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City Research Online: http://openaccess.city.ac.uk/ [email protected] Positive or negative1 In a two-partarticle, the first in a series surveying developmentsin contemporaryGermanic music, IAN PACE introduces the music of Helmut Lachenmann N THE1994 MeltdownFestival at the South but no article has given a comprehensive survey of 1. Elke Hockings: 'HelmutLachen- Bank, a performance by Ensemble Modern of the music. This article (concluded next month) is mann's of Helmut Lachenmann's "... Zwei intended to fill that concept Gefihle..." gap.4 rejection',in Tempo, Musik mit Leonardo (1992) provoked furious no.193 (July 1995). reactions from some members of the audience (like M ODERNGERMAN music from genera- one of a of Saffron Wal- tions than that of Stock- 2. David Smeyers: might expect quaint group younger 'The hausen and Henze open-minded den concert-goers exposed to La valse), incensed at is, relatively speak- clarinettist(Helmut this incursion of such a 'modernist' work into the ing, an unfamiliar area in Britain today, Lachenmann's festival. The audacity of Ensemble Modern in pro- despite many of the composers' having a major rep- clarinet)',in The Clarinet 16 gramming this work alongside the uncontroversial utation all around Europe and elsewhere as well as (1989). sample of 'good composition' provided by Thomas in their native country. The modernistic develop- 3. These are 'The Adds's Chambersymphony came in for particular crit- ments of the 1950s had a special potency for young Beautifulin music icism. Clearly Lachenmann, even after well over Germans, distrustful of the conventions of the past, today',in Tempo, no.135 (December of work, retains the potential to provoke which could be seen to have been tainted by the cul- thirty years and 'On and unsettle the to bear ture from which a culture which 1980), fragile assumptions brought they originated, structuralism', in in of on contemporary music. culminated genocide. The critical tradition Contemporary Music This was not by any means the first airing of German aesthetic thought, encompassing such fig- Review, vol. 12 Lachenmann's work in Britain: the Almeida and ures as Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Walter part 1(1995), Huddersfield festivals had made features Herbert Marcuse and more the latter a highly previously Benjamin, recently Jur- intricate and diffi- of his which had received less attention. Habermas has continued to inform much of the work, gen cult, but penetrating However, since the Meltdown concert, performances intellectual and cultural life of that country. An essay. Lachenmann's of the trio Allegro sostenuto (1986-88) have gener- almost mystical faith in Hegelian dialectics has pro- collected writings ated considerable interest, and a concert by the vided a hope for progress even after the devastation are published in Ensemble in the the of the war who was born in German as Helmut Composers' Sounding Century years. Lachenmann, Lachenmann --Musik 1998 season will include Mouvement (-vor der 1935, is a child of this era, and his ideas and work als existentielle Erstarrung) (1983-84.) are heavily influenced by this tradition. Erfahrung: Schriften It is all too easy to dismiss the work of Lachen- Lachenmann was then at first, like many of his 1996-1995, ed. Josef Hausler mann (or that of Dieter Schnebel, Mathias Spah- contemporaries, drawn towards the music of the (Wies- Nicolaus A. Huber and as musica 1950s serialists. He studied with Stockhausen baden, 1996). Any linger, others) neg- briefly translators out there in manner that the term was in and then with who was to ativa, the deprecatory Cologne, Luigi Nono, considering the used by Hans Werner Henze in his attack on these have a decisive impact upon his work. Nono's per- preparation of an composers. What is at play is the fact that Lachen- ception of an equation between musical and social English version mann's music forces the listener to confront and revolution, in distinction to other of this substantial socialistically- volume would be their from and inclined such as Hans Eisler, and aware- question ingrained expectations composers performing a great responses to music, in an attempt to extend and fur- ness of the social responsibility of the artist, were to service. I urge them ther illuminate one's powers of perception. This is be a profound influence on the young Lachenmann, to do so! far from mere nihilism, or a view of music as an but where Nono's work expanded from a post- simulacrum of a Webernian serial to such 4. This article is (inevitably redundant) fragmented language encompass in based on and alienated matter as the letters of condemned part society. polemical subject a lecture, 'Helmut To date, there has only been one major article resistance fighters, the recorded sounds of street Lachenmann and published in English on Lachenmann, by Elke Hoc- demonstrations or leftist texts such as those of Che other currents in German kings,1 and an article by David Smeyers looking at Guevara, Lachenmann wished instead to engage in a music', Lachenmann's clarinet Various shorter more fundamental examination of the con- which I gave on writing.2 political 7 1997 as have in CD and two of notations of abstract of February pieces appeared booklets, seemingly music, notes, part of the Redlands Lachenmann's own essays have been translated into sounds and their combinations. Lecture series at English.3 Hockings's article is a critical look at the Serialism on one hand, and the chance proce- Reading University. development of Lachenmann's aesthetic position, dures of John Cage on the other, had taken conven- THE MUSICAL TIMES /JANUARY 1998 9 5. 'On structural- tional musical language apart, producing for Stock- sive use of unusual instrumental techniques, partic- ism', Further p.97. hausen an 'imaginary music of the stars'; for Cage ularly with stringed instruments. In live perfor- interestingdiscus- sounds had been freed from the sion of Lachenmann glue that had previ- mance, the unusuality and theatricality of these and serialism ously held them together. Lachenmann came to see techniques would draw attention to the concrete are included in serialism as a fundamentally historical phenomenon, nature of sound production (almost the polar oppo- Hockings,and also rather than a new universal lingua franca. site of the pure sound(s) of Cage and Feldman), just in ThomasKabisch: as Pierre Schaffer's original musique concrete used 'Dialectialcompos- In fact, a study of works fromthe 'classical'period of actual recorded - dialectical sounds, that could be readily associ- ing serialism,such as the CantoSospeso or Incontriby listening',which ated with the material world. Nono, Structuresor Marteau Boulez, is printedin the Luigi by Grup- booklet for Roland pen or Kontrapunkteby Stockhausen,reveals that the MANY OF LACHENMANN'Sworks Keller'sCD of the compelling qualityof this music is not just derived from the 1950s to the earlier 1960s, piano music (col from the virtuous consistencywith which the self- such as Souvenir for chamber legno, AU 31813). imposed rules are adheredto - and work - but also (1959) at least as much from the wisdom with which the orchestra of woodwind, xylophone. 6. Froman inter- even with the aid of such a of rules - and lower use an serial lan- view between music, system piano strings, essentially Lachenmannand and in dialecticalcontact with it - constitutesa reac- guage and a relatively large degree of continuity, to Heinz-Klaus tion to existing social structures and the existing create a type of Nonoesque icy lyricism. The piano Metzger:'Fragen communicative'rules of the bourgeois aesthetic works Echo andante (1962) and Wiegenmusik (1963) und Antworten apparatusthey have created,and offers them resis- are as much concerned with after-effects and reso- (1988)', in Musik- tance - not rhetoricalbut actual- their just putting nances of sounds, those elements marginalised in Konzepte61/62. normalfunctioning out of action, indeed sometimes conventional writing, as with sounding notes them- HelmutLachenmann, even destroyingit. It was this resistanceto the estab- edd.: selves, a consideration that Lachenmann would Metzger, lished which constitutedthe strengthof these revo- RainerRiehn, return to in various works. The latter lutionaryaesthetic outbursts and accountedfor the subsequent p.123. also shows an beautyof these works at a time when the traditional piece early use of tonal fragments their in unfamiliar 7. ibid,p.123. concept of 'beauty'was regardedas highly suspect 'made strange' by being placed by most of these