New Approaches to Melody in 1920S Musical Thought
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Sounding Lines: New Approaches to Melody in 1920s Musical Thought The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Probst, Stephanie. 2018. Sounding Lines: New Approaches to Melody in 1920s Musical Thought. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University, Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:41127157 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA 2018, Stephanie Probst All rights reserved. Dissertation Advisor: Professor Suzannah Clark Stephanie Probst Sounding Lines: New Approaches to Melody in 1920s Musical Thought Abstract This dissertation identifies a new concept of melody that emerged in early twentieth- century Germany at the intersection of developments in composition, music theory, philosophy, the visual arts, and psychology. Focusing on the widespread analogy of the line, which came to encapsulate melody as an autonomous, temporally evolving yet coherently perceived musical entity, the study investigates how theorists unleashed melody from the hegemony of nineteenth- century harmony and theorized its structuring principles independently from vertical ties. Recent theories of visualization frame readings of an interdisciplinary body of sources to illuminate the ways in which the melodic line bridged physical and psychological models of music, temporal and spatial perspectives, and theories of visual and aural cognition. The first two chapters chronicle the revival and re-conceptualization of the line in the visual arts and of melody in music around 1900 as parallel developments. Chapter I examines how modernist tendencies towards abstraction in visual-artistic practice and theory emancipated the line from its traditional representational functionality and elevated it to an expressive graphical element. By representing the temporal processes of its creation and cognition, the line came to hypostatize cognitive theories of vision and audition. In Chapter II, the example of Ernst Toch’s String Quartet Op. 26 (1919) illustrates how melody became a structurally and perceptually salient parameter in compositions around 1920, which challenges this introduced for printers, performers, and listeners alike, and how different ideological camps contested the rightful application of linearity in music criticism. iii Chapters III and IV focus respectively on notions of the single melodic line in Toch’s Melodielehre (1923) and the intertwining of multiple horizontal trajectories in Ernst Kurth’s Foundations of Linear Counterpoint: Bach’s Melodic Polyphony (1917). I trace a lineage of pertinent inquiries in cognitive psychology and Gestalt theory, from Ernst Mach’s theory of sensory perception (1886/96) and Christian von Ehrenfels’s seminal “On ‘Gestalt Qualities’” (1890/1922) to the work of Max Wertheimer (1912, 1923), and elucidate the ways in which music theorists intuited cognitive and Gestalt-theoretical principles in their linear conceptions of melody by privileging step-wise melodic progressions. Chapter V examines the music-analytical and interpretative potential of the line in graphical depictions of musical compositions by Bauhaus-artists Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, and Henrik Neugeboren. My discussion situates an acknowledged turning point in music in a broad cultural and intellectual context. I argue that the interdisciplinary conditions undergirding linear-melodic thinking of this time continue to inform compositional and analytical models and aesthetic connotations of melody and the line today. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements vii List of Figures and Table xii Note on Translations xv Introduction: Some Points 1 Overview of Chapters 12 Chapter I. Sounding Lines 17 Between the Arts, Physics, and Psychology 19 The Genetic Line 26 Tracing Perception: From Eye Paths to the Gestalt Quality of Melody 32 Bach and Beethoven as Linear Icons 41 Musical Lines Today 51 Chapter II. The Status of Melody in the Early Twentieth Century: 57 Aesthetics, Composition, Notation, Theory From Nineteenth-Century Melodik to Twentieth-Century Melodielehre 57 The Nineteenth Century 59 Into the Twentieth Century 65 Ernst Toch and Aesthetic Debates ca. 1920 73 Defining History to Shape the Present 74 Invention (“Einfall”) 76 Theory vs. Pedagogy 79 Theory vs. “Entzauberung” 81 Harmony 84 Composing, Notating, Performing, and Listening to Linear Music in the 1920s: 86 Ernst Toch’s String Quartet No. 9 in C Major, Op. 26 (1919/20) Toch’s Op. 26 90 Expanding Notation 93 “Linearity” in Music Criticism 103 Chapter III. Melodic Wave Lines, 1821 and 1923: Towards Continuity in Ernst 113 Toch’s Tonhöhenlinie Kanne’s Wave Line 115 From Kanne’s Wave Line to Toch’s Tonhöhenlinie : A Preliminary Comparison 121 Approximating Continuity 124 The Problem of Continuity in Kanne’s Theory 124 Towards a Graphical Line in Toch’s Theory 128 Approximating Continuity in Toch’s Tonhöhenlinie 134 v Chapter III (cont.) A Psychological Perspective on Music Theory: Cognition as Methodological 136 Anchor in Toch’s Melodielehre Backdrops for Toch’s Cognitive Framework 141 Ernst Mach 141 Christian von Ehrenfels 144 Other Gestalt Theorists 148 Achieving Continuity 153 The Shape of the Tonhöhenlinie as Expressive Seismograph 155 Beethoven and the Aesthetic Function of Toch’s Tonhöhenlinie 164 Chapter IV. Interweaving Lines in Ernst Kurth’s Theory of Linear Counterpoint 170 Melody as Experienced Motion 173 Gestalt-Theoretical Aspects in Kurth’s Understanding of Melodic Motion 178 Models for Kurth’s Melodic Line in the Visual Arts and Other Domains 189 Horizontality and Verticality in History: Kurth’s Music-Theoretical Intervention 198 The Linear Forms in Apparent Polyphony (“Scheinpolyphonie”) 206 The Gestalt Theory of Apparent Polyphony 219 Chapter V. Performing Music (Analysis) with Pen, Paper, and Steel: 229 Artistic Renditions of Music At The Bauhaus From Dots to the Line: Listening through Kandinsky’s Ears 233 Against the Point in Counterpoint: Lines in J.S. Bach’s Polyphonic Style 243 Performing Bach with Pen and Paper 256 Visions of Tonal Space: Examining the Organization of the Graphs 264 A Haptic Encounter with Polyphony 271 Performing and Listening Engraved 276 Conclusion: Some Threads 279 Drawing, Thinking, Composing, and Hearing Lines 282 Mapping Movement and Interpreting Lines 286 Bibliography 291 vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Lines tie together ideas, and ideas connect people. In writing this dissertation, and throughout my education, a tightly knit web of people have supported me as I collected, developed, and interwove ideas for this project. At Harvard, I am particularly indebted to the three members of my dissertation committee, Suzie Clark, Alex Rehding, and Chris Hasty, for their guidance during the dissertation, for challenging me and encouraging me to find my own path as a scholar. I am grateful to Suzie for her vision and rigor, her inspiring teaching, and for her generous and holistic approach as a mentor. Alex gave much direction to this dissertation through his creative ideas and vast knowledge and has been unfailingly available with practical advice and encouragement. I am also grateful for his help with rendering some of the more evocative samples of early twentieth-century German in fittingly colorful translations. I thank Chris for encouraging me to think outside established frames and for the long, stimulating conversations that helped me to see the bigger picture of my research. I extend thanks to the other wonderful mentors and teachers of my graduate education, including Sindhu Revuluri and Kate van Orden at Harvard, and Bob Wason, Jonathan Dunsby, Elizabeth Marvin, and Bob Hasegawa at Eastman. Seminars at Harvard by Ahmed Ragab in the History of Science, and Benjamin Buchloh in the History of Art and Architecture provided new critical lenses to my thinking. I am grateful to Laura Frahm for inviting me to present early ideas of my research in her seminar on “New Media Theory,” a course that also brought media theory to bear on my project. I look back with gratitude to Marie-Agnes Dittrich, Martin Eybl, Wolfgang Gratzer, and Birgit Lodes for encouraging me to pursue my interests in my early vii studies in Vienna. My music teacher in high school, Gabriele Eder, was the first to stimulate and foster my curiosity in music’s essence, power, and larger contexts. Nancy Shafman, Eva Kim, Kaye Denny, Lesley Bannatyne, and Karen Rynne make the Music Department at Harvard such a welcoming and happy place and have been forthcoming with help on all organizational issues, sometimes even before I asked. Andy Wilson in the Music library always accommodated any special requests and generously volunteered his expertise on player piano rolls. I am very grateful for Harvard’s Oscar Straus Schafer teaching fellowship and the Barbara Natterson-Horowitz finishing grant, which have provided me the time and flexibility to finish the dissertation while abroad during the last two years. I have benefited greatly from participating in the interdisciplinary colloquium on “Panaesthetics” that Cécile Guédon organized at Harvard. The seminars have equipped me with a range of perspectives on inter-artistic scholarship, and my lively discussions with Cécile have left an imprint on my thinking towards both my research and the larger things