lilas and not on stage or for the public. Illustrating this, Hicham said:

We are between us, we play and we sing the deepest of the Gnawa. So I play with the sersera.

One m’allem only referred to the pleasure derived from playing with it.

3.4. Reasons not to use the sersera

The main reason claimed by all the interviewed Gnawa is the amplification. Because of the technologies and the lute amplification, the sersera is now useless. Its primary use was to increase the volume. Moreover, the musicians said that when the lute is amplified the sersera cannot be heard anymore. It seems that some Gnawa tried to amplify the sersera too, but the result was unsatisfactory. In addition, the m’allems said that there are more qraqab players than before because they play outside (in the streets, concerts and festivals) more often, and the musicians are so numerous that the sersera is not heard any more. Apart from this change, there is also the idea of the changes of performance circumstances, to which we can add the evolution of playing techniques. According to Rachid, in the past music was simple but now it has become complex. The sersera is said to be incompatible with this complexity because it would make too much noise and produce too many sounds at the same time. This m’allem also told us that he personally does not like the sound of the guembri when the sersera is added, because:

In fact, when you stroke the strings, it makes schinschin, not a note. I like to listen to the strings. There is the contact with the instrument itself, the skin, the strings, the box. You can’t improvise with the sersera, it will give a false note all the time.

The last reason uncovered was avoiding calling the spirits because the circumstances are not good to attract them. Rachid said that he wants to play music and does not want to deal with magic or the sacred part of the Gnawa.

17 The Jagiellonian University Young Musicologists Quarterly, No. 30 (3/2016)

3.5. “Slave´s chains”

We already discussed the complementarity of the timbre of the materials with the cold and warm contrast. In the continuity of the material in use, the iron gives rise to some consideration: Rida and Hicham said that the metal symbolizes the chains with which slaves, Gnawa’s ancestors, were tied. In the same way, the sound it makes would recall the noise of slaves walking. They also used to be blacksmiths. How- ever Rachid did not agree with this hypothesis. According to his own research, the chains did not exist at the time and slaves were tied with ropes. Furthermore, he claimed that slaves did not have the energy to play music and think about entertainment. All of the m’allems interviewed agreed that with or without the sersera, the meaning does not change. And most of the time, the hole where the sersera is inserted exists even if the idiophone is rarely used. Martina told Hicham that she saw only one Gnawa playing with the sersera in the street in Morocco. The rest of the musicians played without it and did not even have a hole for it; he stated that: “It is less traditional [playing without sersera]. But it is not a problem.”

4. Discussions

4.1. Acoustics

The sersera is not heard with an amplified lute but only during acoustic solo, during which the sersera’s high frequencies contrast with the guembri’s low ones. One of the main reasons given to use the sersera was to bring out the guembri’s warm sound in contrast with the cold sound of the sersera. Following this idea, the sersera appears to be a complementary element in the guembri’s timbre. Also, the spectral components strengthened by the sersera are where the ear hears the best (1000-3000 Hz). Thus, if it makes noise in the spectrum, the sersera makes the guembri cut through a bunch of singers or qraqrab players and singers and it mostly increases the loudness of the sound.

18 M. Hanáková, I. Dobbelaere, H. Sechehaye, The sersera of the guembri…

4.2. Sacred and secular music

In the musicians’ representations, the sersera is linked with the spirits and the intimacy of Gnawa music. In this respect, the preponderance of the secular contexts of playing compared to the sacred contexts explains the abandonment of the sersera. Frequently, the decrease of showing the spiritual dimension in Gnawa music is linked to new performance contexts such as concert stages and street performances. Gnawa play for a broadening audience and they adapt their instruments for acoustical reasons: the guembri has to be heard and so they amplify it. Beside the fact that the microphones can affect the musician’s mentality by putting him in the situation of presentation,29 this new technology is not so compatible with the sersera. Its musical features are replaced by the qraqab (metallic sound, rhythmic dimension), whereas the sacred aspect is not necessary anymore. In fact, this secular habit has spread in the sacred performances. Although some musicians claimed to apply the sersera in lilas, we did not see this practice in the ritual contexts in Brussels.30 The explanation given to us concerning this obvious contradiction is again the quality of the sound due to the amplification. Similarly, in Morocco, we noticed the same and it is confirmed by Tom Beardslee, an ethnomusicologist who spent one year there and never saw Gnawa putting on the sersera except once.31 Therefore this obsolescence concerns all Gnawa and not only those on exile. However, in the migration context, the question of tradition and legitimacy of new practices is more complex and necessitates other considerations than in Morocco.

4.3. The exile issue

In relation to the sacred/secular issue, the diasporic context deserves some consideration. We collected the information from the first gen- eration of immigrant musicians in Belgium. They still have a lot of contacts in Morocco. Music seems to be the way they chose to settle

29 M. Métalsi, Les musiques traditionnelles et la scène: l’exemple des Gnaoua, in: Chlyeh A. (ed.), L’Univers des Gnaoua, Casablanca 1999, p. 114. 30 The first one in June 2014 was amplify and the second one in January 2015, was not. 31 Interview with Tom Beardsley, on the 23th of June, Brussels.

19 The Jagiellonian University Young Musicologists Quarterly, No. 30 (3/2016)

in the new country and keep the link with their original culture. The issue they are confronted with is their image and identity. They de- fine themselves as “traditional” Gnawa but they also admit changes have taken place; for example, not using of the sersera, employing instruments from other forms of traditional Moroccan music styles and involving women within the musical groups.32 This process of combining, adapting and borrowing is inherent to Gnawa culture as a consequence of their diasporic identity and their history of slavery, as explained by Cynthia Becker:33

As a diaspora population with a history of slavery, the performance of music and trance in exchange for financial compensation allowed them to survive economically, since liberated slaves typically had low economic status, no land to farm, and lacked a network of family support. […]

In this way, they adapt easily to new technologies, and new circumstances of playing. Paying close attention to the expectation of the public, the idea of “tradition” and “authenticity” is something closely linked to the “here and now”. Due to the interviews, we noticed the importance of interaction between “us” and “them”: Hicham seems to put the sersera more often since we have been interested in it or at least, we can say that our contacts have led to a reflexion on the object itself. The anecdote of Omar making the hole in his guembri illustrates also the constant process of adaptation intrinsic to the aesthetics of Gnawa.

4.4. Symbolism

Them’allems we interviewed associated the sersera with different connotations: it is an old African object which contrasts with the new technology. “Old” and “African” signify a link with their origins and the roots of Gnawa music which is an important issue for them. From this observation, we can deduce that the sersera is not compatible with the amplification (“old”) but it remains an important part of the

32 H. Sechehaye, S. Weisser, Les Musiciens gnawa, op. cit., [online] http://www. brusselsstudies.be/medias/publications/BruS90FR.pdf [accessed: 23.09.2015]. 33 C. Becker, Hunter, Sufis, Soldiers, and Minstrels. The Diaspora Aesthetics of the Moroccan Gnawa, “Anthropology and Aesthetics” 2011, No. 59–60, p. 129.

20 M. Hanáková, I. Dobbelaere, H. Sechehaye, The sersera of the guembri… guembri (“traditional”, “African”, “normal”). In fact, they still own the sersera even though they do not use it. As for the origins, the m’allems discuss the idea of the chains. We can observe two perspectives: according to one the metal is a remainder of the slaves’ chains; according to the other one, there is no connection. Both points of view have the same purpose: to legitimate the “Gnawa”. The only interviewee who said the sersera is not linked with the metal, based his information on the research he made. He is the only m’allem who has no Gnawa origins and who learned to play the guembri from different m’allems. He considers himself a Gnawa but not a traditional one: he chooses which music he wants to play and how, and he claims he knows better than others what is true or not concerning the Gnawa origins. With his knowledge in opposition to the oral tradition, he tries to find legitimacy among the m’allems.

5. Conclusions

The main concern about the sersera seems to be related to the perception of the meaning of the tradition. The musicians are divided in various positions. Obviously, the rattle is no longer useful in performance since the adoption of amplification made it no longer audible. Also the sersera is linked with the spiritual part of Gnawa music but the predominance of secular contexts of playing makes the metallic addition unnecessary. In spite of that, the device remains important. The Gnawa provided the sersera with symbolism which fits in the Gnawa mythology (the iron linked to slavery). They also justified the use or lack of use of the device. It has strong ties with tradition, which means that the musicians keep even without regular practical use. The perception of “tradition” is influenced by the expectations of the Western public. Thus, what is Gnawa and the notion of authenticity are continuously evolving in Morocco as well as in diasporic contexts, such as Brussels. Furthermore, it would be interesting to see in the future if the sersera will become totally obsolete (and if the hole at the neck’s top will remain there or not), or whether it will be reintroduced and in which way. Exploring the role of amplification could also give a better general understanding of the changes occurring in Gnawa musical practice.

21 The Jagiellonian University Young Musicologists Quarterly, No. 30 (3/2016)

Abstract

In Gnawa music, the three-stringed lute called guembri plays a central role. According to Sum (2012, p. 52), “the guembri attracts the mluk (supernatural entities summoned in gnawa ceremonies) by sounding their musical identities, effectively sounding their names (...), (as well as) calling on the adept (...). Upon arrival of the spirit, the guembri, as the adept, becomes possessed.” The guembri is equipped with a detachable idiophone consisting of metal loops or rings fixed around the edges of a metal sheet, inserted into the neck. This device, called the sersera, is mostly audible during solo moments. It has been often noticed, or briefly described (Baldassarre 1999), but never analyzed in detail. However, it seems important for us to include the sersera in the analysis of the status, meaning and roles of the guembri timbre. Taking it into consideration will provide a new approach leading to better understanding of many facets of the instrument, including its cultural value. The sersera was used before and it is still made and carried by musicians, but nowadays it is barely employed either in Morocco or in Belgium. Through confrontation of the acoustical analysis and the information found in literature with the musicians’ experience, this paper tries to find the reasons of this obsolescence.

Keywords

sersera, guembri, Gnawa, Brussels, Morocco, amplification

Abstrakt

Sersera guembri. Antropologiczne podejście do instrumentu w kon- tekście diaspory Gnawa w Brukseli i Maroku

W muzyce Gnawa główną rolę odgrywa trzystrunowa lutnia zwana guembri. Według Sum (2012, s. 52) „guembri przyciąga mluki [byty nadprzyrodzone przywoływane w trakcie rytuałów Gnawa] przez wybrzmiewanie ich muzycznych tożsamości, skuteczne oddawanie ich imion za pomocą dźwięków (…) [jak również] wzywanie adepta.

22 M. Hanáková, I. Dobbelaere, H. Sechehaye, The sersera of the guembri…

Wraz z przybyciem ducha guembri jako adept zostaje opętane”. In- strument ten jest wyposażony w zdejmowany idiofon składający się z metalowych kółek (pierścieni) nawiniętych na brzegi wprowadzo- nej do szyjki metalowej płytki. Ten element – sersera – najwyraźniej można usłyszeć w partiach solowych. Często znajduje się wzmianki na jego temat, został on również zwięźle opisany (Baldassarre 1999), lecz nigdy nie zbadano go szczegółowo. Tymczasem dla autorów niniejszego tekstu istotne wydaje się uwzględnienie sersery w analizie jej statusu, znaczenia oraz roli tembru guembri. Rozważenie tego elementu sprawi, że możliwe będzie spojrzenie na problem w nowy sposób, który pozwoli na lepsze zrozumienie wielu kwestii dotyczą- cych instrumentu, włączając w to jego walor kulturowy. Sersera była w użyciu już wcześniej i nadal jest wytwarzana oraz wykorzystywana przez muzyków, lecz obecnie jej zastosowanie zarówno w Maroku, jak i w Belgii jest znikome. W niniejszym artykule dokonana zostanie próba odkrycia przyczyny tego spadku popularności poprzez kon- frontację analizy audytywnej i informacji znalezionych w literaturze z doświadczeniem muzyków.

Słowa kluczowe sersera, guembri, Gnawa, Bruksela, Maroko, amplifikacja

Bibliography

Baldassarre A., Musique et danse des Gnawa. La lila/derdeba comme hypertexte, in: Chlyeh Abdelhafid (ed.), L’Univers des Gnaoua, Ca- sablanca 1999. Becker C., Hunter, Sufis, Soldiers, and Minstrels. The Diaspora Aesthetics of the Moroccan Gnawa, “RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics” 2011, No. 59–60. Charry E., Plucked Lutes in West Africa: an Historical Overview, “The Galpin Society Journal” 1996, Vol. 49. Charry E., Mande Music, Chicago 2000. Claisse P., Les Gnawa marocains de tradition loyaliste, Paris 2003. During J., Hand Made. Pour une anthropologie du geste musical, “Ca- hiers d’ethnomusicologie” 2001, Vol. 14.

23 The Jagiellonian University Young Musicologists Quarterly, No. 30 (3/2016)

El Hamel Ch., Constructing a Diasporic Identity: Tracing the Origins of the Gnawa Spiritual Group in Morocco, “The Journal of African History” 2008, Vol. 49, No. 2. Farmer H. G., A North African Folk Instrument, “Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland” 1928, Vol. 1. Hornbostel E., Sachs C., Classification of Musical Instruments, Trans. Anthony Baines and Klaus P. Wachsmann, “The Galpin Society Jour- nal” 1961, Vol. 14 (Translation of: Systematik der Musikinstrumente: Ein Versuch, “Zeitschrift für Ethnologie” 1914, Vol. 46, pp. 553–590). Isaksson B., Transcription in written Arabic, Uppsala University, [online] http://www.lingfil.uu.se/digitalAssets/168/168451_3transcription- -of-arabicen.pdf [accessed: 04.05.2015]. Kapchan D., Traveling spirit masters. Moroccan Gnawa trance and music in the global marketplace, Middletown 2007. Lapassade G., Les Gnaoua d’Essaouia: Les rites de possession des anciens esclaves noirs au Maghreb, hier et aujourd’hui, “L’homme et la soci- été”, 1976, Vol. 39–40 “Tiers-Monde économie politique et culture”. Lesage J.-M., “Gnawa”, Encyclopédie berbère, Vol. 21 “Gland – Hadjarien”, Aix-en-Provence, Edisud 1999. Majdouli Z., Trajectoires des musiciens Gnawa: Approche ethnographique des cérémonies domestiques et des festivals de musique du monde, Paris 2007. Métalsi M., Les musiques traditionnelles et la scène: l’exemple des Gnaoua, in: Chlyeh A. (ed.), L’Univers des Gnaoua, Casablanca 1999. Pâques V., La Religion des esclaves: recherches sur la confrérie marocaine des Gnawa, Bergamo 1991. Pouchelon J., Entre deux mondes: Redéfinitions contemporaines du statut de Gnawi, “Cahiers d’ethnomusicologie” 2012, No. 25. Ramnarine Tina K., Musical Performance in the Diaspora: Introduction, “Ethnomusicology Forum” 2007, Vol. 16, No. 1. Sechehaye H., Weisser S., Les Musiciens gnawa à Bruxelles: une reconfiguration culturelle, "Brussels Studies" 2015, Vol. 90, [online] http://www.brusselsstudies.be/medias/publications/BruS90FR.pdf [accessed: 23.09.2015]. Stone Ruth M., Music in West Africa, New York and Oxford 2005. Sum M., Music of the Gnawa of Morocco: Evolving Spaces and Times, PhD in Music, University of British Columbia, 2012.

24 M. Hanáková, I. Dobbelaere, H. Sechehaye, The sersera of the guembri…

Surugue B., Contribution à l’étude de la musique sacrée Zarma Songhay (République du Niger), Niamey 1972. Turino T., Are We Global Yet? Globalist Discourse, Cultural Formations and the study of Zimbabwean Popular Music, “British Journal of Ethnomusicology” 2003, Vol. 12, No. 2. Turino T., Peircean Phenomenology and Musical Experience, Karpa 5.1-5.2, 2012, n. pag, [online] http://www.calstatela.edu/misc/karpa/ Karpa5.1/Site%20Folder/turino1.html [accessed: 18.03.2016]. Weisser S., Quanten M., Rethinking Musical Instruments Classification. Towards a Modular Approach to the Hornbostel-Sachs System, “Year- book for Traditional Music” 2011, Vol. 43. Weisser S., Demolin D., Analyser les timbres grésillants. L’importance d’une approche pluridisciplinaire, to be released. Wilson O., The Significance of the Relationship between Afro-American Music and West African Music, “The Black Perspective in Music” 1974, Vol. 2, No. 1. Wilson O., The Heterogeneous Sound Ideal in African-American Music, in: Gena Dagel Caponi (éd.), Signifyin(g), Sanctifyin’, and Slam Dunking, Massachusetts 1999.

Acknowledgments

Hicham, Karim, Rachid, Omar, Rida, Mohammed-Saïd, Ahmed, Aziz, Hamza, Stéphanie Weisser, Tom Beardslee, Saskia Willaert, Wim Bos- mans, Jiří Horák

Appendix 1

Omar [M1]

Omar studied sociology and Islamic studies at the University of Mo- hammed 5, Rabat, Morocco. Currently he makes his living by playing on events, such as weddings or different celebrations. He would never use the guembri for busking, it means he would never put a hat or bowl for money in front of him while playing. Martina met him on 4th February 2015, in the Kasbah des Oudayas in Rabat.

25 The Jagiellonian University Young Musicologists Quarterly, No. 30 (3/2016)

Karim [B1]

Karim has been living in Belgium for seven years. He was born in Fès and his father was well-known Gnawa master, so Karim has been in contact with Gnawa since his childhood. His father was his teacher, firstly of theqraqab , then the tbel and finally the guembri. We arranged an appointment on the 23rd of June 2015 in the Museum of Musical Instruments of Brussels.

Hicham [B2]

Hicham was born in Fès, Morocco and arrived in Brussels in 2007. He is one of the three m’allems in Brussels. The appointment was made for the 17th of June 2015 at the rehearsal room. Hicham played the guembri made by himself. We recorded each string for later acoustic analysis. We met Hicham a second time, the 15th of September, to record the strings again with and without the sersera. Both times, the recordings were made in context and not in an anechoic chamber or in a laboratory.

Rachid [B3]

Rachid was born in Fès. He has no Gnawa origins. He moved to France at the age of 13. He said he fell into the music of his roots by chance. In 1990, he went to Morocco where he attended a Gnawa concert. On this occasion, a m’allem of the troop gave him the guembri. He is different from other Gnawa we encountered because he did not want to play towards spirits or songs associated with Allah. It also means he never plays on lilas. We met him in the Gnawa bar the 22th of July 2015.

Rida [B4]

Rida arrived in Brussels in 1998. He is the son of a famous m’allem from Tanger, Abdelwahid Stitou Barrady. In Belgium, he plays concerts, he is responsible for lessons (Gnawa rhythms, dances, songs) which are

26 M. Hanáková, I. Dobbelaere, H. Sechehaye, The sersera of the guembri… now mainly given by Karim. We met him in the headquarters of the NPO “Arts & Folklore Gnawa”, which is also a bar (see below), the 14th of September 2015.

Mohammed Said [B5]

Mohamed-Saïd Aksari is a non-Gnawa Moroccan who founded in 2000 with m’allem Rida the NPO “Arts & Folklore Gnawa” in which he participates as an administrator and the president of the organization. Despite the fact he is not a Gnawa, he plays the qraqrab and took lessons with Rida within the association when he has time. We met him the 14th of September 2015 in the Café.

Neda Kolić

University of Arts in Belgrade

The Sound of Yellow: Kandinsky’s yellow colour in von Hartmann’s and Schnittke’s music

Colour is a power which directly influences the soul. Colour is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammers, and the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand which plays, touching one key or another, to cause vibrations in the soul. (Wassily Kandinsky)1

A tendency towards integration, connection, amalgamation and per- meation of different arts was very strongly expressed in the artistic circles at the beginning of the 20th century. That tendency, also known as “syncretism in art”, was, in fact, about stretching the borders of single media (art disciplines) to pervade its different discourses and endeavour to create the multimedia contents by this. The group Der Blaue Reiter was formed having similar ideas in programme. The founder of the group and its “revolutionary leader”, Wassily Kandinsky (Васи́лий Васильевич́ Кандинский,́ 1866–1944), gave a paradigmatic example for the total artwork “composing” his own “stage compositions” – The

1 W. Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art, (English translation by M.T.H. Sa- dler / Original: Über das Geistige in der Kunst, 1911), United States 1914, p. 27.

29 The Jagiellonian University Young Musicologists Quarterly, No. 30 (3/2016)

Yellow Sound2 and others. In this special “colour drama” Kandinsky integrated sounds (music), colours / light (painting), motions (dance) and words (literature) to express his “inner need”. According to the painter’s words, each of the elements has an equal role, each presents a sole meaning of a microworld in a metaphysical macroworld. So, realizing their mutual relations is very important for understanding the entire “composition” and let us reveal Kandinsky’s symbolism of colours in its “inner essence”. Namely, colour is essential entity of all his paintings, and thus constitutes a world by itself, filled with metaphysical, psychological and (especially important for this paper) musical meaning. This musical meaning of colours, as well as colouristic meaning of music, is going to be presented through musicological recognis- ing / listening of Kandinsky’s Yellow Sound in comparison with the respective musical compositions written by Thomas von Hartmann (Фома ́ Александрович́ Гартман,́ 1886–1956 / Der Gelbe Klang, 1909)1 and Alfred Schnittke (Альфред́ Гарриевич́ Шнитке,́ 1934–1998 / Der Gelbe Klang, 1974). Kandinsky was inspired by instrumental music, which he considered as “transcendental idealistic” media (to say it in a Kant-like way) that can be emancipated from the reality of the world, far away from mere description, illustration, explanation or identification. Understanding instrumental music as media that enables immediate release of feelings, wishes, and fantasies without representing them, painter strived to perform the same quality in painting. In his oeuvre Kandinsky aspired to equalize music and painting (primarily) at the level of theirs basic features – sound and colour. He tried to give the colour the very same quality, freedom, metaphysical characteristic that sound has; for him colour equalled sound. From the perspective of sensory perception, making such parallels is justified if we bear in mind that colours, just like sounds or tones, can change their intensity (strength) and shades (grades / “modulations”), and they can be put together in either har- monic or disharmonic combinations. If we examine the perceptual

1 This specific artwork – Der gelbe Klang (German original) – Kandinsky materialized in the textual form and published in 1912 in: W. Kandinsky, F. Marc (eds.), The Blaue Reiter Almanac, New Documentary Edition, Edited and with an Intro- duction by K. Lankheit, London 1974, pp. 210–225. He also wrote: The Green So- und, Black and White, and Violet (between 1909 and 1914). Find more in: S.A. Ste- in, Kandinsky and Abstract Stage Composition: Practice and Theory, 1909–12, “Art Journal” 1983, Vol. 43, No. 1, Are We Ready to Memorialize Kandinsky? , p. 61.

30 Neda Kolić, The Sound of Yellow: Kandinsky’s yellow colour…

possibilities of connecting sound with colour, or vice versa, we cannot ignore one of the aspects of synesthesia where certain sounds evoke colours or images, what is usually called “coloured listening”, but there is also the opposite possibility.2 Although in literature it is under discussion if Kandinsky had “symptoms” of synaesthesia, his writings certainly testify to his inclination toward linking colour and sound in a synesthetic way, as well as colour and taste, smell, shape, character, and motion, what he theoretically rationalized in the book Concerning the Spiritual in Art (see Appendix Table), and practically presented through The Yellow Sound.3 The fact that Wassily Kandinsky embodied the aesthetic and the psychophysical notions of synesthesia in his work and writing is a result of an another fact, i.e. he was strongly influenced by the theosophical ideology. It is worth to mention that “Pythagoras first explored the notion of synesthesia around 500BC . His intuition of the analogy between vibrations in tone and vibrations in light led him to imagine the Music of the Spheres as the sounds created by the perfect movement of heavenly bodies as they proceed along

2 Thomas von Hartmann had written original music in cooperation with Kandinsky. Gunther Schuller completed, reconstructed and orchestrated it for its first premiere in New York, 1981. The author of this study did not have a chance to see the original von Hartmann’s sketches, but having respect for the first creator, the author decided to reference only to von Hartmann’s name every time when this composition is mentioned. On behalf of the sketches, John Mangan notes: “Among the most intriguing items in the de Hartmann papers are those related to Der gelbe Klang. This Gesamtkunstwerk with its yellow giants, sets of continuously changing shape, seemingly incongruous text and choreography, and lighting cues beyond what early twentieth century technology could effectively realize, was of great importance to the early avant-garde movements of both music and art. A perplexed Stanislavsky, then at the helm of the Moscow Art Theater, declined de Hartmann’s persistent requests to stage the work. Other attempts to have the opera performed by the Künstlertheatre in Munich in 1914 were interrupted by the outbreak of World War I. Whether or not von Hartmann ever completed a score for the opera is unknown; all that remains from the original music are the handful of sketch pages in this collection. When Der gelbe Klang was given its American premiere as a part of a Guggenheim Museum retrospective on Kandinsky in 1982, Gunther Schuller used these sketches as well as other music in the de Hartmann papers to reconstruct, or construct for the first time, a full orchestral score.” Cf. J. Mangan, Thomas de Hartmann: A Composer’s Life, “Quarterly Journal of the Music Library Association”, Vol. 53, No. 1 (September 1996), pp. 18–29. Reprinted: Fall 2004 Issue, Vol. VIII (1). 3 Cf. K. Orlandatou, Synesthesia and Art, Master’s Thesis, Academy of Music and Theater of Hamburg, 2009.

31 The Jagiellonian University Young Musicologists Quarterly, No. 30 (3/2016)

their inevitable course. These analogies between perceptual modes caused Pythagoras to imagine that true spiritual transcendence comes through the re-uniting of the senses.”4 Thus, we should think about the traces of the Pythagorean tradition that is strongly connected to transcendental media inside Kandinsky’s oeuvre. In relation to those facts we can understand more clearly the painter’s reference to music as “transcendental medium”, as well as his deliberate use of musical metaphor and analogy. It is known that “Kandinsky was a member of a spiritual movement that crystallized the notions of Pythagoras into a more formalized belief system called Theosophy. As a theosophist, Kandinsky believed that certain combinations of color and light could bring on spiritually transcendent experiences.”5 Thus, The Yellow Sound should be understand as a result of painter’s theosophical preoccupa- tions. And, for that reason, it becomes clear why painter insisted on “movement” and “vibration” in The Yellow Sound. Vibration equals movement. It is the essence of everything, it is omnipresent, it is the beginning and the source of everything. It is in colour as well as in sound. That essence Kandinsky tried to reach in The Yellow Sound.6 Adding several elements – speaking (words) and motion, to “painting composition”, i.e. sound / colour, Kandinsky formulated more complex concept – “stage composition”.7 Kandinsky imagined his “stage composition” as media expressing his “inner need” and that is an expression of artist’s “soul vibrations”, metaphysical and immaterial world. He wanted to communicate his emotional vibrations with a spectator activating all the senses and making one special “total-synesthesia”. He achieved this applying free, symbolic, external / technical methods and the basic elements of music, literature, dance, and painting:

4 Certainly, numerous scientists, painters and musicians before Kandinsky had been occupied with necessity to link certain colours with tones (or instruments), but his influence in this case reflects in realization of universal piece of art. More on this in studies listed in Bibliography. 5 S.S. Snibbe, G. Levin, Interactive Dynamic Abstraction, “Proceedings of Non/ photorealistic Animation and Rendering” (NPAR 2000), France 2000 [online] http:// www.flong.com/storage/pdf/articles/dynamicNPAR.pdf [accessed: 01.04.2016]. 6 Ibid. 7 In this moment it is suitably to mention that Alfred Schnittke, after having converted to Christianity, was also deeply smitten with mystic beliefs which influenced his music. It is one more reason why his musical composition is used in a comparative analysis with Kandinsky’s “stage composition”.

32 Neda Kolić, The Sound of Yellow: Kandinsky’s yellow colour…

1. The musical sound and its movement; 2. The physical-psychical sound and its movement expressed through people and objects; 3. The coloured tone and its movement (a special possibility for the stage).8 That is achieved in The Yellow Sound: 1) by von Hartmann’s / Schnittke’s music, 2) by characters – Five Giants, Vague Creatures, Tenor (backstage), A Child, A Man, People in Flowing Robes, People in Tights and Chorus (backstage); and 3) by using colourful reflectors. Juxtaposition, interpolation, superposition and differentiation of those elements are possible to follow in Prelude and Six Images – as formal parts of The Yellow Sound (Kandinsky’s, von Hartmann’s and Schnittke’s). Although in the literature it is possible to find an opinion of their purpose as not storytelling or reproducing an existing event (which would be the external representation), but to convey the essence of “yellow sound” which is hidden behind matter and form, the questions are arising: is it not conveying this essence of “inner meaning” actually artist’s special way of addressing a viewer? If “yellow sound” is a symbol, then is it possible to reach the signified reading visible signifiers (Saussure-like said)? And what it would be? Did von Hartmann or Schnittke understand “yellow sound”, and “hear” it in the same way as Kandinsky? The syntagm “Yellow sound” refers to a quality of colour and corresponding sound. As mentioned previously, according to Kandinsky, the colour itself, perceived synesthetically, links together such quali- ties like sound, gestural, verbal, emotional and others. Consequently, colour effects the spectator psycho-physically, stimulating a positive or negative reaction: “come closer” or “stray from”. In other words, the colour has moving potential – toward / from spectator, or within itself.

8 W. Kandinsky, On Stage Composition, in: W. Kandinsky, F. Marc (eds.), The Blaue Reiter Almanac, op. cit., p. 195. According to explication in this study, it is a kind of critique on drama, opera, and ballet of 19th century where “action” had been embedded in representation of occurrences and actions from outer world. However, painter mentioned Wagner (Richard Wagner, 1813–1883) as important reformer who attempted to connect the inner, abstract, spiritual element with the external representation through his concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk, materialized in his “musical dramas”. Yet, for the painter this Wagner’s reformation was only a possibility with many failings, one of which was visual, but important element – stage decoration. Cf. Ibid., pp. 195–197.

33 The Jagiellonian University Young Musicologists Quarterly, No. 30 (3/2016)

It depends on which of its four basic shades the colour appears – as warm, cold, light, or dark.9 On his circle shaped diagram (see Exam- ple 1) – what is a symbol of infinity and eternity – Kandinsky placed basic and complementary colours: yellow, red, blue, orange, green, and violet. On the left side of the circle he added white, and, opposite, black colour; by the symbols he presented “the colours of life between birth and death” (birth was symbolised by white and death by black colour).10 The same diagram behind shows the antithesis of black and white (light / dark, life / death) and illustrates other divergent combinations. The most important for man “learning” colours (in a symbolic way) is the antithesis warm-cold defined by the relation of yellow-blue colours. Contrast or complementary “sounding” of yellow and blue colour is a base of all Kandinsky’s poetics and is also fundamental for The Yellow Sound where the permanent contrast or the complementary sound of blue should not be neglected. It becomes obvious at the very beginning, in Prelude, which can be divided into four units such as specific: “introduction” – established exclusively on musical movement; the first part – with colouristic movement over music; the second part – with speech, verbal movement, as a dominant; and the third part, corresponding the second, whose start is interpolated into the very end of the third part. So this is the form: Introduction + A B A1. Such segmentation can be traced in the musical compositions by von Hartmann and Schnittke, which are orchestrated and instrumented upon Kandinsky’s symbolism of colours. – Introduction: the very first sentence in Kandinsky’s stage composition – “a few indistinct chords from orchestra”; in von Hartmann’s score it lasts from measure 1–6 (see Example 2), “coloured” by several dissonant chords, long-note values and piano-pianissimo dynamics, played by a full orchestra, with a dense structure, making chromatically saturated verticals almost as a sound of a cluster; in Schnittke’s score it lasts from mm. 1–3 (see Example 3), where composer firstly exposed a cluster chord C♯–G♭(C♯–D–E♭–F–G♭) in piano section, then he disassembles it in cello section in three different groups of chords to

9 Ibid., p. 201. 10 In this paper shall not be examined the role of a form, possible combination of form and colour, influence of one element to another changing qualitative features of other, or its mutual influence on viewer. About all this in more details see: W. Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual…, op. cit., pp. 28–46.

34 Neda Kolić, The Sound of Yellow: Kandinsky’s yellow colour… sound again in piano section as a cluster F♯–B♭(F♯–G–A♭–A–B♭). Using these instruments, Schnittke acquainted us immediately with the atmosphere in the following unit: – Kandinsky’s “A” part was conceived as – “(…) on the stage it is dark-blue dawn, which is at first whitish and later becomes intense dark blue. After a while, at centre stage, a small light, becomes visible and becomes brighter as the colour deepens. After a while orchestra music; Pause.”; Namely, writing about the quality of yellow colour, Kandin- sky does it mostly by relating it with blue and trying to underline its diametric contrasts. He puts it in opposition not only by antithesis of warm and cold, but also by material and non-material quality. While reading yellow colour as earth’s colour (man colour, mortal), which cannot have deeper meaning; on its opposition he puts blue colour as heaven (intended to symbolic, spiritual beings), a true carrier of deeper, metaphysical meaning; as its shade becomes stronger, the meaning is deeper. Yellow colour, as warmer, is closer to a spectator. It emphasizes same meaning, it is aggressive, like it “attacks” by its bright shade, while cold blue moves from a viewer – it brings a feeling of relaxation from yellow, “supernatural peace”.11 Kandinsky recognized the sound of yellow colour in screechy trumpets, fanfares made by brass instruments. On the other hand, he “heard” blue colour, or even different shades of blue, in different instruments – flute sounds light blue, cello is dark blue, contrabass is more dark blue, while organ sounds the most dark blue. However, Kandinsky emphasized especially that sound of colours, which was described as his own subjective “audiovisual” perception of sound / colour. Making such analogy is relative, possible to differentiate from man to man, so it should not be understood as the one universal model. But, it seems that in regard to orchestration, von Hartmann and Schnittke understood instrumental colouring of Yellow Sounds as such: in von Hartmann’s composition “A” part lasts from mm. 7–27, and he presented the blue depth by deep register of clarinet, bass clarinet, bassoon, contra-bassoon, horn, viola, cello, and contrabass; continuing sequence with dissonant verticals of tones lasting for a long time in legato articulation and piano dynamic. When the light becomes visible, texture becomes transparent, and yellow is approached in sound he achieves by colours of piccolo flutes and flutes which successively string intervals of major second with accompaniment of the first and second

11 Ibid., p. 43.

35 The Jagiellonian University Young Musicologists Quarterly, No. 30 (3/2016)

violins; “crescendo of colour” is equal to instrumental crescendo, and texture becomes more dense after joining flutes and violins with Eng- lish horn, clarinet, violas, cellos, and contrabasses producing “squeaky” yellow in fortissimo dynamics. During that time, blue colour (former instrumentation) calms it down. In Schnittke’s score this part lasts from mm. 4 to score sign No. 5. The light appears in violins, with one enduring tone – B, in crescendo from pp to ff. In piano accompaniment the chord G♯–A–B can be heard. The structure of such tones is very important for presenting tone’s nucleus or “inner essence” of the entire composition; also, it illustrates the extent to which Schnittke “set to music” Kandinsky’s Yellow Sound. Namely, in Second image Kandin- sky “asked” to hear these tones (respectively, enharmonic equivalent for G♯/A♭–A–B) in music, as an accompaniment for “yellow flower birth”! Yellow shades are intensified firstly in soprano’s vibrato in the range of minor second (Schnittke also colours all the voices in choir according to their vocal ranges, and that is confirmed in the next part of Prelude), then intensifying of yellow is achieved by improvised tremolo of clarinet, trombone, accompanied by vibraphone, cembalo and piano in crescendo from pp to ff, and minor second is a dominant interval. Accordingly, in Schnittke’s composition this dissonant interval and instrumentation, mentioned above (violin, soprano, clarinet, trombone) becomes a symbol of squeaky bright yellow colour which “clashes” with “blue sound”. Should we understand a dominant vibrato effect as a symbolic representation of the vibrations that are crux of colour, and from which colour is made? It is worth thinking about. The following is Kandinsky’s “B” part where choir sounds out of scene pronouncing text: firstly – Deep voices: “Dreams hard as stones (…)”, then – High voices: “Tears and laughter (…)”, and at the end – All voices: “Dark light on the… sunniest… day / (vanishing quickly and suddenly) / Dazzling bright shadow in the darkest night!”, (with a specific order that can be associated with colour shadowing of voices from the deepest to highest?); this “B” part in von Hartmann’s score lasts from mm. 28 till the end of Prelude and in Schnittke’s from score number 5–13. This shift of deep and high voices also represents “clash” between blue and yellow. The last part “A1” in Kandinsky’s work we recognize in interpolated sentence “vanishing fast and suddenly” from “B” section and in the final sentences: “The light vanishes. It suddenly becomes dark. (…)”;

36 Neda Kolić, The Sound of Yellow: Kandinsky’s yellow colour… in von Hartmann’s notes this part is completely linked with the end of “B” part, while in Schnittke’s orchestration extends from score number 12 to the end of Prelude, and is characteristic for improvised (aleatoric, graphically notated) “vanishing” of yellow sound above deep “organ blue”. It is clear that Kandinsky “coloured” the Prelude, primarily, with blue-yellow shades, and established the contrast atmosphere which dominates throughout the entire piece, that should be confirmed through further analysis. After all, is it possible to understand Yellow Sound as a symbolic manifestation of artist’s theoretically explained “spiritual pyramid”,12 about striving to some higher idea, about “clash” between inner and outer, spiritual and material, invisible and visible, metaphysical and real, heavenly and ground, God and man? Maybe we don’t know if it is Kandinsky’s “inner need”, but we do know his “inner Klang” sounds like this.

Abstract

The pioneer of abstraction, Wassily Kandinsky (Василий́ Васильевич́ Кандинский,́ 1866–1944), used musical terms as titles for his paintings with intention to release them from the themes, considering that music is “the art which has devoted itself not to the reproduction of natural phenomena, but rather to the expression of the artist’s soul, in musical sound”. Through his paintings Kandinsky rethought the principles of music. Not a painting, but an another artistic creation, through which we are given a chance to cognize Kandinsky’s comprehension of music, is The Yellow Sound (Der gelbe Klang, 1912), a “composition” for stage. It is the paradigm of Kandinsky’s “true stage-composition”, his totally new view of theatre that consists of three elements – musical movement, pictorial movement, and physical movement, but interwoven together in harmony that will trigger inner harmony in a spectator. Music for his scenario was provided by the composer Thomas von Hartmann (Фома ́ Александрович́ Гартман,́ 1886–1956), and another musical version was written by Alfred Schnittke (Альфред́ Гарриевич́ Шнитке,́ 1934–1998 / Der gelbe Klang, 1974). In Concerning the Spiritual in Art Kandinsky presented his theory of colour through which he explained his own (synesthetic) view of yellow colour / sound, particularly

12 Ibid., p. 38.

37 The Jagiellonian University Young Musicologists Quarterly, No. 30 (3/2016)

in comparison with blue colour, that was “musicalized” through The Yellow Sound. What kind of yellow and blue tone Kandinsky had in mind, and what nuances of these colours did von Hartmann / Schnittke see / hear? What musical instrument(s) can produce yellow, i.e. blue colour? Which music scale / tone / interval has yellow / blue tone(s)? Are we able to perceive all the shades of yellow / blue sound?

Keywords

Wassily Kandinsky, Thomas von Hartmann, Alfred Schnittke, The Yel- low Sound, Der gelbe Klang, sound and colour, synesthesia

Abstrakt

Brzmienie żółtego koloru Kandinsky’ego w muzyce von Hartman- na i Schnittkego

Pionier abstrakcji, Wassily Kandinsky (Василий́ Васильевич́ Кандин́ - ский, 1866–1944), wykorzystywał terminy muzyczne jako tytuły swoich obrazów, by wyzwolić je z więzów utartych motywów, zwracając tym samym uwagę na to, że muzyka jest „sztuką, która poświęciła się nie odtwarzaniu zjawisk natury, lecz wyrażaniu duszy artysty przez dźwięk”. Za pośrednictwem swoich obrazów Kandinsky na nowo interpretował podstawy muzyki. Jednak to nie dzięki dziełu malarskiemu, a innemu efektowi kreacji artystycznej mamy szansę poznania sposobu, w jaki Kandinsky postrzegał muzykę. Mowa o „kompozycji” do sztuki Żółty dźwięk (Der gelbe Klang, 1912). Stanowi ona paradygmat „prawdziwej kompozycji scenicznej” Kandinsky’ego; jego własne, nowe spojrzenie na teatr, które składa się z trzech elementów: przepływu muzyki, przemieszczania się ilustracji oraz ruchu cielesnego, harmonijnie się przeplatających, co z kolei wyzwala uczucie wewnętrznej harmonii u widza. Muzykę do scenariusza abstrakcjonisty skomponował Thomas von Hartmann (Фома ́ Александрович́ Гартман,́ 1886–1956); jej inną wersję stworzył także Alfred Schnittke (Альфред́ Гарриевич́ Шнитке,́ 1934–1998). W dziele O duchowości w sztuce (1911) Kandinsky przed- stawił swoją teorię koloru, która wyjaśnia jego własne (synestezyjne)

38 Neda Kolić, The Sound of Yellow: Kandinsky’s yellow colour… postrzeganie żółtej barwy / dźwięku, zestawiając ją zwłaszcza z kolorem niebieskim, zmienionym w brzmienie w Żółtym dźwięku. Jakiego rodzaju żółte i niebieskie tony Kandinsky miał na myśli i jakie odcienie tych barw widzieli / słyszeli von Hartmann i Schnittke? Który instrument (bądź instrumenty) może wydać z siebie żółty lub niebieski dźwięk? Jaka muzyczna skala / nuta / interwał mają żółte / niebieskie zabarwie- nie? Czy jesteśmy w stanie odebrać wszystkie odcienie tych kolorów?

Słowa kluczowe

Wassily Kandinsky, Thomas von Hartmann, Alfred Schnittke, Żółty dźwięk, dźwięk i kolor, synestezja

Bibliography

Adaskina N., Les idées de Kandinsky en Russie, in: Romachkova L.I., Kandinsky et la Russie, Paris 2000, pp. 33–48. Arnason H.H., Istorija moderne umetnosti: slikarstvo, skulptura, arhitek- tura, fotografija (History of modern Art/prevod sa engleskog Janičić V., priredio Šeter K.), Beograd 2008, pp. 124; 134–135. Clemons L., Staging New Dimensions: Wassily Kandinsky, Der Blaue Reiter Almanac and the Reconfiguration of Artistic Space, “Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism” 1994, pp. 135–143. Florman L., Concerning the Spiritual and The Concrete in Kandinsky’s Art, Stanford California 2014. Friedel H., Hoberg A., The Blue Rider in the Lenbachhaus, Munich 2013. Hartmann T. von, On Anarchy in Music, in: Kandinsky W., Marc F. (eds.), The Blaue Reiter Almanac, New Documentary Edition, Edited and with an Introduction by K. Lankheit, London 1974; (Original: W. Kandinsky, F. Marc (eds.), Der Blaue Reiter, München 1965), pp. 113–118. Kandinsky W., Concerning The Spiritual in Art, (English translation by M.T.H. Sadler / Original: Über das Geistige in der Kunst, 1911), United States 1914. Kandinsky W., On Stage Composition, in: Kandinsky W., Marc F. (eds.), The Blaue Reiter Almanac, New Documentary Edition, Edited and

39 The Jagiellonian University Young Musicologists Quarterly, No. 30 (3/2016)

with an Introduction by K. Lankheit, London 1974; (Original: Kandin- sky W., Marc F. (eds.), Der Blaue Reiter, München 1965), pp. 190–206. Kandinsky W., The Yellow Sound: A Stage Composition, in: Kandinsky W., Marc F. (eds.), The Blaue Reiter Almanac, New Documentary Edition, Edited and with an Introduction by K. Lankheit, London 1974; (Original: Wassily K., Franz M. (eds.), Der Blaue Reiter, Mün- chen 1965), pp. 207–225. Mangan J., Thomas de Hartmann: A Composer’s Life, "Quarterly Journal of the Music Library Association", Vol. 53, No. 1 (September 1996), pp. 18–29. Reprinted: Fall 2004 Issue, Vol. VIII (1). Marcadé J.C., Kandinsky – un artiste russe en Allemagne et en France, in: Romachkova L.I., Kandinsky et la Russie, Paris 2000, pp. 9–18. Orlandatou K., Synesthesia and Art, Master’s Thesis, Academy of Music and Theater of Hamburg, 2009. Popović Mlađenović T., Procesi panstilističkog muzičkog mišljenja, Beograd 2009. Romachkova L.I., Kandinsky et la Russie, Paris 2000. Selz P., The Aesthetic Theories of Kandinsky and Their Relationship to The Origin of Non-objective Painting, in: Spencer H. (ed.), Readings in Art History, Vol. 2, Pearson 1982, pp. 421–440. Трифуновић Л., Сликарски правци XX века, Јединство – Приштина 1982.

Internet:

Collopy F., Playing (with) color, "Glimpse" 2009, Vol. 2, No. 3, [online] http://rhythmiclight.com/articles/Playing(With)Color.pdf [accessed: 01.04.2016]. Collopy F., Color, Form, and Motion: Dimensions of a Musical Art of Light, "Leonardo" 2000, Vol. 33, No. 5, [online] http://rhythmiclight. com/articles/ColorFormMotion.pdf [accessed: 01.04.2016]. Gilbert J., The Influence of Music on Painting and Animation, [online] http://ncca.bournemouth.ac.uk/gallery/files/innovations/2007/ Gilbert_Jennifer_392/Innovations_JenniferGilbert.pdf [accessed: 01.04.2016]. Kennedy S.L., Painting music: rhythm and movement in art, 20th An- nual Sheldon Statewide Exhibition, Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery, University of Nebraska–Lincoln 2006–2007, [online] http://www.

40 Neda Kolić, The Sound of Yellow: Kandinsky’s yellow colour…

sheldonartmuseum.org/photos/graphics/statewide06catalogue.pdf [accessed: 01.04.2016]. McDonnell M., Visual Music, Researched and Presented by Maura McDonnell for Music and Image Course 2003, Trinity College, Du- blin, Ireland, [online] http://www.soundingvisual.com/visualmusic/ visualmusic2003_2004.pdf [accessed: 01.04.2016]. McDonnell M., Visual Music, in: Visual Music Marathon Program Catalog, Boston 2007, [online] http://www.soundingvisual.com/ visualmusic/VisualMusicEssay.pdf [accessed: 01.04.2016]. Snibbe, Scott Sona and Levin, Golan, “Interactive Dynamic Abstraction”, Proceedings of Non/photorealistic Animation and Rendering (NPAR 2000), France, 2000, [online] http://www.flong.com/storage/pdf/ articles/dynamicNPAR.pdf [accessed: 01.04.2016]. Stein S.A., Kandinsky and Abstract Stage Composition: Practice and Theory,1909-12, "Art Journal" 1983, Vol. 43, No. 1, Are We Ready to Memorialize Kandinsky?, pp. 61–66, [online] http://www.jstor.org/ stable/776634 [accessed: 01.04.2016].

Scores:

Hartmann T. von, Der Gelbe Klang / The Yellow Sound, orch. Gunther Schuller, for small chorus and chamber orchestra, 1909, [online] https://issuu.com/scoresondemand/docs/der_gelbe_klang_28796 [accessed: 01.04.2016]. Schnittke A., Der Gelbe Klang, Balletsuite nach Wassili Kandinsky, für Instrumentalensemble, Sopran solo und gem. Chor, Musikverlag Hans Sikorski, Hamburg, [online] http://www.sikorski.de/559/ en/0/a/0/ballett/1009108_der_gelbe_klang_szenische_komposi- tion_fuer.html [accessed: 01.04.2016]. The Jagiellonian University Young Musicologists Quarterly, No. 30 (3/2016)

Appendix

Example 1. Kandinsky’s circle of colours (created by the author of this text according to Kandinsky’s explanation in the Concerning The Spiritual in Art). Neda Kolić, The Sound of Yellow: Kandinsky’s yellow colour…

Table 1. Kandinsky’s characterization of colours (made by the author of this text according to Kandinsky’s explanation in the Concerning The Spiritual in Art). The Jagiellonian University Young Musicologists Quarterly, No. 30 (3/2016)

Example 2. Thomas von Hartmann, Der Gelbe Klang. Prelude, mm. 1–7. The whole score is available at: [online] https://issuu.com/scoresondemand/ docs/der_gelbe_klang_28796 [accessed: 01.04.2016]. Neda Kolić, The Sound of Yellow: Kandinsky’s yellow colour…

Example 3. Alfred Schnittke, Der Gelbe Klang. Prelude, mm. 1–8. The whole score is available at: [online] http://www.sikorski.de/559/en/0/a/0/ ballett/1009108_der_gelbe_klang_szenische_komposition_fuer.html [accessed: 01.04.2016].

Marija Simonović

University of Arts in Belgrade

The phenomenon of reciprocal mirroring of Bachelard’s study L’eau et les rêves: essai sur l’imagination de la matière, Debussy’s Des pas sur la neige and Thaulow’s La Rivière Simoa en hiver

Mysterious, unfathomable, and endless images of water have for centuries intrigued many artists, philosophers and scientists. Seduced by its metamorphoses and kaleidoscopic water scenes, they frequently have been attracted to this ‘onirist’ water phenomenon, where they seem to have found the most beautiful works of art. This paper will discuss the works which, although originating from different artistic media, display a corresponding interpretation of the water element. Specifically, bearing in mind the snow as one of the three aggregate states of water, and following the examples of Bachelard’s study – L’e a u et les rêves: essai sur l’imagination de la matière, Debussy’s Des pas sur la neige and Thaulow’s (one of many) landscape evoking winter in Norway – La Rivière Simoa en hiver, this paper aims to consider the mutual relationship of their intellection, comprehension, and interpretation of water, and onirist experiences encouraged by specific images of its element.

47 The Jagiellonian University Young Musicologists Quarterly, No. 30 (3/2016)

Gaston Bachelard: Deep – asleep – dead waters

In his study L’eau et les rêves: essai sur l’imagination de la matière, Gaston Bachelard deals extensively with the complexity of the water element, water psyche, or type of intimacy suggested by the depth of water; he also examines the moral of water. Bachelard devoted to the water phenomenon this thorough and detailed study. Firstly, this paper focuses on Bachelard’s interpretation of the water element, so as to see in what way and to what extent the water phenomenon allows the process of relating diverse subjects. Secondly, this paper studies works of Debussy and Thaulow in order to show the phenomenon of networking of music, philosophical work and fine art (painting). Bachelard begins his story about the water phenomenon by ex- plaining two concepts: formal imagination and material imagination. Imagination which is prompted by the forms or shapes, that is, the external appearance of objects is formal imagination. Imagination which finds inspiration in the depths, exceeding the variable surfaces and penetrating the very substance is material imagination. Surface reflections of water inspire formal imagination; however, the author states that surface reflections of water are variable, ephemeral, or decep- tive, and that they offer abundant, but simple metaphors.1 Therefore, Bachelard believes that when formal imagination breathes life into these surface ‘performances’ of water, works of simple, ‘low’ art are created.2 Yet, Bachelard points out that if we penetrate behind surface ‘images’, we will discover the world of deep, dark, heavy waters, which is a space where the material imagination acts because it penetrates the substance, the essence – it will breathe life into those deep ‘images’ of water that hide ‘the entire world of meaning in themselves’ and will achieve more stable art. What is characteristic of deep ‘images’ of water is that sometimes we cannot distinguish the shadows from the substance, that is, we cannot indicate what is reflected in the water from what has its natural habitat there. One of the quotes Bachelard used to illustrate this phenomenon comes from Eugeni d’Ors (1881–1954) – “The valley was characterized

1 See: Г. Башлар, Вода и снови. Оглед о имагинацији материје (G. Bachelard, Water and Dreams. An Essay on the Imagination of Matter), Sremski Karlovci- -Novi Sad 1998, p. 29. 2 Ibid.

48 Marija Simonović, The phenomenon of reciprocal mirroring… by great depth, but the water was so diaphanous that the bottom, which seemed to be composed of innumerable rounded alabaster pebbles, in some brief moments clearly showed itself, that is, always when the eye could resist not to see deep down in the turned sky doubled flowers from the hills.”3 So, it is difficult to determine where the reality ends, and where its reflection begins, though, the author (quite justifiably) raises the question of where this reality is at all? Since these two realities are intertwined, they penetrate one another. In other words, water absorbs ‘the images/shadows of reality’, and thus leads to assimilation, the symbiosis of these ‘images’, to a complete fusion of the matter. However, Bachelard states that “water that has absorbed so many powerful reflections and shadows is heavy water (...) It is the heaviest of all the waters.”4 Still, it is not only heavy, it is dark, as it absorbs the shadows – dark ‘images’ that soak it with darkness. Bachelard emphasizes this phenomenon by choosing an example from Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) – “The shadow of the trees was falling hard on the water and as it immersed into it, soaking the depths of element with d ar k .” 5 Then, further in the text, since it is about dark, heavy ‘images’ of water, the author explores a human emotion – sadness, and writes: “sadness, it is a shadow that falls into the water”;6 but to better explain and underline his thought, the author again reaches for the poetry of Edgar Poe, and says: “As long as she was under the influence of beautiful late rays (Fairy), her appearance as if reflected the joy; – but suffering changed her expression when she crossed into shadow area (....) I saw well that, as she walked into the darkness, her shadow broke away from her and disappeared into the dark water, which became even darker.”7 Therefore, after the absorption of shadows, i.e. dark suffering or -sor row, water becomes dark, sluggish, hard, or so heavy that it slows its course to complete stillness, hibernation alike. It begins its mute life, becomes dead – frozen, because “only water can sleep and preserve its beauty; only water can die, motionless, and preserve its reflections”,8 just like a frozen ‘image’.

3 Ibid., p. 70. 4 Ibid., p. 79. 5 Ibid., p. 74. 6 Ibid., p. 76. 7 Ibid., p. 76. 8 Ibid., p. 90.

49 The Jagiellonian University Young Musicologists Quarterly, No. 30 (3/2016)

During the interpretation of deep ‘images’ of water, Bachelard also had in mind, which is somewhat noticeable from the previous passages, the thought of Heraclitus that “death is nothing but water”.9 The author believes that every living water is about to die, and to observe the water means to flow (away), to dissolve, or to die.10 However, for the author this is no ordinary death, it is a melancholic death because for Bachelard water is an object of melancholy. This is evidenced by his statement – “The sun itself also cries on the water: Some sort of fluid similar to dew, somniferous, gloomy, dripping from the golden ring (...) This fluid, in the style of alchemy, gives the water the color of universal suffering, the color of tears, which converts the colors of all these lakes, all these wetlands, in the water-mother of human pain, in the matter of melancholy.”11 From the above description, it is not difficult to notice that the ‘images’ of deep, dark or sleepy waters are the images that represent the feelings of anxiety, pain, suffering, sadness, fatigue and other negative sensations.

Interpretation of deep, dark waters of Gaston Bachelard in works Des pas sur la neige by Claude Debussy and La Rivière Simoa en hiver by Frits Thaulow

The idea to view Debussy’s prelude Des pas sur la neige through the prism of the poetics of water arose as a result of my interest in the music of Claude Debussy. After an insight into his work I have noticed that a large number of compositions by their titles,12 musical language, specific facture,13 and verbal indications,14 undoubtedly relate to characteristics of the water element. Also, I noticed that Debussy in his oeuvre displayed all possible transformations of the water phenom-

9 Ibid., p. 77. 10 Ibid., p. 66. 11 Ibid., p. 87. 12 La Mer, Brouillards, Des pas sur la neige, Nuages, Sirènes, Reflets dans l’eau, Jardins sous la pluie, Poissons d’or. 13 Fast (often rhythmically indefinite) passages, chord decomposition, pedal tones etc. 14 For example: scintillant (sparkling), doux (soft) Animé et tumultueux (live and turbulent), Profondément calme, dans une brume doucement sonore (deep and calm in the quiet fog) and so on.

50 Marija Simonović, The phenomenon of reciprocal mirroring… enon, from large orchestral work La Mer (The Sea, 1903–1905) to piano miniatures, such as preludes Brouillards (Mists, Book II, 1912–1913) and Des pas sur la neige, as they offer musical ‘images’ of all three states of the element of water. In this study the focus will be on the interpretation of the melancholic ‘image’ of water in the prelude Des pas sur la neige. Incidentally, it is worth mentioning that not every “water” piece of Debussy evokes melancholy. For example, La mer and Reflets dans l’eau (Reflections in the water, 1905) are very vibrant. However, it should also be mentioned that there are certain compositions that are melancholic despite their fast tempo, as in La neige qui dance (The snow is dancing, 1908). To match Debussy’s melancholic ‘image’ of the Des pas sur la neige, this paper refers to a work of art of similar nature – La Rivière Si- moa en hiver – by a Norwegian painter Frits Thaulow. It should be mentioned here that Thaulow’s paintings were present and much appreciated in Paris, especially after 1889, when Salon exhibited some of his snow scenes.15 What is more, Thaulow was part of the circles of eminent painters, like Monet (Oscar-Claude Monet, 1840–1926), Degas (Edgar Degas, 1834–1917), Gauguin (Eugène Henri Paul Gau- guin, 1848–1903), Lerolle (Henry Lerolle, 1848–1929),16 which shows acceptance and recognition of his works in France. Similarly, the fact that he was often offered, either as gifts or exchanges, works by Rodin (François Auguste René Rodin, 1840–1917), Camille Claudel (1864–1943), Jacques-Émile Blanche (1861–1942)17 testifies of his esteemed position in the artistic circles of Paris. In France (as well as in Britain, Germany, United States) Thaulow was known as a “painter of the running stream, of the effects of light upon the snow, of the twilight that suggests more than it reveals”.18 Debussy harbored affection for all these features, and particularly for the northern melancholy displayed in the painter’s works on snow (which Debussy had the opportunity to see at Lerolle’s

15 E.H. Moore, Fritz Thaulow, Norway’s Master of Color, "Brush and Pencil" 1903, Vol. 13, No. 1, p. 9, [online] http://www.jstor.org/stable/25505945 [accessed: 26.07.2016], p. 9. 16 J.–M. Nectoux, Portrait of the artist as Roderick Usher, in: Debussy studies, R.L. Smith (ed.), New York 1997, p. 115. 17 Ibid. 18 F.E. Grant, The Art of Fritz Thaulow, "Brush and Pencil" 1906, Vol. 18, No. 5, p. 208. [online] http://www.jstor.org/stable/25504072 [accessed: 26.07.2016].

51 The Jagiellonian University Young Musicologists Quarterly, No. 30 (3/2016)

home).19 Therefore, we assume that Thaulow’s art inspired certain Debussy’s compositions and, following this assumption, the analysis of Debussy’s Des pas sur la neige will be done along Thaulow’s La Rivière Simoa en hiver. The beginning of Debussy’s prelude is marked by verbal indications, like Triste et lent (sad and slow) and, for the rhythm of steps/footprints, Ce rythme doit avoir la valeur sonore d’un fond de paysage triste et glacé (This rhythm should sound like a sad, frozen landscape); pianissimo dynamics; low register; and tonality of D-minor (see Example 1).

Example 1. Claude Debussy, Des pas sur la neige, Triste et lent (mm. 1-3).20

Noticeably, all the dimensions of the initial musical thought allow us, at the very beginning of the piece, to recognise the correspondence between the prelude and Bachelard’s interpretation of deep, dark and sleepy waters. In other words, the slow tempo suggests hard or heavy water, the quiet dynamics stand for mute waters, second and D-minor third evokes feelings of sadness and melancholy, whereas the verbal descriptions clearly indicate the notion of frozen, motionless, or sleeping water. Therefore, the very musical language (along with written remarks) completely justifies the thought of the phenomenon of mutual ‘mirroring’ of the prelude and Bachelard’s interpretation of sleeping waters. Moreover, the atmosphere of the prelude and the still, frozen waters corresponds with the aforementioned work of Frits Thaulow.

19 J.–M. Nectoux, Portrait of the artist as Roderick Usher..., op. cit., p. 115. 20 All music examples are taken from the website: http://imslp.org/ – which represents International Music Score Library Project. Category: Claude Debussy, Préludes (Book I and Book II) – Schirmer Edition, 1972.

52 Marija Simonović, The phenomenon of reciprocal mirroring…

The painting (La Rivière Simoa en hiver, see Example 2), despite a large area of white, shows dark and gloomy atmosphere, reinforced with the shadow of the trees reflected in the water.

Example 2. Frits Thaulow, La Riviere Simoa en hiver.21

Therefore, in this painting it is possible to perceive Bachelard’s statement on Edgar Poe – The shadow of the trees was falling hard on the water and as it immersed into it, soaking the depths of element with dark. Having absorbed the shadows, or dark suffering, the image of water in Thaulow’s work is dark, heavy and sleepy directly responding to Bachelard’s dark and sleepy waters. Then, in Thaulow’s painting, the darkness of the flowing water is so strong that it overpowers the surface of the snow and frozen water, making it dark. In this way we face a phenomenon also discussed by Bachelard – touching, over- lapping, intertwining of two ‘realities’ and complete unity of matter. Interestingly, in addition to the shadows of the trees, plunging into the non-frozen water the painting also shows the footprints in the snow, in solid, frozen water. They testify of the previous movement

21 Painting is taken from the website: http://www.allpaintings.org/. Category: Im- pressionism, Frits Thaulow, Winter at Simoa river (pastel on canvas), posted: 11.12.2002.

53 The Jagiellonian University Young Musicologists Quarterly, No. 30 (3/2016)

of the protagonist, whose footprints have branded the sleepy solid, snowy water altering its surface. However, while analysing the painting in-depth, we see that the distance between the steps becomes smaller. More precisely, the footprints closer to the ‘surface’ of the painting are clearly reflected, and then the prints are becoming blurred and it seems that the distance between them is getting smaller – suggesting difficult, weaker movement and tiredness. A similar pattern of footprints can be observed in Debussy`s prelude. However, before we move onto the musical interpretation, it is necessary to point out certain characteristics of the very motif that represents footprints. Debussy created the motif of steps or footprints by building a double-layer (but only in the part of the right hand): tone D, the lowest tone in the first four bars of the prelude, is the first or lower layer, whereas the upward movement D-E and E-F is the second or upper layer that continues to tone D and is sustained. The motif of steps/footprints permeates the entire prelude (out of 36 bars of the prelude, the main motif appears in 24) and its deeper layer, that is, tone D appears as an pedal tone. Consequently, we can conclude that tone D represents the basis, frozen water and that the upward movement D-E and E-F presents the steps/footprints. Debussy represented the progression of steps (D-E, E-F) with a specific pattern – reverse syncopated rhythm, so the emphasis on the weak part of the bar creates the impression of a slow, difficult pace. Once we found out what in prelude is the ground, frozen water, and what the steps are, we can focus on the presentation of the musical ‘path’ of the steps or footprints. In the first section of the prelude (bars 1-15), the ‘path’ starts from the lowest layer of facture through the middle towards (after one-bar interruption, or more precisely, absence of the motif) the highest voice ends with a halt (i.e. four-measure absence of a motif). After the mentioned interruption, the line continues in the second section (bars 16-36) of the prelude while moving from the highest to the middle voice, and (after one-bar absence of the motif) again in the highest voice in which it ends. Therefore, as in Thaulow’s painting, the trajectory of steps/ footprints in the prelude has some interruptions, which the composer uses to imply that the protagonist falters. Also, when the composer in the second section of the prelude presents and six times repeats only the second part of the motif (E-F; b. 21-24, see Example 3), he thereby reduces the distance between the two appearances of the motifs, or, indicates a decrease in the distance between the steps.

54 Marija Simonović, The phenomenon of reciprocal mirroring…

Example 3. Claude Debussy, Des pas sur la neige, Triste et lent (mm. 19-28).

In other words, in the prelude, and in the painting La Rivière Si- moa en hiver, steps/footprints are at the beginning of the work clearly established, but as the composition develops, after shorter and longer delays, steps are getting smaller and eventually disappear or dissolve. The last occurrence of the motif in the prelude is given in octaves in the high register. Compared to the previous stream and the previous occurrence of the motif in the composition, the octave presentation of the motifs creates a sound impression that the motive dissolves and this also relates to the picture of Frits Thaulow since on his painting footprints in the snow are lost at the point where the protagonist stands in front of the body of quiet (as if sleeping), dark water and observes its flow. This very image brings to life Bachelard’s words: “to observe the water means to flow (away), dissolve, die”. Debussy’s prelude also evokes a similar image – the composition is “set at the very boundary of silence”22 and as the music progresses, the flow becomes quieter (pp – р – più piano – pp –ppp), the ebbing of the musical flow also follows the slowing of the tempo (the prelude starts Triste et lent/slow and sad, and ends with Plus lent/slower, and Très lent/very slow). At the end of

22 See: Т. Поповић Млађеновић, Клод Дебиси (1862-1918) и његово доба. Од „Змаја из Алке“ до „Заљубљеног фауна“ (T. Popović Mlađenović, Claude Debussy /1862- 1918/ and his time. From ’Les dragons d’Alca’ to ’Le faune amoureux’) Београд: Парал – Музичка омладина Србије, 2008, p. 75.

55 The Jagiellonian University Young Musicologists Quarterly, No. 30 (3/2016)

the composition (after the motif has dissolved), the composer marks morendo (dying) and in ppp dynamics sounds (held long) the tonic chord of D-minor (see Ex. 4).

Example 4. Claude Debussy, Des pas sur la neige, Triste et lent (mm. 29-36).

Hence, the prelude also fully captures the image of dark, heavy water which (as the composition develops) becomes heavier, slows its course, bringing it to complete stillness and eventually begins its mute life. The course of the prelude can be described by Poe’s verses quoted by Bachelard in his essay: “Caressing music gradually dies away in the murmur which was becoming weaker, until the entire stream eventually again returns to its original solemn silence.”23 Having discussed in detail the rhythmic motif of the preludes, it is necessary to briefly mention the characteristics of other components of the musical composition. Beginning in the second bar the rhythmic motif of steps is joined by the melody, realized in short strokes, almost fragmentary and based on the whole tone scale, and then modal diatonic. In addition to the melody, it is important to mention the diatonic and chromatic chords which together with the rhythmic motif and melody form the already mentioned three-layer texture of the work. Using these chords, or more specifically, chro-

23 G. Bachelard, Water and Dreams…, op. cit., p. 94.

56 Marija Simonović, The phenomenon of reciprocal mirroring… matic movements (created by the chords) the composer broke the purity and whiteness of a pattern of footprints and modal diatonic, thus bringing more vivid expression into the melancholic flow of the prelude. A corresponding strategy can be spotted in Thaulow’s painting, where the uniformity of dark and gloomy atmosphere of the painting is transformed by the orange cottage and blue smoke – these are the only representations of life in the painting, just as the chromatic movements are moments of intensification of a melancholic prelude. Also, it is very interesting how this triple sound image of the prelude presented by whole tone scale, modal and chromatic movements is reflected in Thaulow’s painting in which the three layers are expressed in colors: from the gentle and bright white color of snow, through the dark color of non-frozen water and trees, to the vivid colors of orange and blue on the cottage. Therefore, following the analytical and comparative approach, we have shown that three different works of art, through their representation of the water phenomenon can be stored and interpreted in the same poetic space, where they, as it turns out, very closely resonate. This interpretation of the analysed works is, of course, only one of many possible meanings they convey. In other words, when we think we have reached an end point, their contents trigger new questions, such as – whether the end of the path of steps/footprints (both in the painting and the prelude) means the end of the road. In the painting of Frits Thaulow we notice that the steps/footprints are lost at the point when the protagonist is standing in front of the vastness of dark, heavy water as if looking at a remote cottage (the only sign of life), but cannot reach it, and remains motionless, drowning in this dark, somniferous, and melancholic scenery (along with a solitary tree that has almost the same shape as the figure of the protagonist). This immobility of the protagonist seems to suggest that, as in the prelude (slowing the tempo, quieting the dynamics with morendo), the heart rate (of the protagonist) is dying away and disappearing, everything dissolves. These issues could presumably raise some new questions, as if we were in a multiple (literary-musical-visual) maze offering a new solution at each level, and yet, it is never the final one. On the contrary, it is always a key to a new door, and a new interpretation.

57 The Jagiellonian University Young Musicologists Quarterly, No. 30 (3/2016)

Abstract

This paper examines the relationship between Bachelard’s (Gaston Bachelard, 1884–1962) philosophical comprehension of the water element, Debussy’s (Claude Debussy, 1862–1918) musical interpretation of the water phenomenon and Thaulow’s (Frits Thaulow, 1847–1906) intellection of the same element in painting. More precisely, having in mind the snow as one of aggregate states of water, I will explore via examples of Bachelard’s study on water and dreams – L’eau et les rêves: essai sur l’imagination de la matière (Water and Dreams. An Essay on the Imagination of Matter, 1942), Debussy’s composition Des pas sur la neige (Footprints in the snow, Book I, 1909–1910) and Thaulow’s piece La Rivière Simoa en hiver (Winter at Simoa river – from a series of images of the Simoa river, unknown date), the reciprocal relationship of their artistic perception, as well as their interpretation of the water phenomenon. These three authors have devoted a significant “expanse” of their oeuvres to their interpretation of the phenomenon of water. In the mentioned “expanse”, their creative interpretations encounter, inter- twine, and interrelate. In other words, in this “expanse” of interpretation of the water psyche, we can detect the correspondence between Bachelard’s, Debussy’s and Thaluow’s poetics of the water vastness. Therefore, through the analytical and comparative approaches, my aim is to emphasize the correspondence among Bachelard’s (philosophical), Debussy’s (musical) and Thaulow’s (painterly) representations of the water element and to demonstrate which compositional and expressive methods Debussy employs to embody his understanding of the phenomenon in question.

Keywords music, philosophy, painting, water Marija Simonović, The phenomenon of reciprocal mirroring…

Abstrakt

Zjawisko wzajemnych odbić lustrzanych studium Bachelarda L'eau et les rêves: essai sur l'imagination de la matière, Debussy’ego Des pas sur la neige i Thaulowa Winter in Norway

W niniejszym artykule zostanie omówiony związek między filozo- ficznym pojmowaniem żywiołu wody Bachelarda (Gaston Bachelard, 1884–1962), muzyczną interpretacją wodnego fenomenu autorstwa Debussy’ego (Claude Debussy, 1862–1918) oraz sposobem, w jaki postrzega go w malarstwie Thaulow (Frits Thaulow, 1847–1906). Doprecyzowując, zanalizuję relacje pomiędzy artystyczną percepcją a interpretacjami zjawiska wody na przykładzie studium Bachelar- da dotyczącego wody i marzeń L'eau et les rêves: essai sur l'imagination de la matière (Woda i marzenia. Studium wyobrażeń o materii, 1942), kompozycji Debussy’ego Des pas sur la neige (Ślady na śniegu, Zeszyt I, 1909–1910) oraz dzieła Thaulowa La Riviere Simoa en hiver (Zima na rzece Simoa – obraz wchodzący w skład serii przedstawień rzeki Simoa, nieznany czas powstania), nie zapominając przy tym, że śnieg jest jednym ze stanów skupienia wody. Wyżej wymienieni autorzy poświęcili znaczący obszar swojej twór- czości zjawisku wody. Na wspomnianym polu ich twórcze interpretacje spotykają się, przeplatają i oddziałują na siebie wzajemnie. Innymi słowy, w przestrzeni interpretacji „ducha wody” możemy dostrzec powiązania między „poetyką bezmiaru wody” Bachelarda, Debussy’ego i Thaulowa. W związku z tym moim celem będzie zaakcentowanie pokrewieństwa w pojmowaniu żywiołu wody przez Bachelarda (ujęcie filozoficzne), Debussy’ego (muzyczne) i Thaulowa (malarskie), a także pokazanie technik kompozytorskich i środków wyrazu, których użył Debussy, by ukazać swoje pojmowanie tego zjawiska.

Słowa kluczowe muzyka, filozofia, malarstwo, woda The Jagiellonian University Young Musicologists Quarterly, No. 30 (3/2016)

Bibliography

Bruhn S., Images and Ideas in Modern French Piano Music. The Extra- -Musical Subtext in Piano Works by Ravel, Debussy, and Messiaen, Stuyvesant, NY 1997. Grant F.E., The Art of Fritz Thaulow, “Brush and Pencil” 1906, Vol. 18, No. 5, pp. 206–210, [online] http://www.jstor.org/stable/25504072 [accessed: 26.07.2016]. Howat R., The Art of French Piano Music– Debussy, Ravel Fauré, Cha- brier, New Haven – London 2009. McQueen A., Monet in Norway, “The Burlington Magazine” 1995, Vol. 137, No. 1113, pp. 865–866, [online] http://www.jstor.org/stable/886858 [accessed: 28.02.2016]. Moore E.H., Fritz Thaulow, Norway’s Master of Color, “Brush and Pencil” 1903, Vol. 13, No. 1, p. 15–25, [online] http://www.jstor.org/ stable/25505945 [accessed: 26.07.2016]. Parsons M.B., “Moonlight on Darkening Ways”: Concepts of Nature and the Artist in Edward and Lilian Steichen’s Socialism, “American Art” 1997, Vol. 11, No. 1, pp. 68–87, [online] http://www.jstor.org/ stable/3109261 [accessed: 28.02.2016]. Popović Mlađenović T., Procesi panstilističkog muzičkog mišljenja, Beograd 2009. Поповић Млађеновић Т., Клод Дебиси (1862-1918) и његово доба. Од „Змаја из Алке“ до „Заљубљеног фауна“, Београд: Парал – Музичка омладина Србије, 2008. Rings S., Mysteres limpides: Time and Transformation in Debussy’s Des pas sur la neige, “19th-Century Music” 2008, Vol. 32, No. 2, pp. 178– 208, [online] http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/ncm.2008.32.2.178 [accessed: 28.02.2016]. Roberts P., Images. The Piano Music of Claude Debussy, Portland, Oregon 1996. Smith R.L. (ed.), Debussy Studies, New York 1997. http://www.smith.edu/artmuseum/On-View/Past-Exhibitions/Debussy- s-Paris-Art-Music-Sounds-of-the-City/Claude-Debussy/Debussy- and-the-Visual-Arts [accessed: 24.02.2016]. https://archive.org/stream/unset00amer_62#page/n45/mode/2up [accessed: 24.02.2016]. Marlene Priller

University of Graz, University of Music and Performing Arts Graz

An examination of Clara Schumann’s musical salons and the research problems that occurred

Clara and Robert Schumann were connected very closely to the culture of musical salons, not only in Germany but also in other European countries, such as Austria, France, Denmark and Russia. Musical salons within and outside Germany considerably influenced Clara Schumann’s career not only in the beginning but also later; she even organised some salons together with her husband. The salons established by the Schumanns were particularly important institutions for young and ambitious musicians and composers. In this article, the existent and non-existent source material will be discussed and by doing so the current state of research on this subject will be elaborated. The following part tries to give an idea of the characteristics of the private circles of Clara and Robert Schumann during their years of marriage and the years after Robert Schumann’s death from 1856 to 1896. The article will be concluded by a summary of what I found out during my research and will address several questions that arose while writing it.

Existent and Non-existent Source Material

Clara Schumann’s life is documented very well, but unfortunately there is only limited literature dealing with her activities in musical salons.

61 The Jagiellonian University Young Musicologists Quarterly, No. 30 (3/2016)

Veronica Beci’s publication Musikalische Salons. Blütezeit einer Frauen- kultur (2000) deals, among other topics, with Clara Schumann’s activities in musical salons and with salons organised by Clara Schumann. However, this publication has to be handled carefully as there are no references in the text and only chosen sequences of Schumann’s life are portrayed. Veronica Beci’s lack of careful research will be discussed later. Some of her statements are wrong and some were put in a different context. Therefore, some of the sources are diaries, letters and memoires written by various authors. Since the year 2000 there has been a great number of books published on the life and work of Clara Schumann and on friends of Clara and Robert Schumann. Among these publications there are: Clara Schumann. Musik und Öffentlichkeit (2009) by Janina Klassen, Clara Schumann (2007) by Monica Steegmann and Fanny Hensel geb. Mendelssohn. Musikerin der Romantik (2007) by Peter Schleuning. The research done by these authors already deals with a lot of relevant sources for this article, for instance, the diaries of Fanny Hensel. Thus, these publications are of particular interest and value for me and this paper. It is hardly possible to extract relevant information about this subject directly from Clara and Robert Schumann’s diary entries or letters. The information we gained from the diary entries is that guests had come and music had been played, but they lack details. In some entries it is mentioned that the guests met in the evening1 and sometimes names of guests are mentioned. Moreover, they offer the information that they were visited and that they played together without inviting someone and sometimes they invited special guests for a soiree2 but they do not offer any finer details as mentioned before. Nevertheless, many entries are useful concerning several statements about soirees organised by friends and acquaintances. These statements are of particular interest, because they answer some questions of what Clara and Robert Schu- mann wanted their salons to be like and what they disapproved of. However, it remains challenging to gather information on this subject, as there is no literature focusing on these aspects.

1 See for example R. Schumann, Tagebücher, Vol. 2: 1836–1854, ed. by G. Nauhaus, Frankfurt am Main 1987, pp. 11, 135–136, 151. 2 The diary reports in December 1841 that a soiree with selected guests took place. R. Schumann, Tagebücher, op. cit., p. 197.

62 Marlene Priller, An examination of Clara Schumann’s musical salons…

Other important sources are the memoirs and diaries of other musicians or friends of Clara and Robert Schumann. One of these sources are the memoirs of the pianist Luise Adolpha Le Beau.3 These memoires tell us about Clara Schumann’s character and personality. However, we have to be careful with that portrayal of her, as it seems that Luise Adolpha Le Beau and Clara Schumann were rivals4 and for this reason biased descriptions are possible. One has to be particularly careful with this kind of subjective and one-sided statements, when it is written and published by a competitive person. Another source may be the diaries of Ferdinand Hiller. Unfortunately, I do not have any access to these but for further research these diaries may be of interest and so could be the Leipzig-diaries of William Sterndale Bennett, which are in the making. Another essential source is a biography of Clara Schumann that was published by Berthold Litzmann in three volumes.5 This biography is of crucial importance, as Clara’s personal diaries about the years following 1844 were destroyed; only the so called “marriage diaries”,6 which date up to 1844 still exist. Some diaries and letters were systematically destroyed during Clara Schumann’s lifetime and also later, after her death, by her descendants. Litzmann’s biography was published shortly after the turn to the 20th century and at this time, he still had access to some documented information and sources, which do not exist anymore. After his publication the remainder of the diaries was destroyed. Therefore, the biography contains information we are nowadays unable to access anywhere, and hence it is of significant relevance to my research.7

3 L.A. Le Beau, Lebenserinnerungen einer Komponistin, Baden-Baden 1910, Reprint: Baden-Baden 1999. 4 See C. de Vries, Die Pianistin Clara Wieck-Schumann. Interpretation im Span- nungsfeld von Tradition und Individualität, Mainz 1996, p. 360. 5 B. Litzmann, Clara Schumann. Ein Künstlerleben. Nach Tagebüchern und Briefen, 3 volumes, Leipzig 1902–1910. 6 G. Nauhaus, I. Bodsch (eds.), Robert und Clara Schumann Ehetagebücher 1840- 1844, 2. edition, Bonn 2013. 7 During my visit at the archive in Zwickau last year, I had the opportunity to talk to its employee who told me that some diaries and letters were systematically destroyed during Clara’s lifetime and after her death by her descendants.

63 The Jagiellonian University Young Musicologists Quarterly, No. 30 (3/2016)

The Musical Salons of the Schumann’s

The first circle was formed by Clara Schumann in the 1840s in Leip- zig after she had gotten married to Robert Schumann. They chose their house in Leipzig because of its social opportunities and artistic presentation. The salon had a square shape, three big windows and accommodated up to 30 people.8 It has been preserved and is still used for concerts. As mentioned before, Clara and Robert Schumann’s salons demonstrated an important institution for ambitious musicians and composers. The circles in Leipzig were not used to communicating, but rather to intensive and systematic studies of music. The focus was on the music of Robert Schumann and of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy.9 In particular during the first year after their marriage the Schumanns received visits from many high-ranking and influential musicians such as the Dutch composer Johann Verhulst; the German composer Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy; their long-time friend the pianist and teacher Ernst Ferdinand Wenzel; the British composer William Stern- dale Bennett; Walther von Goethe, who was Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s grandson; the German-Russian composer Adolph Henselt; the young American pianist Harriett Parish; the Norwegian violinist Ole Bull, and many more.10 Occasional soirees took place, but sometimes Clara was reluctant to participate.11 The very first soiree took place in October 1840. About 20 guests had come. Clara played trios by Mendelssohn and Moscheles and Elise List sang songs by Robert Schumann and Felix Mendelssohn.12 Unfortunately there are no more details mentioned in the diary. Nils Wilhelm Gade’s career was of special importance to Clara Schumann, thus she supported him especially. For instance, she introduced Gade to Mendelssohn Bartholdy. After this encounter, Men- delssohn Bartholdy organised the performance of Gade’s Symphony

8 See J. Klassen, Clara Schumann. Musik und Öffentlichkeit, Köln 2009 (Europäi- sche Komponistinnen 3), p. 181. 9 See V. Beci, Musikalische Salons. Blütezeit einer Frauenkultur, Zürich 2000, p. 68. 10 See N.B. Reich, Clara Schumann Romantik als Schicksal. Eine Biographie, Ham- burg 1991, pp. 130–131. 11 See M. Steegmann, Clara Schumann, Hamburg 2007, p. 64. 12 See R. Schumann, Tagebücher, op. cit., p. 113.

64 Marlene Priller, An examination of Clara Schumann’s musical salons…

No. 1 in C minor in a concert.13 In the 1840s it became obvious that Clara Schumann’s main ambition was to support young artists and to enhance their careers by using her social network. In 1844 the whole family moved to Dresden. According to Veronica Beci it was not possible for Clara and Robert Schumann to build a circle in Dresden.14 One reason could be that their circle of friends was not big enough, but also Robert’s visibly declining state of health and his music, which was ill-reputed as romantic and modern, display possible reasons. There were hardly any supporters in Dresden; however, this was also due to the fact that Robert made no secret of his low opinion of his so-called composing colleagues.15 Yet there is a reason to doubt that statement by Veronica Beci even though Nancy Reich provides evidence for it. During the time spent in Dresden from 1844 to 1850 Clara and Robert were regularly visited by the composers Ferdinand Hiller, Nils Wilhelm Gade, the violinist Ferdinand David and many others. In Robert Schumann’s diary there are entries in which he calls these meetings “Kränzchen”,16 which means private soirees. In addition to that, Clara and Robert Schumann indeed got visits and organised musical salons at their home. According to these sources, these meetings had a character of private and domestic musical events. In 1847, Clara Schumann stayed in Berlin, while the rest of her family resided in Dresden. In Berlin she was introduced to Fanny Hensel, who became a close friend of hers.17 This is also why Clara Schumann was invited to the regularly held “Sonntagsmusiken” of Fanny Hensel.18 On Sundays, after the opening of the summer season, Fanny Hensel used to invite some of her friends in order to make music.19 How- ever, Fanny Hensel’s “Sonntagsmusiken” were normally private, but sometimes also semi-public events in contrast to Clara Schumann’s parties. Fanny Hensel’s salon was much bigger and accommodated up

13 See V. Beci, Musikalische Salons…, op. cit., p. 68. 14 Ibid. 15 See N.B. Reich, Clara Schumann Romantik als Schicksal, op. cit., pp. 154–156. 16 See R. Schumann, Tagebücher, op. cit.; diary entries between the years 1844 and 1850. 17 Fanny Hensels diary reports on March 20th in 1847 that Clara visited Fanny nearly every day and that Fanny became fond of Clara. See F. Hensel, Tagebücher, ed. by H.-G. Klein and R. Evers, Wiesbaden 2002, p. 274. 18 See V. Beci, Musikalische Salons…, op. cit., p. 68. 19 See P. Wilhelmy-Dollinger, Die Berliner Salons, Mit historisch-literarischen Spa- ziergängen, Berlin 2000, p. 151.

65 The Jagiellonian University Young Musicologists Quarterly, No. 30 (3/2016)

to 200 guests.20 Clara was delighted by these soirees. Due to sobriety, the severe discipline and the rigid organisation, it was possible to witness masterful performances. Fanny Hensel’s soirees created the basis for Clara Schumann’s own soirees21 in the coming years. Unfor- tunately, Veronica Beci does not give a more detailed description of Fanny Hensel’s “Sonntagsmusiken”. From Peter Schleuning we learn that many celebrities such as Giuditta Pasta, Pauline Decker, Franz Liszt, the painter Peter Cornelius and the nobility visited the “Sonn- tagsmusiken”. Sometimes the “Sonntagsmusiken” took place in the morning. The repertoire consisted, among others, of pieces by Johann Nepomuk Hummel, Ferdinand David, Ludwig van Beethoven, Felix Mendelssohn – the music to Walpurgisnacht, Sommernachtstraum – Mozart’s Requiem, as well as fragments of Goethe’s Faust and Hero und Leander by Fanny Hensel22. Considering the repertoire and the prominent guests it becomes more possible that the “Sonntagsmusiken” were practised with discipline. Otherwise it would not had been possible to perform Mozart’s Requiem, for example. Masterful performances were very important for Fanny Hensel and her brother. Fanny Hensel felt torment when Giuditta Pasta’s low-pitched tones were intoned between an eighth tone and a quarter tone too low.23 The next opportunity to organise regular concerts at home was offered to Clara and Robert Schumann in 1850 in Düsseldorf. They moved there because Robert followed Ferdinand Hiller as a conduc- tor. In contrast to Paris, where several prominent musical salons had existed before, the salon of the Schumann’s in Düsseldorf was the only prominent one.24 The Schumanns had a very convivial house- hold. Often in the evening music had been played and on June 28th, 1842 the diary reports that acquaintances came and that they were much exhilarated. The local prominence, such as the poet Wolfgang Müller von Königswinter, the painters Hildebrand, Eduard Bendemann, Ernst Rietschel and Ludwig Richter, Ferdinand Hiller and Robert’s student, the violinist Wilhelm Joseph von Wasielewski were invited to the home of Clara and Robert Schumann. Clara used to call these

20 See P. Schleuning, Fanny Hensel geb. Mendelssohn. Musikerin der Romantik, Wien 2007, p. 211. 21 See V. Beci, Musikalische Salons…, op. cit., p. 68. 22 See P. Schleuning, Fanny Hensel geb. Mendelssohn…, op. cit., pp. 208–211. 23 Ibid., p. 208. 24 See V. Beci, Musikalische Salons…, op. cit., p. 63.

66 Marlene Priller, An examination of Clara Schumann’s musical salons… events “Kleine Musik”. At these events Clara performed Robert’s new compositions in front of a selected audience. By organising them, she wanted to provide soirees that were as well planned and structured as the soirees organised by Fanny Hensel, which were mentioned before. However, this did not work out the way it should have, mainly because the laymen, who were employed, were not as strict with punctuality and regular attendance.25 Nonetheless, the Schumanns employed professional performers for some of the private musical events that took place at their home. There is an anecdote about the violinist Wilhelm Wasielewski, in which he was invited to a private soiree at Schumann’s in 1852. Allegedly, Robert Schumann opened the door wearing a suit. Since the violinist Wasielewski was underdressed, he was sent home to change his clothes.26 But not only were the laymen not as strict with punctuality, also some of the prominent guests failed to attend on time. In February 1851 Clara complained that her guests including the painter Hildebrand and the poet Müller von Königswinter were too late too often.27 The soirees should be practised with discipline and respect and the musicians should be dressed appropriately; that had been very important to Clara and Robert Schumann, as they saw their soirees as a cultivation of music. They could not stand people talking and laughing instead of listening to and concentrating on the music. Supporting articles can be found in Berthold Litzmann’s biography of Clara Schumann. According to Litzmann, Clara Schumann once noted: ‘Kränzchen bei Hildebrands, Robert war sehr bös, weil so viel geschwatzt wurde. Der gute Hildebrand an der Spitze. Das ist eigen hier, zum Schwatzen haben sie immer Leben genug, zum Singen aber nicht.‘28 The parties at Schumanns were animated in 1853 by the violinist Joseph Joachim and the composers Johannes Brahms and Otto Julius Grimm. Additionally, Clara and Robert Schumann organised

25 See V. Beci, Musikalische Salons…, op. cit., pp. 68–69; see K. Höcker, Clara Schu- mann. Die große Pianistin ihrer Zeit. Die Lebensgefährtin Robert Schumanns. Die Freundin von Johannes Brahms, Berlin 1975, pp. 72, 86; see R. Schumann, Tage- bücher, op. cit., p. 229 as well. 26 See J. Klassen, Clara Schumann, op. cit., p. 185. 27 B. Litzmann, Clara Schumann. Ein Künstlerleben. Nach Tagebüchern und Briefen, Vol. 2: Ehejahre 1840-1856, Leipzig 1920, p. 234. 28 “Party at Hildebrand’s, Robert was very angry because there was so much chatter. Meaning that their host was one of the most talkative people. That is peculiar here; they always have enough life(-time) to chat, but not to sing.” Ibid., p. 235.

67 The Jagiellonian University Young Musicologists Quarterly, No. 30 (3/2016)

‘Singekränzchen’ (since September 1851) and ‘Quartettkränzchen’ (since November 1851), but these were not held for a long time. It seems that the ‘Singekränzchen’ and ‘Quartettkränzchen’ were not liked as much.29 Even though the parties of the Schumann couple were said to be very strict, academic and little entertaining, there is again doubt that they really were as strict as it is believed by Veronica Beci, due to Robert Schumann’s diary entries. On December 15th, 1843 the diary reports that there had been an amusing get-together at Schumann’s, where all the guests were dancing until late at night. They enjoyed themselves as if they were at one of the greatest balls. Among the guests were Gade, David, the Frege’s and Hiller. Clara played with Gade a Sonata for violin and piano and with Hiller the overture to Waldnymphe by William Sterndale Bennett.30 This entry gives reason to question the reported strictness of the parties by Veronica Beci. Moreover, this diary entry is not the only evidence for less strictness. On October 28th, 1853 a private soiree took place at Schumann’s in honour of Joseph Joachim. Among its guests there were Bettine von Arnim, the Hasenclevers, the Schad- ows31 and the Hammers. It is reported that all the guests and the hosts made a lot of music, that fairy tales were told and that this was not the first time they told fairy tales at one of their parties.32 Unfortunately, this report lacks details and so we do not know what was played and which fairy tales were told. Once Theodor Kirchner wrote in a letter to his friend Blanka Amsler that he spent “[…] selige Stunden […] Es wurde viel Musik gemacht. Mit Clara spielte ich vierhändig eine neue Sinfonie von [Robert] Schumann. Von mir wurden Lieder gesungen.”33 This letter gives reason to doubt the reported strictness as well.

29 See V. Beci, Musikalische Salons…, op. cit., p. 69; see R. Schumann, Tagebücher, Vol. 3: Haushaltsbücher, ed. by G. Nauhaus, Leipzig 1982, pp. 571, 576 as well. The „Singekränzchen“ was mentioned only once and the „Quartettkränzchen“ twice. 30 See R. Schumann, Tagebücher, op. cit., p. 274. 31 Richard Hasenclever (1813-1876) was a writer, an amateur composer and general practitioner of the Schumann‘s. Wilhelm von Schadow (1788-1862) was a painter and the cofounder of the Düsseldorfer Malerschule. 32 See B. Litzmann, Clara Schumann. Ein Künstlerleben. Nach Tagebüchern und Briefen, Vol. 2, op. cit., p. 284. 33 R. Hofmann, Die Beziehung zwischen Theodor Kirchner und Robert und Clara Schumann, in: “Neue Bahnen”. Robert Schumann und seine Musikalischen Zeitge- nossen, Mainz 2002, p. 157 (Schumann Forschungen 7). Theodor Kirchner spent “blissful hours [at Schumann’s]. A lot of music had been played. With Clara I played Schumann’s new sinfonia four-handed. Some of my songs had been sung.”

68 Marlene Priller, An examination of Clara Schumann’s musical salons…

In 1857, one year after Robert’s death, Clara and her children moved to Berlin. In Berlin Clara became an important participant of the musical life of the city. Her friends met regularly in her house in order to make music. The repertoire consisted mainly of the music composed by Robert Schumann, Ignaz Moscheles, Johannes Brahms and Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy. It was very important for the circles of Clara Schumann and the Mendelssohns to distribute the latest Romantic music, because the music of Robert Schumann had not become famous and Johannes Brahms had not composed his masterpieces yet. When Clara Schumann moved to Lichtenthal near Baden-Baden in 1863, she left a lot enthusiasm for the music of Brahms and Schumann behind. As a result, Berlin became a Mecca for the latest Romantic music in Germany.34 Countless people walked in and out of Clara’s home in Lichtenthal. Many grand musicians, composers, virtuosos, singers, the Florentiner Quartetett, and many more visited Clara and they often played music. Friends and acquaintances such as Fanny Lewald, the painter Anselm Feuerbach and Ludwig Bamberger (Reichstag deputy) were invited to enjoy. Johannes Brahms was the most frequent visitor, but the musicians and composers Joseph Joachim, Julius Stockhausen, Anton Rubinstein, Aloys Schmitt, Theodor Kirchner and Hermann Levi visited Clara regularly too.35 In the 1860s the singer Pauline Viardot-Garcia lived in Baden-Baden as well. However, her soirees were completely different to those by Clara Schumann. On March 24th, 1862 Clara noted in her diary that she felt uncomfortable each time she visited Pauline Viardot-Garcia and that there was much restlessness.36 This entry supports the thesis of soirees as a cultivation of music which should be practised with discipline. At the end of the 1870s Clara moved to Frankfurt am Main to become a piano teacher at the conservatory. As she did in Leipzig and Berlin, Clara wanted to continue the “Kleine Musik”– circles in Frankfurt. Hence, she continued to organise such parties with the help of Johannes Brahms, Pauline Viardot-Garcia and Joseph Joachim. The guests and visitors met

34 See Veronica Beci, Musikalische Salons…, op. cit., p. 70. 35 See J.N. Naushaus, 1863-1873 Baden-Baden, in: Schumann-Portal, [online] http:// www.schumann-portal.de/Baden-Baden_1863-1873.html [accessed: 28.07.2016]; see E. Schumann, Claras Kinder. Erinnerungen, Köln 1995, pp. 133–134 as well. 36 See B. Litzmann, Clara Schumann. Ein Künstlerleben. Nach Tagebüchern und Briefen, Vol. 3: Clara Schumann und ihre Freunde, 3. edition, Frankfurt am Main 1910, pp. 116–117.

69 The Jagiellonian University Young Musicologists Quarterly, No. 30 (3/2016)

at teatime at Myliusstraße 32. Among the guests who attended these private concerts were many of Clara Schumann’s students, because of her teaching activity. On May 26th, 1894 a recital of Clara’s students took place and some special guests, such as the composer Clementine Becker, were invited.37 What we see here is that Clara Schumann did not only support ambitious composers. As a result of inviting her piano students from the conservatory, it was possible for them to get in touch with many other musicians and composers as well as well-known people. It seems that these activities developed into studies with high educational demand. The main repertoire consisted of ‘classical’ music. Clara Schumann had a very conservative attitude regarding music. Once a student of hers dared to play a piece composed by Franz Liszt and as a consequence he was locked out of the circle. Clara Schumann wanted to distribute the classical and high romantic music and Liszt’s music was apparently not a part of it.38 Clara and Robert Schumann’s daughter Eugenie reports in her memoires that Clara tried to encourage and support her children in their musical interests. Therefore, she initi- ated musical meetings and get-togethers with other musicians. It was important for Clara to study harmony and counterpoint.39 According to that some musical get-togethers had an educational demand. Despite her hearing impairment, Clara Schumann never lost the enjoyment of music and music-making.40 Ferdinand Schumann reports that Clara often played in private circles at home when he arrived in Frankfurt am Main in 1894 to live there. On November 10th, 1894 Johannes Brahms visited Clara Schumann and played his new clarinet sonata for the very first time.41 In contrast to the salons of many other women, for example the salon of Elisabeth von Herzogenberg or Luise Reichhardt, Clara Schumann’s salons seemed to be strict and serious sometimes. One of her students, Luise Adolpha Le Beau, who was invited regularly, complained about the missing kindness and charm: “Liebenswürdigkeit besitzt sie nicht,

37 See F. Schumann, Erinnerungen an Clara Schumann, "Neue Zeitschrift für Mu- sik", Vol. 84/9, p. 72. 38 See V. Beci, Musikalische Salons…, op. cit., pp. 71, 168–169. 39 See E. Schumann, Claras Kinder…, op. cit., p. 210. 40 U. Kienzle, Robert und Clara Schumann in Frankfurt, Frankfurt am Main 2010 (Mäzene, Stifter Stadtkultur Schriften der Frankfurter Bürgerstiftung und der Ernst Max von Grundelius-Stiftung 8), p. 165. 41 See F. Schumann, Erinnerungen an Clara Schumann, op. cit., p. 70.

70 Marlene Priller, An examination of Clara Schumann’s musical salons… sagt alles so ungeduldig, selbst brutal, daß ich leider wenig Sympathie für sie behalten kann.”42 Clara Schumann did not have the expected admiration a typical salonnière would have had. Maybe this circum- stance was one of the reasons why her activities sometimes lacked amusement. Unfortunately, Veronica Beci ignored the fact that this quotation originates from a different context. The mentioned statement was said during a piano lesson and not during or at a soiree.43 Still, although the mentioned quotation has a different background, it shows one side of Clara Schumann’s character. Despite the knowledge that Clara Schumann and Luise Adolpha Le Beau had a rivalling relationship, Le Beau’s statement may offer a grain of truth. However, it must be said that amusement was only seen as a talent and was only appreciated in France rather than in Germany. Therefore, even at the home of Elisabeth von Herzogenberg and Luise Reichhardt the ambience was modest and serious. This was typical for the artistic-middle-class salons in Germany. In contrast to that, the aristocratic salons were lively and friendly. It seems that the salonnières in Germany wanted to receive the reputation of virtue by severity, precision and academic passion.44

Summary and Prospects

To sum up, after researching and writing this article, it is clear what Clara Schumann wanted her salons to be liked. Her aim was to spread the Romantic music, especially the music of Johannes Brahms, Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy and her husband Robert Schumann. Addi- tionally, her purpose was to support young and ambitions musicians and composers such as Nils Wilhelm Gade and Johannes Brahms. In order to achieve her goals, she used her social network. Clara and Robert Schumann certainly did not like too much restlessness, laughter, chatter and non-seriousness. Sometimes their soirees were arranged in a disciplined and serious manner. In their eyes, their soirees served a cultivation of music. However, as previously mentioned, contradic- tory statements exist, due to which some questions arise.

42 „She does not have a kind heart, says everything in an impatient tone, even brutal, so that I cannot feel a great affinity.” See V. Beci, Musikalische Salons…, op. cit., p. 71. 43 See L.A. Le Beau, Lebenserinnerungen einer Komponistin, p. 48. 44 See V. Beci, Musikalische Salons…, op. cit., pp. 71–72.

71 The Jagiellonian University Young Musicologists Quarterly, No. 30 (3/2016)

Were these parties really as bad, strict and little entertaining as it was said? Or are Veronica Beci’s statements only exaggerations? Clara and Robert Schumann’s diaries report of soirees where the Schumanns were guests and they often complained about chitchat, disturbances and non-seriousness; but that does not necessarily mean that their soirees were strict, less entertaining and academic. Other questions deal with further details of the hold soirees of the Schumanns: What kind of music was played? Who were the composers? At what time did they meet and how long did they play and sing together? These are still important questions to address, although they cannot be fully answered with today’s sources and might not ever be completely answered in the future. The lack of source material, especially diaries and memoires leaves many questions open. Even though only few questions have been answered and many more questions have come up a short insight into the salons of the Schumann’s has been given and hopefully a clear picture of the salons of the Schumann’s can be given in the future. This article is just the first attempt at this subject and more research is necessary and more sources still have to be found.

Abstract

Clara and Robert Schumann were connected very closely to the culture of the musical salons serving young and ambitious musicians and composers. Clara Schumann’s life is documented very well, but there is only a very small amount of literature dealing with her activities in the musical salon. This paper aims at providing an insight into the different circles Clara as well as her husband organised. The existent and non-existent source material is discussed and, by doing that, the current state of research on this subject is elaborated. Furthermore, this paper endeavours to point out the difficulties of research on this topic. That part is followed by a closer look at the characteristics of the private circles of the Schumanns during their years of marriage and the years after Robert Schumann’s death from 1856 to 1896.

72 Marlene Priller, An examination of Clara Schumann’s musical salons…

Keywords

Clara Schumann, musical salon, 19th century, Germany

Abstrakt

Badania nad salonami muzycznymi Clary Schumann i związane z tym problemy

Klara i Robert Schumannowie współtworzyli kulturę salonów muzycznych, pomagając tym samym młodym i ambitnym muzykom i kompozytorom. Życie Klary Schumann zostało bardzo dobrze udo- kumentowane, jednakże tylko kilka opracowań traktuje o jej działal- ności w zakresie prowadzenia salonu muzycznego. Niniejszy artykuł daje wgląd w kręgi towarzyskie Klary i jej męża. Biorąc pod uwagę aktualny stan badań, a także uwzględniając związane z tym trudno- ści, omówiono zachowany i utracony materiał źródłowy. Tę część poprzedza charakterystyka towarzyskiej sfery Schumannów w okre- sie trwania ich małżeństwa, a także od śmierci Roberta Schumanna (1856) do 1896 r.

Słowa kluczowe

Clara Schumann, salon muzyczny, XIX wiek, Niemcy

Bibliography

Beci V., Musikalische Salons. Blütezeit einer Frauenkultur, Zürich 2000. Hensel F., Tagebücher, ed. by H.-G. Klein, R. Evers, Wiesbaden 2002. Hofmann R., Die Beziehung zwischen Theodor Kirchner und Robert und Clara Schumann, in: “Neue Bahnen”. Robert Schumann und seine Musikalischen Zeitgenossen, Mainz 2002 (Schumann Forschungen 7), pp. 154–163. Höcker K., Clara Schumann. Die große Pianistin ihrer Zeit. Die Lebensgefähr- tin Robert Schumanns. Die Freundin von Johannes Brahms, Berlin 1975.

73 The Jagiellonian University Young Musicologists Quarterly, No. 30 (3/2016)

Kienzle U., Robert und Clara Schumann in Frankfurt, Frankfurt am Main 2010 (Mäzene, Stifter Stadtkultur. Schriften der Frankfurter Bürgersti- ftung und der Ernst Max von Grundelius-Stiftung 8). Klassen J., Clara Schumann. Musik und Öffentlichkeit, Köln 2009 (Euro- päische Komponistinnen 3). Le Beau L.A., Lebenserinnerungen einer Komponistin, Baden-Baden 1910, Reprint: Baden-Baden 1999. Litzmann B., Clara Schumann. Ein Künstlerleben. Nach Tagebüchern und Briefen, Vol. 2: Ehejahre 1840-1856, Leipzig 1920. Litzmann B., Clara Schumann, Vol. 3: Clara Schumann und ihre Freunde, 3. edition, Frankfurt am Main 1910. Nauhaus G., Bodsch I. (Ed.): Robert und Clara Schumann Ehetagebücher 1840-1844, 2. edition, Bonn 2013. Nauhaus J.M., 1863-1873 Baden-Baden, in: Schumann-Portal, [online] http://www.schumann-portal.de/Baden-Baden_1863-1873.html [accessed: 28.07.2016]. Reich N.B., Clara Schumann Romantik als Schicksal. Eine Biographie, Hamburg 1991. Schleuning P., Fanny Hensel geb. Mendelssohn. Musikerin der Romantik, Wien 2007. Schumann E., Claras Kinder. Erinnerungen, Köln 1995. Schumann F., Erinnerungen an Clara Schumann, „Neue Zeitschrift für Musik”, Vol. 84/9, pp. 69–73. Schumann R., Tagebücher, Vol. 2: 1836–1854, ed. by G. Nauhaus, Frank- furt am Main 1987. Schumann R., Tagebücher, Vol. 3: Haushaltsbücher, ed. by G. Nauhaus, Leipzig 1982. Steegmann M., Clara Schumann, Hamburg 2007. De Vries C., Die Pianistin Clara Wieck-Schumann. Interpretation im Spannungsfeld von Tradition und Individualität, Mainz 1996. Wilhelmy-Dollinger P., Die Berliner Salons. Mit historisch-literarischen Spaziergängen, Berlin 2000. Shorena Metreveli

Vano Sarajishvili Tbilisi State Conservatoire

The musical and liturgical aspects of the great feasts of the Church services inserted in the Great Lent

Georgian chant is the inheritance of the ancient professional music – the country and its church have an enormous quantity of old musical and liturgical traditions. The purpose of this paper is to show some details of Georgian style. The crucial aspect of this phenomenon are chant schools, which were present in Georgia in the past and also exist nowadays. The culture of Georgian chant is variable and particular schools are different from each other, but all of them have one basis. The vital schools are Gelati, Shemoqmedi (West Georgian chant traditions) and Karbelashvilebi (East Georgian chant traditions). In this paper musical analysis of West Georgian chant traditions will be presented, using Gelati school as an example. Scores are taken from Georgian musical manuscripts from the 19th century, which are saved in National Centre of Manuscripts and were written by St. Pilimon the Chanter (Koridze) and St. Ekvtime the Confessor (Kereselidze). The church year consists of many holidays. In the Orthodox Church there are twelve Great Feasts, which are divided into immovable and movable. The movable feasts are: Palm Sunday, The Ascension of Our Lord Jesus Christ and Pentecost. Among the immovable feasts there are: Epiphany, The Meeting of the Lord in the Temple, The Annunciation

75 The Jagiellonian University Young Musicologists Quarterly, No. 30 (3/2016)

of the Theotokos, The Transfiguration of Our Lord, Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, The Nativity of Our Most Holy Lady the Theo- tokos, The Elevation of the Holy Cross, The Entrance into the Temple of Our Most Holy Lady, and The Nativity of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. The most meaningful feast is Easter (Pascha). The Great Feasts are scattered throughout the year, what is particularly important. The patterns, designed for each of them, are performed only on certain days. The typicon of the Great Feasts services is considerably different from the typicon of the weekly days or the Sunday’s serves. The distinctive features of the vital festivities are additional texts and musical material; the excellence of the worship is also noticeable. All of them are the marks that are connected with the content and significance of the Great Feasts. These characteristic features can be found in three parts of Liturgy of the Hours: Vespers, Matins and Liturgy. Because of the specific character of parish calendar, the Great Feasts ceremonials have different variants from each other in order to diverse days of the week. This paper summarises old Georgian professional music, chant, and its specific traditions, which were in use in the church of Georgia in the 19th century and they are used also nowadays. The article’s aim is to show how some of the Great Feasts in Georgia were celebrated. I will present the examination of some individual aspects of Georgian liturgical practice, for example Great Lent and also the musical and liturgical aspects of the Great Feasts of the church services inserted into the Great Lent. Then, some aspects will be synthesized, what is important in the process of researching Georgian chant. The paper includes only typical phenomenon of Georgian liturgical and musical traditions. For the aim of this work, our interests will be focused on the changes that appear in the structure of seasonal calendar of the Great Feasts, namely, on the Lent, which serves as a preparation for the Easter. Among the Great Feasts, only the Palm Sunday and the Feast of the Annunciation of the Lord are placed in the Lent. The Palm Sunday belongs to the series of movable holidays and is celebrated on the Sunday that precedes the Easter. In Christian services, the Palm Sunday has appeared from the 4th century (it comes from the old Jew- ish holiday). The Annunciation of the Lord is an unmovable festivity and it is celebrated on April 7 (March 25 in the old style). The goal of the present report is to show the very specific nature of the services

76 Shorena Metreveli, The musical and liturgical aspects… of these feasts, their musical and typical hallmarks in the scope of the Lent settings. We also desire to determine the issue of the reflection of the typical peculiarities in the liturgical books (in the Triode and The Celebration of the Menaion). In the present report the establishment of the Lent, the peculiarities of the historical development and the particular importance of the feast services will be examined. It is known that from the beginning, even before the 2nd century, the Church had established the short-term fast before Easter. In the local churches various Lent service traditions had been established. From the 4th and 5th centuries onward the so-called forty-day fast became a commonly acknowledged fact. Determining the issue of a liturgical content of the Lent, the liturgical reform, carried out by St. Theodore of Stoudios in the th9 century at Studios Monastery in Constantinople, was crucial. After that the adult baptism and Cat- echumens Institute, which had been provided in the Lent period before, had completely disappeared from the life of the Church and, after this reform, the Lent was identified only as a “repent” period.1 In our research, the demonstration of compatibility issue of the festive typicon and the specific elements of the Lent services is also important. A comparative study of the Great Feasts and the Triodion typicons found that the liturgy of the Palm Sunday is based on the festive typicon and it does not include the repentance hymns that are characteristic for the period of Lent, three hymns of Matins canon and the other elements. The typical Liturgical pattern of the Great Feasts is completely preserved. As for the Annunciation feast, the diversity of approach is evident. It is celebrated with the Forefeast, which has its own pattern. The holiday falls on the typicon influence of this period, which will coincide with the “Thursday of the third week of the Lent period and lasts until the Bright Week Wednesday”. This fact is confirmed by the facts that are reflected in the liturgical book “The Mark’s chapters” with the 8 cases of Forefeast, 18 cases of Annunciations, and 9 cases of Afterfeast services. It is clear that in this “liturgical collection” it is impossible to discuss all the cases of this holiday and only the important features of the Feast are presented here, the knowledge of which facilitates the use of “The Mark of chapters”.2

1 [online] http://www.orthodoxtheology.ge [accessed: 18.03.2016]; St. Paul’s Or- thodox Christian Theology Centre, Lent – the historical development, 2012. 2 B. Gunia, I. Gunia, Liturgical collection #2, Tbilisi 1996.

77 The Jagiellonian University Young Musicologists Quarterly, No. 30 (3/2016)

In the cases examined in this collection, to each Annunciation canon of the Orthros (Matins) the canon from the Menaion (hymns for each calendar day of the year) is added, that depends on the calendar day to which the Annunciation coincides. Interestingly, as one of the examples of “the variant diversity” caused by the typicon influences of the Lent period, the Palm Sunday, and the Annunciation, coincidence variant is given – “if the Annunciation day coincides with the Palm Sunday”. This fact is quite interesting in terms of the music, as in this case the hymnographic canons of both holidays are performed. It is known that canons of both feasts are given on the 4th tone. The canon on the Palm Sunday belongs to Cosmas of Jerusalem, and the Annunciation one to Theophanes. On the other days, the confluence of the 4th tone and different tone canons would take place. However, the simultaneous designation of two Great Feasts is really an exception, a rare and complex phenomenon in the liturgical practice, as well as in the process of services. In addition to the Liturgical book reviews, we will focus on the music-analytical sphere of the Great Feasts. From the various genre structures of the service, we will focus on the performance characteristics and the hallmarks of the hymnographic canon, which is the biggest in the service. What is well-known, the hymnographic canons have special position in diverse structure of the liturgical services. The hymnographic canon is a composition of nine hymns (Oda). Every hymn is composed by strophes, from which the first one – theme-song – is rhythmic and melodious model for the others, called Dasdebeli. The last one is devoted to the Virgin, so it’s name is Theotokion. As Iovane Batonishvili writes, Matins theme-songs number is 500, and Vespers theme-songs number – 60. On the festive Matins, where a canon was implemented simuntaneously, every canon must have had its own theme-song. It is a reason of an enormous number of theme-songs. In the contemporary serve practice, Matins canon is read by psalm- reader and that is a reason for reducing the share of chanting. During the ceremony, serve singers perform only 9 theme-songs and to the Easter – only 8 theme-songs. The fundamental reason of it could be a prolongation of serves time, absence of the hymns scores or unpre- paredness of singers. The hymnographic canon is the most complicated and has a scaled form, so it is difficult to listen it while singing, and that is why it is performed by reading. It is not helping in revival of the old musical tradition in the contemporary service practice. What

78 Shorena Metreveli, The musical and liturgical aspects… is known from old Georgian musical manuscripts, in the service practice from the 18th century it is not inevitable to sing the theme-songs and other hymns of canon instead of reading it. As we know, due to the intervention of Russian Tsarism in the early 19th century, church services in Georgia were discouraged and in many cases forbidden in place of Russian style services. Comparative analysis of the Festive Ektenia in the contemporary services, Triodioni and sacred hymns description – catalogue (“Descrip- tion of the Manuscripts and Alphabet Catalogue of Georgian Sacred Hymns according to the handwritten scores of St. Pilimon the Chanter [Koridze] and St. Ekvtime the Confessor [Kereselidze]”) proves the existence of different versions of hymnographic canons performed during the Great Feasts. Taking into consideration the peculiarities of texts, it is obvious that the mentioned genre developed in the Octoechos system. Musical manuscripts which include this feast (Palm Sunday and the Annunciation of Our Lady) chant material, are kept in the National Centre of Manuscripts. The survey found that the musical manuscripts contain the notation of three-voiced Heirmos. Annun- ciation Heirmoses are included in the manuscripts Q-666 and Q-681.3 The musical samples of the Heirmos are identical. Heirmoses of the Palm Sunday (excluding Heirmos VIII) are included in the manuscript Q-689.4 Unlike the musical material of the Annunciation, the Palm Sunday music also has notations of Kontakion (Chreli) and different variants of the Heirmos IX – simple, ornamented and motley (Chreli). This material is gathered in the various manuscripts.5 The identities of the expounders are also revealed: Dimitri Chalaganidze, Razhden Kundadze, Ivliane Anton and David Dumbadzes, Simon Molarishvili. This leads to the existence of the different hymn options. Both celebration canons are given on the 4th tone, what creates the possibility to reveal the eight-tone cycle features based on the examples of comparison and intonation analysis of the 4th tone Heirmos. Also, it will help to shape up the intonation models of the whole tune, or that of individual structural units (verse, phrase and motive). There are

3 Q-666 is written in 1885, in Kutaisi and Q-681 is likely to be copied from this manuscript in 1886 in Kutaisi. Chant editors are: D. Chalaganidze, R. Khundadze, and I. Tsereteli. Both manuscripts are written by P. Koridze. 4 The chant was copied by E. Kereselidze and transferred by A. Kutateladze. 5 Q-668, Q-680, Q-687, Q-690, Q-694 and H-154, which were recorded by E. Kere- selidze and P. Koridze in Tbilisi and in Kutaisi.

79 The Jagiellonian University Young Musicologists Quarterly, No. 30 (3/2016)

two motive verses in the Annunciation Heirmoses, the end of which coincide with the contextual end of the verbal text phrasing. On the semantic point of view, the phrases cannot be split. On the intonation point of view, all of the eight Heirmoses are individual and different. We are not able to find repetitions of the verses, formations of the intonation connections, the variant repetition of the second, ending motives and various short rhythmic figurations here.

Example 1. IV Theme-song of Annunciation. Written by Pilimon the Chanter (Koridze); Manuscript Q-666, Kutaisi 1885.

Example 2. V Theme-song of Annunciation. Written by Pilimon the Chanter (Koridze); Manuscript Q-666, Kutaisi 1885.

80 Shorena Metreveli, The musical and liturgical aspects…

According to the verbal text volume, the number of Heirmos verses also varies. The Heirmos I has 7 verses, The HeirmosesIII -IV-V-VI – 5 verses, TheVII Heirmos – 4 verses, The HeirmosesVIII -IX – 9 verses. We have to stress the fact that the Annunciation Feast shares the Heirmos VII with the Entry of the Most Holy Theotokos into the Temple Feast. In the Hymnographic practice, this kind of sharing the chant-like material between the different holidays is not a rare case. In this case, the same topic and the same liturgical essence is gathered around the common material (in this case the subject is the Virgin Mary). The insertion of the IX chant, which contains the similar ending formulas as the Heirmoses, also shows intonation links with them. In accordance with its function, in the IX chant the insertion with the succession of Katavasias forms some sort of a rondeau and generates the intonation arches, where the familiar musical motives of the ending phrases are clearly dominated. Despite the different and individual musical structure of the Heirmoses, the development of a common logic is quite clear. The Palm Heirmoses sharply differ from the music of the Annun- ciation ones. Although both feast chants situate around one tone, it is impossible to trace the signs of the big resemblance here. In this case, the ending verses and short rhythmic figurations act as the connecting forces. It should be noted that, unlike in the Annunciation Heirmoses, in the Palm Sunday ones full repeating of the whole verses takes place, as well as in the other Heirmoses (excluding Heirmos I). As an example, we name the beginning verses of the Heirmoses III and V and the beginning verses of the Heirmoses IV-VI-VII.

Example 3. VI Theme-song of Palm Sunday. Written by Ekvtime the Confessor (Kereselidze); Manuscript Q-689, Mtskheta 1925.

81 The Jagiellonian University Young Musicologists Quarterly, No. 30 (3/2016)

Example 4. VII Theme-song of Palm Sunday. Written by Ekvtime the Confessor (Kereselidze); Manuscript Q-689, Mtskheta 1925.

Example 5. IV Theme-song of Palm Sunday. Written by Ekvtime the Confessor (Kereselidze); Manuscript Q-689, Mtskheta 1925.

The borders of the musical and verbal phrases are in compliance too in this case. There is no two-motived principle in the short verses used in the Palm Sunday Heirmoses. Intonation connections in the level of the ending formulas are revealed in the motley Kontakion that demonstrates the integrity of the canon more clearly. Very interesting information about Palm Sunday hymnographic canon is found in the old Georgian literature – in John Minchkhi’s poetry in particular, a study of which was done by Lela Khachidze. From Georgian hymnographic history there is also the greatest myth of Iovane Minchkhi to the forming of Georgian Triodioni. In the autographic collection of Giorgi Mtatsmindeli, it is presented the Palm Sunday’s serve with extensive repertoire. 4 hymnographic canons are shown there; Iovane Minchkhi’s canon is the first one and then there are 3 canons, which

82 Shorena Metreveli, The musical and liturgical aspects… authors are Kozma and Qristephore. The last canon does not contain the name of the author. On the manuscript Iovane Minchkhi’s name is signed as “Minchkhi” or just “M”. Every hymn of canon contains also the theme-songs. The importance of canon is broadening with second hymn. Nowadays, the second hymn of canon is not written in the contemporary liturgical books, as it was lost in the 8th century. The scientists reckon that the reason of it is the fact is the second hymn’s mourning disposition and its size. It is believed that the second hymn of canon was sung during the Lent previously. It seems to be a reason why the second hymn of canon is not sung in the contemporary practice. From the 10th century, the second hymn starts to appear in the addition to the canon and this process is connect with the name of Iovane Minchkhi.6 While working on the paper, one interesting detail appeared. Dis- cussed above, Heirmoses of the Palm Sunday and the Feast of the Annunciation were compared with Heirmoses that are collected in Paraclition, but Heirmoses of the Palm Sunday was not found there. Talking about the Annunciation Heirmoses, it is possible that, in the material of the IV tone of Sunday Orthros, they are pointed as the models set in the beginning of chants for The Elevation of the Holy Cross. As a full text, it is given in the same tone in the Friday Orthros Cross canon. Apparently, the Annunciation Heirmoses are scattered in the IV tone of Paracliton and in the weekday services. However, the issue of festive Heirmoses is not quite clear and deserves a further research. It is not confirmed whether Paracliton absorbed Heirmoses or, on the contrary, Heirmoses are moved from Paracliton to The Celebration of the Menaion. Certainly, while creating the canons, hymnographers applied to Heirmoses as an elective principle of the models and as it appears, the similar case has been observed here. The analysis shows individuality and diversity of the chant material within the one tone frame. Stability is manifested mainly in the level of the ending formulas. The Heirmos genre, unlike the others, gives more freedom to the performer and creates infinitely diverse fund of the tunes, which has once again demonstrated the wealth and the original nature of the Georgian church chanting. Singing performance tradition of complete hymnographic canon was revived at the Gelati

6 L. Khachidze, E. Metreveli, Poetry of Iovane Minchkhi – monuments of old Geor- gian poetry, “Metsniereba”, Tbilisi 1987.

83 The Jagiellonian University Young Musicologists Quarterly, No. 30 (3/2016)

Monastery in the 19th century, and the whole divine service was performed by chanting there. Even Razhden Khundadze was talking about this fact: “In bygone times Gelati was the nesting ground for church chant, and in modern times some of our most famous and renowned chanters have been trained at Gelati including Anton Dumbadze, Sino Kandelaki, Davit Chkhareli and others...”. Nowadays, only few chants are performed from the vast repertoire. Georgian chant is believed to have originated from the Tao-Klarjeti region between the 7th and the 10th century from where it spread to the major monastery-academies throughout Georgia. Chant flourished at the academy of Iqalto in far Eastern Georgia, the Gelati academy in the Kutaisi region, and Martvili (Chqondidi) Monastery. During the 11th and 12th centuries, chant was unified in the school of hymnography at the Gelati Monastery, which was among the leading spiritual and educational centers of the world at that time. Diversity of the Great Feasts canons which are fixed in Georgian music manuscripts of the 19th century confirms viability of Georgian chanting tradition. Diversity and abundance of existing materials gives the opportunity to conduct further research on the topic. Despite the fact that, in the modern religious practice, discussed Heirmoses are read and on this point of view the chant’s share is reduced, according the results of the intonation analysis of the noted Heirmosesit, it is possible that connecting it with the practice by the returning it to the service will help to revive the Georgian chant traditions. Notably interesting letters by Catholicos-Patriarch Kirion II of All-Georgia and also of Pilimon Koridze are preserved. They contain information about Old Georgian Chant:

Not only is Georgian church chant rich with melody, each phrase and even each word carries special meaning. From this point of view, melody and text are incomparable and we thank God for blessing our nation with such a musical treasure. This three-voiced chant, unlike the chant of our neighbors the Armenians or the Greeks, has been delighting our ears for centuries... (Kirion II).7

7 M. Erkvanidze (ed.), Georgian Church Chant (Gelati School). The hymns of the Twelve Feasts of Our Lord and Immovable Feasts, Tbilisi 2006.

84 Shorena Metreveli, The musical and liturgical aspects…

We are no longer fearful that our church will disappear forever, because as they have been accurately transcribed into notation the same way they have been sung. But if these transcriptions are not published and taught to people in schools, or if these chants are not sung in churches as part of our daily services, then they will lose their purpose, and that would be even worse than their degeneration (Pilimon Koridze).8

Abstract

The culture of Georgian chant is variable and particular schools are different from each other. The vital schools are Gelati, Shemoqmedi (West Georgian chant traditions) and Karbelashvilebi (East Geor- gian chant traditions). The paper presents musical analysis of West Georgian chant traditions, using Gelati school as an example. Scores are taken from Georgian musical manuscripts from the 19th century, which are saved in National Centre of Manuscripts and were written by St. Pilimon the Chanter (Koridze) and St. Ekvtime the Confessor (Kereselidze). The article’s aim is to show how some of the Great Feasts in Georgia were celebrated. The first part contains the examination of some individual aspects of Georgian liturgical practice. The second part synthetises what is important in the process of researching Georgian chant. The analysis shows individuality of the chant material. Diversity and abundance of existing materials gives the opportunity to conduct further research on the topic.

Keywords

Georgian chant, Gelati school, Orthodox Church, liturgy

8 Ibid.

85 The Jagiellonian University Young Musicologists Quarterly, No. 30 (3/2016)

Abstrakt

Muzyczne i liturgiczne aspekty nabożeństw Wielkich Świąt przypa- dających na Wielki Post

Tradycja chorału gruzińskiego należy do zróżnicowanych, w jej ob- rębie występuje kilka odmian. Najważniejszymi szkołami są: Gelati, Shemoqmedi (należące do tradycji zachodniogruzinskiej) oraz Kar- belashvilebi (należące do tradycji wschodniogruzińskiej). Artykuł stanowi próbę analizy zachodniogruzińskich tradycji chorałowych w oparciu o utwory napisane w stylu szkoły Gelati. Jako materiał źródłowy wykorzystano XIX-wieczne manuskrypty pochodzące ze zbiorów Gruzińskiego Narodowego Centrum Rękopisów, autorstwa św. Filimona Koridze oraz św. Ekvtima Kereselidze. Tekst omawia muzyczną celebrację dwunastu wielkich świąt Kościoła prawosław- nego w Gruzji. Pierwsza część artykułu zawiera charakterystykę in- dywidualnych aspektów guzińskiej tradycji liturgicznej. Część druga jest syntezą cech kluczowych dla badania gruzińskiego chorału. Ana- liza dowodzi indywidualizmu ocenianych śpiewów. Różnorodność i bogactwo zachowanego materiału muzycznego stwarza możliwość do prowadzenia dalszych badań w tym zakresie.

Słowa kluczowe

chorał gruziński, szkoła Gelati, Kościół prawosławny, liturgia

Bibliography

All the bibliographical references were translated by the author from Georgian.

Dzindzibadze Z., Parakliton, Tbilisi 1998. Erkvanidze M. (ed.), Georgian Church Chant (Gelati School). The hymns of the Twelve Feasts of Our Lord and Immovable Feasts, Tbilisi 2006. Gunia B., Gunia I., Liturgical collection #1, Tbilisi 1996. Gunia B., Gunia I., Liturgical collection #2, Tbilisi 1996.

86 Shorena Metreveli, The musical and liturgical aspects…

Gvakharia V., Shugliashvili D., Razmadze N., Description of the Manu- scripts and Alphabet Catalogue of Georgian Sacred Hymns – According to the Handwritten Scores of St. Pilimon the Chanter (Koridze) and St. Ekvtime the Confessor (Kereselidze), Tbilisi 2013. Khachidze L., Metreveli E., Poetry of Iovane Minchkhi – Monuments of Old Georgian Poetry, “Metsniereba”, Tbilisi 1987. Naneishvili N., The serve of Christ Easter in Georgian tradition, Master's thesis, V. Sarajishvili Tbilisi State Conservatoire, Tbilisi 2009. Skaballanovich M., The Typikon Interpreted in Russian, Kiev 1910. Soloviov H.A., A Historical Discourse on the Fasts of the Orthodox Church, in Russian, Moscow 1837. Tatishvili K., Dugashvili E. (2006); Archimandrit Kipriane (Kerni) – History of Church Poetry, [online] www.library.church.ge [accessed: 18.03.2016] Triodioni (Markhvani), Press of Eqvtime Kheladze, Tbilisi 1901. [online] http://www.orthodoxtheology.ge [accessed: 18.03.2016]; St. Paul’s Orthodox Christian Theology Centre, Lent – the historical development, 2012. H-154 – “Notebooks #1,2,3,4,5 written in Guria, Theme-songs”. Written by P. Koridze, E. Kereselidze. Q-666 – “First Score” [festal hymns]. Recorder – P. Koridze, Kutaisi 1885. Q-668 – “Score III, Notebook #7”. Lents hymns score. Written by P. Ko- ridze, Kutaisi 1886. Q-680 – “Book V, Notebook #5 written in Kutaisi”. (1886); Written by P. Koridze. Q-681 – “VI book – the notebook #7”. Written by P. Koridze, Kutaisi 1886.Q-687 – “Book XII”. The manuscript is a composition with Theme-songs. Q-689 – “Book #14 – Theme songs”. Written by E. Kereselidze. Q-690 – “Book #15 – Great Feasts hymns”. (1904-1905). Written by E. Kereselidze, P. Koridze, R. Khundadze. Q-694 – “Book #27, Notebook #19 – Great Feasts Hymns”. Written by P. Koridze, E. Kereselidze.

Dominika Micał

Academy of Music in Kraków, Collegium Invisibile

Rhetorical figures and rhetorical strategies in The Minotaur by Harrison Birtwistle1

Harrison Birtwistle (born in 1934) is widely known as a member of “New Music Manchester Group” – his colleagues at that time were Peter Maxwell Davies and Alexander Goehr. Birtwistle’s music is recognised as intellectual and connected with great avant-garde of the 20th century inspired by Pierre Boulez. His musical language is basically modernist: atonal but usually centralised, based on interval patterns or scales invented by the composer himself, very often using precompositional number patterns. On the other hand, Birtwisle has never denied expression in his pieces. Titles and extra-musical inspirations are common (i.e. Melencolia 1, Harrison’s Clocks, The Triumph of Time). British composer is also inspired by music of the Middle Ages (Guillaume de Machaut) or Renaissance (Johannes Ockeghem, John Dowland), and less often by Baroque music (Johann Sebastian Bach). Birtwistle’s greatest achievements include twelve operas; among them the most important is The Mask of Orpheus (1973–1984). The Minotaur is his tenth opera, and the second one written in cooperation with poet and librettist David Harsent (the first was Ga- wain from 1991). Both of the artists worked together since the idea of

1 Text based on MA thesis entitled Mit na nowo opowiedziany. “The Minotaur” Har- risona Birtwistle’a (The myth newly retold. Harrison Birtwistle’s “The Minotaur”) written under the guidance of dr hab. Małgorzata Janicka-Słysz and defended at Academy of Music in Kraków in 2015.

89 The Jagiellonian University Young Musicologists Quarterly, No. 30 (3/2016)

making an opera about Minotaur occurred. The piece was finished in 2007 and premiered in 2008 in Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, starring John Tomlinson as Minotaur, Christine Rice as Ariadne, and Johan Reuter as Theseus. Performance was conducted by Antonio Pap- pano and directed by Stephen Langridge; costumes and scenography were created by Allison Chitty. It is worth mentioning that Birtwistle, Harsent, Langridge and Chitty had discussed the ideas for the opera before it was composed. That is the possible reason why the piece seems extraordinarily organic. Besides remarkable coherence, the most striking feature of The Minotaur is almost constant presence of easily recognizable rhetorical means. Why would the composer, who is connected with the 20th century modernism, use such obvious and traditional elements? One of the main subjects of Birtwistle’s output is narration. We can see it even in his revolutionary pieces, like The Mask of Orpheus. The Minotaur tells the story of its main characters but it also shows how the stories are being created and how important they are for human beings. Rhetorical figures and strategies become the main device helping the composer to show the story in music. I use the term ‘rhetorical figure’ in connection with long tradition of musical rhetoric, whereas the term ‘rhetorical strategy’ is my own concept, created to distinguish rhetorical means that are very short, incidental (figures connected with one word or phrase) from the long passages of music. When rhetorical ‘power’ lasts relatively long (at least few bars but sometimes it embraces the whole scene), I call it ‘rhetorical strategy’. To help us understand better the importance of narration in The Minotaur, I firstly show the general overview and interpretation of the libretto. Then, I briefly examine relation between text and music. Next, I describe some examples of rhetoric figures, rhetoric strategies, and the way they are used in the opera. I explore their connection with tradition and how they work in modern musical environment. In conclusion, I try to explain why I consider the rhetorical aspect of The Minotaur as the most important one.2

2 For other attempts to apply Baroque rhetorical figures to analysis of contemporary music see for instance: K. Naliwajek, “Partita IV” Pawła Szymańskiego i jego “utopia podwójności muzyki”, “Przegląd Muzykologiczny” 2004, No. 4; A. Wiec- zorek, “Te Deum” Arvo Pärta. Między kompozytorskim métier a gatunkowym ar- ché, “Kwartalnik Młodych Muzykologów UJ” 2014, No. 23 (4).

90 Dominika Micał, Rhetorical figures and rhetorical strategies…

The Minotaur – general view

The Minotaur was inspired by many factors (Cretan myth, Pablo Pi- casso’s Minotauromachy and other sketches of bulls, Friedrich Dür- renmatt’s ballet scenario Minotaurus. Eine Ballade), but a libretto was the starting point for the process of composing. We see three main characters: Ariadne, Minotaur and Theseus. Theseus’ personality is the least complicated one. He is a stereotypical hero – his character is strong, he is determined and brave but at the same time static, and in some way not as interesting as other characters. His role is important as long as he has a duty to perform. After killing Minotaur he can just go away: “His death lightens my life. / The debt is paid, the bargain broken.”3 The protagonist, Minotaur (or Asterios), half-bull and half-man, is much more complex. He is a victim of his parents’ sins. He feels like “neither/nor”, “half-and-half”, “next-to-nothing”. The monster cannot speak. He gets a voice only in his dreams, and, finally, after the fatal blow, when his death is obvious. I interpret the death of Minotaur in light of philosophy of Paul Ricoeur, using his concept of ‘narrative identity’. According to Ricoeur, the ability to say someone’s own name and to tell someone’s own story is a symbol of identity and a proof of being a part of community. Using a commonly recognised language protects human being from isolation, makes a person an equal member of society. As Ricoeur says:

Language is itself the process by which private experience is made public. Language is the exteriorization thanks to which an impression is transcended and becomes an ex-pression, or, in other words, the transformation of the psychic into the noetic. Exteriorization and communicability are one and the same thing for they are nothing other than this elevation of a part of our life into the logos of discourse. There the solitude of life is for a moment, anyway, illuminated by the common light of discourse.4

3 D. Harsent, The Minotaur. Libretto, London 2013, p. 27. Later, quotations from the libretto are signed as M and the number of page. 4 P. Ricoeur, Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning, Fort Worth 1976, p. 19.

91 The Jagiellonian University Young Musicologists Quarterly, No. 30 (3/2016)

The fatal blow, dying – a situation of a limit – becomes a catalyst for Minotaur’s transgression. Asterios’ struggle for his identity can also be understood as a process of psychoanalysis. When he is awake, he can only act as his ‘id’. He kills the Innocents unwillingly, only because of his instinct. He destroys their beauty, treats them as an insult for his monstrosity. In his dreams, he is able to reflect upon his acts, he becomes an ‘ego’, he knows that he behaves terribly and he displays feelings and emotions which are typical for humans beings: loneliness, longing, sadness, desire for self-knowledge. In the mirror he sees the second Minotaur – his ‘super-ego’, who is always critical to him and tries to convince him that all his dreams about being a human are only a mirage. Ariadne plays a role of psychoanalyst – she tells her brother his story, she helps him to understand it. Let us look at some of Minotaur’s representative lines: “In dreams I seem to speak like any man. / I say my name. I tell my story” (M27), “Tell me again. Tell me the story of myself” (M30). And after the fatal blow: “Now I can speak… now I am almost human; / now is the right time to die” (M61), “I am Asterios. (…) Son of the sea-god, Poseidon!” (M64). Ariadne is not only her brother’s psychoanalyst. She is nearly the main character of The Minotaur. The Cretan princess seems unfriendly, aloof and cruel. We must consider it as a sign of her story. She, as her brother, is a prisoner, a victim of her birth: “I’m daughter to the man whose arrogance brought shame. / I’m daughter to the woman who sinned against nature. / I’m sister to the half-and-half” (M42). That is she, who has to fulfil the ritual of sending the Innocents to death. She can be considered as a priestess, a coryphaeus of choir in killing scenes – but this role is imposed, and she is determined to escape her prison, the Crete, at any price. The strongest expression of her determination are the following lines:

The Cretan sky is black, the sun burns black, a black sea breaks… O gods, give me Theseus: give me Theseus and Athens, give me Theseus and a life beyond this darkness. The labyrinth is prison to Asterios, Crete is my cage.

92 Dominika Micał, Rhetorical figures and rhetorical strategies…

If malice will free me, let my mother weep. If betrayal will free me, let my father curse. If a death will free me, let the monster die. (M44)

Between Ariadne and Theseus there is no love, not even an enchant- ment – they only make a trade, a bargain. The Minotaur ends with the protagonist’s transgression and death but without catharsis.5 His body becomes a quarry for demonic Kers – goddesses of revenge. We do not see Ariadne and Theseus setting sail for Athens, as the Oracle said. The rest of the story is not the story of Minotaur.

Literary and musical forms

Birtwistle said that music was only a commentary on the libretto, it could not be anything else. The overall musical structure (macroform) is through-composed, the narrative instinct of ‘late’ Birtwistle (since Gawain) plays the main role. The number of scenes is the same, the climaxes are in the same places, the function of each scene remains the same (for example exposition in the first scene, peripeteia in scene 10, anagnorisis in scene 12). In the micro-scale the libretto is much more ritualistic, it contains a lot of repetitions, syntactical parallelisms, refrains and other strict forms. Generally, Birtwistle did not decide to copy those structures in music. However, there are some important lines that go through the libretto similarly to Errinerungsmotiven (even if they are not specifically ‘motives’ but ‘gestures’, or even whole phrases). Birtwistle emphasises that he is interested more in ‘gesture’ than in ‘motif’: the energy, shape, rhythm are more important to him than exact pitches or intervals. Gesture is something possible to remember easily.6 It has to change – Birtwistle admits that he never checks what he has already written and repeats music from memory, without any care of

5 See also: J. Carruesco, M. Reig, Redefining Catharsis in Opera: The Power of Mu- sic in Birtwistle’s “The Minotaur” and Amargós’ “Eurídice y los títeres de Caronte”, in: Seduction and Power: Antiquity in the Visual and Performing Arts, ed. by S. Knippschild, M. Garcia Morcillo, London—New York 2013. 6 H. Birtwistle, Wild tracks. A conversation diary with Fiona Maddocks, London 2014, p. 121.

93 The Jagiellonian University Young Musicologists Quarterly, No. 30 (3/2016)

precision.7 I have decided to use traditional term ‘motif’, where interval structure seems more important than energy and where it is relatively unchanged (as in repetitive ‘fate motif’). When intervals are changed but figure is still recognisable, I use the term ‘gesture’ (i.e. ‘glissando gesture’). The repetition of gesture or motif stresses the importance of particular words for the whole story. First repetitive idea is connected with Theseus’ and Minotaur’s common dream about somebody screaming in the night (“Every night, I hear them [screams] in my sleep”, examples 1, 2, 3). The objects and tenses are changed in every phrase: in example 1 Theseus is singing about many Innocent’s screams, in example 2 and 3 about only one scream: his own or Minotaur’s. Intervals are different in each, but dotted rhythm, overall shape of melody and its falling direction remains the same. While in terms of motivic structure we hear difference, in terms of gesture we hear identity.

Example 1. H. Birtwistle, The Minotaur, scene 1 (mm. 292–294).

Example 2. H. Birtwistle, The Minotaur, scene 1 (mm. 310–311).

Example 3. H. Birtwistle, The Minotaur, scene 12, (mm. 150–152).

7 M. Hall, Harrison Birtwistle, London 1998, pp. 151–152.

94 Dominika Micał, Rhetorical figures and rhetorical strategies…

Another returning phrase is connected with the ‘family triangle’. Theseus and Minotaur have probably the same father – Poseidon, so Minotaur and Ariadne are half-siblings. Phrase “Blood calls for [or “to”] blood” changes very strongly (examples 4–9). Its main feature, which lets us see the similarity, is the dotted rhythm. In extreme cases there is only rhythm (examples 5 and 8) but the connection (even very weak, like in example 9) is still audible. Again: motivic structure changes, gesture remains. Assurance that Ariadne’s scheme will succeed („Ariadne and Theseus will set sail for Athens”) is treated similarly.

Example 4. H. Birtwistle, The Minotaur, scene 1 (mm. 179–180).

Example 5. H. Birtwistle, The Minotaur, scene 6 (m. 63).

Example 6. H. Birtwistle, The Minotaur, scene 6 (mm. 112–114).

95 The Jagiellonian University Young Musicologists Quarterly, No. 30 (3/2016)

Example 7. H. Birtwistle, The Minotaur, scene 12 (m. 50).

Example 8. H. Birtwistle, The Minotaur, scene 12 (mm. 71–74).

Example 9. H. Birtwistle, The Minotaur, scene 12 (mm. 127–130).

As mentioned above, not all repetitions in the text are mirrored by repetitions in music, e.g. Minotaur’s perception of himself as “next to nothing” is worked out differently each time, only the ending iambic rhythm short–long is preserved. Also very important passage “The gods look down and laugh” appears twice in two different ways. We can assume that Birtwistle wanted to show two interpretations of those words. The first correspondences with Ariadne’s “bitter laugh” mentioned in the score: the stress and the melisma appear on “laugh” (example 10). The second version emphasises the direction of looking: the stress and the melisma appear on “down” (example 11).

96 Dominika Micał, Rhetorical figures and rhetorical strategies…

Example 10. H. Birtwistle, The Minotaur, scene 8 (mm. 43–44).

Example 11. H. Birtwistle, The Minotaur, scene 12 (mm. 145–146).

That motif–gesture opposition is strongly connected with the change that happened in Birtwistle’s musical thinking in the middle ‘80s. He turned from the radical pre-compositional patterns to more linear (but very often non-directional) narration; the ‘sanctity of the context’ became more important.8 The composer started to think in more processual way. Every musical moment should stem from previous musical moment and light it, at the same time being connected with what comes next. At the same time we hear connection between even very distant musical events (like in examples 1 from scene 1 and 2, and example 3 from scene 12). The rare examples of patterning musical forms on literary ones are two epicedia after the Innocent’s deaths. They are based on responsorial alteration of English lines of Ariadne and Greek lines of the Crowd. Ariadne’s words are sung in arioso style, they are heterophonic or polyphonic (example 12). The Crowd’s words are elaborated in homorhythmic texture and they recall Johann Sebastian Bach’s chorales

8 M. Hall, Harrison Birtwistle in Recent Years, London 1998, p. 2; H. Birtwistle, Wild tracks…, op. cit., London 2014, p. 119. ‘Sanctity of the context’ does not ex- clude sudden cuts and contrasting juxtapositions, however they are much less common in his later music.

97 The Jagiellonian University Young Musicologists Quarterly, No. 30 (3/2016)

(example 13). There are some more similarities between Bach’s Passions and The Minotaur: the protagonist dies innocently (it is not monster’s fault that he is who he is) and the choir, called Crowd, works like turba, scoffing at Minotaur in killing scenes.

Example 12. H. Birtwistle, The Minotaur, scene 7 (mm. 211–215). Polyphonic texture in epicedium.

98 Dominika Micał, Rhetorical figures and rhetorical strategies…

Example 13. H. Birtwistle, The Minotaur, scene 6 (mm. 216–223). Chorale-like texture in epicedium.

99 The Jagiellonian University Young Musicologists Quarterly, No. 30 (3/2016)

Rhetorical figures

The Minotaur is full of rhetorical figures: both ‘hypothyposis’ (working as an illustration, sometimes onomatopoeic) and ‘emphasis’ (expressive).9 Mostly, they are inspired by a Baroque theory. We can find: pathopoia, transgressio, assimilatio, suspiratio, katabasis, saltus duriusculus, and many others. The most common figure in Birtwistle’s opera is assimilatio – musical analogue. It is connected mainly with nature and motion phenomena. Assimilatio figure appears in instrumental and vocal parts. It can usually be heard but sometimes it is only seen in the score (like Augenmusik). A good example of the assimilatio in vocal part are Ariadne’s words: “like flightless bird”. Very often the way of illustrating words is strongly connected with the tradition, it is obvious in case of pictures of water, depicted as falling melisma (“There were fountains”, example 14). Sev- eral times there is the word “wind”. Birtwistle depicts it in at least two different ways: using the flute leggiero melody and using arched melody and sudden change of texture that looks like a wave and is correlated with dynamic process of crescendo–diminuendo (example 15). The picture of sun can be considered as the example of Augenmusik – we cannot hear it but we can see the sunbeams in the score. However, at the same time the lighting up of timbre is audible: harp, vibraphone and bells join the orchestra. The literary and musical depiction of the sea as seen by Ariadne is especially interesting. The princess considers sea as her “lock and chains” and “the doors that slams and slams”. This is the sea, what prisons her on Crete. Music motions with strong blows, assimilatio becomes tirata (figure connected with flash of lightening or with bolt) or, at the same time, slamming doors. The metaphor from the libretto permeates into the music. What is more, this is one of few places where Birtwistle multiplied words (example 16).

9 See for an example: Sz. Paczkowski, Nauka o afektach w myśli muzycznej pierwszej połowy XVII wieku, Lublin 1998; W. Lisecki, Vademecum muzycznej „Ars Oratoria”, „Canor” 1993, No. 3 (6), pp. 13–26; P. Zawistowski, Rozważania na temat retoryki w muzyce baroku, [online] http://chopin.man.bialystok.pl/Dokumenty/Publika- cje/02-02.pdf [accessed: 28.04.2015].

100 Dominika Micał, Rhetorical figures and rhetorical strategies…

Example 14. H. Birtwistle, The Minotaur, scene 2 (mm. 214–215). Assimilatio.

Example 15. H. Birtwistle, The Minotaur, scene 1 (mm. 104–112). Assimilatio.

101 The Jagiellonian University Young Musicologists Quarterly, No. 30 (3/2016)

Example 16. H. Birtwistle, The Minotaur, scene 1 (mm. 161–165). Assimilatio.

Assimilatio can be also used to imitate human’s and Minotaur’s voices: laughing, crying, moaning. That type of assimilatio appears when Ariadne enacts the sexual intercourse between her mother, Pasiphae, and the white bull from the sea. In this case music can be even called ‘naturalistic’. The interrogatio (question) and exclamatio (exclamation, example 17) figures are widely represented as well. Not all of questions included in the libretto are mechanically rewritten in music as interrogationes: Birtwistle never becomes a slave of rules and stereotypes, even chosen by himself.

102 Dominika Micał, Rhetorical figures and rhetorical strategies…

Example 17. H. Birtwistle, The Minotaur, scene 5 (mm. 151–152). Exclamatio in instrumental parts.

Other kind of assimilatio is katabasis, depicting falling or going down, or, metaphorically, the death as going to the underworld. It is worth mentioning that in epicedia there are Greek words about going to Hades, Ariadne speaks about that as well: “Forget voices still in your ears / As you go down to the hall of the dead”. Birtwistle uses saltus duriusculus figure in similar way. Similarly, the pathopoia (figure of pain) is connected with the descending direction. Although musical language of The Minotaur is dominated by dissonances, there are some passages distinguishingly saturated by semitones, especially the lamenti of the Innocents (example 18). Among other figures are:suspiratio (dying Innocents sing broken lines), transgressio (falsetto register for word “sun”), accentus, mutatio, tenuta, aposiopesis as well.

Example 18. H. Birtwistle, The Minotaur, scene 1 (mm. 151–155). Pathopoia – Innocents’ lament.

103 The Jagiellonian University Young Musicologists Quarterly, No. 30 (3/2016)

Example 19. H. Birtwistle, The Minotaur, scene 11 (mm. 13–18).

104 Dominika Micał, Rhetorical figures and rhetorical strategies…

Composer also uses individual means of expression connected with vocal parts. The part of Minotaur 2 (the super-ego seen in the mirror) is spoken, not sung; choir screams and whispers, Ariadne laughs, Mi- notaur, when awake, roars and moans. As an individual ‘instrumental’ figure we can see the sudden change of timbre, introduction of harp’s arpeggio delicate and saxophone’s dolce, when Ariadne tries to force Theseus to kiss her (example 19).

Rhetorical strategies

When the rhetorical ‘power’ is not incidental but lasts longer, I call it rhetorical strategy. The most common rhetorical strategies in The Minotaur are connected with orchestral means: particular characters or situations can be associated with specific timbre, articulation or texture. The piece is dominated by heterophony – desynchronised lines, textures made from independent strata are the unmarked state of music. In that context everything that is sharp-rhythmed and has a clear (but not necessarily regular) pulse becomes marked.10 It is obvious in abovementioned epicedia with their homorhythmic texture and responsorial alterations. Sharply outlined pulse characterises Theseus as a hero in his monologue from the first scene. The gradatio process in this fragment can be also understood as a rhetorical strategy: the texture saturates, the tonal space fills, volume rises to the climax on words: “I am here to free them, here to kill or to be killed”. Similar rhythmic change appears in the initial scene when Ariadne has to choose the first victim. Stage directions say that the rhythm should be the basis of choreography “pursuit–dance”. The aura of ominous anxiety is intensified by high strings playing motifs in small ambitus or the tremolo, and fanfare-like trumpets, trombones and percussion. That fragment begins with characteristic motif in cimbalom and double bass (example 20).

10 I use terms "marked" and "unmarked" as understood by Robert S. Hatten, in: R.S. Hatten Four Semiotic Approaches to Musical Meaning: Markedness, Topics, Tropes, and Gesture, “Musicological Annual” 1995, No. XXXI, pp. 5–30.

105 The Jagiellonian University Young Musicologists Quarterly, No. 30 (3/2016)

Example 20. H. Birtwistle, The Minotaur, scene 1 (m. 236). Cimbalom part.

Example 20 is variant of ‘fate motif’: repetition of pitch is tradition- ally connected with the powers of destiny, the sinister fate. It appears in meaningful places in the opera. For the first time, in the instrumental introduction. As it is presented in trumpets and xylophone, it sounds as piercing ‘fanfare of fear’ (after Constantin Floros). Later it is connected with words “They’re marked for death” and with the scenes where the Innocents are being killed. It can be interpreted as “gull-cry / their [In- nocent’s] death song” as well. Interesting variant of fate motif becomes a basis of scene 10 settled in the Oracle, where it blends with nervous concitato (example 21).11 As much important as ‘motif of fate’ is ‘glissando gesture’, 12 which opens the whole opera and returns in important moments (example 22). At the beginning of the opera it appears exactly three times, that can be interpreted as initiation of the ritual (Ariadne will later say: “They are here and the tale is told again”). It returns in connection with killing the dove in the Oracle scene, in moment of anagnorisis when Minotaur recognises Theseus in the shadow in the mirror, and, finally, when Theseus gives the fatal blow. It also corresponds with descending direction of Ariadne’s lines.

11 Instrumental interludes in The Minotaur are called Toccatas – Birtwistle admits that he is inspired by Claudio Monteverdi. Beard D., Birtwistle H., Beauty and the Beast: A Conversation with Sir Harrison Birtwistle, “The Musical Times” 2008, Vol. 149, No. 1902, p. 13. 12 Called by David Beard ‘iambic gesture’. See D. Beard, Harrison Birtwistle’s Operas and Music Theatre, Cambridge 2012, p. 436.

106 Dominika Micał, Rhetorical figures and rhetorical strategies…

Example 21. H. Birtwistle, The Minotaur, scene 10 (mm. 27–31). Motif of fate blended with concitato.

107 The Jagiellonian University Young Musicologists Quarterly, No. 30 (3/2016)

Example 22. H. Birtwistle, The Minotaur, scene 1 (mm. 1–3).

108 Dominika Micał, Rhetorical figures and rhetorical strategies…

Among rhetorical strategies there is also the stable connection between particular timbre and characters. The ‘extension’ (according to Rhian Samuel’s opinion)13 of Ariadne’s voice is the ‘sleazy’ (as Birtwistle called it) saxophone. It is not the usual orchestral instrument, so it can emphasise Ariadne’s isolation.14 Beard connects the low woodwinds (cor anglais, bassoon, bass clarinet) with Minotaur.15

Rhetorical means as audible and visible devices of telling the story

Naturally, there are many more examples of using the rhetorical means in The Minotaur. My aim was to give the picture of how carefully Birtwistle had read the text before he wrote music. Since the first contact with this opera the organic connection between words and music is obvious. Composer is aware of historical context of rhetorical figures and he uses them in connection with the tradition but he is not a slave of stereotypes. He puts traditional figures and strategies in context of contemporary musical language and plays with our expectations and habits. Birtwistle’s great success is in creating recognisable and audible figures within the context of his modern musical language. In his opera the stories of Minotaur and Ariadne are really important. All literary and musical means are designated for telling them. But even more important is the audible and visible process of telling the story, meta-narration about how important stories are for our life and our identity. We are the witnesses of Minotaur and Ariadne creating their stories, but we are also witnesses of how Birtwistle re-creates – retells – these stories in music.

13 R. Samuel, Birtwistle’s ‘The Minotaur’: The Opera and a Diary of Its First Produc- tion, “Cambridge Opera Journal” 2008, Vol. 20, No. 2, p. 233. 14 Myth is Universal, H. Birtwistle, D. Harsent, S. Langridge and C. Rice statements about the opera, The Minotaur, Royal Opera House Covent Garden, conducted by A. Pappano, directed by S. Langridge, DVD, Opus Arte 2008. 15 D. Beard, Harrison Birtwistle’s Operas…, op. cit., p. 434.

109 The Jagiellonian University Young Musicologists Quarterly, No. 30 (3/2016)

Abstract

The Minotaur is the opera composed by Harrison Birtwistle to libretto by David Harsent. It was premiered in 2008 in Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. Birtwistle’s musical language is basically modernist: atonal, centralised, based on interval or number patterns, pre-compositional operations, scales invented by the composer himself. His music is recognised as generally intellectual and connected with great avant- garde of 20th century. On the other hand, Birtwistle has never denied expression in his pieces. Titles and extra-musical inspirations are common (i.e. Melencolia 1). Birtwistle is inspired by music of the Middle Ages, Renaissance, and, less often, Baroque. The score ofThe Minotaur is full of rhetorical figures: bothhypothy - posis and emphasis. They are evident and immediately recognised in spite of contemporary, atonal language of the opera. Mostly, they are inspired by Baroque musical-rhetorical figures but there are examples of individual, contemporary means. Figures are local and connected with only one or few words. General atmosphere of fear and isolation can be created with ‘rhetorical strategies’, which are active much longer than figures. Birtwistle uses musical symbols as well. There are two main symbols in The Minotaur: the iambic ‘glissando gesture’ which opens the opera and appears in its key moments, and the ‘motif of fate’ – repetition connected with powers of fate and with tragic irony. The question is, why Birtwistle used so traditional and instantly recognisable means, as he is known for his highly intellectual music. Answer given in this text is that they stay in service of narration. They are audible and visible signs of telling the story.

Keywords

Harrison Birtwistle, David Harsent, Minotaur, musical rhetoric, contemporary opera

110 Dominika Micał, Rhetorical figures and rhetorical strategies…

Abstrakt

Figury i strategie retoryczne w Minotaurze Harrisona Birtwistle’a

Minotaur to opera skomponowana przez Harrisona Birtwistle’a do libretta Davida Harsenta. Jej premiera odbyła się w 2008 roku w Roy- al Opera House w Covent Garden. Język muzyczny Birtwistle’a jest zasadniczo modernistyczny. Cha- rakteryzują go atonalność, zcentralizowanie, bazowanie na formułach interwałowych lub numerycznych, zabiegach pre-kompozycyjnych, czy też skalach wymyślonych przez samego kompozytora. Jego muzykę uznaje się generalnie za intelektualną, powiązaną z wielką awangardą XX wieku. Z drugiej strony Birtwistle nigdy nie pozbawiał swoich utworów ekspresji. Powszechnie pojawiają się u niego tytuły i inspiracje pozamu- zyczne (na przykład Melencolia 1). Kompozytor czerpie inspirację z muzyki średniowiecznej, renesansowej i w mniejszym stopniu barokowej. Partyturę Minotaura przepełniają figury retoryczne – zarówno hipo- thyposis, jak i emphasis. Są oczywiste i natychmiast dają się rozpoznać pomimo współczesnego, atonalnego języka opery. Zasadniczo, są one oparte na barokowej teorii retoryki muzycznej. Figury pojawiają się w wybranych miejscach i łączą się tylko z jednym lub kilkoma słowami. Atmosfera strachu i izolacji w całej operze została wykreowana dzięki całym strategiom retorycznym, które wykazują znacznie dłuższą aktyw- ność niż same figury. Birtwistle posługuje się także symbolami. Dwa główne w Minotaurze to jambiczne glissando, rozpoczynające operę i pojawiające się w jej kluczowych momentach, oraz motyw fatum – kręgu powtarzającego się motywu powiązanego z siłami przeznaczenia oraz ironią tragiczną. Pytanie, dlaczego kompozytor sięgnął po tak oczywiste, wręcz try- wialne środki, skoro jest znany ze swej wysoce intelektualnej muzyki? Pozostają one w służbie narracji – oto odpowiedź, której dostarcza niniejszy artykuł; są słyszalnymi i widzialnymi znakami opowiadania historii.

Słowa kluczowe

Harrison Birtwistle, David Harsent, Minotaur, retoryka muzyczna, opera współczesna.

111 The Jagiellonian University Young Musicologists Quarterly, No. 30 (3/2016)

Bibliography

Sources:

Birtwistle H., The Minotaur. Full score, Boosey & Hawkes, London 2008. Birtwistle H., The Minotaur, Royal Opera House Covent Garden, conducted by A. Pappano, directed by S. Langridge, DVD, Opus Arte 2008. Harsent D., The Minotaur. Libretto, London 2013.

Literature:

Beard D., Harrison Birtwistle’s Operas and Music Theatre, Cambridge 2012. Beard D., Birtwistle H., Beauty and the Beast: A Conversation with Sir Harrison Birtwistle, “The Musical Times” 2008, Vol. 149, No. 1902. Birtwistle H., Wild tracks. A conversation diary with Fiona Maddocks, London 2014. Carruesco J., Reig M., Redefining Catharsis in Opera: The Power of Music in Birtwistle’s “The Minotaur” and Amargós’ “Eurídice y los títeres de Caronte”, in: Seduction and Power: Antiquity in the Visual and Performing Arts, ed. by S. Knippschild, M. Garcia Morcillo, London—New York 2013. Hall M., Harrison Birtwistle, London 1998. Hall M., Harrison Birtwistle in Recent Years, London 1998. Hatten R.S., Four Semiotic Approaches to Musical Meaning: Markedness, Topics, Tropes, and Gesture, “Musicological Annual” 1995, No. XXXI. Lisecki W., Vademecum muzycznej „Ars Oratoria”, “Canor” 1993, No. 3 (6). Myth is Universal, H. Birtwistle, D. Harsent, S. Langridge and C. Rice statements about the opera, The Minotaur, Royal Opera House Covent Garden, conducted by A. Pappano, directed by S. Langridge, DVD, Opus Arte 2008. Naliwajek K., „Partita IV” Pawła Szymańskiego I jego „utopia podwój- ności muzyki”, “Przegląd Muzykologiczny” 2004, No. 4. Paczkowski S., Nauka o afektach w myśli muzycznej pierwszej połowy XVII wieku, Lublin 1998. Ricoeur P., Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning, Fort Worth 1976.

112 Dominika Micał, Rhetorical figures and rhetorical strategies…

Samuel R., Birtwistle’s ‘The Minotaur’: The Opera and a Diary of Its First Production, “Cambridge Opera Journal” 2008, Vol. 20, No. 2. Wieczorek A., “Te Deum” Arvo Pärta. Między kompozytorskim métier a gatunkowym arché, “Kwartalnik Młodych Muzykologów UJ” 2014, No. 23 (4). Zawistowski P., Rozważania na temat retoryki w muzyce baroku, [online] http://chopin.man.bialystok. pl/Dokumenty/Publikacje/02-02.pdf [accessed: 28.04.2015].

Marek Dolewka

Jagiellonian University in Kraków

Silence as a symbol of death in the reflection of Gisèle Brelet and Tōru Takemitsu

The connections between silence and death have been a recurring theme in human thought over the centuries. Each of these two notions entails absence/lack/loss, they are both related with crossing the borders – respectively of an audible sound and life – and similarly as our mind cannot ‘think’ death,1 our ears cannot ‘hear’ silence.2 The association between these two concepts can often be found in music, both in its philosophical and in its compositional spheres. Probably as one of the most common examples of linking them, the Baroque rhetorical figure aposiopesis (“a rest in one or all voices of a composition; a general pause”)3 may be considered. Among the theoreticians writing about aposiopesis as a symbol of death and eternity were Johann

1 Z. Bauman, Mortality, Immortality and Other Life Strategies, Stanford, Calif. 1992, pp. 12–13.; Polish edition (transl. N. Leśniewski): Śmierć i niesmiertelnosć. O wielości strategii zycia, Warszawa 1998, p. 20. 2 J. Cage, Silence. Lectures and writings, Middletown, Conn. 1973 (First printing 1961), p. 8. 3 D. Bartel, Musica poetica: Musical-Rhetorical Figures in German Baroque Music, Lincoln 1997, p. 202.

115 The Jagiellonian University Young Musicologists Quarterly, No. 30 (3/2016)

Andreas Herbst (1588-1666) in Musica poetica (1643) and Daniel Speer (1636-1707) in Vierfaches musikalisches Kleeblatt (1697).4 From the compositional point of view, many attempts to approach this problem long before and after Baroque era may be found. Consid- ering only the pieces written as an hommage after another composer’s death as an example, the 14th century ballade Armes, amours/O flour by F[rançois] Andrieu with texts by Eustache Deschamps or Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten (1977) by Arvo Pärt could be enumerated. The first piece was written as an elegy for the death of Guillaume de Machaut in 1377. A general pause in all four voices is used there after the words “Machaut” and “mort” (death).5 On the other hand, the second work is literally framed by silence. Its score starts with dotted minim rest, after which a bell stroke in ppp succeeds, and ends with semibreve rest in string orchestra with dotted semibreve in pp resonating in bell part.6 According to certain authors,7 silence as a symbol of death was an important motif in the work of Anton Webern, considered as “the first modernist composer to scrutinize silence.”8 In this approach, it is usually associated with a loss of composer’s mother Amalie von Webern, who died in 1906, when Anton was 23 years old. Among various other strands that could be mention here, representing death by a cinematic silence is also noteworthy.9 In this paper I am going to focus though on the philosophical attempts to the problem, made by the French musicologist Gisèle Brelet (regarded as one of the pioneers of 20th century discourse on silence) and the Japanese composer Tōru Takemitsu (whose silence-as-death concept had been noticed by Richard C. Littlefield and assessed as deserving future study, what gave birth to the concept of this paper).10 I will try to discuss the similarities and differences between their reflec-

4 Ibid., pp. 203–206. 5 E.T. Harris, Silence as Sound: Handel’s Sublime Pauses, “The Journal of Musicology” 2005, Vol. 22, No. 4, pp. 525–526. 6 A. Pärt, Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten (score), Universal Edition, Wien 1981. 7 See, for example, J. Johnson, Webern and the Transformation of Nature, Cambridge 1999. 8 D. Metzer, Modern Silence, “The Journal of Musicology” 2006, Vol. 23, No. 3, p. 334. 9 S. Link, Going gently: contemplating silences and cinematic death, in: Silence, music, silent music, N. Losseff, J. Doctor (eds.), Aldershot – Burlington 2007, p. 71. 10 R. Littlefield, The Silence of the Frames, “Music Theory Online” 1996, Vol. 2, No. 1, [online] http://www.mtosmt.org/issues/mto.96.2.1/mto.96.2.1.littlefield.html [accessed: 04.04.2016].

116 Marek Dolewka, Silence as a symbol of death… tions, especially concerning the reasons for linking silence and death and the consequences that it entails. It is assumed that the perception of silence as a symbol of death is observable especially in the so-called Western culture.11 Indeed, manifestations of this relationship are present already in the Bible. For instance, Psalm 94 says: “Unless the LORD had given me help, I would soon have dwelt in the silence of death.”12 In Psalm 115 we read: “It is not the dead who praise the LORD, those who go down to the place of silence”. Again, the 8th chapter of the Book of Amos brings an evoca- tive vision: “The time is ripe for my people Israel; I will spare them no longer. “In that day,” declares the Sovereign LORD, “the songs in the temple will turn to wailing. Many, many bodies — flung every- where! Silence!” The discussed issue is also present in the thought of philosophers. What inevitably springs to mind is the famous phrase by Jean Jacques Rousseau: “An absolute silence leads to sadness. It offers an image of death.”13 Immanuel Kant, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Martin Heidegger, Jacques Derrida or Giorgio Agamben – to name just few of them – could be mentioned here as well. However, silence and death are linked also in other cultures. For example, in some parts of Africa the custom of keeping silence is observed during burial and funeral ceremonies, the birth process as well as initiation rituals.14 It may be also useful to recall the notion of ‘Tower of Silence’ (‘dakhma’ in Persian) – a circular tower-like construction, typical for Zoroastrian tradition, that serves for exposure of the dead to the flesh-eating birds. This English term is attributed to Robert Zavier Murphy, the 19th century oriental translator, who noticed that in Persian and in Hindustani it is common to say that dead people are

11 For research on death in Western culture see, for example: P. Ariès, Western attitudes toward death: from the Middle Ages to the present, Baltimore 1974; Polish edition (transl. K. Marczewska): Rozważania o historii śmierci, Warszawa 2007; M. Vovelle, La Mort et l’Occident de 1300 à nos jours, Paris 1983; Polish edition (transl. T. Swoboda et al.): Śmierć w cywilizacji Zachodu. Od roku 1300 po współczesność, Gdańsk 2004. 12 Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations are from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.®, [online] http://www.biblica.com [accessed: 04.04.2016]. 13 J.-J. Rousseau, Ch.E. Butterworth (transl.), The reveries of the solitary walker, Indianapolis 1992, p. 70. 14 P. Peek, Re-Sounding Silences, in: Sound, P. Kruth, H. Stobart (eds.), Cambridge 2000, pp. 23–24.

117 The Jagiellonian University Young Musicologists Quarterly, No. 30 (3/2016)

silent (‘Khâmush’).15 In this context, it will be particularly interesting to juxtapose the thought of Brelet and Takemitsu. As a composer, the latter takes a different perspective on music, and, despite his numerous links with the European tradition, he derives his inspiration from distant cultural roots.

Gisèle Brelet is widely associated with the notion of musical time. Fur- ther, she is one of the first Western aestheticians who engaged in the discussion of the problem of silence. In 1946, she published a paper called Musique et silence (Music and silence), translated into English 22 years later. The “faithful companion of music, which perpetually is born, dies and is born again” – this is one of the ways in which the French musicologist describes silence.16 While sound is for her a symbol of what is current or has been realised, silence stands for what is indeterminate, for an infinite potential, a possibility and freedom. According to Brelet, silence yields a building material for a musical form (provided that there are not too many rests that could destroy it) – sounds vanish quickly, but a listener synthesises them through a silent mental activity. Thus, thanks to silence, a temporal musical order emerges, because an absolute continuity (only sounds) would be a disruption and immobility (here comes a polemic between Brelet and Bergson). Objectively, silence cuts continuity, it divides it. Subjectively, however, it reunites the musical form, it synthesises it spiritually. Brelet distinguishes two basic, opposite types of silence: formal and expressive.17 The first one may also be called full, peopled, integrated into the form; and the latter is empty, making the listener realise the subjectivity, a feeling of evanescence, expelling them from musical time. Here we experience the link between silence and death. Brelet notices

15 J.J. Modi, The Religious Ceremonies and Customs of the Parsees, Bombay 1937, p. 56, [online] http://www.avesta.org/ritual/rcc1937.pdf [accessed: 04.04.2016]. 16 G. Brelet, Music and Silence, in: Reflections on Art: A Source Book of Writings by Artists, Critics, and Philosophers, red. S.K. Langer (ed.), New York 1968, p. 103; original version: G. Brelet, Musique et silence, “Revue Musicale” 1946, Vol. 22, No. 200, pp. 169–181. 17 Ibid., p. 120.

118 Marek Dolewka, Silence as a symbol of death… that both the composer and the performer fear pauses and she offers a clear explanation of the reason behind this fear. As she writes, silences

always oscillate between two extreme values – nothingness or plenitude.18 Si- lence [...] is the instant made manifest, and, because it is bound to the instant, that unreal division between the past and the future, silence is inseparable from unrest, from anxiety.19

It seems though that the key to understand the link among silence, death and fear in the thought of Brelet may be found in the last chapter of her extensive work Le temps musical, entitled evocatively “Death and transfiguration”. The beginning of its last paragraph, which has not been included in the aforementioned paper, reads as follows: “Like a musical work, our soul is an activity that falls into time, where it accomplishes its destiny...”20 Therefore, Brelet equates musical time with inner standing in awareness (an equation which has been postulated by Hegel); she draws a direct parallel between the condition of life and the condition of a musical piece. Thus, we could say that like silence, which “always exists in music”,21 every moment of our life is branded by inevitable death that ensues it. Fear of silence is then a fear of mortality. However, Brelet does not stop here. Developing the narration on the polarity of silence, she writes that thanks to silence, which separates music from the external world and creates a peaceful atmosphere, the listener may hear the voice of his inner self, a dimension for which the music exists. Music confronts us with the possibility to meet ourselves. In this way, silence must be respected by the composer, the performer, and the listener. The internal peace of the performer directly before starting a piece may bring a clear confirmation that he or she is united with the audience, as far as the audience together with them are discovering this inner principle. The problem is that going deeply into ourselves is connected with the polarity that silence stems from – an array of opportunities and freedom or nonexistence, death. That is why some may try to avoid it.

18 Ibid., p. 117. 19 Ibid., p. 106. 20 G. Brelet, Le temps musical: essai d’une esthétique nouvelle de la musique. [Vol.] 2, La forme musicale, Paris 1949, p. 752. (transl. by the author.) 21 G. Brelet (see note 16), p. 105.

119 The Jagiellonian University Young Musicologists Quarterly, No. 30 (3/2016)

As Brelet concludes, “sounds must fade away and die for the musical work to be born.”22 She finds here a victory of mind over matter, spiritual essence over corporeality. That is also why the French philosopher paraphrases Platon, saying that as “Love is the son of poverty”, likewise “Music is the daughter of silence.”23 Absence means here a spiritual possession; death in this sense is only a stage, an essential prerequisite for something more.

III

Let us turn now our attention to Tōru Takemitsu, whose most extensive set of writings in English is entitled Confronting Silence. As he admits, the title alludes to his main task as a composer, that is: to search for a sound which is strong enough to confront silence. Contrary to Brelet, his reflections concerning silence are scattered over many sections of his work and presented in quite an unstructured manner. He doesn’t consider this notion only in the context of music but, for example, art (Shūzō Takiguchi’s sketches),24 poetry (citing Pierre Reverdy’s words: “Only silence is eternal”)25 and language are also included. Takemitsu finds silence as “the womb” from which spoken languages that have no written version are born. He notices that the meaning of particular word depends there on very subtle factors, like the way of breathing (he gives examples of the language of the Hawaiians, Polynesians, Ainu and Swahili).26 He also shares the suggestive biologists’ report that the essence of the dolphins’ communication “lies not in their sounds, but in the length of silences between the sounds.”27 Moreover, Japanese composer criticizes Western musical notation because of putting the rests to the score “with statistical considerations, which is related to the unrestrained willingness to plan music.”28 What may be unanticipated though is his following declaration: “From Cage I learned life – or

22 Ibid., p. 121. 23 Ibid., p. 120. 24 T. Takemitsu; Y. Kakudo, G. Glasow (transl. and eds.), Confronting Silence. Selected Writings, Berkeley 1995, p. 16. 25 Ibid., pp. 7, 16. 26 Ibid., p. 83. 27 Ibid., p. 88. 28 Ibid., p. 5.

120 Marek Dolewka, Silence as a symbol of death…

I should say, how to live and the fact that music is not removed from life.”29 This approach is typical for Japanese culture; it would confirm the claims of some researchers, like Mikiko Sakamoto, that “Cage Shock” [a term coined by a Japanese music critic, Hidekazu Yoshida] “made Takemitsu return to his native Japanese music and art.”30 With regard to the John Cage’s contribution in restoring the role of silence in Western music, it has been explicitly commented by Takemitsu in the following phrase: “he evoked silence as the mother of sound.”31 The quest of connections between silence and death in the thought of Takemitsu could be started with his following statement: “For a human being, there is always the duality of life and death. Music as an art form always has to connect vehemently with both.”32 And, as Yuri Chayama – who wrote a doctoral dissertation dedicated to Takemitsu’s piano pieces – rightly noticed, since the composer compared once silence to death, it may imply combining sound and life. Moreover, Takemitsu defined art in an enigmatic way as “a human creature’s rebellion against silence. Poetry and music were born when man first uttered a sound, resisting the silence.”33 It may be inferred then that art in his view is a rebellion against death. Thus, the goal of artists should be to achieve immortality – if not in a literal sense, it would be through their work. Takemitsu sees the source of this kind of thinking in the fear of silence, which “is nothing new since silence surrounds the dark world of death.”34 It befits the bitter conclusion of the composer that contemporary arts often “have left the meaning of silence behind.”35 Meanwhile, as he explains, “it is in silence that the artists singles out the truth to sing or sketch. And it is then that he realizes his truth exists prior to everything.”36

29 Ibid., p. 137. 30 M. Sakamoto, Takemitsu and the Influence of “Cage Shock”: Transforming the Japanese Ideology into Music, unpublished Ph.D. Thesis, Lincoln, Nebraska 2010, p. 58, [online] http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article= 1022&context=musicstudent [accessed: 04.04.2016]. 31 T. Takemitsu (see note 24), p. 137. 32 T. Takemitsu, About ‘Marginalia’, in: “Takemitsu Toru Chosakushu”, Vol. 2, p. 207, Y. Chayama and M. Kimura (transl.; as cited in: Y. Chayama, The Influence of Modern Art on Toru Takemitsu’s Works for Piano, The University of Arizona 2013, p. 96.). 33 T. Takemitsu (see note 24), p. 17. 34 Ibid. 35 Ibid. 36 Ibid.

121 The Jagiellonian University Young Musicologists Quarterly, No. 30 (3/2016)

Takemitsu’s view on silence as a symbol of death matches one of the four precepts of Japanese aesthetics, as distinguished by Donald Keene.37 Apart from suggestion, irregularity, and simplicity, this Japa- nese scholar of American origin singles out perishability. A musical symbol of evanescence could be another manifestation of this ideal, alongside the analogy with cherry blossom, which is in bloom so briefly, or a comparison with a cracked tea bowl. This hypothesis is reinforced by Takemitsu himself, who asks rhetorically: “doesn’t beauty exist by its own coming into being and disappearing?”38 In the centre of Takemitsu’s meditations on silence there is, of course, the Japanese idea of ma, broadly described by many authors.39 The composer defines this ambiguous notion in a following way: “It is here that sound and silence confront each other, blending into a relationship beyond any objective measurement.”40 In the light of these words the title of his book – Confronting silence – becomes a clear allusion to the idea of ma. At first glance it might even appear analogical to Brelet’s concept of background silence that perpetually surrounds music. “Each sound, each phrase, has a halo of silence” – writes the French author.41 However, there is a strong clash in the perception of the relationship between silence and sound. Surprisingly, the Japanese composer adds that “sound, confronting the silence of ma, yields supremacy in the final expression.”42 Contrary to Brelet, he gives precedence to the sound and stops at this sensory impression.

While discussing the links between Brelet and Takemitsu, one should point out the vocabulary that the French author uses. Many times she writes about “perpetual rebirth” of music and sound, saying that the essence of the musical form is “to be perpetually nascent and renas-

37 D. Keene, Japanese Aesthetics, “Philosophy East and West” 1969, Vol. 19, No. 3, pp. 293–306. 38 T. Takemitsu (see note 24), p. 21. 39 See, for example, J. Lee Chenette, The concept of ma and the music of Takemitsu, Grinnell 1985. 40 Ibid., p. 51. 41 G. Brelet (see note 16), p. 106. 42 T. Takemitsu (see note 24), p. 51.

122 Marek Dolewka, Silence as a symbol of death… cent” and comparing the sound which “never stops dying and being born again” to the mind.43 This may resemble in some way the idea of reincarnation – a word that Brelet also uses. She explicitly refers to East (with a broad geographical understanding of the word) when she talks about the need of mental preparation of the listener. In this context, she mentions the Hindu and Tibetan tradition of “the birth of sound”, treated as a religious mystery.44 Moreover, in 1946, the same year that she published Musique et silence, Brelet had a paper released dedicated to the problems for the Western listener with perception of music that she called ‘exotic’.45 She referred there to some examples of music from Bali (Javanese gamelan), China (orgues à bouche chinois – probably sheng), Japan (Nō theatre) and Tibet (religious polyphony). It proves that Eastern cultures – despite the poor state of research on them that was available at the time – were in the scope of Brelet’s scientific interests. It is also worth noticing that Brelet’s Esthétique et création musicale (1947) was translated into Japanese already in 1969 and the Brelet’s thought is nowadays extensively referred to by the Japanese scholars.46 It would be tempting to dwell on this “Eastern motif” for a bit longer, especially because a few years after publishing Brelet's Musique et silence, John Cage, regarded as the pioneer of transplant- ing the Eastern idea of silence onto the Western culture, released his Lecture on Nothing.47 However, the idea of reincarnation is not alien also to the European philosophy, starting as early as Pythagorean school. Besides, it is generally recognised48 that Brelet was inspired by French spiritualism, for which continuity is one of the key concepts. This notion deserves a yet closer look by thorough analysis of other Brelet’s writings and studies on them. Interestingly, regardless of their cultural sphere of influence or origin, Brelet and Takemitsu arrive at the conclusion that a common

43 G. Brelet (see note 16), p. 106. 44 Ibid., p. 104. 45 G. Brelet, Musiques exotiques et valeurs permanentes de l’art musical, “Revue Philosophique de la France et de l’Étranger” 1946, Vol. 136, No. 1/3, pp. 71–96. 46 See, for example, the writings by: T. Hori, M. Satō, M. Shibaike, K. Tanogashira, S. Yamashita. 47 The lecture was delivered in 1949 or 1950 at the Artists’ Club in New York City (Eighth Street). See: J. Cage, Silence: lectures and writings, Hanover, N. H. 1973 (First printing 1961), p. 1x, 126. 48 See, for example, E. Fubini, History of music aesthetics, London 1990.

123 The Jagiellonian University Young Musicologists Quarterly, No. 30 (3/2016)

feature for silence and death is the fear that it causes among people, including composers, performers and listeners. They also both describe silence as a unique source of creativity. Surprisingly though, the Japanese composer does not specify if he means only people from the Western culture; neither does he suggest how to deal with this fear of silence, other than quoting the aforementioned verse from the French poet Pierre Reverdy: “only silence is eternal.”49 This may remind a manifestation of Buddhist silence on metaphysical issues, stereotypi- cally interpreted by some Western scholars as the evidence of lack of metaphysical discourse in Buddhist teaching.50 Meanwhile, as already underlined, a strand of eternity and the benefits from exploration of our inner self in silence are clearly present in Brelet’s thought.

At the end of this paper I would like to mention another prominent composer and writer who explored the connection between silence and death – Raymond Murray Schafer. Similarly as in the case of Takemitsu, his thoughts on silence are a series of loose observations, although brought together in one short chapter of his book The soundscape, entitled “Silence”. Among other things, the Canadian composer draws attention to the appreciation of silence in the religious context. Calling it “the tongue of angels”, he lists great “masters of silence”, like, among others, Lao-Tzu, Rumi, Kirpal Singh and Christian mystics (Angela of Foligno, Meister Eckhart, John of Ruusbroec, or the anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing). At the same time he underlines the importance for mental and spiritual condition of quietening in the bosom of nature or in the silent places. He also mentions the role of silence in

49 T. Takemitsu (see note 24), p. 7. 50 See, for example, J. Y Park, Buddhism and postmodernity. Zen, Huayan, and the possibility of Buddhist postmodern ethics, Lanham 2008, pp. 11–30 (Chapter 1: The Silence of the Buddha). For the idea of “soundless music” in the tradition of Zen Buddhism, see, for example, R. Skupin, Muzyka ciszy i cisza w muzyce kultur Orientu, in: Wokół ciszy. W stulecie urodzin Johna Cage’a, M. Grajter (ed.), Łódź 2013, pp. 131–141.

124 Marek Dolewka, Silence as a symbol of death…

Rilke’s Duino Elegies or simultaneous discovery of the value of silence in music by Anton Webern and in psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud.51 It should be emphasised that one of the subsections of Schafer’s work is entitled “Western man and negative silence”. According to the author, the goal of avoiding silence in our society is “to nourish [the] fantasy of perpetual life.52 Schafer combines silence with death and nothingness, perceived as “the eternal threat to being.”53 This use of silence as the symbol of nothingness, also present in Brelet’s thought, seems to be quite paradoxical. It is generally recognised that silence always mean something, depending on the context, for example of surrounding sounds. Feeling of nothingness would be then nothing but the mental impression. Schafer also notices that making sounds serves as a remedy for loneliness. Here, the words of Takemitsu concerning the origins of poetry and music sound as if they were a counterpoint to this statement. The quotation from Schafer could be used as a motto to sum up this paper: “If we have a hope of improving the acoustic design of the world, it will be realizable only after the recovery of silence as a positive state in our lives.”54 The first step is to realise why it is perceived in a negative way and then to consider the benefits of silence. The case of Brelet and Takemitsu seems to be an interesting attempt to answer these questions, although – as we could see including the elements of Schafer’s thought – not the only one. Extensive anthropological and psychological research in this area is also necessary. As one might say, Memento mori – Memento silentii.

Abstract

The link between silence and death has been a recurring theme of human thought and can often be found in reflections on music. Among many attempts to approach this problem, the author of this paper focuses on those done by Gisèle Brelet and Tōru Takemitsu. The “faithful companion” of music which “perpetually is born, dies and is born again”

51 R.M. Schafer, The soundscape: our sonic environment and the tuning of the world, Rocherster, Verm. 1994, pp. 253–259. 52 Ibid., p. 256. 53 Ibid., p. 257. 54 Ibid., p. 259.

125 The Jagiellonian University Young Musicologists Quarterly, No. 30 (3/2016)

– this is one of the ways in which French musicologist describes silence. “For a human being, there is always the duality of life and death. Music as an art form always has to connect vehemently with both” – notices Japanese composer, who in another statement combines silence with “the dark world of death”. Interestingly, both Brelet and Takemitsu arrive at the conclusion that such connotations may well be the source of the fear of silence that affects some composers or performers. Despite different contexts, some analogies to their thought – like connecting silence with nothingness and loneliness – may be also found in the Canadian composer Raymond Murray Schafer’s writings, presented fragmentarily in the last subsection. The differences in the notion of the problem between the authors are, moreover, discussed in this paper.

Keywords

silence, death, Gisèle Brelet, Tōru Takemitsu, Raymond Murray Schafer

Abstrakt

Cisza jako symbol śmierci w refleksji Gisèle Brelet i Tōru Takemitsu

Związek pomiędzy ciszą i śmiercią to wciąż powracający motyw w ludzkiej myśli. Często znajduje on swoje odzwierciedlenie w muzyce. Spośród licznych prób zmierzenia się z tą kwestią autor niniejszego ar- tykułu skoncentrował się na tych podjętych przez Gisèle Brelet i Tōru Takemitsu. „Wierna towarzyszka” muzyki, „stale rodząca się, umiera- jąca i odradzająca się na nowo” – oto jeden ze sposobów, w jaki ciszę opisuje francuska muzykolog. „Dla człowieka zawsze będzie istniał du- alizm życia i śmierci. Muzyka jako forma sztuki musi się łączyć z całą żarliwością z każdym z tych elementów” – zauważa japoński kompozytor, który w innej wypowiedzi łączy ciszę z „mroczną krainą śmier- ci”. Co ciekawe, zarówno Brelet, jak i Takemitsu dochodzą do wniosku, że tego rodzaju powiązania mogą stać się źródłem strachu przed ciszą, wpływającego na kompozytorów bądź wykonawców. Pomimo od- miennych kontekstów pewne analogie do ich poglądów – na przykład łączenie ciszy z nicością i samotnością – można odnaleźć w pismach

126 Marek Dolewka, Silence as a symbol of death… kanadyjskiego kompozytora Raymonda Murraya Schafera. Zostały one pokrótce omówione w ostatnim podrozdziale. W artykule zapre- zentowano także różnice w spojrzeniu autorów na podjęty problem.

Słowa kluczowe cisza, milczenie, śmierć, Gisèle Brelet, Tōru Takemitsu, Raymond Murray Schafer

Bibliography

Ariès P., Western attitudes toward death: from the Middle Ages to the present, Baltimore 1974; Polish edition (transl. K. Marczewska): Rozważania o historii śmierci, Warszawa 2007. Bartel D., Musica poetica: Musical-Rhetorical Figures in German Baroque Music, Lincoln 1997. Bauman Z., Mortality, Immortality and Other Life Strategies, Stanford, Calif. 1992; Polish edition (transl. N. Leśniewski): Smierć i niesmiertelnosć. O wielosci strategii zycia, Warszawa 1998. Brelet G., Le temps musical: essai d’une esthétique nouvelle de la musique. [Vol.] 2, La forme musicale, Paris 1949. Brelet G., Musique et silence, “Revue Musicale” 1946, Vol. 22, No. 200. Reprinted as Music and Silence, in: Reflections on Art: A Source Book of Writings by Artists, Critics, and Philosophers, red. S.K. Langer (ed.), New York 1968. Brelet G., Musiques exotiques et valeurs permanentes de l’art musical, “Re- vue Philosophique de la France et de l’Étranger” 1946, Vol. 136, No. 1/3. Cage J., Silence. Lectures and writings, Middletown, Conn. 1973 (First printing 1961). Fubini E., History of music aesthetics, London 1990. Harris E.T., Silence as Sound: Handel’s Sublime Pauses, “The Journal of Musicology” 2005, Vol. 22, No. 4. Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.®, [online] http://www.biblica.com [accessed: 04.04.2016]. Johnson J., Webern and the Transformation of Nature, Cambridge 1999.

127 The Jagiellonian University Young Musicologists Quarterly, No. 30 (3/2016)

Keene D., Japanese Aesthetics, “Philosophy East and West” 1969, Vol. 19, No. 3. Lee Chenette J., The concept of ma and the music of Takemitsu, Grinnell 1985. Link S., Going gently: contemplating silences and cinematic death, in: Silence, music, silent music, N. Losseff, J. Doctor (eds.), Aldershot – Burlington 2007. Littlefield R., The Silence of the Frames, “Music Theory Online” 1996, Vol. 2, No. 1, [online] http://www.mtosmt.org/issues/mto.96.2.1/mto.96.2.1.littlefield.html [accessed: 04.04.2016]. Metzer D., Modern Silence, “The Journal of Musicology” 2006, Vol. 23, No. 3. Modi J.J., The Religious Ceremonies and Customs of the Parsees, Bom- bay 1937, [online] http://www.avesta.org/ritual/rcc1937.pdf [accessed: 04.04.2016]. Park J. Y, Buddhism and postmodernity. Zen, Huayan, and the possibility of Buddhist postmodern ethics, Lanham 2008, pp. 11–30 (Chapter 1: The Silence of the Buddha). Pärt A., Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten (score), Universal Edition, Wien 1981. Peek P., Re-Sounding Silences, in: Sound, P. Kruth, H. Stobart (eds.), Cam- bridge 2000. Rousseau J.-J., Ch.E. Butterworth (transl.), The reveries of the solitary walker, Indianapolis 1992. Sakamoto M., Takemitsu and the Influence of “Cage Shock”: Transforming the Japanese Ideology into Music, unpublished Ph.D. Thesis, Lincoln, Nebraska 2010, [online] http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1022&context=musicstudent [accessed: 04.04.2016]. Schafer R.M., The soundscape: our sonic environment and the tuning of the world, Rocherster, Verm. 1994. Skupin R., Muzyka ciszy i cisza w muzyce kultur Orientu, in: Wokół ciszy. W stulecie urodzin Johna Cage’a, M. Grajter (ed.), Łódź 2013. Takemitsu T., About ‘Marginalia’, in: “Takemitsu Toru Chosakushu”, Vol. 2, Y. Chayama and M. Kimura (transl.; as cited in: Y. Chayama, The Influ- ence of Modern Art on Toru Takemitsu’s Works for Piano, The University of Arizona 2013, p. 96). Takemitsu T.; Y. Kakudo, G. Glasow (transl. and eds.), Confronting Silence. Selected Writings, Berkeley 1995 Vovelle M., La Mort et l’Occident de 1300 à nos jours, Paris 1983; réed. 2001.; Polish edition (transl. T. Swoboda et al.): Smierć w cywilizacji Zachodu. Od roku 1300 po współczesność, Gdańsk 2004.

128 Bionotes

Itzana Dobbelaere – born in 1989 in Mexico City. She graduated Mu- sicology at ULB (Université Libre de Bruxelles), Belgium, defending a thesis about the Tibetan lute called the dranyen. She keeps on eth- nomusicological researches concerning chordophones at the Museum of Musical Instruments in Brussels, working in collaboration with the ethnomusicologist Stéphanie Weisser. Her research focuses on the Japanese shamisen and the Moroccan guembri. She so far participated in symposiums in Brussels (conference about music in Brussels during the Second World War) and in Georgia (about Gnawa music).

Marek Dolewka – the graduate of Musicology and Religious Studies at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. He deepened his studies at Paris-Sorbonne (Paris IV) and University of Vienna. His master’s thesis, concerning on the reception of Arvo Pärt’s music in Poland and written under the guidance of Professor Małgorzata Woźna-Stankiewicz, received The Ray E. and Ruth A. Robinson Musicology Award. A participant of many domestic and foreign conferences, including London, Prague, Helsinki and Erevan. At the 7th International Conference- Competition for Students in Musicology in Tbilisi he was awarded with a Diploma for the best paper of Ph.D. Student. Since 2014 he performs the duties of the executive editor of “The Jagiellonian University Young Musicologists Quarterly”.

Martina Hanáková – born in 1989 in Nový Jičín, Czech Republic. She studied at the Masaryk University (Brno), Faculty of Arts, Department of European Ethnology. Her master´s thesis Phenomena of Street Musicians

129 The Jagiellonian University Young Musicologists Quarterly, No. 30 (3/2016)

on the example of Brno city received a special scholarship as an award. She currently works on her PhD dissertation, which deals with Busking within the Czech Republic. She attended an internship in the Musical Instruments Museum in Brussels in 2015. Martina is interested in Arabic language and culture. She spent two months at the Czech Embassies as an intern in Rabat (Morocco) and in Cairo (Egypt). She also attended three international conferences in Istanbul and one in Tbilisi.

Neda Kolić – born in 1991, PhD student at the Department of Musicol- ogy, Faculty of Music, University of Arts in Belgrade. As an author she presented papers at conferences, symposia, radio shows, etc. At the 7th International Student Conference-Competition in Musicology in Tbilisi Neda won Diploma for the best paper of MA Student. She has been a member of the Composers’ Association of Serbia (the section of music writers) since 2016.

Shorena Metreveli – born in 1991 (Georgia – Rustavi). She studied in Tbilisi State Conservatoire, receiving the bachelor degree – faculty of Composition and Musical Theory (2010-14). Since 2014 she has been a MA student with the specialty in Church Music. She participated in the local and international conferences. In 2013 and 2016, she acquired D. Arakishvili scholarship. In 2014, Shorena became the winner of 5th international Musicology Conference-Competition in Tbilisi in the nomination of “Best Presentation”. Also in 2014, she was granted with M. Andriadze award for work: Chants of Episcopal liturgy in Georgian church tradition. She works at folk school (She is teacher of Solfejio and History of Georgian music) and sings in “Tbilisi Girls Choir”, “Students Choir of Tbilisi State Conservatoire” and in an ensemble “Ialoni”. She has been a chanter and psalm-reader in the church from 2007.

Dominika Micał – M.A. in Music Theory (2015, graduated with dis- tinction, Academy of Music in Kraków, Poland) and B.A. in Com- parative Literature (2014, Jagiellonian University in Kraków). Currently a Ph.D. student at the Academy of Music in Kraków. Her research interests include British and Polish contemporary music (Jonathan

130 Bionotes

Harvey, Harrison Birtwistle, Michał Jakub Papara, Andrzej Kwieciński), connections between music and literature, hermeneutics of music and literature, and opera in XX and XXI centuries. Presently she writes a doctoral dissertation about the contemporary music inspired by late- Renaissance madrigal. She is also an active music journalist (“Ruch Muzyczny”, “Meakultura”, “Glissando”) and a member of the prestigious student’s association Collegium Invisibile.

Marlene Priller – a master’s student of musicology at KFU Graz and University of Music and performing Arts Graz, she studies pedagogy at the KFU Graz as well. Currently she works on her master thesis dealing with the musical Salons in Europe during the 19th century. Since 2014, she has been a student assistant at the Centre for Gender Studies, University of Music and performing Arts Graz. She has also worked on prefaces for study scores for the publisher Musikproduktion Höflich since 2014.

Hélène Sechehaye – born in 1990 in Braine l'Alleud, Belgium. She received a master’s degree in Musicology at Université Libre de Bruxelles, and she is willing to begin writing a doctoral thesis on the Gnawa in Brussels in co-supervision between Université Libre de Bruxelles and Université Jean Monnet de Saint-Etienne (France). Since 2014, she has done a field research in Brussels among the Moroccan Gnawa community, meeting musicians, attending sacred and secular performances and playing and dancing Gnawa Music. She currently works in Muziekpublique, and in association with it she promotes traditional world music in Brussels.

Marija Simonović – born in 1991, PhD student of musicology at the Faculty of Music of the University of Arts in Belgrade. She earned her master’s degree at the same faculty in 2016. As a co-author she published the paper entitled Stevan Stojanović Mokranjac in Primary school education in the journal for culture “Mokranjac”. As an author, she presented the papers at student symposia, radio shows, roundtable and international conferences (in Tbilisi, Belgrade), then publishing some of them.

131