List of Publications by Christian Utz
Books (full text) by Christian Utz
Studien und Materialien zur Musikwissenschaft 125, Sep 1, 2023
This book tries to produce an understanding of “music as an art of perception” (Helmut Lachenmann... more This book tries to produce an understanding of “music as an art of perception” (Helmut Lachenmann) – which is becoming increasingly important in the music of the 20th and 21st centuries – in a way that is fruitful for musicology: the intertwined concepts of performative analysis and performative listening move perception processes into the centre of musicological methodology. On the one hand, Christian Utz embeds the central position of sound, time, and space in new music since 1900 in broad music-historical and music-aesthetic discourses, on the other hand, he understands sounding materiality as the starting point for listening-based analytical research, grounded in the principle of musical morphosyntax. As a performative activity, the perception of post-tonal music can be shaped in a variety of ways through the experiences of everyday auditory perception and musical listening and is characterized by an interweaving of morphological and metaphorical layers. The analyses reveal new perspectives on a broad spectrum of post-tonal instrumental music by Arnold Schoenberg, Edgard Varèse, Giacinto Scelsi, Bernd Alois Zimmermann, György Ligeti, Pierre Boulez, Morton Feldman, György Kurtág, Helmut Lachenmann, Brian Ferneyhough, Gérard Grisey, Salvatore Sciarrino, and Isabel Mundry.
Since the early transformation of European music practice and theory in the cultural centers of A... more Since the early transformation of European music practice and theory in the cultural centers of Asia, Latin America, and Africa around 1900, it has become necessary for music history to be conceived globally – a challenge that musicology has hardly faced yet. This book discusses the effects of cultural globalization on processes of composition and distribution of art music in the 20th and 21st century. Christian Utz provides the foundations of a global music historiography, building on new models such as transnationalism, entangled histories, and reflexive globalization. The relationship between music and broader changes in society forms the central focus and is treated as a pivotal music-historical dynamic.
In the 1990’s interculturality became a main issue of new music. This study provides detailed ana... more In the 1990’s interculturality became a main issue of new music. This study provides detailed analyses of East-Asian and Western composers’ intercultural concepts in their historical context. It also emphasizes social and political implications and the continuity of stereotypes and spheres of power dating back to colonialism and exoticism. After introducing leading composers of both cultural spheres since 1950, the focus is on the Chinese-American composer Tan Dun whose music aptly shows the potential of intercultural processes for musical creativity. The first in-depth analytical study of Tan's works is provided here.
Contents:
Intercultural reception within compositional processes — Western music on East-Asia since 1950: Dialogue or monologue? (Cage, Britten, Stockhausen, Kagel et al.) — East-Asian music since 1950: Between adaptation and difference (Yun Isang, Chou Wen-Chung, Takemitsu Toru et al.) — Tan Dun 1957-1996: Cultural polyvalence
Im folgenden wollen wir versuchen, auf der Basis der im 1. Kapitel gewonnenen Erkenntnisse konkre... more Im folgenden wollen wir versuchen, auf der Basis der im 1. Kapitel gewonnenen Erkenntnisse konkrete kompositorische Ansätze zu beschreiben, in denen sich bei westlichen (Il) und ostasiatischen (IIl, IV) Komponisten Prozesse der interkulturel-len Rezeption niederschlagen. Die Beschreibung der Rezeptionsprozesse basiert im wesentlichen auf bereits publizierten Untersuchungen und wird mit Hilfe unserer Rezeptionskategorien systematisiert. Es wird dabei unmöglich sein, jedes Detail der Rezeptionsvorgänge auf all seine Implikationen hin zu untersuchen. So wird insbe-sondere die Frage, wie die vom Komponisten konstruierten Traditionsbezüge sich zu historisch-musikethnologischen Fakten verhalten, hier oftmals noch keine befrie-digende Antwort finden können. Eine solche bedingt eine umfassendere Betrachtung eines kompositorischen Ansatzes, wie wir sie im IV. Kapitel anhand Tan Duns Mu-sik bieten werden. Die Auswahl der ausführlicher untersuchten westlichen Komponisten orientiert sich zum einen an den unterschiedlichen Grundhaltungen, mit denen so ein breites Spektrum absteckt werden kann. Zum anderen war die Breitenwirkung und der Ein-fluss, den die Komponisten ausgeübt haben, zu berücksichtigen. Deshalb sind mit Cage, Britten, Stockhausen und Kagel vier "Klassiker" des 20. Jahrhunderts ins Vi-sier genommen, während im fünften Teil Tendenzen der näheren Gegenwart zusam-meneef.(lsst (iarr;estellt sind. Dennoch ist es nicht zu vermeiden, dass unsere Auswahl lückenhaft bleibt. Der Grund für diese Begrenzung liegt darin, dass hier keine historisch oder regional lü-ckenlose Darstellung angestrebt ist, sondern lediglich ein Nachzeichnen einiger Haupttendenzen, die es uns danach erlauben, die neue Musik Ostasiens und insbe-sondere die genauer betrachtete Musik Tan Duns in einem historisch-geografischen Kontext zu sehen. Immerhin soll der abschließende Abschnitt dieses Teils in einer Art Querschnitt auch einige Grundhaltungen andeuten, die in den vier monografi-schen Teilen nicht vorkommen. Die historischen Voraussetzungen der Komponisten in den 1950er Jahren wur-den oben mit den Ausführungen zum naiven und intuitiven Exotismus bereits aus-führlicher behandelt (1.3.1., I.3.4). Seit den 1950er Jahren ändern sich einige Vor-aussetzungen interkultureller Rezeption grundlegend, während andererseits zweifellos Konstanten zu erkennen sind. Der Zweite Weltkrieg führt einerseits zu einem neuen Bewusstsein globaler Interdependenzen. Ob sich die Mechanismen des interkulturellen Rezipierens allerdings dadurch grundsätzlich ändern, muss die De-tailanalyse zeigen. Moden, neo-religiöse und spirituelle Strömungen, New Age, Eso-terik, Personen-und Gurukulte, das Schlagwort der Weltmusik oder Ethno-Pop ste-hen insgesamt eher fur eine instrumentalisierende Vereinnahrnung des Fremden oft unter pragmatischen, zweckdienlichen oder kommerziellen Gesichtspunkten. Sie offenbaren andererseits aber auch einen fortbestehenden massiven Zweifel des Wes-tens an seinen eigenen spirituellen und kulturellen Grundlagen und ein Bedürfnis nach kultureller Kontexterweiterung. In diesem Spannungsfeld sind die im folgen-den dargestellten Beiträge westlicher Komponisten zu verstehen.
Die in diesem Kapitel behandelten historischen und analytischen Aspekte der neuen Musik Ostasiens... more Die in diesem Kapitel behandelten historischen und analytischen Aspekte der neuen Musik Ostasiens sind analog zum 11. Kapitel zunächst auf einige Hauptakteure der älteren Generation ostasiatischer Komponisten zentriert (2.-5.) bevor am Ende kurz einige Tendenzen der näheren Gegenwart zusammengefasst sind (6.). Im Gegensatz zu den teils detaillierten Analysen des vorangegangenen Kapitels werden wir uns dabei auf das Nachzeichnen wesentlicher Grundzüge beschränken, da hier in erster Linie eine Ausgangsbasis und ein historisch-kultureller Kontext rur die genaue Be-trachtung der Musik Tan Duns im IV. Kapitel geschaffen werden solL Es wird dabei zunächst notwendig sein, die rur die Musikgeschichte Japans, Chinas und Koreas im 20. Jahrhundert relevanten zeitgeschichtlichen Fakten und Strömungen zu skizzieren (1.), so dass historische und soziokulturelle Implikationen des Komponierens von Yun Isang (2.), Chou Wen-Chung (3.), und Takemitsu Törn (4.) ersichtlich werden können. Die Haltung dieser Komponisten gegenüber unse-rem Hauptuntersuchungsfeld, der interkulturellen Rezeption, wird dann durch eine Darstellung einiger Hauptwerke und von Äußerungen der Komponisten eingekreist, wobei nach einer Zusammenfassung (5.) anschließend auch verwandte und konträre Haltungen einiger Vertreter der jüngeren Generation skizziert werden (6.). Dies wird eine direkte Überleitung zum folgenden Kapitel (IV.) erlauben, in dem mit Tan Dun ein Hauptvertreter dieser Generation ausfuhrlich diskutiert wird. Dieses IIL Kapitel soll der Frage nachgehen, inwieweit die Komponisten Ost-asiens in ihrer Verbindung von westlicher und ostasiatischer (Musik-)Tradition Er-gebnisse hervorbringen, die sich wesentlich von den im IL Kapitel analysierten un-terscheiden. Anders gefragt: Überwiegt die Angleichung an westliche musikalische Modelle und Konventionen oder ruhrt der kulturelle Hintergrund der Komponisten zu einer Art der Rezeption, die ihre kulturelle Differenz erfolgreich artikuliert, die möglicherweise sogar versucht, bewusst einen Gegendiskurs zu Hauptströmungen
PETAL-Project - 2017-2020 by Christian Utz
Musik im Zusammenhang. Festschrift Peter Revers zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. by Klaus Aringer, Christian Utz und Thomas Wozonig, Vienna: Hollitzer 2019 , 2019
Insgesamt 152 Gesamteinspielungen von Gustav Mahlers „Lied von der Erde“ (Stand 2018) durch 98 ve... more Insgesamt 152 Gesamteinspielungen von Gustav Mahlers „Lied von der Erde“ (Stand 2018) durch 98 verschiedene Dirigenten erlauben einen äußerst differenzierten Blick auf die Interpretationsgeschichte dieses Werkes. Diesem Beitrag liegt eine quantitative Auswertung von insgesamt 96 Aufnahmen (Zeitraum 1936–2016) zugrunde, von denen 52 eingehender in Bezug auf die Interpretation der Form des gewichtigen Finalsatzes „Der Abschied“ betrachtet werden. Die Aufnahmen werden ausgehend von einer narrativen Analyse der Form des Satzes, die das Modell der „rotational form“ (Hepokoski/Darcy 2006) zugrunde legt und erweitert, zunächst im Sinne eines ‚distant listening‘ (Cook 2013) in Hinblick auf die Stellung des Finales innerhalb des Gesamtzyklus interpretiert. Die daraus abgeleiteten Modelle zyklischer Gesamtdramaturgie (Rahmenform, Finalform, anti-teleologische Konzepte, Mischformen) werden dann in einem zweiten Schritt in einer Betrachtung der ‚interpretierten Form‘ des Schlusssatzes vertieft. Anhand qualitativer Beobachtungen zu ausgewählten Interpretationen (u. a. Walter 1936, Klemperer 1966, Bernstein 1966, Horenstein 1972, Karajan 1974, Gielen 2002) werden vor dem Hintergrund des Korpus zwei gegensätzliche Dramaturgien unterschieden: Eine hält die gewählten Tempi zumindest innerhalb der einzelnen Formcharaktere (Rezitativ, Trauermarsch, Lied, „Arie“), ggf. aber auch über den gesamten Satz hinweg, verhältnismäßig stabil und vermittelt so den Eindruck eines als Referenz dienenden Haupttempos, die andere inszeniert bewusst Kontraste zwischen den und innnerhalb der Tempoebenen und zielt so auf eine formale Profilierung der komponierten Zeit. Auf dieser Basis plädiert der Beitrag für eine differenzierte historisch-analytische Einordnung einzelner Interpretationskonzepte jenseits etablierter Kategorien wie „espressivo“ oder „neusachlich“.
Musik im Zusammenhang. Festschrift Peter Revers zum 65. Geburtstag, hrsg. von Klaus Aringer, Christian Utz und Thomas Wozonig, Wien: Hollitzer 2019, 2019
Tables and diagrams pertaining to the article "Form und Sinn in Gustav Mahlers Abschied" (2019)
The challenge of reconstructing Gustav Mahlerʼs aesthetics and style of performance, which incorp... more The challenge of reconstructing Gustav Mahlerʼs aesthetics and style of performance, which incorporated expressive and structuralist principles, as well as problematic implications of a post-Mahlerian structuralist performance style (most prominently developed by the Schoenberg School) are taken in this article as the background for a discussion of the performance history of Mahlerʼs Lied von der Erde with the aim of probing the model of “performance as analysis in real time” (Robert Hill). Following a method proposed by Nicholas Cook, the article interrelates quantitative tempo analyses of recorded performances (“distant listening”) and analytical observations of musical details in individual interpretations (“close listening”) in order to explore the broad field of performance strategies that Mahlerʼs music affords. Different options for taking tempo and sound dramaturgy as a means of structuring the formal process in performance in 23 recordings of the Liedʼs first movement bring out different facets of its multivalent structure between strophic lied and rotational symphonic sonata, between architectonic and processual form. An outlook on the performance dramaturgies of the entire six-movement cycle, based on quantitative data from 92 recordings as well as on a close listening to a key section from the finale, demonstrates contrary concepts of performed form that particularly concern the proportional weight and significance of the finale: performances of Der Abschied conceptualize it either as a unique, “disproportional” telos of the cyclic formal process, optionally enhancing its fragmentary character, or as a balanced counterpart to the first and second movements, amplifying the symphonic framing of the cycle. Although the technique of using tempo as a means of “formal analysis in real time” may plausibly be traced back to Mahlerʼs own interpretative practice, “authentic” and “inauthentic” readings of Mahlerʼs Lied cannot ultimately be neatly segregated from one another.
Composed, Interpreted and Perceived Time: The Integration of Temporal Structures into a Performat... more Composed, Interpreted and Perceived Time: The Integration of Temporal Structures into a Performative Analysis – a Discussion with Reference to J. S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations – Recent developments in interpretation research and performance studies have raised doubts as to whether musical performances genuinely, as often claimed, underline ›structural‹ properties of musical works. Rather, spontaneous, unorthodox ways of treating tempo and dynamics – ›accents pathétiques‹ (Mathis Lussy) – are used to establish relationships that a conventional score analysis can barely pick up or dictate. Against this background, the present essay attempts to grasp Variation 21 from Bach’s Goldberg Variations and its position within the overall temporal framework by means of a ›performative analysis‹ integrating structure-, interpretation- and reception-analytical aspects, and on the basis of a categorial model of temporal perception in music (›spatialized time‹, ›transformative time‹, ›presentist time‹). Here Robert Hill’s idea of performance as ›formal analysis in real time‹ acts as the starting-point for detailed analytical observations on micro- and macro-form amid the tensions of interpretation history. What transpires, especially in the comparison of different tempo dispositions for the entire cycle, is a tension between architectural coherence and a discontinuity in which spatialized time is broken through in the direction of presentist time, or allows itself to be carried along in the mobility of transformative time.
The tension between a realtime-oriented conception of music as a flow of emphemeral sounds or eve... more The tension between a realtime-oriented conception of music as a flow of emphemeral sounds or events, closely associated with the organicist metaphor, and a spatial or architectonic conception of musical relationships, emerging from the centuries-old “frozen architecture” metaphor, lies at the heart of the theory and analysis of musical form from its beginnings as an academic discipline in the mid-nineteenth century. Revisiting the controversial debate in historical music theories (Marx, Riemann, Schenker, Schoenberg, Kurth et al.) up to the “spatial turn” in new music aesthetics, the present essay argues for a close interdependency of spatial and temporal aspects in the analysis of musical form. Based on a perception- and performance-sensitive analytical approach, three main case studies from different epochs (Guillaume Dufay’s motet Nuper rosarum flores, Joseph Haydn’s symphonies Hob. I: 55, 86 and 91 and Edgard Varèse’s Arcana for orchestra) demonstrate the continuous impact and relevance of quasi-spatial “markers” in time as crucial aspects of a conception and perception of form while revealing evident transformational and processual qualities. By connecting these dimensions of formal “time-space” with historical discourses and contexts, the analyses aim at a convergence of speculative compositional practice and historically informed aesthetic experience.
The present article aims to develop an approach to musical meaning that integrates performative d... more The present article aims to develop an approach to musical meaning that integrates performative dimensions systematically into a broadened concept of analysis, connecting particularly to recent research into the temporal qualities of musical perception. Taking three key works from the solo cello repertoire of the 1960s and ’70s – Helmut Lachenmann's Pression, Iannis Xenakis's Nomos Alpha and Brian Ferneyhough's Time and Motion Study II – as a basic corpus of study, this ‘morphosyntactic’ view of sound structure is complemented with a comparison of different recordings of these three works by interpreting software-based collections of data of timing and tempo as well as close listening, in addition to documentation of the composers’ and performers’ conceptions of time and tempo. The analyses propose an interaction of three different categories of form-building time-space concepts that are deeply embedded in the history of music theory and aesthetics: ‘spatial time’, ‘processual time’ and ‘presentist time’. Performers may shift between or merge these three archetypes by varying temporal and dynamic consistency or contrast, among other means. The performance-related data are compared with the perspectives of performers and composers, corroborating the space of ‘informed intuition’ even in the performance of these very prescriptively notated scores and demonstrating on multiple levels the continuous impact of ‘rhetorical’ performance traditions (despite or within their compositional deconstruction) in the music of the postwar and contemporary avant-garde.
CTPSO-Project - 2012-2014 by Christian Utz
Project duration: March 1, 2012 - December 31, 2014
Supported by the Austrian Science Fund (FW... more Project duration: March 1, 2012 - December 31, 2014
Supported by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF)
The research undertaken in this project provides material for a theory of post-tonal art music of the 20th and 21st century. We understand ‘post-tonal music’ as newly composed music that is no longer based entirely on harmonic tonality, a system which dominated Western art music between c. 1700 and 1910. We proceed from the assumption that the perception of post-tonal music is generally informed by both our experience of tonal listening and by our everyday auditive experience. Methods applied during the research included perception-informed score analysis, sketch studies, comparison of performances, sound spectrum analysis, explorative listening experiments as well as the integration of historico-cultural and music-psychological research. Our studies proceeded from the key concepts ‘organization of sound’ and ‘context sensitivity’: An organization of sound during the act of perception, understood as a broad field of possibilities, corresponding or non-corresponding to a composer’s intentions, may be correlated to the diverse intra-musical contexts in which one sound can be placed within a single work, or to the different strategies and emphases implied in diverse performances or recordings of a musical text. The analyses integrate numerous further aspects such as historical discourses on the experience of sound and time since the late 18th century (attempts at an emancipation of sound from musical structures or of the moment from a temporal architecture etc.).
The research into a very broad repertoire of art music since 1910 up to the present resulted in the key thesis that the perception of post-tonal music may be understood as a performative phenomenon which is manifoldly shapeable. Such ‘performative listening’ can be understood as a conscious or unconscious oscillation between different perceptual interpretations of the same sound-time phe-nomenon, interpretations which can be explicated by ‘performative analysis’. Complex structures and the ‘sabotage’ of conventional sound-time dramaturgies, which frequently occur in post-tonal music, may particularly direct perception to elementary processes such as the formation of gestalts and contours, streaming (the segregation of sound layers or lines), segmentation of the sound-time process by the formation of cues etc. – concepts proposed by experimentally grounded research into musical perception (A. Bregman, I. Déliège et al). By establishing such concepts, composers often aim at a self-reflexive form of »perception perceiving itself« (Helmut Lachenmann).
In sum, the materials drawn together in this project may be understood as a necessary corrective to persistent author-centric models in studies of 20th-century music. A critical assessment and continuous interaction between author-based and reception-based perspectives, however, remains its fundamental principle.
in: Kürzen. Gedenkschrift Manfred Angerer, edited by Wolfgang Fuhrmann, Ioana Geanta, Markus Grassl and Dominik Šedivý, 505–531, 2016
Im 20. Jahrhundert wird vor dem Hintergrund der ästhetischen Moderne eine umfassende "Emanzipatio... more Im 20. Jahrhundert wird vor dem Hintergrund der ästhetischen Moderne eine umfassende "Emanzipation" von Klang und Zeit in der Musik projektiert. Dabei ist deutlich, dass eine "Befreiung" des Klangs von etablierten Klangbeziehungen bzw. von jeglicher metaphorischer Kausalität eng verbunden ist mit einer "Befreiung" der Zeit von "chronometrisch" organisierten oder dramaturgisch ausgestalteten Zeit-Konzepten. Bernd Alois Zimmermann hat mit seinen Überlegungen und Werkkonzepten eine Spielart dieser Tendenz hervorgebracht. Das im Spätwerk Zimmermanns in diesem Zusammenhang entwickelte Konzept der "Zeitdehnung" wird in einen breiteren Kontext gestellt mit anderen kompositorischen Ausprägungen von "Präsenzästhetik" in der Musik nach 1945. Dabei wird das Modell eines "Präsenzhörens" einer Prüfung unterzogen. Analytische Grundlage ist dabei ein vom Autor entwickeltes morphosyntaktisches Analysekonzept, das von psychologischen und ideengeschichtlichen Schichten der Musikwahrnehmung ausgeht und dabei auf Zusammenhänge zwischen temporalisierten Klangstrukturen und meraphorsicher Bedeutung zielt.
Musiktheorie und Improvisation. Kongressbericht der IX. Jahrestagung der Gesellschaft für Musiktheorie, 2009, edited by Jürgen Blume and Konrad Georgi, 564–596, 2015
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List of Publications by Christian Utz
Books (full text) by Christian Utz
Contents:
Intercultural reception within compositional processes — Western music on East-Asia since 1950: Dialogue or monologue? (Cage, Britten, Stockhausen, Kagel et al.) — East-Asian music since 1950: Between adaptation and difference (Yun Isang, Chou Wen-Chung, Takemitsu Toru et al.) — Tan Dun 1957-1996: Cultural polyvalence
PETAL-Project - 2017-2020 by Christian Utz
CTPSO-Project - 2012-2014 by Christian Utz
Supported by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF)
The research undertaken in this project provides material for a theory of post-tonal art music of the 20th and 21st century. We understand ‘post-tonal music’ as newly composed music that is no longer based entirely on harmonic tonality, a system which dominated Western art music between c. 1700 and 1910. We proceed from the assumption that the perception of post-tonal music is generally informed by both our experience of tonal listening and by our everyday auditive experience. Methods applied during the research included perception-informed score analysis, sketch studies, comparison of performances, sound spectrum analysis, explorative listening experiments as well as the integration of historico-cultural and music-psychological research. Our studies proceeded from the key concepts ‘organization of sound’ and ‘context sensitivity’: An organization of sound during the act of perception, understood as a broad field of possibilities, corresponding or non-corresponding to a composer’s intentions, may be correlated to the diverse intra-musical contexts in which one sound can be placed within a single work, or to the different strategies and emphases implied in diverse performances or recordings of a musical text. The analyses integrate numerous further aspects such as historical discourses on the experience of sound and time since the late 18th century (attempts at an emancipation of sound from musical structures or of the moment from a temporal architecture etc.).
The research into a very broad repertoire of art music since 1910 up to the present resulted in the key thesis that the perception of post-tonal music may be understood as a performative phenomenon which is manifoldly shapeable. Such ‘performative listening’ can be understood as a conscious or unconscious oscillation between different perceptual interpretations of the same sound-time phe-nomenon, interpretations which can be explicated by ‘performative analysis’. Complex structures and the ‘sabotage’ of conventional sound-time dramaturgies, which frequently occur in post-tonal music, may particularly direct perception to elementary processes such as the formation of gestalts and contours, streaming (the segregation of sound layers or lines), segmentation of the sound-time process by the formation of cues etc. – concepts proposed by experimentally grounded research into musical perception (A. Bregman, I. Déliège et al). By establishing such concepts, composers often aim at a self-reflexive form of »perception perceiving itself« (Helmut Lachenmann).
In sum, the materials drawn together in this project may be understood as a necessary corrective to persistent author-centric models in studies of 20th-century music. A critical assessment and continuous interaction between author-based and reception-based perspectives, however, remains its fundamental principle.
Contents:
Intercultural reception within compositional processes — Western music on East-Asia since 1950: Dialogue or monologue? (Cage, Britten, Stockhausen, Kagel et al.) — East-Asian music since 1950: Between adaptation and difference (Yun Isang, Chou Wen-Chung, Takemitsu Toru et al.) — Tan Dun 1957-1996: Cultural polyvalence
Supported by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF)
The research undertaken in this project provides material for a theory of post-tonal art music of the 20th and 21st century. We understand ‘post-tonal music’ as newly composed music that is no longer based entirely on harmonic tonality, a system which dominated Western art music between c. 1700 and 1910. We proceed from the assumption that the perception of post-tonal music is generally informed by both our experience of tonal listening and by our everyday auditive experience. Methods applied during the research included perception-informed score analysis, sketch studies, comparison of performances, sound spectrum analysis, explorative listening experiments as well as the integration of historico-cultural and music-psychological research. Our studies proceeded from the key concepts ‘organization of sound’ and ‘context sensitivity’: An organization of sound during the act of perception, understood as a broad field of possibilities, corresponding or non-corresponding to a composer’s intentions, may be correlated to the diverse intra-musical contexts in which one sound can be placed within a single work, or to the different strategies and emphases implied in diverse performances or recordings of a musical text. The analyses integrate numerous further aspects such as historical discourses on the experience of sound and time since the late 18th century (attempts at an emancipation of sound from musical structures or of the moment from a temporal architecture etc.).
The research into a very broad repertoire of art music since 1910 up to the present resulted in the key thesis that the perception of post-tonal music may be understood as a performative phenomenon which is manifoldly shapeable. Such ‘performative listening’ can be understood as a conscious or unconscious oscillation between different perceptual interpretations of the same sound-time phe-nomenon, interpretations which can be explicated by ‘performative analysis’. Complex structures and the ‘sabotage’ of conventional sound-time dramaturgies, which frequently occur in post-tonal music, may particularly direct perception to elementary processes such as the formation of gestalts and contours, streaming (the segregation of sound layers or lines), segmentation of the sound-time process by the formation of cues etc. – concepts proposed by experimentally grounded research into musical perception (A. Bregman, I. Déliège et al). By establishing such concepts, composers often aim at a self-reflexive form of »perception perceiving itself« (Helmut Lachenmann).
In sum, the materials drawn together in this project may be understood as a necessary corrective to persistent author-centric models in studies of 20th-century music. A critical assessment and continuous interaction between author-based and reception-based perspectives, however, remains its fundamental principle.
From this analytical sketch emerges a provisional threefold definition of sound which tentatively suggests (1) that the term includes the entire spectrum between isolated sine waves and unpitched noises of maximal spectral complexity, (2) that there is no viable distinction between musical and non-musical sounds as it is not the property of an acoustic event, but only our interpretation of it that makes it part of a »musical« or »non-musical« context, and (3) that, consequently, our perception has the capacity to »organize« any acoustic event into a »sound«.
Such a »liberal« and context-oriented definition motivates a historical review of the concept of sound and related perception theories since the late eighteenth century. Sound has been a prominent »Other« in nineteenth-century music theory and aesthetics, disciplined mainly by »form«, »structure«, or »logic«, supported by eye- and architecture-related metaphorical language. An early emancipation of sound, in contrast, was articulated through ear- and »wave«- or »stream«-related metaphors that profoundly influenced modernist music aesthetics (Herder, Richard Wagner). Facets of this discourse can be traced to the association of sound with the world of the unconscious and suppressed emotions as well as the discussion about the concealment or disclosure of a sound’s source. This debate expanded well into the later twentieth century including criticism of Wagner’s »objective sound« (Adorno), theories of »acousmatic listening« (Schaeffer, Scruton), »musique concrète instrumentale« (Lachenmann), and the twofold model of »hearing-in« (Hamilton).
Music theory has yet to cope with the emancipation of sound as a primary category in the twentieth century as it was, and in part still is, limited by the persistence of a hierarchical »surface-depth metaphor« that places (sub-)structural relationships above »surface events«. The morphosyntactic analytical methodology, developed as part of the research project A Context-Sensitive Theory of Post-Tonal Sound Organization (University of Music and Performing Arts Graz, 2012–2014), in contrast, aims to place a bodily-perceptual experience of sound events at the centre of analytical attention, based on three principal preliminaries: (1) the theory assigns a prominent role to the interaction of morphological (Gestalt-oriented) and syntactic (time-oriented) perceptual processes based on syntactic archetypes (tension/release, call/response, presence etc.); (2) it does not idealize a particular listening strategy, but aims at a multiplicity of perception modes that provide the basis for »performative listening«; (3) it understands musical perception as an interaction of cognitive factors and social construction with a particular focus on the relevance of everyday perception.
A concluding analytical sketch aims to demonstrate the interaction of the archetypes »tension/release« and »presence«. A short morphosyntactic analysis of the third movement from Giacinto Scelsi’s I Presagi (1958) demonstrates how the »flat«, non-hierarchical absence of a conventional »event structure«, provoking the perception of a timeless presence of sound, is juxtaposed with a breath-like, ritualistic phrase arching, suggesting a contemplative experience of sound transformed in time. »Performative listening« might be defined as a mode of perception that (consciously or intuitively) oscillates between such juxtaposed archetypes, allowing for an integration of a broad spectrum of meanings, associations, and emotions.
The present essay aims to develop a perception-based, anti-essentialist theory of musical syntax, reacting to Albrecht Wellmer’s discussion of the syntax concept in music. Three aspects challenge the idea of a generalized syntax of music, in particular of post-tonal music: (1) The innovations of twentieth-century music have sensitised us to the contingency of musical progressions to the point where any two subsequent sound events can be perceived as syntactically meaningful. (2) Serial music and John Cage’s aesthetics have placed a dissolution of any pre-conceived kind of coherence at the centre of their attention, resulting in an emancipation of sound and musical presence from syntactic process. (3) The high degree of diversification of musical styles seems to undermine the idea of generalisable syntactic principles.
In response to this bold challenge of the syntax concept, the morphosyntactic model of musical syntax discussed here elaborates ideas from Albert Bergman’s »auditory scene analysis« and traces music-syntactic experience back to elemen-tary perception modes in everyday life, namely causal or categorical contiguity, equivalence, and similarity between sound events. These modes constantly switch between metaphorical and sensual-sonorous fields of auditory experience, a tension that is also traced in a number of musical examples. Although the three excerpts from works by Johann Sebastian Bach, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Arnold Schönberg share a common contrapuntal-harmonic model or schema (the »secunda syncopata«), interactions between relationships of contiguity and similarity, and a medium-scale tonic-dominant relationship, their enactment as represented by salient »surface« events is highly idiosyncratic and essential to the experience of syntax. In turn, three examples from post-tonal music (Schönberg: Piano Piece op. 11,3, Pierre Boulez: Structures Ia, Brian Ferney¬hough: Funérailles) demonstrate an increasing emancipation from tonal phrase structure and harmonic centrism, but nonetheless retain or even gain morphological profile through their reinventions of musical structure. Contour- and gestalt-based analyses make it clear that a morphosyntactically oriented perception of such works does manifoldly connect to elementary modes of everyday and tonal listening, suggesting a new model of post-tonal listening that ultimately frees itself from an author- and analysis-centred structuralist approach.
Isabel Mundry’s music intends to relate to experiences of daily life and to produce referentiality with-out resorting to conventional musical gestures, figures or topics. In her work Ich und Du (2008) solo piano and orchestra go through several stages of an ambiguous identity discourse informed by the 1932-essay Watashi to nanji (I and You) of Japanese philosopher Kitarō Nishida. The personification and semantization of musical structures implied by this reference has gained significant prominence in new music discourse since the 1970s, predated by Olivier Messiaen’s personnages rhythmiques-metaphor and Theodor W. Adorno’s process-oriented interpretation of Mahler’s musical ‘characters’. This tendency reflects an increasing awareness of the necessity to reach beyond the non-referential and techno-essentialist paradigm of serialism.
A detailed morpho-syntactical analysis of Mundry’s work reveals the destabilization of sonic identities as a principal compositional means subverting the perception of complex sequences or juxtapositions of individual, distinguishable, ‘bodily’ Gestalten (emerging from three basic topics: attack, proliferation and resonance) to a ‘global’ perception. Piano and orchestra are mediated by diverse ‘chimeric assignments’ (Albert Bregman) and tilting movements between structure sound and texture sound (Helmut Lachenmann) resulting in a music-specific mode of narrativity. This compositional design together with the identity discourse suggested by the Nishida-reference of Mundry’s title are successfully evoking a polyvalent situation while avoiding a denotative coherence of musical meaning. By reflecting the instability and connectivity of identity concepts in today’s multiply stratified and fragmented societies, 'Ich und Du' exemplifies an utopia of art music’s social interaction and worldly experience.
Die Ausgabe 14/1 der ZGMTH macht den Versuch, dieses Spannungsfeld von Seiten der Musiktheorie auszuloten, wobei jeweils zwei Autoren dasselbe oder zumindest vergleichbares Repertoire aus unterschiedlichen Perspektiven bearbeiten, mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Relevanz der Forschungsergebnisse in Bezug auf die Aufführung und Interpretation. Wie bei dieser Thematik besonders naheliegend, werden die neuen multimedialen Möglichkeiten der Online-Ausgabe durch die Integration von Video- und Audiobeispielen von allen Autoren genutzt.
Keywords: Wolfgang Fraenkel (1897 - 1983); Exile Shanghai; Twelve-Tone Technique in Asia; Sang Tong (b. 1923); Shanghai Conservatory of Music; Shanghai Municipal Orchestra; Mario Paci; Konoe Hidemaro (1898 - 1973); Julius Schloß; Karl Steiner; Ding Shande; Vinzenz Hundhausen (1878 - 1955); Musical Modernism in China
JSTOR: http://www.jstor.org/pss/20184469
Solche Vereinfachungen kennzeichnen auch die Symphony 1997 des bekannten chinesischen Komponisten Tan Dun (geb. 1957). Dieser Symphonie wird Tans szenisches Werk Nine Songs (1989) gegenüber gestellt, das durch einen Rückgriff auf die Rituale der archaischen Chu-Kultur ein Gegenmodell sowohl zur offiziellen chinesischen Nationalsymbolik als auch zu den bestimmenden Diskursen westlicher Kultur entwirft. Wie Tan Dun so arbeitet auch Guo Wenjing (geb. 1956) in seiner zweiten Oper Night Banquet (1998) mit einer raffiniert gebrochenen Art von tendenziell essentialisierter chinesischer Musiktradition, u.a. durch die Verwendung von "schein-authentischem" Material.
Schließlich wird auf die große Bedeutung des kulturellen Essentialismus im modernen Japan hingewiesen, der japanische Komponisten vor die schwierige Aufgabe stellt, sich im Spannungsfeld von radikaler Verwestlichung und japanischer Kulturideologie zu positionieren. Bemerkenswerte Ergebnisse liefern dabei z.B. Hosokawa Toshio (geb. 1955), dessen Musik diese Gegensätze eher synthetisierend versöhnt, und Takahashi Yûji (geb. 1938), der mit sehr originellen Konzepten beide Traditionen dekonstruiert und sich so eine kritische Distanz verschafft. Im Zeitalter einer zunehmenden Rekontextualisierung und damit Entschärfung solcher Kritik im Rahmen der globalen Homogenisierung wird die Artikulation einer solchen Differenz zu dominierenden kulturellen Diskursen für westliche wie für nicht-westliche Komponisten zunehmend erschwert.
CONTENTS
Introduction: Vocal Music and Reflexive Globalization in Contemporary Music Practices, Christian Utz and Frederick Lau Part I:Voices in Global Perspective 1. Globalization, Identity and the Voice in the 20th Century, Dieter Mersch 2. The Rediscovery of Presence. Explorations into Intercultural Spaces between Speech and Song, Christian Utz 3. Imagining the Other’s Voice. On Composing across Vocal Traditions, Sandeep Bhagwati Part II: Practices and Strategies in the Use of the Voice in Art Music 4. Post-war Japan’s "Operatic Problems": Opera-turgie, Narrative, Language, Fuyuko Fukunaka 5. Voice, Culture and Ethnicity in Contemporary Chinese Music, Frederick Lau 6. Metamorphosis of Traditional Vocal Practices in Korean Contemporary Music, Heekyung Lee 7. Problems of Identity in Helmut Lachenmann’s Vocal Music, Jörn Peter Hiekel 8. The Notation and Use of the Voice in Non-Semantic Contexts: Identities and Performativity in the Vocal Music of Dieter Schnebel, Brian Ferneyhough, and Georges Aperghis, Erin Gee Part III: Identity and Politics of the Voice in Popular Music and Media Art 9. At the Limits of Transnationalism: The Synthesized Ethnic Voices in Zuni Icosahedron’s The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci, Samson Young 10. Revolutionary Images and Identities: The Chinese Communist Party’s Heritage and Survival in Chinese Popular Music, Andreas Steen 11. Frenchly Japanese: On the Nationality of Voices in Japanese Popular Music, Oliver Seibt 12. Singing from Seoul to Soul: Voice, Body and Ethnicity in Korean Popular Music, Michael Fuhr Afterword, Nicholas Cook
Für den Einstieg in die Systematische Musikwissenschaft wie für die avancierte Recherche bietet dieses enzyklopädische Werk einen enormen Fundus an Information auf dem neuesten Stand des Wissens.
Der Band verbindet vier Beiträge, die anlässlich des Internationalen Kongresses der IMS (International Musicological Society) 2007 entstanden, mit fünf speziell für diese Publikation verfassten Texten. Dabei reicht das Spektrum von einer umfassenden kulturwissenschaftlichen Theorie der Passage und dem Entwurf einer poststrukturellen Historiographie zur »Kunst des Übergangs« bei Liszt und Wagner und zu räumlichen wie zeitlichen Passagen im Film. Aus – im engeren Sinn – musiktheoretischer Sicht wird eine Systematik der Sequenz (als prototypische Technik des Übergangs) entwickelt und ein »dezentristischer« Blick auf die »Überleitung« im klassischen Stil geworfen. Untersuchungen zur Werkgenese und ästhetischen Relevanz des »Passagenwerks« bei Mendelssohn Bartholdy und Conlon Nancarrow sowie ein analytisch-systematischer Beitrag zu interkulturellen Passagen zwischen Sprechstimme und Gesang in traditioneller und neuer Vokalmusik komplettieren das breite Feld an untersuchten »Passagen«.
INHALT
Christian Utz / Martin Zenck: Vorwort; Martin Zenck: Zu einer kulturwissenschaftlichen Theorie der »Passage«; Christian Utz: Die Wiederentdeckung der Präsenz. Interkulturelle Passagen durch die vokalen Räume zwischen Sprechstimme und Gesang; Susanne Kogler: Von der großen Erzählung zur Mikrologie? Musikhistoriographische Methodik zwischen Moderne und Postmoderne ; Johannes Menke: Historisch-systematische Überlegungen zur Sequenz seit 1600; Hans-Ulrich Fuß: Die »Überleitung« im klassischen Stil. Hauptwege und Seitenwege in der Sonatenexposition bei Haydn, Mozart und Beethoven; Heinz von Loesch: »Passagenwerk«: Ein blinder Fleck in Analyse und Interpretation. Einige Bemerkungen zu Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdys Klaviertrio op. 49; Matthew Pritchard: Übergangsharmonien. Die »Kunst des Übergangs« als Erkundung des tonalen Raums im Spätwerk Liszts und Wagners; Julia Kursell, Armin Schäfer: Passage zur glatten Zeit. Conlon Nancarrow: Studies for Player Piano; Bettina Schlüter: »Raum- und Zeitpassagen« im Film. Claude Lanzmanns Shoah; English Summaries; AutorInnen
and events of the Cold War. Idiosyncrasies in their works and aesthetics, however, cannot merely be explained by recourse to the institutionalized politics of the time. They testify to the composers' increased awareness of global interconnectedness, addressing a (potentially) worldwide audience and reflecting the multipolarity of post-war modernity.
Shô et sheng - Répertoire contemporain I’analyse musicale, le rôle novateur des maîtres
Christian Utz: Reinventing Mysterious Sounds - Composing for East Asian Mouth Organs in a Globalized Context
https://medias.ircam.fr/x0fbbeb
Mikako Mizuno: Enlarged tradition in contemporary repertoire of Japanese sho - succeeding and creating of sound space
https://medias.ircam.fr/x3112c6