Utz 2016 Music - Analysis PDF

DOI: 10.1111/musa.
12076
CHRISTIAN UTZ
TIME-SPACE EXPERIENCE IN WORKS FOR SOLO CELLO BY LACHENMANN,

XENAKIS AND FERNEYHOUGH: A PERFORMANCE-SENSITIVE APPROACH TO
MORPHOSYNTACTIC MUSICAL ANALYSIS
Recent studies in music performance reflect an increasing degree of

specialisation: quantifiable methods of performance science, research into the
impact of historical performance styles on contemporary practice, performance-
oriented analysis and performers’ own perspectives on the music they perform
often share common objectives but approach them through radically different
channels and methods. In particular, two methodological oppositions frequently
coexist unsympathetically rather than communicating with each other: (1)
the historical and analytical interest in how musical structure is qualified in
particular performances or performance styles often seems incompatible with
the quantifiability of tempo, duration and dynamics in recorded music as
widely explored in current performance studies; (2) such a rationalisation of
performance parameters is often considered to be antagonistic to the inescapable
and idiosyncratic forms of ‘intuitive knowledge’ or ‘informed intuition’ (Rink
2002, p. 36) applied by performers in rehearsal and performance.
In this essay I plan to tackle the first opposition by means of continuous
references to the second. In facing the first opposition, I wish to find ways in
which a historically and analytically informed qualification of performed sound
structures and quantified data derived from recordings can be brought into
a meaningful cross-relation. My case studies here are three significant solo
cello works dating from the 1960s and ’70s: Iannis Xenakis’s Nomos Alpha
(1966), Helmut Lachenmann’s Pression (1969–70) and Brian Ferneyhough’s
Time and Motion Study II (1973–6). All three have become classics of the solo
cello repertoire despite the exceptional difficulties they pose, and they have
been performed and recorded frequently. My focus lies on the compositional
construction, performative communication and perceptual experience of
temporality. More precisely, I intend to explore how particular forms of time
experience, as suggested by these works’ musical structure and the composers’
poetics, are transformed into experienced sound-time in performance and
perception.
[The copyright line for this article was changed on 12th October 2016 after original online
publication.]
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2 CHRISTIAN UTZ
In order to relate performed sound structures to quantified data, I shall discuss

the three works in a twofold process: each is introduced briefly according to a
method that I have termed ‘morphosyntactic analysis’,1 which aims to capture the
multivalence or layeredness of musical sound particularly by cross-relating spatial
or morphological aspects of perception (gestalt formation and spatialisation of
events in memory) and temporal or syntactic aspects (transformation or change of
musical events or processes in time and their syntactic relationships). It is in part
derived from Nicholas Cook’s idea that musical structure is not simply encoded
in the score but rather constituted in the acts of performance and perception
(Cook 1999 and 2013), and it is grounded on research into the perception of
musical sound in Albert Bregman’s model of spatialised auditory ‘scenes’ based
on musical streams, contours and segments (1990) and Irène Deliège’s theory
of cues, imprints, and prototypes (Deliège and Mélen 1997). Similar to what
Cook defined as ‘performative analysis’ (1999, pp. 242–4) and understanding
performance and analysis as ‘interlocking modes of musical knowledge’ (1999,
p. 248), this approach describes different strata of aural experience and relates
them to one another, demonstrating possible synergies as well as conflicts
between them. The main techniques of analysis in addition to established
methods of sketch- and score-based structural analysis are close listening, the
strategic use of amplitude graphs and spectral analyses, and the inclusion of
performances and recordings in the analytical process. The latter strategy will
be utilised in depth in this essay, exploring how specific models of temporality
isolated in the analyses are actually rendered in performance; thus, the
present essay is also conceived of as an exemplification and expansion of the
morphosyntactic analytical model. This involves the interpretation of quantified
data from studio and live recordings as well as a consideration of composers’
and performers’ statements about their intentions and experiences. In order
to demonstrate the versatility and context sensitivity of the analytical method
and to point to broader tendencies within the discussed repertoire against the
background of its historical context, Lachenmann’s Pression will be analysed
in greater detail, particularly in terms of its large-scale form, while only one
representative section each from Xenakis’s and Ferneyhough’s works will be
addressed.
Musical Temporality: Methodological Considerations

The reason for choosing temporality as the main field of inquiry is that the
experience of musical time is often conceived to lie at the ‘heart of performance’
(Rink 2002, p. 39) while appearing to be sidelined by structuralist analysis. In
fact, ‘the time of music’ has been a broad field of investigation for a quarter
of a century (see Alperson 1980; Kramer 1988; Barry 1990; Houben 1992;
Klein, Kiem and Ette 2000; Berger 2007 and Crispin and Snyers 2009), even
if few of these studies have an explicit analytical focus. In recent essays I have
© 2016 The Authors. Music Analysis, 00/00 (2016)

Music Analysis published by Society for Music Analysis and John Wiley & Sons Ltd
A PERFORMANCE-SENSITIVE APPROACH TO MORPHOSYNTACTIC ANALYSIS 3
discussed aspects of the analysability of temporality in twentieth-century art

music (Utz 2014 and 2015), aiming at a morphosyntactic analysis and historical
contextualisation of fragmented and/or spatialised concepts of musical time as
frequently conceived in postwar art music by such composers as Bernd Alois
Zimmermann, Giacinto Scelsi and György Kurtág. A common objective found
in most of these approaches is the drive towards an implicit destabilisation or
even an open rejection of ‘objective’ musical time as represented by architectural
formal metaphors or simplified ‘clock’ models. Cook’s recent explorations into
the temporality of musical performance suggest that the use of such metaphors,
inherent in most established theories of musical form, has its complement in the
history of performance styles, for it interlocks closely with literalist performance
traditions embodied by Stravinsky’s aesthetics of ‘execution’ (1947, p. 122) and
most prominently promoted and disseminated by Nadia Boulanger (see Cook
2013, pp. 219–23). Cook’s study emphasises repeatedly, however, that (pre-
modernist) ‘rhetorical’ and (modernist) ‘structuralist’ or ‘literalist’ performance
styles do not conform neatly to a coherent history of performance – a point also
raised by other scholars of musical performance (Hinrichsen 2011, pp. 36–7).
Indeed, an enduring opposition to ‘literalist misunderstandings’ in the verbal
interpretation and performance practice of postwar art music helps to explain
the extent to which non-linear, phenomenological or presentist time concepts
were embraced by the musical avant-garde (Utz 2014 and 2015). Thus, it is not
as obvious as it may seem that recent avant-garde music relies merely on literalist
performance traditions. Conversely, the following analyses will provide ample
evidence for Cook’s claim that ‘rhetorical and structuralist approaches represent
complementary possibilities for construing music as thought and action’ (2013,
p. 129) rather than irreconcilable opposites which establish a linear historical
causality.
By the same token, however, it is clear that Cook’s distinction between
a performance-oriented phenomenological approach that conceives music as
time, as opposed to the structuralist idea of presenting a musical object in time
(pp. 124–34), appears artificial when read against composition and performance
practice. For one thing, the question of how a performer may suggest, support,
subvert or combine different forms of temporal experience cannot be answered
straightforwardly: composers’ and performers’ shaping of time and listeners’
experience of it do not necessarily correlate with one another, nor can they be
reduced to simple aesthetic categories or quantitative data. Moreover, it may be
maintained that the quantitative aspect of time (music in time) is, in the end,
inextricably bound to the qualitative aspects of time experience (music as time),
even if not in the sense of a simple correlation or reciprocity. It would be nearly
impossible, for instance, to experience a sharp, regular beat as a manifestation
of timelessness or to perform contemplative listening in a ‘chaotic’ montage
setting such as those created by John Zorn’s group Naked City. Apart from
such obvious examples, of course, it is necessary to insist on an unrestricted
freedom of association and imagination with regard to the experiences of
Music Analysis, 00/00 (2016) © 2016 The Authors.

4 CHRISTIAN UTZ
musical temporality and time-related expectation and retrospection. Musical

expectancies in particular, a key area of time experience in and through music
which has recently turned into a rapidly expanding field of research, are for the
most part culturally generated or mediated. Deducing generalised psychological
and formal trajectories from this prerequisite, however, reveals questionable
tendencies towards an analytical standardisation of expectancy-related time
experience – as demonstrated, for example, by Michael Spitzer’s insightful essay
on the musical representation of fear in Schubert (2010; see Utz 2013c). Given
such moves towards (re-)standardisation in the wake of psychologically informed
analytical methods, the need to re-emphasise the merits of performative analysis
as outlined above appears to be a vital precondition of non-essentialist analytical
thought.
In short, despite the many conceptual and methodological caveats inherent
in an analytical incorporation of musical temporality, this subtle topic should
not be disregarded; not only is it considered a key area of musical experience
by composers, performers and listeners alike, but it also signifies a potential
space in which diverging branches of musical scholarship and practice may be
meaningfully interrelated – a task I shall undertake in the next three sections.
Lachenmann’s Pression and Three Archetypes of Musical Temporality

Helmut Lachenmann’s work Pression has come to be much referenced in
musicological writings because it seems most clearly and rigorously to epitomise
the composer’s influential idea of musique concrète instrumentale, in which
sounds are experienced as the immediate results of their production rather
than mediated by a historically loaded space of listening conventions and
metaphorical meaning (see Lachenmann 1996a, p. 150 and 1996c, p. 308).
One of the means invented to provoke this kind of ‘liberated perception’ is
Lachenmann’s complete redesign of musical notation (Ex. 1), which famously
avoids references to conventional staff notation in favour of a tabulature-like
designation of the performer’s movements. This approach is largely retained in
the two revised versions of the score, published in 2010 (handwritten) and 2012
(engraved), although they introduce a number of more conventional elements,
notably bar lines, time signatures and expressive instructions.2 The focus on
the performer and his or her body is also signalled by the work’s subtitle ‘for a
cellist’ (rather than ‘for cello’) and by Lachenmann’s stipulation, in the preface
to the 1972 edition, that the piece be played from memory so that the view of
the performer onstage is not obscured by a music stand. In a literal sense, then,
Lachenmann’s body-oriented concept of sound is rendered in performance,
and the impression is enhanced that heard sounds are perceived as traces or
imprints of the performer’s movements. While body language and choreography
have been shifted into the foreground in recent performance studies, including
some of Pression (see Orning 2012, pp. 22–4 and 2013, as well as Lessing 2006
and 2010), it is important to note that the piece was conceived in a post-serial

Ex. 1 Lachenmann, Pression, first two systems in 1972 and 2012 versions. © 1972
by Musikverlage Hans Gerig, Köln, copyright assigned 1980 to Breitkopf & Härtel,
Wiesbaden.
manner, with performance techniques treated rigorously as parameters of the

music and subjected to a systematic elaboration.3 At the same time, it is crucial
to understand the piece’s sound world as an example of a politically motivated
liberation of perception against the background of a wave of ‘critical composing’
emerging in Germany during the 1968 student movement (see the composer’s
remarks on his piece in Lachenmann and Brodsky 2013).
Starting from a perception-oriented approach to Pression’s sound categories
and formal design, I developed a morphosyntactic analysis of this work in earlier

6 CHRISTIAN UTZ
studies (Utz 2013a and 2013b), which have already referenced recordings and
reconsidered earlier analyses of the piece.4 With regard to temporality or the
experience of time, this earlier analysis suggested the interaction of three different
sound-time archetypes, which shall be re-examined here for their impact on
performance practice.
Time as Space/Spatialised Time

A common analytical approach would be to identify the most salient events in the
sound process of the work and relate them to one another in a hierarchical space
where the most salient events form the top layer (Fig. 1), a technique which
understands the post-tonal, largely unpitched sound structure as a ‘hierarchy
of saliences’ (Lerdahl 1989 and Imberty 1993). Considering that large parts of
the piece operate on a very low dynamic level, two events can be singled out
as particularly salient: a continuous pressed bow section near the beginning of
the work (crotchet 86), rendered fff throughout with the bow pressed on the
strings close to the tailpiece on the wrapping of the strings, lasting ‘at least
60 seconds’, and a ‘distinct pitch’ section near the end on a D!3 (crotchet
262), lasting ‘ca. ten seconds’, with dynamics increasing to and decreasing
from ff. In addition, in the centre of the work we hear a long section of about
35 seconds dominated entirely by sounds produced through springing bow
(saltando, crotchets 99–133). Here, the wood of the bow excites the A and C
strings from below or the bow hair touches the frame of the bridge or the corpus.
All other events in the piece may be related to these three phases, which form
the two top hierarchical levels (see again Fig. 1). For example, impulses within
the opening glissandi (crotchets 13–35) as well as the final saltando impulse
(crotchets 346–349) might be conceived as hints and echoes of the saltando
in the centre of the piece; alternatively, the long sostenuto section (crotchets
180–255), in which a continuous soft ‘noise’ sound produced by muting the
string with the left thumb and bowing close to the bridge is repeatedly unmuted,
temporarily revealing distinct pitches, might be considered as a precursor of the
distinct-pitch section enacted immediately afterwards.
It has often been said that this kind of architectural-hierarchical analysis fails
to capture the way performers and listeners experience musical time. On the
other hand, one can argue that our memory tends to spatialise events in time to
some extent because otherwise events occurring during real-time listening could
not be meaningfully related to one another. Particularly in long-term memory,
spatialisation is vital to the process of ‘making sense’ (Snyder 2000, pp. 14–
15 and 216–17). Lachenmann’s setting in Pression, where three salient sound
events (the pressed bow, the saltando and the discrete pitch) emerge from an
amorphous ground and are then established over longer time windows, lends the
sound structure a particular morphological character, which facilitates this sort
of large-scale spatialisation in memory. The architectural model here can thus be

Fig. 1 Lachenmann, Pression: ‘spatial’ perception model

pressed bow distinct pitch
86 87 258 261
59 60 180 181
saltando
116 117 118
13 14 15 343 346
[pppp]
considered not merely as a theoretical construction, but as a debatable model of

the perception of large-scale form.
In order to support the perception of a spatialised time, the individuality of the
different morphological events or states would have to be sharply distinguished
from one another by the performer. Furthermore, a compression of time would
facilitate the memory work to be performed by the listener. Thus a fast tempo
and strong contrasts between the sound events (and in particular between noise
and pitch) would enhance the spatial time model in performance.
Transformative/Processual Time
A model orientated towards real-time listening rather than towards the activation
of long-term memory might focus on what has been described as ‘categorical
transformation’ within and between ‘sound families’ in Lachenmann’s music
(Neuwirth 2008). The composer was clearly conscious of this idea when
composing Pression and the conceptually related string quartet Gran Torso
(1970–1, revised 1976 and 1988): he stated that in the quartet ‘pitch and noise
were not opposites, but constantly emerging from one another in different ways
as variants of superordinate sound categories’ (Lachenmann 1996d, p. 227).5
In almost all recordings the pressed-bow sound, which is supposed to suppress
any manifestation of pitch,6 actually retains elements of clearly decodable pitch
areas; conversely, the ‘distinct pitch section’ contains noise components, as the
D!3 here is actually split into two adjacent pitches, producing interfering beats
and thus noise components. The most relevant sound document in this respect is
Michael Bach’s 1991 studio recording, in which the pressed-bow section renders
a clearly audible D!2 which is further linked to other prominent occurrences of
D! in the piece (Fig. 2). Thus, the pressed-bow and distinct-pitch sections here
correspond closely, even though this might be the result more of coincidence
than of conscious planning; that ‘noise’ and ‘pitch’ do not function as opposites,

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Fig. 2 Lachenmann, Pression: ‘processual’ perception model
pressed bow (1–98) saltando (99–164) discrete pitch (165–280) coda (281–349)
86 87 116 117 118 180 181
13 14 15 59 60 261 262 343 346
D2 D3 D3 D3
however, also becomes obvious in other areas of Bach’s recording where the pitch
class of D! surfaces. This would suggest a perceptual approach that comprehends
Pression as a constant and audacious variation on D!, which is repeatedly distorted
and blurred but always resurfaces. This model can also be applied beyond the
domain of pitch: in fact, the entire piece might be perceived as a continuous
transformation within and between four large-scale areas (see again Fig. 2), each
dominated by a particular sound quality emerging from an amorphous ground:
pressed bow (crotchets 1–98), saltando (crotchets 99–164) and discrete pitch
(crotchets 165–280), with the fourth area (crotchets 281–349) leading the sound
back to a very remote and soft plane, recapitulating, echo-like, all three salient
sound qualities heard earlier, in the manner of a coda (Jahn 1988, pp. 44 and 51).
Processual time could probably best be communicated in performance by
presenting each sound event as part of a large transformative chain over
the duration of the entire work. One image that comes to mind is the
outworn metaphor of organic growth, which, though commonly rejected in
key areas of new-music discourse, still figures prominently in many performers’
conceptualization of time formation and rhetorical expressive gestures, although
it might be termed differently, for example as ‘synthesis’ (Rink 2002, p. 56).7 It
appears that a slow tempo and a minimisation of contrasts would be adequate to
enhance the often meticulously formed transitions between the different sound
fields of Pression.
Presentist Time/‘Moment’ Time

The transformation model presupposes organic unity where the fragmentation
and isolation of events might be a more suitable perceptual strategy. Indeed,
the duration of the pressed-bow section – at least 60 seconds, according to the
score – is an invitation to embark on a ‘process of tactile discovery’ (Abtastprozess),
to use the composer’s favourite metaphor (see Lachenmann 1996b, pp. 77–8):
to experience this sound in all its dimensions and its diverging inner processes
without immediately demoting it to merely one of several events in a large-scale
structure or chain of events. The same mode of perception might be adequate for
most of the other sections or ‘moments’ in the piece (Fig. 3). This experience of
sound presence might further be enhanced by empathising with the performer,
of whom the sounds require the utmost bodily commitment, producing a form
of energy which in turn has the potential to be transferred to a sensitive listener
(see Lessing 2010, p. 117).

Fig. 3 Lachenmann, Pression: ‘presentist’ perception model
13 14 15 59 60 86 87 116 117 118 180 181 261 262 343 346
In order to enhance the impression of discontinuity and fragmentation and

allow each sound event or field to develop its proper quality and ‘proper time’
(Eigenzeit; see Mosch 2006, p. 37), a high degree of contrast that sets events apart
from one another will again be necessary. In contrast to the architectural model,
however, a slow or irregular tempo would probably contribute to the impression
that the individual events are isolated from one another rather than forming
a continuous chain or set of points in an imaginary space. This impression
could be further enhanced by the player’s movements during live performance,
for example by ‘freezing’ during the less dense areas between the salient
events while energetically projecting the events themselves, thus amplifying their
individuality. Of course, achieving a complete fragmentation of perception, the
attainment of a ‘permanent presence’, is difficult, if not impossible; it is arguably
unavoidable that, after temporarily ‘seizing the moment’, our memory becomes
active again and starts building structures. A continuous interaction between
the three perceptual strategies might therefore provide a more solid basis for a
performative, perception-oriented analysis.
By labelling these three modes of time experience ‘archetypes’, I maintain
that they can be multiply related to influential traditions in the history of music
theory:
1. The architectural model is of course inherent in the tradition of Formenlehre

and emerged from discourses on the hierarchy of the senses around 1800,
where the sense of sight, linked to Kant’s ‘pure contemplation’ (reine
Anschauung), was considered superior to imprecise hearing. Metaphors
derived from architecture were closely linked to this superiority of the
eye and had pervaded writings on music since at least the middle of the
eighteenth century (see Utz 2013b, pp. 19–36). A prominent manifestation
of this tradition is Schenker’s concept of Fernhören (Schenker [1894] 1990,
p. 103; see also Furtwängler 1954, pp. 201–4; Larson 1997, pp. 115–16 and
Cook 2013, p. 52), which described the ideal situation of listening from an
elevated point ‘beyond’ the musical work. As mentioned earlier, this vision-
dependent view of musical form was sustained by literalist performance
traditions emerging as early as the 1920s.
2. The transformation model can be linked to the tradition of musical
energetics most prominently represented by Ernst Kurth’s theory of musical
forces but also by Schenker’s theoretical model (see Spitzer 2004, pp. 330–
41), which demonstrates that it is ultimately not at all incompatible with the

10 CHRISTIAN UTZ
metaphor of architecture. To some extent and in a simplified formulation,

we might see the interaction between architectural and process-oriented
models as analogous to the interaction of the perception of large-scale
musical form and real-time musical perception.
3. The idea of an ‘unlimited presence’ of individual moments naturally
brings to mind Stockhausen’s idea of ‘moment form’ (1960; see Utz
2014, pp. 119–21), as elaborated into, among others, ‘moment time’
in Jonathan Kramer’s The Time of Music (1988, pp. 50–2 and 207–
8). This model assumes a basic discontinuity of time perception and
is informed by techniques of twentieth-century art and music such as
montage, fragmentation and the ‘powderisation’ of musical syntax. This
model of presentist listening also has precursors dating back at least to early
nineteenth-century Romantic listening concepts of hearing proposed by
Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder, Clemens Brentano and Jean Paul, among
others (see Utz 2014, pp. 115–21).
Which of these three models is closest to the dimension of the composer’s

various and changeable intention(s) and how have performers approached or
combined them in the available recordings? To start with the third archetype: a
‘presence’ of the two pivotal events – pressed bow and distinct pitch – seems to
be particularly enhanced by the composer’s notation, as they are the only points
in the piece where a continuous grid of sectional time markers is suspended
for extended fermatas of 60 and 10 seconds respectively. The rest of the piece
is organised by this grid throughout – except for a small number of (short)
fermatas and two slight changes in pulse of merely local significance (poco rubato
in crotchet 125 and poco più vivo in crotchets 287–288). The space between
two markers in most cases equals one crotchet (sometimes also three or four
crotchets) in a tempo of ‘ca. 66’ beats per minute; the score thus seems to
suggest a clear pulse and a steady, rather fast tempo. However, the composer
himself has repeatedly declared that the sounds in Pression have (or need) their
‘proper time’ (Eigenzeit), that performers should listen carefully to the sounds
(‘den Klängen nachhören’; see Mosch 2006, p. 37 n. 14) and even that the piece
should be phrased in a rubato manner, similar to Schumann’s Träumerei (Orning
2012, p. 21).8 On many further occasions, Lachenmann has explained that the
production of his ‘noise’ sounds requires the utmost attention to a particular
form of ‘sound culture’ which has to be studied and cultivated with great care,
in a way similar to traditional (classical) sound production (Lachenmann and
Hermann 2013).9
Lachenmann’s statements on performance present another case of the impact
of rhetorical performance style, which seemingly had its peak in the decades
around 1900. This bears a surprising resemblance to several paradoxes inherent
in the relationship between analysis and performance described by Cook
in the contexts of Schenker’s theory of performance and the performance
history of Webern’s Piano Variations Op. 27. Although Schenker’s thoughts

on performance were deeply embedded in the rhetorical tradition of the

nineteenth century, to a point where they became a poor fit with his modernist
theoretical approach (Cook 2011 and 2013, pp. 80–90), Webern’s ideas about
the performance of his Op. 27 drew on the practices of pre–World War I rhetorical
performance rather than on the work’s serial organisation (Cook 2013, p. 130 and
forthcoming). Cook uses such examples to advance his thesis that performance
does not serve a reproduction of structure but rather semiotically references
gestures, genres and styles of concurrent and earlier performance traditions as
well as the repertoires with which they are associated (Cook 2013, p. 125 and
forthcoming). There may be many areas of contemporary avant-garde music in
which such seemingly outdated rhetorical performance traditions survive (see
also the ‘Performing Time’ section below).
Which solutions did the performers of Pression realise? In a first comparison
of existing recordings, published in 2006, Ulrich Mosch noted that the
metronomical duration of the piece as calculated from the score, taking into
account fermatas and local tempo changes, is about 6′ 30′′ . The 2012 version of
the score expands the total duration slightly (363 crotchets, rather than the
349 crotchets of the 1972 version). The calculated durations of both score
versions, including fermatas and tempo changes, are about 6′ 31′′ for the 1972
version and 6′ 47′′ for the 2012 version. (The metronome marking of crotchet =
ca. 66 is not included in the 2010 handwritten version but is re-inserted in
the 2012 engraved version of the score; the 2010 and 2012 versions of the
score specify a duration of nine minutes, without further comments on the
intended temporal design of a performance.) All recordings Mosch compared
were conspicuously longer.10 Although Mosch conceded that this tendency was
probably due to the ‘physical conditions of realisation’ of some sounds in Pression
which simply required more time to be produced than the original tempo would
offer, he remained sceptical about the composer’s ‘liberal’ attitude towards tempo
deviations (Mosch 2006, pp. 37–8; Mosch was supported in this by other
researchers during the discussion; see p. 38 n. 15) and argued that while the
individual quality of the sounds was surprisingly consistent in most recordings,
no performance was entirely satisfactory with regard to the necessity of placing
‘the right sound at the right time’ (p. 38).
An expanded comparison of the fifteen recordings of Pression presently
available – two LP, nine CD, one CD/DVD and three self-produced live and
studio recordings published on YouTube (see Appendix) – largely corroborates
the results of Mosch’s study. In order to allow a detailed comparison among
recordings, I have divided the piece into four main sections, each consisting of a
total of thirteen subsections (with subsections 1–5, 6–7, 8–11 and 12–13 forming
the four main sections) according to the paradigmatic events and processes
outlined above (Table 1). This sectional analysis refines earlier synopses of the
piece provided by Jahn (1988, pp. 42–9 and 52) and Neuwirth (2008, p. 87).
Fig. 4a shows the durations of all fifteen recordings compared to both versions
of the score.11 The average duration of these recordings is 8′ 27′′ , almost two

Table 1 Lachenmann, Pression: sectional analysis of 1972 and 2012 versions
12
1972 version 2012 version

Sections/ Crotchets Duration Crotchets Duration Instrumental techniques (selective
subsections* Crotchets* per section [sec.]* Ratios Bars* per section [sec.]* Ratios summary)
© 2016 The Authors.

1 1 1–58 57.6667 52.42 0.14 1–183 62.1667 57.52 0.14 – bowing on bridge; gliding
1/1/1–2/4/5 fingertips along the strings;
fingernail accents
– gliding thumb on hair of the bow
and fingertips on the wood of the
bow
– bowing on bridge
2 59–71 13.2083 12.01 0.03 183 –21 13.2083 12.01 0.03 – bow grabbed with approx. half the
2/4/6–3/1/9 hair length, moved vertically on
strings
3 72–85 14.1250 12.84 0.03 22–26 14.1250 12..84 0.03 – bow pressed at the tailpiece
3/2/1–3/3/3
4 86 1.0000 60.00 0.15 27 1.0000 60.00 0.15 – bow pressed at the tailpiece /
slapping fingerboard with open
CHRISTIAN UTZ
hand → wiping back and forth

5 87–98 12.0000 10.91 0.03 28–31 12.0000 10.91 0.03 – moving bow on flat surface of
3/3/5–3/4/8 bridge
2 6 99–133 35.0000 33.82 0.08 32–44 38.3750 37.89 0.09 – col legno saltando from beneath the
4/1/1–4/4/9 strings + saltando on surface of
the bridge + saltando on body
above the bridge
7 134–164 31.0000 28.68 0.07 45–54 32.1250 29.70 0.07 – scratching motion; slapping the
5/1/1–5/3/9 body with the palm
Music Analysis,
[combined with] bowing on
tailpiece
3 8 165–179 15.3333 13.94 0.04 55–59 15.3333 13.94 0.03 – bowing behind/near the wood of
5/3/10–5/4/9 the bridge → bright noise
(Continued)
00/00 (2016)
Table 1 Continued
1972 version 2012 version

Sections/ Crotchets Duration Crotchets Duration Instrumental techniques (selective
subsections* Crotchets* per section [sec.]* Ratios Bars* per section [sec.]* Ratios summary)
9 180–252 72.3333 65.76 0.18 60–83 71.3333 65.35 0.16 – bowing at ponticello; pressing the
6/1/1–6/4/19 thumb of the left hand against the
string; lifting thumb to create
pitched sound of open string →
flautando/pinching the string
between thumb and index finger
Music Analysis, 00/00 (2016)

10 253–268 16.3334 23.94 0.05 84–88 16.3334 24.94 0.06
7/1/1–7/1/18 beating between microtonal
– arrival at open string IV (A!1);
glissando al pont
variants of D!3 → unison;
11 269–281 12.8750 11.70 0.03 89–91 12.8750 11.70 0.03 – echo-like recapitulation of sec. 9
7/2/1–7/3/1 (string II, F3)
4 12 282–325 44.1250 42.11 0.10 92–106 44.1250 40.11 0.10 – sharp jerk (quasi whistle)/saltando;
7/3/2–8/2/6 fingertips along the strings (left
hand without bow)/legno
saltando/legno battuto [combined]
13 326–349 24.0000 22.82 0.06 107–116 30.0000 30.27 0.07 – fingertips along the strings;
8/2/7–8/3/15 plucking strings/buzzing
resonance by stopping strings with
wood of the bow; wiping with
wood of the bow; Bartók pizzicato
+ saltando
Total 349 390.95 1.00 363 407.18 1.00
*The sections in the 1972 version (published by Breitkopf & Härtel in 1980, HG 865) are indicated by page number/staff system/crotchet and by
consequentially numbered crotchets. The counting of crotchets follows the analysis in Jahn (1988, pp. 44–6), where the events 3/3/4 and 7/1/10 are counted
as only one crotchet each (in the second instance, Lachenmann actually notates a semibreve with fermata in the staff system but three crotchets in the
A PERFORMANCE-SENSITIVE APPROACH TO MORPHOSYNTACTIC ANALYSIS
‘timeline’). In one instance Jahn’s indications were corrected (the ‘bar’ 6/4/7–6/4/10 features four crotchets, but Jahn only counts three [crotchets 240–242];
possibly this is due to a printing error, because in the 2012 edition the analogous passage, bar 80, indeed features only three crotchets). The sections in the
2012 version (Edition Breitkopf 9221) have been indicated by bar numbers and beats. The durations in both versions have been calculated assuming an exact
13

duration of MM = 66 with fermatas and prescribed temporary changes in tempo included in the calculation.
14 CHRISTIAN UTZ
Fig. 4a Lachenmann, Pression: comparison of 15 recordings (durations; four large

sections)
Fig. 4b Lachenmann, Pression: comparison of 15 recordings (durations; 13

subsections)

minutes longer than the durations specified in the score versions. Although
statistically the deviations are fairly constant over the four main sections or fields
of the piece (both when compared to the score and among the performers),
a more detailed comparison of the durations of all thirteen subsections
(Fig. 4b) shows how strong the organisation of time differs among performers.
The centre of the pressed-bow section (subsection 4, crotchet 86), at least 60
seconds according to both versions of the score, ranges between 27 and 81
seconds (average: 58 seconds);12 the saltando section (subsection 6, crotchets
99–133), which requires particular care in performance (34 or 38 seconds,
according to the scores) and for which Mosch’s reflection about the additional
time required to produce the sounds may be most convincing, ranges between 37
and 59 seconds and on the majority of recordings is considerably greater than the
prescribed duration (average: 51 seconds); in the longest subsection of the piece,
the ‘morsing’ area (subsection 9, crotchets 180–255),13 which stages the slow
emancipation of pitch from noise, performers’ time also differs strongly (63–102
seconds; average: 81 seconds), although a third of the performances (five out
of fifteen) are faster than or almost equal (63–67 seconds) to the prescribed
duration (66/65 seconds), owing probably to the clearer rhythmic profile of this
subsection and the ternary metre alluded to in the 1972 version by dotted bar
lines.
A more qualified comparison is gained when the ratios of performers’
deviations from notated time are compared (Fig. 5). The deviation of the total
durations ranges between 6% (Stromberg’s 2013 recording) and 45% (Lessing’s
of 2005).14 What is more important, however, is the standard deviation among
the deviation ratios of the thirteen subsections for each performer (ranging
between 17% and 49%), which tells us how constant the overall tempo is kept
and to which degree the proportions between the sections of the score were
preserved in performance even where the chosen tempo is considerably slower
than that indicated. Considering both values, the recordings of Kasper in 2009,
Kooistra in 1992, Bach in 1989 and 1991, Grimmer in 1991 and Fels in 1995
emerge as the most consistent, though both Fels and Bach, in his 1989 recording,
deviate from the score considerably in terms of total duration.
Returning to the three domains of time experience derived from our
morphosyntactic analysis, we now may look at the degree of contrast between
the events and at the vividness with which the sounds’ individuality is rendered.
In a session of close listening I chose three recordings in which one of the time-
experience domains appears to predominate.
Spatialised Time
Michael Kasper’s 2009 recording definitely follows the score most literally in
terms both of duration and of performing ‘the right sound at the right time’.
The contrasts between the different sound qualities are clear-cut. This also
means that the sectional form is rendered quite transparent, for example by

16 CHRISTIAN UTZ
Fig. 5 Lachenmann, Pression: comparison of 15 recordings (ratios of deviation from

score; unnumbered sections are !15% deviation); the values in braces indicate the
ratio of deviation from the score duration and the standard deviation between the
subsections of a performance.
a very pronounced acoustic marker on the ‘whistle’ accent which serves as a

signal of the beginning of the coda (crotchet 281). The recording fulfils the
requirements of spatialised time not least by closely following all major details
of the score, including the temporal design, which is in tune with Kasper’s
(slightly disillusioned) stance that the ‘objective tone’ in new-music repertoire
‘de-personalises and de-mystifies what is played. The act of interpretation follows
the act of composition. There is no place for egomaniac self-aggrandisement’
(Kasper 2009, p. 16).
This statement is at odds not only with Lachenmann’s insistence on a
rhetorical performance tradition, but also with the unsurpassed flow of Kasper’s
recording, which is probably the result of the cellist’s long experience with the
piece. Toying with his presumably ‘conservative’ perspective, Kasper – who has
been the cellist of the Ensemble Modern for more than three decades – says that
this experience leads him to associate Pression’s sounds with ‘motifs or themes
from a sonata by Brahms or Beethoven’ and adds dryly: ‘I’ve no idea whether
this benefits the piece or not. “Pression” must retain its sting’ (2009, p. 17).

Processual Time
In several instances Kasper’s performance seems a little too straightforward:
for example, in the long ‘morsing’ subsection (subsection 9), which slowly
introduces pitched sounds, he articulates distinct pitches without making audible
the laborious manner in which they are produced (the left thumb, muting the
bowed string from below, is temporarily removed, while the bow excites the
string very close to or on the bridge); this is consistent with the architectonic
model, which emphasises the boundary between noise and pitch. Michael Bach’s
1991 recording, by contrast, makes the technical difficulty of this passage clearly
audible: each ‘pitched’ tone sounds different, and each occupies a different
position on the gradual scale between noise and pitch. In many other respects,
as outlined earlier, Bach’s recording approaches the transformative time model:
it keeps the purely amorphous passages such as the first subsection rather short,
while prolonging the areas of transition (subsections 5, 7 and 11, as well as
subsection 13, the final one; see again Figs 4b and 5). His pressed sound is
exciting, always at the edge of rupture, but held together by the basic sonority
of D!.
Not unlike Kasper, Bach felt the need to issue a witty statement about his
performance of Pression in the CD booklet suggesting a desire to overcome the
composer’s somewhat conventional reference to a ‘traditional sequence of tension
and development’ (Bach 1992).15 This is clearly audible in the risk Bach takes
in producing each sound. However, the impression of a transformative thread
running through the entire performance prevails, not least owing to sensitive,
though not totally coherent, timing decisions.
Presentist Time
To my ear, two recordings best represent the idea of discontinuous presence:
Walter Grimmer’s of 1991 and Taco Kooistra’s from the following year.
Grimmer’s use of gut strings lends his performance the utmost intensity but
somehow greys out the overall timbre. Kooistra develops a similar intensity, and
his interpretation of the pressed-bow section is probably the most adventurous
and least ‘classicist’ of all the recordings. Strong contrasts and an irregular though
not exceptionally deviant timing may further contribute to the impression of
exclusive ‘moments’. This, however, is clearly incompatible with Kooistra’s own
comments about the work, which – like the composer’s – emphasise its classical
dimensions:
[W]hen I create a sort of white noise in Pression [ . . . ] this results in a range of

colour differences that is just as wide as in Bach’s or Beethoven’s music; only the
resulting colours are different from theirs. [ . . . ] Because the audience doesn’t
know much about Lachenmann’s music [ . . . ] there will not be the same amount
of discussion about the colour differences within the ‘white noise’ sound as there
will be in the case of the one note in the Bach suite; but the issue is the same.

18 CHRISTIAN UTZ
Neither do I believe that there is an essential difference between the shape of

Lachenmann’s piece and that of a Beethoven sonata. [ . . . ] Beethoven shaped his
story into a sonata form and Lachenmann tells a story about colour that ends
in one note. In both cases, the result is music; it still concerns emotion and the
building or lessening of tension. (Kooistra 1992, pp. 4–5)
Of course, the listener has many additional options. She might choose to
focus on a single sound in the Kasper recording, losing herself in the individual
sound’s topology without following the piece’s architecture. Or she might listen
to Kooistra’s recording – probably in tune with the performer’s intention – as
a linear narrative. However, the substantial, even amazing differences between
the recordings should not be underestimated. What we hear in the recordings
of Pression is not one piece of music but fifteen different pieces.16 Arguably, this
is not due to the tabulature-like notation, since the individual sounds are, as
already observed by Mosch, rendered with a high degree of consistency in most
recordings. In fact, it seems that most performance effects contributing to the
different kinds of performed and experienced temporality discussed above are the
results of conscious decisions by the performers to communicate an inherent time
quality of the music, clearly aiming beyond a mere execution or reproduction of
the notation.
In any case, the composer might not be too happy with this discussion
of implicit temporal dimensions in his music. Although he has declared the
experience of presence as a ‘key utopia’ of his composing (Lachenmann 2003;
see Utz 2015), which led, among other things, to the composition of his late
orchestral piece NUN (‘Now’, 1999–2002), he is outspoken in his criticism of
attributed temporality in music:
I don’t think in [ . . . ] categories [such as a spatial, temporal or teleological sense

of time in my music]. And I’m sceptical towards such semi-philosophical terms.
Is the sense of time in the music of Webern or Bach more spatial, or more
temporal or teleological? I really don’t know, and I don’t want any music to be
put in some predefined or pre-codified terminological category. I prefer to create
or to be exposed to an auditory situation or process in which those categories
will be forgotten. When experiencing an earthquake or a thunderstorm, when
surrounded by mountains or looking into the waves of the sea, or just studying the
structure of the bark on an old tree, such categories have no place. (Lachenmann
and Heathcote 2010, p. 345)
Xenakis’s Nomos Alpha: ‘Outside’ and ‘Inside’ Time

Xenakis’s Nomos Alpha has become not only a classic of the solo cello repertoire
but also one of the composer’s best-known and most-discussed works,17 probably
not least because Xenakis himself generously offered a detailed analysis of its
mathematically inspired structure. In a chapter of his book Formalized Music, he
discerns an (unordered) ‘organization outside-time’, designating systematically
designed collections of musical material, and an (ordered) ‘organization

in-time’, designating procedures which arrange this material in a temporal

sequence (1992, pp. 219–36). Despite complex mathematical procedures of sieve
theory and group theory involved in the compositional process of Nomos Alpha,
the result appears not exceptionally complex but indeed quite transparent: ever-
changing permutations of eight ‘macroscopic’ sonic complexes (S) are mapped
to continuously changing durations, pitch structures, densities and dynamics
in a post-serial manner.18 The 24 sections of the piece constitute six principal
parts of four sections each, with every fourth section (i.e. the final section of
each part) functioning as a kind of ritornello (DeLio 1980 and Peck 2003,
pp. 73–81). While the eighteen ‘strophic’ sections reflect the main compositional
procedure through a montage-like change between clearly distinct (though often
internally related) sound events (eight events are permutated in each section),
the ritornellos reduce this complexity considerably by limiting the musical fabric
to long sustained notes, creating large-scale markers that facilitate the overall
orientation during the listening process. A morphosyntactic analysis may aim
to interpret the syntactic sense created by the mathematically construed order
of the events and the interaction of continuous and discontinuous temporality
suggested by Xenakis’s compositional method. Robert W. Peck has prominently
included in his temporality-orientated analysis a discussion of the consequences
of the piece’s structure for performers (2003, pp. 105–11), which, however,
since it follows Wallace Berry’s normative theory of performance (1989) quite
closely and does not consult any existing recording of the work, confines itself to
relatively ‘abstract’ suggestions of how performers might – or should – project
specific time modes in performance,19 thus basically cementing the ‘page-to-
stage’ approach severely criticised by recent musical performance studies (see
Cook 2013, pp. 33–55).
Considering the first two sections of the work and comparing six available
recordings will help sort out the performer’s strategies. These two sections
make the montage- or kaleidoscope-like character of the music very obvious
(Ex. 2). This impression is achieved mainly by compositionally isolating the
events from one another through rests or caesuras and contrasting dynamics,
length, performance techniques and register, all of which result from the post-
serial structure. On the other hand, the fast tempo leads to a close affiliation of
the individual events, so that eventually many parts may be perceived as a kind
of expanded phrase or cadence. This might be said of the first three events in
bars 1–7, for example: while the first two events create tension by means of the
virtuosic tremolo and the contrasting dynamics, the isolated pizzicato in bar 7
(the third event) is easily perceived as the goal of this short ‘development’ while
also acting as a bridge to the following event chain. Also, many cross-references
between analogous individual events in section 1 (bars 1–15) and section 2 (bars
16–30) can be perceived quite easily (compare, for example, S5 in bars 13–14
and bar 16 or S8 in bars 14–15 and bars 19–21), while the analogy between
other pairs remains mainly conceptual (for example, the short duration of the
impulse of S3 in bar 30 makes it seem closer related to S1 in bar 7 than to S3 in

20
Ex. 2 Xenakis, Nomos Alpha: score, bars 1–30, with sonic complexes marked and numbered events (after DeLio 1980, p. 79).

© 1967 by Boosey & Hawkes Music Publishers Ltd.
1 2 3 4
S2 S3 S1 S4
1
S6 S7 S5 8 S8
8 5 6 7
9 S5 S6 S8 S7
10 11 12
15
CHRISTIAN UTZ
S1
14 S2 15 S4
13
23
29 S3 16
00/00 (2016) Music Analysis,
bars 3–6). In total, as analysed by Peck following Kramer’s categories of musical

time, this basic structure might either suggest a radical discontinuity of individual
‘moments’ or, owing to basic cross-referencing within and between sections, a
‘nondirectional linear time’, although directional perception might be inferred
repeatedly on a microstructral level (2003, pp. 76–81 and 105–111).
The performer thus might choose either to accentuate the aspect of
discontinuity or disruption (similar to the presentist time model in Pression) or to
establish continuities between the isolated events (as in the transformative time
model in Lachenmann’s work). While the first mode would suggest again a focus
on caesuras, possibly expanding them in a rhetorical manner and enhancing
contrast by varying the tempo and dynamics in each section, the continuity-
orientated performer would probably aim to maintain a strict tempo, or at least
the ratio between the individual event durations. The recordings show a broad
spectrum of tempi and durations of this relatively short section (48 seconds,
according to the score), ranging between 53 and 79 seconds (Fig. 6a). Again,
the deviation ratios (Fig. 6b) are helpful for filtering out the recordings with
the most consistent durations, in this case Pierre Strauch’s and Roham de
Saram’s. Close listening leads one to judge Saram’s 1991 recording to be the
most coherent, since it maintains the sound quality and timbre established at
the beginning and avoids strong contrasts; this correlates with the performer’s
pragmatic perspective on the piece (Saram 2010). In Strauch’s recordings, the
same dynamics may be projected in significantly different degrees of loudness
(compare events 14 and 15, or 6, 7 and 8); both recordings tend to shorten
silences and thus reduce the impression of discontinuity. No performer observes
the full measure of the rests; this is particularly the case in the 2010 recording
of Arne Deforce,20 who evidently decided to elaborate the quality of each single
event in disregard of the rhythmic and tempo instructions in the score (note his
highly disproportionate deviation ratios, shown in Fig. 6b). This not only leads
to an overall duration which, at 19′ 10′′ , is about eight and a half minutes longer
than that prescribed by the score (10′ 42′′ ) and six and a half minutes longer than
the shortest recording (Strauch’s, which comes in at 12′ 33′′ ), but also allows
him simply to reduce the tempo drastically where a literal interpretation of the
score would be technically impossible. His metaphorical interpretation of Nomos
Alpha as a process of expanding and shrinking sound, as well as other, somewhat
cryptic remarks about the piece, might therefore be decoded as support of a
certain performer’s independence from the notated structure:
Nomos Alpha is moving architecture of sound. A musical space in which structures

expand into impressive sound complexes or shrink to the concentrated force of a
single tone. (Deforce 2012, p. 82, my translation)21
[T]hat which can be notated, demarcates the playable and thereby the unplayable.
The notation in the score renders legible that which is not audible and the
performance renders audible that which is not playable in the score. [ . . . ] Reading
and performance of the music is the art of tracing lines, punctuating, crossing and

22 CHRISTIAN UTZ
Fig. 6a Xenakis, Nomos Alpha: comparison of six recordings (duration of events 1–16
= sections 1–2 / bars 1–30)
Fig. 6b Xenakis, Nomos Alpha: comparison of six recordings (deviation ratios of

events 1–16); the values in braces indicate the ratio of deviation from the score
duration and the standard deviation between the subsections of a performance. The
square brackets on top indicate sections 1 and 2.
going beyond. [ . . . ] The bringing to life of sound. That is what matters. Its energy
and infinite difference. Between the strings and the bow, not unity but multiplicity.
Between body and sound, not the performance but a plurality of performances!
(Deforce 2011, pp. 6–7)
Section 1 is particularly interesting with respect to literal performance, since

its first two events contain ‘utopian’ notation that, owing to physical limitations,
cannot be reproduced literally at the designated tempo: the first event (bars 1–3)
would require 45 pizzicato impulses with a speed of ten impulses per second
(Xenakis insisted on a conventional ‘non tremolando’ pizzicato playing here22 ),
while the second event (bars 3–6) would require a struck col legno at double
speed (88 impulses with twenty impulses per second).23 Fig. 7 compares the
solution to this challenge put forward in four out of six recordings. As expected,
Deforce renders the highest number of desired impulses in both events, although
his employment of ‘tremolando’ pizzicato in fact yields 73 instead of 45 impulses
in the first event, amounting to the double duration, while the second event is
expanded to almost triple its duration. Saram’s solution is the most irregular here:
he obviously decided to keep the timing in event 1 while observing the number

Fig. 7 Xenakis, Nomos Alpha: comparison of three recordings (‘micro-analysis’ of

events 1 + 2)
of impulses in event 2. This results in a distortion of the ratio between these

two events, which should have almost the same length, according to the score.
Despite these inconsistencies, Saram’s and Deforce’s recordings present, to my
ear, the most convincing solutions to this tricky beginning, since the intensity and
speed of impulses arguably are the key features of these two events, rendering the
impression of virtuosity most poignantly. The compromises chosen in the other
recordings are unsatisfactory: they either keep the desired duration, accepting
a considerable lack of density, or keep the number of impulses at a rather slow
speed, expanding the events disproportionally.
As tentatively discussed above, serial and post-serial music still has to confront
a decades-long misunderstanding about its presumably authoritarian conception
of literalist performance practice, seemingly prolonging Stravinsky’s aesthetics of
‘execution’ into the late twentieth and early twenty-first century (see the ‘Time
as Space/Spatialised Time’ section above). Although Lachenmann demonstrated
that post-serial structure and rhetorical performance practice might not rule
each other out, Xenakis was quite explicit about the authoritative impact of his

24 CHRISTIAN UTZ
notation while also acknowledging ‘utopian’ elements in his scores that cannot
be rendered literally in performance:
‘My works are to be performed according to the score, in the required tempo, in
an accurate manner. [ . . . ] It is very difficult, but sometimes they succeed. I do
take into account the physical limitations of performers [ . . . ] but I also take into
account the fact that what is limitation today may not be so tomorrow. [ . . . ] In
order for the artist to master the technical requirements he has to master himself.
Technique is not only a question of muscles, but also of nerves. In music the
human body and the human brain can unite in a fantastic, immense harmony.
No other art demands or makes possible that totality. The artist can live during
a performance in an absolute way. He can be forceful and subtle, very complex
or very simple, he can use his brain to translate an instant into sound but he
can encompass the whole thing with it also. Why shouldn’t I give him the joy of
triumph – triumph that he can surpass his own capabilities?’ (Varga 1996, pp.
65–6)
Ferneyhough’s Time and Motion Study II: Complexity, Energy,

‘Fidelity’
The topos of ‘transcendence’, of ‘liberation’ from established modes of both
performance and perception conventions, is crucial to the three works discussed
here, though it is approached through radically different compositional and
notational means. While Lachenmann’s score places a new emphasis on
the performer’s movements, which are prescribed in a most meticulous and
authoritarian manner, Xenakis seems to use notation almost as a negligible
convention for the temporal placement of sound events (as is obvious from
his adaption of a 2/2 metrical grid throughout the piece). The contrasting
tendency towards an intentional overdetermination of written notation has
been a distinctive criterion for composers associated with (new) complexity
since the 1970s, particularly represented by Brian Ferneyhough’s scores. This
overdetermination, however, did not necessarily imply that the ideal of an
‘execution’ or ‘reproduction’ of notation was further cemented by ‘complexity’
composers. Somewhat conversely, Ferneyhough has argued that notational
complexity in his scores is linked to the principle that ‘performers are no
longer expected to function solely as optimally efficient reproducers of imagined
sounds; they are also themselves “resonators” in and through which the initial
impetus provided by the score is amplified and modulated in the most varied
ways imaginable’ (1998c, p. 100). Of course, this does not mean that the score
might be taken as a pretext for mere improvisation: according to Ferneyhough,
the criteria for an adequate musical performance – with ‘no difference [ . . . ]
between Haydn and Xenakis’ – lie in ‘the extent to which the performer is
technically and spiritually able to recognise and embody the demands of fidelity
(NOT “exactitude”!)’ (1998d, p. 71).
In Time and Motion Study II (1973–6) for solo cello and electronics, the
relationship of performer and notation is in many respects placed at the centre of

Ex. 3 Ferneyhough, Time and Motion Study II: bars 1–10, indication of 18 events in bars 1–9, live electronic part omitted. ©
1978 by Hinrichsen Edition Peters Edition Ltd. London.
1 2 3 4 5 6
Music Analysis, 00/00 (2016)

1 10 11
3 4
2 5 6 7 8 9
7 8 9
10
12
A PERFORMANCE-SENSITIVE APPROACH TO MORPHOSYNTACTIC ANALYSIS
14 15
13
16 17 18
25

26 CHRISTIAN UTZ
Fig. 8 Ferneyhough, Time and Motion Study II: beginning; events 1–18 (bars 1–9),
comparison of 3 recordings (durations)
attention.24 The piece is inspired by Antonin Artaud’s ‘Theatre of Cruelty’ (see

Fitch 2013, pp. 203 and 211 and Archbold, Heyde and Still 2007, 13:50–18:00),
and in it the body of the performer is conceived as the protagonist of the sound-
producing media: all sorts of machines (microphones, loudspeakers, cables,
tape recorders and live electronic equipment) are attached to or surround the
performer in a kind of ‘punitive cage’ (Ferneyhough 1998e, p. 394) alluded to in
the withdrawn subtitle of the work, ‘electric chair music’. According to Lois Fitch,
a [ . . . ] ‘subjective obscuration’ obtains in the cellist’s relationship to the notation

alone, particularly the physical demands that must be met in order to render
the piece satisfactorily. The performer’s feet, throat, palms, nails and various
parts of the fingers are called upon, and the cello itself becomes an array of exotic
instruments, including guitar, mandolin, zarb [a kind of drum] and piano’. (2013,
p. 210)
The socio-political impact of the work, established by its title’s reference to

efficiency in industrial engineering, is further emphasised by the composer,
who suggests an association of the solo cellist with ‘the self-expression of the
individual’ while the continuously interfering loops of past events rendered by
the electronic set-up symbolise the ‘distorting mirror of collectivity (continually
frustrating the desire of the performer to speak freely)’. The composer thus aims
to shed ‘light on the relationship [ . . . ] between the individual and the public
spheres of experience’ (Ferneyhough 1998a, p. 108).
With regard to temporality, Ferneyhough follows the established avant-garde
topos of an ‘abolition of linear temporal experience’ (1998a, p. 107)25 by what he
called ‘interruptive polyphony’ or ‘interference form’ (Feller 1992, p. 257), most
recently radicalised to a ‘sausage-slicer technique’ (Ferneyhough and Archbold
2011, p. 49) in which the score is put together from a large number of short
fragments in shuffled order. While this is reminiscent of Xenakis’s post-serial
montage technique, the largely incessant density of Ferneyhough’s music makes
it much harder to perceive the music as discontinuous. This is particularly true for
Time and Motion Study II, where the electronic feedback loops over long periods

obscure the performed actions to a considerable extent, leaving only very few
caesuras or regions of low density as large-scale ‘spatial’ markers. Thus neither
a large-scale architecture nor an isolation of ‘moments’ (despite the composer’s
insistence on discontinuity) seems to render an adequate analytical approach
here. The processual model, in contrast, seems in tune with the fact that the
electronics replay events that have already been performed, which contributes to
an impression of permanent transition.
Although it is extremely hard to isolate single events in this ‘stream of
consciousness’, the beginning and ending of the piece conform to their
conventional framing function by reducing complexity and putting the focus
on the cellist. Not unlike the beginning of Xenakis’s piece, the first nine bars
(according to my analysis) establish a series of eighteen contrasting events,
cued by salient attacks and impulses (Ex. 3). All three professional recordings
of the piece render the temporal and proportional order of these events with
remarkable consistency, considering the notational challenges involved (Fig.
8). The ‘extremely nervous’ character indicated in the beginning and obviously
anticipating the piece’s narrative of the ‘oppressed individual’ is arguably best
rendered in the most recent recording by Neil Heyde (2007) which keeps the
timing most consistent while (similarly to Strauch’s Xenakis recording) some
events are rendered rather hastily (event 18, for example, is virtually non-existent
in his performance, while both Taube’s 1977 recording and Gauwerky’s from
1988 focus on this event as a ‘cadential’ marker concluding the first section of
the work).
In a video documentary, Neil Heyde defends the composer’s notation, saying
that alternative solutions to score the sound events, such as semi-improvisational
indications on a time scale, would not ‘necessarily keep challenging’ him to work
harder; and he particularly highlights the ‘helpfulness’ of poetic instructions in
the score such as ‘sudden extremes of stillness and mobility, like certain reptiles
and insects (i.e., praying mantis)’. The composer supplements this by saying that
today’s ‘highly intelligent performers’ are no longer content to play ‘what is in
front of them or what someone else thinks is in front of them [ . . . ], entering into
this much more organic confrontation between [ . . . ] poetic imaginaries and the
practice of the music’ (Archbold, Heyde and Still 2007, 9:10–13:00).
Performing Time
The integration of quantitative and qualitative performance studies into
morphosyntactic analysis might be considered a promising field in current music
research so long as it avoids the one-sidedness potentially inherent in all the
subdisciplines involved: structural analysis, music psychology, historical and
empirical research, performance practice. A highly complex phenomenon such
as the performance and experience of musical temporality cannot be adequately
grasped by either of these subdisciplines alone but requires forms of mutual

28 CHRISTIAN UTZ
dialogue between methodological traditions. The studies offered here propose

ways in which such a dialogue may become fruitful.
The analyses above may also help to contextualise and scrutinise a number
of decisions that musical performers have to make with respect to composed,
performed and perceived temporality, four of which can be summarised here.
1. On a basic level, the performer must decide whether to render the ‘time
of music’ as represented by the rhythmical-metrical structure of the piece
literally or whether elements of a rhetorical performance style should be
(consciously or spontaneously) incorporated even when this is not indicated
by tempo changes in the score: a general rubato, particular tempo decreases
to mark the beginning and/or end of phrases or sections, perhaps the
deliberate expansion or shortening of rests, and so on. It is evident that
these decisions are particularly dependent on larger and often historically
‘loaded’ performance traditions.
2. In cases where a performer decides not to observe a prescribed tempo,
should the ratios between events and sections be preserved and thus the
alternative tempo be kept more or less strictly throughout, or should tempo
changes that are not indicated be allowed or perhaps even emphasised in
order to render the impression of discontinuity?
3. Should the individuality of musical events in general be stressed by
attributing particular timing, timbre, dynamics or performance movements
to each event group or ‘sound family’, or should the performer aim to
minimise contrasts by understanding all individual events as parts of a
large transformation process?
4. What degree of precision should be devoted to the performance of events or
sections that are obviously (partly) ‘conceptual’ or (consciously) ‘utopian’?
Should precision of pitch/rhythm be superior or subordinate to the overall
temporal order?
It is obvious from the preceding discussion that no straightforward or

generalised answers to these questions can be provided and that each combination
of answers is going to yield different concepts of temporal experience such as
those summarised above as spatial time, processual time and presentist time –
or, most likely, a sort of interaction between these three categories. Obviously,
the solutions found by individual performers rarely involve rigorous structuralist
analytical activity but rather reflect many of culturally informed decisions, a not
inconsiderable number of which might be enacted spontaneously only during
a particular live or recorded performance. Of course, these decisions are not
made in vacuo but rather are indebted to performance traditions, some of which
today are still ‘lurking in the darker corners of the conservatories’ (Ferneyhough
1998b, p. 4). However, many of them are more recent in origin and are part of
an oral transmission in the field of contemporary-music performance practice

that is still poorly documented and presents an obvious desideratum for future
research.
Seen from this angle, it is clear that all three discussed scores represent
the musical avant-garde’s criticism of unreflective performance practices very
decidedly, since they provoke the cellist to reconsider or even reinvent every single
movement and sound as well as the way they are communicated to an audience.
However, the case studies have also made it apparent that a prominent type of
convention in performance, which is aptly summarised if perhaps overgeneralised
in Cook’s term ‘rhetorical performance’, nevertheless remains vital to both
composers’ and performers’ imagination of sound time from the 1960s until
the present day. This is true not only for the widespread remnants of rhetorical
performance surviving in the narrower field of new-music performance practice,
but also for the idea, indebted to nineteenth-century aesthetics, that virtuosity
‘transcends’ musical experience beyond established perceptual constraints.
Working out performance-sensitive analyses thus should not lead to
misconceptions about a performance-related or perceptual methodological
positivism. To reduce musical experience to fragmentary real-time listening,
to the bodily experience of performed sound or to the energy produced during
performances would turn the necessary amendments which the performative
turn has made to established musicological practices into an impoverishment.
More than a decade ago Nicholas Cook postulated that musical works should
be regarded as both ‘frameworks for a performance culture’ and as ‘objects
of contemplation or critical reflection’ (2005, [para. 24]). The implications
of compositional structure on performance and perception cannot be limited
to what is performable or perceivable, since this would imply a normative
understanding of what can be performed or perceived (a criticism of the musical
avant-garde based on alleged ‘cognitive constraints’, as formulated in Lerdahl
1988, has been refuted so often and so convincingly that it seems unnecessary to
return to it here at length; see especially Cook 1999, pp. 241–5). It is the marked
impetus of liberation from established modes of perception and performance,
a trope deeply embedded in musical modernity, which the three works by
Lachenmann, Xenakis and Ferneyhough discussed above share. Their act- and
perception-oriented composing might be seen not so much as a naive adherence
to a modernist concept of technical progress, but as an insistent reminder that
our senses are acting and evolving within an unlimited universe of musical sound
time that composers, performers and listeners are constantly reconfiguring.
Appendix: Recordings Analysed
Name of performer, year recorded, publisher and year of release (where applicable),
total duration and URL of performance (where available)
a. Lachenmann, Pression
1. Werner Taube, 1971 (Edition RZ, 1990), 8′ 20′′

30 CHRISTIAN UTZ
2. Michael Bach, 1989 (Edition RZ, 1990), 9′ 16′′

3. Michael Bach, 1991 (CPO, 1992), 8′ 39′′
4. Walter Grimmer, 1991 (Col Legno, 1994), 8′ 17′′
5. Taco Kooistra, 1992 (Attacca Babel, 1992), 7′ 52′′
6. Pierre Strauch, 1993 (Accord 1993), 8′ 37′′
7. Lucas Fels, 1995 (Montaigne, 1995), 9′ 21′′
8. Benjamin Carat, 1998 (GRAME, 1998), 8′ 04′′
9. Wolfgang Lessing, 2005 (Wergo, 2008), 9′ 28′′
10. Martı́n Devoto, 2008 (BlueArt, 2008), 8′ 45′′
11. Michael M. Kasper, 2009 (Ensemble Modern, 2009), 7′ 35′′
12. Jonathan Gotlibovich, 2011 (live recording, Haifa, 29 March 2011),
7′ 23′′ , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ep6joCRmWxg
13. Mykhailo Babych, 2012 (live recording, University of
Music and Performing Arts Vienna, 8 June 2012), 8′ 57′′ ,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ug1iahj82ok
14. Lauren Radnofsky, 2012 (Mode Records, 2012), 9′ 07′′
15. David Stromberg, 2013 (studio video recording), 7′ 09′′ ,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7Gzrake8nI
b. Xenakis, Nomos Alpha

1. Pierre Penassou, 1967 (CVC LP, 1968; EMI CD, 2010), 17′ 57′′
2. Siegfried Palm, 1974 (Deutsche Grammophon LP, 1975; CD, 2002),
14′ 25′′
3. Pierre Strauch, 1990 (Erato, 1992), 12′ 33′′
4. Rohan de Saram, 1991 (Montaigne, 1992), 15′ 26′′
5. Arne Deforce, 2010 (Aeon, 2011), 19′ 10′′
6. Martina Schucan, 2011 (live recording, Zürich, 27 May
2011), 15′ 20′′ , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EN5qpvAG0_I,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwUs4EPJAIk
c. Ferneyhough, Time and Motion Study II

1. Werner Taube; Thomas Kessler, Dieter Mack, live electronics, 1977
(Musicaphon LP, 1978), 22′ 18′′
2. Friedrich Gauwerky, 1998 (Etcetera, 1998), 22′ 32′′
3. Neil Heyde; Paul Archbold, live electronics, 2007, iTunesU/youtube/
DVD (Optic Nerve [DVD] 2007), 21′ 50′′ , http://deimos3.apple.com/
WebObjects/Core.woa/Feed/sas.ac.uk-dz.24603997519.024603997521,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sykB4znEk2Q
NOTES
This essay is an expanded version of a paper presented at the Eighth
European Conference on Music Analysis held in Leuven, Belgium, in
September 2014. I am grateful for advice received from Oscar Bandtlow,

Nicholas Cook, Ellen Fallowfield and Lukas Haselböck, and for financial
support for my research from the Austrian Science Fund (FWF): P 24069-
G21.
1. The method has been elaborated in a series of publications, including Utz
(2013a), (2013b), (2013c), (2014), (2015) and (forthcoming).
2. The first edition, originally published in 1972 by the editor Hans Gerig
(Cologne), was reissued by Breitkopf & Härtel in 1980 (HG 865); the
revised edition was published by Breitkopf & Härtel first as a handwritten
autograph dated ‘6. März 2010’ at the end of the score and ‘Juli 2010’
in the performance instructions (here marked as ‘preliminary version’),
then, in 2012, in a computer-engraved version (Edition Breitkopf 9221).
In terms of note values, the 2012 edition adds fourteen crotchets, resulting
in a total of 363 crotchets (see Table 1); in general, the musical structure is
preserved in the 2012 edition, including most fermatas and the few isolated
remarks referring to the temporal organisation. Detailed comparisons of
the different versions are provided in Orning (2012), Lessing (2013)
and particularly Orning (2013). My analysis will refer to the 1972
edition; events in the score are localised by crotchets, counted from
the beginning, following and slightly correcting the procedure in Jahn’s
analysis (1988, pp. 44–6 and Utz 2013b, p. 12 n. 4; see also Table 1).
References to the 2012 version are given in bar numbers (see also Orning
2013).
3. To date no detailed study introduces the compositional process which
resulted in Pression. Though Mosch has remarked on the systematic
treatment of performance techniques in this piece (2006, p. 28), all that
can been said so far is that Pression is not, like most other works from
this period, based on the complex post-serial systematic of Lachenmann’s
‘structural net’ (Strukturnetz) (see Cavallotti 2006, p. 79), a system first
developed during the early 1960s that the composer has since employed
continually.
4. Earlier analyses were published in Jahn (1988); Mosch (2006); Lessing
(2006), (2010) and (2013) and Neuwirth (2008). Performance is discussed
in detail in Mosch (2006), Lessing (2006 and 2010) and Orning (2012)
and (2013); Orning is a Norwegian scholar and cellist.
5. ‘Ton und Geräusch waren keine Gegensätze, sondern gingen als
Varianten übergeordneter Klangkategorien immer wieder auf andere Weise
auseinander hervor’ (Lachenmann 1996d, p. 227).
6. This intention cannot be directly inferred either from the score or from
Lachenmann’s comments on Pression, but it can be tentatively transferred
from remarks in the cello part of his string quartet Gran Torso (see Hilberg
1995).

32 CHRISTIAN UTZ
7. ‘The success of a performance will be measured by oneself and one’s

audience not so much by its analytical rigour, historical fidelity or even
technical accuracy (at least in some circles) as by the degree to which
“resonance” is achieved in drawing together the constituent elements into
something greater than the sum of those parts, into a musically cogent and
coherent synthesis’ (Rink 2002, p. 56).
8. Here Lachenmann seemed to be referring to the phrasing of the entire
piece. Orning (2013, p. 103) provides a more specific statement about the
col legno saltando section (crotchets 99–133), about which the composer
referred ‘to the performance practice of Schumann and Schubert, which
encourages rubato phrasings in order to shape the music’. The indication
‘poco rubato’ in this section (crotchet 125 in the 1972 version; bar 40 –
two bars earlier – in the 2012 version) thus seems to be applicable to the
entire section, if not to the entire piece. However, this can not be inferred
from any indication in the available score versions.
9. ‘It is important to remember that the opening of the aesthetic as well as the
performance-technical horizon reaches far beyond the discovery of such
alienations. This entails, however, an even more precise understanding and
observation of their realisation. We are facing here, as in traditional tone
articulation, a highly differentiated practice, a unique kind of sound culture
that has to be studied carefully and treasured affectionately. Each of these
performing techniques has its own fascination and beauty in the sense of
sensual intensity’ (‘Wichtig ist mir die Erinnerung daran, dass die Öffnung
des ästhetischen ebenso wie des spieltechnischen Horizontes weit über das
Entdecken solcher Verfremdungen hinausgeht. Umso genauer allerdings
muss deren richtige Ausführung verstanden und beachtet werden. Wir
haben es hier, genau wie bei der traditionellen Tongebung, mit einer
hoch differenzierten Praxis zu tun, einer eigenen Art von Klangkultur,
die man sorgfältig studieren und liebevoll pflegen muss. Jede dieser
Spieltechniken hat ihre eigene Faszination und Schönheit im Sinne von
sinnlicher Intensität’ (Lachenmann and Hermann 2013).
10. A detailed list of all recordings of Pression is provided in the Appendix.
The durations of the recordings compared by Mosch (2006, pp. 26–
38) – six of the eight available in the spring of 2005 – ranged between
8′ 17′′ (Grimmer’s 1992 recording) and 9′ 32′′ (Michael Bach’s of 1989).
It is difficult to determine the exact duration of each recording, because
the piece opens almost inaudibly and closes with a fermata on a
quaver rest followed by a fading-out resonance. Further difficulties are
the high noise level in Bach’s 1989 and in Werner Taube’s 1971 LP
recordings.
11. See n. 10 on the difficulty of determining exact durations. At least three out
of the four recordings made after 2010 are based on the 2010/2012 version

of the score, as can be seen from, among other things, the technique of
damping the strings with the chin.
12. It has to be emphasised here that the three recordings in which this section
is surprisingly short (27, 36 and 37 seconds) are the three YouTube videos
included, two of which are semi-professional in nature (concert recordings
by advanced cello students). All other performances stay above 52 seconds
here.
13. Metaphorical descriptions of some sections in this piece are provided
in the performance instructions to the 2010/2012 version, including the
‘“Morse”-Section’, a term which probably originated in Jahn’s analysis,
where it is rendered for this section without comment (Jahn 1988, p. 43).
14. Stromberg cuts down the 60 seconds of the pressed-bow section to 37,
while Kasper expands it to 67; thus Kasper’s comes closest to the prescribed
duration of the score.
15. ‘It is not what is written down, marked out exactly in terms of its
sound realisation, and considered as sealed once and for all but those
natural, rather subcutaneous penetrations into the sound dimension which,
proceeding from the written aspect, are first realised in the process of
origination that may be understood [ . . . ] as an unexpected enrichment or
as a disturbing “contamination” and a misleading accessory feature. Viewed
in this way, no open contradiction to the score should be in evidence even if
Pression sounds differently each time it is performed, this in keeping with the
varying outer and inner conditions of reception or [ . . . ] the [ . . . ] intentions
[ . . . ] of an interpreter who aimed at the appearances necessarily resulting
from his activity and removed from his intentional sphere of influence.
[ . . . ] In fact, a clearly delineated Lachenmannian style has already
established itself and been documented today. We know how the composer
preheard his music and how it is to be performed. However, does not this
aspect of Lachenmannian performance convention, presenting itself here
in Pression [ . . . ] in a traditional sequence of tension and development,
express the cheerfully classicistic, the self-balancing, ironically historicizing
withdrawal of an originally more “expressionistic” mentality?’ (Bach
1992).
16. This observation takes up the conclusion of Lukas Haselböck’s paper
‘Troping Processes and Irony in Schubert’s Schöne Müllerin’, presented
at the 2014 EuroMAC Conference in Leuven in the same session at which
the author presented the paper on which this essay is based.
17. See the expansive analyses in DeLio (1980) and Peck (2003). The latter is
particularly relevant for our context because it considers the piece primarily
from the perspective of performance and perception. See also Harley
(2004), pp. 42–4.

34 CHRISTIAN UTZ
18. The eight sound complexes are defined by Xenakis and also rendered in
graphic form (Xenakis 1992, pp. 222 and 232–3; see also DeLio 1980,
pp. 76–81 and Peck 2003, p. 88): (1) ataxic cloud of sound points; (2)
relatively ordered ascending or descending cloud of sound points; (3)
relatively ordered cloud of sound points, neither ascending nor descending;
(4) ionised atom represented on a cello by interferences, accompanied by
pizzicati; (5) ataxic field of sliding sounds; (6) relatively ordered ascending
or descending field of sliding sounds; (7) relatively ordered cloud of sliding
sounds, neither ascending nor descending and (8) atom represented on a
cello by interferences of a quasi unison.
19. See Peck (2003) and Berry (1989). The tautological character of Peck’s
suggestions is obvious; ‘introductory material should have a quality of
leading somewhere [ . . . ]; expository material should be deliberate and
obvious, and possess a certain stability. [ . . . O]ne should present closing
material with a sense of finality’ (Peck 2003, pp. 109–10).
20. Hughes reviews Xenakis’s Nomos Alpha attending to Emmanuel Levinas’s
discussion of this work in Otherwise than Being, arguing that Palm’s
recording successfully communicates ‘the particular sound of the moment,
rather than [ . . . ] the larger architecture of the composition’, owing to
the ‘energy of his performance’ and ‘his labored breathing’: ‘Palm gives
the listener an image of the cellist as absolutely committed, body and
soul, to this difficult and very physical piece; not passively absorbed but
rather utterly focused on the production of sound demanded by the score.
The sounds are so precise, so carefully played, and yet so surprising,
that Palm himself gives the impression of dwelling, like the listener,
fully in the particular sound of the moment, rather than in the larger
architecture of the composition’ (Hughes 2010, p. 204). Palm’s recording
is definitely very energetic but surely not ‘precise’, for it renders most
sounds in a rather chaotic and opaque way. (The first event, bars 1–
3, is omitted entirely from Palm’s recording.) Levinas exemplified the
Heidegger-indebted trope of a ‘vibration’ or ‘resonance’ of being/essence
by referencing Xenakis’s Nomos Alpha: ‘the strings and wood turn into
sonority. What is taking place? [ . . . ] The cello is a cello in the sonority that
vibrates in its strings and its wood [ . . . ] . The essence of the cello, a modality
of essence, is thus temporalized in the work’(quoted in Hughes 2010,
p. 116).
21. ‘Nomos Alpha is klankarchitectuur in beweging. Een muzikale ruimte waarin
structuren uitdijen tot indrukwekkende klankcomplexen en weer inkrimpen
tot de gebalde kracht van één toon’ (Deforce 2012, p. 82).
22. ‘[I]n measure 1–3 in Nomos Alpha, the metronome marking is for a half-
note = 75 MM. It is possible to play the sixteenth note pizzicati using
either a quasi-tremolo (as if for a mandolin) using one or two fingers of

the right hand, or by combining a pizzicato in the left and right hands. But
Xenakis stated he wanted the pizzicati in this section played in the normal
manner, with one finger, which makes these first three bars extremely
difficult, if not impossible to play at that speed’ (Saram 2010, p. 298).
Arne Deforce uses a ‘mandolin’ pizzicato in his 2010 recording of the
work.
23. ‘[A]t measure 4 and seq., the “fcl” (struck collegno) is at double the speed of
the articulations of the first three bars, as Xenakis asks for two articulations
to each sixteenth-note! This is clearly impossible with a normal legno battuto.
In order to realize such a passage, the cellist would need a bow notched with
closely ground “teeth” that would be drawn across the string for measures 4,
5, and 6. This could then possibly reach the speed of articulation required’
(Saram 2010, pp. 298–9).
24. See Iddon (2006), p. 96: ‘[T]he score for Time and Motion Study II expresses
more closely the gestures that a performer is expected to make to allow the
sounding result of the piece to come into being. This is foregrounded
most strongly in the performance directions for various sections, including
such instructions as “sudden extremes of stillness and mobility, like certain
reptiles and insects (i.e., praying mantis)”, “sharp and dry (the feel of
powdered glass between the fingers)” or “analytic but flexible: like a
sleepwalker’s dance . . . ”. Even without this, however, the absence of a
notation for the sounding result of the piece (with the exception of the final
page’s scordatura), or any indication of the sounds that should be heard
from the tape loops, suggests strongly that this is a score for performance,
rather than for listening. Moreover, the level of notational detail—up to
five separate staves of densely written material—plays a further part in
questioning notions of what constitutes an efficient performance.’
25. On the dissemination of this topos in the history of twentieth-century music,
see Utz (2014) and (2015).
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40 CHRISTIAN UTZ
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NOTE ON THE CONTRIBUTOR

CHRISTIAN UTZ is Professor of Music Theory and Analysis at the University of
Music and Performing Arts in Graz and Associate Professor of Musicology at the
University of Vienna. His monographs include Neue Musik und Interkulturalität
(Franz Steiner Verlag, 2002) and Komponieren im Kontext der Globalisierung
(Transcript Verlag, 2014). He has also co-edited Lexikon der Systematischen
Musikwissenschaft (Laaber, 2010), Vocal Music and Contemporary Identities
(Routledge, 2013) and Lexikon Neue Musik (Metzler and Bärenreiter, 2016).
Utz serves on the executive board of the Gesellschaft für Musiktheorie (GMTH)
and the editorial board of the Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für Musiktheorie.
ABSTRACT
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.


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DOI: 10.1111/musa.

TIME-SPACE EXPERIENCE IN WORKS FOR SOLO CELLO BY LACHENMANN,

Recent studies in music performance reflect an increasing degree of

Music Analysis, 00/00 (2016) 1

In order to relate performed sound structures to quantified data, I shall discuss

Musical Temporality: Methodological Considerations

© 2016 The Authors. Music Analysis, 00/00 (2016)

discussed aspects of the analysability of temporality in twentieth-century art

Music Analysis, 00/00 (2016) © 2016 The Authors.

musical temporality and time-related expectation and retrospection. Musical

Lachenmann’s Pression and Three Archetypes of Musical Temporality

© 2016 The Authors. Music Analysis, 00/00 (2016)

manner, with performance techniques treated rigorously as parameters of the

Music Analysis, 00/00 (2016) © 2016 The Authors.

Time as Space/Spatialised Time

© 2016 The Authors. Music Analysis, 00/00 (2016)

Fig. 1 Lachenmann, Pression: ‘spatial’ perception model

considered not merely as a theoretical construction, but as a debatable model of

Music Analysis, 00/00 (2016) © 2016 The Authors.

Fig. 2 Lachenmann, Pression: ‘processual’ perception model

Presentist Time/‘Moment’ Time

© 2016 The Authors. Music Analysis, 00/00 (2016)

Fig. 3 Lachenmann, Pression: ‘presentist’ perception model

13 14 15 59 60 86 87 116 117 118 180 181 261 262 343 346

In order to enhance the impression of discontinuity and fragmentation and

1. The architectural model is of course inherent in the tradition of Formenlehre

Music Analysis, 00/00 (2016) © 2016 The Authors.

metaphor of architecture. To some extent and in a simplified formulation,

Which of these three models is closest to the dimension of the composer’s

© 2016 The Authors. Music Analysis, 00/00 (2016)

on performance were deeply embedded in the rhetorical tradition of the

Music Analysis, 00/00 (2016) © 2016 The Authors.

1972 version 2012 version

© 2016 The Authors.

hand → wiping back and forth

1972 version 2012 version

Music Analysis, 00/00 (2016)

© 2016 The Authors.

Fig. 4a Lachenmann, Pression: comparison of 15 recordings (durations; four large

Fig. 4b Lachenmann, Pression: comparison of 15 recordings (durations; 13

© 2016 The Authors. Music Analysis, 00/00 (2016)

Music Analysis, 00/00 (2016) © 2016 The Authors.

Fig. 5 Lachenmann, Pression: comparison of 15 recordings (ratios of deviation from

a very pronounced acoustic marker on the ‘whistle’ accent which serves as a

© 2016 The Authors. Music Analysis, 00/00 (2016)

[W]hen I create a sort of white noise in Pression [ . . . ] this results in a range of

Music Analysis, 00/00 (2016) © 2016 The Authors.

Neither do I believe that there is an essential difference between the shape of

I don’t think in [ . . . ] categories [such as a spatial, temporal or teleological sense

Xenakis’s Nomos Alpha: ‘Outside’ and ‘Inside’ Time

© 2016 The Authors. Music Analysis, 00/00 (2016)

in-time’, designating procedures which arrange this material in a temporal

Music Analysis, 00/00 (2016) © 2016 The Authors.

© 2016 The Authors.

bars 3–6). In total, as analysed by Peck following Kramer’s categories of musical

Nomos Alpha is moving architecture of sound. A musical space in which structures

Music Analysis, 00/00 (2016) © 2016 The Authors.

Fig. 6b Xenakis, Nomos Alpha: comparison of six recordings (deviation ratios of

Section 1 is particularly interesting with respect to literal performance, since