This article was downloaded by: [Selcuk Universitesi]

On: 23 December 2014, At: 13:05

Publisher: Routledge
Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered
office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Contemporary Music Review

Publication details, including instructions for authors and
subscription information:
http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/gcmr20

Conversation with Earle Brown about

Constructivism and Schillinger's System
of Musical Composition
Louis Pine
Published online: 15 Dec 2011.

To cite this article: Louis Pine (2011) Conversation with Earle Brown about Constructivism and
Schillinger's System of Musical Composition, Contemporary Music Review, 30:2, 167-178, DOI:
10.1080/07494467.2011.636203

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07494467.2011.636203

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the
“Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis,
our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to
the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions
and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors,
and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content
should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources
of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims,
proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or
howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising
out of the use of the Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any
substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing,
systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms &
Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-
and-conditions
 Contemporary Music Review
Vol. 30, No. 2, April 2011, pp. 167–178

Conversation with Earle Brown about

Constructivism and Schillinger’s System
of Musical Composition
Louis Pine
Downloaded by [Selcuk Universitesi] at 13:05 23 December 2014

Elena Dubinets’ article ‘Between Mobility and Stability: Earle Brown’s Compositional
Process’ was published in the June/August 2007 issue of Contemporary Music Review.
In a note to the title, Dr Dubinets acknowledged the use of the following telephone
interview, conducted by this author with Earle Brown on 24 March 1996, as the
foundation of her research.
Brown studied and used aspects of Joseph Schillinger’s system of musical composition
throughout his career of some fifty years. He graduated from Schillinger House, later
known as the Berklee College of Music, in Boston in 1950, and he was certified as a
Schillinger instructor.
Brown was a composer who was influenced by the visual arts, and he interpreted
Schillinger’s emphasis on pre-compositional planning as being influenced by Russian
Constructivism, an early 1920s artistic practice. This author contacted the composer to ask
him about a statement he had made in the liner notes of his 1962 album Feldman/Brown,
by Time Records, in which he wrote ‘. . . if nothing else, [the Schillinger system] exposes one
to an extremely iconoclastic, mathematically analytic, constructivist point of view.’ This
interview is his explanation of the connections Brown saw between Schillinger’s system and
the Constructivist movement and how these connections affected his work.

Keywords: Earle Brown; Constructivism; Pre-compositional Planning; Interview

Earle Brown: In my own work, and I don’t know how much you know of what I’ve
done in terms of Schillinger and in relationship with Schillinger, but the Schillinger
techniques have always been an influence on me. I’ve never given them up, and I
believe in them still. So, it goes a long way.
But the fact is that I have been, particularly all my life as a composer, very, very
interested in the visual arts. And the constructivist movement in Russia with Tatlin,
and many other Russian visual artists, they did a kind of what I call a ‘hard edge
concept of assemblage’, assembling pieces in addition to conceiving them. This

ISSN 0749-4467 (print)/ISSN 1477-2256 (online) ª 2011 Taylor & Francis

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07494467.2011.636203
 168 L. Pine
seemed to be a big thing with them. It seemed to be a big thing, obviously, with
Schillinger, because of his emphasis on pre-compositional planning, which has been
very big in my work. I still do a great deal of sketching and pre-compositional
planning, before I really ever put a note down. That is an influence from Schillinger,
and other things, maybe.
I’m published through Universal Edition in Vienna, and I just got something from
them which is written by a man named Lendvai. He’s writing a book on symmetry.1
But anyway, I brought along this thing from Schillinger’s Mathematical Basis of the
Arts, because it seems to me, of my knowledge of—I’ve been very influenced by
Alexander Calder and Jackson Pollock, and I think those are the people in my age
area, although they are both much older than I, but they were my age at the time that
I was beginning to compose music, they were a big influence on me. And Schillinger
Downloaded by [Selcuk Universitesi] at 13:05 23 December 2014

always seems to have influences from many arts. I mean The Mathematical Basis of the
Arts is all about visual things as well as musical things. Even to the art of smell. It goes
right in to today’s multi-media.

Louis Pine: Yes, I’ve definitely noticed that.

EB: I came across a lot of things that you might want to look up. What I Xeroxed for
you, which I don’t have to send to you now, but I’ll send you some things that you
probably don’t have, that is, some reviews and stuff. But look at pages 422 [in The

Figure 1 Lines of preceding configuration used as diameters of semi-circles. From:

Schillinger, 1948. Reproduced with permission of the Frances Schillinger estate.
 Contemporary Music Review 169
Mathematical Basis of the Arts], ‘lines of preceding configuration used as diameters of
semi-circles’ [see Figure 1], and so many things like ‘production of kinetic design,’
‘production of . . .’ You see? He doesn’t talk about ‘constructivism’. But when you use
so many mathematical structures and resultants of interferences and so forth, and
generative structures, as Schillinger does—it’s right there on the verge of
constructing. He speaks about it, and he speaks for the conscious creation of a work
of art. And he’s quite unsympathetic, or at least momentarily unsympathetic while he
makes his own points, that the intuitive way of composing, [that is,] the romantic
way of sitting down by candlelight until inspiration comes, this was very foreign to
him considering what he was trying to do with his theories.
[Look at] page 421, also [see Figure 2]. You see these things are symmetrical, and they
are the product of generalized distributive involution groups. Page 420, the technology
Downloaded by [Selcuk Universitesi] at 13:05 23 December 2014

of art production [see Figure 3]. Page 386 [and page 387], there are six examples of
visual design created by numerical relationships [see Figures 4 and 5]. Now, that is one
way of looking at construction, even if he never used the word ‘constructivism’.
But it seemed to me when I wrote those program notes—and I’ve written a lot of
other ones, too, and obviously, that record was a long time ago—but the idea of its
being a constructivist method, to a large extent, comes from my feeling of all of these
formulas, and so forth, are really not coming from his aesthetic sensibilities; they’re
coming from his ability to put together intricate interference principles that result in
designs. So that’s basically my point of view.

Figure 2 Distributive involution in linear design. From Schillinger, 1948. Reproduced

with permission of the Frances Schillinger estate.
 170 L. Pine
Downloaded by [Selcuk Universitesi] at 13:05 23 December 2014

Figure 3 Technology of art production. From Schillinger, 1948. Reproduced with

permission of the Frances Schillinger estate.

Now on page 264, there is a theory of regularity and coordination phasic

rotation—all of that has nothing to do with the romanticizing of composing; it has to
do with a construction of various aspects [see Figure 6]. And on 264, it’s a graph,
which is three units high and two systems long. The lines are crosshatched, and so
forth, meaning different kinds of formula.
But the most extraordinary thing, in terms of Tatlin and the Russian
constructivists, is the photograph on page 108—‘Rhythm is the law of regular-
ity’—and it’s a construction that Schillinger designed [see Figure 7]. It has a
regularity of projection into further and further deep meanings.
So that’s basically why I used that word ‘constructivism’. Why do you think that
it’s not a good word?

LP: I’m not saying that it’s not a good word. What I’m saying is that you are the first
person I have run across in reading all of the information I have read about
Schillinger who has used that term. And I have concluded, over my period of years of
looking at the Schillinger system, that you are exactly right—that is, it is
constructivism.

EB: Well, his system, let’s say, borders on principles of construction of musical and
visual, and other kinds of works, apart from the merely moment-to-moment idea of
 Contemporary Music Review 171
Downloaded by [Selcuk Universitesi] at 13:05 23 December 2014

Figure 4 Three examples of visual design created by numerical relationships. From

Schillinger, 1948. Reproduced with permission of the Frances Schillinger estate.
 172 L. Pine
Downloaded by [Selcuk Universitesi] at 13:05 23 December 2014

Figure 5 Three more visual designs created by numerical relationships. From Schillinger,
1948. Reproduced with permission of the Frances Schillinger estate.
 Contemporary Music Review 173
Downloaded by [Selcuk Universitesi] at 13:05 23 December 2014

Figure 6 Theory of regularity and coordination phasic rotation. From Schillinger, 1948.
Reproduced with permission of the Frances Schillinger estate.

Figure 7 Rhythm is the law of regularity—a construction designed by Schillinger. From

Schillinger, 1948. Reproduced with permission of the Frances Schillinger estate.
 174 L. Pine
composing. I’ve had so many students where they come in and they start writing
something for trio, and they get about eight bars then they don’t know what to do
next. That’s when I start selling them pre-compositional planning, because there are
so many things about planning density, about the density of attack, density of
dynamic changes, etc. That was a very, very important chapter for me, [that is,]
density in the [Mathematical Basis of the Arts] music book. And I’ve formulated a lot
of stuff out of that, for better or for worse. I’ve always thought influences that you
get, even if you misunderstand something, are not necessarily going to result in
something bad. They are going to result into you transforming somebody else’s idea
into something that that someone else may not have even thought of. So, that’s
basically my point of view.
Downloaded by [Selcuk Universitesi] at 13:05 23 December 2014

LP: I really appreciate your sharing this.

EB: That’s okay. It’s interesting to me because there is so much of pre-compositional

planning, and it goes into a—you know, when I first met Stockhausen and Boulez
in Europe in 1956, I was able to talk to them about permutations, and geometric
and arithmetic projections, and so forth. They had studied with Messiaen. And
Messiaen’s modes of thinking were very close to Schillinger’s in many, many
ways, although I don’t think they influenced each other. But Messiaen’s famous
piece Mode de valeurs et d’intensites, which he organizes every aspect of the piece
of music. Not only the tone row—it’s the beginning of serial music, where not
only the tone row is organized but the dynamics, the durations: everything is
interrelated.
So I think it was primarily through my natural predilection to be interested in the
visual arts so much that I drew that conclusion.

LP: Yes, you had the ideal position of seeing that, because you were looking at it in
two different ways, as Schillinger was. Instead of being just straight music, you were
looking at the design arts and music.

EB: Yes, and that has always been a part of my work. My music sounds unlike most
other people’s music because of this influence from the visual arts, and my making
connections between visual art tendencies and sonic possibilities.
So Schillinger was very important to me, and I still find it interesting. Every once in
a while I crack the books and I find something that starts my mind going.

LP: Do you run across very many people who know the Schillinger system nowadays?

EB: No. Stockhausen, when I first met him in Europe in 1956, claimed to have known
it. He may or may not have known it. But he claimed that he knew it, and that was
the beginning of electronic music in Cologne, and Herbert Eimert and Karlheinz
[Stockhausen] were the two that started it, and Eimert might very well have had the
 Contemporary Music Review 175
books. So Karlheinz may have, but Karlheinz always claims to know everything about
everything. [Earle laughs.]
But anyway, I was able to talk to both Boulez and Stockhausen instantly on
complicated levels of serial composition, which is the integration and construction of
all parameters of sound. So it [meaning the Schillinger system] stood me in good
stead. I was way ahead of most people in that way.

LP: In The Mathematical Basis of the Arts, when Schillinger writes about using
engineering, to me it was another clue of him being influenced by constructivism.
Because they were engineers, and they liked that engineering perspective. In fact, they
were thinking of the artist as being an engineer.
Downloaded by [Selcuk Universitesi] at 13:05 23 December 2014

EB: Yes. Well, architects like Corbusier, and Corbusier would be in that area of great
interest to Schillinger because of the relationship—Corbusier made a theory based on
the average size of a human being, and he used that as a model in constructing his
chapel in France. And Mies van de Rohe, and—the American one who did the glass
house . . .

LP: Gropius?

EB: No, Gropius was part of the Bauhaus movement, and that was very, very—
Schillinger could have been part of that Bauhaus world. Another painter who was
very severe and constructed his paintings was Josef Albers. He painted very simple
paintings with almost nothing but rectangles ordered in very clever ways. And Ad
Reinhardt, a painter that I knew here would—you know, a lot of them would use
these measuring techniques to make—Mondrian, for instance, wrote variations on
symmetry. And all of that, Schillinger was just the right age for that. So he must have
come in under the influence of it, as I did under the influence of Bill de Koonig and
Jackson Pollock, and people like that.

LP: I think it’s very important that you have seen this. This is something I feel
strongly that it needs to be pointed out in Schillinger’s work because, as you well
know, many people have criticized the Schillinger system in a negative way.

EB: Too mechanical.

LP: Yes, and they think that Schillinger is some guy out on a limb who doesn’t know
what he’s talking about. But really, Schillinger is a man of his time, of what I can see,
[that is,] being very influenced by the Russian avant-garde in the 1920s before he
comes to the US.

EB: Yes, he was one of them. But, as usual in his books, he doesn’t give many other
people credit for having influenced him.
 176 L. Pine
LP: Yes.

EB: He was very egocentric.

LP: Was he like that as a man?

EB: I didn’t study with him. He died even before I got out of high school.

LP: Okay, that would be in 1943, and you studied in 195—?

EB: I studied between 1946 and 1950.

Downloaded by [Selcuk Universitesi] at 13:05 23 December 2014

LP: And with whom?

EB: At the Schillinger House School of Music in Boston, which is now called Berklee.

LP: And who was your Schillinger teacher there?

EB: Kenneth McKillop, he’s a terrific guy. Very bright. A good arranger. But nobody
stuck to it very long, you know.

LP: I wonder why?

EB: Well, I started as a GI, and I started at Schillinger House with about 25 people
in my class, and I was one of two who graduated. I studied engineering and
mathematics at Northeastern University before I went into the Air Force. So I was
able to see things, I think, in Schillinger that a lot of other people couldn’t. I mean,
if they couldn’t get an immediate melody that was really going to knock them out,
they didn’t want to fiddle with it anymore. I saw the construction principles of
it, and the sensibility of pre-compositional planning, and all of that. I could see
that it was very important, and I stuck with it. But it’s because of my background,
I think.

LP: Yes, I think so. And that’s what I’m finding is that more and more people who
did become certified as Schillinger instructors . . .

EB: Yes, I did become certified.

LP: . . . did have some engineering or math background, or some type of similar
background.

EB: Well, people always say that it [the system] is all about formulas, and anybody
can do it, that is, anybody can write music once you get the formulas down, which is
 Contemporary Music Review 177
not true. Even Schillinger said you still have to have talent. But you also have to have
this mental severity, and I agree with that very much.

LP: Did you ever meet Mrs Schillinger?

EB: No, I don’t think I ever met her. I knew the Carl Fischer people, but I don’t
think—I always should have gone to see her, I know that. But I never did.

LP: Well, she’s still alive.

EB: She’s still alive?

Downloaded by [Selcuk Universitesi] at 13:05 23 December 2014

LP: Yes.

EB: On 57th Street?

LP: That’s exactly right—340 East 57th street.

EB: 340? Oh, my god!

LP: She’d love to hear from you.

EB: I’m around 340 57th Street a lot. Friends of mine live right across the street.

LP: Well, she’s right there in that building. She’s either in apartment 16D or in
apartment 12A. I just found a different address for her, but I don’t think she has
moved. She just turned 89, at the end of February.2

EB: Wow. Well, I really should go see her because, in my program notes and stuff, I
have a lot of reference notes to Schillinger, which she would probably appreciate.

LP: Yes, she would. In fact, she just gave the remaining part of her collection
that she had on Schillinger to the Peabody Institute of Music down at Johns
Hopkins.

EB: Oh, really?! I was a composer-in-residence at Peabody Conservatory.

LP: They have the remaining part of her collection that she had been gathering for the
last ten to twenty years. They’re not sure what they’re going to do with it, but they are
very interested in trying to do something with it. They may have a Schillinger
symposium within the next couple years.

EB: Well, tell them I’m very interested.

 178 L. Pine
LP: Oh! Okay.

EB: I live not far from Baltimore, and I used to live in Baltimore, and I used to be a
composer-in-residence at the Peabody. And it all makes sense.
If you’re in your neighborhood record store you can see if they have a CD of my
piano works from 1951 to 1995, a helluva long spread. But the early—1951 piano
works, 1951–1952—were very influenced by Schillinger. What Schillinger called
‘rhythmic groups’ is what Messiaen called ‘cellules’. That’s one of the things that I
had in common with Pierre Boulez and Karlheinz. What Messiaen called cellules were
exactly what Schillinger called rhythmic groups, and I composed both of the earliest
of those piano pieces that way.
Downloaded by [Selcuk Universitesi] at 13:05 23 December 2014

LP: That’s great to know. I appreciate that.

EB: I used Schillinger principles, actually.

Notes
[1] Whether Brown was referring to Erno Lendvai’s 1993 book Symmetries of Music is not known.
[2] Mrs Schillinger died on 8 May 1997.

References
Dubinets, E. (2007). Between Mobility and Stability: Earle Brown’s Compositional Process.
Contemporary Music Review, 26: 3-4, 409–426.
Feldman, M., & Brown, E. (1962). Feldman/Brown [LP]. New York: Time Records.
Lendvai, E. (1993). Symmetries of Music. Kecskemét: Kodály Institute.
Schillinger, J. (1948). The Mathematical Basis of the Arts. New York: Philosophical Library.