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Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School
2009 An Analytical Model for the Study of Multimedia Compositions: A Case Study in Minimalist Music Sean Atkinson
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AN ANALYTICAL MODEL FOR THE STUDY OF MULTIMEDIA COMPOSITIONS: A
CASE STUDY IN MINIMALIST MUSIC
By Sean Atkinson
A Dissertation submitted to the College of Music in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
Degree Awarded: Spring Semester, 2009
Copyright © 2009 Sean Atkinson All Rights Reserved The members of the Committee approve the Dissertation of Sean Atkinson defended on December 9, 2008.
______Matthew Shaftel Professor Directing Dissertation
______Denise Von Glahn Outside Committee Member
______Michael Buchler Committee Member
______Evan Jones Committee Member
The Graduate School has verified and approved the above listed committee members.
ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
First and foremost, I would like to thank my advisor, Matthew Shaftel, for his truly tireless efforts and guidance throughout this project. His unending support all during my time at Florida State has helped to shape who I have become as a scholar and educator. I would also like to thank my committee, Denise Von Glahn, Evan Jones, and Michael Buchler, for their support and insightful comments during the writing process. My family (Mom, Dad, and Robyn) also deserves special thanks for the seemingly endless supply of support they have provided my entire life. Last, but most certainly not least, I thank my wife Lindsey for putting up with me while I finished this document and for always believing in me.
iii TABLE OF CONTENTS
List of Figures...... vi List of Musical Examples ...... ix Abstract...... xii
1. DEVELOPING A MODEL FOR MULTIMEDIA ANALYSIS...... 1
1.1 Introduction...... 1 1.2 Semiotics...... 2 1.3 Metaphor...... 5 1.4 Other Interpretive Modes...... 10 1.5 Outline of Model...... 11 1.5.1 Surface Level Analysis and Denotational Meaning...... 12 1.5.2 Cross-Domain Mapping and Blending ...... 14 1.6 Conclusion ...... 15
2. TOOLS FOR ANALYSIS ...... 16
2.1 Minimalist Music...... 16 2.1.1 Issues of Rhythm and Meter ...... 17 2.1.2 Issues of Melody and Harmony ...... 20 2.1.3 Minimalism in a Broader Context...... 24 2.2 Minimalist Art...... 26 2.3 Film Form and Technique...... 28 2.4 Conclusion...... 29
3. THREE TALES ...... 30
3.1 Background...... 30 3.2 “Hindenburg”...... 31 3.2.1 “It Could Not Have Been a Technical Matter”...... 31 3.2.2 “Nibelung Zeppelin”...... 35 3.2.3 “A Very Impressive Thing to See” ...... 40 3.2.4 “I Couldn’t Understand It”...... 45 3.3 “Bikini”...... 49 3.3.1 Music...... 50 3.3.2 Visuals ...... 54 3.3.3 Text ...... 60 3.3.4 Interpretation...... 61 3.3.5 Coda ...... 62 3.4 Conclusion...... 63
4. NIXON IN CHINA...... 65
iv 4.1 Background...... 65 4.2 Act I, Scene 3...... 66 4.2.1 The Arrival and Initial Toasts...... 66 4.2.2 Chou’s Aria...... 70 4.2.3 Nixon’s Aria...... 74 4.2.4 “Cheers!”...... 77 4.2.5 Interpretation...... 79 4.3 Act II, Scene 2...... 83 4.3.1 Entire Scene ...... 83 4.3.2 The Red Detachment of Women...... 91 4.4 Conclusion...... 94
5. LOST OBJECTS...... 95
5.1 Background...... 95 5.2 (3,4) Double Interval Cycle ...... 97 5.3 “Acoustic Aphasia”...... 99 5.3.1 Music...... 100 5.3.2 Text ...... 102 5.3.3 Visuals ...... 103 5.3.4 Interpretation...... 104 5.4 “FW:FW: Please Look” ...... 107 5.4.1 Music...... 107 5.4.2 Text ...... 109 5.4.3 Visuals ...... 110 5.4.4 Interpretation...... 111 5.5 Conclusion...... 113
6. NAQOYQATSI ...... 114
6.1 Background...... 114 6.2 “Primacy of Number” ...... 115 6.3 Conclusion...... 125
7. CONCLUSION...... 127
BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 132
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ...... 138
v LIST OF FIGURES
1.1. A conceptual integration network for Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh ...... 7
1.2. Semiotic Square, as described by Greimas...... 9
1.3. Graphical representation of a model for the analysis of multimedia compositions...15
2.1. Johnson’s superdiatonic complex ...... 21
2.2. (3,4) Double-interval cycle ...... 23
2.3. Fink’s Figure 5 from Chapter 3 of Repeating Ourselves...... 25
3.1. Still frame from “It Could Not Have Been a Technical Matter,” Three Tales ...... 34
3.2. Model of “It Could Not Have Been a Technical Matter,” Three Tales ...... 35
3.3. Graph of “Nibelung Zeppelin,” Three Tales...... 36
3.4. Still frames from “Nibelung Zeppelin,” Three Tales...... 38
3.5. Model of “Nibelung Zeppelin,” Three Tales ...... 40
3.6. Still frame from “A Very Impressive Thing to See,” Three Tales ...... 43
3.7. Model of “A Very Impressive Thing to See,” Three Tales ...... 45
3.8. Still frame from “I Couldn’t Understand It,” Three Tales...... 48
3.9. Model of “I Couldn’t Understand It,” Three Tales...... 48
3.10. Progression of meaning in “Hindenburg,” Three Tales...... 49
3.11. Spiral formal structure of “Bikini,” Three Tales ...... 50
3.12. Spiral form with process shaded in light gray and intuition shaded in dark gray, “Bikini,” Three Tales...... 54
3.13. Stills from “In the Air,” Three Tales ...... 56
3.14. Stills from “The Atoll,” Three Tales...... 58
3.15. Stills from “On the Ships,” Three Tales...... 59
vi 3.16. Semiotic model and interpretation of “Bikini.” ...... 62
3.17. Still from the coda of “Bikini,” Three Tales...... 63
4.1. Pat Nixon “shivering,” Act I, Scene 3, Nixon in China...... 69
4.2. The banquet hall, Act I, Scene 3, Nixon in China...... 70
4.3. Form and musical characteristics of Premier Chou’s aria, Act I, Scene 3, Nixon in China...... 71
4.4. Chou’s aria, Act I, Scene 3, Nixon in China...... 73
4.5. Nixon’s aria, Act I, Scene 3, Nixon in China...... 76
4.6. Chart summarizing the relative disjunctness of the first four choruses of “Cheers!”...... 78
4.7. Final toast, Act I, Scene 3, Nixon in China...... 79
4.8. Model of the arrival and initial toasts, Act I, Scene 3, Nixon in China...... 80
4.9. Model of both arias, Act I, Scene 3, Nixon in China...... 81
4.10. Model that focuses on Nixon’s narcissism, Act I, Scene3, Nixon in China...... 82
4.11. The Southern hexatonic cycle...... 84
4.12. Still from Act II, Scene 2, Nixon in China...... 88
4.13. Model and possible interpretation of Act II, Scene 2, Nixon in China...... 91
4.14. Model of “The Red Detachment of Women,” Act II, Scene 2, Nixon in China...... 94
5.1. Three-tiered structure with text overlay on translucent screen, Lost Objects...... 97
5.2. Double-interval cycle with a diatonic collection bracketed...... 98
5.3. Still frame from “Acoustic Aphasia,” Lost Objects...... 103
5.4. Grid of lost languages from “Acoustic Aphasia,” Lost Objects...... 104
5.5. Model of “Acoustic Aphasia,” Lost Objects...... 106
5.6. Form of “Fw:Fw: Please Look,” Lost Objects...... 108
vii 5.7. (3,4) cycle with brackets indicating the diatonic collections used as they appear in “Fw:Fw: Please Look,” Lost Objects...... 108
5.8. Still frame from “Fw:Fw: Please Look,” Lost Objects...... 111
5.9. Model of “Fw:Fw: Please Look,” Lost Objects...... 112
6.1. Ternary form of “Primacy of Number,” Naqoyqatsi...... 116
6.2. Musical chart with the visual chart, “Primacy of Number,” Naqoyqatsi...... 119
6.3. Screenshots from the opening of “Primacy of Number,” Naqoyqatsi...... 120
6.4. Screenshots from the middle of “Primacy of Number,” Naqoyqatsi...... 121
6.5. Screenshot of the fractal image from “Primacy of Number,” Naqoyqatsi...... 122
6.6. Screenshots of actual battle from “Primacy of Number,” Naqoyqatsi...... 123
6.7. Model of “Primacy of Number,” focusing on the fractal imagery and recursive music...... 124
6.8. Model of “Primacy of Number,” focusing on the chiasmus form...... 125
7.1. Shift of FD, Act II, Scene 2, Nixon in China...... 128
7.2. Shift of FD, “Fw:Fw: Please Look,” Lost Objects...... 129
7.3. Shift of FD, “It Could Not Have Been a Technical Matter,” Three Tales...... 130
viii LIST OF MUSICAL EXAMPLES
3.1. Snare drum phasing. mm. 17–18, “It Could Not Have Been a Technical Matter,” Three Tales...... 32
3.2. Slower pulse. mm. 64–67, “It Could Not Have Been a Technical Matter,” Three Tales...... 32
3.3. Nibelung motive from “Nibelung Zeppelin,” Three Tales ...... 36
3.4. Entrance of pedal notes. mm. 41–43, “Nibelung Zeppelin,” Three Tales...... 37
3.5. Metric dissonance. mm. 11–15, “A Very Impressive Thing to See,” Three Tales...... 41
3.6. Setting of vocal inflections. mm. 16–17, “A Very Impressive Thing to See,” Three Tales...... 41
3.7. Melodies based on vocal inflections, “A Very Impressive Thing to See,” Three Tales...... 42
3.8. Gradual Slowing of pulse through the movement, “I Couldn’t Understand It,” Three Tales ...... 46
3.9. mm. 7-9, “Bikini,” Three Tales...... 51
3.10. mm. 16-18, “Bikini,” Three Tales...... 52
3.11. mm. 30-33, “Bikini,” Three Tales...... 52
3.12. mm. 99-100, “Bikini,” Three Tales...... 53
4.1. Jazz-influenced opening, mm. 1-8, Act I, Scene 3, Nixon in China...... 67
4.2. Example of the melodic texture, mm. 15-20, Act I, Scene 3, Nixon in China...... 68
4.3. Transition from block chords to arpeggios, mm. 99-114, Act I, Scene 3, Nixon in China...... 68
4.4. Example of tritone motion, mm. 278-282, Act I, Scene 3, Nixon in China...... 71
4.5. Clash between harmonies in augmented fifths, mm. 319-321, Act I, Scene 3, Nixon in China...... 72
ix 4.6. Coda, featuring tritone and SLIDE motion, mm. 446-457, Act I, Scene 3, Nixon in China...... 72
4.7. Illustrating difference in style from Chou’s aria, mm. 515-519, Act I, Scene 3, Nixon in China...... 74
4.8. Ramping-up of excitement, mm. 620-624, Act I, Scene 3, Nixon in China...... 75
4.9. Alternation between Em and CM triads, mm. 599-606, Act I, Scene 3, Nixon in China...... 75
4.10. First chorus of “Cheers!” mm. 663-665, Act I, Scene 3, Nixon in China...... 78
4.11. Opening measures, including 7th chords, Act II, Scene 2, Nixon in China...... 84
4.12. Harmonies between hexatonic poles, mm. 97-101 Act II, Scene 2, Nixon in China...... 85
4.13. SLIDE transformation, mm. 161-170, Act II, Scene 2, Nixon in China...... 85
4.14. Root motion mimicking tonality, mm. 530-537, Act II, Scene 2, Nixon in China...... 86
4.15. mm. 487-499. Act II, Scene2, Nixon in China...... 87
4.16. mm. 543-551, Act II, Scene 2, Nixon in China...... 92
5.1. Clear use of descending thirds, mm. 1-3 of “Acoustic Aphasia,” Lost Objects...... 100
5.2. Continuation of thirds along the cycle, mm. 18-21 of “Acoustic Aphasia,” Lost Objects...... 100
5.3. Movement beyond the subset, mm. 31-34 of “Acoustic Aphasia,” Lost Objects...... 101
5.4. More movement beyond the subset, mm. 72-82 of “Acoustic Aphasia,” Lost Objects...... 101
5.5. Transition from section A to b1, “Fw:Fw: Please Look,” Lost Objects...... 109
6.1. First clear use of a subtractive process, “Primacy of Number,” Naqoyqatsi...... 116
6.2. First actual use of subtractive process, “Primacy of Number,” Naqoyqatsi...... 116
6.3. Excerpt from the first cello solo, “Primacy of Number,” Naqoyqatsi...... 117
x 6.4. Compound subdivision of the primary beat, “Primacy of Number,” Naqoyqatsi...... 117
xi ABSTRACT
The examination of multimedia compositions by minimalist composers demands the analysis of not only the music, but also the visual and narrative domains. While there are many ways of addressing the music, there are relatively few methods that engage all of the constituent domains that comprise these multifaceted works. One of these existing methods, developed by Nicholas Cook, analyzes a multimedia work using a series of models based on the literary concepts of semiotics and metaphor. However, these models fail to address the underlying meaning of the composition.
This dissertation addresses the problem of uncovering meaning in minimalist multimedia works by developing a new analytical model. The new model, like Cook’s models, makes use of semiotic and metaphorical concepts, but uses them in an entirely different manner. The result is a comprehensive model designed to incorporate the music, visual, and narrative domains into an all-inclusive blended meaning. To demonstrate the model, four relatively recent multimedia works by minimalist or minimalist-influenced composers are examined: Three Tales by Steve Reich, Nixon in China by John Adams, Lost Objects by Bang-on-a-Can-composers Michael Gordon, Julia Wolfe, and David Lang, and Naqoyqatsi by Philip Glass. These analyses reveal nuanced interpretations and hidden subtexts that are only accessible through the examination of the entire multimedia structure.
xii CHAPTER 1
DEVELOPING A MODEL FOR MULTIMEDIA ANALYSIS
1.1 Introduction
Of late, there appears to be a growing trend amongst composers, especially minimalist or minimalist-influenced composers, to create works that involve not only music, but also some visual element. Minimalist music has a long-standing relationship with the visual art movement of the same name, both born out of reaction against the prevailing school of thought in their respective disciplines. To fully understand and analyze these multi-faceted works, one must consider all of the domains involved, not just the music. The only analytical aid previously available to address the problem of multimedia analysis is a set of models developed by Nicholas Cook. Designed to compare and contrast the effects of the music/visual relationship, the models describe various levels of agreement between the domains. However, Cook’s models fail to address possible underlying meanings that might better explain the composition or allow the analyst to view the work in a new light. Also, it only tangentially addresses any text or narrative that might be present in a work. A new model is necessary in order to examine the meaning behind multimedia compositions.
In developing a new model that addresses these shortcomings, one must account for the three parts, or domains, that make up any multimedia experience: the musical, the visual, and the narrative. Because each individual work balances these three domains differently, the model must also be flexible. This chapter describes the two interdisciplinary modes utilized in this model, discusses existing methodologies and theories–including a direct comparison with Nicholas Cook’s models for multimedia analysis–and concludes with a detailed outline of the new model that underlies my dissertation.
1 1.2 Semiotics
The field of semiotics will provide a useful way of examining the multimedia surface of the works under consideration. Semiotics, broadly defined as the study and interpretation of signs, consists of three parts, according to American semiotician Charles Sanders Peirce: the Signs stand for specific entities, which he calls the Object of a sign, and the Interpretant mediates the relationship between the Object and the Sign itself. The Sign has no power if it cannot be interpreted as representing some Object. As Peirce states: “a Sign is anything which is related to a Second thing, its Object, in respect to a Quality in such a way as to bring a Third thing, its Interpretant, into relation to the same object…”1 The study of sign in music has taken many directions in recent music theoretical scholarship, as described below. Perhaps the most familiar examples of sign in music are the Classical “topics” described by Leonard Ratner in his book Classic Music.2 These musical topics (signs) evoke meaning for something else (objects), typically some extra-musical event that imparts greater meaning to the work if one (the interpretant) understands the topic’s significance. To be clear, musical topics do not directly stand for the extra-musical event. Rather, they connote extra-musical events. In fact, many musical topics denote other musics (Menuet, for example), whose context in a given texture can carry significant associations. It is important to note, however, that virtually anything can act as a sign as long as an interpretant understands the relationship between a sign and its object.
Peirce goes further in his theory to define three different types of signs, known as the Peircian triad, categorized by each sign’s relationship with an object. An icon is a relationship defined by similarity, an index is a relationship defined by proximity, and a symbol is a relationship that is arbitrarily established. Symbols are usually derived when icons and indices become so indoctrinated into a prevailing culture that their original relationship is long since forgotten.
1 James Liszka, A General Introduction to the Semiotic of Charles Sanders Peirce (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996).
2 Leonard Ratner, Classic Music: Expression, Form, and Style (New York: Schirmer Books, 1980).
2 Different from the Peircian triadic semiotic is Ferdinand de Saussure’s two-part model of semiosis, which, although it has no place for the interpretant, is useful in determining different levels of signification for a particular sign. These include the concepts of denotational and connotational meaning. Denotative meaning is the literal definition or meaning of a sign (a stop sign is a red octagon-shaped piece of metal with the word “STOP” spelled out in white letters), while connotative meaning is derived from cultural or personal associations (a stop sign is understood to mean that one should stop the vehicle they are driving).
Roland Barthes further adds to this idea, demonstrating that connotation can be thought of as a second-order of signification, where the original signified becomes a signifier for something else.3 Erwin Panofsky has explored a similar idea of multi-leveled meaning in the visual arts. His three-levels of interpretive meaning in the visual arts consist of: (1) the primary or natural subject matter, “apprehended by identifying pure forms;” (2) the secondary or conventional subject matter, “connect[ing] artistic motifs and combinations of artistic motifs with themes or concepts;” and (3) intrinsic meaning or content.4 The intrinsic meaning comes from the relationship of those themes or concepts to a historical context, specific location, or even to a particular social class.
Semiotic approaches to opera offer a useful precedent for the model found in this study, since they also must engage signs as they act within and between multiple domains. In an attempt to tackle the multilayered meaning of opera, Matthew Shaftel adapts Erwin Panofsky’s iconological approach to art. However, Shaftel’s model incorporates two domains with four investigatory levels.5 The two domains are the music and the drama, and on the first level of investigation, the structures of both are analyzed. The next level is a denotational interpretation
3 Roland Barthes, The Responsibility of Forms: Critical Essays on Music, Art, and Representation, trans. Richard Howard (New York: Hill and Wang, 1985).
4 Erwin Panofsky, Meaning in the Visual Arts (Garden City: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1955), 28-30.
5 Matthew Shaftel, “Sonata Form, Dramatic Subtext, and Musical Irony in the Trio from Le Nozze di Figaro,” In Keys to the Drama: Nine Perspectives on Sonata Forms, edited by Gordon Sly (London: Ashgate Press, 2008).
3 of those analyses. As Shaftel makes clear, he is using a much broader view of denotation that allows for some outside cultural influence. The third level is one of connotation, followed by a fourth level, that aims to combine the dramatic and musical readings into a single exegesis. This fourth level of interpretation is not necessary in Panofsky’s model due to the singular nature of visual art, but is crucial to Shaftel’s model of analysis which engages both music and drama.
Many other music scholars have reached to semiotics to support their musical analyses. Robert Hatten, in several publications on the meaning of Beethoven’s music, also makes use of semiotic theory.6 He employs Roman Jakobsen’s notion of markedness, which derives from the two-part model of Saussure in which two things are placed in opposition. Hatten states that in such an opposition, one of the items will be marked, meaning that one of the items will stand apart from the other for some reason. For example, in an opposition between dog and dachshund, the latter is marked as it represents a specific kind of dog. In music, consider the pairing of major and minor. Minor is the marked term, as it has fewer and more specific associations than major. Hatten also makes use of the Peircean semiotic through the exploration of topics, specifically those Classical topics identified by Ratner.
While Classical topics and their extensions to other styles, in particular minimalism, will provide a useful way to explore meaning in this study, they are limited to a conventional relationship between the musical sign and the interpreted association. Certain musical gestures, on the other hand, are also understood to impart some kind of direct meaning. As Juan Chattah posits, a musical gesture is “a musical-surface phenomenon similar to topics, in that its meaning results from extra-musical associations.”7 However, gestures relate iconically (rather than symbolically, like musical topics) to physical movement of the human body, thus making them a practically universal set of signs.8 One of the most common examples is the sigh motive,
6 These publications ultimately culminated with Robert Hatten, Interpreting Musical Gestures, Topics, And Tropes: Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, (Bloomington: Indianna University Press, 2004).
7 Juan Chattah, "Semiotics, Pragmatics, and Metaphor in Film Music Analysis," (Ph.D. diss., Florida State University, 2006), 105.
8 This idea is discussed at length in Hatten, Interpreting Musical Gestures.
4 represented musically by a falling minor second. This corresponds to a human sigh, most often associated with a sustained sound that is lowered in pitch as the sound continues.9 Again, in a minimalist aesthetic, when direct style and topic quotation is rare, the use of gestures becomes an attractive alternative in applying semiotic interpretations of the multimedia, particularly the musical surface.
Also important for scholars such as Robert Hatten and Michael Klein is the notion of intertextuality.10 They use theories of musical or stylistic borrowing to apply meaning garnered from one work, say a work in which the text imparts meaning to a certain musical idea, and affixes that same meaning to another purely instrumental work that uses the same idea. Looking to these multimedia composers other works may reveal different interpretations than what is readily apparent in these works. Intertextuality, along with the application of gesture and topic, provide a solid foundation of meaning for the model, but to compare the meanings garnered from each of the three domains requires an approach that is better suited to the challenge.
1.3 Metaphor
Metaphor, unlike semiotics, offers a method for comparing differing objects in a single thought or statement. As George Lakoff and Mark Johnson acknowledge, “metaphor is for most people a device of the poetic and the rhetorical flourish–a matter of extraordinary rather then ordinary language.”11 Lakoff and Johnson’s book, however, does not discuss this traditional sense of metaphor, but rather the metaphors we use in our everyday engagement with the world. Take the statement, “certain literary theories play a role in the development of a model of
9 Deryck Cooke first discussed this in The Language of Music, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990).
10 Intertextuality is more fully discussed in Michael Klein, Intertextuality in Western Art Music (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005).
11 George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 3.
5 multimedia.” Theories cannot literally play a role in anything, but Lakoff and Johnson would term this metaphor as IDEAS ARE ACTORS. The theories are “acting” as a part of my model. These conceptual metaphors are, however, one-dimensional in terms of their analytical possibilities, allowing only a one-to-one mapping across different domains. My study will require an expansion of this idea, allowing the three domains of a multimedia work to be compared simultaneously.
Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner’s conceptual integration network (CIN) partly addresses this one-to-one shortcoming.12 As shown in Figure 1.1, a generic space is separated into two input spaces and results in a blended space. The generic space sets up the items which will be compared in the network along with their traits. The input spaces, then, are the different beings, one for humans and another for donkeys. The blended space reinterprets the generic space in light of the inputs made. In this case the network arrives at a fair description of Eeyore, a slow talking, somewhat clumsy donkey. The beauty of CINs lies in their ability to accommodate as many input spaces as needed, though I have yet to encounter any analyses that incorporate more than two.13 This study, which will be dealing with music, narrative, and visual domains, necessitates the use of something like a three-input-space CIN.
12 Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner, "Conceptual Integration Networks," Cognitive Science 22 (1998): 133-87.
13 Chattah mentions this, but never utilizes this expandability of a CIN to include more than two input spaces at a time.
6
Figure 1.1. A conceptual integration network for Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh.
Lawrence Zbikowski employs CINs for the analysis of song.14 The music and the text of the song act as the input spaces and blend together for a reading of the song that a traditional one-to-one mapping might otherwise miss. Additionally, this metaphorical method readily accounts for gesture and cultural awareness in its association of meanings. This kind of cross- domain mapping seems to be the best way to relate the various domains engaged by multimedia works. As stated earlier, nothing in the definition of a CIN demands that the input spaces be confined to two, so I will employ a network involving three, one each for the music, visual, and narrative domains.
Nicholas Cook’s book, Analysing Musical Multimedia, is the first published attempt to develop analytical models for the study of the multimedia compositions. His method of analyzing multimedia is essentially straightforward; one compares the visual actions with those in the music and determines how they relate to each other.15 He does this by means of two tests,
14 Zbikowski, 63-95.
15 The models and the full methodology behind them are described in chapter 3 of Nicholas Cook, Analysing Musical Multimedia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998).
7 one that determines similarity and another that determines difference. The similarity test, borrowed from Lakoff and Johnson,16 determines if the two domains are coherent or consistent. The difference here is subtle, but Cook borrows an example from Lakoff and Johnson to demonstrate the difference.
“LOVE IS A JOURNEY…lies behind such metaphorical expressions as “This relationship is a dead-end street,” “We’ve gotten off the tracks,” and “Our marriage is on the rocks.” These relationships…are coherent because they are all variants of LOVE IS A JOURNEY.”17
However, they each interpret the conceptual metaphor differently: the first as a car trip, the second as a train ride, and the last as a voyage at sea. A consistent comparison would be between such metaphors as “Our marriage is on the rocks” and “This relationship is foundering” since the metaphors align with voyages by ship. To use Cook’s terminology, if an instance of multimedia (or IMM) is found to be consistent, he deems it conformant, the first of his three models for multimedia.
If the IMM fails18 the similarity test, the difference test is applied. This test borrows from Greimas’s narrative grammar and semiotic square to determine if the domains examined are contrary or contradictory. Figure 1.2 is a reproduction of semiotic square. The horizontal arrows represent contrariety while the diagonal arrows represent contradiction. If the two domains are contradictory, then Cook labels the IMM contest and if they are contrary, Cook calls it complementation. With these three models, conformance, contest, and complementation, Cook engages a range of multimedia genres, including a music video by Madonna and the Rite of Spring sequence from Fantasia.
16 Lakoff and Johnson, 41-45.
17 Cook, 98.
18 Cook’s own term for the IMM being coherent, not consistent.
8
Figure 1.2. Semiotic Square, as described by Greimas.
I find two aspects of Cook’s theory to be applicable to my own study. One is the mixing of literary theories in a thoughtful and useful manner. The similarity test relies on metaphor theory, specifically conceptual metaphors and the larger network of relationships between them. The resulting difference test borrows from semiotic theory to determine exactly what degree of difference is being presented. Also of interest is the flexibility the model affords, allowing for an examination not only of multimedia works, but of what Cook refers to as “traditional multimedia” such as songs and opera.
His models seem particularly well suited for comparing two IMMs that have a common domain between them. This is exactly the angle that Pwyll ap Siôn and Tristian Evans take in their application of Cook’s models.19 The authors engage two television commercials that use music from the Reggio/Glass film Koyaanisqatsi.20 Cook’s models show that the music acts differently in each case, sometimes conforming to the action on screen and other times complementing or contesting. Each IMM imparts a different meaning depending on how the relationship between the music and the visual is portrayed. In the end, ap Siôn and Evans
19 Pwyll ap Siôn and Tristian Evans, "Parallel Symmetries? Exploring Relationships between Minimalist Music and Multimedia Forms” (presented at the First International Conference on Music and Minimalism, University of Wales, Bangor, 31 August-2 September 2007).
20 It is not surprising that they choose to examine television commercials, as this is the form of media that Cook uses to introduce his models.
9 determined that the same minimalist music can be molded and shaped by different visual scenarios and Nicholas Cook’s models make for a convincing case.
On the other hand, these models fail to address what is one of the most problematic concerns when applying existing analytical tools to multimedia works. Most rely on some kind of binary opposition to determine meaning, and this presents a problem when dealing with subject matter involving three separate domains. Of course it is not impossible to thoroughly relate music, visuals, and narrative, and Cook does this quite well, but the binary basis of the model does not allow the comparison of all three at the same time.
The labeling of genres such as song and opera as multimedia must also be evaluated, particularly because of the strong connotation the word “multimedia” has with technology.21 These “traditional” types of multimedia do not contain the same degree of consistency in their realization as is found in technology-related multimedia. For example, the staging of an opera can change over time, or a performative interpretation thereof can be radically different, and thus an analysis that relies on the visual domain would necessarily change with each recasting of the work. To avoid such problems, I have defined multimedia, for the purposes of this dissertation, to be any musical work with a fixed visual element. This instantly rules out song and most traditional operas, and differentiates my model from Cook’s.
1.4 Other Interpretive Modes
In addition to Nicholas Cook’s contribution to the study of multimedia, others have provided insight into the music/visual relationship as well. Lawrence Kramer’s book, Musical Meaning: Toward a Critical History, devotes two chapters to the relationship between music and what he refers to as the imagetext.22 Imagetext in this case refers to any extra-musical
21 From the beginning, Cook distances himself from the common connotation of multimedia, typically understood to include some type of interactivity with a user and a computer.
22 Lawrence Kramer, Musical Meaning: Toward a Critical History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002).
10 component in a mixed-media environment, including a visual domain, a spoken or sung domain, or both. Kramer couches the problem of meaning in music by simply asking how music alone can convey meaning. By engaging music as part of mixed media, he attempts to identify that which gives the music meaning. He determines that the degree of subjectivity that goes into this process, even with other supporting domains, can be applied just as easily to music that exists alone. “Music and subjectivity share the same loop; music is virtually subjective because subjectivity is virtually musical.”23 He points out that all analysis of meaning is, to some degree, subjective in nature. He also frees the exploration of meaning from the binary/ternary relationships found in other approaches to musical meaning. His approach, derived from Lacanian philosophy, avoids semiotics’ and metaphor’s need for a second (or even third) thing with which to compare to the object in question. For Kramer, the comparative object can exist purely in the mind, which provides justification for his more subjective readings.
Although Kramer differentiates his approach from Cook’s, to some extent they both describe multimedia (or mixed media) as a binary relationship: the music as compared with everything else that is not music. The current model, to be described shortly, is fundamentally different from these notions in its exploration of multimedia as a ternary entity. By utilizing concepts borrowed from semiotics and metaphor, my model addresses the three domains, presenting a cohesive picture of meaning in minimalist multimedia.
1.5 Outline of Model
My model for the analysis of multimedia compositions consists of a three-step process. Step one involves the analysis of the surface. I will draw upon existing analytical tools suited to each domain. Step two applies a semiotic interpretation to the resulting analyses, resulting in a denotational meaning for each domain. 24 The meanings act as input spaces in step three as a
23 Kramer, 172.
24 Again, I am adopting Shaftel’s notion (also voiced by Peirce and Eco) of a broader denotation that can encompass some outside cultural cues.
11 cross-domain mapping, similar to a conceptual integration network, which blends the meanings together into a single, deeper level exegesis that draws from all three domains.
The model uses both semiotics and metaphor to arrive at an analysis of the work, but in a different manner than does Cook. He uses metaphor to describe similarity, a task to which it is aptly suited, and uses the semiotic square, which is based on opposition, to describe difference. I intend to use semiotic theory where it seems most appropriate, on the surface level of each domain where actions can be interpreted as signs. Only then do I place those signfieds into a metaphorical cross-domain map in order to derive new meaning out of their relationships. The benefit of my model is that all three domains can be engaged at the same time, and that the balance between them can be adjusted and explored.
My model also demands that the visual element be relatively fixed and unchanging. It requires that there be tight bond between the actions in the visual field, musical field, and narrative field, such that a single urtext can provide the source materials. As described above, Cook’s model does not have this restriction and the result is flexible, but limiting in its approach to the sort of multimedia described in the current study. I will now further describe the model and each of its steps.
1.5.1 Surface Level Analysis and Denotational Meaning
The surface level of each domain is capable of being analyzed using existing methods. The musical domain, which for this study will primarily consist of minimalist music, is examined using many of the analytical tools that are described in Chapter Two. While topical interpretations of minimalist music are not common, I will employ them when they are appropriate. I also plan to use musical gestures and formal structures to arrive at the denotative
12 meaning for this domain.25 Of course, if other, more appropriate ways of determining such meaning are available, I will take advantage of them.26
To examine the other domains, I will borrow theories from a number of other disciplines. For the visual domain, I will mainly draw upon established film techniques and their approaches to associated meaning. The technique of match-cutting is one such device. Procedurally, this transitional shot matches an object from one scene to the next. A clear example of this can be seen in the introduction to Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey in which the ancestors of contemporary humans throw a bone high into the air.27 The next scene shows a space station that occupies the same physical location on screen. The use of this technique demands that the viewer compare the objects in each scene, in this case both are tools, but with differing degrees of technological sophistication. Other kinds of transitions and shot types will be used as they seem appropriate to a given situation. Of the four works I will be examining, Three Tales and Naqoyqatsi are the best suited for these types of filmic descriptions.
For the staged works, Nixon in China and Lost Objects, both of which are filmed from an audience-member’s perspective, I will utilize gesture in much the same way I will for the music.28 For example, in Nixon in China, Act II begins with relative calm as Mrs. Nixon arises from her bed, which is in stark contrast to a whirlwind of activity that follows as sets are moved on and off in rapid succession, representing her tour of various locations in China. The scene returns to a sense of stasis with an aria featuring Mrs. Nixon alone, standing motionless on
25 This step can respond flexibly to the exigencies of a particular example. For instance, in Nixon in China, an aria by Premier Chou is saturated with harmonies related by a tritone and those acting as hexatonic poles. These are the furthest apart harmonies can be in each respective harmonic system, which imparts a denotative meaning of maximum separation.
26 One example is Reich’s use of the hammer leitmotif from Das Rheingold during the second scene from the first act of Three Tales.
27 I thank Kay Picart for bringing this example to my attention.
28 I consider these staged works multimedia because of the unchanging visual component they posses. Each work relies heavily on specific staging elements that remain unchanged from performance to performance.
13 stage.29 Also, the physical placement of objects and people on stage can have meaning. For example, in Lost Objects, the Baroque orchestra is always positioned in the middle, making it the focal point of the work. An interpretation of such a staging might be that this “lost” performing ensemble acts as an appropriate core for a discussion lost things. A more detailed description of these visual analytical techniques appears in Chapter Two.
The narrative of each work will be examined in much the same way that Shaftel engages operatic drama.30 The first-level investigation examines the fundamental aspects of a drama before progressing to deeper levels of meaning and interaction with the music. For my purposes, I will identify key aspects of the narrative and determine possible denotative meanings. Those aspects will frequently be presented in the form of an opposition, since some kind of struggle between opposing forces is necessary in any narrative structure.
1.5.2 Cross-Domain Mapping and Blending
Step three involves the use of a cross-domain map to compare the denotational meanings derived in step two. Unlike most traditional CINs, this network has three input spaces, one for each of the three domains under consideration. Once the denotational meanings enter the network, there is no generic space as seen in the CIN described above (Figure 1.1). The generic space is replaced here by a focusing domain (FD) that temporarily allows a single domain to take precedence in the network. Depending on what an analyst is trying to uncover about a work, the FD can shift to other domains, possibly changing and/or enhancing the interpretation.
At this point, it might be helpful to explore a graphic representation of the model. Figure 1.3 is a triangle, the sides of which represent the surface, structural features of each domain determined in step one. The ovals inside the triangle are the denotational meanings from step
29 Another interpretation of the visual domain might include the fact that Pat wakes up in the bed alone and fully dressed for the day to ahead.
30 Shaftel, 40-42.
14 two. Those meanings are then blended together in the smaller triangle at the center of the figure in step three. The FD in this case is the visual domain. Another way to think of the model is as a prism. Just as a real prism can separate white light into its composite colors, this model can separate the various aspects of the composition. As you turn a prism, the way the light interacts with it changes, just as the focusing domain can change to affect the deeper level meaning. A three-dimensional figure would best illustrate this model, taking the shape of a triangular pyramid with three of the sides representing the surface of each domain, the inner space housing the integration network, and the final side acting as the lens through which the blended space is projected.
Figure 1.3. Graphical representation of a model for the analysis of multimedia compositions.
1.6 Conclusion
The model described above will be the basis of the analyses in Chapters Three through Six. Chapter Two outlines the specific analytical tools used to uncover surface-level features in each domain of the composition.
15 CHAPTER 2
TOOLS FOR ANALYSIS
In Chapter One, I explored the various literary theories that are applied in the model. Borrowing from Peircian semiotics and Fauconnier and Turner’s conceptual integration network, the underlying process of the model operates the same way regardless of the information placed inside. This chapter discusses the analytical tools that are required to best obtain the surface level information for the works under discussion, which can be utilized in the model to arrive at deeper, more comprehensive readings. I begin with minimalist music, discussing established methods of analysis that deal with issues of rhythm and meter, melody and harmony, and still others that address the music in a more broad sense. I then discuss minimalist art, as its close connection to early minimalist music underscores many of the visual elements in the multimedia works. I conclude with a brief discussion on film form and technique.
2.1 Minimalist Music
There are many different ways scholars have approached minimalist music. Some deal with aspects of rhythm and meter, others with more melodic and harmonic issues, and still others that address the music in a more broad sense. For this reason, I have grouped the following section into three categories: rhythm and meter, melody and harmony, and broader issues of minimalism.
16 2.1.1 Issues of Rhythm and Meter
From the beginning, rhythm and meter have played a vital role in minimalist music. For instance, African drumming has heavily influenced the music of Steve Reich, and many of his earlier works (Drumming, Clapping Music, etc.) are purely rhythmic in construction. It was not until fairly recently, however, that theories first emerged concerning the rhythm and meter of minimalist music. Richard Cohn was one of the first scholars to deal with the subject, focusing on the phase-shifting music of Reich.31 Cohn applies the methodology of atonal set-classes to the world of beats, establishing beat-class sets (or bc sets).32 Attack points in a measure act as the members of the set, which can then be reduced to a prime bc. “Like pitch-class sets, bc sets have an internal content, bear properties such as invariance or cycle-generability, and enter into equivalence, similarity, and inclusion relations with each other.”33 This also means that any number of Lewinian-type functions can be applied to the sets.34 Cohn develops a number of theorems to explain the relationship of patterns found throughout both Phase Patterns and Violin Phase.
John Roeder deals with similar issues in Reich’s music.35 Roeder expands upon the work done by Cohn by applying theories of accent (including work done by Berry, Lerdahl and
31 Phase-shifting involves the gradual shift of unison lines away from each other before locking in again with one line ahead of the other. Reich’s first experiments in this type of composition involved the use of recorded material which was manipulated to become “out of phase” with itself. Reich later applied the same concept to pieces intended for live performance, and those are the works described by Richard Cohn, “Transpositional Combination of Beat-Class Sets in Steve Reich's Phase-Shifting Music,” Perspectives of New Music 30/2 (1992): 146-177.
32 Cohn was not the first talk about beats in this way. The earliest reference is in Dan Warburton, “A Working Terminology for Minimal Music,” Intégral 2 (1988): 135-160.
33 Cohn, 149.
34 Cohn, 154.
35 John Roeder, “Beat-Class Modulation in Steve Reich's Music,” Music Theory Spectrum 25/2 (2003): 275-304.
17 Jackendoff, and Kramer) to clarify where the accented beats are located in a given passage of music. He also imparts tonal terms to the beat-classes and calls their subsequent transformations “modulations.” In all Roeder defines seven types of accent, and when these types are applied to a passage of music, the beat that is declared the strongest accent by a majority of the types will act as the main “downbeat.”
Roeder addresses one of the many problems with phase-shifting music: the perceived downbeats never stay in the same place for very long. The constant re-orientation of the metric impulse makes the task of identifying a salient hierarchy difficult. Roeder’s theory borrows from the rhythmic hierarchy model of Lerdahl and Jackendoff to methodically determine the strongest accent in the given passage. It does not, however, account for the exciting role that subjectivity can play in the listener’s engagement with phase-shifting music. Indeed, it is entirely possible for perceived accents to change (perhaps within a certain hierarchical range) upon each listening of a piece. Assigning the one and only strongest accent seems, in this context, too limiting and not in the spirit of the composition.
There are relatively few musical situations within the works explored during this study that employ phase-shifting as addressed by Cohn and Roeder. One of the most apparent instances occurs in the final movement, “Dolly,” of Reich’s Three Tales. Here, sound clips of the words “machine” and “gives me pause” are looped and shifted to create a kind of phasing groove that sets up the musical material that follows. The phasing is quick and relatively brief, so I do not think an implementation of beat-class and beat-class modulation would be extremely fruitful.36 However, when consistent, long-lasting phasing occurs in Three Tales, I do use the terminology described by Cohn.
Wes York presents the concept of additive rhythm through an examination of Philip Glass’s work, Two Pages.37 York describes a process of internal repetition where only part of a
36 The real interest in these particular sections are the words Reich chooses to loop. They fit into the overall narrative of Three Tales: frightening technological progress in the twentieth century.
37 Wes York, “Form and Process,” in Richard Kostelanetz, Writings on Glass (New York: Schirmer, 1981): 60-80.
18 rhythmic pattern is repeated. This is typically written out as opposed to using repeat signs or other symbols. Such a method allows a single rhythmic pattern to be varied while not completely obfuscating the connection between the subsequent repetitions. The only occurrence of internal repetition in this study occurs during Glass’s music for Naqoyqatsi. In the movement titled “Primacy of Number,” Glass uses a specific type of repetition known as a subtractive process, which is described in detail below.
The two techniques described above, phase shifting and internal repetition (a subset of linear additive process) are thoroughly demonstrated and explained by Dan Warburton.38 He associates the former technique with Reich (with such pieces as Come Out and Piano Phase) and the latter with Glass (with such pieces as Two Pages and Music in Fifths). Warburton also describes a block additive process, wherein music is gradually built up over several repetitions of the same measure. He mentions examples from Reich’s Sextet that utilize this technique, but it is also quite prominent in the “counterpoint” pieces such as New York Counterpoint or Vermont Counterpoint. In Three Tales, additive process is used in the opening measures of “Nibelung Zeppelin” from the first movement titled “Hindenburg.” A chorus of anvils is gradually brought into the texture by repetition of the Nibelung leitmotif from Wagner’s Das Rheingold.
Another technique Warburton describes is a linear subtractive process, the opposite of an additive process. The piece he uses to demonstrate both additive and subtractive processes, Frederic Rzewski’s Les Moutons de Panurge, consists of a 65-note melody in which the first note is performed, followed by the first and the second, then first, second, and third notes, etc. When all 65 notes are heard, the notes are then subtracted from the beginning. The long-range scope that additive and subtractive processes take in this example is not present in the works under discussion for this study; however, there are several passages that present subtractive process at a smaller, beat-to-beat or measure-to-measure level. As mentioned briefly above, Glass’s music for Naqoyqatsi, specifically in the movement “Primacy of Number,” uses a much smaller-scale subtractive process. An initial four-note group, when repeated, is consolidated into
38 Warburton, 1988.
19 three notes, and finally a pair of notes. This pattern is repeated throughout of the movement, playing a small role in the formal structure of the music.
These modes of analysis that pertain to rhythm and meter aid my analyses in identifying structures that are present on the surface of the music. Since none of the works in this study is purely rhythmic, however, an examination of the harmonic and melodic structures is also necessary.
2.1.2 Issues of Melody and Harmony
Many theories have arisen to determine how the fundamentally diatonic entities that control the harmonic realm of most minimalist music present themselves in a context void of traditional tonal clues. My study particularly draws upon work by Timothy Johnson as well as the much older theory of double interval cycles, recently reengaged by Edward Gollin. What follows is a brief discussion of each of these ideas and how they are (and in one case, are not) used in my analyses.
Timothy Johnson’s substantial article on the treatment of harmony in the music of John Adams develops a formalist set of preference rules for identifying the underlying triadic harmony that is active at any particular time in the work.39 In some sense it is the harmonic counterpart to Cohn’s 1992 article, which focused primarily on rhythm and meter (see above). To begin, Johnson outlines what he calls the diatonic and superdiatonic complexes. Figure 2.1 reproduces Johnson’s Figure 3 of the superdiatonic complex. Preference rules govern which chords are found within each complex. The arrangement of the complexes gives priority to certain sonorities, which eventually leads to the identification of harmonic fields. In this way the theory is hierarchical, such that decisions at lower levels (chord preference) affect the upper levels (sonority and field preference).
39 Timothy Johnson, “Harmonic Vocabulary in the Music of John Adams: A Hierarchical Approach,” Journal of Music Theory 37/1 (1993): 117-156.
20
Figure 2.1. Johnson’s superdiatonic complex.
While the preference rules provide a hierarchy for diatonic harmonies in the absence of an overriding tonal structure and help to describe the strong pitch centricity of Adams’s work, the cumbersome process is limited in its ability to extend to other contexts. In an apparent attempt to ensure that the preference rules can be applied in most situations, many of the rules allow for a great deal of flexibility. For example, Chord Preference Rule 1 (C-PR1) states:
Complete seventh chords or triads are preferred; however, if no complete chord can be found, the fifth or (if no other reading is possible) the third may be omitted. A seventh may be added to a previously established triad; a seventh appearing relatively briefly may be considered as a non-chord tone rather than part of the chord.40
Clearly, the “rule” leaves much to the subjective filtering of the analyst. This rule also omits harmonies with extensions, leaving out many of John Adams’s jazz-inspired harmonies.41 While Johnson’s work provides a worthwhile starting point, other analysts have needed to employ extensive adaptations to the system. Catherine Pellegrino’s dissertation uses Johnson’s model as a base, but makes significant changes in order to address extra-musical issues in Adams’s music.42 In fact, Johnson himself seems to be looking toward new harmonic models (discussed
40 Johnson, “Harmonic Vocabulary,” 129.
41 Catherine Pellegrino outlines many of Adams’s early influences, jazz being one of the most important. Catherine Pellegrino, “Formalist analysis in the context of postmodern aesthetics: The music of John Adams as a case study,” (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1999).
42 Ibid. pg. 11
21 below). As will become evident, I have found other methods of organizing pitch materials that are simpler to employ and that can apply to each of the four pieces under consideration.
Timothy Johnson’s recent work focuses on harmony and drama in Nixon in China.43 At a 2007 conference in Wales, Johnson explored neo-Riemannian and hexatonic relationships between successive harmonies in Premier Chou’s final aria. Upon examining excerpts from other parts of the opera, I have found several places where the harmonies move along similar hexatonic lines. While neo-Riemannian transformational tools may not provide a global theory for minimalist harmony, they have been extremely informative in my work on John Adams.
Edward Gollin, in a 2007 Music Theory Spectrum article, discusses the concept of multi- aggregate double-interval cycles.44 These are cycles that alternate between two interval classes and complete two or more aggregates before the cycle repeats. For example, a cycle that alternates between major and minor thirds (4 and 3 semitones) will complete the aggregate of twelve pitch classes twice before repeating. See Figure 2.2 for an example of this (3,4) cycle, so named for the interval classes for which it is comprised. As can be seen in the figure, choosing any major or minor triad and moving two places above and two places below will complete the diatonic collection with the initial triad acting as tonic, the triad above acting as the dominant, and the triad below as the subdominant. Both Hauptmann and Riemann used similar patterns of major and minor thirds to illustrate diatonic pitch space.45 Though this cycle is not typical in most minimalist composition, some of the composers of Bang on a Can make explicit use of this (3,4) cycle in their work Lost Objects.
43 Timothy Johnson, “The ‘Endless Wakefulness’ of Premier Chou in John Adams’s Nixon in China,” (presented at the First International Conference on Music and Minimalism, University of Wales, Bangor, 31 August-2 September 2007). The presentation included a useful handout. According to Johnson’s website
44 Edward Gollin, “Multi-Aggregate Cycles and Multi-Aggregate Serial Techniques in the Music of Béla Bartók,” Music Theory Spectrum 29/2 (2007): 143-176.
45 For more information about the relationship to this cycle and Hauptmann’s and Riemann’s theories, see Gollin, 2007.
22
Figure 2.2. (3,4) Double-interval cycle.
Determining how notes move between harmonies can uncover useful information about the structure of these minimalist works. Joseph Straus has written on the topic of voice-leading in atonal space as a way to describe the motion between adjacent harmonies as well as the motion over longer spans of time.46 Evan Jones has developed a diatonic lattice that places chromatic harmonies on a grid and charts the voice-leading from chord to chord.47 Both approaches are quite similar in how they interact with their respective musical style. While not employing either system directly, I have developed a simple voice-leading metric, inspired by both methodologies, that helps to unpack the flurry of harmonic motion that ends the first act of Nixon in China.
By use of the methods described so far, I engage the four works’ music domains to discover and describe their surface. From these analyses, I develop denotative meanings that enter into the model and engage the other domains. The next section focuses on minimalism in a broader context, adding further insight to my analyses.
46 Joseph Straus, “Uniformity, Balance, and Smoothness in Atonal Voice-Leading,” Music Theory Spectrum 25/2 (2003), 305-352.
47 Evan Jones, “Pervasive Fluency: A Contrapuntal Definition of Stability and Transience in Tonal Music” (Ph.D. diss., Eastman School of Music, 2002).
23 2.1.3 Minimalism in a Broader Context
Jonathan Bernard’s 2003 article on American minimal music addresses the “post- minimal” style of composition (the style within which the present works fall), asking what exactly is minimal about pieces composed today by minimalist composers.48 In the end, he concludes that very little of early minimalist processes have remained: “minimalism strictly construed…has vanished, yet its effects on present-day music are wide-spread and undeniable.”49 He goes on to say that postminimalism is ultimately too broad a term for pieces being composed today, but only a greater historical perspective will provide more appropriate subcategories.
K. Robert Schwarz addresses similar issues of minimalist versus postminimalist music in his 1990 article on the music of John Adams and Steve Reich.50 By identifying aspects of process, which are made up of more rigid and precomposed musical elements, and contrasting them with the music of intuition, which is linked to active musical decisions made by the composer, he shows how the music of Adams and Reich differs at a fundamental level. Adams’s music seems to be intuitive with brief areas controlled by pre-compositional process, while Reich’s music seems grounded in pre-compositional process with intuitionally inspired musical links. Schwarz goes further in stating that as these composers have continued to mature, their writing has been decreasingly process driven. Even though almost 20 years have passed since this article was written, I find that Adams, Reich, and Glass have continued to follow the trend observed by Schwarz. In one particular instance in “Bikini” from Three Tales, Reich employs differing levels of process and intuition to differentiate sections of the music. These shifts in levels of intuition play into the overall form and meaning of the movement.
48 Jonathan Bernard, “Minimalism, Postminimalism, and the Resurgence of Tonality in Recent American Music,” American Music 21/1 (2003), 112-133.
49 Ibid., 130.
50 K. Robert Schwarz, “Process vs. Intuition in the Recent Works of Steve Reich and John Adams,” American Music 8/3 (1990), 245-73.
24 Perhaps one of the more interesting approaches to minimalist music comes from Robert Fink.51 His book defines American minimalism in the context of American culture. Apart from the engaging and humorous opening chapter which compares Reich’s Music for Eighteen Musicians and a 17-minute remix of Donna Summer’s “Love to Love You Baby,” one significant chapter describes a link between repetitive advertising and minimalist music. Advertisers have spent billions of dollars in efforts to understand when people respond the most to repetitive advertising and Fink uses this data to analyze repetition in music.
Specifically, Fink centers on the idea of pulsed repetition. Example 2.3 reproduces Fink’s Figure 5 from Chapter Three. The figure indicates the degree to which homemakers recalled specific advertisements after being exposed to 13 advertisements over the course of a year. One group saw the adds during the first 13 weeks of the year, indicated on the graph with the line that sharply rises then falls after week 13. The other group saw advertisement spread out over the course of the year, shown with the zig-zag line. The result: pulsed advertising may not achieve as high a percentage of short-term recall, but it steadily grows over the course of the year.
Figure 2.3. Fink’s Figure 5 from Chapter Three of Repeating Ourselves.
51 Robert Fink, Repeating Ourselves: American Minimal Music as Cultural Practice (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005).
25 Fink extends this idea onto minimalist music, defining a sub-genre he calls pulsed minimal music. The music in this category is essentially created by employing Warburton’s block additive process: small motives are repeated and then are gradually built up into larger units.52 Fink concludes the chapter with a possible reading of the end of the first Philip Glass/Godfrey Reggio film, Koyaanisqatsi. The scene culminates with a mother and her two children staring at a department-store television. The trio is transfixed on a series of images sped up to 50-times normal speed. Fink refers to this scene as a “negative climax” and it represents the culmination of the repetitive scenes of industrialization coupled with equally repetitive scenes of consumer consumption. As in Bernard’s article, no in-depth analysis of the music is provided, but the spirit of his reading, in which the narrative and visual information is coupled with the music, is similar to the direction taken in the present study.
Unlike Fink, however, I plan to use many of the music analytical tools outlined above to achieve a closer and better understanding of the music, relating the results with close readings of the visual and narrative dimensions. The goal is to form a richer understanding of the way in which the separate domains interact within the works under consideration. Because of the postmodern setting in which current minimalist works reside, not any one tool for analysis will be sufficient. An ever-changing combination of tools and resources will be needed to develop a coherent analysis of any given work or a subsection of a larger work.
2.2 Minimalist Art
At this point, I would like to briefly discuss the artistic movement that paralleled minimalist music. The consideration here, especially on early video art, underscores my work in several ways, especially as a context in which to place the work of video artist Beryl Korot, responsible for the video of Three Tales. Just as the minimalist movement in music was a response to serial and aleatoric music, minimalist art was born in reaction to abstract
52 Warburton, 1988, 148. Though Fink never acknowledges this, the example he cites, Reich’s Octet/Eight Lines, is constructed using what Warburton describes as the block additive process.
26 expressionism. Jackson Pollock is commonly referred to as the father of abstract expressionism with many artists who followed in the movement borrowing from his ideas in one way or another. The central premise of abstract expressionism involved the removal of the object and a focus on the expression of the artist. Minimalism went against these subjective tendencies by reintroducing the object and taming the artist’s expressive influence. Minimalist artworks, therefore, often took the form of simple geometric shapes or repeated patterns. Frank Stella was a minimalist painter whose early work consisted of monochromatic lines repeated over the entire surface of the canvas. In minimalist sculpture, viewers could examine simple shapes or objects from all sides, creating a continually evolving piece as the observer moves around.53
As the minimalist art movement gained focus, it centered on the process of creating the work, often sacrificing the very object that minimalism had endeavored to reinstate. Art critic and historian Kim Levin has said of the situation, “[the art] emphasized materials and procedures, and sabotaged formalism by de-forming its objects.”54 An eventual sub-discipline of the minimalist movement was video art. Early examples of video art, such as videos by Andy Warhol, were completely tied up with process, often focusing on a single, seldom-changing subject for extreme periods of time.55 The interest (ironically!) was solely on the process with little to no regard for the object. Jonathan Bernard’s first published account of minimalist music actually outlines many of these connections, addressing the music in terms used by visual art theorists and critics.56
53 See Donald Judd, “Specific Objects,” in Donald Judd: Complete Writings 1959-1975 (New York: New York University, 1975), 181-89.
54 Kim Levin, “The State of the Art: 1980,” Art Journal (Autumn 1980): 366-368.
55 Empire is one such film, featuring nothing but the Empire State Building for eight hours.
56 Jonathan Bernard, “The Minimalist Aesthetic in the Plastic Arts and in Music,” Perspectives of New Music 31 (1992), 86-132.
27 2.3 Film Form and Technique
Since two of the four works I engage were designed from the beginning to be viewed on a screen, a brief look at film form and technique is important. In fact, probably the greatest source of inspiration when analyzing the visual domain comes from film form and technique. For example, there are hundreds of different ways a film can move from one scene to the next. One way would be a match cut. As discussed briefly in the previous chapter, a match cut is simply a transition where an object in the previous scene suddenly occupies the same physical location on screen in the new scene. The viewer is then forced to compare those two objects and determine their relationship. Other simple techniques include zoom, pan, and fade. Each has its own associated and well-established meaning within Western culture, and is used in my analyses when appropriate.
An approach to uncovering meaning in film outlined by David Bordwell takes a similar multi-level approach which my model advocates.57 He sees only four types of meaning a critic could construct: referential, explicit, implicit, or symptomatic. The first two, referential and explicit, deal mainly with objects as they appear on screen, what Bordwell describes as the film’s “literal meaning.” This is similar to my investigation of the surface details in each domain. Implicit meaning draws upon the film’s covert or symbolic meaning. The film elements act as signs for some outside cultural reference. Symptomatic meaning is the final, deeper-level reading of the film that takes into account the previous levels. This way of approaching meaning in film will be most helpful in the visual analysis of Naqoyqatsi, the most cinematic work under consideration.
57 David Bordwell, Making Meaning (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989), 8-9.
28 2.4 Conclusion
As mentioned briefly at the beginning of this chapter, my model operates in the same manner regardless of what information is placed inside. This means that the model is not just useful for minimalist multimedia works, but any multimedia work. The only change would be in the analytical methods used to better suit the style of composition under consideration. It is not explored in this study, but the model has great potential for expansion beyond the realm of minimalist textures.
This chapter has outlined the analytical tools I use in the analyses for this study. These theories help explore the surface of each domain, which comprises the outer edge of my analytical model. While the model is the basis of all of my analytical observations and conclusions, it sometimes recedes to the background so it does not disrupt the flow of the analysis. Chapter Seven revisits each composition with the model in full focus, examining the works from angles not previously considered.
29 CHAPTER 3
THREE TALES
3.1 Background
Three Tales is a video opera in three acts that highlights three of the most significant technology-related events of the twentieth century: the crash of the Hindenburg, the testing of the atomic bomb, and the cloning of Dolly the sheep. Steve Reich and his wife, video artist Beryl Korot, created “Hindenburg” first, apart from the other movements, though they were planning on creating a work that encompassed the entire twentieth century. “Dolly” is different from the first two tales, as Korot has said in an interview, “in contrast with the first two acts, ‘Dolly’ is looking within, to ourselves, to the impact of technology on our own physical bodies.”58 For this chapter, I only examine “Hindenburg” and “Bikini” due to their contrasting style and form. “Dolly,” while possibly the most interesting tale in many respects, is a strikingly different piece and would not make for a good comparison with either of the previous two tales. The following analyses of “Hindenburg” and “Bikini” not only show the effectiveness of my model for interpreting minimalistic multimedia, but also reveal a subtext beneath the surface-level elements.
58 Steve Reich and Beryl Korot, “A Theatre of Ideas: Steve Reich and Beryl Korot on Three Tales,” Interview by David Allenby (2002). In liner notes of Three Tales (Nonesuch Records, 2003).
30 3.2 “Hindenburg”
The first act, “Hindenburg,” is comprised of four scenes: “It Could Not Have Been a Technical Matter,” “Nibelung Zeppelin,” “A Very Impressive Thing to See,” and “I Couldn’t Understand It.” Each scene is unique in its musical qualities and narrative content, telling Reich’s and Korot’s version of the Hindenburg disaster. Each scene is analyzed below using the model outlined in Chapter One and the analytical tools discussed in Chapter Two.
3.2.1 “It Could Not Have Been a Technical Matter”
To begin, I examine the surface level of each domain, starting with the music. Scene one of Hindenburg, “It Could Not Have Been a Technical Matter,” features phasing as its primary structural device. As can be seen in Example 3.1, from the moment two instruments, in this case snare drums, are heard at the same time, the second is phased from the first by T2, meaning they are members of the same beat-class, simply transposed by two eighth-note pulses.59 Phased entrances continue to dominate the texture as the remainder of the instruments and voices make their entrances. Interestingly, the changing meters that permeate this scene are not phased, and all instruments change meter signatures together regardless of their phased position. The eighth- note pulse, however, remains constant through the alternating simple and compound meters, and the snare drums that started the phasing pattern continue to sound the same, unwavering pattern throughout the scene.
59 Richard Cohn, “Transpositional Combination of Beat-Class Sets in Steve Reich's Phase- Shifting Music,” Perspectives of New Music 30/2 (1992): 146-177.
31
Example 3.1. Snare drum phasing. mm. 17–18, “It Could Not Have Been a Technical Matter,” Three Tales.
The rhythm and meter make a dramatic change in measure 64, and even though the tempo remains steady, the shift from repeated eighth-note attacks to longer note durations effectively slows this section. The phasing continues here, but the time span between phased entrances is now much longer and less precise. Example 3.2 shows the elongated texture. In this example, Tenor 2 and Tenor 3 are separated by 19 eighth-note pulses (T19), but later that difference is extended to 23 eighth-note pulses (T23). It creates a canon between the three vocal parts. This slower B section of the two-part form is accompanied by an audio recording of a news director who is making sure his camera crew is capturing the crash. Accordingly, this audio is slowed from its normal speed, mimicking the slow down in the rhythmic pulse of the music. In contrast to the slowness of this B section are two brief moments of the previous eighth-note pulse. These flashes of the A section also reintroduce the quarter-note phasing, but are quickly replaced by the B section’s slower pulse and phasing schemes.
Example 3.2. Slower pulse. mm. 64–67, “It Could Not Have Been a Technical Matter,” Three Tales.
The main narrative idea in this scene stems from the text the vocalists repeat several times over. The line, “It could not have been a technical matter,” suggests that the fault of the accident must of have stemmed from somewhere other than the German engineering of the ship. Perhaps human error or an act of nature destroyed the Hindenburg. Regardless, this line compels a narrative that prompts the question, “who or what is responsible for the crash?”
32 The visual domain floods the screen with reproductions of the quote discussed above accompanied by video footage of the crash itself. The quoted text appears on screen during the A section and each word is highlighted in sync with the music. The video footage is presented in one of two ways: either in real time or slower than real time. The A section, along with the text, features real-time footage and the B section mostly contains slower-than-real-time footage. The two places in the B section when the footage is shown at real speed coincide with the return of the quicker eighth-note pulse in the music.
These structural analyses of the domains comprise the outer edge of the model. The next step is to determine any denotational meaning associated with them. The phasing of the scene’s music, which is relentless and unending in both the snare drum part and the vocal parts, creates a sensation of uneasiness. A listener would normally become accustomed to the same phasing pattern for long periods of time, but since the phasing pattern is constantly being expanded and contracted while the drums remain steady, a comfortable groove can never occur. As evidenced by the sudden deceleration of the tempo, the phasing also grinds the entire movement to a sudden stop, having lost the energy present with the quicker phasing patterns.
Some insight into the question raised by the narrative may be gained by knowing a little about the source of the chosen quotation. Dr. Hans Luther, who was then the German ambassador to the United States, made that statement in the May 7, 1937 issue of the New York Times.60 By denying that the disaster could be the result of a “technical” problem, the ambassador also suggests that German engineering had nothing to do with the incident, creating a sense that German technology is infallible.
The crash footage presented in both real time and slowed versions presents an interesting and somewhat necessary dichotomy. It was perhaps necessary to slow down the footage simply
60 Special to THE NEW YORK TIMES, "DISASTER ASCRIBED TO GAS BY EXPERTS: Washington Sees Dangerous Combination of Hydrogen and Blue Gas as Cause," New York Times (1857- Current file), May 7, 1937, http://www.proquest.com/ (accessed March 12, 2008).
33 because of the speed of the disaster. The time it took from the first sign of trouble to a burning heap of wreckage on the ground was only 32 seconds, which would make for a rather short movement.61 Using slow motion techniques here not only creates a longer scene, but also, as suggested by Ephraim Katz, “stress[es] a moment in time.”62 By stretching the crash footage, a strong emphasis is placed on the initial eruption of fire, which almost appears static. The real- time clips juxtaposed with these slower clips create an interesting dichotomy between the events as they actually happened and a slowed down version emphasizing the actual destruction of the Hindenburg, the product of German technological advancements.
Figure 3.1. Still frame from “It Could Not Have Been a Technical Matter,” Three Tales.
The focusing domain (FD) for this scene is the visual domain. The choice of the focusing domain is completely subjective on the part of the analyst.63 Moving from the denotational meanings that stress the actual explosion and the structural aspects of the music and video to an informed blending of all three, a deeper meaning emerges. As shown in Figure 3.2, the notion that German technology is infallible combined with music’s persistent phasing, slowing down, and abrupt ending creates a subtext that arrogance and dogged persistence about technology can
61 Lee Charles Cadwallader and James Stephen Herring, "Safety Issues with Hydrogen as a Vehicle Fuel," Technical Report, Idaho National Laboratory (1999), 32.
62 Ephraim Katz, The Film Encyclopedia (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1979), 1067.
63 Focusing domains and their role in the model is further explored in Chapter seven.
34 lead to disastrous results. This is only one possible reading of the scene. Other surface structures could replace the ones selected here and the model would likely result in a different reading.
Figure 3.2. Model of “It Could Not Have Been a Technical Matter,” Three Tales.
3.2.2 “Nibelung Zeppelin”
The formal structure of this scene consists of an introduction, followed by a series of episodes and breaks. The introduction, ending in measure 54, systematically introduces subgroups of the ensemble every 16 measures, which translates into 30-second intervals. The first group, consisting of a chorus of five anvils, strikes the Nibelung leitmotif from Das Rheingold. This rhythmic pattern, illustrated in Example 3.3, is the source for all of the rhythmic ideas in the scene. Much like the snares in the first scene, the anvils continue to play the leitmotif throughout the entire scene. After all of the anvils are striking the motif or variations thereof, the next group enters. The two vibraphones that comprise the second group continue the rhythmic pattern of the motif, but add a rising melodic gesture. Two pianos enter as the third group with the same leitmotif pattern and an added repeating upward melodic gesture, a variation on what the vibraphones are playing. Other distinctive features of the piano part are the pedal
35 tones first introduced in measure 42. The second piano maintains the same pedal, C2 and C1, however, the first piano’s pedal tones change throughout the scene. The final group to enter is the strings, playing the most varied version of the original leitmotif, which can still be heard as related to the music of the other instrument groups.
Example 3.3. Nibelung motive from “Nibelung Zeppelin,” Three Tales.
The introduction is followed by a four-measure break, where the strings and pedal tones drop out of the texture. A new episode begins with the reintroduction of the pedal tones followed by the strings a few measures later. In measure 75, another four-measure break occurs, again followed by an episode beginning with the pedal tones and the strings a few measures later. This episode then concludes the movement.
The pitch materials utilized in this scene comprise a C Phrygian collection. The lowered scale-degree 2 becomes apparent in the first entrance of the pedal notes in the introduction (m. 42). As shown in Example 3.4, the second piano part maintains a pedal C while the first piano strikes Db and immediately falls to C. At the start of the next episode, the second piano’s pedal
C remains, but the first piano has fallen to alternating between Bb and Ab. This trend continues in the next episode where the piano notes fall further to G and F and then finally, before the end, to Eb and Db. In other words, the bass piano notes outline a scalar descent through the Phrygian collection over the course of the scene. Figure 3.3 is a graph that illustrates the introduction and episodes as well as the Phrygian collection.
Figure 3.3. Graph of “Nibelung Zeppelin,” Three Tales.
36
Example 3.4. Entrance of pedal notes. mm. 41–43, “Nibelung Zeppelin,” Three Tales.
There is no text or obvious narrative, but the rich visual domain suggests a small plot for the scene. The scene opens with several men in black silhouette performing various tasks that we later discover to be related to the building of the Hindenburg. Moments later, a man is shown climbing through the inner structure of the dirigible. Korot has said in an interview that:
What struck me was the incredible gracefulness and dance-like quality of the workers in their everyday activities, especially several of the workmen climbing and walking on the scaffolding. So I masked these out of the original footage, frame by frame, and set them to the music.64
After seeing the Hindenburg under construction, the next images show the airship being moved outdoors for the first time. A small army of workers accompanies the ship on its journey, and this is the first time in the scene that the Nazi party is directly referenced through a prominent display of a swastika on the tail fin.65 Figure 3.4 illustrates several of the images from the scene.
64 Steve Reich and Beryl Korot, “A Theatre of Ideas: Steve Reich and Beryl Korot on Three Tales,” interview by David Allenby (2002), in liner notes of Three Tales (Nonesuch Records, 2003).
65 “Hindenburg,” as it was originally conceived by Reich and Korot, contained a fifth scene, placed before “Nibelung Zeppelin.” Its purpose was to tell the story of General Hindenburg and the eventual rise of the Nazi party. According to Reich, “it was just too laborious and heavy-handed, so we chucked it.” He then says that while the Nazi references in “Nibelung Zeppelin” are not as overt as in the missing scene, the subtle reminders are enough to cover the Nazi’s involvement with the Hindenburg. Reich and Korot, 2003.
37
Figure 3.4. Still frames from “Nibelung Zeppelin,” Three Tales.
38 Also, note the rivets in the last frame of Figure 3.4. Its presence is quite suggestive and helps the viewer to focus on the actual structure and building of the Hindenburg, rather than on the general idea of the dirigible.
The Nibelung motive’s prominence in the scene has a multi-layered denotation. On the surface, it reminds the listener of both Wagner and the powerful ring constructed from the Rheingold, a ring that while powerful, ultimately destroys its bearer. The Nazi party also used the music of Wagner as an anthem during their reign, symbolizing their power and attempting to associate a strong German heritage with their political ideals. Therefore, its continuous use here references both the Nazis and self-destructive power even without the prominently displayed swastika. It is clear, then, that the focus of this scene is not necessarily on the construction of the Hindenburg, but more a comment on the Nazi Party itself.
Furthering that commentary is Reich’s use of the Phrygian mode. This mode, with its lowered scale-degree 2, has long been associated with dark and ominous scenes.66 Figure 3.5 below outlines the structure and meaning of the domains on the model, arriving at a blended meaning that colors the great technological achievement of the Hindenburg with the dark and ominous Nazi party.
66 Two examples of this dark, b2 inflection from the Romanic era include Schubert’s Die Erlkönig and “Feierabend” from Die Schöne Müllerin. In the former, the Neapolitan (or Phrygian II) is heard during the final statement of the Erlkönig, and in the latter, the Neapolitan is heard while the miller’s daughter speaks. This is the only time in the entire song cycle we hear from the daughter, foreshadowing the unhappy ending.
39
Figure 3.5. Model of “Nibelung Zeppelin,” Three Tales.
3.2.3 “A Very Impressive Thing to See”
The music of this scene features a sparse texture and a great deal of metric dissonance. The sound of a Zeppelin’s hum is present throughout the scene and its entrance is followed by a vibraphone playing quarter-note pulses, firmly establishing a metric pulse. A second vibraphone enters a few measures later playing on off-beats once every six beats, which establishes a six-beat metrical unit. This contradicts the written meter of 4/4, and to further complicate matters, the voices and violins enter a few measures later with a three-beat metrical unit. Example 3.5 illustrates the dissonance. The voices and strings maintain their three-beat grouping throughout the scene, but the vibraphones occasionally extend or subtract pulses from their units.
40
Example 3.5. Metric dissonance. mm. 11–15, “A Very Impressive Thing to See,” Three Tales.
This scene also features a technique for melodic writing first used by Reich in Different Trains.67 The scene features an interview clip with Freya von Moltke, a woman who lived in Germany during the time of Paul von Hindenburg’s presidency and saw the Hindenburg several times in person. When Reich inserts a clip from the interview into the scene, he sets the inflection of her voice as a melody and has the strings accompany the clip. These interview clips also happen to be in metrical groupings of three beats. Example 3.6 shows one example where Reich sets the line, “It was enormous and it was like silver.” Note the gradual expansion of the melodic range, mirroring the actual text.
Example 3.6. Setting of vocal inflections. mm. 16–17, “A Very Impressive Thing to See,” Three Tales.
67 This technique was also used early by Janacek, whose work influenced Reich.
41 Reich also structures the harmonic content of the scene around the vocal inflections of the interviewee. A sampler and the vibraphones provide the harmonic support for the scene and their content changes based on von Moltke’s inflections. The opening chord consists of D, Eb,
G, and A, the same notes used by von Moltke’s melodic inflection. This harmony changes to E§,
F, A, and C# in measure 19 and corresponds to the inflection melody that follows. A similar pattern occurs throughout the scene, as shown in Example 3.7. This method of choosing harmonies is unlike that found in any of the other scenes in “Hindenburg.”
Example 3.7. Melodies based on vocal inflections, “A Very Impressive Thing to See,” Three Tales.
The clips shown during this scene include shots of the Hindenburg from several vantage points. They all feature the Hindenburg in flight and include shots from inside looking down on the earth, low-angle shots looking up at it from the ground, and high-angle shots looking down on it and the earth. One shot, which is differentiated from the rest as it is the only clip allowed to encompass the entire screen, juxtaposes the Hindenburg in the background with the Köln Cathedral in the foreground. That shot is shown here in Figure 3.6.
42
Figure 3.6. Still frame from “A Very Impressive Thing to See,” Three Tales.
The only text in the scene comes from the brief uses of the interview with von Moltke:
It was enormous and it was like silver. And it sort of made a humming noise A very impressive thing to see. Have you seen pictures? Why do such a thing? Why have such a cigar, huge silver cigar in the sky? That’s another matter.
The vocalists then sing selected words from these interview clips, including “enormous,” “pictures,” and “why.”
The metrical conflict in the music remains constant throughout, meaning that each part’s metrical cycle, while operating independently from the others, sometimes coincides with the other parts. This could possibly be a corollary to the saying, “A broken clock is right twice a day.” Perhaps, then, the music is suggesting that a broken machine can have limited success, implying that the Hindenburg, while impressive to look upon, was always destined for failure.
All the camera angles used in this scene emphasize the size and dominance of the Hindenburg. Low-angle shots are traditionally used in film to make an object appear larger than
43 normal.68 High-angle shots typically make the subject seem smaller and insignificant, but its use here creates the opposite effect.69 The downward shots of the Hindenburg, which in turn is blocking our view of the ground, actually further assert the blimp’s dominance. The shot featuring the Hindenburg and the Köln Cathedral forces the viewer to compare the two objects, and both happen to be examples of German technological prowess. In short, this scene’s visual domain has a denotative meaning of dominance. Furthering this idea even more, if the Köln Cathedral also stands for religious superiority, then placing the Hindenburg above it raises the status of German technology above religion, or higher than God. Another way to read this scene is as a foreshadowing element. The spires of the cathedral literally pierce the blimp, predicting the inevitable demise of the Hindenburg.
The narrative highlights the largeness of the Hindenburg and also brings its purpose into question. “Why do such a thing?” von Moltke asks. It suggests that she (and possibly others) had trepidation about the huge airship, and even German technology and political aspirations as a whole.
Bringing these meanings together, this time with von Moltke’s trepidation narrative acting as the FD, a possible blended meaning of hesitance towards German technological achievements emerges. Perhaps Reich and Korot wanted to demonstrate that while technology can be wonderful and impressive, taking a step back to ask “Why?” might be a prudent course of action. The model for this scene is shown in Figure 3.7.
68 Katz, 737.
69 Ibid., 561.
44
Figure 3.7. Model of “A Very Impressive Thing to See,” Three Tales.
3.2.4 “I Couldn’t Understand It”
The last scene from “Hindenburg” features a formal structure much like the first scene. It begins with a single snare drum tapping the rhythm of a news headline, later joined by a second drum a quarter-note beat behind. Voices then join the texture, singing the headline the snare drums were outlining, and on subsequent repeats, the three vocal parts each remain separated by a quarter-note beat. After this, the similarity with the first scene begins to break down. Instead of a suddenly slower B section, “I Couldn’t Understand It” slows only when the voices sing in rhythmic unison. This is followed by another section of phasing, which is again followed by a slower unison. Example 3.8 shows these differences. During all of this, just as in the first scene, the two snare drums continue to sound their initial phased duet.
45
Example 3.8. Gradual Slowing of pulse through the movement, “I Couldn’t Understand It,” Three Tales.
The images in this scene are similar to the first scene in the manner in which they are presented and depict the immediate aftermath of the accident. The last image of the Hindenburg from “It Could Not Have Been a Technical Matter” shows it crashed on the ground and still in flames. This same image starts the last scene, picking up where it left off. The images, therefore, are focused on the aftermath of the accident rather than the actual accident itself. Many of the early images show workers attempting to put out the fire and rescue any possible survivors. These quickly dissolve into images of the burning inner-structure of the Hindenburg, followed by an aerial view of the site the day after the crash.
The text consists of two sources. One is of a quote by Captain Ernst Lehman, an officer aboard the airship who survived the initial crash but died of injuries the next day. This is the text sung throughout the scene by the vocalists.
46 Captain Ernst Lehmann…gasped, “I couldn’t understand it,” as he staggered out of the burning control car.70
The other text comes from a newsreel announcer, not sung, but reproduced from the original footage:
The Hindenburg has gone. Her tragedy will not halt the march of progress. From her ashes will arise the knowledge from her fate, the lesson that will lead to a greater and better means of mastering the air. If so, her dead will not have died in vain.
The Hindenburg has gone. She was the largest thing that ever flew. She represented man’s last attempt to conquer the Atlantic by air. Her tragedy will not halt the march of progress.71
Much like the first scene, one phrase from the announcer is slowed from normal speed and repeated twice, the second time even slower than the first. “From her ashes will arise the knowledge” is heard again while the vocal parts are performed slowly.
The music here has the same denotative meaning found in the first scene. At first blush, the text, especially from the newsreel announcer, seems to offer hope for the future, that this event will not halt the progress of technology. But with the prospect that that future will be lead by Germany, and Nazi Germany at that, becomes a frightening concept. The visual domain not only presents the burning wreckage, but also ends by showing the wreckage from the air, a dominion over which the Hindenburg once ruled (Figure 3.8). This extreme low-angle footage also serves to up-end the image of the Hindenburg above the Köln Cathedral in the third scene. All of these meanings are juxtaposed in the model in Figure 3.9.
70 By RUSSELL B. PORTER, Special to THE NEW YORK TIMES.. "SHIP FALLS ABLAZE :Great Dirigible Bursts Into Flames as It Is About to Land." New York Times (1857-Current file), May 7, 1937, http://www.proquest.com/ (accessed June 2, 2008).
71 Text from libretto, drawn from a newsreel announcer of unknown origin.
47
Figure 3.8. Still frame from “I Couldn’t Understand It,” Three Tales.
Figure 3.9. Model of “I Couldn’t Understand It,” Three Tales.
Figure 3.10 shows the progress of the meanings from scene to scene and how they ultimately come together to shape the signification of this final scene. The tragedy of the explosion from the first scene, though not directly referenced in the middle scenes, still influences the perception of the entire tale. The second scene posits a great accomplishment, but at the hands of the Nazi party. The third scene adds a sense of trepidation toward the
48 advancement of German technology, and all of the earlier scenes support the final scene’s reading of frightening technological progress.
Figure 3.10. Progression of meaning in “Hindenburg,” Three Tales.
3.3 “Bikini”
The second tale, “Bikini,” explores the atomic bomb tests after World War II. Reich and Korot used the extensive film footage of the tests to craft the middle tale of their multimedia essay on technology in the twentieth century. The tests were carried out by the U.S. government in 1946–47 on the Bikini Atoll, an inhabited island in the Pacific. The natural shape of the island and the location made it ideal for the tests, but the island’s residents were reluctant to leave their homes. Much of the footage in this scene comes from clips of army officers trying to convince the people to relocate to a new island. These tests were also the most photographed and documented tests to date, featuring “five-hundred photographers, seven-hundred cameras, and half the world’s supply of film.”72
Its overall structure is quite different from “Hindenburg,” taking on a cyclic quality that repeats various sections several times over. The three main sections, “In the Air,” “The Atoll,” and “On the Ships,” each have three sub-sections and are presented, with no breaks, in the order
72 This text, used in the libretto, appears to be drawn from a news article from the time of the testing, though I do not know the exact source.
49 represented in Figure 3.11. The circles represent “In the Air,” the triangles represent “The Atoll,” and the stars represent “On the Ships.” This spiral form plays into the overall meaning of the tale. Because of the difference in form and the open, rather than closed, endings of each scene, it is impossible to arrive at a separate, individual meaning for each scene. Instead, a final blended meaning, incorporating all of the scenes, is discussed after engaging the entire tale.
Figure 3.11. Spiral formal structure of “Bikini,” Three Tales.73
3.3.1 Music
There are several musical features that are unique to the “In the Air” scenes. Three pre- recorded sounds are heard throughout, consisting of a voice that counts down from the number ten, a metronome in sync with the tempo of the scene, and the constant drone of a B-29 airplane.
73 The spiral implies that the sections get longer as the tale progresses, but this is not the case. It is simply meant to demonstrate the cyclical nature of the tale’s structure.
50 The countdown takes place over the course of all of these scenes, counting down by three or four digits in each scene. Other musical devices include the familiar snare drum set to the text of news headlines and vocalists singing excerpts from newspaper interviews from the time of the testing. Other instruments include two vibraphones, two pianos, and a string quartet.
The interval of a minor second is quite apparent in these scenes. The opening harmony, performed by pre-recorded sampler, is a Cmb9 chord, featuring a minor second between pitch classes C and Db. The bottom two vocal parts, in unison with the viola and cello, begin and end their first passage a minor second apart, as shown in Example 3.9. By measure 11, the minor second has expanded into a major second with a change in pitch from C to Bb of the sampler chord and the B-29 drone. Correspondingly, the vocal parts and strings conclude their next passage with a major second between Bb and C, as shown in Example 3.10. The last sampler harmony of the first “In the Air” scene features a cluster chord, mixing both major and minor seconds, a feature duplicated by the final gesture of the vocals and strings. The subsequent “In the Air” scenes follow a similar pattern, featuring a harmonic palette permeated by major and minor seconds, though the form they take changes with each repetition.
Example 3.9. mm. 7-9, “Bikini,” Three Tales.
51
Example 3.10. mm. 16-18, “Bikini,” Three Tales.
The three sections of “The Atoll” feature a radical change in harmony and style. While it is difficult to assign a key to any of the scenes, there is a key signature change from four-flats to five-sharps. Also different is the absence of the snare, drumming the rhythm of headlines. The news reports are instead sung in choral style by two sopranos and two tenors. The constant hum of the airplane has also disappeared, and the strings now arrpegiate the harmonies, shown in Example 3.11. The vibraphones, pianos and sampler all play sustained harmonies, though they are more open than before, consisting of mostly thirds and perfect intervals.
Example 3.11. mm. 30-33, “Bikini,” Three Tales.
The form of “The Atoll” sections is also even more fluid than “In the Air.” While the elements described above are present throughout, the interjections and lengths of sung text and archival footage have no discernable pattern. Of the three main scenes (not including “Coda”),
52 this seems to be driven most by what K. Robert Schwarz refers to as intuition.74 This is in opposition to the more process-oriented music that occurs in “On the Ships.”
“On the Ships” features a common formal design in its first two occurences and a slight alteration in the final presentation. It opens with a fast-paced three-against-four metric pattern, illustrated in Example 3.12. This gives way to a section that presents the text in normal speed, followed by a third section which uses the same text, but is performed with a slower tempo and elongated words. A final section returns to the quick, three-against-four music heard in the opening. The final instance of this scene, immediately before the “Coda,” features a complete countdown from ten, which at first was only part of “In the Air” sections. The countdown, which is sung in long sustained notes, is interrupted several times by the three against four material from the previous two “On the Ships” sections.
Example 3.12. mm. 99-100, “Bikini,” Three Tales.
Because of the rigidity of this formal design, the “On the Ships” sections are the most process-oriented sections in the tale. It is likely that the formal design for these sections was chosen pre-compositionally, and the music and visual imagery, which is discussed below, was made to fit into the structural mold. “The Atoll” scenes are, by contrast, the most intuitive- oriented parts, that is the music seems less reliant on processive features. The lack of a constant or predictable formal design lends it a through-composed quality indicative of more intuitively based music. “In the Air” exists somewhere between process and intuition, acting as a hybrid or bridge between the other two sections. While it features a common harmonic language between each instance of the scene, the length and internal structure varies. The chart shown as Figure
74 Schwarz, 245–73. This notion of process versus intuition is discussed further in chapter 2.
53 3.12 shows spiral form seen earlier, this time with areas of process indicated in light gray and areas of more intuitive music indicated in dark gray.
Figure 3.12. Spiral form with process shaded in light gray and intuition shaded in dark gray, “Bikini,” Three Tales.
3.3.2 Visual
The visual imagery for “Bikini” consists of the footage taken during the tests. Project Crossroads, as the tests were called, were the fourth and fifth atomic blasts in the world, the first being the initial test during the Manhattan Project, and the second and third being the bombs dropped on Japan at the end of World War II. Not only were these tests a momentous occasion, worthy of the status Reich and Korot have bestowed upon them with inclusion in this work, but the careful documentation of the tests also provided them with several hundred hours of video with which to work. Project Crossroads was the most photographed and documented event to date.
Appropriately, the “In the Air” sections feature images of the plane that dropped the bomb. Other images include the airman responsible for dropping the bomb, the crosshairs over
54 the drop site, and the text of the news headlines that are sung by the vocal ensemble. These sections, as mentioned above, also make use of a constant metronome tick, and it too is visualized in these sections. A brief segment of the text explains the use of the metronome during the course of the testing: “Listen, you hear that rhythmic ticking noise? So long as you hear it you’ll know that bomb has not gone off.”75 The metronome was broadcast on a certain radio frequency, and as long as a soldier could tune in and here it, they would know they were in no immediate danger from the blast or the radioactive side effects of the aftermath. Radio stations in Europe during World War II used a similar technique to ensure people that the station was still intact even when not broadcasting any news. Figure 3.13 presents a still image from each of the three instances of the scene.
75 Taken from government footage of the testing.
55
Figure 3.13. Stills from “In the Air,” Three Tales.
56 “The Atoll” shows scenes of the relocation of the Bikini people and the U.S. government’s attempts at explaining why they being moved. The technique Korot employs in these sections takes multiple still frames and blends them into each other, which simulates a kind of slow motion effect without slowing down the footage altogether. In scenes that show the Bikini people being moved away from their homes, the jerky motion of their movement almost imparts a sense of resistance to their actions. Other images include brief clips of an army officer trying to explain to the people the “great destructive power” of the bomb and how it is “for the benefit of mankind.”
57
Figure 3.14. Stills from “The Atoll,” Three Tales.
The visual imagery for “On the Ships” illustrates not only the U.S. military’s preparation for the tests, but also the sadly under-reported toll paid by test animals. As the text makes clear in these scenes, the tests were designed “to measure the effects on metal, flesh, air, and water.”76 The “flesh” was tested with live animals, a fact that Reich and Korot seem adamant in relating to the audience as almost twenty percent of the time used for “On the Ships” scenes features animals being placed in position for the test. The other images of the preparations illustrate the coordination and efficiency with which the government can prepare for such a technological, yet devastating event.
76 From the libretto.
58
Figure 3.15. Stills from “On the Ships,” Three Tales.
59 3.3.3 Text
The text for “Bikini,” as with “Hindenburg,” is drawn from newspaper articles and headlines from around the time of the tests. “The Atoll” texts describe the effect of the tests on the local people of Bikini. Lines such as “The inhabitants have been taken away, transferred to another coral island, and given new homes,” are heard presented as actual recordings, paired with sung phrases like “with absolutely no show…he turned away.”77 The text in “On the Ships” emphasizes lists of ordered items, which aligns well with the more process-oriented music. The last instance of this scene features a full countdown from ten to one. “In the Air” features texts referring to either the plane itself or the actual explosion, particularly the mushroom cloud after the blast: “Then it became a giant tree bearing invisible fruit, fruits of the Tree of Knowledge.”78 This biblical allusion is not the only one in “Bikini.” Perhaps the single most unifying element for this tale lies with the insertion of text from the first two chapters of Genesis throughout the entire tale.
The Genesis texts that appear in the first three scenes (not the final “Coda”) come from chapter one.
And G-d created man in His image Male and female G-d created them And G-d blessed them and G-d said to them Be fruitful and multiply and fill the Earth and subdue it And rule over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, And every living thing that move upon the Earth.79
This text highlights one of the two vastly different roles of humans depicted in the Genesis stories. According to an interview with Korot, “In the first story, man and woman are created
77 The full line, seen on screen, is “with absolutely no show of emotion [emphasis mine] he turned away.”
78 From the libretto.
79 From Genesis, chapter 1, as presented in the libretto.
60 together and achieve dominion over the Earth and its creatures.”80 She goes on further to draw the connections between the Genesis proclamation of dominance over the Earth to the U.S. government’s dominance over the people of Bikini. More than that, however, the U.S. is actually playing the role of God through the destruction of what, according to Genesis, God once created. The Bikini people are here depicted as humble representatives of the human role described in the second Genesis story.
And the eternal formed the man Of dust from the ground And placed him in the Garden of Eden To serve it and keep it.81
These Genesis stories help create a subtext for “Bikini” that deals with the plight of the Bikini inhabitants, and the notion of taking on a God-like role.
3.3.4 Interpretation
Combining all of the music, visual, and text into a single, blended reading, results in a larger story about the atomic bomb blasts, but also a more subtle subtext that deals with the struggle of the Bikini people and the authoritarian stance of the U.S. government. As a result, “Bikini” also comments on the multiple natures of humankind in the mid-twentieth century. The United States shows its dominance over the Bikini people through technological superiority. This is supported not only by the Genesis story, but also by the heavily process-oriented music and the visual display of efficiency and images of animals being dominated and sacrificed that accompanies the “On the Ships” scenes. The people of Bikini are shown as the victims during “The Atoll” scenes, removed from their home and forced to relocate. Their hesitance at such a move, while not directly shown, is possibly implied by the film editing technique employed by Korot. The music is the most intuitive of the three scenes and the images of forced relocation,
80 Steve Reich and Beryl Korot, interview.
81 From Genesis, chapter 2, as presented in the libretto.
61 coupled with texts that highlight the remorselessness of the people moving them, completes the other side of this dominant versus humble dichotomy. The “In the Air” scenes act as a middle ground between the other two scenes, almost like a mediator between them. A model representing these blended meanings is shown in Figure 3.16.
Figure 3.16. Semiotic model and interpretation of “Bikini.”
3.3.5 Coda
The last scene of “Bikini,” titled “Coda,” begins with the actual atomic blast after the final countdown in the last “On the Ships” scene. In a way, “Coda” helps support the notion that the more interesting story, or tale, in “Bikini” is not the actual bomb but the Bikini people themselves. The mushroom-cloud, a traditional sign associated with atomic bomb blasts, is never seen. Instead, the screen becomes a bright yellow-orange with barely noticeable palm trees in the frame violently thrashing around. This quickly succumbs to images and text about the next generation of the Bikini people who still to this day cannot go back to their original
62 home island.82 These are the images, shown in Figure 3.17, with which Reich and Korot conclude the tale, not the bomb or mushroom-shaped cloud.
Figure 3.17. Still from the coda of “Bikini,” Three Tales.
3.4 Conclusion
The way in which Reich and Korot constructed these two tales is quite different. “Hindenburg” resembles a symmetrical form, a form that Reich has employed in many pieces before, such as Desert Music and even Clapping Music. Yet “Bikini” takes the form of a circular, or spiral form, in which the same three scenes are repeated three times, yet their content changes each time. The basic idea for each repetition is the same, including its musical, visual, and narrative content. One aspect that links these differently constructed tales is obviously their roles in portraying technology in the twentieth century, but as I have demonstrated here, there is a deeper subtext. For “Hindenburg,” the subtext was frightening technological progress and for “Bikini,” it was the plight of the Bikini people in deference to technology. Another element that
82 There is also a brief segment that mentions the bikini swimsuit. Frenchman Louis Reard invented the bikini in the same year as the atomic bomb tests at Bikini. He needed a name for his new creation, and, with the word “atomic” just coming into parlance to describe something sensational, he decided to name it after the testing site. Kathryn Westcott, “The bikini: Not a brief affair,” BBC News, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/5130460.stm.
63 can link these tales is their engagement with religion. While this is hard to miss in “Bikini” and plays a large role in its overall message, the only overt scene involving religion in “Hindenburg” happens during “A Very Impressive Thing to See,” when the Hindenburg is photographed flying above the Köln Cathedral. This placement of German technology over religion furthers the case for fear of German technology and introduces a religious seed that begins to sprout in “Bikini” and fully takes root in the last tale, “Dolly.”
In “Dolly,” the vocal ensemble performs very little of the text, which is instead taken straight from interviews with leading scientific and religious figures from around the world. Just as in the previous tales, this tale takes the cloning of Dolly the sheep as a way for introducing a larger discussion, the moral of which goes beyond the immediate surface to extend to an exploration of life itself. Reich and Korot tackle questions of what it means to be alive and whether we might have the right to “play God” in our creation of new life, just as the U.S. government had played the role of God with the atomic bomb in “Bikini.”
In this chapter, I have demonstrated the usefulness of this interdisciplinary approach to multimedia in uncovering a subtext and deeper meaning for a multimedia composition. Chapter Four focuses on how the same approach can apply to a more traditional form: multimedia opera.
64 CHAPTER 4
NIXON IN CHINA
4.1 Background
Nixon in China, completed and first performed in 1987, was John Adams’s first opera and collaboration with director Peter Sellars. The opera tells a mostly fictionalized account of President Richard Nixon’s visit to China in February of 1972. The three-act opera, lasting just under three hours, features many of the events that actually occurred, including the arrival of Air Force One, the dinner scene, Pat Nixon’s tour of China, and the viewing of a revolutionary ballet choreographed by Mao Tse-tung’s wife. However, the libretto mainly consists of new material, written by fellow collaborator, Alice Goodman.
As an “opera,” Nixon in China would not seem to fall into the multimedia category. The work, however, is virtually unique in its design and conception and is included in this study for two important reasons.83 First, it features a fixed visual domain. As defined in Chapter One, the notion of a multimedia work’s visual domain as unchanging is essential to the success of my model for analysis. Sellars and Adams worked in close collaboration on the staging and music respectively, making sure that events in both domains would coincide as intended. Second, all of the set design and stage movements were based on photographs and video taken during the real visit to China. In this way, the opera is as close to multimedia as any staged production could be.
In this chapter, I examine two scenes from Nixon: Act I, Scene 3 (the dinner scene), and Act II, Scene 2 (the ballet scene). The dinner scene features four distinct sections, each with its
83 Nicholas Cook actually refers to all opera as a “traditional multimedia genre.” Since the production of a traditional opera can vary from performance to performance, most operas would not satisfy my definition of multimedia, which requires a fixed visual element. See chapter one.
65 own musical style and narrative. In contrast, the ballet scene features many musical styles, seamlessly transitioning from one to the next, with a single narrative idea uniting them all. For these reasons, the analysis of each scene will take on different characteristics: the analysis of Act I, Scene 3 will treat each of the four sub-sections as individual units before a final consideration of the movement as a whole, and the analysis of Act II, Scene 2 will first treat the scene as a whole before examining a specific segment, relating it to the overall analysis. This will demonstrate the versatility of the model in mapping the interpretive possibilities in both large and small-scale analyses.
4.2 Act I, Scene 3
The final scene of Act I contains four distinct sections: the arrival and initial toasts at the dinner, a speech by Premier Chou, a speech by President Nixon, and a final series of toasts. Below is a detailed look at each section, followed by a cohesive examination of the entire scene. The music of this scene uncovers and ends up contradicting many of the statements made by the characters, leading to a rich and nuanced interpretation.
4.2.1 The Arrival and Initial Toasts
Unlike the other analyses in this study, I will begin my discussion of this scene with the text, as it will eventually fulfill the role of the focusing domain in the model. The dialogue is filled with political double-talk and double entendres. The scene opens with the Nixons and Premier Chou en route to the evening’s state dinner. It is quite clear, through not only the text but also the staging and miming done by the performers, that they are walking outside on a cold winter night. Naturally, the trio begins to discuss the weather, routinely spicing their conversation with subtle political rhetoric. This ultimately leads Richard and Pat Nixon to triumphantly sing the following lines:
66 At least this Great Hall of the People stands like a fortress against the winds, it stands against the winds whatever their direction. Yet the west wind heralds spring.
If their clever masking of political dialogue as “chatting about the weather” were not entirely obvious, it certainly is no secret now. The Nixons are commenting on how the Great Hall, a structure that is centuries old, has managed to stand through the major political changes in China, but the politics they offer, from the Western world, could herald a new beginning to the Chinese people. This opening text sets up the main narrative device of the scene to come.
The music of the scene opens with a heavily jazz-influenced quality. As can be seen in Example 4.1, the music is ripe with extended harmonies and makes use of a quasi-jazz walking bass. While the rhythmic pattern and “feel” is in keeping with a traditional jazz pattern, the actual notes are not right, featuring wide leaps as opposed to step-wise motion. Also, the extended harmonies, while providing jazz-like sonorities, are not used in a typical progression. The alternation of G#mb7 9 and Cm9 #13 does not fit into any standard jazz or blues idioms, but nonetheless, still maintains the quality of a jazzy, if not “smarmy” progression. In fact, the real President Nixon was a piano player and often performed popular, similar sounding music himself.84 These harmonies, along with other similarly voiced chords, dominate the texture for the opening 98 measures. The vocal lines that the Nixons sing during this “jazzy” moment, some of which are excerpted in Example 4.2, are disjunct, featuring unusually wide leaps.
Example 4.1. Jazz-influenced opening, mm. 1-8, Act I, Scene 3, Nixon in China.
84 A video of one such performance can be viewed online at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCsGSMze_6Q (accessed January 24, 2009).
67
Example 4.2. Example of the melodic texture, mm. 15-20, Act I, Scene 3, Nixon in China.
After the jazz-inspired opening, a shift towards traditional diatonicism occurs. These new harmonies, gradually featuring fewer accidentals, are stretched out over several measures, each with little to no alterations in voicing. Example 4.3 illustrates this change and shows a shift towards simplicity with triads and seventh chords, as opposed to the more extended harmonies from the beginning. Also, the texture begins to change from block chords to arpeggios.
Example 4.3. Transition from block chords to arpeggios, mm. 99-114, Act I, Scene 3, Nixon in China.
The next part of this opening sub-section, from measures 148 to 212, features a sudden change in feel as the sustained harmonies from before are replaced completely by arrpegiated chords. Those arpeggiations, realized as running eighth notes, also serve to quicken the pace of the music. The tempo had been gradually increasing, starting in 3/2 with 108 half-notes per minute and arriving at 126, but the elongated notes of the accompaniment made this change difficult to perceive until this moment. The vocal parts in these sections feature more conversation-like lines, as opposed to longer melodic singing. The harmonic rhythm has also slowed considerably, with single harmonies lasting for more than 15 measures at a time.
In the closing measures of this sub-section, low sustained notes punctuate the continuing arrpegiated texture. The vocal parts have begun their initial toasts on the word “Gambei,” set at first to the interval of a perfect fifth, but the toast is quickly expanded to the full cast and
68 accordingly voiced in fuller triadic harmonies. The section ends with a gradual fade-out of the triplet-based arpeggiations and a fade-in of the next section’s duple pattern.85
The visual domain in this opening section is quite simple. The Nixons and Chou arrive from stage right in front of a drawn main curtain. Placing them outside the drawn curtain, in this case, symbolizes them being outdoors and arriving at the dinner. The performers’ gestures also indicate their discomfort at being outside in the cold Chinese winter.86 After a few minutes of dialogue and singing, the curtain rises to reveal the dinner’s several large round tables dominating the stage. At this point, Chou, the Nixons, and Henry Kissinger, seated a few seats down from them, begin to make small talk before Chou rises to begin the toasts.
Figure 4.1. Pat Nixon “shivering,” Act I, Scene 3, Nixon in China.
85 The fade-out of one section with the fade-in of another is a technique used quite frequently by Adams and is described by Alex Sanchez-Behar as dovetailing. Alex Sanchez-Behar, “Counterpoint and Polyphony in Recent Instrumental Works of John Adams,” (Ph.D. diss., Florida State University, 2007).
86 These gestures include shivering, arm-rubbing, crossed arms, etc. All are typical pantomimes for indicating a cold environment.
69
Figure 4.2. The banquet hall, Act I, Scene 3, Nixon in China.
4.2.2 Chou’s aria
Chou’s aria has two distinct formal sections that alternate, followed by a concluding coda that also serves to transition into President Nixon’s aria. Figure 4.3 shows the overall form and each section’s defining harmonic characteristic. The harmonic language of Chou’s entire aria consists mainly of triads and seventh chords, a departure from the extended harmonies that dominated the beginning of the previous sub-section. In addition, the motion between these harmonies has abandoned anything jazz-like and can be described by various neo-Riemannian transformations, as well as several root motions by tritone. Example 4.4 shows the opening chord progression from Bb major to E7, a tritone root motion that defines the A sections of the aria.87 Other types of harmonic motion include movement by the relative transformation (R) and the SLIDE motion, which retains the third between two triads and moves the outer notes by a
87 The designation E7 refers to the dominant seventh.
70 semitone each.88 However, a majority of the section features only the static back-and-forth motion between Bb and E7.
Figure 4.3. Form and musical characteristics of Premier Chou’s aria, Act I, Scene 3, Nixon in China.
Example 4.4. Example of tritone motion, mm. 278-282, Act I, Scene 3, Nixon in China.
The following B section is immediately noticeable as two triads an augmented fifth apart are heard simultaneously. Example 4.5 shows this clash of harmonies between Bb minor and F# minor. Several measures later, these harmonies are presented in juxtaposition, just like the motion between Bb major to E7 in the previous example. This B section is much shorter than the opening A section, only lasting 22 measures before returning to A material.
88 For more information about SLIDE, see Joseph Straus, Introduction to Post Tonal Theory, 3rd edition (New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2005), 161-166. SLIDE was first discussed in David Lewin, Generalized Music Intervals and Transformations (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), 178.
71
Example 4.5. Clash between harmonies in augmented fifths, mm. 319-321, Act I, Scene 3, Nixon in China.
The beginning of the coda features a return of the A material, starting with Bb and moving to E7. As shown in Example 4.6, this motion is quickly replaced by a SLIDE transformation from BbM to Bm. The SLIDE motion dominates the texture for the rest of the aria, which consists mostly of choruses of “Gambei,” first heard at the end of the previous section.
Example 4.6. Coda, featuring tritone and SLIDE motion, mm. 446-457, Act I, Scene 3, Nixon in China.
Chou’s speech, provided below, is very optimistic about the growing relationship between the U.S. and China.
Ladies and gentlemen, comrades and friends, we have begun to celebrate the different ways that led us to this mountain pass, this summit where we stand. Look down, and think what we have undergone. Future and past lie far below half visible.
We marvel now that we survived those battles, took those shifting paths, blasted that rock to lay those rails. Through the cold night uncompromising lines of thought attempted to find common ground where their militias might contend, confident that the day would come for shadow boxers to strike home.
72 We saw by the first light of dawn the outlined cities of the plain, and see them still, surrounded by the pastures of their tenantry.
On land we have not taken yet innumerable blades of wheat salute the sun. Our children race downhill unflustered into peace. We will not sow their fields with salt or burn their standing crop. We built these terraces for them alone.
The virtuous American and the Chinese make manifest their destinies in time. We toast that endless province whose frontier we occupy from hour to hour, holding in perpetuity the ground our people won today from vision to inheritance. All patriots were brothers once: let us drink to the time when they shall be brothers again.
The visual domain consists simply of the Premier standing at a bank of microphones at the front of the stage, in front of the round tables set on stage. This stasis, while somewhat necessary since this is how speeches are typically given, could also demonstrate the Chinese as the more disciplined or totalitarian culture in the U.S./China dynamic. This is in comparison with Nixon, who, as we will see in the next section, becomes fidgety and moves around a great deal more than Chou, possibly representing a freer democratic culture.
Figure 4.4. Chou’s aria, Act I, Scene 3, Nixon in China.
73 4.2.3 Nixon’s aria
President Nixon’s aria takes on a dramatically different character than Premier Chou’s. In addition to being approximately half the length of Chou’s speech, the music unfolds at a much faster pace, featuring rapidly repeated harmonies as opposed to arrpegiated chords. The harmonic language is also quite different, including mostly root motions separated by thirds, as opposed to Chou’s largely fifth-saturated music (specifically diminished and augmented fifths). Example 4.7, when compared to Examples 4.4 and 4.5 from Chou’s aria, demonstrates these fundamental differences. This example is taken from the beginning of Nixon’s aria and sets the harmonic precedent for the music to follow.
Example 4.7. Illustrating difference in style from Chou’s aria, mm. 515-519, Act I, Scene 3, Nixon in China.
The aria features a brief moment towards the end that ramps up the overall excitement of not only the aria, but also the entire scene. As shown in Example 4.8, the harmonies progress upward by step twice in quick succession, maintaining a Bb pedal underneath the last two chords. Harmonies that progress in such a manner commonly increase the tension and excitement of the music.89 This excitement eventually overtakes Nixon and can be seen in his actions on stage. In fact, this excitement is so great that it appears to overtake everybody involved, including the normally more reserved Chou.
89 Michael Buchler has written about a similar phenomenon in the Broadway songs of Frank Loesser, though the context in this example is quite different. Michael Buchler, “Modulation as a Dramtic Agent in Frank Loesser’s Broadway Songs,” Music Theory Spectrum 30/1 (2008): 35-60.
74
Example 4.8. Ramping-up of excitement, mm. 620-624, Act I, Scene 3, Nixon in China.
It is also in this aria that Adams, for the first time in the opera, describes the U.S. and Chinese relationship through the use of the C major and E minor harmonies respectively. Timothy Johnson pointed out this relationship in a 2007 presentation that focused on the ending soliloquy of Premier Chou.90 Towards the end of the aria, the music alternates between the two harmonies while Nixon sings about the differences between the countries, shown in Example 4.9.
Example 4.9. Alternation between Em and CM triads, mm. 599-606, Act I, Scene 3, Nixon in China.
The text of the aria portrays Nixon in a narcissistic light, at times seemingly more concerned with his own image and legacy than with building a relationship with China. The text is presented below.
90 Timothy Johnson, “The ‘Endless Wakefulness’ of Premier Chou in John Adams’s Nixon in China,” (presented at the First International Conference on Music and Minimalism, University of Wales, Bangor, 31 August-2 September 2007).
75 Mister Premier, distinguished guests, I have attended many feasts but never have so enjoyed a dinner, nor have I heard played better the music that I love outside America. I move a vote of thanks to one and all whose efforts made this possible.
No one who heard could but admire your eloquent remarks, Premier, and millions more hear what we say through satellite technology than ever heard a public speech before. No one is out of touch. Telecommunication has broadcast your message into space. Yet soon our words won’t be recalled while what we do can change the world.
We have at times been enemies, we still have differences, God knows. But let us, in these next five days, start a long march on new highways, in different lanes, but parallel and heading for a single goal. The world watches and listens. We must seize the hour and seize the day.
As mentioned above, an obviously fidgety Nixon, standing at the same microphones as the more reserved and stationary Chou, fills the visual domain. The interest lies not as much with Nixon’s actions in this aria, but more with how his presence compares with that of Chou. Nixon presents himself as an impulsive, easily excitable, yet incredible persuasive speaker, while Chou appears to be the more grounded and thoughtful character of the duo.
Figure 4.5. Nixon’s aria, Act I, Scene 3, Nixon in China.
76 4.2.4 “Cheers!”
The last sub-section of this scene is the grand conclusion to Act I. The entire cast stands and begins to cheer the arias of both dignitaries. When the chorus is singing these cheers, they do so in a disjunct series of triadic harmonies. In fact, the movement between triads at many points appears to be as disjunct as possible.
Using a simple voice-leading metric, modeled after Joseph Straus’s method for voice- leading in atonal music, the motion between triads fluctuates between moments of extremely smooth and disjunct voice-leading.91 The metric first determines the maximum possible distance between the voices in two triads (within an octave) in total number of semitones. This is measured from the actual pitches in one chord (including any doublings) to the most distant pitch of the next chord. Then the actual voice-leading distance is measured, and when the actual distance is divided by the maximum possible distance, the result is a percentage; the larger the percentage, the more disjunct the voice-leading. Example 4.10 presents the first chorus of “Cheers!” The numbers above and below the staves indicate the actual number of semitones traversed in each voice respectively. The arrows indicate instances where the cardinalities between chords do not match and notes must split or combine when moving to the next sonority. In moving from the second to third triad, the furthest possible distance is 68 semitones, but the actual music only moves by 48 semitones, resulting in a percentage of 71. By contrast, moving from the third to the fourth triad only result in a percentage of 33. Figure 4.2 shows the calculated percentages for the first four choruses of “Cheers!” As that figure indicates, the first and second choruses contain larger percentages, and therefore are more disjunct than the two choruses that follow. This pattern of “more disjunct” moving to “less disjunct” continues for the rest of the scene.
91 Joseph Straus, “Uniformity, Balance, and Smoothness in Atonal Voice-Leading,” Music Theory Spectrum 25/2 (2003), 305-352.
77
Example 4.10. First chorus of “Cheers!” mm. 663-665, Act I, Scene 3, Nixon in China.
Figure 4.6. Chart summarizing the relative disjunctness of the first four choruses of “Cheers!”
The text, other than the incessant repetition of the words “Cheers!”, conforms with the topics already introduced in the previous sections, mainly consisting of continued high praise for each country. Nixon makes a stunning confession, however, stating, “I opposed China…I was wrong.” Shortly after this statement, Pat Nixon, Richard Nixon, Chou, and Henry Kissinger all begin singing different music and text in a simultaneous stretto. While Pat reminisces about “America the Beautiful” and Kissinger parrots other people’s words, Chou and Nixon reprise the ideas from their previous arias.
Nixon: “Ideas that we have entertained grow in a night to touch the stars. Chou: “Look down and think what the Chinese people have done to earn this praise.
They do not repeat anything directly from the arias, but the spirit of the respective messages remains the same; Nixon pursues the future with little thought to anything other than himself, while Chou, the more reserved character, reflects on the comments made by Nixon.
Visually, this is the most active of the sections. Everyone on stage is moving, joyously toasting one another. The scene ends with the characters of Nixon and Chou frozen in a toast with each other. Their facial expressions and body positions closely mimic a photograph taken during the real banquet during Nixon’s actual visit to China. This kind of fixed iconic
78 relationship is atypical of opera, but given the multimedia nature of this opera’s creation (relying on photographs and videos of the real visit to China), the ending is appropriate.
Figure 4.7. Final toast, Act I, Scene 3, Nixon in China.
4.2.5 Interpretation
The opening section sets the tone for the rest of the scene in two ways. First, it sets up the political ideology for the scene, where we get confirmation that the Nixons firmly believe that their way of government is fundamentally better than the Chinese communist government. The President’s statement that “the west wind heralds spring,” which would end the communist “winter,” is possibly his most overt political message of the entire opera. This section also establishes different styles of music. It begins with the heavily jazz-influenced music (featuring the Nixons) juxtaposed with the Gambei music, which is heard again after Premier Chou’s aria. The dichotomy created between the two representative styles, the sultry jazz and the much more reserved and symphonic Gambei, represents the cultural differences between China and the U.S.. This becomes readily apparent in the last section, “Cheers!” where the reserved toasting music sung to the Chinese word Gambei transforms into a boisterous chorus of wandering harmonies
79 sung to the English version of the word. Despite the apparent “coming in from the cold” and sitting together at the same table, which indicates hope for the young relationship between the countries, the opposition shown in both music and narrative domains outweighs any sense of a successful relationship.
Figure 4.8. Model of the arrival and initial toasts, Act I, Scene 3, Nixon in China.
The visually static middle sections featuring the arias of Chou and Nixon lie in contrast with the message each dignitary is delivering. The content of their speeches is intimately involved with progress in the relationship between the countries and their forward momentum towards the future, yet the motion on stage is limited and almost static. Chou is the more striking in this regard, as he remains uncomfortably still the entire time. Nixon, while not moving from his mark on the podium, does seem to get caught up in the moment and appears almost giddy with excitement. Just this little movement demonstrated by Nixon reinforces the dichotomy established in the first section; a more reserved China and a freer United States, further supported by the “iconic” parallel with the difference in musical styles.
Factoring in additional musical content reveals another interesting interpretation of the China/U.S. relationship. The harmonic motion in Chou’s aria between not only tritones, but also harmonically sounding triads an augmented fifth apart represents sounds not of union, but of clash and incompatibility. In light of the Premier’s words about further unifying the two
80 countries, the relationship between the U.S. and China is portrayed as complicated and never as simple as it may appear on the surface.
Figure 4.9. Model of both arias, Act I, Scene 3, Nixon in China.
Richard Nixon’s apparent obsession with his self-image provides yet another foil for interpretation. Not just in this scene, but going back to the beginning of Nixon, the President consistently reflects upon the way the visit will be perceived back home and by history in general.92 After thanking the Premier at the beginning of his aria, he immediately discusses the wonders of technology and how “millions more hear what we say…yet soon our words won’t be recalled while what we do can change the world.” It is clear that Nixon is fully aware of his place in history, and will say anything to ensure his legacy. At this task, he is very effective, for after he finishes the aria, the crowd erupts into the final chorus of “Cheers!” Musically, the rapid ascending-second root motion intensifies the texture and pushes the music forward towards the climactic toasting. Unlike Chou, who received no applause after his speech, Nixon, while
92 When Nixon first steps off the plane in Act I, Scene 1, he briefly greets Chou, and then he immediately begins speaking about the significance of the historic meeting between the two countries, and how important a role he will play in that history.
81 maintaining his historically minded narcissism, is able to cause the entire cast to erupt into thunderous cheers. This is modeled as Figure 4.10.
Figure 4.10. Model that focuses on Nixon’s narcissism, Act I, Scene 3, Nixon in China.
Going one step further, this could represent an outward manifestation of the relationship between Nixon and Chairman Mao. Nixon, who is visibly excited about the future, and Mao, who is hesitant (or static) about change, are portrayed by the fidgety Nixon and the reserved and stoic Chou. The fact that Chou himself eventually gets caught up in the excitement could suggest a small change in the budding relationship between the two countries.
The music throughout this scene undercuts and reveals the truth behind the words and visual staging. In every case, the text is filled with double meaning or ambiguous dialogue, inviting a third party, in this case the music, to dissect the real meaning behind the actions of the characters. While this can be found elsewhere in operatic analysis, unlike most operatic analysis, which focuses exclusively on two domains, the model solidifies and standardizes the cognitive process of analyzing multimedia compositions, utilizing all three domains in its mapping of the larger interpretive possibilities.
82 4.3 Act II, Scene 2
Act II, Scene 2, features Madame Mao’s staged production of “The Red Detachment of Women” for the Nixons to observe. Matthew Daines has called this scene “the liveliest part of Nixon in terms of stage action.”93 What follows is a discussion of the scene as a whole, followed by a closer look at the section that features the introduction of The Red Detachment. Parsing the scene in such a way allows the model to function at both macro and micro levels, illustrating not only the overall meaning, but also the specific, more local meanings that fit into the larger context.
4.3.1 Entire Scene
The harmony of this scene is structured in many different ways. At different points, Adams employs hexatonic cycles, non-cyclic neo-Riemannian transformations, and traditional tonal relationships. The instrumental introduction is constructed from harmonies along the south hexatonic cycle.94 Hexatonic cycles consist of a series of alternating parallel (P) and Leitton- wechsel (L) neo-Riemannian transformations. The south hexatonic cycle, one of four cycles (each is based on one of the four possible augmented triads) named according to cardinal directions, is shown in Figure 4.11.95 Example 4.11 shows a small section of music from the opening. Notice that the harmonies Adams employs do not always move in one direction around the cycle, but are free to move back and forth and even skip stops along the way. For example, the move from D minor to F# minor consists of a combined P and an L transformation. Also
93 Matthew Daines, “Telling the truth about Nixon: Parody, cultural representation, and gender politics in John Adams’s Opera Nixon in China” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Davis, 1995), 69.
94 See chapter two.
95 Richard Cohn, “Maximally smooth cycles, hexatonic systems, and the analysis of late- Romantic triadic progressions,” Music Analysis 15 (1996): 9-40.
83 notice that in addition to the triads that typically make up a hexatonic cycle, Adams has occasionally added a seventh to the harmonies. The root motions, however, serve to emphasize the Bb-D-F# augmented triad shown in the figure.
Figure 4.11. The Southern hexatonic cycle.
Example 4.11. Opening measures, including 7th chords, Act II, Scene 2, Nixon in China.
Only once during this opening section is there a direct motion between hexatonic poles; the harmonies that lie on opposite ends of the hexatonic cycle. Shown in Example 4.12, the harmonic motion between Bb major and F# minor reflects direct succession between the hexatonic poles (an augmented fifth apart). Just as the tritone represents the greatest possible distance in tonal music, the motion between hexatonic poles in this system of organization represents the traversal of the greatest possible distance.
84
Example 4.12. Harmonies between hexatonic poles, mm. 97-101 Act II, Scene 2, Nixon in China.
David Lewin posits an additional neo-Riemannian transformation, the SLIDE (discussed earlier), that is also represented in this scene. While SLIDE transformations do not participate in the hexatonic cycles, they can be used to move to other non-cycle harmonies. During the opening measures, which are dominated by harmonies from the south cycle, there is a brief occurrence of two additional harmonies, F major and B minor. The SLIDE motion allows the use of F major and then is used to return to the original cycle. Adams, as well as other minimalist composers, seems to enjoy the sound of a SLIDE, as it is used often in Nixon.96 Example 4.13 shows a particularly generous use of SLIDE that alternates between B minor and Bb major. In fact, the highest concentration of the SLIDE transformation occurs during the opening of this scene.
Example 4.13. SLIDE transformation, mm. 161-170, Act II, Scene 2, Nixon in China.
96 Philip Glass is especially fond of the SLIDE transformation, as it can be found all throughout his oeuvre.
85 Midway through the scene, when the audience is finally introduced to the Red Detachment of Women, the harmonic language takes an unexpected turn toward functional tonality. This section of the scene will be discussed in detail later, but Example 4.14 shows the strong root movement by fifth between A major and E major. This is the only place in the scene to feature such strong tonal connections between harmonies.
Example 4.14. Root motion mimicking tonality, mm. 530-537, Act II, Scene 2, Nixon in China.
Tritone root motion between Bb and E occurs several times during the scene and appears to act as a transition between differing systems of harmonic organization. Immediately before the jump to tonality, shown in the above example, this tritone features quite prominently. This tritone also immediately precedes the SLIDE motions shown in Example 4.13. Incidentally, the Bb-E root motion is a pitch-specific reference to Chou’s aria from Act I, Scene 3, discussed earlier.
In addition to the juxtaposed harmonic structures, there are also differences in the way those harmonies are presented. Most of the time, they are treated as in the examples above: block chords that are repeated or sustained. Occasionally, they are heard as arpeggiations. Such is the case with the after-storm music, a sample of which is shown in Example 4.15. While harmonically this music is closely related to the hexatonic system of organization, it sounds completely different, reminiscent of the Classical pastoral topic, featuring long bass pedals with simple triadic arpeggiations in the other voices.97
97 For more information about the pastoral, please see Leonard Ratner, Classic Music: Expression, Form, and Style (New York: Schirmer Books, 1980).
86
Example 4.15. mm. 487-499. Act II, Scene2, Nixon in China.
In summary, the musical domain is governed by three different harmonic motions, as well as abrupt shifts in texture. Although these contrasting strategies may be combined in direct succession, they typically transition from one to the other by means of the Bb-E root motion. Generally speaking, the scene contains a “mishmash” of loosely connected musical styles.
The scene presents a ballet within the opera: “The Red Detachment of Women,” written by Mao’s wife, seeks to promote revolutionary ideals. It opens with Ching-hui, the heroine of the story, who has been sold by her father to a landlord who has her chained to a post. Mao’s secretaries sing about fear and abuse from the landlord before he arrives on stage, played by the same actor that plays the role of Henry Kissinger. Lao Szu recounts the raping of a girl earlier that day, at which point Ching-hui manages to escape for a short while. When she is eventually caught, Szu orders his men to “whip her to death” and leaves her to die.
Pat Nixon is so overcome for the safety of the girl on stage that she rushes up to help her. A begrudging Richard Nixon tries to tell her it is only a play, but follows her on stage anyway. They shield Ching-hui during a storm and when the storm passes, a passing young soldier revives the girl. Suddenly, the Red Detachment of Women appears and the soldier persuades Ching-hui to join them, after which everyone leaves the stage, including the Nixons.
The ballet resumes in the courtyard of Lao Szu. The Red Detachment of Women, now disguised as dancers, enter with Ching-hui and the Nixons. The intended goal of this scene is for Ching-hui to get her revenge against Szu, but when she does not follow through with killing him, Madame Mao, who has been in the audience, stands up and scolds her for missing her cue. At this point, the ballet is effectively over as Madame Mao stands on a chair with “the book” (the
87 communist manifesto) and outlines what would have been the central premise of the ballet, that “Mao Tsetung raised the weak above the strong,” and that they all “speak according to the book.” The scene ends with the beating of counter-revolutionary elements.
The staging of this scene is quite complex. Adams and Sellars have created a play within a play (or in this case, a ballet inside an opera). To represent this, the ballet audience is located on stage right and the ballet takes place on stage left in front of the audience.98 Figure 4.6 is an image from the production that shows the staging.
Figure 4.12. Still from Act II, Scene 2, Nixon in China.
As the ballet progresses, the tightly controlled choreography begins to break down. The first time the opera audience realizes something has gone off track occurs with Mrs. Nixon’s recognition of Kissinger as Lao Szu and her subsequent rush onto the stage to help Ching-hui.
98 I will refer to both the opera audience and the ballet audience, the latter being the group located on stage.
88 From then on the Nixons become a highly visible and integral component of the ballet’s story; the original ballet, as conceived by Madame Mao, is irrevocably changed.99
The last breakdown occurs when Ching-hui fails to carry out her revenge against Szu. This action causes Madame Mao to rise up from the audience and halt the ballet entirely. From this point until the end of the scene, the choreographed movements that opened the play are replaced by a rather chaotic scene in which not only the ballet cast beats the counter- revolutionaries, but the ballet audience members join in as well. The only people not involved with the beatings are the Nixons and Madame Mao.
As discussed previously, the music in this scene is highly varied, using a number of different methods to organize the harmonies and textures. In an interview with John Adams, Matthew Daines uncovers a possible reason as to why the scene is constructed this way:
I had read that during the Cultural Revolution it was the proper thing for a committee to write a piece of music…My ballet music, which is of course an essay in horrific kitch, is an attempt to make a score sound as if a committee wrote it.100
The music certainly seems to support Adams’s statement, so the varied presentation of styles and structures could be thought of as some kind of faux communist collage. Not only different harmonic systems, but different styles altogether permeate the texture and are always in flux, battling for control of the scene.
The narrative for this scene does not merely tell a story about revolutionary ideals, but illustrates an example of what happens when counter-revolutionary ideas are thrust upon a culture. If the Nixons had not interfered with the ballet’s progress, it is likely that it would have continued normally, but Pat Nixon’s influence on the character of Ching-hui is ultimately realized when she does not fire the gun and kill Lao Szu. This forces Madame Mao to stop the production, lead the ballet cast and ballet members in a brief revolutionary rally, and conclude
99 The ballet audience seated on stage appears to be oblivious to this changing of roles.
100 Daines, 170.
89 with the beating of any counter-revolutionary figures.101 The meaning here is complex, but mainly addresses two incompatibilities between Chinese and Western culture: the Western notion of human rights–Pat’s influence on Ching-hui to not kill Lao Szu–and the Chinese (revolutionary) notion of the rise of the proletariat at the hands of a cruel dictatorship–Madame Mao forcing the production to stop and scolding the actors involved.
The breakdown that is seen on stage mimics the breakdown in the narrative structure of the ballet. As soon as the Nixons take the stage, the choreographed actions of the ballet cast become altered, leading to the eventual breakdown of the ballet and a small riot on stage. The Nixons becoming involved in the ballet, however, is not dismissed as ridiculous, as the opera audience can recognize the “play within a play” as allegorical; the outward manifestation of the ideological conflict between Nixon and Mao. Adding another twist to the ballet is Henry Kissinger playing the role of Lao Szu, a fact that Pat picks up on early in the scene.102 Since Kissinger has a role to play in the ballet, it becomes clear at this point that Pat will as well. What starts as a clear distinction between characters in the opera and those in the ballet ends with a blurring of roles, where the entire ballet audience has become part of the ballet itself. Even though Madame Mao looks pleased in the end, a complete disruption of her carefully conceived revolutionary ballet could never have ended as she had intended. Instead, it was forced to devolve into the only useful medium available on such short notice: a revolutionary political rally.
Figure 4.13 brings together the domains using the narrative as the FD. The disrupted revolutionary story highlights the incompatibility of Chinese and Western political thinking. When coupled with the clash that comes from the “communist collage” and the breakdown of the “play with in a play,” the model firmly establishes the entire scene as a depiction of the ideological struggle between Nixon and Mao.
101 Mrs. Nixon, who arguably started the breakdown of the ballet, is spared from being beaten.
102 Pat Nixon sings, “Doesn’t he look like you know who,” seemingly self-aware of her place in the opera and imminently, the ballet. Edward Cone has written about such phenomenon in other contexts in “The World of Opera and its Inhabitants,” in Music: A View from Delft (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 125-137.
90
Figure 4.13. Model and possible interpretation of Act II, Scene 2, Nixon in China.
4.3.2 The Red Detachment of Women
The above has been a reading of the scene as a whole. How would the reading change if we only examined a small portion of the movement? The following analysis focuses only on the entrance of the Red Detachment of Women. As discussed previously, this is one of the few sections of the scene that is mostly tonal. Example 4.15 showed the strong root motion by fifth that is unmistakably referencing motion between an A major tonic and its E major dominant. A few measures later, shown below in Example 4.16, the music moves to F major and then Db major. On the surface, this move is achieved by simply moving chromatically down from A to F in the bass voices, but why F major?103 Why Db major? They are distantly related to both A major and E major, but they also happen to members of the same hexatonic collection with A
103 Though not seen here, when this music is repeated several measures later, there is corresponding upward chromatic motion to Db major.
91 major. A simple PL transformation results in F major, and its opposite, LP transformation results in Db major, using A major as a starting harmony in each case.
Example 4.16. mm. 543-551, Act II, Scene 2, Nixon in China.
The text during this scene acts as a recruitment speech, encouraging people to join the Red Detachment of Women:
Flesh rebels the body pulls those inflamed souls that mark its trials into the war. Arm this soldier! Rise up in arms! Tropical storms uproot the palms ending their sway. The Red Army showed us the way. From scorched earth people step forth over dead wood and over the dead: follow their lead.
The hand grenade beats in the chest let the heart burst, Let the clenched fist strike the first blow for Chairman Mao and overthrow the tyrant, And share out the land. Share out the land, unclench the fist, let the heart burst and sow broadcast The dragon’s teeth your kin and kith seed of your seed, The dragon’s teeth your kin and kith, your flesh and blood.
The message here is clear: rise up with us and fight the tyrant that owns the land, all in the name of Mao and the Chinese people. Phrases like “storms uproot the palms” and “the dragon’s teeth” all serve to demonstrate the power of the Red army, in turn championing the power of the people when brought together. The phrase “The hand grenade beats in the chest…” probably alludes to the heart-racing thrill of joining up and violently participating in the fight for the people. The focus on sharing the land and overthrowing the tyrant comes from the ongoing struggle between Ching-hui and the landlord (or tyrant) Lao Szu, which was discussed previously. All of this, however, is cleverly undermined by the fact that Madame Mao is tyrannically directing the show, interrupting and changing it to better suit herself or her ideals.
92 The Red Detachment enters from stage left, complete with a waving red banner. Each member of the detachment is armed with a rifle and uses it as a prop during their choreographed dance. The dance movements are traditional Western ballet steps with miming, or play-acting. The passing soldier that helped revive Ching-hui encourages her to join them, an effort aided by Mrs. Nixon who presents her with a rifle of her own. After quickly learning their choreography she follows them off stage left.
The music, which is so strongly tonal at this moment, still cannot seem to escape the influence of the previously used hexatonic system. To quote Adams again: “At no point in this opera did I want to write fake Chinese music.”104 Maybe the extensive use of hexatonic systems is Adams’s way of making music that is not Chinese, but not entirely common to the ears of the audience either. If so, then the bleeding over of the hexatonic system onto what should be the stronger tonal system might suggest a dominance of the former over the latter: the uncommon over the common or the “weak above the strong”.105
The text and the visual domains act together in this scene. As the text encourages Ching- hui to join them, she obtains a rifle and does so. Just as she must learn the Red Detachment’s dance, anybody else joining a real Red Detachment of Women or the Red Army would need to learn about revolutionary ideals and fall in line with the will of the people. Adding complexity is the role of Madame Mao. Her tyranny over the ballet is a direct allegory to Chairman Mao’s tyranny over the Chinese people. The meaning here could be described as coming together for the greater good, even though that good requires service to yet another tyrant in the form of Mao.
Combining the meanings, as shown in Figure 4.14, encourages revolution of the weak above the strong, but only under the control of a tyrant. This falls in line perfectly with the revolutionary political ideals Madame Mao wanted to describe with her ballet, and the portrayal of Madame Mao as a tyrant herself. Mrs. Nixon’s involvement has been superficial up to this point, not yet affecting the meaning of the larger scene. It is only later that the conflict between
104 Daines, 166.
105 During Madame Mao’s aria “I am the wife of Mao Tsetung,” this line is repeated many times.
93 Chinese and non-Chinese modes of political thinking will cause trouble with Madame Mao’s original vision of the ballet.
Figure 4.14. Model of “The Red Detachment of Women,” Act II, Scene 2, Nixon in China.
4.4 Conclusion
As is evident from the discussion of Act II, Scene 2, the model can react and adapt to many different levels of detail, as well as to various levels of interpretation. In the beginning, I took information from the entire scene to feed the input spaces of the model, and the result was broad comment on the scene, lacking in detail, but providing a useful background. Examining a small sub-section of the scene, on the other hand, reveals a more specific reading of local events within the scene. While the interpretation of the entire scene dealt with broader issues, such as the patching together of different styles of music, the later analysis temporarily ignores that aspect to focus just on one short part. Nixon in China provides the perfect setting for such an exploration, and sheds some light into how Adams approaches and comments upon the story in his music.
94 CHAPTER 5
LOST OBJECTS
Continuing with the analysis of live works, this chapter focuses on Lost Objects, a staged oratorio written by Bang-on-a-Can composers Michael Gordon, Julia Wolfe, and David Lang. Bang on a Can, an ensemble devoted to the performance of new music that was founded by the trio in 1987, primarily functions as an outlet for composers of new music to have their works performed. In addition, they hold new music workshops for players from all over the world. Lost Objects combines the visual, musical, and narrative domains in subtle yet profoundly moving ways. Minimalist in orientation, two of the movements compose out a specific interval cycle, that, when combined with the visual and narrative domains, produce a rich and complex statement on the nature of loss.
5.1 Background
In 2001, the Bang-on-a-Can composers created the oratorio Lost Objects, which features an eclectic group of participants, including a Baroque ensemble (performed by the Köln Orchestra), the Bang-on-a-Can Ensemble (BoaCE), voices, and the popular artist, Paul Miller, also known as DJ Spooky.106 The work is centered on the notion of lost things, not only how things become lost, but also what to do when lost things are then found. The Talmud, the book of traditional Jewish law, is indirectly referenced throughout as a basis for understanding the nature of loss. Topics range from the mundane, as in the everyday missing items such as socks
106 The core instrumentation for the ensemble includes bass, percussion, guitar, and clarinet. This instrumentation is often augmented with guest artists as needed. In the case of Lost Objects, there is no clarinet and a keyboard has been added.
95 and umbrellas, to the extreme, including missing children and the disappearance of Amelia Earhart. It was not until 2004 at the Brooklyn Academy of Music that the work was recast as a visually intense staged oratorio under the direction of François Girard, director of The Red Violin. The BAM performance is the one referenced in this chapter.
Just as Nixon in China fell within the purview of multimedia as described in Chapter One (requiring a fixed visual element), so too does Lost Objects. Because the stage direction was created with little flexibility (more like a stationary work of visual art than a typical stage work) and was intended to be filmed, the visual domain remains fixed.107 Also, the director of the visual staging, François Girard, is most notable for his movie direction, which also features a fixed visual domain. Just as the creative ties between Sellars and Adams in Nixon produced a stage work with very specific instructions in terms of set design and movement throughout the opera, Girard’s production notes provide precise instructions and requirements for performing Lost Objects at venues other than BAM.108 Additional aspects, which will be discussed in detail below, further support the work’s categorization as multimedia, including the vertical rather than horizontal orientation of the staging, as well as the projection of fixed images and words on a translucent screen in front of the stage.
The staging of Lost Objects consists of a primarily vertical design, utilizing the space above the stage floor rather than the space from front to back. Each level of the three-tiered structure is home to a particular ensemble; the Baroque orchestra always occupies the middle level and the vocalists and BoaCE move between the upper and lower levels as the piece progresses. DJ Spooky rises from the pit only during his remix movements, utilizing material from other parts of the work. Below the structure is a large collection of “lost” objects, ranging from suitcases to umbrellas, which remain on stage throughout. At various times during the production, opaque screens descend in front of the stage, blocking certain parts of the vertical structure from the audience’s view. In addition a translucent screen remains in front of the stage
107 I thank the executive director of Bang on a Can, Kenny Salvelson, and composer Julia Wright for their assistance in obtaining this video.
108 This is explained in the technical rider, which is available at bangonacan.org.
96 at all times, allowing text and images to be displayed on it while not obscuring the musicians behind. Figure 5.1 is a still frame from the production that shows the three-tiered structure as well as the text overlay.
Figure 5.1. Three-tiered structure with text overlay on translucent screen, Lost Objects.
5.2 (3,4) Double Interval Cycle
Edward Gollin, in a 2007 Music Theory Spectrum article, discusses specific interval cycles known as multi-aggregate double-interval cycles.109 These are cycles that alternate between two interval classes and complete two or more aggregates (complete collections of all 12 chromatic pitch classes) before the cycle repeats. An example Gollin presents in the article is a cycle that alternates between major and minor thirds. This cycle is reproduced below as Figure 5.2. The cycle that alternates between interval classes 3 and 4, to be henceforth known as a (3,4) cycle, has been discussed by music theorists for many years due to its unique characteristics.110
109 Edward Gollin, “Multi-Aggregate Cycles and Multi-Aggregate Serial Techniques in the Music of Béla Bartók,” Music Theory Spectrum 29/2 (2007): 143-176.
110 Hauptman and Riemann have both discussed parts of this cycle in their theoretical treatises. Philip Lambert has discussed the role of interval cycles in the music of Charles Ives. Philip Lambert,
97 As can be seen in the figure below, choosing any major or minor triad from the sequence and moving two places above and two places below will complete the diatonic collection, with the initial triad acting as tonic, the triad above acting as the dominant, and the triad below as the subdominant. On the figure, the pitch classes surrounded by angle brackets represent a C- natural-minor collection with a C-minor triad in the middle, the dominant G-minor triad above, and the subdominant F-minor triad below. Both Hauptmann and Riemann used similar patterns of major and minor thirds to illustrate diatonic pitch space.111 Any seven adjacent pitch classes on this cycle will form a diatonic collection and, consequently, all 24 major and minor keys are represented. Furthermore, if a major diatonic collection is selected, moving one pitch counterclockwise will reveal the relative minor collection. It should also be noted that at some point, an enharmonically equivalent note must be used to complete the cycle. The cycle in Figure 5.2 does this between F# and Bb located on the lower left.
Figure 5.2. Double-interval cycle with a diatonic collection bracketed.
“Interval Cycles and Compositional Resources in the Music of Charles Ives,” Music Theory Spectrum 12/1 (1990): 43-82.
111 For more information about the relationship to this cycle and Hauptmann’s and Riemann’s theories, see Gollin, 2007.
98 Other characteristics of the cycle include the preservation of fifths after the first repetition of a pitch class on the cycle. Referring back to the bracketed collection in Figure 5.2, notice that when moving clockwise beyond this collection, every other note in the cycle is duplicated in the same order as before, but the thirds between them have been raised by a half step. If one continued to play the notes in the cycle in a clockwise direction ad infinitum, one would have the sensation that the cycle is always “creeping” upward. Motion in a counter-clockwise direction would result in an opposite, falling sensation. This is similar in effect to a series of Shepard tones that always seem to be rising or falling.112
Two movements of Lost Objects incorporate the use of the (3,4) cycle as a salient structural feature. “Acoustic Aphasia” and “Fw:Fw: Please Look” are both clearly organized by alternating major and minor thirds, however, the cycle’s meaning in each movement is quite different. The following analyses of “Acoustic Aphasia” and “Fw:Fw: Please Look” demonstrate how identification and interpretation of the cycle, in conjunction with the visual and narrative domains, can uncover a rich and complex subtext for the work.
5.3 “Acoustic Aphasia”
As in previous chapters, I will examine the music first, followed by a discussion of the other domains before bringing them together in the end. In the case of “Acoustic Aphasia,” the cycle helps to cement the already clear narrative of aphasia. In the end, the combination of all of the domains portrays the notion of loss at a much grander scale.
112 Shepard tones, named for Roger Shepard, are pitches that have been manipulated to have a disproportionate intensity of overtones. When played as a scale and looped over and over, the sensation is that the scale is always ascending even, though the same seven tones are repeated.
99 5.3.1 Music
The opening measures of “Acoustic Aphasia,” shown in Example 5.1, illustrate the initial establishment of the third interval. The strings repeat various arpeggiations of triads, as expressed by the alternating major and minor thirds descending through the cycle, with the D of the bracketed collection in Figure 5.2 as an upper bound and the C below it as the lower. The pitches also happen to form the beginning of a C minor collection that will act as a foundation for the rest of the movement.
Example 5.1. Clear use of descending thirds, mm. 1-3 of “Acoustic Aphasia,” Lost Objects.
Example 5.2 shows that when the voices first enter, they continue to perform from the C- minor collection as arranged on the cycle. The bass and cello have joined the ensemble and also make use of the cycle. At this point the piece has established the bracketed collection in Figure 5.2 as a subset of the larger cycle; the only pitch classes heard belong to this C-natural-minor subset.
Example 5.2. Continuation of thirds along the cycle, mm. 18-21 of “Acoustic Aphasia,” Lost Objects.
100 Only twice does the piece move away from the C-natural-minor collection. A few measures after the voices first enter, as shown in Example 5.3, the bass drops down below F and moves to C# (represented as Db on the cycle) and the upper strings soar past D onward to E. This is shown in the Figure 5.2 cycle diagram with (+) and (-) signs beyond the bracketed pitch classes. The other deviation from the established diatonic subset occurs about midway through the movement, a bass reduction of which is reproduced in Example 5.4. This time, the cellos and basses move beyond the F and make a long counter-clockwise trip around the cycle finally arriving on B before dropping out of the texture. This B is illustrated in Figure 5.2 with a (--) sign. The cellos and basses obviously need to change octaves when playing this cycle, but due to the nature of the cycle when moving counter-clockwise, they sound as if they are always falling, even when they are moving up to the next pitch. Both of these changes in pitch-class collection are quite noticeable, and after these journeys through the cycle, the music continues to reprise the opening vocal material seen in Example 5.2. The remainder of the movement remains comfortably within the C-natural-minor collection.
Example 5.3. Movement beyond the subset, mm. 31-34 of “Acoustic Aphasia,” Lost Objects.
Example 5.4. More movement beyond the subset, mm. 72-82 of “Acoustic Aphasia,” Lost Objects.
101 It should be made clear at this point that technically, any diatonic composition could be considered as part of the (3,4) cycle, since any seven adjacent pitches on the cycle form a diatonic collection. But what makes “Acoustic Aphasia” special is the method used to present the pitch material. The salient use of alternating major and minor thirds, as well as its eventual voyage through the entire cycle, clearly point to the use of this cycle as a pitch-generating mechanism.
5.3.2 Text
Aphasia is a condition that affects a person’s ability to comprehend or produce speech. Typically this is caused by a heart attack or stroke that temporarily deprives blood from certain areas of the brain. The type and severity of each case can differ greatly from person to person. The text of “Acoustic Aphasia” raises an interesting question, and in doing so, creates a dramatic possibility.
I hear the sound coming from your mouth but I do not understand the words Can you repeat after me? ABCDEFG113
“Can you repeat after me?” is not a rhetorical question, but a direct question that requires a response. This simple question creates a dramatic situation that requires two characters to be involved in a conversation. In the context of aphasia, the answer to the question could create the possibility that one of the two suffers from aphasia. Either the answer will be unintelligible (meaning that the character can understand, but not respond), or the answer will be comprehendible, but not a proper response to the question (meaning the question was not understood, but the character is able to respond). The text indicates that the musical alphabet should be repeated, but it never is, so the lack of answer might indicate that the hypothetical
113 From the libretto for Lost Objects, written by Deborah Artman.
102 answerer suffers from aphasia. This conflict, as well as the entire concept of aphasia, will become a focusing feature of the final interpretation.
5.3.3 Visuals
The movement begins with the top tier of the vertical structure blocked, the Baroque ensemble in the middle, and the vocalists on the lowest level. The BoaCE is heard during the movement, but they are on the blocked top tier. As with most of the movements from Lost Objects, the text is displayed somewhere in the vertical space as the vocalists perform; in this case projected on the covered top tier. The translucent screen in front of the stage is also used to display additional text and does not completely obscure the performers. Figure 5.3 illustrates the stage setup with a screenshot from the performance.
Figure 5.3. Still frame from “Acoustic Aphasia,” Lost Objects.
The vocalists are divided into two groups; a trio of voices surrounded by a vocal sextet with three to the right and three to the left. As the movement begins, only one member of the trio is in place. All of the other vocalists appear to searching for objects amongst the items located on the lower level. A majority of them continue searching throughout the movement while the trio and sextet pull away from the group and take their places. A spotlight illuminates
103 only the group that is currently singing, visually separating them. The screen shot in Figure 5.3 shows the highlighting of the trio. In the second half of the movement, the text on the top tier fades away and is replaced by a grid of lost languages that encompasses the entire height and width of the performance area. This is shown in Figure 5.4. This grid remains visible until the end of the movement, slowly fading away as the music subsides.
Figure 5.4. Grid of lost languages from “Acoustic Aphasia,” Lost Objects.
5.3.4 Interpretation
The music in this movement creates a binary opposition between a tonal center and movement away from that center. This is not an uncommon phenomenon in music, as traditional tonal music functions by establishing tonic, moving to the dominant, and eventually returning to the tonic. In the absence of this traditional tonal model, however, the movement utilizes motion around the (3,4) cycle to accomplish a similar goal.
The text, in relationship to the music, reveals an interesting and possibly conflicting subtext. As discussed above, the text alone would indicate that the hypothetical respondent to the question “Can you repeat after me?” is suffering from some kind of aphasia. However, each
104 letter of the musical alphabet is set to music, but not to the corresponding pitch of each letter.114 The alphabet is instead set to the same descending melody heard during “Can you repeat after me.” This is an apparent mismatch of information. On one side you have the musical alphabet ascending in step, and on the other, actual pitches descending by major and minor thirds. This would indicate that the questioner is suffering from aphasia, confusion over how to properly perform the spoken note names. So which is it? Is the interrogator aphasic or is the respondent? A possible resolution to this dilemma lies in the (3,4) cycle, specifically those times in which the pitch collection deviates from C-natural minor.
The immediate response to “Can you repeat after me?” is musical, with no accompanying text. Referring back to Example 5.3, this is the first time the pitch collection strays from C minor. Next, after the letter names are heard using the C-minor collection, the music again cycles outside the original diatonic collection. These changes in pitch materials might indicate a kind of musical aphasia. The musical question, a descent through the C-minor subset of the (3,4) cycle, is answered by music that literally lies outside of those bounds. The respondent and the interrogator are, in a sense, speaking different languages; completely unable to communicate. Since the C-minor subset is present through most of the movement, an answer to this hypothetical question is that the respondent likely suffers from some form of aphasia.
Obviously, the visual domain imparts another layer on this aphasic/non-aphasic dichotomy. From the beginning, the vocalists are visibly divided into two groups: the trio and the sextet. This spatial layout immediately distinguishes the two characters as represented by the respondent and the interrogator. Later, the musical cycle and a visual display of the names of lost languages combine to deepen the aphasic meaning of the movement. The languages initially appear without any context and thus the music continues to utilize the C-minor collection. As more languages appear, it becomes clearer that they all belong to a larger category of lost languages. At the very moment this happens, the cellos and basses begin their descent through
114 There are numerous examples of the musical alphabet being set to the actual notes being spoken. One example comes from Leonard Bernstein’s Mass, where the singer states, “I believe in F#, I believe in D,” and is set with the corresponding pitches. The singer even mentions changing keys, and the music obliges. The non-conformance of the music to spoken letters in the text is the less common way to set the music. This topic certainly deserves further consideration in some future study.
105 the (3,4) cycle, and moments later the words “Lost Languages” are projected in order to confirm the categorical grouping. Since the listener already connects the departure from the C-minor collection with aphasic misunderstanding, the cello and bass departure from the home subset at this moment imparts an even greater sense of loss to these languages. This falling bass line, not entirely dissimilar from a lament bass, literally mourns the loss of the lost languages.
Charting all of this on the model results in Figure 5.5. Allowing the narrative element of aphasia to become the FD, the underlying subtext of the movement becomes apparent. Not only is the music drifting away from a tonal center along the double interval cycle, but that drift also augments and cements the aphasia narrative. The visual domain then clinches this narrative by reinforcing the dichotomy and associating the movement with lost languages. Losing one’s entire language, after all, would be the ultimate manifestation of aphasia.
Figure 5.5. Model of “Acoustic Aphasia,” Lost Objects.
The model is used here in a slightly different capacity. In the works examined previously, an often-obscured subtext was uncovered by using the model as a systematic means of analyzing the various domains. Here, it acts to show how the various domains reinforce and add complexity to an already apparent theme. The sense of loss attributed to aphasia is expanded beyond the individual and thrust upon entire cultures; cultures that in this case have long since
106 been forgotten, along with their languages. In the analysis that follows, the model will be utilized in a similar manner, to expand upon and deepen the readily apparent narrative.
5.4 “FW: FW: Please Look”
The (3,4) cycle, while also clearly present in this movement, plays a different role in the overall meaning. In fact, its use here helps to divide the piece into formal sections that then play a larger role in understanding the subtext present in the movement. The missing child who makes up the main narrative device is never explicitly found, however, the other domains create a possible scenario.
5.4.1 Music
The formal structure of “Fw:Fw: Please Look” is ternary, separated into its sections by changes in non-tonally functioning key areas. The relationship between these key areas appears distant in a tonal context, but when viewed through the lens of the (3,4) cycle, the relationships come into focus. Figure 5.6 provides a chart indicating where these sections in the movement occur. The opening A section presents a bitonal beginning, with two simultaneous diatonic key areas using specific groups of instruments to differentiate the two sections of the (3,4) cycle. The bass instruments, consisting of the cellos, basses, and bass guitar, start on pitch class C and move counterclockwise along the cycle until reaching Eb. This span of seven notes represents the Bb-minor-diatonic collection. The other instruments, including the solo voice part, use pitch classes in the clockwise direction starting from C; the seven notes representing G minor. Figure 5.7 illustrates these collections on the cycle. The dotted angled brackets show the Bb-minor collection and the solid brackets show the G-minor collection.
107
Figure 5.6. Form of “Fw:Fw: Please Look,” Lost Objects.
Figure 5.7. (3,4) cycle with brackets indicating the diatonic collections used as they appear in “Fw:Fw: Please Look,” Lost Objects.
The B section presents two smaller subsections in the key areas of D major and G minor
respectively. In the first smaller section, labeled b1, the bass voices simply alternate between pitch classes B and G. The upper strings and solo voice, presented again in major and minor
thirds, complete the rest of the D major collection. In b2, the music shifts back to the G-minor collection heard previously, this time without the accompanying Bb-minor collection.
The tonal distance between these key areas almost disappears once they are understood in the context of the cycle. As can be seen in Figure 5.7, the G-minor and Bb-minor collections of the A section share pitch class C and are symmetrically juxtaposed. This gives their tonally
illogical usage newfound meaning. The move to D major in b1 is particularly interesting, since it appears to be completely separate from either of the collections heard in the A section. There is no linking pitch class to connect them. Example 5.5 shows the transition in the bass voices from the A section to b1. The first pitch class played in the b1 section is B and we retrospectively
108 understand that this B is the one that belongs to the D major collection. However, pitch-class B also happens to be next in the cycle, after the Bb-minor collection, which would then move on to G# and so forth. A cyclical slight-of-hand has occurred, replacing the expected pitch class with
its counterpart from another place in the cycle.115 In this way, the transition from G/Bb minor to D major is made smoother by use of the cycle.
Example 5.5. Transition from section A to b1, “Fw:Fw: Please Look,” Lost Objects.
The concluding A’ section is similar to the beginning in its construction, but the key areas have been transposed down a semitone to F# minor and A minor. Likewise, the linking pitch class is also transposed down to the B located in the lower right-hand portion of the cycle; the same B used in the transition described above. Thus, pitch-class B acts as a shortcut between the various sections of this movement.
5.4.2 Text
The text presented in this movement is taken from a forwarded email message alerting people to a missing child.
Missing Child, Please look, then forward on…
I am asking you, begging Please forward this email to everyone. I have a daughter named Chelsea.
115 A common tonal counterpart to this substitution would be the fully-diminished-seventh chord. This harmony can be enharmonically reinterpreted in order to smoothly shift between distantly related keys.
109 She has been missing since 4 PM. If you know anything, If you see anything, If you hear anything, please.
Missing Child, Please look, then forward on…
All prayers are appreciated.116
The main subject is of course the missing child. The author of this message appears to be desperate in getting help to find their child. The repeated use of the word “please” along with “asking” and “begging” creates a sense of desperation. Also of note here is the method of communication employed, that of a forwarded email message. These types of emails, speaking from personal experience, tend not to be regarded with the utmost urgency. There is no way of knowing how many times it has been sent forward, or if the recipient even knows the child in question, not to mention the likelihood that the message could be a hoax, or worse, a scam. Indeed, there is a degree of skepticism involved with the method of communication itself; perhaps a comment on the loss of trust caused by the internet.
5.4.3 Visual
The visual domain during this movement is quite rich. A solo vocalist is positioned stage left on the stage floor. The BoaCE and the other vocalists are also on the stage floor, with each vocalist equipped with a flashlight. The beginning features a darkened stage with only the soloist illuminated. Meanwhile, the other vocalists search throughout the cluttered stage floor for something, presumably the missing child. Soon after the beginning, the soloist turns her attention toward the other vocalists, telling them the story of the missing child. It is at this point that a large projection of a child is displayed on the translucent screen on stage right. The vocalists all point their flashlights towards it and begin moving in that direction. Once directly
116 Written by Deborah Artman.
110 behind the projection of the child, the vocalists line up and shine their lights on their own faces from below. At the same moment the soloist turns her attention back towards the audience. The movement ends as the soloist sings “All prayers are appreciated,” while the lights and the projection of the child slowly fade to black. A still frame from the movement is shown in Figure 5.8.
Figure 5.8. Still frame from “Fw:Fw: Please Look,” Lost Objects.
The projected image of the child appears to be in distress. While there are no accompanying child-sounds, the face of the child looks as if it is scared and crying. Strangely, the child does not start becoming distressed until right before she is “found” by the vocalists pointing their lights at her. The child’s distressful state, in fact, remains from that point until the end of the movement.
5.4.4 Interpretation
The obvious subject here is the missing child, indicated not only by the narrative, but also by the staged searching. The model, however, reveals a dark subtext; the ‘dim’ likelihood that the child will be found. The visual domain highlights the fact that the child becomes visibly upset when she is located by the lights on the stage. This is the exact opposite reaction that one
111 would expect when finding a lost child. In fact, the upset child could indicate a future in which the child is never found.
The music domain, featuring a ternary formal structure, creates a return of previously heard material to end the movement. The line “Missing Child, please look then forward on…” states the case for the missing child, and its repetition at the end, along with the musical return, might indicate that the email was sent again, an unending cycle that never results in a found child. Even worse, the flashlights actually do “find” the child, but she is apparently not noticed. The searchers are instead blinded by the very tools they use to search. Using this musical return as the focusing domain, it shapes an outcome that despite the desperation in the email, the child is likely to remain missing. Figure 5.9 illustrates this blended meaning.
Figure 5.9. Model of “Fw:Fw: Please Look,” Lost Objects.
It is interesting to note the possible connection between this movement and “Hindenburg” from Three Tales in their treatment of technology. While the present invocation of technology is much more subtle, they both still portray technological advances with a hint of skepticism; whether it be progress at the hands of an evil empire or the seemingly mundane world of forwarded email messages.
112 Referring to the model, each domain supplies a different denotational meaning such that a shift in the focusing domain would cause slightly nuanced blended meanings to emerge. For example, if the narrative became the focusing domain, the final reading could find the endless cycle to be applied to all missing children, not just this specific instance. More about the shifting of focusing domains is discussed in Chapter Seven.
5.5 Conclusion
The other movements in Lost Objects continue to focus on the Talmudic ideas associated with lost things, though none make such explicit use of this multi-aggregate cycle. It is interesting, nonetheless, that these two movements are able to incorporate the cycle in such a way as to augment the narrative, yet the final result is completely different. It also important to remember that Lost Objects was originally conceived as an oratorio with no visual domain. The addition of the staging to the already established music/narrative relationship augments the pre- established relationships here. In “Acoustic Aphasia,” the visuals further support the narrative, adding the notion of lost languages to the concept of aphasia. In “Fw:Fw: Please Look,” it offers an additional lens through which to view the overall meaning, allowing for a careful, nuanced interpretation of the movement.
113 CHAPTER 6
NAQOYQATSI
In 1982, Godfrey Reggio and Philip Glass began collaboration on a film titled Koyaanisqatsi, a film that was meant to describe the imbalances of modern life. This became the first in a trilogy of films whose names are derived from the Hopi language. What follows is an examination of the final film in that series, using the model to craft a cohesive analysis and uncover multiple meanings that are present in one of its movements.
6.1 Background
Naqoyqatsi is the last in a series of three films based on the Hopi word qatsi meaning “life.” The prefixes assigned to the word indicate specific types of life: Naqoyqatsi translates into “life as war;” the first film, Koyaanisqatsi, means “life out of balance,” and Powaqqatsi means “life in transformation.” Godfrey Reggio, director of the films, has stated that war in Naqoyqatsi is meant to symbolize not only war in the common sense of the word, but also smaller, internal conflicts we all experience everyday.
“For the word naqoyqatsi, naqoy means ‘each other, kill many,’ so it’s out of our syntax. The additional meanings [of naqoyqatsi] are ‘way of life of killing,’ ‘war as a way of life,’ and by commentary, those of us that made the film chose to use the term ‘civilized violence’ as a contemporary understanding of that term.”117
The trilogy of films attempts to chronicle how technology has shaped and continues to shape our world. However, this is done in a completely different way than in Three Tales. Reich and
117 Taken from comments Reggio made during a New York University panel discussion contained in the special features of the DVD release of Naqoyqatsi.
114 Korot picked specific points of the twentieth century on which to focus, and crafted their work around them. Reggio and Glass address similar topics, but do not restrict themselves to specific moments in history, instead touching on many issues as they relate to the Hopi language.
Naqoyqatsi, produced fourteen years after the second film Powaqqatsi, stands apart from the first two. Its chronological distance from the first two films not only separates it in time, but advances in film making technology also give this film a unique look. Combined with this new look is Philip Glass’s score for the film, which departs from the music of the first two films by featuring a solo cello part performed by Yo-Yo Ma. The film has no spoken dialogue; only Reggio’s images and Glass’s music.
The film consists of 11 individual movements, each with a different take on technology and its ever-increasing role in everyday life. One of the movements, “Primacy of Number,” makes this point the most clearly and is the primary focus of this chapter. The movement can also be thought of as a microcosm of the entire film, for it features many of the same musical and visual devices that appear in the other movements. Ultimately, this movement addresses a broad range of issues and makes for a more interesting analytical subject than the more topically focused movements that come after it. The approach to “Primacy of Number” is similar to that found in the previous chapters; I will examine the surface of each domain before progressing to deeper levels of meaning. What makes this composition somewhat different is the lack of any explicit text or narrative. Instead, I rely on the title of the movement and the overall focus of the film; life as war.
6.2 “Primacy of Number”
Philip Glass’s musical score for Naqoyqatsi is in ternary form. Each section has several distinct features, which are all included on a chart of the formal divisions in Figure 6.1. Of particular interest is the apparent conflict between the bipartite key scheme and the tripartite formal division. Each part of the form is discussed below, including a possible resolution to the formal tension.
115
Figure 6.1. Ternary form of “Primacy of Number,” Naqoyqatsi.
A particular minimalist technique known as subtractive process is introduced in the A section and a recurring pattern is developed.118 Example 6.1 presents the first clearly noticeable use of a subtractive process. Besides the subtraction in the melody, which is clearly one note shorter on each repetition of the pattern, a bass note below the melody accentuates and highlights the subtraction as a musical device. The subtractive rhythmic pattern created, 4 – 3 – 2, is heard throughout the entire movement as a central motivic gesture. While different from the large- scale process as described in the Rzewski example from Chapter Two, this local subtractive pattern is still very much in the spirit of minimalist compositional technique. Example 6.2 provides another example of the pattern and is heard before Example 6.1 in the music, but the listener, not yet clued into the subtractive pattern at work here, may miss this more subtle manifestation of the process. Here, the same 4 – 3 – 2 subtraction is used, though pitch classes G and D move to A and C# (respectively) during the first repetition.
Example 6.1. First clear use of a subtractive process, “Primacy of Number,” Naqoyqatsi.
Example 6.2. First actual use of subtractive process, “Primacy of Number,” Naqoyqatsi.
118 See chapter two for more information on subtractive process.
116 This section also features larger metrical groupings of four beats with simple subdivisions. There are, of course, times when other metrical divisions are heard (as shown above), but quadruple divisions are the most common. The instrumentation for the A section includes only the Philip Glass Ensemble.
The entrance of the solo cello marks the beginning of the B section. Example 6.3 presents a small excerpt from the cello solo. While the solo is subdivided into two beats per measure, the underlying rhythmic pulse clearly establishes the primary beat grouping as three. Later, as shown in Example 6.4, the meter changes yet again, this time with main beat groupings of two and a compound subdivision of the beat. In either case, meters and subdivisions in this section introduce and primarily involve groups of three. The subtractive pattern developed in the opening A section does not play a role in the B section.
Example 6.3. Excerpt from the first cello solo, “Primacy of Number,” Naqoyqatsi.
Example 6.4. Compound subdivision of the primary beat, “Primacy of Number,” Naqoyqatsi.
The short A’ section reprises some of the music from the first section, primarily the music seen in Example 6.2. Of interest, however, is the return of a simple subdivision of the beat, and larger metrical groups that realign primarily in groups of two. This is a significant change from the initial A section where the meter was primarily quadruple.
Harmonically, the music is quite simple. The movement begins centered around the diatonic collection of G minor. A little over halfway through, the harmonic language shifts to
117 become centered around C minor.119 Interestingly, the shift does not correspond with the ternary form of the movement, instead changing midway through the B section. A possible reason for this incongruity between the harmonic and metrical structures is addressed in the next section when investigating the visual domain.
While the use of the subtractive pattern is itself intriguing, Glass creates a larger organic connection through the expansion of the 4 – 3 – 2 pattern into the formal design of the movement. As can be seen in the summary of the form in Figure 6.1, the metrical groupings in each part (4, then 3, and finally 2) correspond with the smaller scale subtractive pattern. This pattern presents itself at the larger level of form, creating a situation where the structure is recursive on multiple musical levels. This feature of the music, often seen in tonal music, where the Schenkerian background manifests itself in foreground features, is rarely seen in minimal music. Its use here may indicate a subtle projection of meaning; that local actions can affect global consequences or, to borrow from what Reggio has said about the meaning of war in the context of the film, that war is not only a conflict between opposing forces, but possibly a manifestation of a personal, more local struggle.
All of the images in “Primacy of Number” come from either stock film footage or are generated with computer graphics.120 The sequence of image types divides the movement into three unique sections that essentially correspond to the music’s ternary form: images that deal with technology and numbers, primarily the binary digits zero and one; those that deal with war and mathematical equations; and a final section that returns to binary numbers and fractal imagery. The one discrepancy occurs when the images of mathematical equations appear about
119 I hesitate to say that this movement begins in the “key” of G minor and “modulates” to C minor simply because of the lack of any tonal cues in the music, such as harmonic progressions and cadences. Instead, the pitch space Glass uses is the diatonic G-minor collection of pitch-classes moving to a space using the C-minor collection. In fact, there is only one traditional tonal device present in the entire movement: at the very end the C-minor harmony sees a “Picardy” transformation to C major.
120 The entire film is drawn primarily from stock footage; that is, clips that were created for projects other than this film and were available for purchase by Reggio. The only scene shot specifically for the film was the opening sequence in the first movement, featuring an abandoned building.
118 30 seconds before the music transitions to the B material (the cello solo). Figure 6.2 shows the musical ternary structure in comparison with the visual domain’s formal divisions.
Figure 6.2. Musical chart with the visual chart, “Primacy of Number,” Naqoyqatsi.
The scene opens with many little white lights racing toward the camera. The effect is similar to driving at night in the rain and passing under a streetlight where it appears that the rain is luminous and moving towards you. Soon, a large number zero enters the frame from behind the camera, and as it moves into the background, the screen is filled with more and more of the tiny white lights until the screen becomes solidly white. When this fades, we are left with a moving field of zeros and ones, the binary digits that dominate the first part of the movement. Figure 6.3 shows both the large zero with tiny white lights and the field of binary digits.
119
Figure 6.3. Screenshots from the opening of “Primacy of Number,” Naqoyqatsi.
After a few more scenes featuring the binary numbers, the scene abruptly shifts to images of marching armies, starting the second section. As mentioned above, this happens about 30 seconds before the cello solo, the start of the musical B section. These moving images are effected from their original source material in several ways. At first, the brightness is increased, which emphasizes the soldiers’ white pants and also imbues the army with an aura, an almost heavenly glow. After this initial group of soldiers, the scene suddenly cuts to another group of soldiers, but this time the colors have been inverted, a technique known as negative, such that the video resembles the negative of a traditional photograph. For both sets of clips, time has been slowed significantly, almost as if Reggio wanted the soldiers to march in time with the hypermeter of the music. A by-product of this slow down is the added emphasis it gives the armies by requiring the viewer to examine the details in each step.121 Shortly after the marching soldiers, numbers return to the fore, but this time in the context of complex mathematical equations scribbled on a chalkboard. Ultimately, after more scenes of soldiers training and in actual combat, this gives way to a full-screen image of Albert Einstein, subjected to the same negative technique mentioned above.122
121 According to Ephraim Katz, slow motion literally “stresses a moment in time,” giving it greater importance. Ephraim Katz, The Film Encyclopedia (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1979), 1067.
122 Other scientists are shown here as well. Most of them worked on the U.S. government’s Manhattan Project, which developed a nuclear weapon in the 1940s. Among them are Paul Olum and
120 The soldiers in this section that are again shown with increased brightness, and are cadets from West Point Academy, identifiable from their highly ornate uniforms.123 This is in stark contrast to the soldiers subsequently shown in negative, who are wearing less decorative uniforms and feature helmets with a red star on the front, indicating a socialist or communist affiliation. This separates the two groups even more than they would be with no image alteration at all, giving preference to the West Point cadets and their heavenly glow. The use of the negative effect also links the “red” army to another image displayed in a similar way, that of Albert Einstein. Einstein’s theories were partly responsible for the development of the atomic bomb that was dropped on Japan, a key factor in ending World War II. Portraying both in a similar manner may highlight this link.
Figure 6.4. Screenshots from the middle of “Primacy of Number,” Naqoyqatsi.
Glen Seaborg. Also, the prominent feature of Einstein is also a reference to one of Glass’s former works, Einstein on the Beach.
123 Thanks to retired Air Force Lt. Col. William Atkinson for his assistance in identifying the cadets in the first screenshot of Figure 6.4.
121 The last set of images returns to binary numbers and a new, seemingly never-ending descent into a fractal image. Fractals are mathematical constructs that are self-similar at all scales. This particular fractal, known as a Mandelbrot set, could be “zoomed” indefinitely and the resulting shapes would be similar to the features seen at previous levels. The recursive nature of fractals, in this case, mimics the recursive feature of the music’s large-scale metrical and small-scale rhythmic structures.
Figure 6.5. Screenshot of the fractal image from “Primacy of Number,” Naqoyqatsi.
Another striking feature of the imagery comes from the abrupt transition from soldiers marching in formation to scenes from actual combat operations. Indicated by a dotted line along the top row of Figure 6.2, the switch to scenes of real combat occurs precisely as the music shifts to C minor. The affective difference of the images is striking. The first images of the marching cadets are laden with ceremonial qualities; the soldiers are dressed in traditional uniforms and march in formation. Even the contrasting, communist troops seen later are still presented as marching in a ceremony or parade. The battle images, however, have a real sense of danger and urgency. The people depicted are actively engaged in war-time activities, causing a rift between these depictions and the civilities of the former soldiers. Figure 6.6 shows two screenshots from these actual battle scenes.
122
Figure 6.6. Screenshots of actual battle from “Primacy of Number,” Naqoyqatsi.124
As I mentioned in the beginning of the chapter, there is no spoken dialogue or text presented during the course of the film. To examine the narrative, then, I rely on the title of the movement (“Primacy of Number”) and the overall topic of the film as described by Reggio (civilized violence, both personal struggles and battles against opposing forces). This comprises the narrative in the analytical model.
The interaction between the domains in this movement creates a number of different possible interpretations using the model; not only by rotating the focusing domain, but also by examining different aspects of each domain. To begin, I focus on the fractal imagery in the last part of the ternary form. With this clear image of a recursive structure, an association is created
124 All of the real battle scenes were filmed with night vision technology, hence the grainy resolution.
123 with the similar structures found in the musical form; the subtractive rhythmic pattern of 4 – 3 – 2 expanded onto the larger metrical pattern which defines the music’s ternary form. A strong emphasis on recursion, when viewed in light of the narrative, indicates that not only is war conceived as a dichotomy between personal and larger struggles, but that one is the outgrowth of the other. The relationship between different forms of violence is presented as a continuum. See Figure 6.7.
Figure 6.7. Model of “Primacy of Number,” focusing on the fractal imagery and recursive music.
Another visual aspect to address is the difference between the images of war that Reggio juxtaposes. The fact that the pivotal switch between the ceremonial and actual war images occurs precisely when the music shifts from G minor to C minor cannot be overlooked. Since the key area shift almost evenly splits the B section of the ternary form, it is possibly a chiasmus. Essentially splitting the middle B section, a chiasmus form transforms the initial A section into the A’ by means of some kind of reversal during the middle sections.125 The reversal in this case is the images of training becoming those of actual combat, accompanied by the shift in key area
125 For more information on the chiasmus form, see Lawrence Kramer, Franz Schubert: Sexuality, Subjectivity, Song, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
124 from G minor to C minor. The visual shift underscores the difference between simulated reality and reality itself, transforming the images of the final A’ section into those that are read as real- world technologies as opposed to the abstract numbers seen before.126 Figure 6.8 shows the model with the chiasmus as the FD.
Figure 6.8. Model of “Primacy of Number,” focusing on the chiasmus form.
6.3 Conclusion
The narrative at work in this movement does not only provide meaning. Naqoyqatsi as a whole embraces the role of technology and how it has shaped the way we now think about war at many levels. “Primacy of Number” is the most dynamic movement of the film in terms of the methods used to get this central point across. It uses multiple types of imagery and musical devices to create a complex work that deals with the broad concept of war as a multi-leveled and
126 The obvious exception, of course, is the fractal imagery, but the other images that end this movement are a computer keyboard and a computer modeled weather prediction. These lie in stark contrast to the more abstract presentation of solely binary numbers in the A section.
125 nuanced subject. The other movements tend to focus on more specific manners in which technology affects modern existence, including movements that focus on consumerism, mass communication, and religion. The results from a study of these scenes is more limited in terms of demonstrating the interpretive model.
The movement titled “Media Weather,” for example, includes a rigidly conceived and constantly repeating ground bass that is only varied through slight changes in instrumentation. This is juxtaposed with various images related to mass media, including actual content, as well as the technology behind transmitting that content. While the message is powerful–that much of what we enjoy as consumers of media is so complicated that we no longer understand how it works (or care to know how it works as long it continues working)–the music seems to focus purely on the never-ending stream of data that bombards us daily. The resulting model leans very heavily on the visual domain to produce a rather straightforward analysis.
126 CHAPTER 7
CONCLUSION
This dissertation provides a new method with which to approach meaning in minimalist multimedia compositions. The model developed here is similar to existing models by Nicholas Cook, but crafted in such a way as to uncover meaning by examining all three domains of a multimedia work. Important to the success of this new model is the existence of a fixed visual domain, without which the meaning could change as the visual domain changes.127 To demonstrate the effectiveness of the model, I chose four relatively recent works by American minimalist composers; each one different in how the domains manifest themselves throughout the work. The resulting analyses, accordingly different for each work, uncover aspects of meaning that rely on the close interaction of each domain.
One key feature of the model may be possible to explore further, as I have hinted throughout this document. The focusing domain allows the analyst to decide which domain will take precedence in the model. Depending upon the situation, this could greatly affect the outcome of the analysis. Below, I briefly discuss several instances from previous chapters where a shift in the FD can cause an entirely new and sometimes unexpected result.
From Chapter Four, recall the model produced as a result of the events in Act II, Scene 2 of Nixon in China (Figure 4.7, pg. 79). This is the scene featuring Madame Mao’s ballet “The Red Detachment of Women” in which the Nixons attend and ultimately become participants. The music domain’s “communist collage” and the loss of the ballet’s third wall combine with the disrupted revolutionary story to create an outward manifestation of the internal conflict between Chairman Mao and Richard Nixon. However, if the FD is shifted to the music domain, a new
127 This is the benefit of Cook’s models, as the intention is to use them to compare various instances of multimedia that may have the same music domain, but different visual domains.
127 and intriguing reading comes into focus. Figure 7.1 explores this idea in the model. Several things change as a result of the Nixons involvement in the ballet’s story, the most prominent being Ching-hui’s refusal to kill Lao Szu. One of the underlying revolutionary ideas of the scene, the music’s communist-collage style, remains fully in effect, however, even after the Nixons begin to take part in the ballet’s actions, it is possible that the Nixons are complicit with the revolutionary ideals of the ballet. If the Nixons (and by extenstion, the Nixon administration) are complicit, then this might explain the presence of Henry Kissinger in the ballet.
Figure 7.1. Shift of FD, Act II, Scene 2, Nixon in China.
At the end of Chapter Five, I briefly mention a different outcome in the meaning for “Fw:Fw: Please Look” from Lost Objects (see Figure 5.9, pg. 112). There, I propose that the lack of formal closure in the music focuses the other domains in such a way that the search for the child is an endless cycle that never achieves closure. Shifting the FD to the narrative, which centers on the forwarded email, creates a meaning with more far-reaching consequences. The endless cycle of email forwards, of which thousands, perhaps millions, are sent everyday, could read as the escalation of the topic from one missing child to the tragedy of missing children everywhere. Figure 7.2 illustrates such a reading.
128
Figure 7.2. Shift of FD, “Fw:Fw: Please Look,” Lost Objects.
Chapter Three presents many iterations of the model in order to handle the various sections of “Hindenburg” from Three Tales. The first model, the analysis of “It Could Not Have Been a Technical Matter,” uses the slowed footage from the visual domain as the FD (see Figure 3.2, pg. 35). The resulting meaning focuses on the disaster itself and how arrogance and dogged persistence can lead to such a disaster. Shifting the FD to the music creates a slightly nuanced reading. Figure 7.3 shows that the new interpretation emphasizes the suddenness of the disaster, supported by the real-time crash footage.
129
Figure 7.3. Shift of FD, “It Could Not Have Been a Technical Matter,” Three Tales.
In addition to providing an analytical framework, I have also found the model useful as an outline of the cognitive process. When viewing these works for the first time, it was difficult to objectively assess each domain independently, but the model encourages the analyst to do so. In fact, the benefit of having a model at all is the ability to apply the same analytical process to multiple compositions. Though it lies outside the scope of this study, it would be interesting to investigate the works of a single composer, say the operas of John Adams, to determine whether any of the same devices that generate meaning play into some larger compositional trends.
Further research on this topic can take at least two directions. The first is to further refine the model itself. The initial goal in creating this model was to allow enough flexibility to be useful in many different situations, but not so broad as to render the results bland and uninteresting. Any refinements would need to maintain this present balance. Obviously, any new analytical techniques in the study of minimalist music or film/visual theory can easily be accommodated within model, as the relationship between items is not affected by the analytical tools with which they are uncovered.
The second is the expansion of the model to other forms of multimedia. Yes, there is a trend for minimalist or minimalist-inspired composers to use multimedia in their compositions,
130 and this was the catalyst for the creation of the model. But the model itself does not rely on anything specifically related to minimalism in order to operate. Only the analytical tools or the number of input spaces must change in order for this model to be successfully applied in any multimedia setting.
The current analytical options for multimedia analysis are varied. This model borrows from many of them, including aspects of song, art, film, and opera analysis, in an attempt to create a more flexible method for addressing works that have, until now, been difficult to analyze in a meaningful way. As the technology that allows for the creation of these multimedia works becomes cheaper and easier to use, multimedia may become a more mainstream outlet for them. If that is the case, then analysts need to be increasingly prepared to utilize the type of interdisciplinary approach taken in this study in order to better understand the meaning behind multimedia composition.
131 BIBLIOGRAPHY
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134 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
Sean Atkinson graduated from Furman University in 2004 with degrees in music theory and trombone performance. He received his master’s degree in music theory from Florida State University in 2006 and continued his education in the doctoral program, also in music theory. He has presented research at several regional and national conferences, including the Music Theory Southeast Conference and the Semiotics Society of America Annual Meeting. His research interests include minimalism, visual media, and music technology. Sean currently resides in Tallahassee, FL, with his wife Lindsey and dog Taz.
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