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 tran- scription” 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. And like an interesting perfor- tury. But even in his relatively straightforward mance, what a good transcription often provides transcription, Busoni employs some artful con- is some sort of insight into the parent work: structions of his own. In his score, Bach directs the organist to perform organo pleno—that is, to A transcription cannot help but comment on the original use a substantial complement of pipes. Busoni, im- in re-presenting the musical contents of the original, so itating the octave-rich organ pleno sound, fills his a transcription invites reconsideration of and compari- transcription with numerous octaves that are not 108 The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism present in Bach’s score, maximizing the timbre of often lush twentieth-century colors seem poised the piano in an effort to emulate the sound of the to break away into dodecaphonic variations, those organ. familiar with both works will hear the Webern as Bach’s original asks the organist to read three a faithful reexpression of Bach’s work, though its staves of music at once: one for the left hand, one extreme timbral discontinuities point the way to- for the right hand, and one for the pedals, operated ward transcriptions that are even looser musically. by the feet. It would have been an easy matter for Bach–Stravinsky: Igor Stravinsky’s 1955 tran- Busoni to reduce the three staves of the organ mu- scription of Bach’s canonic variations on Von him- sic into a simplified version for piano written on mel hoch da komm’ ich her marks an important two staves. However, Busoni, capturing the per- departure from the musically faithful transcrip- formative complexity of the original, ingeniously tions described above.17 Stravinsky reproduces all maintains a three-staved texture, with a stave for of Bach’s notes and rhythms, but then adds some the left hand, a stave for the right hand, and a that are all his own. These additional notes are middle stave that uses both hands in alternation. foreign not only to Bach’s original work but also Busoni successfully preserves the overall tone to Bach’s musical language. In fact, they create of Bach’s chorale prelude, and indeed of the ex- chords that are quintessentially Stravinskian. alted plainchant on which it is based—“Come, Cre- The clearest example occurs in Stravinsky’s set- ator, Spirit blessed!” Even though Busoni has not ting of Bach’s Variation III. Early on, Stravinsky changed the fundamental harmonic or melodic adds notes that echo Bach’s chorale melody, but content of Bach’s original, he has nevertheless at an interval (minor sevenths above and below) had to make some slight musical changes in or- that creates a line foreign to Bach’s original. The der to preserve across instruments the experience added pitches form new harmonic collections (so- of playing and hearing Bach’s work. called 0257 collections such as C-D-F-G) that are Bach–Webern: Anton Webern’s notorious 1934 completely absent from Bach’s compositional lan- orchestral transcription of Bach’s six-part Ricer- guage. Music theorist Joseph Straus nicely summa- car from The Musical Offering moves subtly away rizes the relationship: from Busoni’s more traditional transcription.15 Webern’s conceptual leap is not to alter Bach’s Stravinsky’s added lines do not conform to the prevail- notes or rhythms—theyare all faithfully preserved. ing harmonic logic of Bach’s original. . . . The harmonies Rather, it is to break up Bach’s long contrapuntal formed by the lines are no longer triadic, but consistently melodies into small units, distributing each melody create a small number of non-triadic sets, particularly among several different instruments. (The tech- the tetrachords 0247 and 0257, . . . which are principal nique is called Klangfarbenmelodie or tone-color motives of [Stravinsky’s great neoclassical ballet] Pul- melody.) For example, a single instrument would cinella as well. In this sense, the lines are regulated to originally play the first twenty notes of Bach’s each other, but on Stravinsky’s terms, not Bach’s.18 fugue theme.16 But in Webern’s orchestral tran- scription, the first five notes are played by the Stravinsky intentionally here moves beyond the trombone, the next two by the horn, then two by transcriber’s traditional goal of remaining as faith- the trumpet, two by the horn with harp, dovetail- ful as possible to the musical notes and language of ing into four by the trombone, and so on. the original while adjusting to differences in per- Webern’s transcription is kaleidoscopic. Bach’s formance means. He strives instead to preserve original lines are all present and accounted for, the work’s expressive content across a difference but each is “sung” by an unpredictable and ever- in musical language—a dialect he himself created changing orchestral voice. Moreover, Webern’s in his neoclassic period. But as we see it, Stravin- coloristic choices foreground many short motives sky does not, in his work, build an entirely new mu- that are not heard as such in the continuity of sical expression upon music he has borrowed from Bach’s original. Since much of Webern’s own ma- Bach. Rather, he provides a musical language— ture music is made up of similar tiny motivic cells, a palette of harmonic and timbral sensitivities— his transcription is a “Webernization” of Bach. within which he endeavors to reexpress Bach’s Nevertheless, while Webern’s fragmentation and original music. Stravinsky does not say something Beaudoin and Moore Conceiving Musical Transdialection 109 new; he says in his own way what Bach previously After all, composers (including classical variation said in his, revealing features of the original in the writers and modern jazz musicians) often bor- process. row a melody from a preexisting piece and re- The passage we just discussed illuminates the harmonize it without the intention of reexpress- point. The original chorale melody in Bach’s or- ing the work. In such cases, the earlier melody gan work is written as an inner voice, surrounded is merely a compositional jumping-off point. But above and below by other faster-moving lines Freidman’s treatment remains a transcription— of counterpoint. Stravinsky’s transcription fore- more exactly, a transdialection—because it pre- grounds Bach’s inner part in two ways: first, he serves the totality of Bach’s original. It does so by scores the line for human voices, which always adding an accompaniment that is wholly in keep- brings prominence; second, he uses brass instru- ing with Friedman’s own musical style. For all of ments to echo the chorale melody in minor sev- his pianistic modernizing, Friedman ingeniously enths. This is particularly elegant, since it is the reexpresses Bach’s original in an early twentieth- “Stravinskian” additions that highlight and fore- century voice. ground an otherwise backgrounded element of Bach–Finnissy: We now turn to the example Bach’s original counterpoint. For these reasons, that opened our article, Michael Finnissy’s tran- we regard Stravinsky’s transcription as a solid ex- scription of Bach’s “Deathbed Chorale,” so called ample of what we call “transdialectical transcrip- because Bach may have dictated the piece to a tion” or, more simply, “transdialection.” The goal colleague during his final days of life.21 If Stravin- in this species of transcription is to revoice or re- sky and Friedman crossed a conceptual threshold express the original not (or not merely) across a hinted at by Webern, then Finnissy tramples that difference in performance means, but across a dif- threshold and runs a good deal further for good ference in musical dialect. measure. For in Finnissy’s transcription the Bach Bach–Friedman: Born in 1882, the same year as original is now increasingly difficult to perceive, Stravinsky, the Polish piano virtuoso Ignaz Fried- both aurally and graphically. man likewise saw fit to add “non-Bachian” ele- Amidst the many alterations, Finnissy’s piece ments to an original work by Bach. Friedman’s generally maintains a through line that follows 1948 arrangement for solo piano of the “Gavotte, Bach’s counterpoint from beginning to end, but in en Rondeau” from Bach’s Partita No. 3 in E Major almost all cases the rhythms, pitches, and location for Solo Violin modifies the original on two fronts: of the voices are distorted. To complicate matters texture and harmony.19 Texturally, Friedman adds further, Finnissy adds some surrounding mate- a thoroughgoing accompaniment to Bach’s origi- rial, including other superimposed melodies from nal monophonic composition, which appears com- Bach’s original, and melodies from Alban Berg’s plete and intact as Friedman’s melody.20 Since 1935 Violin Concerto. Finnissy’s use of Bach’s a melody–accompaniment texture is standard in chorale prelude seems a direct challenge to the Friedman’s late-romantic or early-modern style, traditional notion of transcription. But then why his addition of accompaniment can be said to mod- should we continue to regard Finnissy’s project as ernize the texture of Bach’s original. Harmoni- transcription? cally, Friedman’s transcription begins by invoking It seems to us that, despite the significant mu- Bachian harmonies to support Bach’s line; how- sical alterations, Finnissy’s fundamental aim is to ever, during a reprise of the rondeau theme (mea- remain faithful to Bach—to reexpress Bach’s orig- sures 48–53), Friedman’s accompaniment veers inal in Finnissy’s own twentieth-century musical into a slippery, modern chromatic harmony that language. And this can be heard, though doing so is foreign to Bach’s language. During this passage, requires more than a casual listening (or a passing Friedman’s early twentieth-century harmonic sen- glance at the respective scores). We will briefly sibility exerts itself on Bach’s baroque melody. highlight three dimensions of transdialectical fi- Given Friedman’s additions, one might ques- delity—mood, texture, and relative historical com- tion whether Friedman’s treatment is really a plexity. transcription of Bach or whether it falls into a Though Bach’s score specifies no tempo mark- broader category of musical borrowing instead. ing or performance indications, the piece is 110 The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism profoundly melancholic: its contrapuntal unfold- has no place within common tonal practice, and ing is steadfast, lacking any obvious climax point includes a level of dissonance not often found or shift in dynamics. The same can be said of outside of high-modernist or avant-garde circles Finnissy’s transcription: his tempo marking reads in the late twentieth century. Legatissimmo, sostenuto, intimamente (very con- Finnissy accomplishes these significant musi- nected, sustained, very intimate), while his dy- cal similarities despite the striking musical differ- namic never rises above pianississimo (extremely ences we noted at the outset. But did Finnissy quiet). Though Finnissy shifts the position of intend to carry out what we hear as an expres- Bach’s lines and confounds their tonal logic, they sive transdialectical preservation? Concerning the nevertheless maintain a mood of calm, contrapun- piece at hand, Finnissy writes: “Layered frag- tal rumination. ments of Bach’s chorale-prelude (BWV 668) sur- The Bach and the Finnissy also share musi- face throughout, but no consistent ‘tonality’ is sug- cal texture. Each exhibits a pattern of four-voice gested as a context. The constituent measures of counterpoint that winnows to a single voice, then the original are constantly melting away, refracted works its way back to four voices, only to oscillate through varying intervals of transposition, under- back again. In both, the simultaneous deployment mining any sense of rational ‘perspective.’”22 of various lines inhibits the dominance of any sin- Finnissy’s expressed goal of undermining tonal- gle melody. ity and “rational perspective” might seem to con- Finally, Finnissy’s transcription inhabits a simi- flict with the preservational aspirations of the lar position with regard to his own contemporary transcriber. But consider how Finnissy describes musical environment as Bach’s did to his. Bach’s another of his transcriptions—this time of Verdi:23 “Deathbed Chorale” is a work of extreme con- “I worked from an earlier transcription by trapuntal complexity: written in 1750, this four- Alexander Abercrombie, generally increasing the part chorale prelude stood at the pinnacle of a harmonic ambiguity, eliding the original phrases, learned practice that had already gone out of re-voicing Verdi’s (orchestral) texture, creating a fashion. It features contrapuntal techniques such kind of production of the scene in my imagina- as vorimitation (a foreshadowing of the chorale tion.”24 melody), augmentation (the reappearance of cer- Here the move away from a determinate “per- tain lines in doubled note values), and inversion spective”—or at least toward greater harmonic (whereby a line of counterpoint is answered by ambiguity—is presented less as an attempt to an upside-down version of itself). But these tech- undermine the original and more as a way of niques were outmoded at the time of composi- imaginatively restaging the original in Finnissy’s tion, having been supplanted by a less contra- own musical language. The point to recognize puntally complex Galant style, exemplified by is that Finnissy’s general musical style traffics in composers such as Bach’s son, Johann Christian the overlaying, the clashing, and the ultimate de- Bach (1735–1782), in which a well-defined melody struction of fixed perspective—anexpressive voice with a supportive, nonimitative bass was the norm. not entirely foreign to contemporary artists. So, The contrapuntal fabric of Finnissy’s work— the “perspective-denying” features of the music with each hand playing multiple voices and vir- properly characterize not some nontranscriptive tually no sense of prevailing meter—strikes one goal, but rather the character of the musical lan- as cryptic, in just the way that Bach’s four-part guage within which Finnissy endeavors to reex- chorale prelude might have struck his own Galant press Bach’s work. contemporaries. Only a handful of composers Finnissy’s bold treatment of Bach is so success- currently write music with Finnissy’s level of ful precisely because of the insight it gives into rhythmic complexity. And the profoundly atonal Bach’s original. The numerous stepwise motives harmonies and dissipating, noncadential phrases in Finnissy’s transcription recapitulate Bach’s con- diverge from the prevailing pop, minimalism, and trapuntal voices, but Finnissy’s freely atonal lan- more overtly “tuneful” musical landscape of mod- guage allows us to hear them anew, accentuating ern Britain, where Finnissy lives and works. The the poignancy of the title, “When we are in the work’s opening chord (B, C, E-flat, F-sharp, G) deepest need.” Despite—or, as we have claimed, Beaudoin and Moore Conceiving Musical Transdialection 111 because—of Finnissy’s acknowledged attempt to lighted is usefully thought of as crossing musical “frustrate and deny the logic” of Bach’s original, dialects, not languages (though the distinction is, Wenn wir in hochsten¨ Nothen¨ sind seems to us to be of course, metaphorical and vague). It is for this a more developed instance of the new form of the reason that we have appropriated a term that has transcription glimpsed in Webern and ventured by been used to refer to the intralinguistic translation Stravinsky and Friedman. of literature. In fact, the term ‘transdialection’ is as rare as the practice it names.27 And for good reason: we iii. transdialection translated usually think it sufficiently easy and valuable to learn enough of a different dialect so that we can If we are right, a new musical undertaking— read an original work as is. Indeed, we often learn transdialection—hasbegun to emerge from a more a dialect in the very process of trying to inter- traditional, trans-instrumental form of musical pret a text written within it. But this norm is not transcription. There are several reasons this may always in place: it might be important to make have happened when it did. One is the twenti- the original accessible to those who cannot or will eth century’s increasingly intensified thirst for new not cross a dialectical divide, and we might also artistic forms. But there is also the shift in func- think that doing so sheds illuminating light on the tion mentioned in Section I: since we can now original. And so there are modern-English trans- hear a recording of the original with a click of dialections of, for example, the King James Bible, the mouse, the need simply to access the work no Shakespeare, and even David Hume.28 longer creates much of a demand for traditional, But musical transdialection also trades in strict trans-instrumental transcription.25 This would un- fidelity to notes and rhythms for reexpression of derstandably lead transcribers to experiment with a deeper sort. And although intralinguistic trans- different transformations as a way of carrying out lation of any type is rare, certain interlinguistic the now heightened function of providing new in- translations have certainly had the analogous goal terpretative perspectives. But the functional shift of reexpressing a piece of literature not merely in also foregrounds a different type of accessibil- the words of a different language but in the mind- ity: transdialection can serve to make the origi- set of a different age. Among the many trade-offs nal work accessible to an audience whose musi- a translator needs to weigh is one of purpose: is cal dialect has different expressive sensitivities.26 the translation to serve simply to make the orig- Although we may have recordings available to inal accessible to someone who cannot speak the us and although our powers of musical discrim- original language or might it also serve to reex- ination may be just as refined as any citizen of press the original along some other dimension? A eighteenth-century Leipzig, the expressive con- looser translation which sheds light on the original tent of Bach’s works may nevertheless be difficult by bringing to the fore one of its hidden aspects or for us to access because of a dialectical difference by reexpressing it against contemporary sensibili- in the way musical features map onto expressive ties is more to the point when the target audience ones. knows at least some of the original language. To appreciate this point, consider an anal- As Peter Green notes in the preface to his re- ogy with poetic translation—an analogy the word cent translations of Catullus, “from the Renais- ‘transdialection’ wears on its sleeve. Our capacity sance to comparatively recent times, literary (as to understand music that is very foreign to us will opposed to informational) translations have al- be limited until we spend time accommodating to most always had as their target other scholars and the culturally different musical fabric in which it is men of letters who knew the original language, and created and expressed. However, we can access at who would thus appreciate elegant pastiche.”29 To least some central expressive features of most mu- articulate the typical aim for such “literary transla- sic that hits our ears. Certainly those surrounded tions,” Green cites John Dryden, who “justified his by Western popular music can listen to Bach with extensive Anglicization of whatever ancient poet a modicum of musical understanding. So, in most he tackled on the grounds that ‘my own [version] cases, the musical transformation we have high- is of a piece with his, and that if he were living, and 112 The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism an Englishman, they are such as he would prob- tics for help. But our metaphorical talk of musical ably have written.’ ”30 Exactly the same concep- languages and dialects is meant only to highlight tion, articulated in much the same counterfactual, the culturally contingent and conventional quasi- guided Robert Lowell when, three centuries after syntactic constraints of genre and musical culture Dryden, he undertook a book of translations he that allow a piece of music to achieve its expressive called Imitations: effects. This first, and most important thing to note Boris Pasternak has said that the usual reliable trans- is that this worry applies to any notion of tran- lator gets the literal meaning but misses the tone, and scription, including the more traditional trans- that in poetry tone is of course everything. I have been instrumental variety. Not only do most theoreti- reckless with literal meaning, and labored hard to get cal treatments of traditional transcription speak the tone. Most often this has been a tone, for the tone is explicitly about expressive content and its cog- something that will always more or less escape transfer- nates, but the traditional transcriber is also clearly ence to another language and cultural moment. I have guided in his choices by a sense of something more tried to write alive English and to do what my authors stable and, dare we say, deeper than the sheer might have done if they were writing their poems now notes of the original. So, the first objection un- and in America.31 dermines our notion of transdialection only inso- far as it undermines the intelligibility of the well- established practice of transcription generally. Of course, Dryden and Lowell articulate just one Still, it would be nice to say more. Alas, we do conception that might guide a project of poetic not have a theory of expressive content to offer. translation. We might debate the utility of such But in fact, we do not think we need one for our “imitations” on a given occasion: for a bilingual purposes. We are sympathetic to the possibility audience, it is only “literary” translations of this that this term (and this notion) shifts its semantic type that will be of any value, while other audi- focus along with the diverse aims and standards ences may call for a stricter, more “informational” of our musical practice and discourse. And so, the translation. In any case, we find it useful to regard notion of expressive content may not get at any- musical transdialection as an intralinguistic and thing entirely fixed.32 If this is right, then talk of musical analogue to the interlinguistic projects of a work’s content arises from (and is sustained by) literary translation in which Dryden, Lowell, and a sort of semantic pretense that composers, per- others have engaged. formers, listeners, and music writers implicitly and collectively engage in. (Perhaps it is like our reify- iv. transdialection defended ing talk of “the average American couple” with 1.7 children. And live where—Springfield?) When se- We now sharpen the notion of transdialection by mantic push comes to metaphysical shove, it may responding to a pair of objections—one about its be that this talk is subtly misleading: it purports to intelligibility and a second about its applicabil- get determinately at something fixed and precise, ity. The first worry is conceptual: the notion of while it is actually activated in a more rough and transdialection assumes that there is something ready way by shifting clusters of a work’s aesthet- that can be recomposed or reexpressed. But what ically relevant properties. is this “thing”? It is not, of course, the exact se- If this is right, then “expressive content” might quence of notes and timbres that are preserved, occasionally be vague in application, and this since it is precisely these that the transcriber al- vagueness would ramify, affecting concepts such ters. The same holds for the notations in the origi- as that of a musical transcription that are built nal score. We have avoided any assumptions about upon it. In the case of musical transdialection, work identity and have talked instead about the the presumption is that the successful transcriber preservation of a work’s “expressive content.” But has pursued a determinate musical isomorphism— what is this exactly? And how is it determined? If a function that takes a musical feature in the di- music were fully like a natural language, then we alect of the original and yields a musical feature might appeal to some sort of denotational seman- in the new dialect that gives rise there to the same Beaudoin and Moore Conceiving Musical Transdialection 113 expressive feature.33 In practice, of course, the from himself. Joseph Straus has argued that the exact mapping, not to mention the individuation very recompositions of Stravinsky and Webern of musical features, of expressive features, and, that we have discussed were not “undertaken in indeed, of musical dialects, is shot through with the spirit of homage, the generous recognition by indeterminacy and vagueness. And this explains, one master of the greatness of an earlier master. among other things, the difficulties we sometimes The internal evidence of the pieces, on the con- have in determining whether certain borderline trary, suggests a vigorous and self-aggrandizing musical undertakings count as transdialections or struggle on the part of the later composer to assert as some sort of looser form of musical borrowing his priority over his predecessor, to prove himself on the way to musical pastiche or homage.34 the stronger.”37 If Straus is right, his claim would But even if the notion of expressive content hold despite any public or even private proclama- is looser and more unsettled than it seems, it is tions these composers might have made. sufficiently constrained, even if we cannot explic- What then of our second condition: intentions itly say quite how, to play a useful role in our aside, did our transcribers succeed in transdialect- thought and talk about music. Frequently enough, ing Bach? This question embroils us, of course, in we make clear, justified, and even legal judgments the vagaries of expressive content that we touched about which musical undertakings are transcrip- on above: just which musical details are relevant tions and which are not. This practice not only might be indeterminate and shift with explanatory pins down a robust notion of transcription, but context. But as we have emphasized, this complex- it also helps determine the correlative notion of ity is not all-encompassing, since we are capable expressive content that is bound up with it. of judging determinate success and failure in a The second worry is empirical: even if transdi- great many cases. And we have given solid musical alection is intelligible in principle, is it clear that evidence that Webern, Stravinsky, Friedman, and Stravinsky, Friedman, Finnissy, or anyone else has Finnissy succeeded in transdialecting Bach. Still, really engaged in it? We suggested in Section I clinching the case would involve a much more ex- that musical transcription of any stripe is both an tended musical discussion. intentional and a normative notion. In saying that In any case, we take ourselves to have opened musical transcription is intentional, we mean that up a new hermeneutic possibility: with transdialec- the transcriber paradigmatically intends to pre- tion as a theoretical possibility, musical details that serve a work’s expressive content across some dif- might otherwise point, for example, to what Straus ference in musical context.35 This intentional con- regards as content-destroying one-upmanship on dition is not sufficient, however, since a would-be the part of certain twentieth-century composers transcriber might fail to pull it off. So transcrip- can be understood instead as manifesting various tion is also a “success notion”—the musical details projects of transdialection.38 We submit that, for matter. Whether or not the constructions of We- both music theorists and philosophers trying to bern, Stravinsky, Friedman, and Finnissy count as understand our transcriptive practice, the notion transdialections depends, then, upon whether they of transdialection is squarely in play. satisfy these two conditions in turn. So did our transcribers really intend their constructions as transdialections? Here self- v. transdialection extended descriptions, like the ones we have quoted, are relevant. And we think the evidence sup- Our focus here has been on the practice of musi- ports an intention to transdialect.36 It is always cal transcription as it has been carried out within possible, though, for an artist to “play off” a Western classical music. Our main claim has been genre. Finnissy’s self-descriptions, for example, that this practice is best understood as extending, are highly nuanced, and it is possible that his over the last century, into an undertaking we have project merely starts with transdialection and articulated and defended as transdialection. This, builds upon, or perhaps against it. we think, is already a significant reconception of It is also possible for an artist, like anyone else, an important practice. But it also seems to us that to hide his real intentions from the public, or even the notion of transdialection has intriguing and 114 The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism illuminating conceptual connections with certain musical transdialection and looser forms of musi- other artistic practices. We end by briefly men- cal borrowing. But as in the case of transdialection, tioning some of these. doing so will be illuminating. Why is it, exactly,that One connection is with the practice of produc- Dr. John seems clearly to have transdialected the ing covers in rock, jazz, and other popular idioms. works of Johnny Mercer on his recent album, Mer- To elaborate with just one example, Joe Cocker’s cernary, while John Coltrane seems, in his famous famous cover of the Beatles’ With a Little Help recording, to use Rogers and Hammerstein’s “My from My Friends seems simultaneously to be both Favorite Things” merely as a jumping-off point for a performance of the Beatles’ song and also a dis- a quite different musical expression? Does Jane tinctive version of it. (Musicians might deliber- Smiley’s treatment of King Lear in her Thousand ate about whose version to perform.) In the lat- Acres (1991) count as transdialection or rather as a ter capacity, Cocker’s cover seems to us to be a looser form of literary adaptation—a “deconstruc- transdialection of the Beatles’ original: it is a re- tion,” perhaps? Did Joyce transdialect Homer’s expression of the original in Cocker’s distinctively Odyssey? Asking such questions with the gener- expressive musical dialect, and it provides an in- alized notion of “reexpression” might illuminate teresting and informative “noncritical” interpre- these and many other works. tation of the original. Finally, we do not mean our investigation to Transdialection might also be useful in under- be merely descriptive: we hope that, once transdi- standing the development of certain oral and folk alection is explicitly seen as a distinct and entirely traditions. Examples include the development of legitimate musical undertaking, it will be even early American blues music, wherein regional more widely practiced. For transdialection seems styles and instrumental preferences forced incom- a fruitful way of engaging music across wide differ- ing songs into new arrangements, and the “‘dop- ences in musical context—a way not only of mak- tion” tradition of the Trinidadian Spiritual Bap- ing more readily and differently accessible works tists, wherein Southern Baptist hymns became that are expressed in distant musical dialects but wordless devotional pieces. In both cases, preex- also of shedding new interpretative light upon isting, though typically unscored, pieces of music them.39 seem to be intentionally reexpressed in modified musical contexts, in the manner of transdialection. Transdialectionmay also have illuminating con- RICHARD BEAUDOIN nections with artistic practices outside of music. Department of Music We have already explored the analogy with liter- Harvard University ary translation. But might we also view certain lit- Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138 erary and cinematic adaptations as undertakings in the mold of transdialection? To take the case of internet: [email protected] film, Brian De Palma’s 1983 “remake” of the 1932 Scarface might count as a transdialection because, although it alters details of setting, character, and JOSEPH MOORE even plot, it seems to do so in order to preserve Department of Philosophy and re-present the original’s expressive content in Amherst College an historically updated context. Amherst, Massachusetts 01002 These possible extensions will have to negoti- ate vague borderlines analogous to that between internet: [email protected] Beaudoin and Moore Conceiving Musical Transdialection 115 116 The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism

1. The first figure is the first four measures of Johann monophonic chant, and incorporated it as part of his new Sebastian Bach’s Chorale Wenn wir in hochsten¨ Nothen¨ sein, polyphonic work. BWV 668a, composed in 1750. The second is the first system 9. This view is defended in Joseph Moore, “Musical of Michael Finnissy’s Wenn wir in hochsten¨ Nothen¨ sind, Works: A Metaphysical Mash-up,” unpublished manuscript. Work No. 177, composed in 1992, published in Finnissy: 10. Davies, “Transcription, Authenticity, and Perfor- Collected Shorter Piano Pieces Vol. 2 (Oxford University mance,” p. 221. Press, 1998), and reproduced by permission. 11. Paul Thom, The Musician as Interpreter (Pennsylva- 2. Julian Silverman, “Aspects of Complexity in Recent nia State University Press, 2007). British Music,” Tempo New Ser. 197 (1996): 33–37, at p. 37. 12. Along with making a work more accessible and pro- 3. For more on ethnomusicological transcription, see Ter viding an interpretation of it, Davies notes that transcrip- Ellingson, “Transcription (i),” entry in Grove Music Online tions have also played a role in musical pedagogy and in (Oxford University Press, 2007), whence we derived the la- providing a vehicle for a composer to show off his compo- bel. For more on transcription in the jazz tradition, see Mark sitional skill. Since it seems to us that this last function is Tucker and Barry Kernfeld, “Transcription (ii),” entry in achieved by carrying out one of the others, and since ped- Grove Music Online (Oxford University Press, 2007). agogy is not at play in the transcriptions we will discuss, it 4. We also do not mean to imply that our taxonomy is ex- is only the first two functions—increasing accessibility and haustive. In fact, there is at least one further use of the word providing interpretation—that will be at play in our discus- ‘transcription’—we might call it “medial transcription”—in sion. which we pick out the process of transferring music from one 13. We do not have space to discuss these transcrip- non-instrumental and relatively proximal source (such as a tions in more detail, much less to discuss additional ex- storage medium) to another, as in a “broadcast transcrip- amples. Please contact the authors for access to recordings tion” or a dubbing. For more on this notion of transcription, of the examples we discuss. See our appendix for a spec- see Howard Rye, “Transcription (iv),” entry in Grove Music trum of selected Bach borrowings. And for a more exten- Online (Oxford University Press, 2007). sive (though still partial!) list of transcriptions and other 5. J. Peter Burkholder gives this definition on p. 863 settings dedicated to works of Bach alone, see www.bach- of “The Uses of Existing Music: Musical Borrowing as a cantatas.com/NVD/PT.htm. Field,” Notes, Quarterly Journal of the Music Library Asso- 14. Bach Original: Komm, Gott, Schopfer,¨ heiliger Geist, ciation, 2nd Ser. 50 (1994): 851–870. He goes on to provide BWV 667, ca. 1708–1709; Busoni Transcription: Komm, a tentative typology of musical borrowing and urges further Gott, Schopfer,¨ heiliger Geist from 10 Chorale Preludes, orig- study of the field. We regard our article as one response to inal organ works by J. S. Bach, “Transcribed for the piano in Burkholder’s invitation. chamber style” by Ferruccio Busoni, 1907–1909. 6. Requiring in our definition that the transcribed work 15. Bach Original: Fugue (Ricercare) a 6 from Das preexists ensures that later drafts in a compositional pro- Musikalische Opfer, BWV 1079, 1747. Webern Tran- cess do not count as transcriptions of previous ones. We get scription: Fugue (Ricercare) a 6 from Das Musikalische this point from pp. 216–217 of Stephen Davies, “Transcrip- Opfer, arranged for orchestra by Anton Webern in 1934– tion, Authenticity, and Performance,” The British Journal 1935. of Aesthetics 28 (1988): 216–227. Requiring the treatment 16. The six-part Ricercare is somewhat unique in Bach’s of entire works, or clearly delimited sections thereof, marks oeuvre, since he wrote it in “open score,” meaning that no off transcription from certain other forms of musical bor- exact instruments were specified. rowing, such as theme and variation. And requiring that 17. Bach Original: Einige canonische Veranderungen¨ the transcribed material be unembedded rules out a sort of uber¨ das Weihnachtslied: “Von himmel hoch da komm’ ich extended musical quotation in which a work is sandwiched her” vor die Orgel mit 2 Clavieren und dem Pedal, BWV between bits of new music, thereby transforming the overall 769, 1746–1747. Stravinsky Transcription: J. S. Bach: Choral- expressive content of the original. Variationen uber¨ das Weihnachtslied Von Himmel hoch da 7. We will say more about these two conditions later komm’ ich her Gesetzt von (“set by”) Igor Stravinsky for in the article. We note here, though, that our commitment mixed chorus and ensemble in 1955–1956. to the first, “intentional” condition is qualified: certainly, 18. Josef Straus, “Recompositions by Schoenberg, it is satisfied in all cases of actual transcription, but our Stravinsky, and Webern,” The Musical Quarterly 72 (1986): received concept of transcription does not seem sufficiently 301–328, at pp. 320–323. determinate to rule out the possibility of an unintended 19. Bach Original: “Gavotte, en Rondeau” from the Par- transcription. tita No. 3 in E Major from Sei Solo a violino senza Basso 8. That there is a tenable and useful, even if intentional accompagnato, BWV 1006, 1720. Friedman Transcription: and vague, distinction between the revoicing or reexpres- “Gavotte, en Rondeau” from the Partita No. 3 in E Major, sion of a work and a mere appropriation of it is a central arranged for solo piano by Ignaz Friedman, published 1948. implication of our article. For an example clearly on the far 20. Occasionally, Friedman adds countermelodies above side of the distinction, consider Perotin’s Alleluia: Nativitas, the source material, but Bach’s original is never challenged written around 1200. In this organum, Perotin greatly elon- as the hauptstimme, or most prominent voice, of the texture. gates a preexisting Gregorian chant and uses it as a cantus 21. Bach Original: Wenn wir in hochsten¨ Nothen¨ sein, by firmus, over which he composes two new, fast-moving lines. J. S. Bach, BWV 668a, 1750. Finnissy Transcription: Wenn The original music is obscured—at times, over sixty notes wir in hochsten¨ Nothen¨ sind, by Michael Finnissy, “based on sound over a single note of the borrowed chant. Since the the Chorale-Prelude by J. S. Bach BWV 668,” written for preexisting music is used as a kind of hidden scansion on piano in 1992. For a summary of the complex heritage of which the new music rests, Perotin has here appropriated a the “deathbed” attribution, see David Yearsley, Bach and Beaudoin and Moore Conceiving Musical Transdialection 117 the Meanings of Counterpoint (Cambridge University Press, alect The Musical Offering. We thank Diana Raffman for 2002). pushing us on this point. 22. Michael Finnissy, liner notes from “Michael Finnissy: 34. A transdialection can, of course, shed light on the Etched Bright with Sunlight,” Nicholas Hodges, piano original by selectively highlighting certain of the original’s (Cornwall, UK: Metronome Recordings, compact disc MET expressive features while downplaying others. But a musi- 1058, 2002): 2–5, p. 3. cal undertaking can count as a transdialection even when 23. Verdi Transcription No. 10 (“Me pellegrina ed or- the reexpression engages in a somewhat broader conversa- fana,” 1986–1988). tion with the original. How broad can this “conversation” 24. Finnissy, “Michael Finnissy: Etched Bright with Sun- be? This is clearly a vague matter, though transdialection light,” p. 3. does not extend to undertakings whose expressive feel is 25. Traditional transcriptions are still useful, of course, primarily one of interrogation, much less of subversion or for pedagogical reasons—for example, simplified versions new construction. There is obviously much more to be said for student performers and as exercises for aspiring com- here, and we hope to say some of it in a future project. (We posers, including would-be transdialectors. thank an anonymous referee for highlighting this issue.) In 26. For an example of the way musical transcription can the meantime, see the appendix for our view of where some be used to make Bach accessible to a contemporary audi- other examples fall on the spectrum. ence, consider the recordings of Bela´ Fleck and the Fleck- 35. As we noted in Section I, there is surely enough in- tones—for example, Bach Fugue No. 2, from The Hidden determinacy in the notion of a transcription that one might Land. label as a “transcription” some far-fetched composition that 27. It is so rare in fact that we thought we had coined it, was not intended as such. Despite this, the intentional condi- until we looked it up. The Oxford English Dictionary shows tion seems central to the notion, though dropping it would, the term used as early as 1698, and, interestingly, in 1776 by of course, only strengthen our empirical claims. the English music historian, Charles Burney. 36. We do not require, of course, that a transdialector 28. See, respectively, lfnexus.com/weareforanewtransdia conceive her project with the explicit understanding we have lectionofthekingjamesversionofthebible.htm,www.csulb.edu/ articulated here, much less that she use our label. richmond/Shakespeare.html, and http://www.earlymodern 37. Josef Straus, “Recompositions by Schoenberg, texts.com/f_hume.html.∼ Stravinsky, and Webern,” p. 327. 29. Peter Green, The Poems of Catullus: A Bilingual Edi- 38. As another example where our notion might be tion (University of California Press, 2005), p. 25. useful, consider Stephen Davies’s wavering description of 30. Green, The Poems of Catullus, p. 25. Stravinsky’s Pulcinella: “Stravinsky does more than re- 31. Robert Lowell, preface to Imitations (1961), orchestrate Pergolesi’s music, he adds to it. But he does reprinted in Collected Poems, ed. Frank Bidart and David so with a light touch, aiming to add an ‘edge’ to the sound Gewanter (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003), rather than to recompose Pergolesi’s piece. So, though Pul- p. 195. cinella has a Stravinsky-like sound one would not asso- 32. Compare Paul Thom: “I believe that there is no ab- ciate with Pergolesi, the work is more like a transcription solute criterion on the basis of which we can give a uniform than anything else. It is a work by Pergolesi/Stravinsky, not determination of what should be included in a work’s con- by Stravinsky alone” (Davies, “Transcription, Authenticity, tent. The transcriber’s decision about what to count as the and Performance,” p. 219). What Davies seems to want work’s content will be relative to his or her purpose.” The to say—what he could say with our terminology—is that Musician as Interpreter, p. 11. Pulcinella is determinately a transdialection of Pergolesi’s 33. Since there may be several musical features in the piece. And we agree that certain movements of Pulcinella new dialect that exhibit the relevant expressive feature, might, indeed, be classified as transdialections. However, there may be several mapping functions that ground a given we have not discussed Stravinsky’s Pergolesi-inspired bal- project of transcription. (We could say, alternatively, that let because it does not treat a single work by Pergolesi the relevant mapping relation is not always a function.) It and because many of Stravinsky’s source movements were is important to emphasize, though, that the relevant func- not written by Pergolesi, though Stravinsky thought they tions (and associated transcriptive projects) are relativized were. to musical dialects, and this puts significant constraints on a 39. An earlier version of this article was delivered at the project’s success conditions. There is, to be sure, some map- ASA Annual Meetings in November 2008. We thank the ping function—and so, some conceivable project of transdi- audience members on that occasion and particularly our alection—according to which Stravinsky’s Pulcinella counts commentator, Diana Raffman. For additional comments, as a transcription of Bach’s The Musical Offering. But rel- suggestions, and helpful examples we thank James Harold, ative to the respective musical dialects of Stravinsky and Greg Hayes, Tom Wartenberg, and an anonymous referee Bach, Pulcinella clearly and determinately fails to transdi- from this journal.