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In his recent book Twelve-Tone Music in America, Joseph Straus sets out to counter the
perception that dodecaphonic practice in the United States has been dominated by a small cadre
of zealots, and presents it instead as a multifaceted, flexible musical tradition stretching back to
the 1920s. Although a questioning of assumptions about 12-tone music’s past is much overdue,
Straus’s focus on pitch-based analysis at the expense of other cultural and artistic criteria limits
insight into the music and hampers the revisionist enterprise as a whole. Straus’s discussion of
Rochberg’s Second String Quartet illustrates these constraints, and in this paper I develop an
While writing the second quartet in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Rochberg formulated
an idiosyncratic alternative to the rigid strictures of indeterminacy and serialism; space-form was
a concept that allowed post-tonal composers to freely determine musical structure by creating
audible relationships between individual sound objects. Rochberg’s Second String Quartet
unfolds as a musical manifestation of space-form: throughout, gestural units with their own
distinct characteristics interrupt each other, fade away into silence, or emerge from an existing
texture. And although Rochberg uses the 12-tone row to create consistency across these gestural
units, he also exploits dodecaphonic procedures to exaggerate the differences between them. By
showing how one of Straus’s case studies was part of an aesthetic project to rectify the perceived
form perspective helps to demonstrate that the American 12-tone tradition was more contentious
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dodecaphony as a “loosely knit cultural practice.” Rochberg’s contribution to this “vigorous and
unbroken tradition” was his awareness of its role in changing the relationship between music’s
temporal and spatial dimensions; Straus cites the composer’s 1963 article “The New Image of
Music” to explain:
The passage of sounding forms in traditional music is dominated and organized by a flow of
measured beats, presenting an image of time in a constant state of flux and movement, of change
and becoming. But in the new music it is the image of space which predominates, an image in
which the sound substance forms itself as the primary object of perception.1
Where “traditional music” used meter to create the impression of moving through time, 20th-
century atonality downplays rhythm, using it primarily as a means to present sound objects
within musical space. Straus cites Rochberg’s second quartet as an example, analyzing it as a
collection of sound blocks that are “intrinsically static, but juxtaposed in a variety of ways.”2
Within each instrumental line, the row statements form separate motivic groups that stand apart
from each other, and when all four voices play together, the result is an aural mosaic of musical
shapes.
In his quartet, Rochberg only uses row forms that contain the same three tetrachords with
specific pitches, and Straus depicts this as the glue binding the individual components together.
Straus shows how these tetrachords appear in what he identifies as the prime row (example 1).
1
Cited in Twelve-Tone Music in America by Joseph N. Straus (New York: Cambridge University Press,
2009), 76. See also “The New Image of Music” by George Rochberg in The Aesthetics of Survival: A Composer’s
View of Twentieth-Century Music, Revised and Expanded Edition (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004),
23.
2
Straus, 79.
3
Each tetrachord consists of two semitone dyads: the first tetrachord, labeled X, contains C#-to-C
and G-to-F#; the Y tetrachord contains D-to-Eb and A-G#; and the Z tetrachord is made up of
the E-to-F and Bb-to-B dyads. Although these semitone groups may appear in different orders,
and notes might be flipped around, they always appear together within their own tetrachords. In
RI-7, for example, tetrachord Y appears first with its dyads reorganized—but intact with the
The connection between the Second String Quartet and Rochberg’s comments in “The
New Image of Music” is a valid interpretative starting point, but Straus’s reading is highly
selective, providing a very limited—and somewhat misleading—picture. Straus does not mention
that in “The New Image of Music” Rochberg is highly critical of serialism, and warns that its
bolstering his point about the vitality and diversity of American twelve-tone culture, Straus
ignores the possibility that the second quartet was the product of Rochberg’s more pointed
commentary.
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After describing the contemporary musical mindset in “The New Image of Music,”
indeterminacy and serialism. In both cases, he finds that the search for new sound worlds within
the spatial realm has become an obsession that threatens the very comprehensibility of music.
unpredictable.” He spends more time addressing what he sees as the disturbing contradiction
between the compositional goals of strict serialism and the sounds that result. According to
Rochberg, the more thoroughly composers such as Stockhausen and Boulez organize every part
more it approaches the “perceptual disorder” of indeterminacy.3 In an article written just before
“The New Image of Music,” Rochberg compares this situation to the process of entropy, noting
that the “ordering of equivalents is analogous to the equal distribution of energy in closed
physical systems.”4 Because all parameters of sound receive the same treatment, every moment
becomes equally important within a serialist piece. There is no way to hear relationships between
individual sections, and over time the music becomes more and more aurally balanced—and less
and less comprehensible. Listeners are left with a collection of sounds that, although rigidly
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Rochberg’s solution to this musical dead end is space-form. Space-form is not a return to
subjective artistic decisions about musical structure. In space-form, composers still exploit
musical space by positing sound objects that resonate with listeners as “energy tensions.” But
they also have creative license to decide how each of these energetic sound masses transitions
3
Rochberg, “The New Image of Music,” 18.
4
Rochberg, “Indeterminacy and the New Music,” in The Aesthetics of Survival, 7.
5
from one to another, and in these powerful moments, significant relationships develop. There is
no predominantly temporal flow, but there is a sense of change that creates a perceptible
structure, one that is “determined solely by the form it takes in relation to the context it
establishes with other images.”5 By embracing the spatial potential of music while resisting the
that is the musical equivalent of Charles Olson’s projective verse and abstract expressionist art.
As such, space-form is, to Rochberg “as authentic for us as speech-form was for previous
centuries … [it is] a profoundly human musical form, a potentially intense artistic expression.”6
Space-form was Rochberg’s first attempt to present a direct alternative to serialism, and
it’s possible that it was out of his work on the Second String Quartet that the composer
developed the concept. Only a few weeks after mentioning in a 1961 letter to Istvàn Anhalt that
rehearsals for his second quartet were to begin, Rochberg wrote a second letter to Anhalt in
which he discussed some preliminary thoughts about space-form. Here we see a composer who
is attempting to build a career within the dodecaphonic “cultural practice” while grappling with
its limitations.
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followed by a setting of Rilke’s Ninth Duino Elegy in English translation. In both parts,
Rochberg presents clearly articulated gestural units that differentiate themselves from each other
through timbre, texture, and dynamics. The first gestural unit—and the entire piece—begins with
the second violin, which introduces the prime form of the row (example 2).
5
Rochberg, “The Concepts of Musical Time and Space,” in The Aesthetics of Survival, 118.
6
Rochberg, “The Concepts of Musical Time and Space,” 126.
6
This is not the same prime row that Straus identifies, but it does contain the same three
distinctive tetrachords. Here, what Straus labels as the Z tetrachord appears first, and his X
tetrachord is last. (For a full list of rows and row numbers, please see Example 6). The other
three instruments enter in quick succession after the second violin. Each of the lines presents row
forms that contain versions of the tetrachords, adding a degree of consistency to the contrapuntal
As instruments enter and drop out of gestural unit A, a certain ebb and flow develops; all
of this is abruptly interrupted by a sudden outburst of loud, short, disjunct notes that announces
Spiky and abrupt, gestural unit B contrasts sharply with the relatively smooth flow of gestural
unit A, and there is nothing in the music that announces a change; gestural unit A simply stops
and gestural unit B violently begins. Rochberg underscores the sense of interruption by curtailing
the row forms that conclude gestural unit A and using the remaining pitch material to announce
gestural unit B. Rochberg begins the first violin line of gestural unit B with the final E-F dyad
(X1) of row form R-2, which ends gestural unit A. He hardly begins RI-9 in the second violin
before breaking it up. The viola splits RI-3 and the cello divides R-8. Because the row forms
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occur so regularly throughout gestural unit A, their separation here is particularly striking, and
This sudden, disruptive shift between gestural units is one point of transition that occurs
in the quartet; the gradual disintegration of gestural unit B is another (example 4).
At the end of gestural unit B, it sounds as if the music is struggling to stay heard. One by one,
each voice simply gives up, starting with the first violin. The viola follows, with a long F# that
gradually gets softer and dies out. The second violin puts up a good fight with a loud Bb-B dyad
(X2), but the cello gives it all up, ending the section on a low, soft, short F#. After a brief
In the midst of gestural unit C, an antiphonal melody section gradually emerges from the
The two violins then begin to pass the melody between them as the other two voices churn
underneath. The first half of this section freely uses the characteristic dyads from tetrachords X,
Y, and Z, but in the second half something changes and, for the first time, Rochberg uses
I0 I1 I6 I7 I11 I10 I4 I5 I9 I8 I3 I2
P0 E F A# B D# D G# A C# C G F# R2
P11 D# E A A# D C# G G# C B F# F R1
P6 A# B E F A G# D D# G F# C# C R8
P5 A A# D# E G# G C# D F# F C B R7
P1 F F# B C E D# A A# D C# G# G R3
P2 F# G C C# F E A# B D# D A G# R4
P8 C C# F# G B A# E F A G# D# D R10
P7 B C F F# A# A D# E G# G D C# R9
P3 G G# C# D F# F B C E D# A# A R5
P4 G# A D D# G F# C C# F E B A# R6
P9 C# D G G# C B F F# A# A E D# R11
P10 D D# G# A C# C F# G B A# F E R0
RI10 RI11 RI4 RI5 RI9 RI8 RI2 RI3 RI7 RI6 RI1 RI0
In the row matrix for the Second String Quartet, half of the forms are made up of the X, Y, and Z
tetrachords; the other half are made up of a different set of three tetrachords that have their own
semitone dyads, and it is these two-note groups that Rochberg uses to conclude the antiphonal
melody section. The first tetrachord (labeled U in Example 6) is made up of the D#-to-E and A-
to-A# dyads. The second, labeled V, contains D-to-C# and G-to-G#; the third has C-to-B and F#-
to-F. These alternative tetrachords are presented in aggregate twice, with the antiphonal melody
stating each of the alternative dyads once. In conjunction with the distinctive melody and
rhythmically uniform voices, this new pitch material differentiates the antiphonal melody section
from gestural unit C and the rest of the Second String Quartet.
In the setting of Rilke’s Ninth Duino Elegy, the antiphonal melody section takes on added
relevance, appearing at two pivotal points in Rilke’s depiction of the spiritual struggle to deal
with the impermanence of existence. It first occurs after the lines “But this having been once
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only: here on earth, can it ever be again no more?” These words ask whether the past has any
relevance in the present or the future; as if to answer in the affirmative, Rochberg brings back the
music that sounds the most like the traditional, outmoded music he discusses in his writings. The
second statement comes on the words “Earth my adored, I obey. / You need no other springs to
win me, / One is more than my blood can endure.” This is the point in the poem where
acceptance of life as only a small part of the flow of eternity sets in, and the antiphonal melody
becomes a musical symbol for the persistence of the past as part of our present-day experience.
This particular use of the antiphonal melody section in Rochberg’s Ninth Duino Elegy setting
could be construed as a possible amendment to the space-form concept, one that warns against
completely abandoning past musical procedures—and foreshadows his future use of tonal
conventions.
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The case of Rochberg’s Second String Quartet and its relationship to space-form shows
that an attempt to construct a history of dodecaphony requires a rigorous examination not only of
different ways that composers used the technique, but also the motivations behind their choices.
This is but one contextual framework that can help: other scholars have also opened up avenues
conceptualizing the listening experience. All of these approaches can build a deep, contextually