Hans Keller

The Contemporary Problem

A tedious title, this, but a thought which will remain with us for a long time, and which I am therefore adopting as a permanent title for my regular feature. We have to cope with the problem so long as it exists. The two usual, alternative ways of escaping it are (1) to deny its existence, or (2) to regard it as unsolvable. The first route is usually taken by composers, the second by resigned music lovers. We shall see in the course of these quarterly notes whether there is, perhaps, a third.

In Memoriam Dylan Thomas: Strawinsky's Schoenbergian Technique

Music examples usually illustrate articles, but the present article is no more than an illustration appended to my analytic music example of the complete central song from Strawinskys most recent composition (Spring, 1954), In Memoriam Dylan Thomas . I think that writers on music should be encouraged to keep to the music, and seriously contend that all the adverse critics of Schoenbergs serial technique, and most of the writers who pass for serial experts, are incapable of a serial analysis and have only the very vaguest notion of what makes a serial piece “tick.” They quote a bar or two—usually from the opening of Schoenbergs 4th Quartet—where the note-row is fairly obvious or, anyway, has previously been uncovered by someone else, and then proceed to let obscure theory take the place of clear if complex practice. The reason is simple: they dont hear the row, and if you are unable to imagine a row aurally, it is very difficult, usually indeed impossible, to trace it throughout a piece. Let me hasten to add that I should not dream of reproaching any critic with his tone-row-deafness if he left it at that: for all we know, he may otherwise be a musical genius. If, however, he professes to talk serial “shop” at the same time, I raise the strongest moral objections.

Strict Serial Technique in Classical Music

Vaughan Williams inspired attacks on musical history in The Making of Music (London, 1955) have come in for some heavy censure. “There is no physical reason,” he writes, “why an 18th-century composer should not have written the whole of Strawinsky and Schoenberg, provided that he had the pen and paper.” “Only the same reason,” Martin Cooper comments, “that prevents a monkey with a typewriter producing Hamlet .”

Benjamin Britten's Second Quartet

In the first part of the exposition, the three subjects are announced in immediate succession (see Exs. 1-3). They are given at octave intervals by three instruments while the fourth supplies the pedal of a tenth, which interval is the fons et orzgo (not the Leitmotiv) of the whole movement. The tenth forms the root motif of each subject and is subsequently used at the beginning of each of the above-named five sections. At the same time, it assumes a dominant role in the coda, thus making an end out of the beginning and completing the movements ternary circle (see Ex. 4).

In Interview with Anton Weinberg

AW. Your early childhood in Vienna was rather interesting, first of all because I believe you had rather a funny Christmas present one year: a conductors baton... HK. Ah, yes! I had seen a conductor, but I was too small to see the orchestra, so I thought that all the music came out of the conductors stick. Whence I desired to have such a stick and a conductor and friend of my mothers brought me one, and I started conducting. Nothing came, so I thought to myself, Oh god, youve got to learn this! and was gravely disappointed. Thereafter I was told that the orchestra produced the music and the conductors stick didnt.

Composers of the World, De-Bow!

IHE HISTORY of modern notation is the history of the stupefaction of our musical world which, enriched by an ever greater number of unmusical people (listeners, performers, and composers), has come to need a proportionate amount of superfluous information-superfluous, that is, for anybody who understands the music in the first place. Complex and problematic cases apart, Bach was still able to rely on our insight to the extent of letting the sheer structure of a piece dictate its tempo whereas nowadays, the not so musical amongst us are unhappy without metronome marks, while the rest of us are unhappy about them. Again, Mozarts dynamics are extremely economical; many a dynamic change is firmly implied without being notated, and if we confined ourselves to his notated dynamics, an impossible, underplayed performance would be the result-which, in due journalistic course, would be described as stylish by our critics. So much-though there could, of course, be far more-about the increasing musical stupidity at the reception end and in the receptive middle-listeners and performers. Unfortunately, the de-musicalization of our culture encompasses the production end, too: what, in the 1 8th and early i 9th century, was the complete musician no longer exists-and the complete musician, i.e. every notable composer, played keyboard and string instruments at what we nowadays call professional level. The keyboard virtuosity of a Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, and Mendelssohn tends to make us forget their string-playing accomplishments, but a glance at the violin and viola parts which Bach wrote for himself leave us in no doubt about his own string technique. Again, the viola parts which Mozart wrote for himself (and, as H.C. Robbins Landon has discovered, for Haydn) prove him (if not Haydn too) a viola virtuoso, and the fact that, despite his physical condition, Beethoven conscientiously tried the trickier passages of his Violin Concerto on the instrument is sufficient evidence of his own, practically insightful approach to string-writing: he did, after all, start professional life as a string player. As for Mendelssohn, his pianism overshadowed everything-but the fact remains that as a viola player, he was a highly valued quartet colleague of Louis Spohr (see the latters Autobiography)--and can you imagine Spohr, whose quartet travelled with Beethovens op. 18, put up with an amateurish viola player?

An Instrumental Problem in ‘Pulcinella’

Stravinsky knew little about violin technique. It happens in the best circles. Schumann, on the evidence of his highly substantial string quartets, knew as much about string playing as I know about the cimbalom. Brahms and Tchaikovsky wrote great violin concertos against the violin. And Mahlers auditioning of violinists was a joke: ‘He attached the greatest significance to the steadiest possible bowing in sustained notes’, Carl Flesch recounts, and therefore considered the beginning of the third act of Siegfried [Flesch means the beginning of Act III, Scene 3] a touchstone for the bowing technique of an orchestral violinist … He first asked me to play a Mozart Adagio, and then set the Siegfried passage in front of me. As my bow glided over the strings with the phlegmatic calm of a world-weary philosopher, he seemed greatly pleased, wanted to nail me down to the post of leader at once, and accompanied me himself to the administration building …

Mozart's Wrong Key Signature

Articles about keys tend to remain unread, even by musicians, who will pick out the odd point of interest, but regard tonal structure as something to be heard and not seen, as indeed it is. Its even true to say that most articles on keys are, in fact, boring: they explain, in infinitely patient conceptual detail, what is part and parcel of ones instinctive musical experience anyway, if one is musical at all—so why bother? However, my subject is not a key, but a non-key—the most dramatic non-key I know in our entire diatonic literature. No technical knowledge is needed to appreciate what is a 181-year-old sensation. All you need to know is what one sharp means in a key signature. For the rest, its worth getting a score of Cosi fan tutte out of the library if you dont possess one.

Wrong Notes in Contemporary Music

My title is, of course, a begging of at least half the question: we first have to diagnose the right notes as right before we can say that any of them are wrongly played—diagnose rather than merely find: no longer does the fact that a composer puts down a C on paper necessarily mean that he cares two hoots if a C sharp is played instead, or a C-semi-sharp for that matter. And even if he thinks he cares, one takes leave to doubt the profundity of his worries when, in rehearsal, one notices that he does not perceive the difference between the alleged right note and the wrong note he gets instead. Such tone-deafness may indeed be temporary, traumatic—especially if the composer is young, unused to rehearsal, frightened, nervous. But if it happens again and again, in all conceivable circumstances, the least that can be said on the sceptical side is that he must be overestimating the significance of his C qua C.

Knowing Things Backwards

It follows that. Folgerung . That doesnt follow. Non sequitur . Wherever we look, logical consistency or inconsistency is expressed metaphorically in terms of time. So elementally do we link “after” and “because” that the most common fallacy, by which historians make a living, is post hoc ergo propter hoc : “thereafter, hence because of it.” Conversely, we should say that propter hoc ergo post hoc must inevitably be valid: “because of it, hence thereafter.” There is, however, one respect in which this need not be held to be true—the teleological. Causa finalis , the ultimate purpose, lies inevitably in the future, as indeed does every purpose. Tomorrows concert causes todays rehearsal. True, your reason for rehearsing necessarily precedes your rehearsal, but the cause of your reason may be said to lie in the future inasmuch as the future is foreseeable. In this sense, then, propter hoc ergo post hoc can be fallacious too. Tomorrow you have a concert. It doesnt follow that you want a rehearsal today; it precedes .