A Quarry for Melodies

The following quotes are from Rosen's brilliant little book,
Arnold Schoenberg.  Italics are mine.

The series:

The series, in fact, is not an order of pitches but of what is called pitch-classes.  For example, in the first two notes of the series of [Schoenberg's] opus 25 . . . as long as some E, high or low, is followed by any F, the serial conditions are satisfied.  Tonal music had gone only part of the way to asserting the equivalence of all octaves, but Schoenberg's serialism went much further, and made it the structural foundation of his music. (p.82) 

The series is not a musical idea in the normal sense of that phrase.  It is not properly speaking something heard, either imaginatively or practically; it is transmuted into something heard. The motif, on the other hand, is an idea heard, and Schoenberg's development of motivic material . . . is remarkably sophisticated . . . . (p.78)

The waltz [no. 5 of opus 23] breaks open the previous aesthetic with great consequences for the future by its nonmelodic conception of the basic motif or set: except at the beginning, the order of twelve notes is not a melody, but a quarry for melodies. (p.77)

All the music of this immense work [Moses und Aron] is drawn from the transformations of a single series: it is the triumph of Schoenberg's ideal of drawing a wealth of themes from a single source.  The series is no longer conceived in any way as melodic, but the main interest still lies in the creation of melodies. (p.94)

Unit of composition:

The periodic nature of serialism means, too, that the fundamental unit of music composed in this form is not the note but the series as a whole, a larger unit and harder to grasp–for composer as well as listener. (p.104) 

The series has a rhythm of its own opposed to the classical forms in that it is periodic, constantly recurring.  By this quality it transcends its inner organization.  The periodicity is of an exceptional sort in that it is totally independent of pulsation, unrelated to a measurable tempo. (p.103)

Counting notes:

Schoenberg . . . wished the public to remain unaware of the serial techniques. (p.88)

Charles Rosen

Post Script to Lewin on Babbitt on Schoenberg

I confess that I ignored David's suggestion to add this manuscript to the Milton Babbitt Collection, and it now resides where it belongs, in the Library of Congress' David Lewin Collection.

To my knowledge this lecture has never been published. And it's quite possible that it won't be published in its entirety any time in the foreseeable future. I say this for two reasons.

First, at a superficial glance, everything here is covered in various other sources in the relevant literature.  While the lecture is a brilliant condensed description of the dodecaphonic big bang creating a universe-within-a-universe that still awaits further exploration and colonization, there is nothing really "new" here to the cognoscenti.

Second, the current comfort zone for music analytic studies, at least in the U.S., is Schubert, not Schoenberg. Today, while atonal and "post-tonal" theory may harbor areas that hold some interest, serial theory per se is somewhat démodé in academia. At least this is what that environment feels like to me, a few possible exceptions notwithstanding. But I must admit that I am speaking here as a total outsider.

So why bother with this little lecture in honor of Milton Babbitt's contributions to serial music theory? Well, in one sense it's a gentle reminder that David Lewin's musical soul – the composer inside – is fundamentally Schoenbergian.  Some sense of this can be gained by reading a tribute by his former friends and colleagues. 

Those familiar with Lewin's Generalized Musical Intervals and Transformations will easily recognize this lecture as an earlier, condensed version of a large chunk of that book's Chapter 6, so much so that it's tempting to go back and read GMIT from the middle out rather than from beginning to end.  In fact, over the past decade, this is exactly how I have come to read GMIT, probably the primary cause of my intensely personal, heterodox (and certainly wrong-headed) approach to contemporary music theory/theories.  Things may possibly have changed for the better lately, since I have not been in touch with the post-Lewin/Clough generation.  But last time I looked, the music academy was trapped within a tonal comfort zone where the game is to over-justify the already over-determined triad.

Rameau is dead.  Long live Rameau!

Basta!

Entr'acte

It is essential that one not succumb to the fallacy of completeness in either of its guises–namely, either in the sense that one claims completeness with respect to evidences employed, or in the sense that one requires completeness in the use of evidence.  Some degree of specialization is essential.  The question is this, however: Has the specialized employment of evidences determined the omission of important areas of experience which may in fact be seasonally relevant in our period of cultural activity?  To respond affirmatively to this question involves one in the criticism of the manner in which the inertial character of the past has overdetermined the nature of the cultural present.

David L. Hall

Eros and Irony: A Prelude to Philosophical Anarchism 

As I said before, I am not proclaiming the virtues of any one mode of perception over all others.  I am only concerned that our society encourages us to ignore some of those modes.

David Lewin

"Music Theory, Phenomenology, and Modes of Perception"

reprinted in

Studies in Music with Text 

Added December 9th:

The chief danger to philosophy is narrowness in the selection of evidence.  This narrowness arises from the idiosyncrasies and timidities of particular authors, of particular social groups, of particular schools of thought, of epochs in the history of civilization.  The evidence relied upon is arbitrarily biased by the temperaments of individuals, by the provincialities of groups, and by the limitations of schemes of thought.

Alfred North Whitehead

Process and Reality

Lewin on Babbitt on Schoenberg

In October 1998, I received a surprise package in the mail from David Lewin. It was a 12-page manuscript, 7 pages of which were a single-spaced typescript and 5 pages of which were musical examples, charts, and a mathematical proof. It was accompanied by this note:

Following are 12 excerpts from Lewin's 1983 lecture.

I have numbered these excerpts for reference in any future discussions or commentary.

My thanks to June Lewin for permission to reprint this material here.

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