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Musical Modernism at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century

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Musical Modernism at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century Sonic flux 195 Lachenmann In Lachenmann's works, sounds arrive changed; issued from an instrument whose tones we know so well, they come strange and unknown. Bow hitting string creates a noise alien to the sonic friction that we have experienced 196 Musical Modernism at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century time and time again. The composer's sounds are born in a moment of defamiliarization. These moments have captivated Lachenmann, as has the general idea of48 the technique described by Shklovsky. This is a composer for whom the only reason "to make music" is "to hear, in a new way, what you knew before." Not surprisingly, the idea of defamiliarization underlies many of his central49 aesthetic concepts. It especially shapes his views of sound, how it behaves, and what it can do.50 Of particular interest is the composer's hallmark technique of musique concrete instrumentale. The name refers to Schaeffer's school of electroacous- tic composition. Lachenmann intensively used the technique in works from temA ( 1968) to Accanto ( 1976) and has modified it in subsequent pieces, in which it serves as one part of other "hierarchies of sound." He later regret- ted the choice of name, saying that it was "perhaps an error."51 52 It was an illuminating error, though, as the comparison with Schaeffer throws light on aspects of Lachenmann's handling of sound. Lachenmann's adjectival tag concrete instrumentale clarifies an obvious difference in terms of media. Schaeffer deals in recorded real-life sounds, Lachenmann in acoustic sounds created by conventional instruments. Beyond the chosen medium, the more compelling contrast is how Lachenmann's technique reverses the trajectory of Schaeffer's. The latter tracks a course from "the purely 'sonorous' to the purely 'musical."' 53 Schaeffer begins with real-life sounds (train noises, shouting) and transforms them to such a degree that they lose any resem- blance to the original sound and its meanings and associations. A new "sonic object" emerges from the process, one that in its abstract guise could attain the status of music. His alterations create an "acousmatic" experience, in which we, like Pythagoras's students who listened to their master sight unseen behind a screen, are unable to perceive the source of the sound that we hear. 54 Or so it goes in theory. As listeners of Schaeffer's works know full well, many of the sounds are easily identifiable, and not all are rigorously transformed. Nonetheless, there is an effort to get beyond the banality of real-world sounds and to make them into something more independently rich. 48 David Ryan, "Composer in Interview: Helmut Lachenmann," Tempo 210 (October 1999), 21. 49 Paul Steenhuisen, "Interview with Helmut Lachenmann - Toronto, 2003," Contemporary Music Review 23, nos. 3/4 (2004), 10. so Ross Feller, "Resistant Strains of Postmodernism: The Music of Helmut Lachenmann and Brian Ferneyhough," in Postmodern Music/Postmodern Thought, ed. Judy Lochhead and Joseph Auner (New York and London: Routledge, 2002), 254. 51 Lachenmann, "Paradies aufZeit: Gespriich mil Peter Szendy," in Musikalsexistentielle Erfahrung, ed. Josef Hausler (Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & Hartel, 1996), 211-12. The Lachenmann essay collection will hereafter be referred to as MEE. Lachenmann, "Paradies auf Zeit," 211-12. 5253 Pierre Schaeffer, "Acousmatics," 81. 54 Schaeffer, "Acousmatics," 77. Sonic flux 197 Lachenmann begins with musical sounds, or musical means of creat- ing sounds, and "demusicalizes" them. Whereas Schaeffer tried to pull us from the noises of the street to music, Lachenmann leads us from music to unfamiliar sounds. The two also differ in terms of the object of trans- formation. Schaeffer operates on a finished sound, a sonic event that has been completed and preserved on tape. Lachenmann, on the other hand, alters the means of producing a sound. He isolates aspects of production that are typically blocked out in appreciating the conventional tone of an instrument. A tremendous amount of physical "energy" is needed to create that tone, particularly the labor involved in technique and the handling of an instrument. 55 Lachenmann concentrates on two kinds of energy: that required to create a sound and that sparked by a sound emerging and pro- jecting outwards. He redirects and intensifies both currents. The musicians approach their instruments in unusual and often strenuous ways, which place the performance in an unsettled field of exertion. The sound events come alive with force and unpredictability. Produced by unfamiliar means, they assume unfamiliar shapes and veer off in unfamiliar directions. Musique concrete instrumentale alters a sound from the inside out. It begins by exposing the "anatomy" of a sound: in other words, the basic core, like that of the scrape of a bow against a string or the flow of breath. 56 Changes to the interior essence can form a new expressive "outer skin," as the changed sound takes on expressive roles far different from those typically associated with its more conventional origins. 57 The legato lyricism sustained by smooth bowing on the cello, for instance, can give way to bursts of toneless, buzzing noises created by digging the bow into the strings. It is worth pausing over Lachenmann's anatomy lesson, for it reveals how closely his conception of sound taps into the dynamics of transformation and expression explored here. The transformations begin at the most elemental level, the interior of a sound, and expand from there. One alteration begets another until we hear chains of metamorphoses, a sweep that has significant expressive force. Not only does Lachenmann alter the surface of a sound but he also works upon the cultural meanings surrounding it. He has developed two concepts to group the disparate ideas in those outer rings. "Aura" captures 55 Lachenmann, "Horen ist wehrlos - ohne Horen: Ober Moglichkeiten und Schwierigkeiten," in MEE, 124-25. On the concept of energy in Lachenmann's soundworld, see Martin Kaltenecker, Avec Helmut Lachenmann (Paris: Van Dieren, 2001), 56-61. 56 Steenhuisen, "Interview," 10. Lachenmann, "Pression fur einen Cellisten (1969/70)," in MEE, 381-82. 57 Rainer Nonnenmann, "Music with Images-The Development of Helmut Lachenmann's Sound Composition Between Concretion and Transcendence," Contemporary Music Review 24, no. 1 (2005), 7. 198 Musical Modernism at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century 58 59 the associations and memories that have accrued to a sound over time. The "aesthetic apparatus" enforces "the ruling aesthetic needs and norms." Key to this concept is what he calls the "instrumentarium," which consists of traditional instruments, the techniques involved in the creation of the "beautiful60 philharmonic sound," the genres and ensembles designed to highlight that sound, and the institutions and markets devoted to promoting it. Both the "aura" and "aesthetic apparatus" submit to the same process of defamiliarization 6at1 work on the individual sound. In composing his Second String Quartet, Lachenmann realized that the "medium" had to be "rendered alien." Yet not completely alien, as the Quartet and other pieces keep us aware ofthe medium in its conventional forms: only then can we appreciate how significantly it has been changed. Lachenmann values the "ambivalence" between the old and new, the flashes of the quartet 62 musique concrete, ensemble we know amid the frenzy of strange performance motions and sounds. How different from Schaeffer's conception63 of which sought to have the listener forget "every reference to instrumental causes or preexisting musical significations." Both composers hold to Shklovsky's notion that the practices of defamil- iarization, the strange depictions64 and transformations, are a means to a more significant end. By having the listener get beyond the familiar, they heighten65 the process ofperception. Schaeffer stretches out the acousmatic curtain to Musique concrete 66 create not so much new "phenomena" as "new conditions ofobservation." enlivens the "perspective consciousness." Along similar lines, Lachenmann has stated that "the problem is not to search for new sounds, but for a new way of listening, of perception."67 For68 him, percep- tion begins with listening and then transcends it: "the concept ofperception is more adventurous and existential than that of listening." The existen- tial, an important idea in Lachenmann's thought, denotes an elevated and broad realm of experience. Listeners confront the possibilities of the new created by the unfamiliar sounds; at the same time they have a more keen69 awareness of the history and associations of the familiar sounds that have been displaced. Perception brings not only knowledge but also liberation. Once so attuned, listeners can free themselves from the binds of habit. In particular, the restrictions of the aesthetic apparatus - what sounds can be 58 Lachenmann, "On Structuralism," Contemporary Music Review 12 ( 1995), 98. 59 Lachenmann, "The 'Beautiful' in Music Today," Tempo 135 (December 1980), 20-24. 60 Lachenmann, "The 'Beautiful' in Music Today," 22; Steenhuisen, "Interview," 9. 61 Lachenmann, "On My Second String Quartet," Contemporary Music Review 23 nos. 3/4 (2004), 59. 62 Steenhuisen, "Interview," 10; Lachenmann, "On Structuralism,'" 100. 63 Schaeffer, "Acousmatics," 81. 64 Viktor Shklovsky, "Art as Technique," 3-18. 65 Schaeffer, "Acousmatics," 81. 66 Schaeffer, "Acousmatics," 79. 67 Steenhuisen, "Interview," 9. 68 Lachenmann, "On Structuralism," 102. 69 Lachenmann, "On Structuralism," 100. Sonic flux 199 made, how they can be presented, where they can be heard - are revealed to be mediated decisions, Aware of this, the listener culturallyrnusique concrete instrurnentale.not given rules. is free to embrace alternatives to those rigid rules, such as the sounds created by Das Madchen rnit den Schwefelholzern The Little examined Lachenmann's of sound and perception, MatchHaving Gir[). 70 conceptions we can turn to the opera ( 71 In a letter from 1975, years before he began even sketch- ing the piece, Lachenmann foresaw it as the "pinnacle" of his oeuvre. Premiered in 1997, the opera in many ways did reach a peak.
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