pynchon-l-digest V2 #589

[Daniel Wolf]

Paul Mackin quoted the following:

< After World War II the two leading artistic attitudes tended to
<merge when the followers of Anton von Webern carried serial composition
<to such a rigorous extreme that its craftsmanship and intellectual
<orientation suggested Classicism rather than Expressionism. Shortly
<afterward, Stravinsky, the doyen of the Neoclassical group, began
<experimenting with serialism. Avant-garde music since that time has begun
<to employ the techniques made possible by technological developments in
<electronics.

Out of a more detailed context, the above quote is a ridiculous
abbreviation of the development of the post WWII avant garde. Webern's
later music was indeed composed in a strict manner, with twelve-tone rows
set together in intricate canonic and symmetrical relations. This was,
however, only half the story: the gestural style demanded by Webern was
well with the _Wiener Expressivo_ tradition, requiring extremely nuanced
dynamic and tempo movements. Too. it should not be forgotten that Webern
was primarily a composer of vocal works, and the mysticism of his last
works (esp. _Das Augenlicht_ and the two Cantatas to texts by Hildegard
Jone) cannot be ignored.

In Europe, the 'total serial' style of the 1950's does follow Webern, and
represented an attempt to restore music after the war with the dignity and
order of a strict organization. But this was essentially limited to a few
works by Goeyvaerts, Boulez, Stockhausen, and perhaps Nono, all of whom
would turn quickly away from a totalitarian rigor, but all of whom can be
said to have remained in the realm of Webernian mysticism. (e.g,
Stockhausen was strongly influenced by Hesse's _Glass Bead Game_, Boulez by
Char and Mallarme, and Nono by a romantic Marxism and later, Hölderlin).
The subsequent discovery, through works by Cage and Xenakis, that the use
of chance or statistical means could lead to musical surfaces strikingly
similar to the most rigorous serial constructions had a particularly
devastating -- if frequently denied -- impact on the developments in
Europe. 

In the United States, Webern had a strikingly different impact. Starting
perhaps with Cage and Morton Feldman, there was a primary interest in the
sound quality of Webern's music. The first (almost-)complete recording of
Webern's works was made under the leadership of Stravinsky's amanuensis,
Robert Craft. The performance style of these recordings, often spliced
together note-for-note, is quite distant from the Viennese tradition and
has a dry clarity closer in style to Stravinsky than any of the 2nd
Viennese School composers. While the more rigorously mathematical
'Princetion' school of composers seized on certain elements of Webernian
practice, they remained generally closer to Schoenberg. The Craft
performances would have their most significant impact on composers of the
American minimalist generation, particularly La Monte Young and Steve
Reich, who seized upon a certain static sound quality in the performances,
especially when single pitches tended to be repeated in distinct octave
registrations.   

The entrance of electronics into all this, although promising unlimited
possibilites and unlimited precision, looks, in retrospect, to be of much
lesser importance.  The juncture of engineering and music parodied in CL49
in the bar with the play-along all-electronic music policy was very short
lived, although the 'electronic folk music' of the the Sonic Arts Union,
the Cunningham Dance Company, the San Francisco Tape Studio, MEV and
others, would produce classics in strikingly different directions. As
digital techniques have finally arrived in recent years, the post-Webernian
moment has become a less-vital source of direction.

Daniel Wolf
Frankfurt-am-Main