Conceiving Musical Transdialection

RICHARD BEAUDOIN AND JOSEPH MOORE Conceiving Musical Transdialection While it may not surprise you to learn that the first critic put it, real music is “mostly thrown into a bit of music above is the opening of a chorale pre- seething undigested, unimagined heap of dyslexic lude by Baroque master Johann Sebastian Bach, clusters of multiple key- and time-proportions, as who would guess that the second bit is a transcrip- intricately enmeshed in the fetishism of the written tion of it? But it is—it is a transcription by the con- notation as those with notes derived from number- temporary British composer Michael Finnissy.1 magic.”2 We are more sympathetic to Finnissy’s The two passages look very different from one music. But still, how can one maintain that his another, even to those of us who do not read mu- music transcribes Bach’s? What conceptual un- sic. And hearing the pieces will do little to dispel dertaking and what art-historical trajectory can the shock, for here we have bits of music that produce such a relationship without straining the seem worlds apart in their melodic makeup, har- term ‘transcription’ past its useful limits? monic content, and rhythmic complexity. It is a far In this article, we illuminate the wandering no- cry from Bach’s steady tonality to Finnissy’s float- tion of musical transcription by reflecting on the ing, tangled lines—a sonic texture in which, as one various ways ‘transcription’ and its cognates have The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 68:2 Spring 2010 c 2010 The American Society for Aesthetics ! 106 The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism been used in musical discourse (Section I). At While notational transcription aims to preserve root, musical transcription aims at preservation, music across differences in notation, and ethno- though as we bring out, exactly which musical in- musicological transcription aims to preserve mu- gredients are preserved across which transforma- sic in a notated form, what we call “musical tran- tions varies from transcriptional project to transcription” aims to preserve the expressive content scriptional project. In fact, our primary goal is to of a musical work across some difference in musi- uncover, articulate, and endorse one very interest- cal context. Determining just what differences can ing such project—we call it “transdialection”—in legitimately engage a project of musical transcrip- which a transcriber reexpresses a work in a dif- tion is the central concern of this article. But the ferent musical dialect. We sketch the emergence paradigm case is the attempt to preserve a musical of this fruitful musical undertaking by examining work across a difference in performance-means, some notable twentieth-century Bach transcrip- as when Ferruccio Busoni reset for the piano cer- tions, including Finnissy’s, which became increas- tain chorale preludes that Bach composed for the ingly loose through the decades (Section II). We church organ. (We discuss this very example in the sharpen our understanding of this new species of next section.) transcription by exploring an analogy with poetic ‘Musical transcription’ is an apt term for a dis- translation (Section III) and by responding to sev- tinct and distinguished musical undertaking that eral objections (Section IV). We conclude, among has engaged many composers and arrangers. But other things, that Finnissy’s transcription is justifi- the label should not imply, of course, that nota- ably and usefully so called. And we suggest ways tional and ethnomusicological transcriptions have in which our notion of transdialection might be ex- nothing musical about them. And it should not im- tended to illuminate other artistic practices (Sec- ply that all musical transcriptions go by this label. tion V). The musical undertaking we have in mind can go by other names—‘arrangement,’ ‘setting,’ ‘orches- tration,’ and ‘reduction’ being the most common i. “transcription” traversed in English.4 Musical transcription is a highly circumscribed The word ‘transcription’ is used in several ways form of musical borrowing—a sort of limit case, in musical discourse. It is worth introducing some in fact. J. Peter Burkholder usefully defines mu- terminology so that we can set apart the notion— sical borrowing as the taking of “something from “musical transcription”—thatwe aim to illuminate an existing piece of music and using it in a new as well as to show how, at root, transcriptions in piece.” And he adds that this “something may be all senses aim at preservation. “Notational tran- anything, from a melody to a structural plan. But scription” is the process of renotating a musical it must be sufficiently individual to be identifiable work—that is, of notating in a new form a previ- as coming from this particular work, rather than ously notated work, as when a piece written in from a repertoire in general.”5 The musical tran- tablature is transcribed to staff notation, or when scriber can be regarded as a musical borrower who a trumpet part in C is transcribed to be played on a treats a specific, preexisting work (or a clearly de- trumpet in B-flat. Notational transcription aims to limited section of it, such as a movement) in its preserve a musical work across some difference in entirety and unembedded in a longer work.6 In notational form, and it can be carried off without order to count as a transcription, this treatment actually listening to the work itself. “Ethnomusi- must satisfy two additional constraints. First, the cological transcription” is the process of writing transcriber aims, in ways we will explore, to pre- down or notating music that is heard in live per- serve this work’s expressive content across some formance or on a recording. This might be done musical difference, and not merely to use it as ma- in an effort to preserve the music of some cul- terial in some new, derivative work. Second, she ture or musician for enthnomusicological study; succeeds in carrying out this preservation.7 but it might also be done for musical education, Musical transcription has the conservative goal as when an aspiring jazz musician transcribes an of reexpressing the content of the target work in improvised solo from a recording.3 a new musical context. And indeed, the phrase Beaudoin and Moore Conceiving Musical Transdialection 107 ‘reexpression’ suggests how musical transcription son with the original. Rather than being valued merely is, paradoxically, a sort of maximal form of mu- for making the musical contents of their models more sical borrowing, and thereby nearly not a case at accessible, transcriptions are also valued for enriching all. In musical transcription the original work is our understanding and appreciation of the merits (and not “borrowed” in the way one might borrow a demerits) of their models.10 hammer and some nails in order to build a shed or a theme in order to compose a set of variations Expanding on Davies’s observation, Paul Thom upon it. The musical transcriber aims not to create has recently argued that, in this capacity, tran- an entirely new (even if derivative) musical work, scription can be viewed as a form of noncritical but rather, as it were, to redeploy or revoice the interpretation: while the music critic might say original work in a new context.8 something about a work’s meaning or content, This explains some of our uneven descriptive the transcriber (and also the performer and the tendencies. We do not know, for example, whether composer of variations on a theme) can show it.11 to count a transcription as a new (even if max- This interpretative function has, we submit, be- imally derivative) work, and we do not know come more prominent as the invention and wide whether to count the transcriber as a cocomposer distribution of musical recordings have increas- of the result. This seems to us to be largely a con- ingly obviated the transcriber’s traditional task of ventional matter of labeling: whether we give the simply making a work more widely accessible, by transcriber primary billing or list him more sec- transcribing it for performance on the living room ondarily as the “arranger” is largely a matter of piano, for example.12 (A similar shift occurred in marketing. painting, where a rise in abstraction was concur- This conventionalism would follow from the rent with the onset of photography.) This shift in view that the individuation of musical works is function helps explain the emergence, in the twen- subject to indeterminacy.9 However, our treat- tieth century, of a new, “transdialectical” form of ment of musical transcription does not depend transcription. upon this or any other view about the contested individuation of musical works. We rely instead upon a sufficiently robust notion of expressive ii. bach transcribed content, which we will defend in Section IV. Same- ness of expressive content is clearly necessary for We now discuss in some detail five twentieth- work identity, but we are agnostic here about century transcriptions of works by Bach.13 These whether it is also sufficient. transcriptions, which span the entire century Musical transcription is not an automatic or (1907–1992), reflect what we regard as a general merely technical process. Transcriptions can be emergence of musical “transdialection” from a highly creative, as we will show in the next sec- more traditional trans-instrumental form of mu- tion, though the transcriber’s creativity is balanced sical transcription. against—or better, played out within—a guiding Bach–Busoni: In 1907, Feruccio Busoni sought and constraining fidelity to the original work. In to transfer the original organ music of Bach’s negotiating this tension between authenticity and Komm, Gott, Schopfer,¨ heiliger Geist to the mod- originality, the transcriber is, as Stephen Davies ern piano.14 Busoni’s transcription nicely repre- notes, like the performer: a good transcription, sents a tradition of more or less “straight” piano like a good performance, is faithful to the par- transcriptions that was already well established ent work while also providing the audience with and widely practiced by the early twentieth cen- something original.

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