Contact: a Journal for Contemporary Music (1971-1988) Citation
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Contact: A Journal for Contemporary Music (1971-1988) http://contactjournal.gold.ac.uk Citation Potter, Keith. 1989. ‘Darmstadt 1988’. Contact, 34. pp. 26-32. ISSN 0308-5066. ! 27 them. There are good reasons for this, and some of practically, it may be argued that emphases of some these can be put right, as I will suggest below. But kind are inevitable, at least during any individual expectations of Darmstadt will no doubt always run summer school. What seems especially interesting unreasonably high among first-time visitors as long as about the Hommel Years, though, is that they seem to 'Darmstadt' continues to mean anything much have gone out of their way to elevate older figures who historically. Indeed there are few reasons to suppose were previously regarded by the Official Avant Garde that the slate will be somehow wiped clean. as also-rans or at least as outsiders. It should also be pointed out that the image of 1950s Two composers given this treatment in the recent 'Darmstadt' as simply the dispenser of the pure past are no longer living, but the shades of both were mountain air of the new serialism, invigorating all who strongly felt this year. Giacinto Scelsi actually died went to have their constitutions improved, becomes while the 1988 Ferienkurse were in progress; news of not a little tarnished directly one looks at the details. A his death quickly filtered through to participants and spot of delving, in rare idle moments during resulted in some memorial tributes and performances. Darmstadt 1988, into the Darmstadt Institute's The music of this redoubtable Roman count, who extensive archives (which should be used by received belated and rather cultish attention in his last researchers more than at present seems to be the case) decade or so, had been a feature of Darmstadt 1986. makes a little clearer, for instance, the position there of Morton Feldman, who died in 1987, had been a special Bruno Maderna who, though seen by some as one of feature of Darmstadt 1984 and was, I understand, still a the embodiments of 'Darmstadt' - perhaps partly strong presence two years later. (The treatment given because he made the city his home for many years - to this composer in his last years was seemingly quite was at least a neo-Romantic, if not a postmodernist, different from that offered his erstwhile 'New York before either term was invented, and who must have School' colleague Christian Wolf£ at Darmstadt 1974; irritated hard-line serialists even as he helped though their markedly different personalities champion them as a conductor. It is also too easy to undoubtedly played some part in this, it is suppose that everything about 'Darmstadt' was so encouraging to think that former experimentalists much better in the early years: some accounts I've besides Cage are now perhaps seen as more than received of 1950s Ferienkursen do not entirely 'interesting minor figures'.) A tape of Feldman's last substantiate the glowing impression that history has orchestral work, Coptic Light (1986), was played as a so widely conveyed. tribute to him late on the last evening of the 1988 Ferienkurse, by which time most participants had either left town or got drunk and gone elsewhere. * * * Feldman's presence had, however, been strong How, then, has the real Darmstadt changed since its throughout the preceding weeks not only through Mecca days? Perhaps the chief innovation in the 1980s other, live, performances of his music, but because a has been an almost total avoidance of the 'old guard' number of composers presenting their own work in who previously ruled: Berio, Boulez, Ligeti and the course of lectures had been pupils of his and Stockhausen; even Kagel and Xenakis, whose referred frequently to his ideas and sayings. These relationship with the old Darmstadt was more included Feldman's widow, Barbara Monk-Feldman, problematic despite their status as Major European who is, though, far from being the clone of her late Avant Gardists. These composers might anyway no husband that cynics would have you believe. It may longer respond positively to invitations to appear in not be too far-fetched to suggest that the kinds of person; what is more interesting is that their music is, energy generated by the music of Scelsi and Feldman with the exception in 1988 of one or two short pieces by - different from one another in important respects but Berio and Xenakis, seemingly now banned from also sharing qualities defined only very inadequately performance as well. The system of one-hour by such words as 'contemplative', 'spiritual' and presentations which now replaces the courses of 'undramatic' - are now seen as complements, even lectures given by the old figure-heads produces, antidotes, to fast concerns. Serialism and indetermin- however, something less than the total democracy that acy - also, o course, very different from one another might conceivably have been brought about. One - often generated raging but at the same time rather reason for this is that some composers, young or old, rebarbative sorts of energy. The output of the 'quietist' are inevitably going to be seen by the majority of Feldman was always an exception to this - as was the participants as more important than others (though music of all the American 'chance' composers with the that in turn raises the question of who those exception of Earle Brown, whose more emotional participants are nowadays and what their value indeterminacy was, significantly, an important judgements are likely to be). Another reason has more influence on European brands of 'aleatoric music' in to do with the nature of the choices made by Hommel the fifties and sixties: it's more the European and his team which, while quite possibly stemming 'misunderstanding' of indeterminacy (fruitful or from concerns for equality and 'righting the balance', otherwise) of which I'm thinking here. An 'angry- result in practice in what looks like an attempt to young-man' aspect can still be perceived in the work of establish an 'alternative history of contemporary the modernist 'successors' to the 1950s avant garde, music' which threatens to become every bit as perhaps partly for the simple reason that these enshrined in stone as the 'official avant-garde' one. It composers dispute the 'succession'. If Brian could be argued that 'alternative history' is a very Ferneyhough (who may stand as an example of such necessary counter to received views that make what present-day modernism) and Feldman are both should be a constant process of change and flux into acceptable at Darmstadt these days as somehow something ossified: we can all benefit from a view that fulfilling complementary needs, perhaps an is sufficiently open-minded to encompass a wide 'alternative' (because less straightforwardly range of aesthetic opinions and stylistic results, combative) view of the present is being offered, as well however contradictory, but which also provides some as the more obviously 'either/or' of an 'alternative even vaguely coherent way of looking at things. More musical history'. 28 There were living older presences at Darmstadt 1988 at Darmstadt that, with or without the assistance of as well. The 65-year-old Karel Goeyvaerts will be Ferneyhough (who, not entirely surprisingly, seems to known to students of the Official Avant Garde as one of view them more as rivals than colleagues these days), the chief contenders to be written up in the history Barrett, Dench and Dillon (probably not Finnissy, books as the writer of the First Totally-Serial Piece. It though maybe some of the others) are the 1980s was his just-completed Sonata for two pianos that so equivalents of the 1950s serialists in their quest for a fired Stockhausen at Darmstadt in 1951, and synthesis of intellectual rigour and musical forms Goeyvaerts talked about that early period in the course consistent with acoustic realities. The fact that their of his lecture. Following a gap of some years after he New Complexity has challenged the old serialism as gave up serialism around the end of the fifties, he both intellectually and musically bogus only adds began writing a totally different, much simpler music spice to the crusade currently being waged on their which he himself is quite happy to describe as behalf. The fact that their work is not presented on the minimalist; these works have received a certain lavish scale Stockhausen could once expect at amount of attention in Continental Europe but, as so Darmstadt (Dillon, for example, was represented in often, almost none in Britain. We were able to hear a the concerts by a couple of short solo pieces, while his number of recent compositions by Goeyvaerts in the major recent orchestral work helle Nacht (1986-7) could course of the concerts, as well as a seemingly quite only be heard on tape during his talk) is more an splendid performance of the early sonata which, not indication of Darmstadt's presently rather parlous for the first time in my experience, made it seem much financial situation than of anything else. more than the Historical Curiosity it is written off as Any suggestion that Hommel is himself openly (I'd like to know how many people have heard the fostering the advancement of these composers' careers piece). Goeyvaerts' recent 'minimalism' often seems at the expense of his already-mentioned pluralism gauche to me, but fascinatingly gauche; I've just about must, on the other hand, be challenged. The principal convinced myself that I mean more by saying this than protagonist in the British New Complexity business at that I'm simply intrigued by the aesthetic reversal and Darmstadt appears to be Harry Halbreich, an the clear and compelling honesty that lies behind it.