Contemporary Music Review 2015 - Political Implications of The Material of New Music

Contemporary Music Review
ISSN: 0749-4467 (Print) 1477-2256 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/gcmr20
political implications of the material of new music
mathias spahlinger
To cite this article: mathias spahlinger (2015) political implications of the material of new
music, Contemporary Music Review, 34:2-3, 127-166, DOI: 10.1080/07494467.2015.1094212
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07494467.2015.1094212
Published online: 28 Oct 2015.
Submit your article to this journal
Article views: 259
View related articles
View Crossmark data
Citing articles: 2 View citing articles
Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at

http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=gcmr20
Download by: [Perpustakaan Nasional Republik Indonesia (PNRI)] Date: 04 March 2016, At: 07:52
Contemporary Music Review, 2015
Vol. 34, Nos. 2–3, 127–166, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07494467.2015.1094212
political implications of the material of

new music
mathias spahlinger
Downloaded by [Perpustakaan Nasional Republik Indonesia (PNRI)] at 07:52 04 March 2016
in the period following the 1968 protests, the question arose of how a transparent music could
be conceived, especially one which it would be impossible to misunderstand, and which would
therefore be protected against political misuse. this was very often the object of discussion. in a
paper delivered at the ‘musik und politik’ symposium held in vienna in 1991, i developed four
political aspects of music: function, content, means of production, and the poetic.
to explain:
function: music composed for ritual and representation, etc, or music composed to
increase productivity, or enable an increase of consumption, either in the workplace,
the cowshed, or the shopping centre.
external content/subject: music with text, plot, or programme.
means of production and distribution: free art or dependent work.
the methods by which the music is made, its poetry and its style (spahlinger, 1991).
as a composer, i am most interested in the final point. i would like to explore this as posing the
main set of problems for this paper, as well as posing the question of which processes effect
meaning in a new music that can be differentiated from traditional music. i shall devote
the first third of this article to this issue. i will then be in a position to question whether
analogies exist with political thought. i will briefly examine the other three political aspects,
in particular the means of production.
Keywords: Spahlinger; critical composition; new music; politics; parametric music; musical
material
if one truly desired to break new ground, it would emerge

that not only must new contents be recorded, but the structure
of one’s thinking must change in order to understand the new.
(heisenberg, 1969, p. 114)
© 2015 Taylor & Francis

128 m. spahlinger
i do not want to define either what the political is or what politics are. these issues have
already been well-discussed as political questions, especially when imagining threats to
existence, or thinking habits, and possessions (which are actually the same thing). carl
schmidt—the somewhat deservedly notorious german expert in constitutional law—
outlines the same idea in his conceptual definition:
let us assume that in the realm of morality the final distinctions are between good
and evil, in aesthetics beautiful and ugly, in economics profitable and unprofitable.
[ … ]the specific political distinction to which political actions and motives can be
reduced is that between friend and enemy. (schmidt, 2007, p. 26)
taking this definition to be true and valid, my response is that a negative concept of the
political is needed, a concept of the a-political, in the sense that the material of new
music is a-tonal: i.e., reflected in itself. i would like to explore this thought and get
closer to it over the course of this article.
vier stücke (four pieces) for soprano, clarinet, piano, violin, and cello (1975)
one may choose to characterise my vier stücke (spahlinger, 1975b) as examples of para-
metrically determined, post-serial music. they were composed using two main par-
ameters: loudness and density, but without recourse to serial procedures. both of
these parameters are imagined as continuous (from the lowest values to the highest,
i.e. like pitch); both parameters are not divided up into a single scalar order from
which one could create a characteristic disorder by creating a row; instead, they
appear as properties which change gradually.
a crescendo or a diminuendo is assigned to each of these pieces for their duration as
indicated in figure 1. furthermore, a decrease of density or an accumulation of density,
occurs first in the same order and then in the opposite order. therefore there is no rep-
etition in the coupling of the parameters.
everything was done to obfuscate the fact that the same idea has been worked
through four times across the four pieces. each piece has a differently short duration:
34”, 70”, 18”, and 86”. one almost has the impression that the final piece is longer than
all three previous pieces put together (122”), which is not true. despite the fact that for
each piece the dynamics are uni-directional, they are perceived very differently from
each other because the extremes in each piece are very different. the beginning and
ending dynamics are different for each piece and sometimes the same for all instru-
ments and at other times mixed. therefore the middle dynamic for each piece is not
necessarily the midpoint between the loudest and quietest dynamic.
to go into more detail: the first piece begins with dynamics between f and p, after
which it moves towards a unison pppp, moving further towards niente. the middle
value here lies between p and pp. the second begins at niente and makes a crescendo
only as far as pp. the third, the shortest, begins with fff, and at the end many different
dynamics appear which all lie between this fff and p. the middle value is ff. the begin-
ning of the final piece descends, so to speak, into a pool of whispers at pppp which is
Contemporary Music Review 129
figure 1. vier stücke: formal sketch showing the plan of diminuendo/crescendo for each
movement and indications of dynamics, durations (4 durations, 3 pauses: long pause, as
long as possible, attacca), and densities.
shot through with occasional pp ‘spikes’. both of these dynamic layers are connected by
a layer at ppp. from here on it progresses in waves towards fffff possibile; the middle
value is only mf.
i preferred not to consider the changes in densities as quantities (i.e. objectively)
either before or during composition. i merely wanted to outline the processes discussed
above (decrease, increase, increase, decrease) and in so doing wanted to present an
unresolved contradiction. it is not clear how the masses of transients (or attacks)
together with the durations of the surrounding notes create the impression of
density. the question one must answer in advance is: to enable the perception of a com-
parable and stable density throughout how many short attacks should be removed as
they gradually become long durations? once one has established this neutral middle-
value one can then derive further increases and decreases of density relative to it.
there are, of course, many issues and attributes that influence the perception of
density (for example: dynamics, timbre, degrees of instrumental blending, distances
in both temporal and pitch space, etc, etc) all of which need consideration.
130 m. spahlinger
what purpose does this preoccupation with increase and decrease of density serve? i
can remember my initial reflections: during times when, from the outset, it is anything
but certain that any sense can be made of music, one must, so to speak, offer a super-
abundance of material, a profusion of information from which the listener perceives
‘super signs’ and begins to establish an understanding of what is more and less
important.
during the process of density reduction, the individual details become gradually
more audible; hearing becomes more intentional, and what is heard acquires
implied intention. further reduction of density allows one access to ‘buried’ infor-
mation and, while hearing the much longer durations, one either discovers or
assumes the presence of minimal sonic fluctuations. far more important than the
(at that time quite fashionable) relation with information theory is the keyword
‘open form’, to which i will return.
one remaining question is whether i would prefer to strengthen the unifying prin-
ciple ‘four times the same’, especially given how shrouded and obfuscated it has
become.
the pauses should be performed as differently from each other as possible. they
should be performed differently when compared with each other and in their relation-
ship to the music that they divide. an ‘almost movement’ pause is placed between the
1st and 2nd movements. even if this pause were to be held too long, the fade out of the
clarinet note (played ‘as high as possible’) at the end of the 1st movement and
the fading in of the clarinet note (‘nearly as low as possible’) at the beginning of the
2nd movement could be understood as a technical process. to maintain tension, the
pause before the 3rd movement should be held for as long as possible. the music con-
tinues before the tension between movements dissolves. the exact duration depends
on: the acoustics, the noise from the hall, and the way that the public receive the work.
there is no pause at the end of the 3rd and shortest movement, and because of this, it
may be confusing to know if the 4th movement has actually begun or not, especially
when the fermata on the 24th second could be taken for the pause between those
movements.
open form
if one were to argue that eric satie’s vexations was the very first piece of new music, i
would consider that interesting. whilst the 840 repetitions demanded of a short piece
which, even when played at a reasonably slow tempo, implies a total duration of 28
hours, the score does not contain the least indication of this total duration or anything
like a whole form.
as a consequence of atonality, the residual characteristics of music were exposed.
comparable to this erosion was the discussion of open form in the new music scene
in the 1950’s. this legacy allows one to think that new music is the only music in
which the relationship between the parts and the whole has been fundamentally
changed. this changed relationship can affect all of music’s properties, including
those that are still yet to be discovered because new music—and this is one of its most
remarkable characteristics—has an infinite number of properties.
if music has formal qualities at all, they can be abstracted from concrete musical
events; these can be named, perhaps they are generaliseable, repeatable, or even re-
composable. the criteria for music’s analysis is its divisibility and its dramaturgy.
from the outset, traditional analysis asks: how many parts does a piece have? if it
has no parts then it consists of one part. the antithesis of this is presented by drama-
turgy. the extreme case would be a music in which everything develops continuously;
the appropriate form of representation would be a fever curve, showing the course of
tension and resolution. division and dramaturgy can never present themselves in a
pure and un-mixed form.
if one were to believe that they had fully understood the A-B-A form by using a
sequence of letters and number of bars there would be a deficit in relation to drama-
turgy, and in understanding the relations of tensions in and between the parts. even
when the degrees of tension do not allow themselves to be precisely quantified, they
are, even according to their type, never identical.
an analogy can be made of a purely sequential form where two climaxes occur one
after the other. even though a dividing line could be drawn (as between sections) it
would not be represented with a vertical stroke but a wavy line (see figure 2).
traditional european music has cultivated a small repertoire of standardised forms
for which the clearest case (for example a 3-part lied-form) has been memorised by
every member belonging to that culture. when a motive or a theme is heard, its
figure 2. examples of: division, dramaturgy, proportion, processuality.

132 m. spahlinger
formal implications are immediately identified and, consciously or not, an inner cursor
is able, bar by bar, to outline the form of the whole (complete with the fundamentals of
the harmony and its punctuation).
a situation comparable to this does not exist in new music. the material of new
music does not possess any formal implications; a sequence of atonal chords is not
stamped with the syntactical qualities of convention: despite the fact that not all
chord sequences are permutable without difficulty, it is always possible to reverse
the direction of the sequence.

furthermore, there is no musically defined material in new music to begin with.
where should formal implications or logical sequences come from, when everything
that sounds (and everything that does not sound) could be musical material? as a
result, composers have been confronted with the problem of open form since the
beginning of atonality.
for this reason, i would argue that with regard to new music the traditional con-
ception of form (i.e. the division into parts and dramaturgy) needs to be replaced
with proportion and processuality (see figure 2). the former derives naturally from a
serial position where a piece is divided into parts (preferably 12), and with clearly
different lengths—different lengths which are far shorter than or exceed by far the tra-
ditional orders of size, and a sense of balance is not necessarily desired. the contents
(which here suggests densities) should not in any way behave according to the pro-
portion of the parts. incidentally, this is an aspect of open form: the sections are not
yielded from each other, and none of them present a qualitative beginning or ending.
processuality has a specific background. i would argue that the material of new
music possesses neither formal implications nor syntactic qualities. this implies that
a quasi causal, or logically derived sequence of sounds is more questionable than
under tonal circumstances. with cage, time stands still because no causal relationships
are apparent, or can be found to exist between sounds.
if i were to compose a music in which time moves forward, i would need to borrow
an extra-musical source, for example by using a process. this also belongs to the reper-
toire of open forms: there is no state of density that is either so filled or so sparse that
one could not imagine it being yet more dense or sparse. this implies that there is no
qualitative beginning or ending; these forms begin suddenly and are cut off with an
already (silent) ongoing and imagined process.
how does this bear any relation to politics? for the time being only this: the formal
implications of traditional music—the fact that the character, form, style, content,
function, etc, of a whole piece can be imagined with just the first bars, or with the
first motive (as discussed above)—owe entirely to the fantastic ability human beings
have to fill in (ergänzungsleistung), or complete, the rest of the information (i.e. the
holistic ability to imagine a gestalt). not only can a whole piece be imagined, and esti-
mates made from what has already been heard, the whole, understood as the whole set
of relations, is also evoked: the cultural and ideological context, the conditions of life
and work, the myths and aspects that create meaning, and the whole of planet earth
which is, naturally, flat as a disc, and around which is the crystal shell upon which
the stars are fixed, and beyond that an endless will, which is the highest ability—the
ability to complete the picture—that mankind could ever imagine. the most wonderful
and the most terrifying acts that mankind is capable of derive from the same talent: the
ability to make the maximum inadmissible assumptions and hasty conclusions from
an absolute minimum knowledge of facts. self evidently new music is reliant on this
act of completion. however, it does not operate in new music in the same way; this
does not relate itself to a relatively closed system of selective perception and formal
execution (which is what traditional music, indeed every traditional music of this
world, is), but relates itself to itself; it presents itself to the question of what music
is or what it could be—and relates these questions to the societal location where
these questions can be (sonically) posed.
the problem of the finale goes back to the 19th century. in the twentieth century the
problem of how to begin was added: conclusions remain as conclusions, regardless of
how long they may be stretched out. in the short works between op. 5 and op. 11,
webern wrote truly open conclusions, because they were atonal. an ‘open conclusion’
is either a paradox or a contradiction in adiecto, the sort of contradiction one should
avoid, and, just like everything that is not indisputable, abominated by formal logic.
obviously the open conclusion, like the open form, belongs to a culture of thinking
for which formal logic is simultaneously valid and not valid. it belongs to a culture
of thinking that tries to think contradiction and that thinks from within contradiction.
to conclude, the open conclusion is the opposite of itself, the negative that reflects
itself.
in order to see this a little more clearly, i will turn to the question of what atonality
(for many the fall of man) is: the first ever appearance of the changed relationship of
the parts to the whole.
it is no surprise that tonal syntax, the central category of european music, was
eroded, and it is no wonder that, in the most developed countries, the technical/scien-
tific world view and the enlightenment began to find their place.
tonal and atonal chords

the atonality i am discussing is limited to a specific negation of classical/romantic ton-
ality. i am not attempting to discuss and clarify what atonality would mean for other
cultures. neither can i be concerned with pursuing the highly interesting problem of
whether chords can be considered autonomous before the question has been answered
if these chords are not primarily based upon scales. after all, scales have a formal effect.
for my purpose in order to be in a position to question how scales determine how time
unfolds, and how they create formal implications, it must suffice to consider pitch
combinations as occuring often, seldom or never, and that this is already a highly stat-
istical approach.
tonal chords are shapes (gestalts) that can be recognised before all other details are
completely present (see figure 3). gestalts are one-sided and immediate units (as
described by hegel) that can contain modifications and remain preserved:
134 m. spahlinger
figure 3. tonal and atonal chords.
1. in inversions
2. in potential completion
3. in extension
4. in suspensions
5. in alterations
in the following examples the function of the chords within harmonic syntax is modi-
fied, however tonality remains preserved.
1. 2nd chord, figure 3: tonic with the 3rd in the bass: ‘light’ tonic, this stands for
tonal stability (cf. mozart in repeating a sections, or in fixed second subject
group tonal keys). 3rd chord, figure 3: 3rd in the soprano: maybe a conclusion
(haydn, beethoven, op.100, 1st movement) or not.
2. 4th and 5th chords, figure 3: the 3rd and 7th are enough to create a dominant
seventh function. here, the leading note is supported by a dominant seventh
chord underneath, and never with a relative minor, which is almost never
correct.
3. 6th chord, figure 3: a dominant which has been extended upon the 7th, without
the 5th. this intensifies the dominant function. every freely appearing dominant
7th is plausible and can function as a pre-dominant (the supertonic) to a chord
sharing the same scale, or it can introduce a chromatic modulation, because the
3rd and the 7th of the dominant seventh chord clearly define the target tonality
(the leading note and 4th appear once only in the 12 major/minor keys).
4. 2nd chord, 2nd bar, figure 3: a suspended 4th in the dominant seventh.
5. final chord of 2nd bar, figure 3: with g in the bass, and with the tonic missing:
diminished 5th, 3rd, 7th, diminished 9th, augmented 5th. in harmonic language
this is not the dominant but the secondary dominant, or the pre-dominant.
the number of pitches in tonal chords is limited. simple doublings are allowed. the
number of possible shapes soon exhaust themselves. mammals have four limbs,
beetles never have seven legs. if anything is missing it will automatically be completed
in your head.
in contrast to this there are atonal chords: any two pitches can always belong to a
tonal context, a third pitch defines whether a chord is tonal or atonal (when no
other context is given).
1. 3rd bar, figure 3: these four chords are made of the same 3 pitches. however
because they have no common tonal function they create four different
chords rather than inversions of the same chord.
2. 4th bar, figure 3: an atonal chord is never complete, it is never whole in terms of
its being a gestalt. in principle it is always possible to add a further note. from
this perspective no act of completion or of filling in a missing part, as previously
described, takes place.
3. 5th bar, figure 3: an atonal chord can contain 4, 5, 10, or all 12 chromatic
pitches and can still be infinitely extended, as i have done here by using micro-
tonal intervals.
4. it is impossible for a listener to have the impression that a tone in one atonal
chord is a suspension moving towards another one without allowing for a
tonal interpretation to emerge (apart from perhaps in a piece where the same
chords always appear).
5. alterations are equally incomprehensible, and can be understood at best as
tonally embedded particles. either that or they can be understood as a transition
towards another equally autonomous atonal chord.
an atonal chord is a chord and not a chord (analogous to the open conclusion). the
pitches sound simultaneously but do not create a gestalt unit, therefore their simulta-
neity is also called into question. if one were to repeat a tonal chord, and, if after suc-
cessive repetitions this chord were gradually made to arpeggiate, the singular pitches
would still be heard as belonging to this tonal chord rather than as separate pitches.
if the same procedure were applied to an atonal chord, one would hear it dissolve
into a melodic shape much more quickly. but neither is this clear since melodies are
also gestalt units made of pitches and rhythms, that need a gestalt background such
as scale and meter—both of which are also capable of creating gestalts.
atonal chords are both chords and not chords. their pitches can easily be heard in
isolation and can be assigned to other changing categories; such pitches are
‘between categories’ because they are, as schoenberg said: ‘only related to each
other’ (schoenberg, 1976, p. 75).
if the thought truly realized itself [entäußern] in the thing, if this counted for some-
thing and not its category, then the object itself would begin to speak under the
thought’s leisurely glance (adorno, 1997, p. 38).
this quotation from negative dialectics by adorno, can hardly be interpreted as an over
concise apology for cage, for example one that takes the position that once all intention
and expressivity and all other categories are removed, then sound itself is the only thing
136 m. spahlinger
that remains. freedom only begins to exist when, and as far as, determination (whether
cultural or biological) comes to consciousness. this appears to me more likely: it would
be best to consider changing categories, or transitions between these and competing
orders (for example 12 chromatic pitches per octave are nothing other than 12 com-
peting tonal orders) that effect a specific negation of pre-stabilised harmony, (one that,
from the outset, establishes a finalised categorical ordering of the tonal system). the fact
is that this still occurs successfully. despite this, there is still an endless number of tonal
pieces that get performed and composed, in comparison to the number of pieces that
attempt a serious critical discourse with tonality.
i maintain that, beyond pitch, as with all other characteristics of music—even those
that are yet to be discovered—a similar emancipation from a culturally pre-determined
relational system is taking place, similar to the basis of implied pitch relationships (as
far as they at all belong in such a tradition, and were already characteristics of music). it
is impossible for me to exhaust even just the characteristics as they have been listed.
the next musical example (see figure 4) can be heard from the perspective of two
fundamentally changed characteristics of traditional music: the ordering of bar and
metre, and the principle of variation. i would like to say something about the
former and afterwards discuss the latter. bar, metre, rhythm, and tempo mutually con-
stitute themselves in traditional music. without making any difference to arsis or thesis
(strong and weak parts of a measure), the pulse (otherwise represented as 1:1) appears
only as an abstraction (to adjust the metronome) but never appears in music itself. in
new music it is possible to separate these four temporal characteristics, and the pulse—
which, as a sheer mass of equal pulses, creates an a-metric phenomenon—can play a
large role.
i want to draw attention to the fact that i am always concerned with dismantling
hierarchies. the many variations of bar length and metre—heard as unifying principles
in traditional music—allow themselves to be changed from, so to speak, the bottom to
the top via rhythmic modulation and actual variation.
developing variation
without recourse to the history of this concept, i would like to clarify its specific defi-
nition for new music. here it does not refer to the (relatively unsystematic) derivation
of a gestalt from a primary material, neither does it refer to the transition from one
stable ground to another: it refers to transition itself.
i would like to clarify this in comparison with the classical variation cycle. in this
case one is presented with a theme (usually in lied form) the essential characteristics
of which are binding, these being: the form, the implied number of bars, and the har-
monic sequence (i.e. the chord positions determine the highest notes in the melody as
well as the bass line). for the whole cycle the key (whether major or minor), bar, and
tempo can be changed for dramatic reasons.
every variation varies the theme (occasionally not, as in beethoven’s diabelli vari-
ations, op. 120) of the previous variation. every variation has a figuration type
figure 4. farben der frühe (spahlinger, 2005), measures 1–8, movement 2.
which is applied to the above named characteristics. the essential characteristics remain
the same, the inessentials are changed. from a historical perspective this is tautological,
since these essential characteristics only became essential because they were considered
‘unifying ideas’ which eventually became binding.
developing variation (or rhythmic/metric modulation—which is nothing other than
developing variation limited to rhythm) presents the extreme opposite of this
perspective.
a beginning is not a qualitative beginning (as little as it is possible for a conclusion to
be a qualitative, or cadence-like end), but it is some kind of beginning. it can be named
(a), whereby the first letter of the alphabet does not imply it as a primary material or
principle (see figure 5). this beginning is gradually altered until it is either possible to
imagine writing a caesura (which, to some extent, remains arbitrary) or until these
138 m. spahlinger
figure 5. developing variation.
alterations are considered so meaningful to justify the label (a’). this decision is equally
as arbitrary. the variant of (a) can just as well be called (b), which can also be seen as
‘any kind of beginning’. this process repeats itself (and is, in principle, endless), and
after a number of iterations a state is reached in which there is no similarity with
the beginning.
this is not the same kind of transition that is heard in the progression from the 3rd to
the 4th movement of beethoven’s 5th symphony (which also progresses from one fixed
point to another fixed point), which is a purely psychological transition and does not
contain a gram of material from the final movement. on the contrary, i am referring to
a permanent quantitative change that creates a qualitative leap; whether over a short or
long passage no essential characteristic is safeguarded from being transformed into an
inessential characteristic, and the other way around.
does this awaken the association of ‘permanent revolution’? don’t be fooled: the
small steps of a transformation only appear logically compelling; if just one of these
steps were to go in another direction everything that followed could be different.
this process contains no formal implications; it belongs to methods native to the
open form, as does atonality. developing variation addresses expression and represen-
tation, and is not an illustration or an anticipation of reality.
until now, i have presented examples of how certain characteristics in new music are
specifically negated, characteristics that intimately hold traditional music together. i
want to look at the next piece in a similar way, even though it may appear that its con-
cerns are not as fundamental as pitches or rhythmic order—which is the reason i want
to keep the description short.
afterwards, i would like to confront all the musical ‘protests’ towards the tradition,
introduced until now, with the question: how far can they be seen as altered modernist
figures of thought? and how far can they be used for political reflection? following that
(rather like a doppio movimento) i will present two further musical examples to rep-
resent these questions further and, where possible—similar to the insights already
gained (all the while committed to the negation of the tradition)—might open a
more direct political perspective.
this piece has the title gegen unendlich (towards infinity; spahlinger, 1995), and this
addresses the idea that, with the introduction of atonality, a virtually endless number of
pitches become available. the same analogy can also made for rhythm: the loss of a bar/
metric background yields an infinite number of points in time. above and beyond the
sound, both parameters can always be further differentiated. the section under discus-
sion appears after a slow passage that may awaken the impression that the composer is
eager to prove that there are always more pitches that can be heard between two held
pitches (see figure 6).
almost the whole of the second half of this piece (see figure 7) consists of rapid semi-
quavers in a 1:1 pulse (as described above: i.e., without metric stress), with false notes
as deviations. after a certain amount of time, the whole ensemble plays a single tone
whilst maintaining the 1:1 pulse (see figure 8).
figure 6. (a) gegen unendlich, p. 7. (b) gegen unendlich, p. 8.

140 m. spahlinger
figure 7. gegen unendlich, p. 9.
if music can prove anything at all (or even if it attempts to, or if it should prove
something), this uni-tone unisono allows an experience where the identity of this
pitch—as with the infinite number of pitch identities in both meanings of the word:
as being identical with itself, and also therefore recognizable—is just as questionable
as the identifiability of other pitches. tones are perceived as having the same pitch
only when—as long as timbre and dynamics are compensated to enhance the percep-
tion of pitch—they are not quite measurably the same. this is also valid for points in
figure 8. (a) gegen unendlich, p. 18. (b) gegen unendlich, p. 19.
time. without bar/metre articulation, and without the listener knowing what position
is intended in bar and metre, the instruments involved, given their differences of attack
and decay, must not just play a unisono but must, given the intention for the listener,
play simultaneously.
these out-of-focus unisoni are used to make the idea of a gradual decoupling, or
drifting apart, plausible and logical.
the end of the piece addresses the problem of the infinite number of pitches with
disruptive suddenness, in a manner that could be mistaken for positive ordering.
indeed, the basic assumption of every pitch classification is systematically disturbed,
this being the identification of identical pitches with their value in herz (as discussed
above, the disturbance of pitch identification is already due to the infinite number of
pitches).
the fact that the name of a pitch and its frequency may not be identical is an experi-
ence that giacinto scelsi made possible. in his work one encounters either a tone with a
wide vibrato or melisma, followed by a held and lingering tone, which is lent a different
intonation, and as a result one has the irrefutable impression that the music is con-
cerned with the same tone only pitched at a different frequency.
to return to gegen unendlich, one can imagine a notation system with a 6-lined stave
(see figure 9): one that regulates pitch relations. this stave notation shows how pitch
lines break away (in principle these lines run infinitely) from a common pitch; this
142 m. spahlinger
figure 9. gegen unendlich; graphic sketch showing six-lined stave.
representation is radically different to the well-known stave where the lines run in par-
allel. a second, self-imposed rule is that the courses these glissando lines take—when
equated with the well tempered system—regulate the identity of a pitch when
measured against time. in other words for every point in time i can choose between
six different and precisely defined pitches (see figure 10).
the courses these six lines take are either represented (or not: since pauses have been
included in the rhythm notated above) as short pitches, as glissandos, or both. during
this process, a particularly interesting phenomenon appears, which i made further use
of in my double concerto for bass clarinet, trombone, and orchestra (spahlinger, 1998),
the whole of which is composed according to the same principle. this phenomenon can
be named: ‘point never meets motion’ (punkt trifft bewegung nie). a pitch, as short as it
might be, possesses a certain expansion in time. strictly speaking neither glissandos nor
short tones have, at any point in time, the same pitch, or, as hegel says: ‘motion is the
immediate presence of contradiction’ (as cited in liebrucks, 1966, p. 75).
the following sentence (1930!) is from kurt tucholsky: ‘on account of bad weather,
the german revolution took place in music’ (tucholsky, 1975, p. 346).
i hope you would not imagine me to be so naïve as to believe that atonality is any-
thing like the emancipation, or the democracy, of pitches. relationships between
people are not illustrated by the relationships between pitches, and it is not very pro-
ductive to imagine that one can change one thing and therefore allude to another. so
little about the world can be changed, either as a consequence of music or solely using
it. despite this, i maintain that ‘if change does not take place in thinking, and does not
take place in music, then it does not take place anywhere’.
from this point, heisenberg’s motto that prefaces this article can be criticised. for me,
it does not go far enough. during an experience worthy of the name one undergoes a
sensual sensation, but also an intervention in the sensorium, as well as in its abilities of
reception and perception. above all, when experience is accompanied by theory,
figure 10. gegen unendlich, pre-compositional sketch.
everything that was regarded as reasonable is simultaneously experienced as both too

narrow and surmountable.
in heisenberg’s sentence, thinking remains directed towards the object. it then
adapts itself towards a new problem, but remains only a tool.
the tools derived from sedimented experience are taken for granted as useful and
are, regarding any subject matter to which they are applied, never questioned. as a con-
sequence, this represents a positivism (or a product of positive order) which, it is
believed, puts subject matter in motion.
in new music changes in details create deliberate categorical mistakes which
exchange the essential with the inessential, render music’s categories visible, and can
be reflected upon.
what bruno liebrucks wrote about language applies to both art and music in general:
‘language is both means and tool, but also purpose’ (liebrucks, 1964, p. 29). when
language is considered as a means of work it only remains the means, because it
allows for questions to be posed in relation to itself. for example the question: ‘what
do you mean by “hammer”?’ correctly refers to (or simultaneously implies) questions
of how reality is to be understood, and in whose designation language is not exhausted.
144 m. spahlinger
the industrial revolution, or the technical/scientific revolution, created a transform-
ation of thought, which, in turn, impacted on enlightenment and new music. quanti-
fication, mechanisation, gestalt critique, facticity and its critical reflexion: these are all
virtues of political-critical thinking. analogies can be drawn, that, in turn, impose an
analytical perspective on musical scores: just as new music no longer questions what
it is that sounds in relation to a tonal system, but rather what sounds in reality, political
strategies and utopias need facticity as their corrective. this concerns what it is that
occurs concretely according to the construction of reality, for one’s political friends
as well as for one’s enemies.
this approach corresponds to a negative model of cognition. self-evident truths have
the immediate effect of being taken for eternal truths but, in fact, remain incompre-
hensible. this is not possible when they are considered holistically but the act of dis-
mantling such givens makes it possible to observe the unholy way the positive has
been assembled. this criticism has also arrived at the doors of popular conceptions
of utopia, that were relegated out of philosophy. seen from a class perspective
neither revolution nor a consciously structured improvement of human destiny will
occur quasi-automatically, out of the necessity of history. developing variation
addresses these issues.
today, utopia also demands that we recognise the conditions that determine our
projections into the future (without which nobody would live!). what may we hope
for? where do our wishes come from? how can we learn to wish for the right thing?
new music does not establish any new conventions that are either obvious, or
capable of ‘conditioning’ us in the same way as with an unresolved dominant 7th
chord that, in the times of its undisputed validity, could have caused a sleepless
night. not even its most dogged guardians take good old antiquity as seriously as
that. form (as little as the other elements of categorical order that either fulfill the
target or come before the details—for example bar and metre—and not beyond the
individually effective tendencies of these elements) only supplies coherence via modu-
lation, and is in contention with both itself and an emergent system of rules.
the analogy with democracy is clear to see, and apparently only remains concealed to
its private and sinister enemies: the legitimate possibility to legally and fundamentally
convert state and society into consensual partners, without being denounced as a crim-
inal revolutionary.
in being part of a system of selective perception and interpretation, the closed work
idiosyncratically summons up the holistic act of completion in its listeners, to the point
where the work is experienced as being long finished before it is heard completely;
together with all its systems of making sense, it has erased all traces of its social
roots, conditions, and history. the closed work presents itself as a quasi-object
before its public. it appears a priori—as if from nowhere—as reasonable. it is complete.
the closed work might be changeable and modifiable, but after one correction it again
appears as complete. for our times the closed work is an instructive example of reified
thinking.
forms that are complete, and are similar to objects, have been conceived of as closed
even before the first sound has occurred, in addition to musically defined materials
together with their respective formal implications: these signify inner cohesion, and
outer adhesion. the effect of both is their exclusivity. inward: police, outward: military.
such are the means by which interests of power are enforced, and by which they deny
communication. new and more powerful coalitions are created: the eliminated outer
borders become substituted by further, larger borders, which are yet more difficult
to pass through and more threatening.

are not the conventional orders, those categorical orders that descended into ideol-
ogy, like a thought (if ‘thinking’ is the designation it deserves) that preserves itself and
serves to justify and conserve itself, and conserve both what it thinks and the one who
thinks it? like a canon of norms and rules, together with its kinship to publicly cele-
brated rituals, the practice of music has an institutional character. it has to be said
that institutions (as factors of power) have a justification in truly democratic relation-
ships where they are forward-facing and open, where they constantly criticise their
conditions, and drive their self-reflexion towards a state of sublation. the existence
of the police is justified (out of necessity) only when and in so far as they simul-
taneously work toward their own redundancy and elimination.
the question remains if, because of its institutional character, musical praxis really
belongs to that political concept, as stated in my opening quotation, that divides the
world into friend and enemy, or if it achieves this from the character of its system.
systems of perception and interpretation have their styles. style is a societal category,
and stylistic characteristics can be perceived as belonging to an enemy society or to
societal groups. is it true that music is international and binds people? who ever
invented that sentimental kitsch? which nation has not hated the music of its min-
orities and enemy ethnicities, and excluded and forbidden their art? common
amongst enemies are the following facts: all have nationalistic countries that fight
against each other, and all have national anthems which are stylistically similar,
since they were composed during an epoch of national fervour: in some cases they
were composed by foreigners, or share the same melodies as those from foreign cul-
tures. such insanity should really belong to the past.
due to its harmonic syntax, music has become like language and speech (sprachähn-
lich) but it does not operate with concepts that evoke objects directly. it refers to that
which is outside itself solely through its inner relational network and via its logic.
hence, at the same time, the interior of music is its material-sensual sound. music
cannot retreat from this ‘step of enlightenment’. as a result of this fact, whoever
invents music comes face to face with reality (wirklichkeit).1 the musical sound
emerges as that which it appears and seems to be2: meaningful from within an inter-
pretative, categorical perception (here categories are understood as modes of
expression and testimony!), which is simultaneously intercommunicative, dynamic
and, from the outset, can be considered as societally relativised and sublatable. this
is how sound apparently appears, as itself.
146 m. spahlinger
even so, new music is the only music we know of that has driven the auto-reflection
of its own categories to the point of self-sublation. which of us does not say: ‘we are the
good ones?’ the person who is well-practised in aesthetics, and is able to see their work
as alienated, will find it difficult to be an enemy of the foreigner. the passage from
debussy to ravel, partly from bartók onwards, towards new music, goes via the recog-
nition of the colonised as independent cultures. the desperate question of the citizens
of new york: ‘what do you have against us?’ is the question with which those in power,
and who stand in assymetric relationships, pose towards those with shorter leverage.
that the positive, and the positions that represent it, must be reflected upon until
their opposites emerge, is the aesthetic position (which, at the same time, is not a pos-
ition) practiced and exposed by new music in its aesthetic thinking, feeling, and doing.
to give an old example: the master-servant relationship remains the same when it
becomes inverted. it might be easier for the servants to emerge as their own opposite
in this relationship but perhaps, because they don’t understand their own interests, the
masters may not be interested in this change. both sides reflect themselves, and in so
doing, the relationship of the whole is sublated.
und als wir (1993) for 54 strings
i will describe two further musical examples. the first piece, und als wir, thematicises the
societal character of perception. this designation will be accepted for this description. marx
names consciousness an a priori product of society. however, while discussing language,
he did not say that it is the medium, the telephone, or the postman of consciousness, but:
‘language is practical, real consciousness that exists for other men as well [and only
therefore does it exist for me]’ (marx & engels, 1983, p. 31 [extended by translator]).
occasionally, the individually subjective aspect of discourse becomes hazy and unclear
compared with its collective-subjective aspects in the discussion of materialism; i
would rather use this than the sociologically empty-sounding word ‘society’. this
points towards the intercommunicative character, or the linguicity of, perception.
spatial listening has often played an important role in european music history, from
the venetian polychoral style to the moment where the fixed position of a pitch became
a further serial parameter. moving beyond those times, even when heard as distant
trumpets, or by the conductor or the listener when sitting/standing in the central per-
spective (or ‘sweet spot’), the location of pitch should (in reality) be heard as a real
location determined by the score.
in my work und als wir for 54 solo strings there is no central perspective. the string
orchestra is divided into four parts, arranged in the form of a cross (see figure 11). the
conductor stands in the middle, the public sit between each arm of the cross—or,
outside this cross if the performance space has terraced seating (as with many
concert halls), or where there are galleries available for the audience.
the instrumental arrangement for each arm is as follows: only the first string orches-
tra (see figure 12) conforms to the conventional set-up: the 1st violins sit nearest the
conductor, followed by violas, cellos, and contrabasses. for the other orchestras these
positions are shifted by one. in the second orchestra (figure 12) the 1st violins are
figure 11. cross-form layout of the 54 strings with the conductor placed in the centre.
where possible, the audience are positioned between each arm of the cross.
placed at the back, the 2nd violins sit at the front, the order for the rest of the orchestra
is the same as the first orchestra following the 2nd violins. the same idea is apparent for
the third orchestra only this time the violas are placed at the front, and in the fourth
orchestra (figure 12, bottom) the cellos.
my compositional intention was that all four orchestras can be understood as a gra-
dation of depth in increasing distance to the conductor (see figure 13).
figure 14 foregrounds the relationships between instruments of the same type, here
connected by lines.
each time two instruments are sonically paired, the impression of the sound chan-
ging location (a wandering of sound) emerges. this can be seen in figure 15 from the
bottom-left to the top-right, and is further illustrated in the pre-compositional sketch
in figure 16.
music is not a collection of examples for a lecture on acoustics, nor can it be allowed
to exhaust itself in illustrations from social psychology or communication theory.
music is really concerned with the reality of sound, which is also the reality of the
way we perceive.
the positioning of the ensemble, as described, allows for differentiation in the per-
ception of space, and this leads to many unexpected acoustic surprises; the deep and
148 m. spahlinger
figure 12. und als wir: arrangement of all four string orchestras: i, ii, iii, and iv.
figure 13. und als wir, gradation of depth.

figure 14. und als wir, relationship between instruments across different string groups.
figure 15. und als wir.

150 m. spahlinger
figure 16. und als wir, sketch, translation from above: ‘b) spatial wandering, a) spatial and
temporal proximity compete (konkurrierender zuordnung). trapezoid with singular point or
square? *there are no one-dimensional dependencies (i.e. the lower a pitch, the longer the
duration)’.
loud pizzicati pitches on the same string continue sounding for longer than high and
quiet pitches; changes of instrumentation allow one to hear unexpected jumps of
location in the decay of the sound.
the perception of regular rhythm is either irritated or disturbed, according to the
way that positions in space are changed.
in the context of the theme the following is important:
in stereo technique (see figure 17) it is generally well known that spatial listening is
determined by the inter-aural time difference of sound, i.e. the time difference for
sound to reach each ear. a sound from the left side arrives at the right ear later. due
to the layout of the musicians, and where the audience are seated, the fact that
every other listener hears differently will (hopefully) be understood by all. vertically
aligned notes that, according to the score, should sound simultaneously may actually
be heard and perceived as sounding together for a person who happens to be sitting in
a straight line and at an equal distance between the two players. from another angle,
non-simultaneously notated music can be heard simultaneously, and vice-versa, and
this leads to all imaginable variations of spatial effect.
the ideal position for the listener of this piece is to sit at the periphery. there, inter-
personal listening can be perceived: one can listen, and imagine at the same time what
the sound must be doing from the perspective of those sitting in other locations.
i would like to alert your attention to the fact that this experience cannot be made
with traditional music. if we heard metric music from an extreme position (for
instance from seat no.1, row 1, i.e. at the very front and the outermost edge) these
figure 17. und als wir, sketches, translation: ‘measurement = parameter. here the left
column concerns qualities, the right column concerns objective measurement as par-
ameter. pitch—frequency (instead of qualities of scale relation). loudness—amplitude.
duration— (a-metric). timbre—(colouration, timbre is n-dimensional). pitch-spatial
location: traditional = venetian polychoral writing. serial = pitch-spatial location (12
locations). given: ideal listening position, stereo position. contradiction: simultaneity’.
effects would be noticed uncomfortably, but after a little while they begin to be blended
out, and soon become understood as ‘unintended’. in all its characteristics, traditional
music is always heard as ‘what is intended’, but never according to what actually
sounds.
as described above, once all interpretation has been removed, the reality is not what
remains. clarity cannot be achieved, nor should it be wished for: language, or language-
like music, demands both understanding of the specific idea and understanding of the
contextual meaning. otherwise it is only about signals that release stimulative reactions,
similar to our likeliest relatives in the animal kingdom.
during this music, the listener can hear (either consciously or unconsciously):
152 m. spahlinger
1. the fact that a rigid idea of the subject-object relationship (as mere counter-
parts) does not represent reality (left of figure 18)
2. that the subject-object relationship takes place within the subject (middle of
figure 18)
3. that the subject is a part of, and intercommunicates with, society (right of figure 18)
i now come to the final musical example. perhaps, in order to contribute something
that clarifies the relationship between music and politics, i have, almost exclusively,
concentrated on the poetics of music. i hope this is for good reasons. everything
about art has the idiosyncrasy that a large portion of what is represented focuses on
the means of representation. a still-life perhaps depicts something, which means
that it cannot simply be replaced with a signpost that says: ‘fruit, vegetable, exotic
fruit’. a large amount of attention is directed upon the manner in which a work is
painted, as well as upon the way in which it could be perceived. it is also directed at
the observer. reflecting on the means of portrayal and understanding is also the
same as the higher reflection of the object. i would think that, for example, an
extra-musical content, which could be transported by music remains locked in a
superficial relation to new music when it has not been conceived from within its
own specific characteristics and parameters (traditional music has always behaved
merely as expressive interpretation of content).
mechanical repetition—for example, that which proceeds in a self-contained way
and does not have syntactical caesurae, or formal implications—can be the content
of new music (as far as i am concerned this could be of alienated factory workers,
which, by the way, i attempted in my work morendo (spahlinger, 1975a) for orchestra).
at the same time—and this brings me to the next related aesthetic problem—mechan-
ical repetition addresses a closely related aesthetic problem which can be found in
autonomous music. this occurs in alban berg’s lyric suite for string quartet at the
end of the 5th movement, and it occurs far more convincingly than, for instance,
the portrayal of mechanical repetition in arthur honegger’s pacific 231. due to the
pre-conceived harmonic taste of its composer, this futuristic piece (pacific 231) does
not even touch upon the problem: mechanical juxtaposition (i.e., interlocking gear-
wheels) implies that it would do so, and that it must be possible for equally considered
figure 18. und als wir.

pitches to coincide in any combination—therefore it would not be possible to treat
them as belonging to a harmonic syntactic order.
the question is if it is at all possible for music, and extrinsic content, to be placed in a
relationship that would amount to anything more than either a musically unholy com-
motion about this content, or a dreary illustration from which one could—upon con-
sulting the programme note—make rational assumptions that the music either refers
to a mass of lemmings lunging to their deaths over the cliffs of dover, or to the crash of
the stock market.

function behaves in a similar way. the march music beethoven and schubert com-
posed does not differentiate itself stylistically from other works bearing the same name
or of the same era. their political effect is beneath what can be measured.
my final musical example represents the criticism of the ruling means of production
of music.
pre-thematicised and precisely defined characteristics of the material of new music
approach this problem. these have been advanced by ever further and higher develop-
ment of musical virtuosity, and this causes a problem, as the music can only be
approached with a formidably high degree of work and/or specialisation. this is
proven by the range of notational instructions in the scores of new music; parallel
to this development is the large number of playing techniques that must be learned
and mastered (new music does not posses a priori musically defined material; every-
thing that sounds can be music, including silence).
this quantitative change in the conception of material simultaneously allows for a
qualitative leap of transformation. every musician and composer involved in new
music must, in particular aspects, invent music anew with every piece; they are not
able to become masters and, so, remain beginners (as satie said: ‘i do not want to be a
master, that is ridiculous!’). perhaps the most, and in his own way, fundamental approach
to this was attempted by walter zimmerman, whose work for solo piano has the title
beginner’s mind (zimmerman, 1971), which is an idea derived from zen buddhism.
the limitless material in new music even allows itself to be radically reduced; the sim-
plest decisions are possible, i.e., deciding between sound and silence, breathing in and
out, synchronicity or non-synchronicity, etc. such decisions are immediately aesthetic
and do not assume any technical proficiency in specific standards. they are, in a sense,
unrestricted, and therefore present a critique of the ideology of the masterpiece—
which is unintentionally revealed by the saying: ‘it is by working within limits that
the master reveals himself’.
instrumental techniques demanded by new music have at times been ruthlessly
intensified, and particularly where the customary division of work is maintained,
the mental and instrumental demands on its interpreters have also been raised to fan-
tastically high levels. however, during the following description i want to emphasise
that precisely inverted possibilities and tendencies exist. the essential aspects of the
implications of new music are as radical as they are simple. in musical praxis they
can be understood by everyone, and can be practiced privately and publicly. in these
154 m. spahlinger
aspects (and contrary to its reputation) new music is most probably the least elite, the
most democratic, international, and open musical activity.
my discussion addresses the special phenomenon that appears only in the material of
new music: that there exist musical situations over which not a single person needs to
be in control of, and where the organisation, structure, and a host of collective decisions
regarding musical realisation can be decided practically in order to progress further. it is
even possible that contradictory choices can be decided upon for simultaneous realisation.
i once named this phenomenon irreducible not-gestalts (irreduzible nicht-gestalten).

what a gestalt actually is cannot be fully concieved of, and neither can it be defined; it is
only possible to define a list of characteristics that do not always completely apply to it.
i prefer this negative expression because it corresponds to open conclusions, to atonality,
etc. i would like to accentuate that it is the case here (but not for gestalts) that no coherence
exists, and that there are no clear, hard, or fast relationships between the categories, or with
the conceived details that are determined by them. in order to avoid fruitless controversy, i
have named these irreducible characters (irreduzible charaktere, see figure 18).
as can be seen from figure 19, and figure 20, even under changed circumstances, these
irreducible characters are immediately recognisable. singular points (punkte) are points,
whether high or low, loud or soft, simple or rich in timbre. the same holds true for scalar
steps (stufen, tonleiter), glissandos, bands of sound (klangband), melody, pulse (1:1), etc.
they are susceptible to qualitative changes which, if driven far enough, can lead to a
qualitatively transformative leap: i.e. transitions progressing from singular points to
yield fields of points, or from one pitch to a chord, or a cluster, etc.
there also exist quantitative changes of another kind: the introduction of certain
ordering principles that intervene in the respective characters, and transform them
into another character. this leads to another type of transformative, qualitative leap.
the top of figure 20 shows that points of sound can be extended (quantitative
change) yielding drones, bands of sound, and chords. by intervening in the sequence
of points, and by extending them, a sequence of scalar steps is produced (middle of
figure 20). in the example that follows, chords can be produced by establishing a tem-
poral order (lower half of figure 20). the bottom of figure 20 shows how changing
orchestration yields steps of instrumental colour or timbre, etc.
these, and the following, examples are an attempt to demonstrate that it is possible
to create a transition from every one of these (processual) characters to any other one
(see figure 21).
excluded from this are processes that i term ‘individual time’ (eigenzeit) processes,
i.e. those that take their own amount of time to complete, e.g., the time it takes for
a bouncing tennis ball to come to rest. in addition to those excluded are, of course,
chordal sequences that belong to a tonal syntax. for example:
subdominant—dominant 4th + 6th, dominant 7th, tonic

figure 19. pre-compositional sketch showing irreducible characters.

156 m. spahlinger
figure 20. transitions, processes.
doppelt bejaht, (twice affirmed) studies for orchestra without conductor (2009)
doppelt bejaht (spahlinger, 2009) consists of 24 concepts which can be played by
(almost) any mixed ensemble. a performance can begin and end anywhere.
the instructions and performance rules are only sometimes as simple as the charac-
ters assigned to them (see above). this version of the score, with its secondary and
additional performance instructions, was conceived for a symphony orchestra,
especially one experienced in performing new music.
figure 21. translation: a) everything (can be combined) with everything, hence: b) principal
invertibility, [exception: falling tennis ball, an example of individual time (eigenzeit)], c)
endless continuum.
every number (of the 24 concepts) has a graphic score containing all the regulatory
information. this is made more precise with accompanying text, and sometimes
pitches or rhythms.
03. klangband/band of sound: tones: long and less long, that combine to create
chords that change slowly and constantly. no melodies or motives are allowed, no
tones are allowed to connect (to create a melody), and no rhythms either (see
figure 22).
04. field of points: only short, damped, and ‘strangled’ sounds, and also those
sounding like cracking branches, etc. in the final third (of this number), very short
and audible pitches should emerge (see figure 23).
05. infinitely many tempi: all play regular pulses (1:1), every player in their own
tempo. tempi should be chosen that bear a ‘dissonant’ relation to each other. they
figure 22. doppelt bejaht: graphic score of 03. klangband; band of sound, or infinitely many
pitches.
158 m. spahlinger
figure 23. doppelt bejaht: 04. field of points.
figure 24. doppelt bejaht: 05. infinitely many tempi.
should either be almost the same as each other, or almost the same as a doubling
of tempo. simple tempo relations (such as 2:3, or 4:5) should be avoided (see figure 24).
17. point never coincides with motion: glissandos should be gently articulated by
short notes at the same pitch. this can also be executed by one player: e.g. left-hand
pizzicato while playing arco glissando. after a while the short notes remain heard but
without their glissandos (instead the glissandos are ‘felt’, see figure 25).
15. ritardando moltissimo: this is to be played either on one pitch or on pitches that
create a cluster chord. the durations of whole ritardando passages should be extremely
different, lasting between 4 seconds—2 minutes, or longer. with a longer ritardando
passage it is crucial that everyone play their individual ritardando according to as
natural a progression as possible, so that the listener cannot predict if the eventual
pitches heard return in the same exact sequence, or if they have a different sequence
(see figure 26).
branching: further ‘branches’ are given at the end of each number; three possibilities
allow a pathway through all 24 concepts (see figures 27–30). for shorter performances,
it is possible to avoid playing single numbers. repetitions are very much desired, and,
during longer performances, are unavoidable. this should communicate to both the
musicians and the listeners the experience that not only are there many different poss-
ible versions, but also the perception that what occurs before and after is not cause or
effect, and that a changing context makes the ‘same’ into the ‘dissimilar’.
field of points: due to the limitation of pitches, this number can make a transition
towards a single pitch, towards the hommage to scelsi which from the beginning, and
for a long time, consists of one single pitch. field of points can, by way of a gradual
introduction of 5th and 7th harmonics lead to the number entitled flageolette (harmo-
nics) 5 and 7.
the world premiere of this cycle was performed by the south west german radio
symphony orchestra (swr) of baden-baden and freiburg. it had the character of an
orchestral installation, where the public could come and go as they pleased. each musi-
cian was allowed a break, while the other musicians continued playing. the total dur-
ation of this performance was just under 4 hours.
one performance (which was more a concertante performance and much shorter)
took place at the 2012 darmstadt summer courses. it was performed by the berlin
ensemble splitter orchestra as a single ensemble. this ensemble usually performs not
only without a conductor but, as a rule, without a composer either. the approximately
24 musicians that comprise the ensemble consider themselves as composer/perfor-
mers, and perform their own ideas, concepts, and compositions. in this sense, they
are making political music, because their means of production have been so altered
that no musician has sole responsibility to make decisions over the others. further-
more, everyone is empowered, and given a position which involves them in making
aesthetic decisions—not decisions made by the majority (which merely represents a
victory of the majority over the minority) but in consensus, or in which the dissension
becomes both the content of the expression and the object of representation.
field of points also prepares the beginning of competing orders.
in its simplest case, competing orders (see figure 31) means that (as can be seen from
the graphic notation) two alternating pulses are presented, each playing in the gaps of the
other. by shifting the relations of the dynamics, it is never clear if both pulses create a
metre, and it is also impossible to ascertain which of the pulses is the arsis or thesis.
figure 32 shows the sequence: competing orders, followed by branching.
there is no era that has gathered as much knowledge about its history as our era.
never has so much music by dead composers been performed. also, in popular
music, traditional musical material is constantly present, even when presented in a
‘modernist outfit’ and, as i maintain, without a minimum of historical consciousness,
160 m. spahlinger
figure 25. doppelt bejaht: 17. point never meets motion.
figure 26. doppelt bejaht: 15. ritardando moltissimo.

figure 27. doppelt bejaht: branching (verzweigung) and field of points. this first example
shows how field of points can be followed by one of three different numbers, here numbers
11, 15, and 16.
162
m. spahlinger
figure 28. doppelt bejaht: branching and infinite number of tempi.

figure 29. doppelt bejaht: branching and … .
and, at the same time, without entering into any aesthetic debate or discourse with the
current state of our world.
the suspicion is justified: our music culture (even we don’t have high expectations of
this term) is hopelessly backward-looking. this in turn influences new music. almost
never or nowhere are the specific characteristics of new music that i have identified
addressed; neither in the majority of cases, nor with an awareness of the problems
that belong to them.
mostly composers, for whom the models of thought of new music have remained
foreign, help themselves to expressive topoi from the past: they force music to
express something that its material cannot deliver.
despite this i also have to say:
i do not know what new music is. it is not a style.
164 m. spahlinger
figure 30. glissandi and chords.
figure 31. competing orders.
during times of undaunted avant-gardism (or the remnants of it), one may want to
postulate a zeitgeist, or possibly a global world zeitgeist. in a similar vein it was said:
that which can call itself music is only that questions whether it is (still) music or
not. everything that takes it for granted that it is music, is quite definitely not.
(attributed to heinz-klaus metzger)
figure 32. (a) doppelt bejaht, example of 10. competing orders followed by … . (b)
branching.
this is a sentence i would ascribe ironic distance to. i would like to consider this: new
music is not a mother tongue. a child must first learn to sing all meine entchen (all my
ducklings: a typical german nursery song) properly in tune (as well as have internalised
the notes of the scale, and perhaps also the harmonic implications of a melody) before
the child learns about the fact that accidentals are notated before pitches, and before it
is exposed to the shock of understanding for the first time that the steps of the scale are
not (despite what one might think) the same size!
i believe it is very significant that most of us cannot remember what we felt when we
either heard or played the chromatic scale for the first time: the bad infinity, where one
can always say ‘+1’, that can never find closure.
not to mention the n-dimensionality of timbre and noise.
style is a societal category. it has the effect of being definitive and exclusive. therefore
it is bound by both social peculiarities and biases. style, in the conventional sense of it
having a national, regional, class, or group identification, or a sociolect, etc, is not
specific to new music. this is why, and even more so, personal style has become obso-
lete in new music. new music is not a style, at best it is a method that does not have
‘problems of translation’ that can be applied to all styles in the world (very much in
contrast to what is taken for granted about an epoch or a geographic region).
166 m. spahlinger
new music’s method of self-questioning can be applied to every music. it has been
practised for the past 100 years. that should be long enough to allow the understanding
that the radical self-questioning of one’s own cultural evolution must be included if
one wants to—in the political sense, a-politically—make strangers or enemies into
friends.
Translated by Alistair Zaldua

disclosure statement
no potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
notes
[1] in german there are two words for ‘reality’: realität (the objective world independent of con-
sciousness, whatever that could be), and wirklichkeit (the reality of consciousness). the latter
sense is intended here.
[2] in reality, as understood by wirklichkeit, appearance (schein) and being (sein) are inseparable:
the negative is the opposite of itself, and remains in motion.
references
adorno, t. (1966). negative dialectics. (d. redmond, trans.) [adobe digital editions version]. retrieved
from http://members.efn.org/~dredmond/ndtrans.html (accessed 30 june 2015).
heisenberg, w. (1969). der teil und das ganze. munich, zürich: piper.
liebrucks, b. (1964). sprache und bewusstsein (vol. 1). frankfurt am main: akademische
verlagsgesellschaft.
liebrucks, b. (1966). sprache und bewusstsein (vol. 3). frankfurt am main: akademische
verlagsgesellschaft.
marx, k., & engels, f. (1983). werke (vol. 3). berlin: dietz verlag.
schmidt, c. (2007). the concept of the political. chicago, il: university of chicago press.
schoenberg, a. (1976). stil und gedanke (vol. 1). frankfurt am main: s. fischer verlag.
spahlinger, m. (1975a). morendo. berlin: peer verlag.
spahlinger, m. (1975b). vier stücke. berlin: peer verlag.
spahlinger, m. (1995). gegen unendlich. berlin: peer verlag.
spahlinger, m. (1998). akt, eine treppe herabsteigen. berlin: peer verlag.
spahlinger, m. (2005). farben der frühe. berlin: peer verlag.
spahlinger, m. (2009). doppelt bejaht, etüden für orchester. berlin: self-published.
tucholsky, m. (1975). gesammelte werke (vol. 8). reinbek bei hamburg: rowohlt.
zimmerman, w. (1971). beginner’s mind. berlin: self-published.

Contemporary Music Review 2015 - Political Implications of The Material of New Music

Transféré par

Informations du document

Titre original

Copyright

Formats disponibles

Partager ce document

Partager ou intégrer le document

Options de partage

Avez-vous trouvé ce document utile ?

Ce contenu est-il inapproprié ?

Droits d'auteur :

Formats disponibles

Contemporary Music Review 2015 - Political Implications of The Material of New Music

Transféré par

Droits d'auteur :

Formats disponibles

Contemporary Music Review

ISSN: 0749-4467 (Print) 1477-2256 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/gcmr20

political implications of the material of new music

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07494467.2015.1094212

Published online: 28 Oct 2015.

Submit your article to this journal

Article views: 259

View related articles

View Crossmark data

Citing articles: 2 View citing articles

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at

political implications of the material of

external content/subject: music with text, plot, or programme.

means of production and distribution: free art or dependent work.

if one truly desired to break new ground, it would emerge

© 2015 Taylor & Francis

figure 2. examples of: division, dramaturgy, proportion, processuality.

the direction of the sequence.

tonal and atonal chords

figure 3. tonal and atonal chords.

figure 4. farben der frühe (spahlinger, 2005), measures 1–8, movement 2.

figure 5. developing variation.

figure 6. (a) gegen unendlich, p. 7. (b) gegen unendlich, p. 8.

figure 7. gegen unendlich, p. 9.

figure 8. (a) gegen unendlich, p. 18. (b) gegen unendlich, p. 19.

figure 9. gegen unendlich; graphic sketch showing six-lined stave.

figure 10. gegen unendlich, pre-compositional sketch.

everything that was regarded as reasonable is simultaneously experienced as both too

to pass through and more threatening.

figure 13. und als wir, gradation of depth.

figure 15. und als wir.

figure 18. und als wir.

the stock market.

i once named this phenomenon irreducible not-gestalts (irreduzible nicht-gestalten).

subdominant—dominant 4th + 6th, dominant 7th, tonic

figure 19. pre-compositional sketch showing irreducible characters.

figure 20. transitions, processes.

figure 23. doppelt bejaht: 04. field of points.

figure 24. doppelt bejaht: 05. infinitely many tempi.

figure 25. doppelt bejaht: 17. point never meets motion.

figure 26. doppelt bejaht: 15. ritardando moltissimo.

figure 28. doppelt bejaht: branching and infinite number of tempi.

figure 29. doppelt bejaht: branching and … .

figure 30. glissandi and chords.

figure 31. competing orders.

Translated by Alistair Zaldua

Vous aimerez peut-être aussi