Against Expression?: Avant-Garde Aesthetics in Satie's" Parade"
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Against Expression?: Avant-garde Aesthetics in Satie’s Parade A thesis submitted to the Division of Graduate Studies and Research of the University of Cincinnati In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF MUSIC In the division of Composition, Musicology, and Theory of the College-Conservatory of Music 2020 By Carissa Pitkin Cox 1705 Manchester Street Richland, WA 99352 [email protected] B.A. Whitman College, 2005 M.M. The Boston Conservatory, 2007 Committee Chair: Dr. Jonathan Kregor, Ph.D. Abstract The 1918 ballet, Parade, and its music by Erik Satie is a fascinating, and historically significant example of the avant-garde, yet it has not received full attention in the field of musicology. This thesis will provide a study of Parade and the avant-garde, and specifically discuss the ways in which the avant-garde creates a dialectic between the expressiveness of the artwork and the listener’s emotional response. Because it explores the traditional boundaries of art, the avant-garde often resides outside the normal vein of aesthetic theoretical inquiry. However, expression theories can be effectively used to elucidate the aesthetics at play in Parade as well as the implications for expressability present in this avant-garde work. The expression theory of Jenefer Robinson allows for the distinction between expression and evocation (emotions evoked in the listener), and between the composer’s aesthetical goal and the listener’s reaction to an artwork. This has an ideal application in avant-garde works, because it is here that these two categories manifest themselves as so grossly disparate. Robinson’s theory affirms that while the avant-garde elements of Parade may distort, it does not necessarily follow that this distortion lacks significance. Through these methods, expression theory will provide a fresh aesthetical significance to Parade, and a more consummate understanding of the work. ii iii Acknowledgements I would like to thank my advisor, Dr. Jonathan Kregor, for his help with the many different stages of this project. I would also like to thank my reader, Dr. Cahn for his thoughtful and helpful feedback. In addition, I would like to thank my student, Yana Miakshyla, who assisted with transcription and translation of primary sources. I would like to thank my friends (Liv, Lizzie, and Jackie) for encouraging me to continue with this labor of love. I would like to thank all my family for their love and support. Finally, I would like to thank my husband, Kyle, who helped me to believe in this project and in the power of possibilities (again). iv Table of Contents Abstract ii Acknowledgements iv Table of Contents v Introduction 1 Chapter One – Satie before Parade 12 Chapter Two – Satie, Modernism, and the artists of Montparnasse 25 Chapter Three – Cocteau, Modernism, and the collaboration of Parade 42 Chapter Four – The music of Parade as something entirely new 73 Chapter Five – Application of Expression Theory to Parade 89 Bibliography 102 v Introduction An enigmatic and problematic character, Erik Satie is commonly considered a progenitor of musical avant-gardism. His music is a prime example of the various modernist trends in society and art that emerged during the early twentieth century. Yet, his music is not often acknowledged as historically significant in any meaningful way. This study will focus on one of his later works, the 1917 ballet, Parade, which is a fascinating example of the avant-garde, but has yet to receive full attention in the field of musicology. Parade has been widely referred to in the music history narrative—it’s uniqueness makes it stand out as a curiosity—being notable as the first example of cubist theater, the first instance of the use of the term “surrealism”, and for a collaboration of historically significant artistic figures (Picasso, Cocteau, Satie, Massine and the Ballet Russes). Yet, it is a quirky work that stands apart in the usual historical narrative, since it is both non-traditional, and since the work itself doesn’t lead anywhere historically significant. Daniel Albright has noted that Parade, as a work, survives today only in fragments: “Concert scores, sketches for backdrops, reconstructions of dimly remembered choreography…and fading gaudy costumes worn only by mannequins. Even where a great deal of information remains…the project is enclosed in a certain glamour of the unrecoverable.”1 Roger Shattuck has said that Parade is more a product “of its time” than a unique catalyst for any significant change in art or music. Parade was a “serious-humorous exploitation of popular elements of art, a turning to jazz and music-hall and to all the paraphernalia of modern life, not in a spirit of realism, but with a sense of exhilaration in the absurd.”2 Parade doesn’t yield anything 1 Daniel Albright, Untwisting the Serpent: Modernism in Music Literature, and Other Arts (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 185. 2 Roger Shattuck, The Banquet Years: The Arts in France 1885–1918 (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1955), 154. 1 significant in-so-far as being the progenitor of a substantial body of music that follows in its footsteps, and is not considered in the larger musical narrative as historically significant. Perhaps by nature of the fact that Modernism in the arts is already so fragmented, that finding a traditional music history narrative in any case would prove a difficult task. Furthermore, it doesn’t really yield anything productive as a musical entity itself. There is no movement in Parade, in both a musical and historical sense. In a very avant-garde fashion, Parade doesn’t have a project that leads anywhere in a meaningful way. Because it explores the traditional boundaries of art, avant-garde music is particularly wrought with challenging aesthetic questions of composer intentionality and hermeneutic interpretation. In particular, the avant-garde in music contains important implications on aesthetics, and specifically on the role of expression in these types of artwork. Expression is commonly referred to as the “conveying of feeling” in a work of art or music, and thus a piece of music can be said to have the characteristic of expressiveness if it is thought to convey feeling or human emotion. However, there are limits to defining expression in these terms, and certainly limits music to necessitate that in order to be meaningfully expressive, it must convey human emotion. Indeed, there are limits to requiring that a piece of music must have the goal of expression, or have a mode of expression to be a successful work. What defines expression then, may instead be seen as more multi-valanced than just determining whether it successfully conveys human feelings. This holds true in music of the avant-garde, since these composers were not always after an aesthetic goal that could be readily understood or felt by the audience. The implications of avant-garde aesthetics and their influence on the creative process of Parade have not been given direct scholarly attention. Indeed, few have approached Parade with a thorough consideration of its expressiveness. A multimedia artwork such as Parade 2 should be replete with expressiveness, since it is able to draw on a combination of art forms. However, in its music, movement, scenery, as well as the interaction between these different art forms actually repudiates any enhancement to expressiveness and in fact denies emotional accessibility to the audience—thus adding to a scenario that is already incongruent, fragmented, and filled with pastiche and broken references to popular culture that turn the everyday world upside-down and close the pathway for traditional expressiveness. As an avant-garde work, Parade is art that denies its status as art. In doing so, it rejects art’s traditional mandate to express human emotion. This study will discuss the ways in which the avant-garde in Parade creates a dialectic between the expressiveness of the artwork and the listener’s emotional response. Indeed, few aesthetic considerations have approached Parade’s expressiveness—or lack thereof—and they have not addressed the avant-garde qualities of this artwork using expression theory to explain its unique features of aesthetics and meaning. Within the realm of aesthetics, expression theories can be effectively used to elucidate the aesthetics at play in Parade as well as the implications for expressability present in this avant-garde work. For this thesis, I will be drawing primarily on Jenefer Robinson’s work on expression theory, and supplementing it with works by Peter Kivy and Jerrold Levinson. While expression theory is an established field in philosophy and aesthetics, the discourse often restricts itself to the theoretical, without any consideration of the actually musical repertoire. Applying expression theory to an artwork as a means of analyzing its aesthetics will provide one of the first applications of this kind. Aesthetic considerations of Eric Satie’s music thus far have been too quick to dismiss his works as inaccessible. In particular, few have approached Parade with a thorough consideration of its expressiveness, and they have failed to apply an appropriate expression theory to answers such questions. Using the 3 theories of Robinson, as well as Kivy, Levinson and others, this study will come to a better understanding of the implications of expressability in this avant-garde artwork. In particular, the expression theory of Robinson allows for the distinction between expression and evocation (emotions evoked in the listener), and between the composer’s aesthetical goal and the listener’s reaction to an artwork. This has an ideal application in avant-garde works, because it is here that these two categories manifest themselves as so grossly disparate. Robinson’s theory affirms that while the avant-garde elements of Parade may distort, it does not necessarily follow that this distortion lacks significance.