Music Theory Online
The Online Journal of the Society for Music Theory
Volume 2.7:
Gerold W. Gruber*
Review of the 3rd Congress for Music Theory, Vienna, Austria, May 10-12 1996
KEYWORDS: compositional technique, analysis, perception, Schubert, Schumann, tempo, rhythm, meter
ABSTRACT: In his last year as teacher at the University of Music and Dramatic Arts in
Vienna, Austria, Diether de la Motte organized a congress with the title
"Time in Music--Music in Time."
[1] Diether de la Motte, author of "Harmonielehre" (Eng. Madison,
1991) and other books on melody, counterpoint and music analysis, is
known as an unorthodox music theorist and a very creative teacher and
composer (at the Department for Composition at the University of Music
and Dramatic Arts in Vienna, Austria). In what is, regrettably, his last
year
(he has been emeritus since September 1996) he again organized a
music theory congress, after two previous congresses, in March 1993
("Theory Books that Ought to be Written or One Would
Like to Write"), and in December 1994 ("Speaking About Music in History
and the Present"). The eccentric title of the three-day congress in
May was "Time in Music: standing still, stopping, flowing, rushing,
backwards against the time, lapse of time, point in time, time crack;
Music in Time: timeless, ahead of his time, much too late" which is
only a very free translation. It should however encourage theorists
and composers to bring forth individual brain-teasers.
Theoretical questions predominated, but the theme was also picked up
by some speakers in a historical context.
Clemens Kuehn on Schubert
[2] Using selected compositions, Clemens Kuehn tried to demonstrate
the striking way in which Schubert uses harmony, rhythm and measure
groupings. He detected--not unexpectedly for Schubert scholars--unusual,
unpredictable, and pronounced techniques in landlers, waltzes and
sonatas (in comparison with Mozart and Beethoven), and also
explored the rhythmic and harmonic "pulse" of Schubert's
compositions. Schubert's extraordinarily musical diction would have
appeared yet greater, however, had Kuehn compared Schubert's landlers
and waltzes with the compositions that appear in the same
collections (an inspiration which Kuehn left to musicology).
Diether de la Motte on Schumann
[3] Diether de la Motte's contribution was thematically associated
with the ideas "dream, sleep and death," and he explored such ciphers
in songs of Robert Schumann. Motte discovered a meaningfully
"sounding" final fermata (op. 83/2, "Waiting in Quietness"), an
awkwardly harmonic "glued joint" in op. 35/5 ("The Tearing of a
Heart"), a non-transposable song (op. 90/3, whose original Gb
major, in contrast to the E-major version, finds the way "out of
harmony," just as the juvenile dream described in the song is
irretrievably lost). Further examples from the harmonic and other
subtleties of Schumann's compositions have led de la Motte to come to
the conclusion that the aforementioned ideas and contents force the
composer to find possibilities to step, in a musical way, "outside of
space and time."
Thomas D�zsy on motion and measures
[4] The young composer Thomas D�zsy explored the correlative
relationship of motion, tempus, and tactus using a collection of
definitions derived from Johann Gottfried Walther (1732), Johann
Mattheson (1739), and
Heinrich Christoph Koch (1782). In a passionately presented
attempt, he used Heinrich Schenker's reductive analysis
to show different tempo layers ("Aktionstempi") based on
musical examples from the music of Bach and Webern, actually
passing through Schenker's structural layers with the help of
structural levels of tempo (a highly innovative attempt).
Designing of time lapses in music is, according to D�zsy, a central
idea of the classic
composition (a model, we may assume, that also inspires twentieth-century
composers.
Helga de la Motte-Haber on Time Layers
[5] Helga de la Motte began with the theoretical assumption that we
do not know whether there is time or not. Time, however, is describable
as motion and changes of energetic conditions. If one assumes that
time is a mental construction, then it is understandable why there are
such different views about time. She named three aspects of the
structure of time that have endured to the present: cyclically recurring
time (biological rhythm), progressive time with a dramatic goal, and
time that goes together with ideas of space (Wagner's "time becomes
space" in Parsifal). Helga de la Motte gave examples showing
that diverging compositional time-shaping is always also a perspective
on space. She
explained this hypothesis with pieces by Debussy (movement in space,
planes, and colors); Charles Ives (echo space); Morton Feldman (time
screens); Karlheinz Stockhausen (overlapping tempos that become
spatial melodies), as well as with Stravinsky's structures, which
Messiaen called "personnages rhythmiques"; and of course with the
"Zeitr�ume" (time spaces) composed by Messiaen.
Barbara Barthelmes on Wyschnegradsky
[6] Ivan Wyschnegradsky, known for microtonality, pursued the idea of
a regeneration of musical time together with his idea of a new
conception of a musical space. (Barthelmes described a largely unknown
project of a Gesamtkunstwerk, which Wyschnegradsky called "Projet de
la mosaique lumineuse de la coupole du temple," as an idea of a
spatial time.) Wyschnegradsky developed new models (i.e. modes) of
the rhythmic movement (additive, increasing, slowing, declining
etc.), and described several layers of musical figures in a spatially
defined time continuum.
Gerold W. Gruber on different time perception
[7] Gerold W. Gruber examined different levels of perception and
varied models of presentation when speaking about "composed time--
interpreted time--analyzed time." Composed time is, on one
temporal level, the struggle of the composer for formal and dramaturgic
solutions and, on a second level, the realization of material,
idea and musical figures. (Analysis generally deals with the
second level.) The achievement of the composer in the time and space
continua lies in the combining of both levels, which is unique
within the arts. In interpretation, minute nuances in the balance
between detail and general view open new time structures in the
composition. Composition and analysis are incompatible insofar as
in analysis new courses of time are constituted. In rare instances,
however, composition and analysis approach each other, as in Hans
Keller's attempts at analytical expansions of composed time (e.g. in
his Functional Analysis scores).
Heinz von Loesch
[8] After Helga de la Motte and Gerold W. Gruber, Heinz von Loesch
raised once more the problematic question of time structures and their
concepts. Loesch criticized Carl Dahlhaus and Helga de la Motte, who
have spoken in publications of the idea of a "linearly directed time,"
and of "works directed to the finale" (above all in Beethoven's
works), where time is experienced through music as a process. Loesch
saw here a purely symbolically oriented concept of time, which he
contrasted with a concept in the physiology of perception. In the
first case the concept of time seems convincing but not noteworthy,
in the second case it is significant, but untenable. Similarly,
Loesch considers Aristotle's concept of time to be problematic. Many
participants articulated the view that a solution of the conflict was
scarcely offered.
[9] In a lecture entitled "Time in motion--Motion in
Time," Werner Schulze united ideas from te Greek classical
antiquity (Plato, Aristotle), from the Middle Ages (Kepler), and from
modern times (Schopenhauer, Messiaen). He described the similarities and
differences between space and time, between architecture and music
(as artistic forms of expression of space and time).
[10] Marie-Agnes Dittrich examined from a temporal distance an
impressive cultural event: the performance of Mozart's Der
Schauspieldirektor, and Salieri's opera buffa Prima la musica e poi
le parole, and showed the perfidious irretrievability of works of art
as related to time and their surrounding world--their irony being
understandable only with difficulty.
[11] Annegret Huber dedicated her lecture to the questionable
designation of "Biedermeierzeit," and asked to what extent the works of
that time can be conceived of as homogenous.
[12] Wolfgang Auhagen began his investigations on tempo-feeling while
listening to music, after he had encountered the publications of Willem
Retze Talsma. Talsma stated that present interpreters play classic
allegro movements twice as fast as intended by the composer because
one has to count two "ticks" of the metronome instead of
one. Tsalma's view not only directly contradicts exact research
of the sources but, moreover, Auhagen stated that the interpreter has
the capacity to judge the correct tempo by examining the structure
and expression of a piece of music. Many composers trust the
interpreter to find the right tempo automatically. An
empirical investigation of this interesting thesis followed. According
to Auhagen, musical movement is more comparable with gestures than
with sequences of discrete events.
[13] A further empirical investigation with music students was carried
out by Guenther Roetter. Roetter's thesis contrasts two types of tempo
perception, the type experienced while performing music on the one
hand, and, on the other, the type experienced while reading
music. With electrodes, he also looked at the motor aspect while
subjects were reading music. Subjects with distinctive motor activity
while reading an unknown piece of music had an especially high level
of precision when playing music. Roetter's hypothesis is that, when
learning music, body motion has a beneficial influence on the
result. This body motion is transferred through increasing experience
from exterior to interior, and transforms into a cognitively
structured process.
[NOTE: The congress report will be published next year by Peter Lang.]
Gerold W. Gruber
University of Music and Dramatic Arts
Institute for Music Analysis
Lothringerstrasse 18
A-1030 Vienna, Austria
t0061dab@vm.univie.ac.at
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11/4/96