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To cite this article: Elke Hockings (2005): All Dressed Up and Nowhere to Go, Contemporary Music
Review, 24:1, 89-100
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Contemporary Music Review
Vol. 24, No. 1, February 2005, pp. 89 – 100
ISSN 0749-4467 (print)/ISSN 1477-2256 (online) ª 2005 Taylor & Francis Ltd
DOI: 10.1080/0749446042000293637
90 E. Hockings
any other music of the past. The Darmstadt effort, including Helmut Lachenmann,
may not have escaped the romantic metaphysical dichotomies after all.
This article has no intention to lay blame for the creation of an illusion, or to
proffer any judgement on Helmut Lachenmann or his music. It is rather a report of a
journey through the available material. There is good reason to believe that other
people might see in this report similar experiences reflected, doubts expressed and
questions asked.
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Do not torment yourself too much with analyses. The question is always: which
means are used in which ways, why and to what effect, or better, inasmuch to what
innovative effect. It is therefore more important to define the categories which are
used, installed and stretched rather than to measure things—hence it is more
important for analysis: WHAT IT IS rather than how it is made—processes which
are often totally buried under later interventions. (H. Lachenmann, personal
communication, March 27, 1994)3
sections through listening itself is not easy, not least because the energy states and
forms of articulation of most sections do not change abruptly but more or less
gradually and often in an overlapping fashion. There are a number of general pauses
inserted in the score, but they are frequently not obvious to the ear because of the
many other surrounding hesitations and pauses.
Two passages are, however, clearly discernible: the passage with the continuous
bright doorbell in the first half of the piece and the other with the regular pulse in the
second half. A drastically simplified listening diagram would describe the work thus:
After an introduction (mm. 1 – 10) follows a passage of predominantly sniffing sounds
(mm. 10 – 42), followed by a short transition (mm. 42 – 50). Here begins the
aforementioned doorbell passage (mm. 50 – 111). The next two instrumental
articulations that define the respective overall impression create first a scraping sound
(mm. 111 – 92) and then a snapping sound (mm. 192 – 231), after which we hear a
passage with much exhaling (mm. 231 – 262). A real pulse, albeit still very irregular, is
introduced in measure 262. This eventually develops into a fast regular pulse, the other
obvious passage mentioned before (mm. 319 – 425). This pulse passage is bound to fall
apart and does so in mm. 425 – 477. The work is rounded off by gestures sounding
somewhat of conspiracy (mm. 477 – 491). One feels immediately, though, that such an
oversimplified listening diagram does the work no justice at all.
Both the programme note and the score mention a quote from the song O du lieber
Augustin, the same song that Arnold Schoenberg had quoted in his second string
quartet. Helmut Lachenmann in his Mouvement quotes only the rhythm of the song.
Despite claims to the contrary (even the instruction in the score), there is reason to
believe that O du lieber Augustin cannot, and was possibly never intended to, be heard
at all because
1. its rhythmic design is too trivial and has no salient feature (three dotted crotches
to 36 crotchets and nine quavers) to be recognisable;
2. it is embedded in a context of too many distracting pulses;
3. nearly each note is given to a new instrument;
4. most notes are obscured by double or triple impulses;
5. the rhythm is not supported by its original triple metre; and
6. the odd writing mistake has (consciously or unconsciously) cropped in by
transferring the traditional crotchet to the new underlying pulse of seven
semiquavers (double dotted crotchets) as Figure 1 shows.
92 E. Hockings
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One may suspect that, by putting the text all too neatly under the score and
mentioning its existence demonstratively in the programme note, Helmut
Lachenmann had his fun with a kind of emperor’s-new-clothes syndrome. The
expectant, diligent programme note reader, the musicians and the analyst know
about its existence, but hesitate to admit that they simply cannot hear it. Filled with
expectation, they may, however, hear a similarly trivial kind of rhythmic fragment
somewhere else, or they may even suspect a short phrase on the right spot before they
are lost again in the sea of exhaling noises.
Where then should the analyst cut into the flesh of the piece? Taking refuge in the
score, things look a little more clear cut. Adding the beginnings and endings of the
bell passage and the regular pulse passage, the divisions along the 491 measures of the
whole piece can be obtained (see Table 1). A closer look reveals a number of overlaid
symmetries, obscured by + / 7 1, + / 7 2 as shown in Figure 2.
There are too many symmetries to assume that they may be coincidental. They
are clearly the result of the composer’s manipulation. They are also too complex to
be done without some reference to pen and paper. Clearly, there ought to be
sketches testifying to these manipulations. Yet a thorough look through Helmut
Lachenmann’s sketches and manuscripts for Mouvement (—vor der Erstarrung) at
the Paul Sacher Stiftung (where the composer explicitly left all of his manuscripts)
reveals not a single indication of him having worked on the design of such
symmetries.
Among Helmut Lachenmann’s papers at the Paul Sacher Stiftung, there are also no
indications of which basic series (or pool of series) for Mouvement may have served as
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Measure
starting point(s), if and how Helmut Lachenmann translated his list of instrumental
gestures and articulations into number series, etc., or where the seemingly random
algorithmic tables that do exist may come from or how they relate. But Helmut
Lachenmann clearly works with such generative algorithmic principles, at least at the
start. Above most manuscripts since 1969/1970, including Mouvement, is a ‘structural
melody’ (Toop, 1994, p. 15) or ‘net of time articulation’ (Lachenmann, 1992, p. 7).
This melody appears to be a sequence of pitch and rhythm series unfolding in one
continuous line. This structural melody may or may not determine a certain event
rhythm, a pitch issue or the length of a section. One can only guess that there is a
relationship between this structural melody and the coordination of particular
instrumental actions (col legno battuto, frullato, different echo forms, various
incarnations of pulse, etc.), possibly by way of numerical/algorithmic processes. It is
clear from the manuscripts that this relationship does not work one-dimensionally,
which is to say that one has difficulty detecting a direct relationship between this
structural melody and the de facto events unfolding in the score.5 There may well be
several action fields overlaid. What also becomes clear in the manuscript is that this
structural melody does not determine the overall design as its notation often becomes
increasingly lax towards the end of a work and sometimes even disappears entirely.
While it seems impossible to deduce the driving series or algorithm from the
manuscripts, Helmut Lachenmann’s very early description of his composition
Introversion II (1964, withdrawn) may give some clues to the compositional
principles of the later works. This seems to border on the ridiculous, given that the
composer’s sound world became so distinctly different after ca. 1969/1970, but,
reading the following, one cannot help feeling that there may be a much stronger
connection than previously suspected:
Contemporary Music Review 95
The concept is totally different from Introversion I, but it starts equally from a
situation created by me. . .. In this case, the situation created by me is a varyingly
dense net of pitch entries [Tonhöhen-Einsatz-Netz], which runs across the whole
length of the movement, and in each version a different section is allowed to come
through: the net is scanned for permissible pitches and timings for entries by means
of various twelve-tone series, which can be chosen at random from a given pool;
this for each part respectively. At the same time, I composed a clearly directed
process for all 6 instrumental parts, consisting of a number of—to use
Stockhausen’s term—events in which everything is characteristically determined
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(timbre, form of motion, intensity curve, etc.) except pitch and duration and point
of entry. These are determined differently from work to work by transposing the
events to the pitches let through by the net as mentioned above, or they are
projected in the times between their entry and the next entry. Depending on when
and where an entry is let through for various instruments, different sound mixtures
and dense motion structures emerge each time. We are dealing here with a kind of
six-part polyphony coordinated vertically by this overriding net. . ..6
point of his writing were not even publicly available at the Paul Sacher Stiftung?
A healthy suspicion emerges also about Shaked’s clear-cut definition of the staged
process. First, the regular pulse passage does not start with the double-bar line
between mm. 321 and 322 but began already in m. 319. Additionally, Shaked’s
divisions between mm. 152 – 153, 259 – 260 and 365 – 366 are similarly unjustified.
For example, the ‘diatonic, chromatic, sequence and arpeggio-runs’ (sic) that are
supposedly marking the change of texture at mm. 152 – 153 can already be observed
in the preceding measures in the flutes, clarinets and cellos. One could argue similarly
against the other divisions mentioned.
Another questionable independent analysis of Mouvement is by Robert
Piencikowski (1988). He exhibits, with the same confidence as Shaked, data that
are most unlikely to have been extracted from the score. They have either been
obtained from the composer and/or from Piencikowski’s own theoretical will power.7
The discussed pitch constellations invite particular suspicion. He mentions, for
example, impressively organised harmonic progressions of the brass and wind
sections at the end of the regular pulse passage (which is probably from m. 425
onwards), as seen in Figure 3.
How he arrived at that level of abstraction from the score remains a mystery. After
having consulted a substantial amount of Lachenmann’s manuscripts myself, it is fair
to say that harmonic manipulations of the kind that Piencikowski describes are
scarcely to be found in the composer’s sketches. Even if Piencikowski’s harmonic
progressions may truly reflect a level of Lachenmann’s construction, he could not
easily have arrived at this information independently.
The finally liberated music reacted to the totalitarian political demand which
intended to rule even artistic activities with a recantation of any committing
articulation . . . by musically resisting false principles of hierarchical dependence
Contemporary Music Review 97
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(this is the relation of the dodecaphonic to the tonal axiom), new music objected to
unreflected authority in general.
It appears to me that it is not primarily the fault of our ear that we face the colours
of the timbral world helplessly, that we can never systematise them reliably. This is
rather due to our kind of terminology. . . . We float in the ocean of timbre without
being able to locate signs of orientation. . . . We rather ought to design a
terminology which can encompass the phenomena of timbre. . .
The difficulties are rooted in the fact that the relationship among the colours/
timbres has no constant dimension—at least for us these days (the sound of an
Contemporary Music Review 99
oboe relates to the harp as the marimba to a ___?) . . . Those difficulties, however,
are not perceived as such by the painters and musicians. On the contrary, the
romantic inclination toward irrationalism, currently stronger than ever before,
makes us appreciate and prefer the non-categorisable as a sign of freedom.
(Karkoschka, 1976, p. 126)
Notes
[1] ‘Serial’ as in the German seriell, not the 12-tone technique in general.
[2] I am immeasurably grateful to Richard Toop for all of his support and patience over the
years and in particular his comments to this article. He told me, for example, Stockhausen’s
story about Nono’s annoyance that he (Stockhausen) had so easily ‘cracked the code’ of a
movement from Il canto sospeso (R. Toop, personal communication, March 4, 2004).
[3] This and all subsequent translations are my own.
[4] In his lectures in Oslo and Berlin (1989) and Leningrad (1990); revised and extended, see
Lachenmann (1990).
[5] Lachenmann (1983) himself describes the use of a structural rhythm in his article,
‘‘‘Siciliano’’—Abbildungen und Kommentarfragmente’. But how the relationship between
this rhythmic frame and the acoustic events works in practice is not really clear from this
either. Simply by calling it a ‘framework for various polyphonies’ does not reveal the
generating principle.
[6] Lachenmann, letter to Ernst Thomas from December 12, 1964, in the archive of the
Internationale Musikinstitut Darmstadt. Richard Toop made a crucial connection when he
commented the following about Lachenmann’s descriptions: ‘This piece (like the highly
aleatory Introversion I) was written at roughly the same time Helmut Lachenmann was
attending Stockhausen’s Kölner Kurse, and in particular, had been studying Stockhausen’s
Plus Minus, and had made a partial realisation. Helmut Lachenmann describes this
somewhere as an overdue completion of his studies with Nono. The word events in your
quotation refers directly to Plus Minus. Though the latter work is extremely aleatory at one
level (not so much a composition as a genetic blueprint for making one), its components are
extremely highly structured’ (personal communication, May 15, 2004).
[7] Piencikowski’s article was the result of analysis courses at IRCAM in 1986/1987 within which
Mouvement was also performed by the Ensemble Intercontemporain. It is possible that
Lachenmann participated in some form or another at these courses or in the rehearsals prior
to the performance.
[8] Boehmer (1967, p. 54, n. 15) described this method in relation to Boulez, Koenig and Kagel:
‘During the last years a compositional technique of connection has become established which
could be described as pseudo-osmotic. While in dialectical tonal forms a structure was
developed out of another one, the verges of individual serial structures were now merged by
means of anticipation and extension. The material of structure X appears and fades within
structure Y, and vice-versa, the material of structure Y can emerge already at the end of
structure X’. In 1989, Boehmer (1993b, p. 221) stated about Luigi Nono that this composer
not only knew disparate ‘‘‘ localities’’ . . . which are tied together, but that he conceives each
individual locality, as it were, as a fabric, as a liana, which winds its way through the piece,
thus associating itself with others to bigger strata, motions and waves’.
100 E. Hockings
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