Ars Nova

Author(s): Maurice Blanchot and Donald Schier

Source: Perspectives of New Music, Vol. 17, No. 2, (Spring - Summer, 1979), pp. 76-84
Published by: Perspectives of New Music
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/832834
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 Ars Nova
Maurice Blanchot
Translatedby Donald Schier

In DoctorFaustus Thomas Mann delivers up the composer

Adrian Leverkiihnto damnation.Not merely to eternal damna-
tion-which would not be much-but to that more serious
curse which makesof him the symbolicimageof Germandestiny
as it sinks into the madness of the Third Reich. Leverkuhn's
story follows Nietzche's ratherclosely: Leverkuhn'sart borrows
muchfromSchoenberg.Not only that, ThomasMann has pointed
out these correspondences,which in any case are obvious. We
know about his own relationship and later his quarrels with
Schoenberg;we know also that Mann was initiated into twelve-
tone music by Adorno, and that the latter is far from being
willing to damn Schoenberg,much less to associate the destiny
of the new music with the National-Socialist aberration. We
shall not discuss ThomasMann's novel itself, which is preserved
by narrativeambiguitiesfromsimplistic conclusions. It remains
true, however, that the musical system attributed to the de-
testable ingenuity of the composeris the serial system, and that
 77

thus a decisive turning in all musical development, is, without

much in the way of scruple or precaution, presented as a sym-
bolic symptomof the Nazi perversion.Mann notes in his journal
that behind the beloved name of Adrian Leverkuhn lies con-
cealed the hated name of Adolf Hitler.
The Ars nova, which is the source of all future music, can
then logicallybe defined as music sociallyand politicallytainted.
Others, on the basis of esthetic principles wrongly called so-
cialist, speak of reactionary music. The same is true of non-
representationalart. But back to Thomas Mann. The motives of
his judgment are complex. On the one hand, as he admits, his
understandingof music stops at Wagner,and in the face of the
new adventure he feels the suspicion and intolerance of a man
still devoted to the traditionalformsof an art which he loves-
an intolerance which is universal and selfish but all the firmer
for that. He sees in the new music a disruption which seems to
him to be a disruption of order itself. But on the other hand his
native shrewdness leads him to feel in atonal music the quality
of change and innovation which he needed to give authority to
the genius of Adrian Leverkuhn. He even suggests that this
discovery, achieved through the personalfolly of a man and the
generalfolly of the times, is not a chance mistake,but represents
the madnessnaturalto an art which has come to its end. He says
in his journal that the music of Schoenberg furnished him all
that he needed to describethe generalcrisis of civilizationand of
music and thus to point up the mainidea of his book:the coming
of sterility, the innate despair which makes the pact with the
demon possible.
In this condemnation of Mann's, one in which the word
damnation is forcefullyunderstood, there is the judgment of a
cultivated man. It is as a cultivated man that Mann fearsthe Ars
nova,just as it is as a cultivated man (I think this must be said in
all simplicity) and not as a political theorist that any socialist
ruler may utter a harsh judgment of non-representationalart.
The sameis true of Lukacsand in generalof all men of taste who,
in the nameof what they think is Marxism,define as reactionary
all formsof art and literature which the long cultural tradition
 78

they have inherited does not allow them to welcome with open
arms. Or more precisely:what they object to and (rightly) fear
in artistic experience is what makesthe latter a strangerto all
culture. There is a non-culturalaspect of literatureand art with
which it is not easy to come to an understanding.

On the subject of the "new music"-we shall continue to

use this expression though it is not really very satisfactory-
Adorno expresses himself as follows: "Atonalism, if it really
results from a desire to purify music of all convention, includes
as a result of that very fact something barbarousand capableof
continually disturbing afreshthe artisticallyarrangedsurface;a
dissonant chord sounds as if the civilizing principleof order did
not entirely control it; the work of Webern,in its fragmentation,
remains almost entirely primitive."1Such statements must be
read with caution. The words "barbarous"and "primitive"are
hardlyappropriate.The effort of the composerto makepossible
the total organizationof the musicalelements and in particular
to renounce the idea of a natural esthetic (accordingto which
the very sounds or a given system of sounds have in themselves
meaning and value), that effort decisively opposes and contra-
dicts any barbarousconception of music, even when this bar-
barism hides, as it always does, behind the appearanceof the
ideal. And as to the technique whose excessive use is being
condemned(and it is condemneda second time as barbarous,as
being also the barbarismof total rationalism)it does not in any
sense claim to be all of music, only that it must predominate
momentarilyin order to "breakup the blind constraint upon
musical materials"or else to hold in abeyancethe alreadyelab-
orated meaning of musical expression; in a word, if we may
repeat, it seeks to destroy the illusion that music has by nature a
quality of beauty independent of historicaldecisions and of the
musicalexperienceitself.
From this point of view, what appearsto be "barbarous"in
the Ars nova, is preciselywhat ought to keep us fromjudging it
barbarous:its critical power, its refusal to accept worn-out
 79

cultural forms as eternally valid, and especially its violent de-

terminationto empty naturalsoundsof all preconceivedmeaning,
to keep them empty, and so open to a meaningyet to come. This
is a violence which, since it does violence to nature, has in it
something despotic and dangerouslyuncivilized.
Similarly,what is the meaningof the judgment I have quoted
from Adorno according to which the fragmentationof tonal
units in Webern makes his music an almost entirely primitive
event? Without undertakinga technical analysis,it is clear that
when the composer, with austere rigor, renounces the con-
tinuity of a unified work or the fluid development of what
Walter Benjaminhas called the "auricular"work of art, when he
renouncescreating a perspicuouswork, his intent is not to deny
all coherence, nor the value of the form nor even to oppose a
musical work considered as an organized whole (as Stravinsky
often seems to do) but on the contraryto place himself beyond
esthetic totality. More exactly, the totality he rejects is that of a
musicalcompositionwhich is alreadygiven (preformed);he uses
instead a language first made indeterminate through the re-
jection of traditionalconventions and then restructuredso as to
include most of the essentials of earlier thematic development;
now compositionwill be able to progressonly through analysis,
through division into more and more subtle structures, i.e.,
through a method of composition which will make use of dis-
tinction and dissociation. If the musical languagethen seems to
be broken up and even to be scattered into ever more frag-
mented forms, the reason is that in reality analysis has become
creativejust as variationhas ceased to be a method of developing
a theme which is to be enrichedand has turned into a method of
discovery by which the totality already potentially present in
the choice of the tone row and its preparatoryworking up
reveals itself by being put to what amounts to torture; yet the
obstinate return of the identical notes seeks to bring about
constant renewal, as Adorno also says. Finally, when it is
claimed that the last works of Webern have "liquidated even
contrapuntalorganization,I think it would be better to say that
Webernhas in no way freed himselffromrigorouscounterpoint,
 80

but that he has decided we are to hear only its nodal points and
traces, in memoryof a rigor which is no longer imposed on us
except as a reminiscence or as absence, and leaves us as we
listen, always free (dangerouslyfree).

The fragmentarywork-the need of the work itself to be

fragmentary-then has a very different meaning depending on
whether the work appearsas a renunciationof the act of com-
position, i.e., an aggressive imitation of pre-musicallanguage,
(such as expressionismtried to achieve through refinement)or
whether it appears as the pursuit of a new form of writing
which makesthe completedwork difficult, not because it evades
being finishedbut because-beyond the conception of the work
as being unified and enclosed in itself, organizing and domin-
ating values being transmitted by traditional skills-, this kind
of writing explores the infinite space of the work with in-
exorablerigor yet is based on a new postulate which is that the
relationshipof the work will not necessarilysatisfythe concepts
of unity, coherence and continuity. The problem posed by the
fragmented work is a problem of extreme maturity; first in
artists but also in societies. Walter Benjaminremarksthat, in
the history of art, last works tend to be catastrophes:"With the
great masters, finished works weigh less heavily than those
fragmentson which they worked all their lives. They draw their
magic circle in the fragmentarywork." Why? Because the work
against which they measurethemselves cannot evoke in them a
total response,or ratherbecausethe artist must find a beginning
when the "composition"itself is in some sense alreadyfinished;
this leaves him only the pain of apparentlyself-defeatingwork,
the agony of a dislocation which is meaninglessonly because it
continues to promise meaning or is refractoryto the order of
meaning.
I should like with these remarksto put an end to a mis-
understandingby recallingthat if there is an essential difference
between art and culture, it is not that art is retrograde,that is
turned towards an unculturedprimitivenessor that it is tempted
 81

by nostalgia for an originally natural harmony;the difference

exists because art has always gone beyond all acquiredformsof
culture, to the point that it might better be called post-cultural.
What frightens Thomas Mann in the Ars nova (and frightened
the mastersof the Third Reich no less, since they made haste to
proscribe atonal works, preferringto atonalism an esthetic of
grandeur,of monumentalityand pretentious accomplishment)is
indeed frightening through the unending demand which the
artistic experience makes on us; and this experience can be
realizedin fragmentaryworks because they are enough, by their
very existence, to undermine the whole future of culture and
any utopia based on happy reconciliation.

The new music allows us to "hear"in an almost immediate

way the gap between artisticaffirmationand culturalaffirmation.
It undermines the notion of the work, whereas culture needs
finished works that can be admiredas perfect and whose eternal
immobility can be contemplated in the depots of civilization
that we call museums, concerts, academies, record collections
and libraries. The new music does its best to "desensitize"
language,to purifyit of all those intentions and meaningswhich
makeof it a kind of naturalknowledge. It is rigid, hard, austere,
has no sense of play, no shadings, and refuses to concede any-
thing to that "human quality" to which society is always so
eager to appeal so as to have an alibi for its own inhumanity.
Now, humanismis the idea that carries culture along, that is,
the idea that mankindmust be able to recognize itself easily in
the works of man, that mankindis never divided against itself,
that there is a constant progressivemovement, an unbreakable
continuity which joins the old with the new, since culture and
accumulationadvance shoulder to shoulder. Whence it follows
that culture requires of art and language certain responses,
because these responses alone can be accumulatedin the great
silos of culture: and thereforea difficult art which claimsonly to
be pure questioning and also puts in doubt the very possibility
 82

of art, must appearas dangerous,hostile and unfeelinglyviolent.

Cold, insensitive, inhuman, sterile, formalist, abstract, these
reproaches,when directed at the Ars nova, always give away
the man of culture who formulatesthem, and who formulates
them all the more forcefullyand sincerely since he feels himself
threatenedby what is "good"and "sound"and felicitous in that
art when it comes face to face with the real distress which he
refusesto admit. For who can deny that culture is "good"?And
certainly it is legitimate to labor for its increase. What writer
ought not also be a man of culture? We are all men of culture
when we do not write and even when we write without
writing. When Alban Berg speaks of the joy he felt as the tone
row came by chance (that is, by method) to produce tonal
relationships,there is surely in that joy a feeling of consolation
produced by return to a cultural tradition; exile has suddenly
come to an end; like the prodigalson the composerhas returned
to the familiarbosom of tonality and unity.
The new music, and this is its most decisive endeavorfor the
other arts and for expressionitself, the music condemnedby the
man of culture, is both rigorouslyconstructed and yet of such a
nature that it is not built arounda center, and that the very idea
of center and unity is as it were expelled from the area of the
work, which thus becomes, in the last analysis,infinite. This is a
painful, a scandalous condition for any culture and for any
comprehension."In this music, where each individual sound is
determinedin a completelytransparentway by the construction
of the whole, the difference between the essential and the
accidentaldisappears."And Adorno adds:"Suchmusic is always
close to its center and hence those formal conventions which
used to regulate proximity and distance from the center lose
their meaning".Since everything is taken to be essential, there
are no more non-essential transitions between strong elements,
just as there is no more development or theme to be developed,
but instead a perpetual variation which varies nothing at all, a
drive towards non-repetition which can be successful only
through an indefinitely repeated affirmationwithin difference
itself.
 83

Yes,this is a painfulcondition, and indeed what is presented

by such a mode of expression is something very much like
sorrow itself, sorrow which is heard and sorrow seeking to be
heard,which is proofthat thought is trying to escape the power
of unity. At about the time when Schoenbergwas beginning to
becomeknown, Worringerand certainGermanpaintersassigned
to plastic art the task of finding an unprivileged field in which
orientation would be impossible;the field was to be defined by
lines all points of which would have the samevalue. Later,Klee
came to dream of a space such that the omission of any center
must at the same time eliminate any trace of vagueness or
indecisiveness. Still later... But let us not seek in the com-
parison of the different arts the characteristics of a common
attempt: common precisely in this that all the arts affirmedthe
existence of relationships without unity, relationships which
consequently escape any common measure. Yet when I read
George Poulet's book2in which all the adventuresof word and
thought are related to the power of the circle, since they are
always enclosed in the relationship of a center to a circum-
ference,a relationshipthey are always trying to breakonly to fit
better within it, I wondered why this book, in which the simp-
lest because it is the perfect geometricalfigure allowed me to
grasp without alteration and without monotony, the most di-
verse values and riches, I wondered, once I had closed the book
why the history of criticism and culture came to a close with it,
and why it seemed with melancholyserenity to bid me farewell
and at the same time to authorize entry into a new artistic
space. What space?Not, of course, to reply to this question but
to show how difficult it is to approachit, I should like to make
use of a metaphor: it is almost accepted that the universe is
curved, and it has often been supposed that the curve must be
positive, whence the imageof a finite and unlimited sphere. But
we cannot exclude the hypothesis of a universe (the term now
becomes deceptive) which is shapeless, evading every optical
requirement,evading also the considerationof wholeness, being
merelynot finite, disunited, discontinuous. What is the universe
like? Let us drop that question and raisethis one: what will man
 84

be like on the day he dares to face up to the idea that the

curvatureof the world and even of his world must be indicated
by a negative sign? Will he ever be willing to accept this
thought which, although it would free him from the fascination
with unity, might force him for the first time to take the
measureof a godless cosmos, of a space definedonly by questions
which cannot have answers, since any answer would necessarily
presupposethe shape of shapes?Perhapsthis amounts to asking
ourselvesthis question: Is mancapableof a radicalinterrogation,
which comes down to saying, is man capable of literaturewhen
literature verges upon the absence of the book? Such is the
question that the Ars nova now directs at him with all its
neutral violence (being in that respect diabolical, so Thomas
Mann was right in the end).3

NOTES

1. Th. W. Adorno. Philosophyof ModernMusic.Tr. Anne G. Mitchelland WesleyV. Blomster

New York:SeaburyPress, 1973.
2. Georges Poulet, The Metamorphosesof the Circle. Tr. Carley Davison and ElliottColeman.
Baltimore:JohnsHopkinsPress, 1967
3. "ArsNova"by MauriceBlanchot.CopyrightEditionsGallinard,1969 Translationpublishedby
permission.