Challengingthe system Chaos actual, or chaos virtual? DAVID BRUCE puts Birtwistle'sLast Night Panic into its proper perspective Oh what is he doing, the greatgod Pan even come under such anarchic 'attacks', but balance David Bruce is Down by the reedsby the river and context are still the primary organisational con- currently writing a Spreading ruin and scattering ban cerns. piece for the BBC The idea of a musical structure being attacked Composers Forum T HUS IS inscribed the score of Panic,1 Sir from within has previously been discussed in rela- tion to In one of Harrison Birtwistle's now almost legendary Birtwistle's Earth dances. the most 1. Birtwistle writes for the last of the 1995 Proms to have been written on Birtwistle in piece night cogent papers the following season. Whilst not exactly a 'programme', recent times Arnold Whittall identifies musical mod- alongside this this poetic fragment, as with that by Robert Graves ernists as those who 'challenge synthesis and inte- fragment: 'some- heading the score of Secret theatre, seems at least to gration even as they allude to it',4 a notion developed thing I remember from school but provide some kind of extra-musical context in by Whittall over a long period of time and applied by can't remember by which to the work. Secret theatre has been him to numerous modernist figures, including place whom (A. Noyes described as a of and whilst the Maxwell Webern and 'geometry comedy',2 Davies, Stravinsky.5Although maybe?'!) term 'geometry of chaos' hardly makes sense, Panic this notion is perhaps less applicable to, say, Boulez, certainly depicts a wild and at times chaotic expres- Carter or Schoenberg, all of whom attempt to create 2. See Arnold sive force whose appeal to the senses is not entirely a new and real kind of integration (even if Hans Whittall's article on Secret theatre in MT abstract. For the tabloids, it was chaos, an increas- Keller argued convincingly that Schoenberg belongs (January 1993), ingly rare opportunity to open the dusty old 'con- to the noble breed of the 'stylistically impure', sug- pp.17-19. temporary/squeaky-gate so-called music' file, last gesting that 'absolute purity of style seems possible used, I believe, to ridicule Stockhausen's string quar- only if you are prepared to say nothing whatso- 3. MT (November tet, in which each player sits in a different helicopter ever'6), it nonetheless applies well to earlier 'mod- 1995), p.616. (I caught a glimpse of this on 'And finally...' on News ernists' like Berg and Mahler. What these two com- 4. at Ten recently). Stockhausen tends these days to be posers share with Birtwistle and others is an accep- 'Comparatively ridiculed from within the New Music scene as well tance that musical is an illusion. complex: Birtwistle, unity essentially Maxwell Davies and as without; Birtwistle is, on the now one of (Even as to exist in the of the contrary, supposed masterpieces modernist analysis', our most Yet whilst 19th exists with reference to highly respected composers. century, unity only in Music Analysis many cognoscenti felt duty bound to support Panic what Anthony Pople calls a 'common practice... vol.13 nos.2-3 on the night itself, as an act of solidarity, I have which provides the models of harmonic progression, (October 1994), rarely heard colleagues coming out in support in the linear motion and so forth',7and whilst unity is pos- p.140. months since. The view tends to be that Birtwistle sible in terms of thematic relationships alone, 5. See, for example, has gone off the boil since the great days of the whether this is actually a necessity for its success is Jonathan Dunsby & 1980s (to any who retain this view, despite what fol- highly questionable.) For there is no doubt that the Arnold Whittall: lows, I would commend the forthcoming premiere ear attempts to impose unity on almost any consec- Music analysis in of the complete Celan settings and string quartets, utive series of musical sounds and is therefore open theory and practice Pulse shadows - the songs in particular show how to being 'tricked' into finding connections between (London, 1988) and Arnold Whittall: Birtwistle's in a beautiful melan- ideas which are barely, if at all, related. For what we facility capturing 'The in cholic has far from and that now call the this the to bottom line', lyricism disappeared) postmodernist opens gate MT Panic was chaos actual rather than virtual. number of different within the same (September really any styles piece; 1994), pp. Gavin Thomas, for example, has suggested that the for the 'modernist', however, there is still the need 'intricately conceived polyphonies collapse, in the for some kind of overall integration of style, whose 6. Hans Keller: heat of the moment, into what sounds like an impro- authority can then be 'challenged' through such Essays on music, ed. vised free-for-all'3Admittedly, there is no doubt that 'trickery'. In many cases the 'integrated' system Christopher Wintle on first hearing little can be easily absorbed beyond which is being 'challenged' is in fact tonality itself. In (Cambridge, 1994), p.218. the extraordinary sensation of wild energy emitted Berg's Violin Concerto, for example, as Pople has from the and drum-kit soloists. But I will there is a continuous flux between sections saxophone shown, 7. Anthony Pople: argue that whilst there are indeed a few sections in which are audibly tonal and more 'floating', atonal Berg: Violin Concerto which true harmonic and rhythmic chaos is allowed sections. The former, combined with other 'tonally (Cambridge, 1991), to reign (principally those areas with two, indepen- aligned' elements encourages a 'tonalistic perception pp.88-89. dently playing musical textures), these are actually of the detailed musical fabric'. But, as Pople contin- carefully planned 'attacks' on a system of clearly ues, 'the continuity of the musical perception thus defined and audible musical signals. Most of the achieved is an illusion - just as the continual corre- music may be wild and unruly in character, and may lation of the musical gestures with the well-known THE MUSICAL TIMES / APRIL 1996 11 Ex.l: Alto saxophone, 6 bars after O x r X X mf jiP,r-3il~-- in __,', _^,3, L ----3, .... 2p-F~:f- ~f7F>i~v% i fry I~H~si Ff -f f ifY wff -I , 8. Op.cit. dramatic programmeof the work gives the false example of this kind of 'dramatic flow' in Birtwistle's impression of a continuous musical narrative.The output and is perhaps the only one of his pieces to 9. See, for example, music is not coherent, end with an affirmative - to reach some kind RhianSamuel: organically,self-referentially 'bang' but "makessense" because at of rather than in every point something goal dissolving away 'Gawain', in it is an active CambridgeOpera alwaysrecognisable through cogni- Journal, vol.4 no.2 tive framework'.8 T- t _HE PRINCIPAL process of achieving (1992), pp.163-78. Birtwistle'smusic, however,does not deal in dia- momentum is by simple repetition, logues with tonality,nor (apartfrom in the very gen- apotheosised most famously in The rite of eral way outlined at the beginning of this article) spring. Birtwistle plays with this inherent with 'dramaticprogrammes', so what exactly is the property of repetition, affecting an increasingly men- system being 'challenged'? In Earth dances, for acing tension. The solo line in Panic, for example, instanceit is, as Whittallhas argued the authorityof repeats no less than 14 times in succession a rhyth- the tonal centre D as a source of gravitythroughout mic pattern first heard at letter O (ex. 1 shows a few the movement.The music returnsto D at a number of these, marked 'x'; notice the incremental dynam- of importantpoints in the piece, but its tenacity is ics, which, when combined with the ever closer rep- challenged,partly by a C# at one point, but also sim- etitions create a strongly cumulative effect); but it is ply by its absence in interveningsections. Whittall in the orchestral accompaniment where repetition also talks of the dialogue between 'stillness' and really comes to the fore, with barely a texture in 'movement'.The combinationof these two elements which it is not significantly involved. This is, of is, he maintains (as with the Berg), enough to pro- course, an area in which Birtwistle has been operat- vide Pople's'active cognitive framework'for under- ing for some time - even the opening of the 1965 standing the piece. In Panic these ideas become piece, Tragoedia,despite the work's sectional, appar- increasingly important. The two separate frame- ently non-progressive form, uses short repetitive works suggestedby Whittall- one of movement,the fragments to drive the music on; it is only when used other of harmony- are vital listening tools without continually over a longer time span, as has happened which the listener might easily become lost in the more often in recent years, that the music really complex mesh of sounds. builds up an overall driving momentum. I would like first to concentratefor a moment on The forward momentum in Panic can, however, the propertiesof driving forwardmotion which so be undermined from time to time, through what clearlyaid the impressionof the Panic'sover-the-top Whittall calls the dialogue between 'stillness' and frenzy (although the feeling of forwardmotion is of 'movement'. The music moves between its clearly course aided by the harmony,as we shall see). This defined sections by a variety of means: sometimes it kind of momentumhas become increasinglyimpor- stops temporarily on a simple orchestral chord or tant in Birtwistle'smusic in recent times:it was pre- tremolo, as at letter B; some sections are linked by a sent to an extent in the Sinfonietta pieces of the flurry of saxophone writing, as at I; others still flow 1980s (the new interest in linearity in the recent straight into one another, as at P, or simply collapse, operas,as noticed by some commentators,is part of as at D1.