Toward a Phenomenology of Music: A Musician's Composition Journal

Author(s): F. Joseph Smith

Source: Philosophy of Music Education Review, Vol. 3, No. 1 (Spring, 1995), pp. 21-33
Published by: Indiana University Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40327085
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 Toward a Phenomenology of Music:
A Musician's Composition Journal

F. Joseph Smith
Chicago City College

Foreword compose for at church and for people there.

Journal keeping is rife these days, and in fact 1. Re-identifying as a composer and performer,
it has a long literary history. It needs no particu- after wandering afield into musicology and
lar justification as a genre of writing and is phenomenology as such, I now appreciate the
actually more direct and honest as a form of complaints of specialist-composers that we are
expression. The following are entries from my treated by the music media as though we didn't
journal now in its seventy-first volume, compris- exist, or that what we are engaged in does not
ing nearly 14,250 pages to date, written in a factor into the current musical and artistic cul-
number of languages, covering many topics and ture. In musicology we may well and deservedly
including major sections on the philosophy of be regarded as marginal, given the narrow and
music. I excerpt segments of this extensive, often trivial pursuits engaged in-with a goodly
partially published opus dealing with musical number of notable exceptions, of course. But at
composition. My composition teacher was Leo least musicologists get published and have access
Sowerby at the American Conservatory of Mu- to national and other conferences. Under such
sic, Chicago. He wanted me to major in compo- circumstances few of the composers we actually
sition, but at Freiburg University I was led astray get to hear at Chicago Symphony Orchestra
into musicology and phenomenology, returning concerts-Daniel Barenboim is steadily improving
later to composition as such. My works have this situation-or on FM radio would ever have
been presented and premiered at colleges, univer- gotten known. Conceivably, even Mozart would
sities, churches (American Guild of Organists have gotten masked out by a canon of older
recitals and regular services), and coffee sessions music, and we might never have heard of him
in the USA and Canada over the years. Enough but for some meticulous and studious musicolog-
said! Currently, a new York publisher is looking ical treatise or two. It is a bit frightening both
at a set of Preludes and Fugues among other for working composers as well as for the pros-
pieces, that include a 'Peace Cantata*' and key- pects of general artistic culture, it seems to me.
board "Explorations." Let the "phenomenology We are presented in recitals and on FM with past
of music" emerge spontaneously from these glories. But where is the future if our actual
journal entries. And maybe that is better music present is missing, except marginally?
education as well! These are edited entries from
about 1993 to the present. "Negative" comments 2. Extensive Holocaust studies prompt me also
have since given way to more positive attitudes, to add that contemporary composers might begin
greatly due to the wonderful new instruments to to feel some solidarity with vanished composers

© Philosophy of Music Education Review 3, no. 1 (Spring 1995): 21-33.

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 22 Philosophy of Music Education Review

variations
like Erwin Schulhoff, cut down inand permutations. My response was
mid-sympho-
"Thé pour deux,
ny (no. 8) in KZ Wülzburg during Worlda Medieval
WarChanson"
II. in various
settings.
It's hardly the same, but our Stravinsky has
awareness writtento
needs that the best
be reawakened. It is a sad fact that conservative response to music is simply more music. And
conductors like the brilliant and mystical Karajan we thus set up more than just a wordy dialogue
made careers after the War that in effect buried with our colleagues. A "new tonality," refresh-
such composers in oblivion. To its eternal ing and enjoyable! Mostly, listenable and play-
credit, musicology is bringing them back to life! able, too.
Thus, silence on our composers has had oppres-
sive and tragic implications, going far beyond 4. The all but total silence on any music outside
mere neglect or marginalization in favor of the sacred canon has been a form of oppression-
musical canons or trite commercialism. None of by-ignoring. Luckily there are progressive
us performers or composers has been carted musicians at work trying to remedy this. At
away to a death camp in mid-performance or least in rock music, such as it is, composers get
right after a première, as happened at Theresiens- heard. So do jazz musicians and organists
tadt and other camps. Victor UUmann has improvising at clubs and in churches and tem-
written of the "spiritual counter-world" created ples. Without our contemporary composers
by composers, as their defiant resistance at that actual culture goes begging. Recitals and radio
notorious "resort" give us museum pieces, marvels of art, but out
of another age. What we need in America are
3. Looking at some of my own recent pieces, Music Nova ensembles, as in student days in
like 'The Twenty-Six Preludes" on the Presbyte- Europe, not tokenism or even sincere efforts to
rian Hymnal, many performed as part of the schedule a few new composers' works. At
services, I seem to write in a "new tonality." It Freiburg/FRG I heard a lot of live contemporary
is no return to classic tonalities and modes but music, including Pierre Boulez, and radio con-
rather a recouping of both classic and a spectrum certs by the regional radio orchestras. Coming
of contemporary idioms where they seem appro- home to the USA I searched in vain for anything
priate and useful. I agree with Theodor Adorno remotely comparable.
that what we call classic tonality-pace Leonard
Bernstein and others-is not identical with natural 5. Recently at the Art Institute exhibit on Entar-
tonality as such, which among other things is tete Musik, I examined a score by Arnold
hardly well-tempered. I believe with John Schoenberg and saw right away what he was
Gilbert and other contemporary composers that trying to do: searching and following not a
there is a broad range of possible styles today system but the Muse. He developed not arid
and that a fresh look at tonality is among these rules or a straightjacket system but saw and
options. (Cf. Gilbert and others in the recent CD heard emergent patterns that were clues to under-
"New Sounds from the Village.") The days of lying pantonal principles, themselves never
the official style are over. Our current situation meant to be systematized the way it was done in
is one of a liberated pluralism, in which we may the fifties over here. Calling any musical tradi-
even subsume the values of the past into Jhe tion dépassé is too abstract a characterization.
present and future, transformed and even trans- Rather, a musician grasps instinctively that a
muted, of course, for the new century that is given tradition is simply played out No one can
almost upon us. Gilbert's witty "If Time Re- compose like Mozart again and produce that
members" spoofs and transmutes 'Tea for Two" sound again. It has already been played through
in a series of clever and imaginative keyboard and out! Mozart is not thereby disparaged but is

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 F. Joseph Smith

instead waters and muddled heads with little heart or

honored as
era and insight
style.
into beauty and even honesty. We
imitating him, e
example,7. Not just classic harmonies and rhythms are
resonate
of the "naive," we think; and we can no longer com- f
Concerto
pose that way except in quotations or flashbacks.
6. The display of Arendt
Hannah runs, octaves, repeated broken
chords, these are
collapsed also no longer available to us
traditi
future. in a modern idiom. There is a lot more,
We're at there- s
menting fore, toinfocus on than just an expansion of
hopes
in our works. Thus one ties in with such com- harmonic range. The whole shape of contempo-
posers as Aaron Copland's concept of American rary music demands an inventiveness not hereto-
music, even as we resist imitating here, too. It fore imagined. Are we up to such an enormous
is a start and an aspect of our recovery from the task, individually or collectively? The phenome-
perhaps unintended devastation by serial tech- non is almost cosmic in scope! Any current
niques, the scholasticizing of Schoenberg's phenomenology of music has to begin here.
creative insights in a phenomenon that was more
intellectual than musical, barring obvious excep- 8. Not unlike Wittgenstein, John Cage came up
tions. Real creative spirits by contrast accept with aphoristic pronouncements and then stepped
that we are in a temporary limbo that no system- on to ever new ones, not bothering to elaborate
atizing will remedy. We are in some sort of much or work things through. But it is exactly
unfinished state of being, in a negative ontology this that we musicians must develop in both
that nevertheless bespeaks freshness, lucidity and concept and practical detail. Whatever we think
hope, alongside the inadequacies and vague of Edmund Husserl, he did insist on working
longings. We need to listen for our truer feel- things through (ausarbeiten), not just making
ings in this open area bordering on hope and grand assertions. I believe a composer realizes
despair, an area that nothing can quite fill and best of all the need to work things out.
that defeats vain strivings and spurious activities.
It is the feeling of being unformed, embryonic, 9. Bernstein always composed with a program
at loose ends, of being everywhere and nowhere; in mind, Joan Peyser tells us. It was never an
a feeling of freshness and hope, of dark damp- academic exercise with him but music for a
ness, a certain transparency and perlucidity of show, even without actors or a stage. This is
spirit precisely because we are searching amid probably more germane to the actual nature of
resonances from the past and expectations of anmusic as a social phenomenon. It was also what
aborning future. Something flowing, something made his music not just listenable but intriguing.
singing-perhaps in the spirit of a Schumann, a Apparently, we learn, it was René Leibowitz
Mozart, a Mendelssohn-that's what a person who brought serialism to Paris, establishing a
needs to compose again, though in our new kind of theoretical supremacy that could even
idioms! If we can no longer do that, something characterize Igor Stravinsky as a dilettante!
seems drastically amiss with our efforts, it seems Peyser describes the whole project as deadly
to me. In our expansion toward pantonality in serious and joyless. Boulez, Leibowitz' s student,
whatever contemporary idiom, we have come up apparently even led a booing session at a Stra-
with quite a range of musical curiosities that vinsky concert! With Milton Babbitt it meant
make one yearn for simpler and perhaps more graduating from pop to art music. Now that all
sincere days! Some clarification is called for in seems passé and defunct!
our century after experiencing such muddied

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24 Philosophy of Music Education Review

10. Bernstein, following the times theorists

lead of consciously
classic thematized
jazz tonality, if
we read medieval,
as well as the classics he played and conducted Renaissance and Baroque
music even
so well, went for tonality. And theorists, and not just impose nineteenth
Schoenberg
century musical
advised his tennis partner, George pedagogy and
Gershwin, toharmonic catego-
ries retroactively
stick with his tonal genius and not takeonlessons them. We throw the word
in serialism. And Berthold Brecht
'tonality" around got
ratherKurtloosely to describe
Weill off sterile experimentsmusics
into of quite
peopledifferent
music.origins and conceptuali-
ties, it seems
True, we need to reconceptualize and to me. Detailed musicological data
experiment
backtonalities.
with the parameters of classic this up. Whatever Mozart the case, Schoenberg
tried testing
and then Haydn arrived beyond accidentalism the limits of tonal
atmusic as he knew
"structural chromaticism/' which is more thantuning and did so
it from modern times and
creatively enough,
just the alteration of an otherwise diatonic neverseg-
regarding his probings
ment or section, and which may or
as a system even have
prescribed mechanism or mindset,
especially not
foreshadowed Schoenberg himself (one thinks a set that engendered
of any music
the beginning page of Mozart's C some
per se, like Major sort ofQuar-
pseudo-Platonic arche-
tet). Schoenberg seems to have been the final
typal form.
chapter in this musical evolution; and Leibowitz,
12. At the practical
Babbitt, and others seem to represent level, the composer can
a scholasü-
work
cizing decline, guilty also of a with
numberthe given of keyboards
sim- (piano, organ,
plicities: identifying tonality as such
synthesizer, with
etc.) and all
try to expand the range and
music before Schoenberg, resonances
though of such
tonality classic
as such, without giving up
music of recent eras was but one actualized and the search and struggle by settling for any kind
delimited form of tonality; thinking that "atonali- of categorical system or simplistic arithmetical
ty" was the "solution," even as it ended up as an mechanism. Thus a new chromatic spelling may
intellectualizing form of pan-tonality; adopting a also be needed, departing from Harmony I as we
rather artificial "mathematics" instead of delving learned it from updated pedagogy. We carry it
into a more thorough philosophy of number, as over into a new structural conceptuality not
did even the medieval music theorists like dictated by school categories or mindsets but by
Jacques de liège in the "reactionary" but thor-
what emerges within the explored phenomenon of
oughly thought-through and voluminous Specu-
sound itself y specifically from the actual materials
lum Musicae9 the neglected summation ofof
allsound we work with-keyboards and instru-
medieval music theory as such. ments, figures, shapes, motives, permutations of
form, etc. There seems to be a natural reason, I
11. We should no longer try going the way think,
of for some pieces of ours and of others to
sound
serialist scholasticizers. There is something in bad, while others do not. It cannot all be
just cultural conditioning. There must somehow
the very nature of sound itself that we have thus
far failed to grasp, especially as a guidebetoa natural and ear-related cause for our rejec-
tion of some contemporary pieces as "unmusi-
musical composition, to say nothing of a philoso-
phy of music. Momentarily abstracting from cal."
the Our inability to tolerate certain new com-
positions is not only because they sound bad,
various historic tunings, we have the generality
of tonal music as such in variant expressions,however correctly conceptualized. Rather our
though tonality per se has never really been physiological and aesthetic sensibilities and
shown as an achieved concept, only as a fact perceptions
of have been badly impacted by awk-
ward or arbitrary schemes. There are natural
musical life in a kind of generalized postulation.
reasons for sound to coalesce or not, to make
In history composers of whatever ilk and some-

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 F. Joseph Smith 25

music or
brittle categorizations
ress in the IS. Musical sound is not soundof
discovery as such. Athe
music as a phenomenon,
waterfall, a rainstorm, a thundering train or th
because we (pace either
are Cage!), even wind chimes
too
facto music but rather materials to be worked up
13. Once
against dissonance, human agent or subject.
natural basis the of"objective"
as we see from medieval treatises and farther engagement of the human subject acting on
back in history. What is in fact the natura soni,
the very nature of sound as such? We can
neither accept acoustical data as "objective," nor
can we submit to purely "subjective" theories. It
is the phenomenon we need to question, as we
work with and within it experientially. I see the
need here for astute and practical reductions of
both sound-phenomena and our perceptions,
leaving both intact but significantly modified in
the crucible of thought and actual composition.
14. There seems to be an instinctive musicality
at work in us that both attracts us away from
trite tonalities and thought-forms toward the
expansion of our musical horizons, and a sense
of revulsion at what is maladroit or constitutes
merely mentalistic forms, as we think, compose,
listen, perform. Sound as such becomes musical,
whatever the musical materials, in the workshop
of the composer and theorist We need to sound
out the process better than we have thus far.
And maybe we do even achieve the crystal-
lization of concepts in the sense of Walter
Benjamin, concepts that contain and reflect
experiential percepts themselves. Yet~and on a
natural basis still to be laid bare-not all sound
materials seem able to be musically elaborated.
There are more than just musical considerations
at work here! What indeed is the natural funda-
ment of sound that, prior to perception and
conceptualizations, is either co-optable within or
intractable to a humane musical aesthetic? We
need to work up an "aesthetic from below," from
the phenomenon itself, not from prior mindsets,
and lay bare a truer musical affectivity that
results from listening and not just preset thought-
not.
modes. This needs
canno
n
truck
are eage
not ipso
weinto begin to the
musical composition through acco
creative
we It is a can
matter not just
als of
consonance,
phenomena of sound but of the
sound. (Thus, one begins to grasp Kzysztov
Penderewsky's De Natura Sonoris.) It takes the
creative human to shape natural sound, giving it
shape as art.
16. I do not understand musicians today who
are "only" historians, educators, composers,
theorists, or whatever! I believe the Muse moves
us to do some of all of that at one time or
another. As composer, Bach was always teach-
ing us through his compositions what could be
done with extant musical materials and forms.
We are required by our Muse to do many diverse
things, maybe become a Magister Ludi (cf.
Hermann Hesse's Das Glasperlenspiel)l
17. I just finished "Afterthought in D" and it
sounds a bit like Bernstein! I agree with him
that there are uncharted and fresh possibilities
within tonality, understood in a larger sense,
even as broadened to embrace neo-Romanticism
itself. Bernstein was in touch not just with an
academic tonalism but with a rich cultural ma-
trix, drawing on jazz, the classics, Jewish roots,
and even atonal effects. His was a vibrant
tonality, a mixed phenomenon; and this "real-
ism" kept him from the naive pursuit of intellect-
ualoid fads of those now apparently defunct
times. Instinctively he knew his genuine musical
roots and, not unlike Benjamin Britten, he ad-
vised composers to say what they had to, provid-
ed it was an honest and uncontrived expression
or statement that was and remained musical.
18. There's nothing wrong with either expand-
ing tonality or working at its edges as did not

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 26 Philosophy of Music Education Review

factored intoof
only Schoenberg, but in terms whatever musical or other judgment
structural
chromatics, also Mozart himself, and later we might make!
Haydn, too. But just to break in a vacuum with
our cultural roots to pursue a vastly and artifi- 20. Graduating from jazz and Broadway, Babbitt
cially reduced musical phenomenon is something must have thought he could find musical struc-
quite other than either instinct or genuine culture. ture in the correct "set of formulas" with which
Bernstein, perhaps precisely because he was "all mind could govern practice. It was not only a
too human," was all the more genuine, musically matter of asceticism, but also of slaying father
and otherwise. The music flows in incredible figures like Stravinsky. They were too focused
variety. Babbitt's music seems largely a result on pitch and harmonic permutation, it seems to
of an intellectual adventure. Even his prose me. Yet one of the things a good musician
concerning the Bernstein book seems fall ofinstinctively knows is that rhythm has to be in
your bones, not just your calculating head!
controlled Agnew-esque alliterations. He with-
draws into a narrow arithmetical shell, from Similarly, motives and themes, even anti-themes,
which, however, the Muse does seem to have have to be in your ear, in your musical imagina-
rescued him from time to time, if we go along tion. There is a point after which both harmony
with Judy Lochhead's analyses. Bernstein, no and ihythm in Babbitt and others seem simply a
such ascetic, is at least to me infinitely more head trip. But music is not mere technique or
appealing, even as I recognize historic intellectu- mathematics. Musical number is there, as the
al needs with attendant excesses decreed by history of measured sound tells us, but it is there
uncritical restructuring mandates. Look at the to be heard and not just to be stored in the
rich sources Bernstein could drawn on: classical recesses of our brains. It does matter to have
music, American and Judaic songs and rhythms, people want to listen to our works, such as they
everything from Mozart through Scott Joplin and maybe.
Gershwin! After he left jazz, what was there left
for Babbitt to draw on except increasingly arid 21. It's all fan, yet there's a desperate edge to
and listener-alienated mindsets seeking embodi- a lot of these people in their efforts to forge
ment in what was left as music? Anyone is, of ahead. One also sees the risk of having music
course, at liberty to experiment in whatever break out of context with theater, language,
manner he or she chooses, but pitch sets and people, culture and society itself in favor of
acoustics are not music as such: an art form that often frenetic individual explorations. Music
listens to the Muse in a larger mathesis than seems manipulated, too, for other ends, personal
rudimentary counting. Moreover, the overcom- and careerist. I was shocked to read Babbitt's
ing of classic tonality, not unlike its development comments on academic versus "show-biz
since the Renaissance, is a collective effort of crowds," i.e., ordinary concert-going people. He
generations of composers, not the task, assumed composed, he says, for philosophers (luce Carl
or imposed, of one self-appointed individual or Hempel?) and mathematicians! I find the narrow
even school. And this holds unless we are perspective, in which mathematics never gets
simply to submit to a new scholasticism. beyond rudimentary arithmetic, not just offput-
ting but appalling. There is nothing at all wrong
19. Yet~a bit of reassuring relief-Stephen with maintaining a particular view of music, but
Sondheim's lessons with Babbitt at Princeton when the rest of us are supposed to feel even
reveal a more tolerant person, who would not guilty about not being committed serialists,
impose his own schemes on an original talent. something is amiss. In fairness, however, it
Surely this must mitigate our criticisms and be must be noted, that Babbitt himself seems not to

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 F. Joseph Smith 27

have been responsible for

Donaueschingen, and recently at Northwestern
Fidelity University.
title, Who I experimented
Cares a lot, even whil
if
this is all working as a medievalist
history now! and musicologist, bu
I remain mostly a tonalist/modalist, but hardly
22. Karlheinz Stockhause
the tradition. I've improvised with others on
takte) mga> got the
presents a idea muchof the "moment" ric or th
conceptuality. "now," as also
He of the "nuclear
worked cell" that gene
with the process
ates form, and so on. It of
all occursform
to just about
suitable every modernfrom
pitches composer, along with what to do
noise
into noise, ofwith the serialist guilt trip laidrhyth
forming on the America
All of this scene.
was Babbitt did, of course, work with
vastly motradi-
Babbitt's seemingly
tional equal temperament at one narr
time as well as
Momente, with the archaic piano-roll synthesizer
however, we (pre
se
And it is Moog) atthat
here Columbia/Princeton.
Babbitt That all seem
simply very naive and campy now!
traditional, ph
Some others, such
The need as
for preliminary Stoc
instructions that
and Luciano Berio seem to be much more inter- prepare us for serial music seems to follow on
esting composers with a richer musical experi- deficiency of the phenomenon itself, incapable o
ence. As in philosophy, American theorizings being presented as such to either the ordinar
seem arid, if not aesthetically impoverished. listener or the musician. Meticulous instructions
Whatever makes our intellectuals that way, on either composing or listening seem to connote
musicians are not so by nature! a brittle metaphysical superstructure, perhaps
born of what Husserl called a metaphysical
23. The spectrum of avant garde music since adventure, a structure unable to exist outside the
1945 is quite bewildering. There is no way we laboratory hothouse and incomprehensible except
could even get to listen to it all, let alone ana- to an initiated few. What is the agenda here for
lyze it satisfactorily. Perhaps the "new analysis" both decent musician or hapless audience?
of Lawrence Ferrara of New York University
would be more enabling of it. Anyway, live 24. Babbitt did indeed address himself to the
performances seem at a premium, as if only the "perceptional and conceptional capacities of the
pre-war classics existed. And what of us ordi- human auditor," but in a critique of the electron-
nary workings stiffs?! Coming from a back- ic revolution and thus defensively. And the
ground of classic modality in addition to Bach "human auditor" sounds like some odd entity
and company, we were exposed to medieval, "out there" for him, something he in the last
Renaissance, and Baroque music in spades, and instance cannot afford to utterly ignore. One
also to Olivier Messiaens and Jean Langlais. We suspects that for his laboratory tape there is
knew Bela Bartók' s music and that of another corresponding tape: the human auditor
Stravinsky. We heard Phillip Glass and viewed
Georgeas a necessary evil, as receptor for his
Perle, a good bit of Copland and others. inputBut
By contrast, Stockhausen appealed to the
unless you get this through a good surveylistening
(such subject. This, it seems to me, is less
as Griffiths) and conscientiously sample it as
stilted and more humane as well as being more
best you can, you remain rather benumbed phenomenological.
by This current critique surely
has a place in the progress of composition in a
the sheer phenomenon itself, even as underrepre-
sented in recital and radio programs. post-serialist
I heard milieu that admits of a great deal
more in the sensible recovery of a transformed
Stockhausen played at the Freiburg Kaufhaus
hall by H-P Goebel in recital there, by Boulez
tonality,
at in the shared struggle of wondering-

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28 Philosophy of Music Education Review

dance in
with many other musicians-where we your
came head,
fromutterly away
partner
and whither we are progressing, and partly
perhaps people in
making merr
a cyclical return to roots andmy real critique:
origins. serialist arithm
In criticiz-
ing facets of some composers, simplistic and naive but a dead
concentrating
applied dogmatically
especially on the listenability of some of their to music.
efforts, we begin an inchoate prelude to the death
phenomenology of of music
ask! And
music as such. The preliminary how mathematical
stage is natural was Babbitt's
music after
and allowable, in fact inevitable. Noall? Beyond
one counting and juggling
denies
additive meters,
others' obvious talents, but many of our does he get into proportionality
mentors
were terribly flawed withal. The critiquealone
(<z la Jacques de liège), let logorhythms (à
only
underlines a basic acceptancela and
Iannis respect
Xenakis)? Electronic
for the composers get
into some
sincere struggles of others and of this by
their dint of the technology itself.
ingenuity.
But mathematics
One only objects to any absolutizing ofas such goes a long way, and
whatever
I'm unsure how
emerges in the struggle or to putting oneself developed serialin
mathematics
really is beyond
the same category as Bach, Mozart, andcounting
the staggered
like. metrics as in
Relata I and II.
25. I think what we all are doing is aiming for
a "new tonality" under whatever guise,
27. Babbitt scores European and
serialism for using
meanwhile, in almost Kantian manner, we seem
the row as a compositional device instead of a
to be probing the edges of precompositional
an already achieved
scheme. What does this mean?
That may
terrain. All these new efforts mathematics
be (admittedly
stages onlyin arithmetic) is
what may hopefully become the bones of music, that it comes before any
a convincingly
available new synthesis, accessible, basically
sound, that it is indeed preset, that it is some sort
listenable, essentially do-able,
of formathatnew but com-
in a neo-scholasticism shapes musi-
cal matter?
monly spoken musical language It lookshas
that as though
been music theory is
now
through individualistic traps supposed
and to generate
cultural practice precisely in
risks
and merely private languages. There
terms of mindsets is,
that are of
arithmetically preset.
course, always room for dialects,
This is a narrowpatois,
interpretationand
indeed of creative
even some jargon. I have a musical
hunch intelligence
that some and the compositional
of
this critique is that serialism
process.has seemed
It is doubtless im-
clever enough but at a
posed- unasked, unneeded and unwanted-on
rather primitive mathematicalthelevel. It is moot
body of musical composition. whether or There is
not the genius an mathematics
of either
element of humbug and hoaxor to of music
dogmatic
inhabits suchtheory
simple tinkerings with
the bones
of the sort criticized here. It's of the Muse. For
reassuring to me,
readtoo, it resonates
similar even scathing comments
the life-hatingonascetic
thewithsubject
intellectual preten-
by such stellar musicians as Leon
sions Kirchner.
never quite He
met, the withdrawn recluse
denounced cerebralism and who "quasi-arithmeti-
wants to drag the hapless Muse into his
cians" who worship the fetishcave, oftherecomplexity
to torture her with forhis childish puz-
zles.
its own sake. He opted for warm-blooded music
and away from graphs, charts, and cold stylistic
minutiae. 28. I was glad to read that author Gilbert Chase
regarded serialism as at very least quite conser-
26. "One, two, three" is not vative
a matter of abstract
and even traditional, if not reactionary!
mathematics but of dancing numbers, gettingdo not
The kind of almost mechanical structures
people to hoof it with you! That
just prevent is "higher
chromatic chaos, as intended, they
math," and not a reduction to a cold and deadly

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 F. Joseph Smith 29

make form and

long since tried compositio
to do this but with spotty results
the classic Deity created
in terms of tonal quality. Handmade instruments
beings out of chaos
from other and
cultures help, but the answer ispri
not in
not skeleton a or
borrowing from others.a
Most large
of us turn out a
finely variety of experimental
crafted! Luckily, music, some of which
Sc
and Webern may had
be notable and such
memorable. I get the
pro idea
that they that Babbitt wants to ensure that
submitted in every note
the he
brittle ever
mentalisms. wrote will be memorable
Whatand listable, even w
disciples is if not listenable. People like Stephan Wolpe and on
unfortunately
some strange deity.
T. Ross Finney I'd
seem musically more convincing, e
suggest that
as they Babbitt
sought chromatic integration andand
structur-
their own al organization, listenable
musical and accessible as well.
potentia
even an "expanded"
By contrast Perle seems the voice of seria
both musi-
grow cal innovaüveness andor
musically humaneness. even m
such circumstances? Was
ment or 30. As composers of
perhaps today we cannot
just the imitate ex
trip? I onlygreatask.
composers of theThey
past or present, but we
ma
genii of the canfifties-nowuse them as creative models. We need to ou
one was never convinced even then. It struck get at the qualities we see and hear in them, e.g.
me as a forced march, as cerebral in a particular- the classic clarity of Mozart or Ravel. And there
ly skewed manner, as an intellectuality that stood is no harm in resonating traces of classic idioms
up quite badly against the greats of even medi- honoring great composers. The adulatory organ
eval music theory. And the more I learn of it pieces of Sigfrid Karg-Elert are, disappointingly,
the more I think my initial reaction was instinc- just good imitations! In Bach we admire not just
tively on the mark! the consummate craftmanship but the imaginative
inventiveness, seemingly endless, in short, his
29. Even the tonal elements we all reacted superb artistry. In Mozart we admire his mastery
against, including the soggy Wagnerian pathos, the execution of musical ideas, in Beethoven
in
the channeling of an almost volcanic energy, in
are not adequately addressed in serial music. We
search for models, and Mozart's "structural Debussy the imaginative breaching of the borders
chromaticism"--not yet adequately thematized of tonality but always in musical manner, in
Ravel the clarity and spice. We can take these
and described-seems a better start, in that it was
already more than mere accidentalism. It does models of artistry and craftsmanship into any
not and did not, of course, 'lead" to serialism, contemporary
as idiom, where they will stand us in
asserted by one author. Neither did late
good stead along with a resonating of prior
techniques and forms, like toccata, fugues, and
Beethoven quartets or piano works of Debussy.
What to do with the extant keyboard and sonata
its now seen as a shaping of sound and not
tuning was the real question, never addressediust
in as a ready-made form.
all this, except by the "exotic" Edgard Varèse.
31. We can get clues, too, from the other arts as
Perhaps we just need to accept that tonality, such
as we have known it, has done its all, like classic
to where to go from here! If music goes its own
modalities. Where to go from here mayway be regardless of what culture, the arts, science
toward different instruments, differently and and language are achieving, is this a proper
more idiomatically tuned, and toward new men- contextual development, or is it musical autono-
talities more attuned to musical instinct, rather
my driven into isolation? We have to remain
than to "mind" Synthesizers, of course, have
with the perceptive listener and all those partici-

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 30 Philosophy of Music Education Review

33. which
pating in the Gesamtkunstwerk As critic, Ifinds
am simply disappointed at the
better
goals in the work of Roman lack of richness of
Ingarden, his musical
pheno-experience and
menology of music and film, apparent
than default
in ofthea viable musical organizing
classic-
Romantic approach of Wagner. principle
Inwithin
other a larger human context. The
words,
it is a matter of music within a viable culture reductive-ness of serialism was ascetical and
and context. Within our culture, we can then counterproductive, it seems to me. And, as soon
begin to ascertain where not only music is as we begin to mention organizing principles and
tending but the arts as such, and in fact, where structures, we should be aware of classic models,
humanity itself is going! In a way this compli- like that of Kant. There are still useful elements
cates everything yet simultaneously expands our available in critical philosophy, itself brought
ability to develop contextual nodes within a vital into our own century.
world, not just in the recesses of an isolated
mind. And what is a "node"? Probably a 34. By contrast with the eras of Bach and of
developmental point within musical and artistic Mozart, our times are characterized by instability
dynamics. And here we might even consult in general and in the arts, particularly in musical
some sophisticated mathematical or computer composition, as we flail about for guidance and
models. direction in a meaningful expression of our art.
We try to be different and neither trite nor
32. After exploring the edges of extant harmony reactionary. Yet a certain sameness emerges that
and form and seeing the results of mentalisüc is disconcerting, at least within serialism, and
adventures, what are we actually looking for as bordering on the boring and the trite. I'm not
musical within a human and humane context? sure but that some minor devil is cackling hid-
For starters, it might be simply clarity or clearly eously somewhere in Hades, as he welcomes
simplicity. Any past or present models interest individualists to the same cave over which hangs
us, as primers of the pump! Chant still beckons Dante's sign: Lasciate ogni speranza voi chi
as a model of modality, and Purcell, Bach, intrate! Why is it that so many serial composi-
Couperin, Mozart and Ravel for different slants tions sound the same? And even in perceptual
on tonality. We can no longer recompose such chaos, however highly organized conceptually,
music, but we can strive for a viable vision of what comes out seems anemic, frustrated, abort-
clarity and integrity that motivated them on a ed. One continues to admire Schoenberg, Berg,
path toward great art. This implies a fresh Anton Webern and others, including some nota-
diatonicism as well as structural chromaticism. ble Americans. What I seem to be objecting to
In all this I think we are led back to a philoso- is the classic club, that became a kind of incubus
phy of the human being, but in a down-to-earth imposed on the musical world after World War
sense, touching the questions we all ask of II. Maybe deprogramming or an exorcism was
ourselves, our children, our city, our country-the required. But in the meantime, it seems just to
world itself: What is humanity? and Where is have faded away. The great composers, includ-
our world going? This is in fact an amplification ing Stravinsky and Copland, made serialism their
of Kant's own query! This is after all the con- own in an adapted and humanized manner, trying
text of our question and our quest: la situation to make music out of it, but unable to adhere to
humaine. It is enormous in scope, but-dull or the dogma. My own use of serialism is mostly
brilliant- we all have to cope with it every day in spoofing and mocking and a perceptual rather
some way and at some level just to survive, to than conceptual approach, thus working not from
say nothing of creating a culture, a humane sets but sounds, from the phenomenon not
atmosphere for society and the arts. mentalisms. This may well come out as not very

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 F. Joseph Smith 31

successfully action.
veiledThe implosion of disdain.
the musical materials
anyone's actual talent,
seems obvious, both to the ear and to a critical on
vehicle of it,
mind. that in fac
undermined the whole musi
some control mechanism.
36. As you reach for fuller sound phenomena in B
sound musical composition, of
phenomena you thinkwhate
not just of
than with pitch
harmony, counterpoint, musical nucleior
tones and nodes,co
evoke the resonances of
form and shape, but also of individual instru-
sources, shape the
ments and ensemble. spectru
You don't necessarily set
apprentices to the
out to compose for soloMuse her
instruments, to write for
fixated on our own
a quartet, piano trio, chamberpreset
music, or for full
push back orchestra; rather,
the it seems to happen as you
intellectual
limits of the
compose,musical phe
as you build and expand, as you search
heed Kant's forwarnings
embodiment of viable concepts underabou
inspira-
and still endtion up with
by the Muse. an
Classic rule-writing fosteredae
the notion that following all the regulation leads
35. As sentient to a work of persons
art. But, while we must needswe be
erably mixed schooled in some good pedagogy, we also in-
phenomenon
ness. This is stinctively
perhaps know that the Musewhat looks askance
And here wemore often also
than not at mere run pedantry. For str
the
warnings even first time Iabout
think I see where I am headed
that: in n
any way, not composition.
to I'mexpect free to use "melodic types" "con
fluidity andfrom amusic history as well as to work for
matrix immedi-
referto. German ately with complexIdealism
sound phenomena. I can a
menology compose with a clearer pounced
naively conscience, making use
"content" of consciousness,
of the cornucopia of historical models as well as
rated an inchoate
the sheer inspiration of sounddynamas such. But it is
seems to be obvious
a that my compositions
kind of still need some-
redu
the flow of consciousness, but one achieved how to be transcended, either acoustically or
within very restrictive and even naive electronically, so that what we end up with in a
mentalisms. We should now concentrate less on second stage of composition are resonances and
harmony and meterized ordinary time frames and trace materials that survive in a critical musical
get at a more basic perceptual capacity and at the consciousness. One can perform some of this
very roots of rhythm, if we can. Serialism was already on the standard keyboards such as piano
caught in a simplistic view of linear time and and organ, and instruments could be added to
temporal division, as well as fixated on purely help trace evanescent facets of the extant fin-
scalar considerations like pitch. The system of ished piece. In a certain real sense all my piano
series-writing is at best intriguing, but it only pieces end up only as material for some sort of
compounds the basic naivete, i.e., the uncritical trace or resonance transmutation. (I detect some
use of the dimensions of ordinary time, as op- of this very thing in Gilbert's piano works.) In
posed to a viable ontology within fluid human certain "homage" compositions I felt the distinct
consciousness. Within linear time, spatially need to transmute out of the obvious idioms I
metaphorized, you never get off the plateau onto was working with, i.e., working my way out of.
a fuller and richer level of expanded time-con- Thus our various works go through stages: the
sciousness. Serial positivism stays frozen at a first, naive achievement; followed by its trace-
certain artificial level of consciousness and reduction in musical consciousness; the third,

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 32 Philosophy of Music Education Review

musical synthesis. often inept or awkward prose. If so, this is

surely his salvation from himself! What I have
37. Boulez* transformations»
thus farused in Répons,
heard frankly does not sound that good
heard at Northwestern University at all~or thatand bad! He is certainly a musical
described
by his assistant, Gerzso, in Composers'
phenomenon, Musk
and I stand to be better instructed
Review (October 1984: 23-34), seem quite me Yet the man and the musicus in tra-suspect there
ditional in linking electronic is anresponses
equal amount of humbug
(respon- along with what-
sories!) to acoustical instruments, ever "genius"~that tired and tiresome word. I
transforming
them in terms of an almost classic intervallic maintain faith in the human ear as guide, what-
logic. I'm sure this is not mathematical enough ever flights of fancy or logic the mind may take.
for the Babbitt group, nor pure enough either. The incomparable Bach never played down to
But it seems more naturally and culturally rele-his listeners, even as he lifted us all to his level.
vant withal. The Boulez piece seemed to beI agree that the listener has been too passively
very complex but musical throughout, even conceived and that the '^bourgeois" ear mires us
coherent in terms of perception, not just inin the trite and the expected. But the audience,
conception. To professional logicians this mustsuch as it is, still needs to be brought into the
all seem simplistic. But how far along suchperformance in some viable manner, and our
lines can music actually go as a primarily per-musical theory has to focus on this facet of
ceptual art? Perception, of course, is not justanalysis, too. Any performer, especially with a
what is left over after conceptualization, as angroup, knows that the players get more out of it
intellectual poor relation. It is rather a rich arenathan passive listeners. So, our goal is to get
for the reception of a whole musical Gestalt thateveryone to "perform." Church musicians
touches us as humans and in complex ways.already do this!
While vindicating the obvious proper place of
critical and practical intellect, perception seems 39. Reading Rockwell, I see that as individual
composers we are on a very perplexing and
larger: the matrix of receptive sensibility, without
which there just is no music at all, whatevercomplex journey as we search for the Muse,
"mind" devises in secretive recesses and imposes trying somehow to figure out just what we are
on hapless ears. Meantime there is no one trueabout and what to do about it. The phenomenon
kind of transformation. It is an area to be ex- of contemporary music is so diverse and contra-
plored, a matter of shifting gears into a different dictory as to offer a dizzying pallet of possibili-
perceptive consciousness, allowing the play and ties from which to choose. And I believe seek-
replay of musical resonances in the stream of ing fame can no longer be a primary goal in
consciousness itself. Of course, we are also music. It may or may not happen; but we still
working here with some metaphorical rhetoric, have to create what we can. Musical integrity
and the reality of the phenomenon is not in requires constant struggle as we proceed, and if
verbalizations, however clever, but in musical we are in touch with the Muse and touch some
realizations of what we intend. Some of our sensitive ears as well, we will have done our part
in helping weave the grand tapestry of musical
better concepts get defeated or routed within the
act of actual composition or performance, as weculture. Out of all this one day may emerge
all well know. another Mozart, and we will have helped prepare
the ground. Meantime, in the home, at church
38. John Rockwell, New York music critic, and temple, in college and university music
suggests that Babbitt's compositions often sound department we will also have reached the ears
good despite the abstruse calculations and the and maybe also the hearts of a good many

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 F. Joseph Smith 33

people. a spectacle of costumes, weird actions, lighting

effects, and so on. But how long can a real
40. There is something to Ernest Ansermet's musician thrive under such artificial and silly
and Bernstein's contention that pitch scales do circumstances, whatever the pay or pay-off?
not need to be invented by either individuals or Thus, Rockwell's essay begins to show possibili-
cultures, because they are already there, untuned, ties of art rescuable amid frantic and frenetic
in Nature! Some, of course, contend this is self- show-biz.
evident, since most cultures have built on this
concept in some manner, however differently. 43. Rockwell puts serialism down as out of date
Whatever the case, the "fresh discovery of a and as the oppressor of genuine American music,
fuller and natural tonality" can indeed amount to now being thankfully rediscovered and redevel-
a new and refreshing musical event. Simply oped. Yet he also shows how Schoenberg and
letting go of isolated or warped mentalisms and others were a counter in the twenties and thirties
being "at one with Nature*' may be our future in to a bloated and Nazi Wagnerianism, how the
modern music. I would add that to do so is also Big Serialist Three (the "Vienna School") helped
to require some sort of available reduction of the rescue musical art and structure, whatever subse-
phenomenon as such, as the product of human quent American scholasticizers did out of histor-
nature. ical and even musical context. My impression of
both serialists, who are so de rigueur, and mere
41. Walter Murch's music is a case of expand- experimentalists, is that there may be an inordi-
ing the very concept of what music is to include: nate amount of humbug and opportunism at
the "artful organizing" of sound collages. It work.
seems to be a convincing case, judging from the
music composed for the film, Apocalypse. It 44. Sometimes I am aghast at the underdevelop-
certainly brings musique concrète closer to ment of talented musicians' intellectual grids, the
home! It is impossible as composer to be all received and uncritically accepted perspectives
things to all people, given the chaotic and even and categories, vocabularies and suppositions.
far-out scene, without making a fool of yourself. This need not be a replay of Husserl. We have
We need simply to accept who we are, our all been in naive situations, and it takes time and
talent, its limitations, and then work creatively effort to come out from under received conceptu-
for what it's worth in what is a natural and alities, especially in music theory and musicolo-
comfortable framework for us. gy, both, it seems, narrowly conceived, both in
need of a breakthrough. I suggest a critical
42. Rockwell's chapter on Neil Young is the philosophy of music that abets our exit from
best essay on rock that I've ever read! It makes pedantry, careerist restrictions, ideologies, ment-
its artistry plausible, while discussing plenty ofalisms, and worn-out categories. There are great
problems inherent in the show, the son et lum-talents at work, and they need to have an open
ière, especially the deadly commercialism. Toforum of expression. It seems that music educa-
me it has seemed an already musically defunct tion is the proper arena for fruitful explorations
movement kept alive only by a combination of of our innate potential in composition, perfor-
corporate greed, simpleton antics, a few chords,mance and the understanding of a genuine
and public stupidity. Apparently, they also don'tmusical ethos.
care if you listen! The primitiveness of rock is
neither primordiality nor musical ethos but more Dedicated to the memory of Professor Arthur
often crude and even moronic. In the apparent Motycka, Rhode Island University-music educator,

absence of any attempt at art we are subjected to author, colleague, and friend

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