Motivación para la ayuda

Far from providing answers, several composers talk about how they see music raising new questions (e.g. Berio in Griffiths 1995: 193). They and others ask how composing acts as a critical engagement with music already encountered. While they can talk about it in words (sometimes very illuminatingly), the language they are trained to use (music) ends up being translated into words to explain it. Kolisch in 1925 (Adorno 1973: 182) said that Stravinsky’s music was "music about music", while Adorno felt it was music "from which music was banished" (see Kundera 2010: 87). The idea that music can have the 'music' extracted makes one consider what music is made up of. Murke, in Böll's short story (see Lamport ed. 1974: 325-47), splices together the silences from radio broadcasts to create a tape of 'silence', yet this very editing creates an artwork of 'no noise', which helps to declare that the actual production of art (whether sounded or not) is the defining element in according artistic status. When Berio puts it similarly, saying that "music is everything that one listens to with the intention of listening to music" (1985: 19), it reminds us that as life is unfinished, so the organism that is music is never able to be fully assessed objectively. Rather like some of Howard Hodgkin's paintings where the 'painting' bursts over the frame, Op. 48 seems to transgress what might appear to be borders. This unfinished, or rather unfinishable, nature has its own challenges which link in to the realisation that no piece is an island. Yet if pieces do link with themselves, with each other, and with other areas of human activity then authorship itself becomes debatable. Further, if 'my' pieces are not all my own then plagiarism, appropriation, arrangements, editions are all discussable.

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Roussel believes that music is the most "inaccessible" art form (Mellers 1947: 92), but despite this, music's naturally self-referential essence (as Katz implies) means that music is only fully music when it talks to other music. To some, science may be precise and controllable, while art is whimsical and flighty, yet Op. 48 hopes to demonstrate that one can be artistically precise or scientifically whimsical. That there may not be an exact fit (for instance between vulgar and decimal fractions) is part of what it is to be human, since we may all experience the same events in different ways. Realising that we can be connected (by a sort of musical magic) becomes part of a living hope that it might happen again. While the word individual has come to mean 'separate', its true meaning is about indivisibility rather than uniformity. The Trinity is held (in standard Christian theology) to be indivisible which means not just infrangible ('unbreakupable' is a better word, perhaps) but also composed of relationships within itself between the various Persons. Kristeva's depiction of the Trinity mentioned earlier (1987: 43) highlights the inter-play between the Persons. It is not that the Trinity is the only appropriate methodological model, but it does live on that strange hinge between something we cannot understand and yet something we attempt to discuss. In this way, we might see the overall 'individual' organism of music as incredibly diverse and yet interwoven on many levels, allowing us to appreciate the worlds we encounter through it.

This Chapter noted that Op. 48 draws on a wide range of reference, and that this is a potential avenue which can continue to be explored. Utilising aspects of music history as story or as motivations embodies a richer interplay of texts—which may or may not be apparent to listeners or those studying it— and yet these remain a valuable part of the generative process. At the same time, the interconnectedness of materials invites wider speculation about the integrity of art.

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Section VII InConclusion

In this chapter I acknowledge that a neat conclusion is problematic, but I identify various strands which might aid the further integration of musical awareness. With the idea that music is internally 'dappled', Op. 48 suggests that musicians could profitably seek ideas from outwith their normal territory. As the final question in the Foreword noted, music's capacity to be discerned across genres and subjects makes some discussion of the place of interdisciplinarity inevitable, even though the nature of disciplines mitigates against real encounters with the Other.

Composing a last movement has often created headaches for composers: Walton's First Symphony (1935) was premiered without one in 1934 (Howes 1974: 35-40), and Brahms's solution for his Symphony no. 4 (1887) was to create a passacaglia drawn from a Bach Cantata (see Gál 1963: 174-5). While Muir's essay The Decline of the Novel comfortingly notes that modern writers, too, can start but not finish (1949: 144), an end for this document is needed, even if the topic is somewhat ongoing and boundless. There is, perhaps, a clue in Debussy who produced a Première Rapsodie (for Clarinet) in 1910 without ever getting so far as a second one. Samuel Johnson's 1759 tale about Rasselas (Prince of Abissinia) was, similarly, originally printed as Volume 1, although the title of the 49th chapter "The Conclusion, in which nothing is concluded" (2009: 108) proves that he sensed that some endings have a propensity to being somewhat open-ended.

Echoing Steiner’s view that some element of trust or faith is involved in any artistic encounter (1989: 156), an appeal to otherness mirrors the aesthetic dimension. While that can sound fanciful, it links directly with the world of science, where no system can fully explain itself only using itself (see Hofstadter 2007: 165). If standard modes of analysis— where things are 'either x or y'—are inadequate, then ways to allow the more quantum dispensation to resonate are needed. I adapt (the Centaur font indicates its doubleness) the tale of the Rabbi who, here, is asked to settle a dispute between musicians.

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Composer: Rabbi, musical pieces are all individual and separate. The Rabbi: You are right.

Analyst/Critic: Rabbi, musical pieces are all interconnected and linked. The Rabbi: You are right.

Performer: Excuse me, Rabbi, you've just confirmed two opposites. The Rabbi: You are right.