The Sounds of the Sounds Themselves: Analyzing the Early
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The Sounds of the Sounds Themselves: EXAMPLE 1: LAST PIECES FOR PIANO, Analyzing the Early Music of Morton BEGINNING OF THE FIRST MOVEMENT Feldman I was overdoing it. Trying to make look silly by Catherine Costello Hirata anyone who thought we could actually hear "the sounds themselves." I was nervous. For can you This essay was originally published in Perspectives of imagine, if I were called upon to speak to an New Music , Vol 34 No 1 (Winter 1996). experience in which what happened before was I wonder what they would say if they were really erased from memory? Supposing, for here.(1) If Feldman were here. If his fans were example, I were called upon to speak to the sound here. (I expect some of you are here.) What would of the second F2 in the first movement of Last they be talking about? What would they want to Pieces. What would I say? What could I say? I talk about, with a music analyst? I imagined. They suppose I might find a word or two. That F2 does were going on about how Feldman's music have a particular timbre, after all. But still. Can sounds. About how beautiful it sounds. About the you imagine just not being able to relate that F, not sounds sounding beautiful - sonically beautiful.(2) to the chord before it, nor to any of the chords I was a bit bewildered. And they were still going after it, because those relations were just not part on. About how Feldman's music is about sound, of your experience? Because you'd be hearing that rather than construction (according to F just as you hear it on its own? I'd be stuck - Feldman).(3) About Feldman's desire for sounds with just whatever it is that we have on the sound "more direct, more immediate, more physical than of F2 on the piano, which as far as I know is not anything that existed heretofore."(4) About "the much. sounds themselves." Ah, yes. "The sounds Yes, I wanted to introduce the fact that "what themselves." It was a fantastic idea. That if the happened before" cannot possibly be erased from composer were careful, careful about how he or memory into the conversation fast. So that when she put the sounds into the composition, we I was called upon to speak to the sound of that F, might hear those sounds just as we would hear I could speak, as analysts always do, to how that F them if they were not in the composition.(5) We sounds in context. (10) might hear, in other words, "the sounds themselves. " If the composer were careful, as I began by looking to the first chord. Looking Feldman once put it, to "free" those sounds from first to the first chord's C#3, since, of all of the "compositional rhetoric."(6) Yes, it did take care - pitches in the first chord, it's closest to the F. I to create such a strange effect. Or, as Feldman said something about the interval between the described it, such a "mysterious" effect "whereby C#3 and the F2, about the different ways of each sound as if almost erases in one's memory naming it: perhaps as an 8, perhaps as a 4, or what happened before," whereby the listener is perhaps in some other way. After looking to the "very fresh into the moment and does not relate C#3, I looked to the other pitches of the first it."(7) chord, and to the distances between them and the F2. And I also gave some attention to the I entered into the conversation. "Yes, it was a intervals between the notes of the first chord fantastic idea. But of course we never really hear itself. Comparing all of these intervals, I then 'the sounds themselves,'" I pointed out. "We pointed out that two of them are related in a never really hear a sound in a composition just as rather special way: I explained that the interval of we hear it out of the composition. 'What a 5, between the G4 and C5 of the first chord, happened before' is never really erased from and the interval of a 31 between that C5 and the memory." Can you imagine if it were? Can you F2, belong to the same interval class (both are imagine, for example, hearing the succession of interval class 5s; I've indicated the similarity in chords that makes up the first movement of Example 2). And I tried to make something of Feldman's Last Pieces for piano in this way this similarity: I interpreted it as giving a certain (opening, given as Example 1)?(8) Each chord's "edge" or "force" to the interval between the first sounding just as it would, had we never heard the chord's C and the F, in the sense that this interval chord before it, nor the chord before that, and so somehow continues an interval already present in on. Each chord's sounding, in other words, just as the first chord, from the G to the C. And having it sounds when heard on its own. Sounding as so interpreted this interval between the C and the thin - or if I may borrow from J. K. Randall, as F as having such a "force," I also tried to make "skinnythin"-as it sounds when heard on its something of the fact that this is not the smallest own.(9) No chord "thickened" by the chord interval between the first chord and the F (the before it, nor the chord before that, and so on. As smallest interval, obviously, is from the C# to the if the chord before it, and the chord before that, F). I suggested a kind of "conflict" or "tension" simply never were. between the two intervals. I even took the leap of positing a voice-leading tension, between the renditions of Intermission 6 (Given as Examples 3a sense that the C# moves to the F and the sense and 3b), demonstrating how, if the G falls here, it that the C moves to the F. sounds one way, and if it falls here, it sounds another way. But as I was demonstrating, I found EXAMPLE 2: INTERVAL CLASS 5S IN myself slipping into thought. And I found myself OPENING TWO SOUNDS playing what I had just played again - saying what OF THE FIRST MOVEMENT OF LAST I had just said again. Here the G sounds one way, PIECES here the G sounds another way. The Gs sound And I was just about to turn to the chord which different. And as I was repeating myself, I found follows the F - where I would find another myself wanting to play and listen to the sound of intervallic similarity, which when considered yet another G: G, as it sounds, heard on its own. alongside the one just mentioned, might really EXAMPLE 3: BEGINNINGS OF TWO make the beginnings of a little story about this F - RENDITIONS OF INTERMISSION 6 FOR when someone interrupted. When someone said, PIANO "Yes, but you're relating the F." And I responded "But of course. Didn't I already establish that the I was beginning to get a strange feeling. A feeling F doesn't sound just as it does heard on its own? of . I wasn't sure any more. Was I perhaps That the first chord isn't really erased from hearing how the Gs, how just the Gs sound in memory? I'm speaking to how the F sounds in context? ("Speak to me about how the F sounds context." And she replied, "I wasn't suggesting in context," she said. "About what you hear, not that the F does sound just as it does heard on its between the first chord and the F, but in just the own. Of course it sounds as it sounds in context. F.") But I resisted this strange feeling. And But was that , all that talk of the intervals between feigning confidence, I said, simply, "See. The Gs the F and the first chord, supposed to be a sound different." And she whispered. "Yes, description of how the F sounds in context?" And different. But not only different. Special." I before I could again mutter, "but of course," she agreed. "But of course special. After all there's elaborated a little. She said, " That wasn't about music in these Gs (at least some music). We how the F sounds in context, that was about the wouldn't expect these Gs to sound like ordinary sound of the F and the context." And she insisted: Gs - like just what you get by depressing the G "Speak to me about how the F - how just the F - key on the piano." And smiling, she said: "Yes, of sounds in context." course there's music in these Gs. That's what I was trying to get you to speak to - about what all "She wants me to speak to how the F sounds in those relations between the first chord and that F context, but she doesn't want me to speak about do for the sound of the F, about what you hear in the context?" I became confused, flustered. And the F - not about what they do for the sound of so did a few others. But not her. She was the first chord and the F." And elaborating, she tenacious. "Why do you so insist on talking about said, "That's how the relations function when what you hear between the first chord and the F?" they're not doing the usual compositional rhetoric she asked.