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City Research Online City, University of London Institutional Repository Citation: Pace, I. (2014). Book Review: Music in Germany Since 1968 by Alastair Williams. Tempo (London, 1939): a quarterly review of modern music, 68(268), pp. 116-121. doi: 10.1017/S0040298213001940 This is the accepted version of the paper. This version of the publication may differ from the final published version. Permanent repository link: https://openaccess.city.ac.uk/id/eprint/4732/ Link to published version: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0040298213001940 Copyright: City Research Online aims to make research outputs of City, University of London available to a wider audience. Copyright and Moral Rights remain with the author(s) and/or copyright holders. URLs from City Research Online may be freely distributed and linked to. Reuse: Copies of full items can be used for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-profit purposes without prior permission or charge. Provided that the authors, title and full bibliographic details are credited, a hyperlink and/or URL is given for the original metadata page and the content is not changed in any way. City Research Online: http://openaccess.city.ac.uk/ [email protected] Tempo 68 (268) 1–5 © 2014 Cambridge University Press 1 1 2 3 4 books 5 6 7 Music in Germany Since 1968 by Alastair Williams. Constructing Musicology;1 Williams does not 8 Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. match the dialectical oppositions within the 9 £60.00. field of enquiry with much of a dialectical sens- 10 ibility of his own. The result is a ‘history’ 11 Musicology has faced many challenges in recent which is in large measure a study of two ‘great 12 decades, including critiques of canons and the men’, Lachenmann and Wolfgang Rihm, with 13 exclusive focus upon ‘great composers’ and other composers and issues viewed relative to 14 autonomous ‘works’, the centrality of Western their work and world-view. 15 art music and the privileging of authorial intent, Williams makes clear at the outset that he 16 as well as the increased interest on issues of class, does not intend to cover ‘the full range of art, 17 gender, sexuality as they relate to music and its popular and traditional musics’ existing in 18 contexts, an increased focus upon musical per- Germany during the period in question, prefer- 19 formance and reception, and the effects of music- ring instead to concentrate exclusively on the 20 al institutions upon music-making. Yet I would area of ‘new music’ (p. 2), but this term is 21 find it difficult to identify many ways by which never adequately defined.2 Williams alludes 22 such concerns have affected the worlds of com- vaguely to some definitions by Nicolaus 23 position and performance of contemporary A. Huber and Carl Dahlhaus (p. 2), but finds nei- 24 scores, in which fields there continues a dis- ther really adequate for the range of music he 25 course mostly sealed off to wider concerns as wishes to cover, and does not provide any alter- 26 might be raised by non-practitioners. The divide native workable criteria.3 Issues of institutions 27 can be stark; the possibilities of constructive dia- supporting and propagating this ‘new music’, 28 logue between those convinced that modernism the relationship of new music to other aspects 29 represents a last-ditch manifestation of hegemon- of concert life, and reception of new music and 30 ic ideologies of autonomy, which serve to per- the extent of its impact upon a wider German 31 petuate white male bourgeois privilege, and public, are either omitted entirely or dealt with 32 those who revere the music, writings and world- in a perfunctory manner. And there are only 33 view of now elder figures such as Brian smatterings of rather slight critical engagement 34 Ferneyhough or Helmut Lachenmann, are prac- with the aesthetic and political positions of com- 35 tically zero. posers or other figures. Performance and 36 The history of recent German music is by no 37 means simply one of a steady canonisation of 38 masterworks within a framework of general 39 1 Alastair Williams, Constructing Musicology (Aldershot: Ashgate, assumptions of musical autonomy and the vir- 2001). 40 tues of increasingly sophisticated compositional 2 The term Neue Musik gained most widespread currency in the 41 technique, whatever Richard Taruskin or others 1919 essay of that name by Paul Bekker, reprinted in Bekker, 42 Neue Musik: Dritter Band der Gesammelten Schriften (Stuttgart might like to claim. Rather, at least from the late and Berlin: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1923), pp. 85–118, a 43 1950s to the late 1970s, this field was charac- polemic against the staid nature of German music at the 44 terised by ferocious opposition between musical time which nonetheless held up the work of Debussy, 45 Schreker and Schoenberg as possible catalysts for change. factions, replete with charged polemics, wither- Bekker’s article provoked a wave of writings in the next 46 ing critiques and counter-critiques of all aspects years from Hermann Scherchen, Walther Krug, Bartók, Paul 47 of avant-garde ideology and work, and a plurality Stefan, Schoenberg, and others. For a thorough overview of 48 the history of the concept, see Christoph von Blumröder, ’ 49 of approaches and attitudes towards music s rela- Der Begriff »neue Musik« im 20. Jahrhundert (Munich and tionship to wider society and politics, to an Salzburg: Musikverlag Emil Katzbichler, 1981). 50 3 extent not witnessed since the 1920s. Alastair In particular, he justifies the omission of all East German com- 51 posers other than Reiner Bredemeyer and Friedrich Williams’s new history of German music 52 Goldmann on the grounds that new music did not flourish since 1968 displays a surprisingly conservative in this country. But it is not clear why then Paul Dessau, 53 approach and a relative lack of methodological Georg Katzer, Steffen Schleiermacher and Jakob Ullmann, all 54 reflection in the face of new musicological chal- of whose work makes of interesting comparison with that of 55 – composers in West Germany, should be excluded, yet lenges surprising given that many of these chal- Detlev Müller-Siemens or Manfred Trojahn, identified by 56 lenges are outlined in the same author’s Williams himself as associated with neo-romanticism, should. 57 2 tempo performers occupy a deeply subsidiary role rela- gives a concise and accurate account of the 58 tive to composers (and listeners hardly feature at shootings of Benno Ohnesborg and Rudi 59 all); in a few brief passages there are short men- Dutschke. 60 tions of the Arditti Quartet, Ensemble Modern, To connect this all to music, Williams simply 61 Ensemble Recherche and Musikfabrik, with a mentions the contemporary shift in France from 62 few banal remarks such as ‘the ensemble values structuralism to post-structuralism, linking this 63 individual preparation highly, so that all the to the events of May 1968 despite himself point- 64 players can be fully aware of one another in ing out that Derrida’s L’écriture et la différence was 65 rehearsal instead of remaining immersed in the published the previous year. He links this to the 66 score’ (p. 23). There is no conception of any cre- end of serialism (as much of an ‘other’ for 67 8 ative or critical role for performance other than Williams as for many other musicologists) , not- 68 realising a score and perhaps adding some type ing that a few composers active after 1968 made 69 4 of ‘musicality’. Furthermore, important per- some reference to post-structuralist figures and 70 formers such as the two major Stuttgart vocal that Rihm alludes to Artaud, who had been dis- 71 groups, the Schola Cantorum and Neue cussed by both Derrida and Deleuze and 72 Vokalsolisten, are not mentioned at all, whilst Guattari. This historical substantiation is most 73 the vitally important role of radio orchestras is tenuous, relying on rough historical coincidence, 74 skipped over in just a sentence (p. 18), portrayed too-easy assumptions of parallel processes in 75 at best as a facilitator for composers, at worst as Germany and France, whilst also betraying a 76 5 an obstacle. simple lack of knowledge of the broader historic- 77 Williams’s arguments for the importance of a al and musical context. It is simplistic at the least 78 starting date of 1968 (which holds a romantic to maintain that German music between 1945 79 appeal for many writers on music and cultural and 1968 was monolithically dominated by 80 6 9 historians) reveal some of the wider limitations serialism, unless one discounts the Sprache als 81 of his perspectives on German history and new Musik movement from the late 1950s onwards, 82 music prior to this date. He portrays this year the influence of John Cage, the substantial 83 in terms of youth culture, new permissive atti- body of work in the realms of music theatre, 84 tudes towards sexuality and authority, and the text scores of Dieter Schnebel from 1959 85 dissatisfaction with the world bequeathed by onwards, the beginnings of Fluxus, or the revolts 86 the Wirtschaftswunder (economic miracle), whilst against existing modern music in Cologne and 87 10 arguing that the specifically German dimension Munich around 1960. Pierre Boulez and John 88 to this year’s events was ‘the shadow of the Cage had already demonstrated a significant 89 National Socialist past and the presence of interest in Artaud’s work from the late 1940s– 90 7 11 the other Germany’ (p. 5); in this context, he early 1950s onwards. Furthermore, Williams 91 92 93 4 We are told that the Arditti Quartet ‘add much to the music past) amongst a generation too young to have been personally 94 that is not present in the notation’ (p.