Població d’estud

One of the most interesting aspects of text (as a concept) is its role in adumbrating the spectrum of private versus public. People function both privately and publicly, modifying their behaviour according to circumstance. It would seem reasonable to examine how notes on the page become different by being performed, especially since they are always undergoing this prismatic shift. Rosen's contention (in Thomas ed. 1998: 68) that text and performance are only identical in computerised music or jazz improvisation can be contested, but it amplifies the point that performance creates issues for how to tackle the text. Davies (2003: 28) avers that Cage's seminal 4'33" is more dependent on a public articulation for its effect than many pieces. While Cage's notated text (my 'pretext' above) is free of normal instructions (such as notes on staves), the popular consciousness of this work has ignored the fact that it is written in three movements, and thus is surely, as Fettermann observes (1996: 69-95) a theatre piece about listening. Indeed, Ferneyhough's comment (Boros & Toop 1996: 212) that his scores are not merely instructions but an

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invitation to the performer to grapple with issues might make him appear very un-user- friendly, but he sees the performer as someone who should be required to think. Moving the text from the 'private' realm of the composer to a shared experience with the performers enacts the text in performance and is a form of 'public-ation'. Yet even moving a text from the entirely personal to the more global does not make its total apprehension possible, since its symbolic nature ensures that some part of it remains hidden.

Rowland's assertion that texts are "vulnerable to interpretation" (in Norris C. ed. 1982: 13) is really looking at the problem through the wrong end of the telescope. Texts, arguably, only really become texts when interpretation happens to them, for interpretation is not an unwelcome intruder but a necessary partner. A Schubert Song, for example, has already undergone several layers before we individually hear it in a collective setting, which adds yet more layers to the single performance-instance. Its very plurality is part of its identity, lending weight to Cook's idea of a "multitext" (2007: 194). It is impossible to create an Urtext that, in being 'realised', does not somehow change or distort itself. Interestingly, the Hebrew for 'face' (a concept loaded with personality and identity) is a plural word, suggesting that person-hood depends on recognition of more than one dimension. Borges, similarly, talks of Shakespeare in the plural (Bate 1997: 33) to indicate something of his multi-dimensionality, and it might be advantageous to see music as similarly protean.

Appreciating that works are not monolithic and monadic allows them to surprise us, much as people do with their own particular personalities. For instance, Elgar suggests the medieval chivalry in Froissart (1890) by hinting at the 'Prize Song' from Wagner's Die

Meistersinger (1867) and the issues that texts create over their boundaries is tackled in the

next chapter. When Shura Cherkassky used to doodle on the piano prior to beginning a Sonata, it was not, strictly speaking, part of the piece, yet its sense of integrity allowed the subsequent piece to emerge out of the piano's being prodded. I even heard this (Perth City Hall, May 1986) in relation to such a supposedly hermetic art-work as the 1909 Sonata by Berg. Such playing or playing around has the practical advantage of familiarising the pianist with the instrument at that close point of contact. It would also seem to push Mozart concerto performers to play bits in the exposition, which has the musical advantage of

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making the soloist more part of the overall music-concept and not some demi-God descending after the instrumental exposition. This blurring of both text and work indicates the richness of performance in the enacting of a performance. Adorno's idea that "the only works which really count are those which are no longer works at all" (1987: 30) may well be more helpful than he intended, as it helps us see that it is when works shift and move that they become autocephalous, creating the valuable idea that the defining identity of a work is its display of difference. By contrast, the idea that a piece of music should a fit prescribed formula is against the idea that it is self-ruling or autonomous, though one can understand why for purposes of classification it is useful to be able to compartmentalise works. Yet that approach betrays the mindset that music is a product or a thing. The more risky notion that we may not know what a piece is until it is too late is vital to its organic nature.

Further, something of a text's mysteriousness can be played to advantage. Rothstein (in Rink 1995: 219) remarks on how a fugue in Bach is designed to sound in such a way that its construction or joins of elements are not apparent. He suggests that to highlight each entry of the subject (as folk are often taught to do) is "boorish pedantry", since Bach wants the complicity of the performer in this hidden art, and his intent was to hide the workings. On another level, while noting the numerology behind works, such as the 10 repeated notes at the beginning of Dies sind die zehn heilgen Gebot BWV 678 (from Bach's Clavierübung III of 1739) helps one appreciate the construction, it is also possible to see such care pace Goehr (1998: 63) as a sort of spontaneous calculation. It is arguably even evidence of how intense technical training in music can become so thoroughly absorbed as to make these responses instinctive. Hiding the workings was a sign of civilised behaviour (Kramer 1995: 27) which at the same time kept some mystique to the creation and allowed the skill of the musician to be seen as mysterious. Nowadays, unlike Victorian table-legs which were covered up, there is a greater appreciation that the workings can and should be celebrated publicly (and one might think of Richard Rogers' Lloyds building where the pipes are on the outside).

Although defining 'Text' precisely is somewhat problematic, this project recognises that text behaves in a peculiarly rich manner. Yet it also recognises that much of this richness comes from the way it is engaged with by composers and listeners.

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Section IV Research Context

Chapter 4

Work

In this chapter I discuss how works are formed. Defining what a 'work' is is more difficult than it might appear, and this relates back to the initial dichotomy between the logical and the intuitive. However, in suggesting ways in which works function, composers may become aware of how this fecundity is useful.