The Oxford History of Western Music, Pt. 13

Although the circle of fifths and its modulatory properties had been theorised in the sixteenth century, it was Arcangelo Corelli who imported the theory into the practical domain. Instead of using continual "perfect" fifths, a single diminished fifth kept the cycle within the diatonic realm, and thus allowed each scale degree to potentially act as a harmonic root (as opposed to being defined by its melodic resolution tendencies).
The result was that Corelli, who only wrote instrumental music, could give the sort of formal structure to instrumental music that vocal music derived from text. Thus Italian instrumental music in the 1680s exhibited a fully elaborated tonal system; pieces began and ended in the tonic key, travelled to the dominant (V), and possibly visited other keys close by on the circle of fifths. What was unique about this use of the circle of fifths was that it played a global, structural role.
The extravagance of fifth-related harmony was often counterbalanced by descending melodic sequences, which created smooth voice leading through the sevenths of thirds of the harmony. In contrast, ascending sequences allowed composers to modulate to relatively distant key areas via what we now call "secondary dominants," setting up the inevitable "unravelling" of harmonic tension via the circle of fifths.
For composers, they now had a way to create tension and release over a large structure without relying on text. Listeners came to listen to these pieces differently; the momentum created by these harmonic structures required closer attention. Their attention was rewarded in experiencing the waves of tension and release, or implication and realization, crafted by composers. Hence an important step had been taken towards instrumental music's autonomy.

The Oxford History of Western Music, Pt. 12

Pg. 173, vol. 2:

Speaking of Opera Seria.

"The highest arbiter of taste and practice was the ruler or patron; next in order of clout came the audience; next the singer; next the librettist. The composer was there to serve them all."

It's interesting to me that we know think of the arbiters of taste in almost the opposite order. Such ideas are the effects post-enlightenment education. Perhaps the most pertinent idea here then, is that much of the music we consider Art, and many of the techniques used in most of music we listen to, comes from a time when the composer was very far down the ladder of power.

The reception of Opera itself in the early 1700s is testament the place music occupied in society. The only times audience members were really required to pay attention was when the king or patron, who the opera also presented as a symbol of all that is good in the world, was in attendance. Otherwise, people were free to talk, wander in and out, play cards, and relieve themselves in chamber pots. Most audience members also new all of the operas extremely well, meaning they could pop in or out whenever they pleased depending on when their favorite arias or singers were on.
Singers themselves thus needed to draw the audience in with virtuosity, improvisation and diva-like behavior. Caffarelli, a virtuoso castrati of the day, was arrested for refusing to sing, mocking other performers, and practically molesting a female singer on stage, only later to be reinstated by the opera company because he was the public's darling.

So, singers behaved, musically and personally, much more like pop singers do today, and the reception of music was more akin to the way we watch television than the way we sit in an opera house.

Elliott Carter, improvisation and metric modulation

The Oxford History of Western Music, Pt. 11

The first appearance of pieces exhibiting the title "concerti" are by Andrea Gabrielli from 1585, and might be described as Masses for voices that are organised into antiphonally organised groups such that their contrasting timbres and musical characters form the main thrust of the work.
That only some of the voices are marked "a cappella" suggests that the other "choirs" are actually played by instrumental ensembles. Thus the earliest use of "concerto" suggests, simply, voices and instruments.
Ten years later the Bolognese organist Adriano Banchieri's piece Concerti ecclesiastici a otto voci was published including a seperate part for the organist that contained a harmonic "reduction" of the many vocal and instrumental parts. Accompanied songs soon after were published with an even more streamlined organ part, called the basso continuo.
The basso continuo was not "invented" at this time. Simply, publishers were now documented a practice that organised had long used in their "oral" tradition.
Interestingly, this new development gave rise to backlash among some organists who saw the published, "fully-realised" basso continuo part as an easy way for the lazy to play something that previously only the studied could.

The Oxford Histroy of Western Music, Pt. 10

The Madrigal (music set to secular poetry) became the hotbed for music experimentation in the sixteenth century. With Ars Perfecta composers such as Josquin streamlining composition to as perfectly express holy texts as clearly as possible (although not without incredible craftsmanship and feats of "composition"), composers used secular texts to create links between the expression in text and music.

Hence the representation of text became the challenge for many composers, and resulted in many different forms of radical experimentation in terms of texture, melody and harmony. Luca Marenzio's Solo e penso. Is the first example of the entire chromatic scale in a piece of music; it begins on F-above-middle-C and proceeds, by semitone, to cover the range of a major 9th, before descending again. Some semitone steps were diatonic, that is, between the 3rd and 4th or 7th and 8th degree of an ionian scale, or were chromatic, that, spelt using a different accidental on the same letter name. The text (Alone and thoughtful I pace the most deserted fields/with slow and heavy steps) is expressed through this mono-rhythmic and mono-intervallic soprano melody. The resulting harmony, if we were to use a system of harmonic analysis based on the 18th and 19th century, is unconventional. The fact of the matter is, however, that this harmony arises out of Marenzio's want to give life to text, rather than experiment with harmony for its own sake.

The use of the complete chromatic scale also suggested a refinement of the tuning system to equally space the 12 semitones through the octave while maintaining the 2:1 ratio of frequencies between octaves.

The Oxford History of Western Music, Pt. 9

Although written traces of instrumental dance music date back to the thirteenth century, the earliest extensive collections of instrumental dance music come in the form of the fifteenth century collections of bassadanza (in Italian) or basse danse (in French), meaning "low dance." That term referred to the height of the dancer's feet off of the floor. "Low dances" were generally the stuff of the upper classes and nobility.

These collections of bassdanza resemble the notation of Gregorian chant, rectangular figures on a staff, but with one difference: large strings of letters now adorned the pages.

What these manuscripts actually document were improvised accompaniments to dances over a given bass lines (or "tenor," as they were known at that time). The ensemble, know as alta capella, musicians formed something akin a guild, transferring their craft to one another via aural, rather than notated forms, hence this music's delayed entry into the literate tradition.

In the final section of the bassadanza book composer Diego Ortiz writes: "I thought I'd include the following recercadas on these bass lines that are usually called tenors in Italy, but that are mainly played as written here, in four parts, with the recercada over them." What follows is an improvisation not accompanied as it would normally be: by a cantus firmus in long note values, but a series of harmonic cells that can each be repeated in order to prolong the improvisation, if needed.

Thus, the tenor has now become what we might call a "ground bass," and forms the first harmonic-driven structure in Western art music. They create harmonic structures that are not born from voice leading but exists purely as vertical structures, and "accompany" an improvisation.

The Oxford History of Western Music, Pt. 8

Continental musicians adopted the cyclic Mass from the English as the standard "high" genre in the mid-the-early 1400's. As such, the Mass became the form composers were most drawn to to demonstrate their compositional prowess, something that had been happening since the Notre Dame school and can be found in the development of the isorhythmic motet, for example.
Each movement of a mass utilises the same "Cantus Firmus," and, seeing each movement's texts were drawn from disparate parts of the larger service, exemplifies the role literacy played in developing new forms in music; the mass' movements were combined only because of the common melody, not because of any over-arching textual narrative.
Around 1440, an anonymous English composer (possibly John Dunstable) created Missa Caput: a composition that reached over and above previous levels of grandeur. It is the first documented polyphonic composition in four parts. Scribes adopted a new way of naming the four voices: the tenor remained as such, while the parts directly above and below became known as contratenor altus and contratenor bassis respectively. The top-most part was known as the superius.
At cadences, the tenor and alto parts follow the convention of resolving, in contrary motion, from an imperfect consonance (a sixth or third) to a perfect consonance (octave or unison). The only way to have the two other voices form consonances with both the tenor and alto while remaining independent of them is to sing notes that result in two triads a fifth apart. Here, we have the first explicit example of the perfect cadence, V-I. Using a Landini sixth to, say, the soprano, would result in the fourth degree of the mode sounding, giving the V chord an added "seventh."
This should not be viewed as the "beginning" of tonal harmony; that is our tendency to see (early) examples as essences. However, it is a point where developments in form and the fusing of continental and English approaches to harmony helped give rise to occurrences we now regard as conventions.

The Oxford History of Western Music, Pt. 7

One of the things I love most about this book is Taruskin's quasi-philosophical interjections to remind the reader what they are and aren't reading.

In his introduction, which is identical for each volume, Taruskin explains that his book should be viewed more as a history of people and societies, rather than of music. Hence many "developments" in music are linked to shifts in the function and reception of music in different parts of a socio-political climate. Perhaps a good example is the Notre Dame's music academy, which gave rise to the Ars Nova style. This was music composed by literate, educated types, who were part of a community (that is, other like-minded composers) where invention and innovation in composition was encouraged. Hence such forms as the isorhythmic motet and the canon came to be used a demonstrations of compositional finesse.

But I digress . . .

I write this post simply to quote one of Taruskin's musings, which also seem to really hit home for me. From page 381 (almost half-way!) of Volume 1:

When periods are essentialized, moreover, we may then begin seeing objects classed within them in invidious comparative terms as more of less essentially medieval of Renaissance. We may become burdened with the considerations of purity or fidelity to a Zeitgeist (a "spirit of the time") that never burdened contemporaries. And that is because unless we are very cautious indeed, we can forget that the Zeitgeist is a concept that we, not "the time," have constructed (or abstracted). We may then value some objects over others as being better, or even as being "the best" expressions of "the spirit of the Middle Ages" or "the spirit of the Renaissance." If this sort of essentialism seems innocuous enough, we might transpose the frame of reference from the chronological to the geographical, and reflect on what happens when people become concerned over the purity or genuineness of one's essential Americanism or Africannes or Croathood.


I'm loving this book.

The Oxford History of Western Music, Pt. 6

Ars Nova theorists Philippe de Vitry and Jehan des Murs wrote treatises on the theoretical aspects of music. They sought to reconcile the rhythmic character of the twelfth-century motet, where a "longa" was equal to twice the "breve," and the thirteenth-century, "Franconian," motet, where the "longa" equalled a "perfection" of three "tempora."

From a mathematical perspective, the innovations that reconciled those rhythmic irregularities were the by-product of the theory of exponential powers and the theory of "harmonic numbers."

In basic terms, it was proposed that the breve could be broken into 3 (perfect, deriving from the holy trinity) or two (imperfect) semibreves. Semibreves could then also be broken into perfect or imperfect parts. There are four combinations of these:

1. Breve division: 3      Semi-breve division: 3

2. Breve division: 3      Semi-breve division: 2

3. Breve division: 2     Semi-breve division: 3

4. Breve division: 2     Semi-breve division: 2

The breve was roughly the equivalent of what we might now consider a bar. Therefore, combination 1 might represent 9/8 time, combination 2 3/4 time, combination 3 6/8 time,and combination 4 2/2 time.

One main difference between this and our notion of time signatures is that the above division do not dictate an accentuation scheme.

The Oxford History of Western Music, Pt. 5

Hermannus Contactus, a monk in the Swiss abbey of Reichenau, proposed that the six-note chord, C-A sums up, with greatest possible economy, the "sound" of Gregorian chant. Therefore the "finals" (see last post), where extended downwards to include the C. The tetrachords beginning on those finals (now C, D, E, and F) now begin to point to what we now think of as major and minor tonality.

The Italian monk, Guido of Arezzo, proposed, around 1030, placing nuemes on the lines and spaces of a ruled staff to define their precise pitch. He used colours, and then clefs, to denote "key lines"; points of reference to be used to find the pitches of the surrounding notes.

A specialist in ear-training, Guido chanced upon a tune (the hymn Ut queant laxis) that not only contained each diatonic interval up to and including a fifth, but where each half-line began on each of the notes proposed by Harmannus. The syllables at these points (corresponding with C, D, E, F, G, and A) are Ut, re, Mi, fa, Sol, and la. What we now know as sol-fege.

The full major scale came about when singers in the early seventeenth century began adding an extra note (si, later becoming ti) at the top of Hermannus's hexachord. Guido achieved something similar by transposing and superimposing the hexachord back onto itself, thus creating the gamut: a full range of pitches that were later represented on the Guidonian hand. Placing this pitches on the hand was a technique derived from public speakers and the like, and acted as a mnemonic aid. It is also where such expressions as "At one's finger-tips" or "rule of thumb" come from (the thumb on Guido's hand contains the first, most basic note of the gamut).

The Oxford History of Western Music, Pt. 4

A tonarius was a kind of index that grouped antiphons according to their psalm tones. They were created to assist finding applicable pieces for various church services, but also led to early theorists and analysts identifying the various ways the finalis (final note) and reciting tone (usually a fifth above) could be "filled-in" using step-wise motion. This led to four "species," each with it's own combination of semitones and tones to create a pentachord. The ending notes of these four species were dubbed the "four finals": D, E, F and G. The pentachord A-E was considered a doulbing of the first (D-A), while the one begining of B was deemed unusable due to it's including two semitones.

Chants ending on the four finals were then also categorised into two families. One where the final was at the bottom of the range of the melody, and one where it was in the middle. Analysts then categorised the different way the four species extended up (to the octave) and down (to the fifth) in the antiphons. The former were named "authentic" and the latter "plagal."

Thus the modes as we now know them (and named after tribes in Greece as well as Asia-minor) were first used as a method of categorising Gregorian chants, and only later became used as a basis for composition; chants composed after tonaries had been assembled demonstrate more clearly, in their melodic turns as well as their structure, the relationship between the final and reciting tone.

The Oxford History of Western Music, Pt. 3

• The Kyrie is a chant from the Franco-Roman Mass, derived from earlier forms of Congregational singing. The earliest sources of Kyries were little books called Kyriale. They contained two versions of each melody, a syllabic version along with a melismatic version. There is evidence to suggest that both verions were in usage, rather than one developing out of the other. If this is the case, it seems likely that the syllabic version was used as a mnemonic device to remind singers of the correspondence between notes and syllables, while the melismatic version was a guide to the intricate melody of the chant. It was this need to convey all of this information at once that could well have led to the development of the staff.

The Oxford History of Western Music, Pt. 2

More fun facts.

• Melismatic melodic turns helped group and identify chants together, and acted in a similar way to the term mode as defined in it's earliest usages
• Our concept of a mode, more closely related to the final note of a melody, has less in common with Gregorian chant, and is a product of Frankish and Italian music theorists in the tenth century, when they made efforts to categorise the music of the Roman church according to ancient Greek music theory.
• The harmonic series, often used to show that "naturalness" of the diatonic scale, was actually only discovered in the eighteenth century. According to one fable, Pythagoras passed by a blacksmith shop, heard pitches, and used the weights of the anvils to determine the pitches, which corresponded to the intervals of the perfect 4th, perfect 5th, and tone. Transposing this same pitch set (0, 5, 7) to begin on the any other those notes gives rise to the pentatonic scale.

The Oxford History of Western Music, Pt. 1

I've started reading Richard Taruskin's momentous work. which covers western music from it's earliest notations to the end of the twentieth century. I've a loved Taruskin's writing ever since I got a copy of "The Danger of Music and other Anti-Utopian Essays."

The sheer size of this collection, combined with my inability to remember everything I read has lead to decide to make short posts that document some of the interesting things I find on the way.

• Music notation arose out of political and geographical changes: the music sung in the churches of Rome migrated north to the Frankish kingdom after the two empires combined to protect themselves from the efforts of the Lombard kingdom to expand their southern border. No one really thought the notation of music was particularly interesting, so no one thought to chronicle it.
• Gregorian chant is not a "primitive" form of music making, but was rather a rebellion against the extravagant (and probably polyphonic and antiphonal) music used in Christian rituals as it became the official religion of the late Roman Empire.
• Melismatic singing, rather than being that annoying thing we think of as developing in modern pop music, was the highest form of musical devotion to God, where multiple notes could be used for a single syllable.

Stay tuned for more, if you'd like.

Messiaen, Carter and Coltrane

Masters Thesis

I'm very happy to share with you all the final version of my Masters thesis, titled: Elliott Carter's Rhythmic Language: A Framework for Improvisation.

I suppose at this point I could pen a lengthy reflection on the process of writing, research, performance, the course itself, or perhaps it's demise, but at this stage I'll endeavour to keep things very short.

Dr. Donna Coleman is by far and away one of the most inspiring and instructive teachers I've come across. Her enthusiasm seems to know no bounds, and her piano playing is always awe-inspiring, even more so at close quarters. I actually already owned Abbey Whiteside's famous book, On Piano Playing before I started with Donna, but it was my lessons with her that transformed that book from mere descriptions to a physical sensation I then learned and continue to refine.

The thesis details my analysis of one piano piece of Carter's, 90+ (1994), and my efforts to use the rhythmic language contained therein as a basis for my own music. My discoveries along the way have profoundly changed the way I think about rhythm.

As with most theses, it seems, my thesis is pretty dry to read, but hopefully it contains some useful information for those who are interested. I also hope that it might act as guidance for those wishing to pursue a similar topic.

Finally, it seems to me that, to paraphrase a friend of mine, that 'complex' rhythms can be used for good and evil. To my mind, this means being mindful to allowing the music to breathe, have space, and create drama. In the end (and this hopefully does not come off as too shameless a plug), I hope the reader will listen to (perhaps even buy) my music as the final product of all this work. My trio release from earlier this year, Sarcophile contains recordings discussed in this thesis.

The thesis can be downloaded from:

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/15184639/MH%20Carter%20as%20a%20Framework%20for%20Improv.pdf

For audio please check out:

http://www.marchannaford.com/buy

The Work Concept

Two Views on the Application of the Work Concept

This paper compares two passages of writing: Lydia Goehr’s ‘Werktreue: Confirmation and Challenge in Contemporary Movements,’ (the final chapter from The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works)[1] and José Bowen’s The History of Remembered Innovation: Tradition and Its Role in Relationship between Musical Works and Their Performances.[2]

Published in similar times, both pieces explore applications of the work concept[3] in terms of its imperialist tendencies and the way it may regulate practice. Goehr examines John Cage’s philosophy of composition and performance, the role of the conductor in the Western ‘classical’ tradition and the practice of ‘historical performance,’ while Bowen explores the work concept and its application in jazz performance, suggesting that the continued use of an oral tradition may stave off the sometimes paralysing tendency of the work concept. By comparing Goehr’s studies of ‘avant-garde’ (John Cage) and historical (what is sometimes labelled as ‘period music’) practices with Bowen’s examination of jazz practice I hope to illuminate how the work-concept may function differently, depending on the context.

Bowen’s study is, in fact, suggested in some of Goehr’s passages. In mentioning the conceptual differences between works, improvisations and transcriptions, she hints that ‘indeterminacy’ of the latter two may suggest a practice in which the work concept’s regulative force is lessened. This is, in fact, one of the main thrusts of Bowen’s paper.

Through our actions, the work-concept or any other open concept reflects our beliefs, ideals, assumptions and expectations.[4] How the concept is used in packaging music, however, may change. For Goehr, these packages may be considered ‘original’ or ‘derivative’ in their employment of a concept. The former does not refer to those examples produced first, but rather those that are produced under the direct regulation of the given concept. ‘Derivative’ examples are produced indirectly from the concept. This second classification is much more problematic in that there are multiple ways in which this method of packaging may come into being. One such example is when musicians from traditions other than western art music incorporate work-concept performative and philosophical notions into their practice. The motivation for doing so may stem from a personal need for legitimisation or marketing. I echo Goehr in suggesting that we lose something when we hear jazz, for example, in a concert hall. In my experience it seems that the conventions of the concert-hall setting create an artificiality that only serves to obscure the musical aesthetic.

Both pieces of writing come across as non-combative (although Richard Taruskin’s foreword for Goehr may lead you to believe otherwise), instead sharing a mentality that “claims that point to someone’s having got something absolutely right, and claims that reveal a belief in the absolute rightness of an idea, do matter.”[5] Goehr does acknowledge that the “Werktreue ideal can be delimiting in scope.”[6] This is, after all, one of the reasons for her writing this book. However her tone remains distanced and rather objective. Bowen seems unwilling to overtly suggest that the application of the work concept is more open in jazz performance than in fully notated music, although I get the impression that that is what he is driving at. The closest he gets is: “for Wittgenstein’s concepts and our musical works indefiniteness is a virtue.”[7] Both writers seem content, through the illumination of concepts, to work with a premise that “wonder can increase rather than be diminished despite philosophical and historical understanding of these ideals.”[8]

The opening pages of Goehr’s chapter expound on the imperialistic tendencies of the Romantic Movement and how many of the ideals of this era have continued to dominate contemporary music practice. The traditional, static notion of history was transformed, via Romanticism, into a dynamic one. This led to the “reconstructing or rewriting the past” that “was and remains one of the most characteristic ways for persons to legitimate their present.”[9] By stripping past pieces of music of their original connections with time and place it was possible to transport them into the present, endowing them with a sort of timelessness. Thus appropriate musical meanings could be conferred on pieces of music that would never have been conceived as such. This led to the emergence of what Goehr calls the ‘imaginary museum’: a collection of standardised ‘works’ that helped exalt composers, pre and post enlightenment, to a godlike status and the works themselves to a sphere of aesthetic autonomy.

Goehr draws the reader’s attention to the malleability of the work concept to show how it has continued to dominate music practice. She begins by drawing the reader’s attention to a point of view often associated with the bourgeois:

Many persons, convinced nowadays by the greatness of classical music, have found a reason to describe all the types of music in the world, of whatever sort, by means of a work-based interpretation. Such persons have believed that the closer any music embodies the conditions determined by the romantic work-aesthetic, the more civilized it is.[10]

By showing that the work concept may be used in an evaluative as well as classificatory sense, Goehr suggests that malleability is one of the central traits of the work concept that has allowed it to continue in present practice.

4’ 33” (1951) and Music of Changes (1952) are taken by Goehr as examples of John Cage’s failure in undermining the work concept in performance practice. This failure is largely due to Cage’s continued presence as a composer, via regulative performance stipulations, despite his philosophical claims otherwise. By the very presence of performance stipulations Cage has maintained his control over the musical event, and therefore been once again had it subsumed under the work concept as a regulative force. As Goehr states “those who wish to challenge a concept’s regulative force usually find themselves paradoxically situated in a practice that is regulated by the very concept they want to challenge.”[11] She goes onto make the excellent point that Cage tried to bring ‘outside’ music into the institution (being the concert-hall and conservatory) to no avail; these ‘real’ sounds were altered so as to become standardised. It seems that a radical challenge such as Cage’s, in interacting with the work concept, becomes regulated, therefore losing its initial intent.

As Goehr points out, the debate surrounding what are often propagated as historically authentic or informed performances is complex and heated. The charge levelled against those engaged in this mode of performance usually revolves around the indeterminacy of the definition of authentic. A consideration of the factors that may inform a performance of this kind highlights this ambiguity. On one hand, performing on instruments that closely resemble those of the relevant period is often seen as an indispensible part of this practice. On the other hand, these performances often take place in a modern concert hall. Critics of this movement have “wanted authenticists to admit their failure to meet the ideal, or if not that, to argue themselves out of the commitment that to be completely and not just selectively faithful to early music one has to meet all the original conditions.”[12]

Whether the performers choose to strive to comply with the composer’s intentions as perfectly as possible (a reading of historical performance limited to the musical score) or to including the reproduction of as much of the historical setting as possible (including extra-musical elements), it is again the work-concept that is a regulative factor. The above realisations differ in terms of degree, rather than type.

It is in offering a third alternative that Goehr is able to make her case for the early music movement as “perfectly positioned to present itself not only as a ‘different way of thinking about music’, but also as an alternative to a performance practice governed by the work-concept.”[13] If the players still wish their music be true to something, they might consider the possibility that authentic concert music need not be judged in terms of a fixed ideal. While Goehr is not convinced of this ‘post-modern’ move she is “much more certain of the advantages that result from our more modestly allowing different performance movements to develop for themselves their own regulative ideals.”[14]

Goehr’s conclusion is limited to the European tradition of classical music. As already stated in my paper, however, performance in jazz may suggest a way the work-concept may function without delimiting practice.

Bowen begins by establishing that musicologists’ relationship to the musical work and its performances is fundamentally different. Bowen wonders, “Is the score a sample, summary or a sketch?” The history of western art music, much like jazz, balances an oral/aural tradition with a written tradition. The difference in Bowen’s mind is that, in jazz, the oral tradition has survived, preventing the fixing of the work-concept into a regulative one. The two key factors in this regard are:

1. Scores are not musical works. Bowen later cites Roman Ingarden’s assertion that a performance, a musical work and a score are not identical entities.

2. While the sequence of pitches between two performances may remain the same, the performance may vary in practically every other regard

The focus on pitch sequence is an important concept that distinguishes the two traditions. Objectors may cite works, such as Boulez’s third piano sonata, that allow (or perhaps demand) the alteration of pitch sequences from one performance to the next, as a rebuttal to Bowen’s use of pitch sequence to distinguish between traditions. However I would argue that such works are, as gestures, reactionary against this very model of the work, and therefore do not (as we saw in Goehr’s consideration of Cage’s work) re-define the work concept, but rather, are adapted to fall under the traditional work concept.

That jazz has almost always existing in an age that includes audio as well as print reproduction is one of the reasons, for Bowen, that “every performance of the same musical work in jazz will actually differ in pitch content.”[15] In contrast to the need to fix a work as a reproducible object, as outlined by Goehr, the jazz tradition, according to Bowen, has an in-built flexibility that at once preserves and varies the work.

Bowen’s passage on performance begins with an analogy to language. While acknowledging that this comparison may only go so far, it helps him define performance as “a musical utterance which is both example and definition.”[16] This dualism is also exemplified in the tensions between individual expression and communication or between innovation and tradition. Taking the former comparison and invoking the analogy to language, this is a balance between utterances that are personal, in that they tend towards individual idiosyncratic formulations, and impersonal, in that they are made up of universally understood expressions that by their very genericism, do not express anything personal. Since, according to Bowen, “every performance of a musical work . . . is a unique example of the thing and not the thing itself,” then “each performance . . . is a unique moment during which the individual struggles to convey both a unique message and a specific musical work.”[17] This conception of music performance then lays the groundwork for Bowen to describe performances of a single work in jazz practice (he uses Thelonious Monk’s 1944 piece ‘Round Midnight) using Wittgenstein’s concept of family resemblance. This reading contrasts with the traditional, structuralist view that multiple performances vary in nuance but not in content. Wittgenstein helps Bowen describe how several performances may not share any single set of characteristics. Bowen summarises: “No one member may have all of the common characteristics, and any two may share nothing in common (i.e. there is no one essential family trait.)”[18]

The traditional jazz ‘lead sheet’, to use Bowen’s example, is a case in point. It is at once generic enough to allow multiple, contrasting realisations, but also contains details that help identify the performance as a particular work. A performance such as this is at once generic and expressive. Bowen is able to demonstrate this concept in action: “Although there is no intersection set of characteristics, the different performances on ‘Round Midnight collectively share a set of family resemblances.”[19]

Lead sheets are not scores. In score-based, Western art music, the use of expressive techniques such as “dynamics, tempo, phrasing, rhythmic placement, accent, rubato, timbre . . . vibrato and portamento” imbue multiple realisations of the same pitch content with an individual identity. This segues to perhaps Bowen’s most profound point:

While the tradition, like the lead sheet and other forms of authority, can have the effect of establishing a canonical set of essential notes or practices, every performance is an opportunity for the performer to redefine these notes.[20]

Description of performance as canonical but with a space for movement is key to understanding Bowen’s adaptation of the work concept to jazz. In Goehr’s writing the work-concept, as a regulative force in Western art music, could be delimiting. Bowen, however, shows how this particular, ‘derivative,’ (to use Goehr’s term) use of the concept helps allow a movement that has potential for philosophical expression.

In jazz, like western art music, “new performances will be heard against the background of previous performances.”[21] Jazz and western art music differ, however, in that, in jazz “the original recording is the first variation.”[22] This means that, like Wittgenstein’s ‘family resemblance’ there is not one recording that is the work; “the history of the work is also like a set of variations over several generations.”[23]

By understanding that, in jazz, the standardisation of a single work is an evolutionary process, we are able to free ourselves of the static dictatorship of the work-concept.

I find this to be both a refreshing and convincing argument. To my mind Bowen is well informed both in terms of philosophical arguments and jazz practice. While Goehr’s writing (at least in the aforementioned book) concentrated mainly on the conceptual and philosophical implications of the work concept as well as an account of it’s formation and rise to governance, Bowen seems here to be developing those ideas to discuss a practice that is, more often than not, avoided in serious discussions of contemporary music and its accompanying philosophies.

Bibliography

Bowen, José A. "The History of Remembered Innovation: Tradition and Its Role in the Relationship between Musical Works and Their Performances." The Journal of Musicology 11, no. 2 (1993): 139-73.

Goehr, Lydia. The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works: An Essay in the Philosophy of Music: Oxford University Press, 1992.

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[1] Lydia Goehr, The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works: An Essay in the Philosophy of Music (Oxford University Press, 1992).

[2] José A. Bowen, "The History of Remembered Innovation: Tradition and Its Role in the Relationship between Musical Works and Their Performances," The Journal of Musicology 11, no. 2 (1993).

[3] Outlined by Goehr for much of the book

[4] Goehr, The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works: An Essay in the Philosophy of Music, 253.

[5] Ibid., 278.

[6] Ibid., 284.

[7] Bowen, "The History of Remembered Innovation: Tradition and Its Role in the Relationship between Musical Works and Their Performances," 147.

[8] Goehr, The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works: An Essay in the Philosophy of Music, 243.

[9] Ibid., 245.

[10] Ibid., 248-49.

[11] Ibid., 260.

[12] Ibid., 281.

[13] Ibid., 284.

[14] Ibid.

[15] Bowen, "The History of Remembered Innovation: Tradition and Its Role in the Relationship between Musical Works and Their Performances," 141.

[16] Ibid.: 143.

[17] Ibid.: 144.

[18] Ibid.: 146.

[19] Ibid.: 148.

[20] Ibid.: 149.

[21] Ibid.

[22] Ibid.: 151.

[23] Ibid.