Neo-mythologism in music: from Scriabin and Schoenberg to Schnittke and Crumb 9781576471258

Table of contents :
Frontmatter
Acknowledgments (page viii)
Foreword (page ix)
I Neo-Mythologism: a Hermeneutic Construct and a Historic Trend (page 1)
II The Prime Structuring "Molds" of Myth and Music (page 27)
III Towards the Universality of Myth (page 77)
IV In Search of the Lost Union: Word-Myth-Music (page 113)
V Cosmologies (page 137)
VI Numerology (page 183)
VII "Where Time Turns Into Space": The Mythologem of a Circle (page 201)
VIII Reception and Critique (page 241)
Appendix 1. An Interview with George Crumb (page 265)
Appendix 2. The English translation of the texts by García Lorca from George Crumb's Ancient Voices of Children (page 273)
Appendix 3. Text excerpts from Stockhausen's Licht (page 275)
Selected bibliography (page 277)
List of Illustrations (page 287)
Index (page 291)

Citation preview

Neo-Mythologism in Music From Scriabin and Schoenberg to Schnittke and Crumb

To the memory of Irene Alm

Neo-Mythologism in Music From Scriabin and Schoenberg to Schnittke and Crumb by Victoria Adamenko

INTERPLAY: MUSIC IN INTERDISCIPLINARY DIALOGUE No. 5

Siglind Bruhn and Magnar Breivik, General Editors

PENDRAGON PRESS HILLSDALE, NY

Other Titles in the Interplay Series No. 1 Masqued Mysteries Unmasked: Early Modern Music Theater and Its Pythagorean Subtext by Kristin Rygg (2000)

No. 2 Musical Ekphrasis: Composers Responding to Poetry and Painting by Siglind Bruhn (2001) No. 3 Voicing the Ineffable: Musical Representations of Religious Experience, eleven essays edited by Siglind Bruhn (2001) No. 4 The Musical Order of the World—Kepler, Hesse, Hindemith by Siglind Bruhn (2005)

Cover design by Stuart Ross, based on Victor Ekimovsky’s Up in the Hunting Dogs

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Adamenko, Victoria, 1965Neo-mythologism in music : from Scriabin and Schoenberg to Schnittke and Crumb / by Victoria Adamenko. p. cm. -- (Interplay series ; no. 5) Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 978-1-57647-125-8 (alk. paper) 1. Music and mythology. 2. Music--Philosophy and aesthetics. 3. Hermeneutics. I. Title. ML3849.A383 2006 780.9'04--dce22

2006021752

Copyright 2007 Pendragon Press

Table of Contents

Foreword 1X Acknowledgments Vill I Neo-Mythologism: a Hermeneutic Construct and a Historic Trend 1

Artistic Validity l The Diachronic Perspective 3

Defining the Term: “Neo-Mythologism” as Assertion of Myth’s

Remythification in Literature 4 Early-Twentieth-Century Approaches to Myth in Music 5 Creative Mythology During the Age of Disintegration 6 Late-Twentieth-Century Approaches to Myth in Music 8 The Role of Jungian Psychoanalysis in Neo-Mythologism 9

Wagner 13 Scriabin 15 Mythologems 20 Forerunners of Neo-Mythologism Prior to the Twentieth Century 11

The Synchronic Perspective 18 The Operational Modes and Archetypes of (Neo-)Mythic Thought 24

II The Prime Structuring “Molds” of Myth and Music 27

Binary Opposition 28 Hindemith’s Oppositive Thinking: Is Mediation Possible on Earth? 29

Schoenberg, the Mediator of Opposites 31

Other Instances of the Binary Opposition at Work 39 The Idea of Symmetry and Mythological Twins 45

Score 54 The Desert Music 59

The Odd and Even from Stravinsky to Reich 48

Mythic Repetitiveness and Musical Ostinato 51 The Mythologem of the World Tree as the Model for a Musical The Meaning of Ostinato in Minimalism: Steve Reich’s

“The Quest for the Invariant”: Variability and Combinatoriality 64 Vv

vi Contents

Ill Towards the Universality of Myth 77 “Wie ein Naturlaut”’: Reaching Beyond Culture 77

Crumb’s “Evocation of Nature”: Drones 79

Imagining the Pre-Cultural: Babbitt’s Philomel 82 The Composer as “Archaeologist of Culture” 83 The Mythic “World Body” and the Idea of Global Communication 86

From Universal Nature to Universal Culture 88

Symphony ofBabel Psalms108 90 The Tower of

Polystylistics in its Mythological Function: Stravinsky’s

IV In Search of the Lost Union: Word—Myth—Music 113

Assonance and Alliteration 117 Babbling, the Language of Magic 119

Mythic Power of Names in Stockhausen’s Licht 125 Musical Monograms: Attributes, Possessions, Spiritualism? 127

Berg’s Mythification of Personal Names 128

Musical Names as Precedents for Stravinsky and Crumb 130

Naming God and Self Musically: Denisov’s Requiem 132

V_ Cosmologies 137 Composition as a Total Picture of the Universe 137

Artistic Systemology 145

Cosmogony and Eschatology 152 God as Composer, Composer as God, and Music as Religion 152 Schnittke’s First Symphony 158

Ritualism 165

Cosmogony in Licht 163

How Myths are Retold: the Initiation Rite of Modernism 168

The Transformations in Schoenberg’s Life 171

A Passage to the Future in Secrecy 175 The Musical Mythification of Technology and Science 178 The Mythification of the Cosmos 179 The Mythification of Industrialization 181

VI Numerology 183 Numbers’ Role in Cosmology 183

Return of Number Symbolism 185

Contents Vil

Numerology in Musical Fabric and in Piece Grouping 187 Eclecticism and the Attachment of Private Meanings 189

From Beliefs to Games with Numbers 192

Circular Notation 205 The Circle in Archaic Myths and Jung’s Theory 207

VII “Where Time Turns Into Space”: The Mythologem of a Circle 201

Crumb’s Mandalas 209

The Circle in the Poetic Text of Ancient Voices of Children 213

“Timelessness of Time” 218 Historical Precedents? 221 Circularity in the Musical Structure of Ancient Voices of Children 216

The Mandalas of Pauline Oliveros 225

Stockhausen’s “Curvilinear Thought” 230 The Centerpiece in an Enigma Ritual 232 Stravinsky’s “Wheel” and the Folk Round Dance 234

The Cyclic Time of David Demnitz 236

Inner Time and Space Meet 239 VIII Reception and Critique 241 Myth as a Figure of Speech in Musicological Discourse 241 Mythological Dimensions of a Style: The Reception of Crumb’s Music 243

Perception of a Score: Empirical, a priori, or Syncretistic? 245

Jungian Archetypes in Schnittke’s Memos 246

Schnittke’s Mythological Outlook 249 Faust and Godliness 252 The Devil and the Perception of Schnittke’s Early Style 256

Postlude 262

The Mythologems in Schnittke’s First Symphony 259

Appendix 1. An interview with George Crumb 265 Appendix 2. The English translation of the texts by Garcia Lorca

from George Crumb’s Ancient Voices of Children 273 Appendix 3. Text excerpts from Stockhausen’s Licht 275

Index 291

Selected bibliography 287 277 List of Illustrations

Acknowledgements I wish to express great appreciation to Alexander Ivashkin, Director of the Schnittke Archive at the Centre for Russian Music, Goldsmiths College, University of London, for sharing the archive’s materials with me. I should

like in particular to mention Melanie and Simon Morrison, and Larisa Gerver for their enthusiastic and generous help with this book at its initial stage. I am indebted to Richard Taruskin for his insightful suggestion to include Scriabin as a subject of this research. Gratitude is also most deeply expressed to Siglind Bruhn, ‘the book editor, for her extensive assistance and considerable patience; Daniel Miller and Kate Norris, the copy-editors; Jeffrey Kurtzman, who proofread the text; and Ron Evans, Amanda Hirsh, and Joseph Orchard, whose involvement with the project helped me a great deal. I am grateful to Kimberlyn Montford and Shannon Mirchandani, who read separate chapters of the manuscript and provided valuable comments. Thanks must go to Michael Coleman and Matthew Fossa for their technical assistance with the music examples, and to Irina Schnittke, George Crumb, and Francois-Bernard Mache, for their communication through letters and interviews. Finally, I thank Leonid Yanovskiy, my dear and caring husband, for being the most supportive and encouraging of all.

viii

| Foreword A mythological component has always been present in culture, whether archaic or modern. In one way or another, mythology reveals itself in every creative process; it 1s the first system of thought in the history of culture. The semioticians of the Tartu-Moscow school—Yuri Lotman (1922-1993), Zara Minz (1927-1987), Boris A. Uspenski (b. 1927), Eleazar M. Meletinsky (b. 1918), and others—observed that, although a restoration of mythic thought in its totality is impossible within the framework of modern culture, certain

components of that thought continue to inform artistic creativity of the modern age. Meletinsky wrote: “Beginning with the second decade of the twentieth century, re-mythification became an unstoppable process that in the end came to dominate different sectors of European culture.”' Re-mythification, or “neo-mythologism,” a term coined by Meletinsky, has features that are typical of archaic mythologia—its paradigmatic nature, its use of archetypes, and its mediation of opposites. However, modern mythmaking incorporates Jungian metaphorical approaches to the unconsciousness and

an ironical estrangement from a common orthodoxy. Neo-mythologism involves the search for an individual language and individual myths. Because of the particular semiotic problems associated with the study of music, the application of myth in modern literary genres has received much fuller discussion than in music. A recent non-musicological study empha- © sized “the primacy of mythical archetypes even in modern literature, where

the field has been cleared of the ancient gods.”” Yet the mythographer Claude Lévi-Strauss considered music to be a sign system no less closely related to myth than literature: “Mythology occupies an intermediary position between two diametrically opposed types of sign systems—musical language on the one hand and articulate speech on the other.”’ Indeed, the The Poetics of Myth, trans. Guy Lanoue and Alexandre Sadetsky (New York: Garland, 1998), 17. This book was originally published in Russian as Poetika mifa (Moscow: Nauka, 1976). *Norman Austin, Meaning and Being in Myth (University Park, PA, and London: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1990), 8.

*Introduction to a Science of Mythology, vol. 1, The Raw and The Cooked (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), 27. IX

x Foreword primacy of mythical archetypes is palpable in many works of twentiethcentury musical repertoire and parallels that of modern literature. The mythological features of some twentieth-century compositions are commonly mentioned in different sources, from composers’ interviews and program notes to scholarly works.* However, research on the role of myth in twentieth-century music is not extensive. There has been no study devoted exclusively to the past musical century as a whole and its unique relationships with mythology. Two monographs by musicologists on the relationship between myth and music investigated many individual facets of this subject. The pioneering author Eero Tarasti considered a variety of styles, yet in the twentieth-

century repertoire his main focus was on Stravinsky and Sibelius.” Now almost three decades since the publication of his classic study, a large number of other composers have yet to be considered from the point of view

of mythological features inherent in their artistic languages and methods. Tarasti drew upon the analytical system of “semeanalysis,” developed by Algirdas-Julien Greimas, using the classification of semes typically applied to literary works: the nature-mythical, the hero-mythical, the fabulous, the balladic, the legendary, the sacred, and others. His attachment to the subject matter of music dramas or dramatic symphonic works has been criticized as artificial,° although, in my opinion, Tarasti chose a legitimate, if particular way of considering the mythic in music. This approach can be complemented by other paths of research, which I advocate in the present book. Francois-Bernard Mache devoted an insightful book to the problem of myth and music relations, in which he commented on individual twentiethcentury styles, although his study did not single out the century as a whole.’ Mache writes from his position as the composer of multiple myth-inspired musical works bearing programmatic titles based on Ancient Greek mythology. His study expresses, first and foremost, his own aesthetic credo as a composer as well as a thinker educated in Greek archeology and art. ‘Richard Taruskin, for example, recently acknowledged the great role of myth in Stravinsky’s thought, in “Stravinsky and Us,” in Cambridge Companion to Stravinsky, ed. Jonathan Cross (Cambridge University Press, 2003), 262-265. Eero Tarasti, Myth and Music. A Semiotic Approach to the Aesthetics of Myth in Music, especially that of Wagner, Sibelius and Stravinsky (New York: Mouton, 1979). °See Raymond Monelle, Review of Myth and Music, by Eero Tarasti, Music Analysis 3 (1984): 210. "Musique, mythe, nature ou les dauphins d’Arion (Paris: Klincksieck, 1983), 2nd augm. ed., 1991. English translations: Music, Myth and Nature, trans. Susan Delaney (Paris and Philadelphia: Harwood, 1992); Music, Myth, Nature (London: Gordon & Breach, 1993).

Foreword xi Most of the other musicological literature on the role of myth in twentieth-century music is not available in English translation.* Although it offers some shrewd observations on the nature of mythification 1n music, the main focus traditionally has been the adaptation of mythic stories and

motifs for the librett1 of music-dramatic or programmatic works. In my

opinion, the field does not have to be limited to the problems of plot adaptations alone. I have found greater support for a broader approach to the problem of myth and music relationship in some philosophical writings of the twentieth century.

Susanne Langer (1895-1985) was one of the first philosophers to address the relationship between myth and music. She captured both in one definition, calling music “our myth of the inner life.”’ Four decades later, a German philosopher Kurt Htibner offered an entire philosophy of music connected to myth.'° From reading both Langer and Hiibner, one concludes that the perspective on the problem of myth and music relationships is much broader than the current empirical and narrow paradigms musicologists have utilized. Without limiting the sphere of the mythic 1n music exclusively to dramatic and programmatic works, the present book attempts to answer the following questions: How do changes in aesthetics, historical circumstances, and perceptions influence the capacity of music to support and project our mythologizing notions and world views? How does the mythological reveal

itself within modernist and postmodernist aesthetics? What are the historical-cultural decoding channels in our present-day possession that allow audiences, performers, critics, and researchers to perceive symbolic meaning in music? In order to deal with these questions, I reexamine the ideas developed by Claude Lévi-Strauss, who famously compared myth and music in terms of function, structural characteristics, and derivation from a common source. Lévi-Strauss considered the pattern-forming nature of the human mind as a universal feature of foremost importance. The patterns themselves vary from society to society, individual to individual. These are not “pre-ordained and *See, for example, Lev Akopian, “Musyka I mifotvorcestvo v dvadzatom veke.” [Music and

| mythmaking in the twentieth century]. Sovetskaya Muzyka 10 (1989): 78-82; Clinton, Mark, and Peter Csobadi, eds. Antike Mythen im Musiktheater des 20. Jahrhunderts: Gesammelte Vortrdge des Salzburger Symposions 1989, in Wort und Musik, Salzburger Akademische Beitrage Nr. 7 (Salzburg: Ursula Mueller-Speiser, 1990). Susanne K. Langer, Philosophy in a New Key: A Study in the Symbolism of Reason, Rite and Art (Cambridge, M.A.: Harvard University Press, 1942), 245. OS ee his Die Wahrheit des Mythos (Munich: Beck, 1985) and Die Musik und das Mythische (Basel: Schwabe, 1996).

xii Foreword inflexible structures, but rather molds from which forms are produced that turn up as entities without being obliged to remain identical.””’' To continue this line of thought, I have examined musical manifestations of the basic structural ideas on which mythic thought has traditionally relied, such as opposition, symmetry, variability, and repetition. These structural ideas have always played important roles in the construction of musical forms. Nevertheless, in the twentieth century, these ideas gain a special role as their display is unmediated by the dominating force of long-established principles of organization, for example, tonality. The void created by the disappearance of tonality was inevitably filled with those prime elementary structuring methods first used in myths. When Lévi-Strauss applied his techniques of myth analysis to Ravel’s Bolero in his work L’>homme nu (1971), he offered a fresh approach to musical phenomena, even those that are considered well-known and understood. While advocating a useful comparative approach, Lévi-Strauss addressed neither specific contexts (in which meanings were and are created in works by individual artists) nor identity as ultimate participants of the dialogue between myth and music. This missing part is one of the subjects of this

book. Clearly, it is not only on the level of structure, as Lévi-Strauss claimed, that modern music assumes, to some extent, the place of myth; this

engagement is also present at other levels, such as social and political function, identity and meaning. A number of twentieth-century composers, both European and American, from Alexander Scriabin to George Crumb, endeavor in their work to forge a macrocosmic fusion of history, culture, and society—to manufacture, in short, an idiosyncratic myth about the world. Many of these composers create ritualistic compositions based on archetypal symbols of myths, for example, the mandala. My interpretation of these relies on a variety of methodologies, which complement each other: Lévi-Strauss’s structuralism, the semiotics of the Tartu school, the mythography of Joseph Campbell, and more. As a result, this book considers the dialogue of music and mythic, both diachronically, as a trend unfolding in history, and synchronically, as a trans-historical hermeneutic construct. Of course it is only in abstraction that these two “dimensions” are truly separate; I separate them in the structure of the book itself only for the sake of clarity of my argument.

The first chapter presents a detailed consideration of methodology. First, from a diachronic perspective, I aim to outline and to characterize "Cited in Pandora Hopkins’s translation from her review of Lévi-Strauss’s theory: “The Homology of Music and Myth: Views of Lévi-Strauss on Musical Structure,” Ethnomusicology 21 (1977): 252.

Foreword xiii neo-mythological tendencies as a specific trend, illustrated by certain examples, but I do not fully explore the approach to mythology of each individual composer. Because individual composers demonstrate different degrees of involvement with neo-mythologism, inevitably, some composers

receive more, and some less, attention in this study. My goal is not to provide a balanced, comprehensive overview of the phenomenon, but rather,

to point to its mere presence in the music of the twentieth century. The exemplary works and ideas, sometimes intentionally outlined in a sketchy

format, represent the tendency, but do not exhaust it. Many works not analyzed here may potentially fit under certain categories of the discussion presented in this book. My focus is mostly on those major composers whose works and ideas characteristically reveal various aspects of neo-mythologism. The historical forerunners of the trend before the twentieth century, such as the individual ideas and features of the works of Haydn, Beethoven, and Wagner, are examined in the first chapter. Secondly, from a synchronic perspective, the ideas and works by differ-

ent composers can be examined in one context, in spite of the manifest differences in their aesthetic positions. The diversity of composers’ idioms chosen for consideration here is huge: in the same chapter the reader will find passages devoted to figures as different as Babbitt and Crumb. Myth

unifies them not on a surface level, but on the level of common mythic prototypes within musical structures. If we admit that this level exists and can be discerned, then we need to disregard, to a certain extent, these apparent manifestations of different styles and aesthetic credos. This second approach is focused on the mythological layer of the mind and its echoes in musical thought, the echoes that are inevitably mediated by various social and political circumstances, identities, and other diversifying factors. The eight chapters of the book present many different aspects 1n which neo-mythologism reveals itself in twentieth-century musical thought. They deal with major clusters of issues addressed by modern mythography: the structure of mythic thought (Chapter 2), 1ts tendency for universalization

(Chapter 3), and its coordination with other sign systems (Chapter 4). Following general reductive logic, the next three chapters offer a more detailed look at specific types of myths (Chapter 5), their operational means,

such as numerology (Chapter 6), and at a specific mythic motive, or mythologem (Chapter 7). Adapted for musicological discourse, this structure manifests itself as

follows. Myths unfold through opposition and mediation, variation and repetition; the second chapter is devoted to these structuring capacities of myth and their reflection in twentieth-century music’s own forms. The third

chapter explores the ways in which the opposition “culture/nature,” the

xiv : Foreword major opposition of mythic thought, reveals itself in composers’ ideas. It includes a view of polystylistics as a phenomenon of culture mythologized. In chapter four, I refer to some of the compositions in which the mythological is expressed through the recreation of the “lost union” between word, myth, and music.

The new life of cosmological myths in twentieth-century music is discussed in chapter five. A neo-mythological composition tends to present

a total picture of the universe. The systems of correspondence between different elements, which are typical tools of structuring within the cosmological myths, serve as organizational tools for many twentieth-century composers, so that one can speak of the artistic systemologies of our time. The second section of chapter five deals with cosmogonic myths (the myths of origin) and eschatological myths (the myths of the end of the world). These two closely related groups within the general class of cosmological

‘myths also influence composers’ thought in the twentieth century. In particular, the notion of “God” as of cosmogonic origin became equated with that of a “composer” in some instances, and music itself was deemed a “universal religion.” '* Ritualistic aspects of music, which result from such an approach, particularly those in Schoenberg’s work, are considered in the next section, “How Myths are Retold: the Secret Initiation Rite of Modernism.” Mythification of the industrial world and scientific data plays a role in

the new cosmological myths of our era. Composers such as Xenakis, Varese, Crumb, and others use scientific data as a mythologized model so that music subordinates to the laws or hypotheses of mathematics, physics, or astronomy. This recalls the characteristic tendency of the mythic mind to resort to a “sacred formula” or a “magic word” in order to harmonize the world. In chapter six, I enter a special territory—numerology in twentiethcentury musical thought—and present a discussion of its mythic connotations. The mythologem of a circle is a major tool used in cosmological myths for structuring the universe. In some modern scores, the circular arrangement of notation seems to follow the tradition of reading the circle as one of the central symbols and structures found in mythology and as a proto-scheme for structuring. The seventh chapter is devoted to this matter and contains analyses of selected works along with speculations on the origins of their circular notation. The compositions with circular notation are viewed here from two different positions: from the semantic point of view and in the Universal religion” is also a Symbolist and a Romantic concept, prevalent in the ecumenical religious ideas of early Symbolist composition.

Foreword xv phenomenological perspective. Circular notation exemplifies the tendency of twentieth-century music to overcome its specificity as an “unfolding in time” type of art in favor of one “unfolding in space.” I apply the notions of

the “phenomenology of roundness” and “vertical time” by the French philosopher Gaston Bachelard (1884-1962) to those processes in modern music by which the flourishing of circular notation becomes possible. In particular, the concept of verticalizing time corresponds to both Crumb’s idea of “suspended time” and Stockhausen’s “moment-form.” The final chapter deals with the reception and critique received by some exemplary compositions, whose characteristics pertain to neo-mythologism. In some cases, I follow the logic of illustrating the points of my concept, beginning with those less important, which deserve only a brief remark, to those more important, even if it results in anachronism. The material is organized using various aspects of neo-mythologism as my signposts. In general this study 1s conceived neither monographically, devoted to individual composers, nor as evolutionary, although I still point to certain linear “paths” of historically inherited ideas. Rather, my research is centripetal, with myth as its subject and protagonist. Ultimately, this investigation aims to demonstrate how it is much more

rewarding to view quintessentially Western composers in a culturally non-purist and non-exclusive context, rather than insist on incongruity of independent cultural experiences. It has customarily been difficult to overcome the divisions between the mind of a highly sophisticated art-musician and the mind of an aboriginal maker of music, myth, and ritual. Both neomythologism and neo-ritualism of the twentieth century clearly provide foundations for transcending cultural borders.

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ONE

Neo-Mythologism:

a Hermeneutic Construct and a Historic Trend World outlook always contains mythological features. [...] Myth 1s a necessary category of the mind and of being in general.

Alexei Losev, The Dialectics of Myth

Defining the Term: “Neo-Mythologism” as Assertion of Myth’s Artistic Validity In a December 9, 1997, interview, the composer George Crumb observed that “music tends to be mythological, at least some of it. Some of my music

is mythological just in expression. People tell me that it has that sense sometimes—ancient.’”” The mythological aspect of which Crumb spoke clearly relates to what is perceived nowadays as myth in the narrow sense of the word, as opposed to its broader sense, which implies a system of beliefs that is ultimately artificial, untrue, misconceived, based on false ideology, or, in

the well-chosen words of Richard Taruskin, “an operational fiction or assumption that unless critically examined runs a high risk of tendentious abuse.”” This latter model, the heritage of the French encyclopedists, is among

the most cherished by present-day deconstructionist critics, who seek to deconstruct precisely these kinds of myths. In contrast, recent historiography ‘Alexey Losev, “Dialektika mifa” [The dialectics of myth], in Opyty: Literaturno-filosofskii ezhegodnik (Moscow: Sovietskii pisatel’, 1990), 166. *See Appendix.

Richard Taruskin, Defining Russia Musically: Historical and Hermeneutical Essays (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 1997), xxix.

I

2 A Hermeneutic Construct and a Historic Trend advocated myth’s conscious integration as a model of intelligent activity,’ not to mention the artistic application of myth. Consider, in this introductory discussion, Crumb and his “mythological expression” an example of such an application. Crumb regarded the mythological as venerated in its archaic symbolic

realm. This narrow interpretation of myth may be seen as the mode of artistic creativity that never ceases to exist, in spite of any attempts to demystify myth and thus turn it into “logos.” In Plato’s writings, mythos is juxtaposed with Jogos. While logos is associated with analysis, argument, proof, and differentiation (it also is translated as “word”’), mythos is based on belief, imagination, recollection, and wholeness.’ Crumb’s definition of myth reveals his connection to the Platonic tradition of linking myth to poetry. He states: “Myths and those mythical gods continue to live culturally. They represent poetic truths.’”®

The composer’s view of myth loosely matches the first and third categories of Bruce Lincoln’s classification of assertions about the validity of myth: 1) strongly positive (e.g., myth is “primordial truth” or “sacred story”);

2) strongly negative (myth is “a lie” or “an obsolete worldview”); or 3) something in between (“poetic fancy’”).’ I suggest that the prefix “neo-” placed before “mythological” might serve as a terminological aid in dis- — tinguishing between the newly constructed, resurrected, desirable, vital— that is, culturally inspiring—myths and those myths in need of de-mythification. The hermeneutic construction (or deconstruction, for critics of the concept) of neo-mythologism begins with the question of the meaning and validity of the term “mythological,” but it needs historical context.

“See Joseph Mali, Mythistory: The Making of a Modern Historiography (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2003).

See Aza A. Takho-Godi’s study of the word “myth” in Plato—“Mif u Platona kak deistvitel’noe 1 voobrazhaemoe [Myth in Plato’s works as the real and as the imaginary], in Platon i ego epokha [Plato and his era] (Moscow: Nauka, 1979), 58-82. On the differentiation between logical thought and myth in Plato see also H. D. Kitto, “Poesis,””’ Structure and Thought (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966), 187-88. “Logos” has a different meaning—an association with God or Christ—in Christian theological tradition (in particular, as conceptualized by the Russian Symbolists and the Russian Formalists). The resulting less oppositional relationship of that “logos” to myth is discussed in Steven Cassedy, Flight from Eden (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 112. This specific connotation of “logos” is not relevant to my discussion. “Interview at Rutgers University, December 1997 (see Appendix).

"Bruce Lincoln, Theorizing Myth: Narrative, Ideology, and Scholarship (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1999), ix.

The Diachronic Perspective , 3 The Diachronic Perspective The nineteenth-century Romantic acclaim for myth was reshaped in the early twentieth century.* Such pillars as Stravinsky and Schoenberg adopted and built on aspects of Wagner’s mythologism. Sibelius followed a similar trajectory stemming from Wagner, as Eero Tarasti observed.’ Crumb started to make connections between himself, Sibelius, and other American com-

posers, in stating that “the music of Sibelius is mythological in [a nonprogrammatic] sense, too.”'” We unavoidably enter a diachronic paradigm of viewing neo-mythologism as a trend, rather than an artistic movement in the conventional sense, such as symbolism or expressionism. A trend is based not on common aesthetic manifestos that connect diverse composers,

but rather on broader tendencies that affect culture as a whole. In the broader view of the twentieth century as a period 1n which culture itself was mythologized and filtered through different political and religious ideological screens, the musical phenomena related to this process may be viewed as a distinct trend. This broader view also informs the hermeneutics of neo-mythologism. Consider Roland Barthes’s 1957 statement: myth today [...] is a type of speech, a mode of signification, a form. Myth is not defined by the object of its message, but by the

way in which it utters this message; there are formal limits to myth, there are no “substantial” ones. Everything, then, can be a myth? Yes, I believe this, for the universe is infinitely fertile in suggestions.’

Barthes’s interpretation of mythification as a universal trend is symptomatic of the entire twentieth century’s thirst for mythologizing. As this 1979 encyclopedic overview declared, there exist profound mythological needs in modern society, and

some are filled by myths borrowed from submerged or alien traditions. Modern society’s neglect of cosmic symbolism [... ] *See George S. Williamson, The Longing for Myth in Germany: Religion and Aesthetic Culture from Romanticism to Nietzsche (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2004), and Richard Middleton, “After Wagner: The Place of Myth in Twentieth-century Music,” The Music Review 3 (1973): 307-27. "Eero Tarasti, Myth and Music: A Semiotic Approach to the Aesthetics of Myth in Music, Especially That of Wagner, Sibelius and Stravinsky (The Hague: Mouton, 1979).

See Appendix. "Roland Barthes, Mythologies, trans. Annette Lavers (New York: The Noonday Press, 1972), 109. Ist French edition, 1957.

4 A Hermeneutic Construct and a Historic Trend has provoked certain reactions, such as the continuing interest in astrology. [...] And the huge scientific advances of the twentieth century have given rise to a literature, science fiction, that resembles myth, even down to an eschatological element. [...] Seculari-

zation in modern society [...] 1s accompanied by a process whereby new myths are formed.’

Remythification in Literature According to other cultural critics, in the beginning of the twentieth century the prominence of mythic models in composing artistic texts took on a new intensity. Eleazar Meletinsky (b. 1918), the Russian mythographer

and literary scholar, wrote about “the rebirth of myth in contemporary literature”'’ and in broader twentieth-century culture in general: In one way or another, the history of culture was seen against the background of the history of primitive and classical mythology. The relationship between myth and culture considered as a whole has always been changing and evolving, but there has been an overall tendency toward de-mythification. The apogee of this process was the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century and the positivism of the nineteenth. The [twentieth] century has witnessed a return to mythicizing, especially in the culture of the

West. This recent phenomenon has gone well beyond the Romantic infatuation with myth and stands diametrically opposed to de-mythification.'*

Although the nature of twentieth-century mythification cannot be understood without looking back to the characteristics of the mythology of

early societies and of antiquity, Meletinsky writes, it is important to distinguish between what he calls “authentic” myth and its contemporary artistic reincarnation: The language of twentieth-century mythification does not at all coincide with archaic myth. There is no modern equivalent for

the degree of social integration that marks life in primitive societies. [...] Even the cyclical pattern attributed to the development of events in modern mythification is not universally found in archaic myths.'° 2k ees W. Bolle and Richard G. Buxton, “Myth and Mythology,” in Encyclopaedia Britannica, 15th ed. vol.12 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1979), 721. 'SFleazar Meletinsky, The Poetics of Myth, trans. Guy Lanoue and Alexandre Sadetsky (New York: Garland, 1998), xix. Originally published as Poetika mifa (Moscow: Nauka, 1976). Tbid., XX1. *Tbid., 339-40.

The Diachronic Perspective 5 Meletinsky pointed to mythification in the works of such diverse authors as Joyce, Mann, Kafka, Lawrence, Yeats, Eliot, O’Neill, Cocteau, and Marquez. These writers, he explains, view myth either as the instrument by which artistic organization

is imposed on their material, or as stable archetypes that are relevant for the cultures of different nations. [...] Mythification is

certainly linked to Modernism, but the ideological and artistic aspirations of mythicising writers have allowed the process to go well beyond the confines of the Modernist movement. Mythifica-

tion in literature and criticism has replaced nineteenth-century Realism.'°

Moreover, Meletinsky emphasized that the tendency for remythification in the twentieth century is so complex and contradictory as to include those

writers who have remained faithful to the traditions of Realism (such as Thomas Mann, for example). Nevertheless, mythification in the sense Meletinsky understands it “cannot be reduced to other, simpler factors such as, for example, being considered the sum of various mythologies.””” Importantly, the degree of involvement with the mythological in some early-twentieth-century creative approaches cannot be reduced simply to an

interest, however intense, in the mythic. It is the mythologizing activity itself—the artistic myth-making, which involves the intuitive attempt to recreate a specific mythic logic—that defines neo-mythologism. For instance, Meletinsky argues that Thomas Mann conceived Doctor Faustus as a myth

for our time. Zara Minz suggests that in the beginning of the twentieth century, the representatives of the Russian Symbolist movement, influenced by Nietzsche and Wagner, attempted to create “text-myths.”!® Early-Twentieth-Century Approaches to Myth in Music Clearly, the issue of myth in music and art thrived in philosophical and theoretical thinking in Europe and America in the early twentieth century.”

In 1915, the Russian philosopher Alexei Losev assessed Scriabin—his

Tid. Ibid. XX1. 1B) nekotorykh ‘neomifologicheskikh’ tekstakh v tvorchestve russkikh simvolistov” [About some “neo-mythological” texts in works by Russian Symbolists], in Tvorchestvo Bloka i russkaya kultura XX veka: [The work of Blok and Russian culture of the twentieth century], Scholarly Proceedings of Tartu University, vol. 459 (Tartu: Tartu University, 1979), 76. The most representative is Emst Cassirer, with Sprache und Mythos (1925), Die Philosophie der Aufkidrung (1932), An Essay on Man (1944), and The Myth of the State (1946).

6 A Hermeneutic Construct and a Historic Trend personality as well as individual works—from the point of view of the mythic features inherent in the creative mind of a musician.” In 1925 and 1926, Max Kraussold, one of the contributors to Langer’s anthology Reflections on Art, devoted a special study to the subject of myth’s relations

with music.*' Yet another instigator of the interdisciplinary approach to myth and music was the pioneering filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein (18981948). In his essay, “The Incarnation of Myth” (1940), which centered on Wagner’s Ring cycle, Eisenstein called for an analysis of mythological thinking in and of itself.’” He examines the synthesis of the arts as a bridge between archaic mythic thought and the ways in which it can be re-used by later artists, implying his own art as a director: Exploiting our visual effects, music and plot in equal measure, we shall be able to stir the layers in the depth of our consciousness where thought is still powerfully imagistic, poetic, emotional

and mythological.”

Notably, Eisenstein points to “the depth of our consciousness” where, he believes, mythological thought is still preserved. This idea makes him correspondent with Jungian psychoanalysis, which focused on revealing mythic archetypes in the deep levels of the psyche. Eisenstein also insists that “the synthetic merging of emotion, music, action, light and color [aids] in the process of creating legend and myth.” Creative Mythology During the Age of Disintegration Given the many specific causes for a greater thirst for myth 1n various

fields and artistic movements, is it reasonable to search for a general rationale for renewed empathy with the mythological? Joseph Campbell, for

one, judged twentieth-century culture as “the peak of an accelerating disintegration that has been undoing the formidable orthodox tradition since 791 osev’s essay Mirovozzrenie Skriabina [Scriabin’s Weltanschauung| was written soon after Scriabin’s death in 1915 but remained unpublished until 1990. It appeared in Strast’ k dialektike [Passion for dialectics] (Moscow: Sovetsk11 pisatel’). *IMfax Kraussold, “Music and Myth in Their Mutual Relations,” in Reflections on Art, ed. Susanne K. Langer (Baltimore: John Hopkins Press, 1958; reprint: Arno Press, 1979), 340. Kraussold’s article was originally published in Die Musik 18 (1925-6): 176-87. *2Sergei Eisenstein, “Voploshenie mifa,” in Sergei Yutkevich et al., eds., Jzbrannye proizvedeniya v shesti tomakh [Selected works in six volumes] (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1964-71): 329-59, 23 Sergei Eisenstein, “The Incarnation of Myth,” in Selected Works, ed. Richard Taylor, trans. William Powell, vol. 3 (London: British Film Institute, 1996), 155.

Ibid. 161.

The Diachronic Perspective 7 as far as about the thirteenth century.” Owing to this disintegration, a trans-personal “creative mythology” crumbled into individual mythologies. Campbell ascribed the demise of orthodoxy to a condition in which the released creative powers of a great company of towering individuals have broken forth; so that not one, or even two or three, but a galaxy of mythologies—as many, one might say, as the multitude of its geniuses—must be taken into account in any study of the spectacle of our own titanic age.”°

If one looks at mythology solely from a religious perspective, like Rudolf Otto (1869-1937) and Mircea Eliade (1907-1986), then one might conclude that artists of the twentieth century turned to mythic structures in response to a religious void—a crisis foretold by Nietzsche’s famous dictum “God is dead.” The relationship between spiritual and mythic belief calls forth the issue of Kunstreligion, defined by Dahlhaus as “religion—or its

truth—having passed from the form of myth into the forms of art.””’ Meletinsky, though, found it possible to consider the poetics of myth independently from its religious aspect. He focused on the mechanism of substituting a harmful myth, deserving of de-mythification, with a good one. In an

example that he drew, Thomas Mann attempted to substitute the Aryan myth promoted by Nazi cultural policy with his humanistic myth based on the Faust tale. Yet, the notions of disintegration and de-sacralization are as

crucial in twentieth-century thought as those of re-integration and resacralization. In the 1960s, some artists and philosophers began to interpret the disintegration and crisis of cultural and religious consciousness as a distinguishing feature of twentieth-century culture. Marc Chagall wrote: God, perspective, color, the Bible, form, lines, traditions, the socalled humanisms, love, caring, the family, the school, education, the prophets, and Christ Himself have fallen to pieces.”

Susanne Langer likewise spoke of disintegration, the substitution of institutional belief by individual beliefs in modern society: Joseph Campbell, The Masks of God: Creative Mythology (New York: Penguin Books, 1968), 3. **Ibid.

*7Carl Dahlhaus, Richard Wagner’s Music Dramas, trans. Mary Whittall (New York, London: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 144. Marc Chagall, “Why Have We Become So Anxious?” (1964) in Mircea Eliade, Symbolism, the Sacred, and the Arts, ed. Diane Apostolos-Cappadona (New York: Crossroad, 1986), 87.

8 A Hermeneutic Construct and a Historic Trend In Christian Europe the Church brought men daily (in some orders even hourly) to their knees, to enact if not to contemplate their assent to the ultimate concepts [...]. In modern society such exercises are all but lost. Every person finds his Holy of Holies where he may: in Scientific Truth, Evolution, the State, Democra-

cy, Kultur, or some metaphysical word like “the All” or “the Spiritual.”””?

Late-twentieth-century philosophical writings on the mythological qual-

ities of music voice similar complaints about disintegration. Kurt Hiibner observed: “Music is only one facet in the whole picture of disruption in which the modern world is determined.” Late-Twentieth-Century Approaches to Myth in Music In his 1977 radio conversation, later published as a short book, LéviStrauss defended a concept of mythification that roughly parallels Campbell’s concept of “creative mythology.” Specifically, he suggested that since the

sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries, music gradually “took over the function—the intellectual as well as emotive function—which mythical thought was giving up more or less at the same period.”’’ Although LéviStrauss’s assessment of mythification of culture is more music-specific than

Campbell’s general picture, it is not limited exclusively to music, but is shaped along the triangle “music—myth-literary language.” Lévi-Strauss operates on the level of text structuring when he cites such major works as Rite of Spring (1913) and Bolero (1921) as examples of myth transformed into music. He also addresses the larger picture in which myth, music, and literature transfer their function and structure to each other over the course of history. He argues that when Western art music took over the function of

mythology, the first novels began to appear, replacing mythology as a literary genre. Moreover, according to Lévi-Strauss more recently (in 1977), another such passing of function and structure arose: We are witnessing the disappearance of the novel itself. And it is

quite possible that what took place in the eighteenth century when music took over the structure and function of mythology is

now taking place again, in that the so-called serial music has

Susanne Langer, Philosophy in a New Key: A Study in the Symbolism of Reason, Rite, and Art (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969), 288. Hubner, Die Musik und das Mythische (Basel: Schwabe, 1996), 17. | Myth and Meaning: Cracking the Code of Culture (New York: Schocken Books, 1979), 46.

The Diachronic Perspective 9 taken over the novel as a genre at the moment when it is disappearing from the literary scene.”

Lévi-Strauss leaves undeveloped the idea of the reversed roles of serial

music and the disappearing novel in this final passage of the book. However, it is significant that he stresses that mythic thought did not vanish from Western culture over the last several centuries—it simply changed its form of expression. If it could ever be proven that a certain type of twentieth-century music

replaced the function of the novel, how would that correlate with Meletinsky’s study demonstrating the remythification of the twentieth-century novel? Although Lévi-Strauss refers to the 1970s and Meletinsky focuses on the novels up to the late 1960s, the chronological margin between the two periods is too thin to reveal any dramatic changes within the genre of the novel. If myth now resides in the novel, as Meletinsky wants his readers to think, then, following Lévi-Strauss’s theory, music would likely “take over” the mythic component from this disappearing genre. Like Lévi-Strauss, I will leave the issue open. It imparts a sense of circularity through the idea of passing the mythic component of culture from one medium to another. It is

important to remember, however, that what Meletinsky understands by myth is merely its poetics; the Moscow-Tartu school clearly stated that archaic mythic thought could not possibly be resurrected in its original and entire form.”°

The Role of Jungian Psychoanalysis in Neo-Mythologism Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961), via mythic symbols, bridged the archaic and the modern, the collective and the individual. Meletinsky emphasizes that neo-mythologism was really based in “neo-psychologism,” or Jungian psychoanalysis. The latter with its universalizing and metaphorical interpretation of the unconscious play of the imagination, presented a certain trampoline for a huge leap from the psychology of an alienated or oppressed

modern individual to the pre-reflexive psychology of archaic society.”

*Tbid., 54.

Yuri Lotman and Vladimir Uspenski, “Mif. Imya. Kul’tura” [Myth. Name. Culture] in Trudy po znakovym sistemam [Studies on sign systems], vol. 6 (Tartu: Tartu University Press, 1973): 282-95. *Poetika mifa, 3rd edition (Moscow: Vostochnaja literatura, 2000), 297, my translation.

10 A Hermeneutic Construct and a Historic Trend Jung associated the unconscious part of the individual psyche with the collective unconscious, which reflects a central feature of mythology: the awakening of cultural memory. In Jungian theory, this awakening occurs in the individual psyche as dreams or artistic creations. Scriabin intended Predvaritel’noe deistvo (Preliminary Action, 19141915) for his Mysterium as “a collective act””’ and a memory. Each participant must remember what he has experienced from the moment of the creation of the world. It exists in each of us—it is only necessary to call up the experience—it, and the memory. [...] To relive the primal integration is to relive the whole history of the race.*°

Scriabin also proclaimed the importance of the collective memory of mankind in its mythic function of “reliving the primal integration,” independent from Jung, although almost synchronously with him. The composer’s work paralleled the early stages of Jung’s research—in particular, the publication in 1912 of Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido [Symbols of Transformation]—full of mythological images and motifs.”’ The turn to pre-reflective psychology is aimed at achieving wholeness

—that is, the healing of the fragmented personality, in Jungian terms. Wholeness can be attained through ritual and its symbolic forms. However,

a twentieth-century artist who continues to pursue the traditional goal of myth—a reconstruction of the original wholeness of the world—inevitably does so from the position of an outsider, in a personal effort. This highly individual approach is paradoxically combined in neo-mythologism with the tendency for universality. In particular, mixing elements of different faiths

and myths, equating them, using old archetypes and mythologems in new contexts, all are representative features. The aspiration for universality also *>T eonid Leonidovitch Sabaneev, Vospominania o Skriabine [Memoirs of Scriabin] (Moscow: Muzykal’nyi sektor gosudarstvennogo izdatel’stva, 1925), 150. The idea of the Mysterium first came to Scriabin in 1902; the composition was unfinished. Preliminary Action was intended as a preparative composition for the Mysterium, which he never composed; this Preliminary Action Scriabin never completed either, but a considerable body

of his sketches and a verbal text survive. For more detail and translation of the text, see Simon Morrison, Russian Opera and the Symbolist Movement (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2002), ch. 3. *°Scriabin’s remark is quoted by Sabaneev in Vospominania, 83, trans. Malcolm Brown, in “Skriabin and Russian ‘Mystic’ Symbolism,” Nineteenth-Century Music 3 (1979): 49. >’Scriabin’s interest in occult and Eastern philosophies paralleled Jung’s interests of roughly the same period. Jung’s first published paper, Zur Psychologie und Pathologie sogenannter occulter Phanomene (On the Psychology and Pathology of So-Called Occult Phenomena), appeared in 1902.

The Diachronic Perspective I] reveals itself through the creation of a cosmological all-embracing picture of the world in a work of art where history, culture and the present alloy into

one grandiose synthesis. A neo-mythological artist believes in the actual

power of his work to create this synthesis and thus conceives it as an almighty “magic word,” or like an ancient ritual; nevertheless in many cases this ritualistic feature is presented and perceived in an ironic and a playful

manner—for example, in Stravinsky, as I will argue later. The ironic voicing of some neo-mythological creations, as Meletinsky puts it, “expresses the enormous distance separating modern man from the creators of primitive myth.””®

Forerunners of Neo-Mythologism Prior to the Twentieth Century

Sergey Averintsev, a Russian scholar of comparative literature and mythology, finds “moments of high-conscious play with previously known archetypes” in Ovid (43 B.C.—17 or 18 A.D.). Ovid aesthetically flattens different layers of Greek and Roman mythology and allows any degree of frivolity and irony in regard to various motifs. This is permissible because the kind of individual myth making that Ovid uses is free of any life-organizing tasks.°”

Thus, neo-mythology is not really “new,” but stands in contrast to the

collective mythology of the period in which art embodied rather than expressed mythology. The estrangement of art, often expressed in a playful

and ironic form, is inherited by neo-mythologism from the individual mythologies of a literary tradition that can be traced far into the past. However, the special role of myth in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries resulted in new and unique combinations of mythic-artistic ways

of thinking, and it is precisely this pluralistic worldview that makes neomythologism special. Myth no longer appeals only to circumscribed areas of

the imagination, nor do neo-mythological “text-myths” (Minz’s term) appear as stylizations. Instead, Minz insists, myth “infuses the blood” of European artistic culture itself.“° Myth does not inherit a solitary realm in artistic expression, nor does it oppose an artist’s personal outlook. Myth

appears in these texts as one of many coterminous elements. Minz’s *8Meletinsky, The Poetics of Myth, 277. 3%e« ‘Analiticheskaja psichologia’ K.-G. Junga 1 zakonomernosti tvorcheskoi fantazii’’ [The “analytic psychology” of C.G. Jung and the principles of creative fantasy] in O sovremennoi burzhuaznoi estetike [On modern bourgeois esthetics], vol. 3 (Moscow: Nauka, 1972), 113.

Miinz, “O nekotorykh,” 76.

12 A Hermeneutic Construct and a Historic Trend observation regarding Russian Symbolism may also be applied to Scriabin, as I explain later in this chapter. The orientation toward myth in Romanticism 1s habitually described as

an admixture of folklore and fantastic images. The Romantic approach, influenced by the poetics of myth and fairy tale, features direct citations of mythic stories. According to Minz, the subjectivity of the Romantic author is either dissolved into the mythic world and merged with it, or more often this mythic world illustrates certain features of the author’s position. The author’s point of view (the expression of Romantic irony) may dominate over the mythic or folklore-oriented outlook. The Romantics turned to mythology to recapture a desired oneness with nature. Romantic pantheism,

inaugurated by Rousseau and Schiller, can also be felt in Beethoven’s reverence for nature. In what follows, I trace the neo-mythological trend in music from its origins 1n the nineteenth century, which will reveal its specificity against the general Romantic approaches to mythology. Aside from the obvious chronological and stylistic succession of Haydn, Beethoven, Wagner, Scriabin, and Stockhausen, these composers also exhibit common features of neomythologism, including syncretism, a propensity for universality and cosmologism, and an individual approach to common orthodoxies. As previously noted, traces of neo-mythologism are evident as far back as Haydn’s The Creation (1798), where, famously, the archetypal mythologem of creation is reconstructed through the sounding matter. The plura-

listic approach might have taken root in this work, if we trust Lawrence Kramer’s claim that Haydn in The Creation combines elements of traditional Christianity with modern cosmological speculation and a scientific model

of the cosmos.*’ Even more characteristic of neo-mythologism is what Maynard Solomon describes as Beethoven’s “rejecting the primacy of dogmatic, biblical, and hierarchical authority in favor ofa universal, humanistic religion,” the position considered by Solomon as a “compromise between nature worship, enlightened ideas, and Christianity.””* From Solomon’s dis-

cussion one concludes that Beethoven replaced one group of myths with another, and that he usurped dominant orthodoxy. The individualistic nature

of Beethoven’s quest for faith manifests itself in what Solomon calls the composer’s identification with a suffering savior, as well as his disregard for

organized religion. At the same time, Beethoven seeks an “intimate *T awrence Kramer, Classical Music and Postmodern Knowledge (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 81 and 91. Maynard Solomon, “The Quest for Faith,” in Beethoven Essays (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988), 217 and 220.

The Diachronic Perspective 13 communion with a variety of deities,” as he turns to Eastern, Indian, Egyptian, and classical mythology.” Pluralism, a key aspect of neomythologism, emerged in the philosophical writings of the pre-Romantic epoch and dominated those of early Romanticism, for which Solomon’s study provides some evidence. The author points to the tendency to “expand the concept of divinity to include the totality of its manifestations” and “remove the veils that differentiate diverse forms of belief.” Wagner Wagner’s involvement with mythology is much less ambiguous. LéviStrauss, a later analyst of myth, notably saw him as his true predecessor and nothing less than “the initiator of structural analysis of myth.” By enabling

music to take over the structures of myth, Wagner was the first, in LéviStrauss’s view, to become conscious of this process, while in general in “all musical forms [...] music did not really invent but borrowed unconsciously from the structure of the myth.””° Both Lévi-Strauss and Meletinsky point to

the /eitmotiv, with its characteristic systematic recurrence, as Wagner’s major tool for recreating the cyclic and reiterative logic of myth. Certain styles of literary prose characterized by neo-mythologism drew on Wagner’s combination of myth and music—for example, James Joyce.”

If we apply to Wagner the criteria that Meletinsky used to define neomythologism in the twentieth-century novel, allowing for the obvious ana-

chronism, the composer exemplifies a characteristic link between neomythologism and Jungian archetypes rooted in myths and, thus, in the collective unconscious. Wagner’s expression of “purely human intuitions” is comparable to the archetypes of the Jungian collective unconscious: Lohengrin is no mere outcome of Christian meditation, but one of man’s earliest poetic ideals; just as [...] it is a fundamental error of our modern superficialism, to consider the specific Christian legends as by no means original creations. Not one of the most affecting, not one of the most distinctive Christian myths belongs Tbid., 218 and 221. “Thid., 226.

See his analysis of the dramatic role of “The Renunciation of Love” leitmotiv from the point of view of mythic logic in the chapter “Myth and Music,” in Myth and Meaning, op. cit., 46-50. *°Claude Lévi-Strauss, Introduction to a Science of Mythology, vol. 4, The Naked Man (New York: Harper & Row, 1981), 654; and Myth and Meaning, 50-51, emphases mine.

*7See Timothy P. Martin, "The Influence of Richard Wagner and His Music-Dramas on the Works of James Joyce" (Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1981).

14 A Hermeneutic Construct and a Historic Trend by right of generation to the Christian spirit, such as we commonly understand it: it has inherited them all from the purely human intuitions (Anschauungen) of earlier times, and merely moulded

them to fit its own peculiar tenets. To purge them of this heterogeneous influence, and thus enable us to look straight into the pure humanity of the eternal poem [is a poet’s task].*

An element of neo-mythological pluralism is apparent in Wagner’s attempts to reach beyond Christianity to “prehistoric times,” to perceive Christianity as a later variant of the ideas found in German and Greek myth.” However,

his desire “to purge them of heterogeneous influence” is a Romantic ambition to transcend mythic thought.

The hermeneutics of neo-mythologism embrace the aesthetics of religious-artistic hybrids. Wagner conceived Bayreuth as a temple to sacred rites. However, he had to re-actualize myths or conjure up new ones in order to achieve that ideal. It is important to realize that, for Wagner, Christianity was a myth for manipulation and that in general, myths were subsidiary to

nationalist ideology. Middleton is correct in stating that in Wagner’s dramas, “myth, from being the servant of religious ritual, is to become the handmaiden of the new religion, art.””” Wagner’s syncretism likewise foreshadows twentieth-century artistic developments. When discussing Wagner’s role as a precursor of later composers’ involvement with syncretism, it is important to perceive his musical and non-musical structures as a unity. His position as a composer preoccu-

pied with active mythmaking by means of music and word, united in a manner of archaic ritual, also influenced Scriabin. Minz names Wagner as one of the fathers of Russian symbolism: Already at the end of the nineteenth century, Russian symbolist poetry, under the influence of Nietzsche and Wagner, molds a concept of the development of modern art “from symbol to myth”

(Vyacheslav Ivanov), and actively creates innovative “textmyths.””?

484 Communication to my Friends,” in Richard Wagner's Prose Works, trans. William A. Ellis, vol. 1 (New York: Broude Brothers, 1966), 333-34. Wagner refers to “prehistoric times [...] when Speech, and Myth, and Art were really born,” Ibid., 289. >°Middleton, “After Wagner,” 307. >I Minz, “O nekotorykh,” 76. See also Rosamund Bartlett, Wagner and Russia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 65-72; 117-218.

The Diachronic Perspective 15 Scriabin The “neo-mythologism” of Russian Symbolist literature fueled Scriabin’s neo-mythologism.” Minz applied the terms “novel-myth” and “poem-myth”

to several works of Scriabin’s time.’ The philosopher Vladimir Solovyov

(1853-1900), who greatly influenced Russian symbolism, was himself affected by Schelling’s philosophy and its embrace of mythopoetic thinking.

Solovyov offered a view of the world as a myth-like text with specific “characters” and a “plot” about its evolution. He declared that cognitive processes related to artistic processes. In their critical writings, the Symbolist poets Konstantin Balmont (1867-1943) and Andrei Bely (1880-1934) interpreted myth poetically.°* As Minz points out, an irrational worldview was juxtaposed with rational science and literary realism: Any work of art was now equal to myth. On the other hand, it was precisely myth in a narrower sense that became the highest sample for the modern art. Myth was understood as an expression of the prime and fundamental features of human culture; as a “clue” or a “cipher” for comprehension of the deepest meaning of modern history and art. Because the features of pre-logical thinking are easily seen in myth (such as symbolism, the magic function, the limitation of “reasoning,” etc.), the turn to myth seemed to show a path out of the crisis of knowledge. Especially in the 1900s, myth also embodied the collective, “folk” consciousness, which was a social ideal of the time, a way to overcome individualism and subjectivism. To become myth was the goal of

symbolism. In the future, the symbolists believed, the true

mythmaking will be resurrected.” |

It is not surprising that Losev, a mythographer, devoted special essays to Scriabin and Wagner. As Faubion Bowers attests, ancient myths inspired Scriabin’s everyday conversation, and mythic heroes lived in his imagination.”° A full analysis of Scriabin’s mythologism requires an independent

study. I present here only a smaller-scale outline of his version of neomythologism—like Wagner’s, not conceived ironically, yet autocratically On the complex relationships between Russian symbolism and Scriabin’s work, see Morrison, Russian Opera and the Symbolist Movement, op. cit. ->Minz, “O nekotorykh,” 77.

*Minz refers to Zmeinye zvety [Snake flowers] by Balmont and to Bely’s article “Emblematika smysla” [The emblematics of meaning], ibid. >°>Minz, “O nekotorykh,” 83.

Scriabin: A Biography, 2nd ed. (Mineola, NY: Dover, 1996), 319.

16 A Hermeneutic Construct and a Historic Trend fashioning old and new myths. Both composers remodel eschatological myths, revealing their kinship. In his Ring cycle, Wagner adopts myths about the end of the world; Scriabin’s Mysterium was actually intended to cause the end of the world by transforming Matter into Spirit through incantatory music and to bring about humanity’s reconciliation with the godhead. The view of art as a substitute for religion was shared by both Wagner

and the poets and philosophers of Scriabin’s milieu.°’ Brown draws a parallel between Scriabin and Vyacheslav Ivanov and Andrei Bely, who “preached poetry as ancilla theologiae.”””* The key notion here is preaching, to the point of transcending art; as Morrison effectively demonstrated, the composer had to pay for transcendental ideas the great price of his personal

creative silence. Morrison adds that Scriabin went even further than these

poets in his virtually insane attempt to execute the religious rite of his Mysterium by staging it.’ Losev considers Scriabin’s art-religion in a broader context of an acute crisis in European creative thought, separated from a specifically Russian context: In the individualistic anarchy of Scriabin is the highest achievement of European culture, but simultaneously also its highest negation. One cannot understand Scriabin without understanding and suffering through these terrible centuries of the new European culture in their distinction from the Middle Ages. Only the independence and the divinity of “self,” of which the new Europe dreams—the Europe that exterminated religion and church—only these metaphysical matters make Scriabin and his philosophy understandable. Having transferred onto “self” religion, church, culture, science, and all being, Europe comes to its own negation. [...] Scriabin again becomes astrologer and alchemist, magician and miracle-maker. Scriabin’s “self” is the prophesy of revolution and of death of European gods.”

Such post-Wagnerian composers as Scriabin, Schoenberg, and Stockhausen express mythologism through religious or theosophical precepts, although they also make direct references to known myths (e. g., Prometheus in Scriabin, the Older Edda in Wagner). Typically, these religious or

theosophical concepts extend beyond traditional orthodoxy, absorbing >’See Malcolm Brown, “Skriabin and Russian ‘Mystic’ Symbolism,” Nineteenth-Century Music 3 (1979): 42-51. **Thid., 46.

>? Russian Opera and the Symbolist Movement, 197.

6° osev, Mirovozzrenie Skriabina, 297.

The Diachronic Perspective 17 elements of myths and other spiritual teachings and establishing new, highly individualized, self-centered, and universalized versions of traditional liturgies. Wagner’s music dramas symbolized religious pathos as redemption, an

element that, as Hermann Danuser points out, infuses his major works.” However, Wagner also “universalizes redemption in a work [Tannhduser|

that is emphatically art-religious and yet critical of the church.” Like Wagner, Scriabin embraces a religious concept of redemption in universal terms. In the period around The Poem of Ecstasy (1907), he pronounced

himself a theurgist who would redeem the whole of mankind from the decline of Spirit into Matter by means of the synthesis offered in his scores. Scriabin perceives “the sacred” in terms broader than any particular institutionalized orthodoxy would allow. Many of Scriabin’s works bear Christian references: his Symphony No. 3 (1904), for example, bears the subtitle Bozhestvennaya Poema (The Divine Poem), and his Piano Sonata No. 7 (1912) is known as Belaya Messa (The White Mass). Other works hint at demonism—notably, Satanicheskaya Poema (The Satanic Poem) of 1903 or the Piano Sonata No. 9 (1913), later subtitled Black Mass. This latter group of compositions justifies Losev’s view that it was not the Christian God to whom Scriabin devoted his work. Paganism and demonism, Losev believes, influenced his music.

Only paganism can be demonic, for only in paganism all imperfections and evils of the world are made divine [...]. It is precisely from here that the demonism of Scriabin arises. Of course, Christianity too feels the demons; without them, it would not understand the evil of this world. But Christianity knows that the demons are evil; for in them it has a true instrument—all this evil dies from facing God’s sacred cross. In paganism, however, one does not sense evil in the demonic. Demons are also divine,

only perhaps, lower in range. A pagan loves his demons and worships them; for him it would be unthinkable to exterminate them. On the contrary, the demonic in paganism represents the beginning of religion and beauty, and the believers are intimately united with the demons. Such is Scriabin, who loves all things demonic, who calls himself evil, but who sees in this his very strength and beauty.” ©! Hermann Danuser, “Musical Manifestations of The End in Wagner and in Post-Wagnerian Weltanschauungsmusik,” Nineteenth-Century Music 18 (1994), 65. *"Thid., 69.

3 Sabaneev, Vospominania, 102.

7 osev, Mirovozzrenie Scriabina, 291.

18 A Hermeneutic Construct and a Historic Trend He is one of the rare geniuses who give us an opportunity to feel . paganism and its somewhat unbreakable truth.™

The composer takes from Christianity the concept of history progressing towards a predetermined end, the apocalyptic vision of the end of the world, a quality that Losev calls “Christian historicism.” Scriabin is a queer mixture of pagan cosmic spirit with Christian historicism. He takes from paganism the most important feature

that distinguishes it from Christianity—the immanent unity of God and the world. But he does not want the pagan stasis and the “eternal return.”[...] Therefore Christian historicism is allotted the pagan joy of divine flesh, the apocalypse becomes an erotic madness, and the redemption and the end of history is found in the individual demonism and heroism of the very tragic hero— Scriabin.”

The chain of cosmological projects, including Haydn’s The Creation, Beethoven’s Ninth symphony, Wagner’s music dramas, Mahler’s symphonies, and Scriabin’s works, continued in the second half of the twentieth century. Wagner envisioned Bayreuth; Scriabin hoped to build a great temple in India expressly for the production of his Mysterium. The gigantic, cosmic

scale of his last unfinished project anticipates Stockhausen’s grandiose operatic cycle Licht (begun in 1977). Scriabin’s mythology foreshadows Stockhausen’s, where the idea of the transformation of mankind through music also resides.

The Synchronic Perspective Hermeneutic constructs change over time. Nevertheless, mythologically rooted hermeneutic constructs possess remarkable stability. For instance, the

“magic” significance of certain numbers, such as three or seven, or the mystic roles of certain geometric figures, such as a square, circle, or triangle, preserve their symbolism through time. In what follows, I will examine these stable characteristics before applying them to analyses of concrete works. First, let us review the specificity of mythic logic and the

mechanisms of the formation and memory of myths. | Tbid., 301. *Tbid., 294.

The Synchronic Perspective 19 The synchronic aspect of neo-mythologism is a particular manifestation

of mythic thought. When we present archaic myths simply as linear narratives we disregard an important vertical dimension of myth as the well of culture. The very nature of mythic thought requires that it be reconstructed,

as Plato put it, as a model (paradeigma) or even “a model of a model” (paradeigmatos paradeigma). The paradigmatic correlation of events in mythos means a precedent, or a sample pattern, repeated in all consequent

events as if they were placed paradeiknunai (side by side, from Greek), contrary to the cause-and-effect linear or syntagmatic progression. Rituals—

the “consequent events”’—-grant the opportunity to reenact myths and explore their cyclical nature. Examples of mythic precedents include the discovery of fire and Persephone’s abduction by the king of the Underworld, establishing the seasonal changes. The reiteration of the initial precedent in rituals is no less real than the precedent itself, so the events of the past, the present, and the future become interlocked with each other. Mythic

time is thus formed. At the bottom of this well one finds a collection of precedents—models for imitation and reincarnation in varied forms. Such imitation allows a reawakening of cultural memory, a remembrance and reactualization of things past, an evocation of the ancestors. This aspect of mythic time may also serve as a hermeneutic model applicable to music, especially when dealing with certain types of stylization or quotation. A style of the past may be treated as a “precedent” for a consequent celebration. The Jungian aspect of neo-mythologism requires that we look at the collective unconscious as a repository of archetypes and their variances in

artistic consciousness. The archetypes retain generic ties with mythic images, even if, in the conscious state, a person is unaware of them. They are not “pre-ordained and inflexible structures, but rather molds from which are produced forms that turn up as entities without being obliged to remain identical.”*’ Lévi-Strauss believes that such a priori structures as geometrical forms are innate to the human mind. In Le regard éloigné (1983), he argues that these forms are biologically rooted: Today, advances in neurology give hope of resolving very old philosophical problems, such as the origin of geometric notions. But if first the eye and then the lateral geniculate bodies do not photograph objects but react selectively to abstract relationships —a horizontal, a vertical, or an oblique direction; the contrast between a figure and its background; and other such primary data

from which the cortex reconstructs objects—it therefore no °7Quoted in Pandora Hopkins, “The Homology of Music and Myth: Views of Lévi-Strauss on Musical Structure,” Ethnomusicology 21 (1977), 252.

20 A Hermeneutic Construct and a Historic Trend longer makes sense to ask whether geometric notions belong to a

world of Platonic ideas or are drawn from experience: these notions are inscribed in the body.

If geometric notions are indeed inscribed in our bodies, human consciousness begins to resemble a computer program; hence the critics of the structural method accused it of dehumanization. On the other hand, how can dehumanization occur where, in fact, a study of archetypes common to all humans seeks to reduce cultural difference? Archetypes, basic images, or motives typically acquire a life of their own, reappearing in various guises throughout cultural history. Their number is limited, and they are understood as universal. Mythologems Migrating mythic images or motives, such as the mandala or the Arbor Mundi (the World Tree), are sometimes called “mythologems.” Following Lévi-Strauss, a mythologem can be said to reflect “the kind of language in

which an entire myth can be expressed in a single word.” For example, a long, elaborate narrative stands behind the single mythologem of the Cosmic Tree in the version used by Wagner in the synopsis of Der Ring des Nibelungen. The term “mythologem” points directly to the mythological roots of a particular archetypal theme or motive and contains a reference to the logic of myth (mytho-/ogem). Minz sees the function of a mythologem as a sign-

substitute for the whole plot, which carries the memory of the past and future states of images used in a text. In this sense, a mythologem is a kind of program of the plot. Because a mythologem can signify a great number of

metonymically similar situations and images, Minz also defines it as a symbol with unlimited meaning, “the sign of ‘everything.’””” A number of mythologems are associated with geometric symbols, such

as a circle, a sphere, a square, a triangle, a pyramid, a cross, or simply a straight vertical line. These figures, which constitute a special class of mythopoetic signs, convey the idea of structuring the universe and often represent a model of the Universe. One of the best-known examples is the combination of circle and square in mandalas (see Figure 1).

Claude Lévi-Strauss, The View from Afar, trans. Joachim Neugrochel and Phoebe Hoss (New York: Basic Books, 1985), 33. See Levi-Strauss's discussion of the mytheme and metalanguage in Structural Anthropology, trans. Monique Layton, vol. 2 (New York: Basic Books, 1976), 144. ™Minz, “O nekotorykh,” 95.

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The Operational Modes and Archetypes of (Neo-) Mythic Thought Due to the reactualization of the precedent from mythic time, repetition replaces the relationship of reason and consequence.”° The interchangeability of elements within a paradigmatic structure results in a state in which “anything is likely to happen [...] any characteristic can be attributed to any subject, any conceivable relation can be found. With myth, everything becomes possible.””’ The combinatory mold thus typifies the way that mythic thought operates. PVladimir Toporov, “Drevo mirovoe” in S. Tokarev, ed., Mify Narodov Mira [The myths of the world’s peoples], vol. 1 (Moscow: Sovetskaya encyclopedia, 1997), 399.

Ol ga Freidenberg and Vladimir Propp, Mifil literatura drevnosti [Myth and literature of the Antiquity] (Moscow: Nauka, 1978), 6.

Claude Lévi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology, trans. Claire Jacobson and Brooke Grundfest Schépf (New York: Basic Books, 1963), 208.

The Synchronic Perspective 25 In the twentieth century, these structural molds take on a role independent of tonality, the long-dominating major structural force. The combinatorial and repetitive molds (the former a characteristic, for example, of aleatorics, and the latter of minimalist music) are important categories of twentieth-century compositional thought. The mythologems sometimes also serve as compositional models. The question of whether composers “consciously” applied these molds and mythologems as compositional models may be answered from a Jungian perspective. The mythologems are attributed initially to the unconscious layer of the human mind. However, in the creative process, a conscious appropriation of an unconscious discovery takes place, and application of archetypes may become self-conscious on the part of a composer. Several

composers that are examined in the present book possessed previous knowledge of archetypal models, as the reader will see from the following

chapters. Here I will cite only brief exemplary evidence supporting my argument. Crumb, who wrote, “A strong initial conception for a piece of music must come from deep within the psyche,” mentioned owning Jung’s books.” In the 1997 interview, Crumb portrayed himself as someone familiar with different mythological traditions, from Greek to Norse, finding inspiration in standard texts on the subject. I have Edith Hamilton’s book on Greek mythology. I have read that book: she is very good on the myths! These are retellings of the myths in a very concise way. She also has a short book on Norse mythology. She has also written The Way of the Greeks, which is one of the greatest books ever written. [...] There is another writer, Bulfinch, who has a book called World Mythology, which I read, and looked through some other books by him.”

Crumb’s approach to myth also involves what Meletinsky ascribed to neo-mythologism as “the universalizing and metaphorical [...] play of the imagination,” demonstrably so in Ancient Voices of Children (1970). Here, Crumb testified referring to an imaginary Indian Ghost Dance, which he described as

"Interview with Robert Shuffett, in Profile of a Composer, 35, and Interview at Rutgers University, December 1997 (see Appendix). In a telephone conversation (January 14, 2001), Crumb also specified that one of his books on Jung addressed mythology. Crumb recalled reading this book early in his career.

Interview at Rutgers University, ibid.

26 A Hermeneutic Construct and a Historic Trend an ancient mythological dance. I used it just as a title [In movement IV], referring to a mysterious character, after reading about

it in one of the books on Indian mythology.” While a neo-mythological author is self-conscious about mythic arche-

types and their universalizing power, and about Jungian interpretation thereof, he or she also relies on numerology—the other “universal’’ patternbuilding structural force behind myths. Jung defined it as the part of mythic

thought that helps “to organize the play of archetypes [...] into a certain pattern, so that a ‘reading’ becomes possible.’*’ Myths strive to establish a state of order in the human mind. Numbers, according to Jung, establish “an

archetype of order which has become conscious.” The numerological structures and symbols often used in myths “not only express order, they create it.”* Numerology is one of the “first principles” of archaic mythology. Another such principle is systemic correspondence between various elements of the world. The French ethnologist Lucien Lévy-Bruhl showed that each totemic group had a mystic association with the land, which in turn had associations with certain colors, winds, animals, woods, rivers, etc. The principle of correspondences will be one of my major tools for analysis of artistic systemology in chapter 5. This principle 1s one of the ways in which

mythology emerges as a system. Correspondences help to create the paradigmatic aspect of a text, and the correlation of macrocosmic and microcosmic elements conveys a universal unity. Twentieth-century culture longed for survival, sanity, healing, and resto-

ration. It is only natural that some composers would reinvent systematic correspondences that evoke mythic systemology. For many centuries, the latter proved useful, as it provided an antidote against the disruption and fragmentation of consciousness.

“Ibid. Ina phone conversation on March 14, 2003, Crumb confirmed that he has never seen an Indian Ghost Dance that has served as a prototype for this movement, and added: “I do that a lot—using something that I have never seen myself, but read about.” 8! Carl G. Jung, Mysterium Coniunctionis: An Inquiry into the Separation and Synthesis of Psychic Opposites in Alchemy in Collected Works of C. G. Jung, trans. R. F. C. Hull, vol. 14 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970), 294. 82 Jung, Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle, in Collected Works of C. G. Jung, trans. R. F. C. Hull, vol. 8, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, 24 ed., (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977), 456. “Tbid., 457.

TWO

The Prime Structuring “Molds” of Myth and Music In a comparative study, Fran¢ois-Bernard Mache defines structural processes that apply equally to mythology and music as “universal procedures

of treatment.” By “universal,” Mache understands that certain formal procedures of both myth and music, due to their similar trans-historical presence in different contexts, are separate from stylistic differences and

historical evolution: Evidently, a number of myths and a number of musics are almost

peculiar to this or that culture, but this does not prevent the existence of certain universals in music being worthy of conside-

ration, just as much as the universality of certain generative thoughts or mythems.!

Mache’s universal procedures of treatment clearly parallel Lévi-Strauss’s

concept of molds. These include binary opposition, repetitiveness, variability, symmetry, and numerical organization. Also related is Lévi-Strauss’s notion of “bricolage,” which refers to one of the ways in which the principle of variability unfolds, but it also can be considered a relatively autonomous means of structuring. Bricolage corresponds to combinatorics, which by itself stands for combinatorial mathematics, the field concerned with problems of selection, arrangement, and operation within a finite or discrete system, and the closely related area of combinatorial geometry. For the specific purposes of comparing myth and music, I use the derivative term “combinatoriality” in place of the more mathematically oriented term “combinatorics.” Combinatoriality is defined as a type of structuring, based on a finite set of elements. Combinations of these elements form larger entities between which elements can be traded. Twentieth-century composers developed an interest in structuring elementary material. While 1n the nineteenth century chord and motive served 'Francois-Bernard Mache, Music, Myth and Nature (Philadelphia: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1992), 22.

27

28 The Prime Structuring “Molds” of Myth and Music as the finite atoms of musical creation, in the twentieth century, especially with Webern, this limit shifted to a single pitch, timbre, and dynamic, all of

which gained independence. “Bare” structures, such as symmetrically organized series, formed the basis of a composition; the search for the components of a single tone led composers to acoustical experiments with the sources of sound. As other structural forces began to co-exist with tonality, the prime structural molds grew increasingly independent from the logic of tonal relationships. Though these molds were always part of music, the tonal system obscured their pure and untamed forms.

I will begin with the most prominent of all Lévi-Strauss’s “molds”— binary opposition, because of its special role in mythic thought.

Binary Opposition Lévi-Strauss considered binary opposition the major characteristic of mythic thinking. The system of binary oppositions with its mediator, as Lévi-

Strauss describes it, plays an important role in smoothing over the contradictions between the polar objects of the human mind, such as life— death, male-female, day—night... Mythical thought always progresses from the awareness of oppositions toward their resolution. [...] Two opposite terms with no intermediary always tend to be replaced by two equivalent terms which admit of a third one as a mediator; then one of the polar terms and the mediator become replaced by a new triad, and so on.”

A mythic trickster (in North American myths, a coyote or a raven) enables a reconciliation of the final opposition, being related to both poles, as Lévi-Strauss demonstrates in the following chart:

INITIAL PAIR FIRST TRIAD SECOND TRIAD Life

Agriculture

Hunting

Herbivorous animals Carrion-eating animals (raven; coyote)

Warfare eee Beast of pre

Death

* Structural Anthropology, trans. Cl. Jacobson and B. G. Schoepf (New York: Basic Books, 1963), 224.

Binary Opposition 29 Analyzing a group of myths, Lévi-Strauss discerns the fundamental opposition “life-death,” which does not offer a mediator (left column). He finds a replacement for that irreconcilable opposition through a similar, but weaker opposition, “agriculture-warfare” (middle column). By embodying elements of agriculture (animals) and warfare (killing), “hunting” mediates between them. Thus the triad “agriculture-hunting-warfare” constricts the initial opposition. Finally, the mediators in the third column are the raven and the coyote, carrion-eating animals, which combine the opposite features of the second triad.

Lévi-Strauss considers binary oppositions in the same chapter of Structural Anthropology in which he draws the analogy between myth and a musical score.’ In his other work, Lévi-Strauss places the opposition between ternary and binary rhythmic groupings at the center of his analysis of Ravel’s Bolero to demonstrate the similarity between myth and music.*

The oppositions of mythic thinking express themselves in music as relationships between the discrete and the indiscrete; regular and irregular; sound and silence; dynamic and static; high and low. In the classical tonal system the hierarchy of tonal functions promoted the inequality of opposites: for example, the dominant, if considered an opposite of the tonic, ultimately subordinated to the latter. In the twentieth-century, under a condition of only a ghostly presence of the classical tonal system, binary opposites frequently come to the foreground of musical thought. Oppositional thinking with mediation 1s characteristic of several major

twentieth-century composers, among them Paul Hindemith and Arnold Schoenberg, whose ideas I have chosen to illustrate this statement. While the binaries in their compositions have been often noted, the idea of mediation,

and indeed the link between opposition and mediation in the context of mythic structure, has yet to be probed. The ensuing discussion deals with two

different manifestations of oppositional structuring and mediating in the output of each of these composers. Hindemith’s Oppositive Thinking: Is Mediation Possible on Earth? James D’ Angelo was the first to point to the fundamentally important role of binary opposition in Hindemith’s work, particularly on the level of pitch organization. In his theoretical writings, Hindemith emphasized the antagonism between tonalities, based on the tritone’s “antagonistic striving *Chapter 11, “The Structural Study of Myth” in Structural Anthropology, trans. Claire Jacobson and Brooke Grundfest Schoepf (New York: Basic Books, 1963), 201-228. “Introduction to the Science of Mythology, vol. 4: The Naked Man, trans. John and Doreen Weightman (New York: Harper &Row, 1981), 666.

30° The Prime Structuring “Molds” of Myth and Music against the tonic.”” This antagonism gains a symbolic meaning for Hindemith, summarized as follows by D’ Angelo: Each character [in the opera Die Harmonie der Welt| embodies a primary mode of being [...] which aligns itself to a positive and/or

negative polarization of thought and action. To symbolize this polarity Hindemith used pairs of tritone-apart tonalities. [...] Overall there are relatively few moments in Die Harmonie der Welt when the principle of tritone opposition, to one degree or another, is not in operation.°

As D’ Angelo demonstrates in his analysis, every key has either a negative or a positive symbolic meaning in the context of Hindemith’s opera, and this system reflects its entire philosophical theme: Hindemith’s overriding theme in Harmonie [...] is that the life of humanity on Earth consists of a polarization of positive and negative forces, which cannot be resolved by humanity’s own efforts of will. Rather than ever being reconciled, these polarities must be transcended and resolved in the afterlife state where there can be a union between human beings and the Harmony of the Universe.’

Absent from D’Angelo’s discussion, however, is the mediation of the extreme opposition between E (which symbolizes universal Harmony) and B) (which symbolizes Earthly imperfection) by a number of inner pairs of opposition, for example, the opposition between Kepler (C#) and his opponents on Earth (G), and between Heaven (C) and Earth (F#). To demonstrate these oppositions graphically, I use Hindemith’s Series J, taken from his music theory, in D’Angelo’s application to the specific tonal organization of the opera, in a transposition to a major third above, that is, C to E:° “Heaven” “Earth”

E B A Ct Gt G C Fe D FB B

“Universal “Kepler” “Kepler’s “God” “Earthly

Harmony” opponents” Imperfection” main opposition

Paul Hindemith, The Craft of Musical Composition, vol. 3: Three-Part Writing, trans. Coman, as quoted in James D’Angelo, “Tonality Symbolism in Hindemith’s Opera ‘Die Harmonie Der Welt,’” Hindemith-Jahrbuch/Annales Hindemith 14 (1985), 104. 7. D’ Angelo, “Tonality Symbolism in Hindemith’s Opera ‘Die Harmonie Der Welt,’” 105. Tbid., 128. “Ibid., 103.

Binary Opposition 31 This particular version of Hindemith’s Series I begins on the pitch E and

ends on B}, both pitches representing the extreme tonal poles and extramusical meanings he assigned to them in the opera. Although the scheme of oppositive-mediating organization here differs from the one suggested by Lévi-Strauss, some pairs of symbolically interpreted keys within the series provide meaningful mediation between the extreme poles. The structure of

the series and the extra-musical meanings attached to certain keys also provide a narrowing of the fundamental opposition between the “Universal harmony” (E) and “Earthly imperfection” (B}). Indeed, graphically, the pair “Kepler-God” (C#-D) is symmetrically equally distant from the extreme poles. The pitch class C# associated with the figure of Kepler is equally distant from both poles E and B) (at the one-and-a half tone). Keeping in

mind that for Hindemith, the distance between the tones defines their relationships, the C¥ constitutes a mediator from this point of view. Since Hindemith identified with the figure of Kepler, the mediating role of this character and his key is especially important.’ The identification with Kepler illustrates that Hindemith’s cosmology is thus self-centered, as is typical for other neo-mythological thought, including that of Schoenberg.

Schoenberg, the Mediator of Opposites Although Schoenberg regarded the term atonal music as “most unfortunate,” its popularity and durability in music terminology may have been provoked by the composer’s own inclination toward opposites. Dualism is a prominent feature in his thought, as several scholars have noted: Robert

Fleisher, in particular, demonstrates that dualism is the main feature of Schoenberg’s opera Moses and Aron.'® The opposition of the “Spirit” (Moses) and the “Image” (Aron) 1s not limited to the subject matter but reveals itself in the music through many elements. Among these are the structure of the main twelve-tone row, the use of opposite extremes of register, contrasting rhythms and textures, instrumental and timbral contrasts, motivic work, and formal organization (the bipartite organization of scenes

and juxtaposition of binary and ternary forms). Fleisher goes as far as to point out Schoenberg’s “predilection for contrastive and oppositional musical design,” and “the polarization of materials,” as well as the dualistic nature of Schoenberg’s “idea” in general, illustrated by many fragments from 7As D’ Angelo points out, in this opera, “Kepler, whose life and pursuits paralleled much in Hindemith’s own life and work [...] represents Hindemith himself.” D’ Angelo, “Tonality Symbolism,” 100 and 128. '°See “Dualism in the Music of Arnold Schoenberg,” Journal of Arnold Schoenberg Institute 12 (1989): 22-39.

32 The Prime Structuring “Molds” of Myth and Music the composer’s theoretical writings.'' The following passages from Schoenberg are examples of his oppositional thinking; the first passage constitutes

a general aesthetic statement, while the second refers to traditional tonal theory: An idea achieves distinctness and validity in contrast with others. __ [...] Musical thinking is subject to the same dialectic as all other

thinking.” In a key, opposites are at work, binding together. Practically, the whole thing consists exclusively of opposites, and this gives the strong effect of cohesion.”

In addition to Fleisher’s commentary, it is worth mentioning that, while

the latter passage is applicable to tonal music, twelve-tone composition, according to Schoenberg, lacks oppositional structure as it no longer features

dissonance versus consonance opposition.'* Therefore, it constitutes a problem for a composer: a substitute for the principle of opposites is necessary. In his 1923 article, ““Twelve-Tone Composition,” Schoenberg singles out two pairs of opposites: old resources versus new resources and old art versus new art, the “new” associated here with twelve-tone composition. As Patricia Carpenter and Severine Neff observe, Schoenberg sometimes called tonal harmony “old harmony,” which shows his preference for the terms

“new” and “old.” The opposition of nature versus culture—the chief opposition in LéviStrauss’s model of mythic structuring—is notable in Schoenberg’s distinction between the laws of nature and the exceptional, that is, not justifiable by natural laws, essence of art. Attempts to base art entirely on nature will continue to be abortive. The attempt to formulate artistic law can at most have the merit of

a good comparison (that of influencing perception). This is a considerable merit. [...] Yet one must never imagine that such miserable achievements constitute eternal laws comparable to the 'Ibid., 30 and 31. '? Amold Schoenberg, Fundamentals of Musical Composition, ed. Gerald Strang (New York: St. Martin Press, 1967), 94.

3 Armold Schoenberg, Style and Idea, ed. Leonard Stein, trans. Leo Black (New York, St. Martins Press, 1975), 209.

Thid., 207. '°See The Musical Idea and the Logic, Technique, and Art of Its Presentation (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), 61.

Binary Opposition 33 laws of nature. I repeat: natural law is true without exception, but theories of art consist mainly of exceptions.’°

Fleisher suggests that the dualism of Schoenberg’s thought may be rooted in the traditional symbols of Jewish mysticism, visualized in a Tree of Life and the menorah. The dualistic aspect of these mystical concepts [...] 1s rooted in the polarities of the human condition: masculine and feminine, active and passive, positive and negative, all surrounding the central axis of equilibrium."'

Whether or not this particular alignment can indeed be proven, the trans-

cultural nature of the Tree of Life mythologem places Schoenberg’s oppositional thinking in a broader perspective, one that sees Jewish mystic symbols as representative of mythic thought in general. The presence in Schoenberg’s thinking of the second feature pertinent to traditional mythic conception—the mediation of the opposites—so far has evaded scholars’ attention. It is likely that the conventional apparatus of music analysis, rooted as it is in the late romantic traditions highlighting of opposites, still blocks our view of mediation. Adorno, in particular, as Rose

Subotnik points out, built his argument along “the negative tendency of dialectics” as to emphasize “the tension of dialectical contradictions.”"= In her shrewd criticism of Adorno’s so-called “negative dialectics,” Subotnik incorporates a view of the modern French structuralists with their attempts to “bring their [...] discontinuous binary oppositions [...] into a system,”

clearly implying Lévi-Strauss’s notion of mediation, as she notices that Adorno “failed to find such a principle in music.”!’ Lydia Goehr, exploring Adorno-Schoenberg correlations, interprets Schoenberg in Adorno’s terms

linked to his “negative dialectics,” thus also highlighting dualism. She writes: The strategy of negation was crucial. The way music voiced truth was not through positive utterances of content or empty promises

of happiness—Aron’s voice—but rather through the oblique, silent, or subcutaneous (formal) relations obtaining between the 16 Armold Schoenberg, Harmonielehre (Vienna: Universal Edition, 1922), 5-6, as quoted in

John F. Spratt, “The Speculative Content of Schoenberg’s Harmonielehre,” Current Musicology 11 (1971), 84. \7Fleisher, ““Dualism in the Music of Arnold Schoenberg,” 27.

18Rose Rosengard Subotnik, Developing Variations: Style and Ideology in Western Music, (Minneapolis and Oxford: University of Minnesota Press, 1991), 35. Tbid., 207-208.

34 The Prime Structuring “Molds” of Myth and Music works or words—Moses’s voice—and the listening public. But yet—and here was the profound conflict—there could never be the one (pure) voice without the other (impure) voice.”

Although John Covach sought to deconstruct dualism as a philosophical foundation for musical analysis,”' he nevertheless developed a hermeneutical

concept featuring a dual opposition—that of “this world” (of German masterworks prior to Schoenberg) and the “other world” of Schoenberg’s atonality and his spirituality.”” The refusal to suppose that a tendency for mediation between the opposites within a composer’s world of ideas could be plausible inevitably instigates cultural alienation. Perhaps, a cross-cultural,

or even a meta-cultural approach (revealing similarity of archetypes in multiple cultures) will finally allow the possibility to distinguish mediation in Schoenberg’s music, including the view of the composer himself as the mediator of opposites. It may not be immediately apparent that Schoenberg often progresses from the awareness of oppositions toward their resolution. The composer’s important distinction between style and idea, in the essay collections and the essay of the same name, seemingly only illustrates the binary “dialectics” of

his theoretical thought. However, in other theoretical writings and some musical works he reconciles several important oppositions. A closer look at the dramatic concept of the opera Moses and Aron gives a palpable example of such a resolution of opposites. In the opposition of God and the Hebrew people, for instance, Moses appears as the mediator; in turn, the opposition of Moses and the Hebrew people 1s mediated by Aron. Middleton pertinently sensed this mediating function, when he pointed to Schoenberg’s desire “to heal the psychic split through re-living the original disintegration, to reconcile the Moses and Aron within himself.””° In his ethics as a human being, Schoenberg emphasized the notion of mediation, especially needed in the time of crisis in European culture during World War I. In a 1916 letter to Busoni, who wrote an article about peace, Schoenberg offered himself as a mediator:

207 ydia Goehr, “Adorno, Schoenberg, and the Totentanz der Prinzipien,” Journal of American Musicological Society 56 (2003), 604. *l«Destructuring Cartesian Dualism in Musical Analysis,” Music Theory Online 0.11 (1994).

*2See John Covach, “Schoenberg’s Turn to an ‘Other’ World,” Music Theory Online 1/5 (1995), 30. *3Richard Middleton, “After Wagner: the Place of Myth in Twentieth-century Music,” The Music Review 3 (1973), 321.

Binary Opposition 35 I am suffering terribly from this war. How many closed relationships with the finest people it has severed; how it has corroded half my mind away and shown me that I can no better survive with the remainder that with the corroded portion. Please send me your article about peace [...] If only we two and the likes of us in every country could sit down and deliberate on a peace settlement. Within a week we could pass it on to the world and with it a thousand ideas which would suffice for half eternity, for a half-eternal peace. Yes, men are evil. But not so evil that one could not mediate between them.”

There are more of Schoenberg’s theoretical concepts that feature mediation as a structural foundation. He seems to look for mediation, or a common ground, between the new and the old, suggesting that both the new and the old art express the same laws, the former being a reaction to the latter: [The avoidance of consonances and simpler dissonances in twelve-tone composition] is, presumably, just one manifestation of a reaction, one that does not have its own special causes but derives from another manifestation—which it tries to contradict, and whose laws are therefore the same, basically, as its own.

A later time will perhaps (!) be allowed to use both kinds of resources in the same way, one alongside the other, just as recently a mixed style, partly homophonic, partly polyphonic, permitted these two principles of composition (which in fact differed far more) to mix—although it would be stretching a point

to call it a happy mixture.”

Schoenberg’s notion of unity, which stretches beyond tonality or atonallty, is primarily thematic in nature. This mediates the opposition between the

tonal and the atonal. Schoenberg is equally concerned with the overall wholeness and unity of a composition in his tonal theory and in his atonal music. In tonal theory, his concept of “monotonality’’and his care for proper

voice-leading, rather conservative compared to other aspects of his tonal theory, aim to create a coherent unity. The perfection of voice-leading allows for linearly justified progressions to remote regions. Stretching beyond tonal

theory, Schoenberg preferred the all-inclusive labels “pantonal,” “polytonality,” and “pantonality,” all of which emphasize the notion of unity, as opposed to the destructive “atonality.”In remarkable contrast to Rudolph “Ferruccio Busoni, Selected Letters, trans. Antony Beaumont (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987), 419. 2 Schoenberg, Style and Idea, 207.

36 The Prime Structuring “Molds” of Myth and Music Réti, who meticulously limited the term pantonality only to the area of the pre-twelve-tone extension of tonal language,”° Schoenberg would rather use the same term, “tonality,” for the new contents, such as the twelve-tone series. His wide definition of “tonal” reaches beyond those historical periods and styles that were traditionally associated with tonality in the narrower sense. Schoenberg implies the underlying presence of tonality even in the so-

called “church modes” and sees a parallel between that era and modern times: If one insists on looking for names, “polytonal” or “pantonal” could be considered. Yet, before anything else, we should determine whether it is not again simply “tonal” |...]. There has been no

investigation at all of the question whether the way these new sounds go together is not actually the tonality of a twelve-tone series. It is indeed probably just that, hence would be a phenomenon paralleling the situation that led to the church modes, of which I say [the following]. The effect of a fundamental tone was felt, but since no one knew which tone it was, all of them were tried.”’

Thus it is clear why Schoenberg disliked the term “atonal.” Again, a unifying tendency, with its characteristic ahistorical color, underlies this thought. In the quoted passage, both the church modes and atonality meet under the general classification “tonal.” Schoenberg’s definition of tonality grows to an all-embracing category, broad enough to mediate between diffe-

rent types of pitch organization, such as modality, atonality, twelve-tone system, and polytonality. An example of mediation appears in Schoenberg’s own tonal theory.

Three out of four musical examples on page 3 of Structural Functions of Harmony demonstrate “roving harmony” processes in which “no succession of three chords can unmistakably express a region or a tonality” (Figure 4).”*

Schoenberg’s introduction of roving harmonies early in his textbook, as opposed to a later discussion as in most tonal harmony texts, speaks to the importance the concept had for Schoenberg. One explanation of this special significance 1s the mediating role of roving harmonies between tonality and atonality. In tonal music, this type of harmonic progression has typically served as a tonally unstable transitional passage, as Schoenberg notes in his commentary on the examples. Within an atonal composition, the same type Rudolph Reéti, in Tonality, Atonality, Pantonality (New York: Macmillan, 1958), 69, describes pantonality as “an atonal tonality” with “movable tonics, tonics of different kinds.”

77 Arnold Schoenberg, Theory of Harmony, trans. Roy Carter (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1978), 432. [emphasis mine] 8 Amold Schoenberg, Structural Functions of Harmony (New York: Norton, 1954), 3.

Binary Opposition 37 of progression, where voices are linked exclusively on a linear melodic basis,

would be recognized as commonplace. It can be found easily in Schoenberg’s own atonal music. (See Figure 5 for an example from his piano piece op. 11, no.2.) Another fragment from the same piece looks even more like

Schoenberg’s textbook illustration of roving harmonies because of the presence of triadic chords, although brief and elusive. (These are circled on Figure 6.) Here, a moderate tempo permits one to discern triadic harmonies, such as F-A}-D} in measure seven; its enharmonic return at the end of the same measure (F-G#-C#); the second inversion of the triad E-G-B 1n measure

eight, upper staff; and the two chords that represent the first inversion of triads F-A}-C and C4-E-G¢# in measure eight. FIGURE 4: Schoenberg’s demonstration of roving harmonies, in Structural Functions of Harmony, page 3

| z fo 3 : c) Roving

J tbe bd 4 | ba bd ba -

FIGURE 5: The harmonic progressions in Schoenberg’s op. 11, no. 2, mm. 10-13

) , [MaBige| - —— [== eT ne

|| S—= ea we . 18 De , ao

PENes ne ie Js ———— |}

[MaBige] > | ty Pe TNT

FIGURE 6 :Triadic harmonies in Schoenberg’s op. 11, no. 2, mm. 7-8

| eS Pee war a a}

(.\ Vi be hte (R1 _hbe:

a 2 PO st NG et Sts "ee Os Os) ESS? =

38 The Prime Structuring “Molds” of Myth and Music Even though Schoenberg doubted the possibility of a union of opposites, the grounds for their mediation appears in his output both as a theorist and a composer. It is not only in his later works, such as Moses and Aron or even

the Fourth quartet, that he combines “old” and “new” resources in one composition.”’ Even in Schoenberg's early works written prior to his statement of 1923 contrasting the two, Christopher Wintle finds “the integration of the old with the new, and not just the old or the new considered independently.””*° Comparing certain harmonic progressions from Berg’s reduction of Schoenberg’s Quartet, op. 7 (1905) with Schoenberg’s instructive examples from his Harmonielehre, Wintle demonstrates how the former, seemingly more complicated, derive from the traditional procedures of the latter. Moreover, as one concludes from Wintle’s analysis, even the most non-traditional and radical tone relations, which seem to be looking forward to twelve-tone organization, can be drawn from the same “school exercises” and instructions Schoenberg provides when he discusses theory. In particular, old resources are given new life because of Schoenberg’s approval of the dual properties of chords, such as the augmented triad. It can function both as a result of a passing tone in a linear motion or “as a chord within its own right [...] which gives rise to (twelve-tone) systematic symmetries.””' Wintle finds a similar type of triadic connection between Schoenberg’s theoretical-instructive concept, its traditional facet represented in his own composition, and its non-traditional potential in the song Traumleben, op. 6, no.1. Here, Schoenberg’s concept of fluctuating tonality applies as a guideline for the analysis, as well as the notion of altered triads and combined major and minor modes.” Wintle’s is the unifying and reconciling position in acknowledging the co-existence of the old and new, in contrast to the somewhat more traditional and uncompromising approaches of both Allen Forte and Will Ogdon, who analyze op.11, no.1, from diametrically opposed positions, the former viewing it as “Schoenberg’s first atonal masterwork,” and the latter discussing “how tonality functions in it.” In his foreword to the two analyses, Leonard Stein (who, like Wintle, acts as a mediator) admits that Schoenberg, in fact, was “reluctant to define unequivocally the boundaries 94 later theorist describes the Largo of the Fourth Quartet as “an organic synthesis of tonal thought and the strict twelve-tone procedures of Schoenberg’s aggregate-forming compositions of the 30s.” Sylvina Milstein, Arnold Schoenberg: Notes, Sets, Forms (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 184.

Christopher W. Wintle, “Schoenberg’s Harmony: Theory and Practice,” Journal of the Arnold Schoenberg Institute 4 (1980), 51. *"Nbid., 54.

On fluctuating tonality, see Schoenberg, Harmonielehre, chapter XIX.

Binary Opposition: 39 between tonality and atonality.”*’ Hence, the whole field of mediation serves as a kind of “neutral zone’’between the concepts of tonality and atonality. This is because, despite his own theoretical juxtaposition of the new and the old resources, many issues of Schoenberg’s tonal theory imply the possibility of atonal relationships. For instance, his “harmonies with multiple meanings” —the “vagrants”—may occasionally proceed in conflict with the theory of root progressions.”** These harmonies are each open to free interpretation, including considerations outside of traditional tonality. Schoenberg’s binary thinking, his mixture of tonal and atonal systems, is only one of many instances of twentieth-century phenomena that require similar terms (such as “mixture of tonal and atonal’’) for their interpretation.

Other Instances of Binary Opposition at Work Binary opposition and the principles of polarization and mediation also play an important role in the creative thought of other twentieth-century

composers.” I will only point to a few randomly selected cases without elaborating on each. Scriabin is an early example. He claimed that as the result of the performance of the Preliminary Action, “male and female polarization would vanish. The divine androgyny of two sexes in one (as Plato envisaged them) would first return and then become a nullity.””® His contemporaries testify that “Scriabin resolved the opposing pulls of reason by placing himself in the center of the polarity.”’’ A source of Scriabin’s oppositive thinking may be found in Buddhism (part of Scriabin’s study), where one finds an opposition of lower (earthly) and upper (divine) planes, as well as in the opposition of culture versus nature.

By contrast with Scriabin, who attached a highly sacred meaning to opposites and their reconciliation, oppositive structures and materials in Stravinsky’s works show a certain playfulness. Their fairy-tale character apparently does not specifically seek mediation, which would be appropriate Leonard Stein, “Foreword: Tonal or Atonal?” Journal of Arnold Schoenberg Institute 5 (1981), 122.

“Schoenberg, Structural Functions of Harmony, XVI.

The role of binary opposition in twentieth-century music has not been addressed in its entirety; only individual cases have been considered. See the discussion of the opposition “death-sleep,” a very typical opposition of mythology, in Berg’s music: Magnar Brevik, “The Representation of Sleep and Death in Berg’s ‘Piano Songs,’ op. 2,” in Encrypted Messages in Alban Berg’s Music, ed. Siglind Bruhn (New York: Garland, 1998), 109-36. *°Faubion Bowers, The New Scriabin: Enigma and Answers (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1975), 125. *Tbid., 124.

a

40 The Prime Structuring “Molds” of Myth and Music for a sacred myth dealing with the problem of reconciliation of life-anddeath-type polarities. In his light, ironic, and purely representational approach to opposing materials, Stravinsky tends to stress their elementary nature, particularly through notation. The “Petrushka chord,” for example, in its original piano version, employs a visually perceived opposition of white versus black keys, coordinated with the opposition of the right hand against the left.°* Pagan Slavic mythology features the opposition of black

versus white through the White God (Belbog) against the Black God (Chernobog). Stravinsky may have been familiar with this mythological opposition in the libretto of Glinka’s fairy-tale opera Ruslan and Ludmila. Jungian unconscious restoration of the mythically archetypal associated with neo-mythologism may be responsible for Stravinsky’s reconstruction of this opposition, even if the concrete Belbog/Chernobog opposition was not specifically his model. After all, the universal black-and-white opposition constitutes one of the most elementary structures widely employed in myth.

Accidentals act as another kind of binary opposition in Stravinsky’s compositions. At rehearsal number 18 of Les Noces, in the Piano III and IV parts (Figure 7) Stravinsky reinforces the opposition of flats against sharps by

combining them in contrasting descending versus ascending motion. He FIGURE 7: Stravinsky, Les Noces [18], Piano III and IV parts: the opposition of flats versus sharps

. . > > > te 4 te *

Piano III > ajp F ae > ] ye 2 | « «# 2 fF | ’=>

Piano IV

nn ca >

*8See Richard Taruskin’s detailed analysis of the “Petrushka chord” in Stravinsky and the Russian Traditions (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1996), 403-6 and 749.

Binary Opposition 4] uses here a total twelve-tone pitch collection that results from a mixture of octatonic and whole-tone components. Both examples demonstrate how Stravinsky’s compositional ideas were sometimes based on the archetypal binary patterns typical of mythological structuring. In the second half of the century, Crumb in Makrokosmos IT (1973) followed Stravinsky’s path by using the opposition of black and white keys

in modal contexts. Robert Shuffet, in his detailed analysis of the score, notices “‘a dichotomy of black-key pentatonic versus white-key pentatonic, [which] often dominates other textural considerations,” in “Morning Music,”

the opening piece of the Makrokosmos cycle.” Indeed, the passages consisting of all-black and all-white keys are played by separate hands as two variants of a single “sonic-entity,” to borrow Shufett’s term,” the one based on a whole-tone scale. Shared modal contents in both cases serve as a field of mediation for black and white polarities. (Figure 8) FIGURE 8: Crumb, “Morning Music” (Genesis II) from Makrokosmos IT, opening Exuberantly, with primitive energy (J =66])

Piano | A a a ne nn cS Woes as [VIBR. wwvennenerarnrrrrnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnarnr Sempre] =i |

SSS. ——— ——=__2.- => Se ei as =o ee

EL. (hold down throughout)

Crumb uses similar procedures in other pieces of the cycle. In “A Prophe-

sy of Nostradamus,” after the first appearance of Thema enigmatico, the pianist is directed to rotate the score upside-down and repeat the theme. As a result of clef and key signature change, the material which was just played

with only white keys is now played entirely on black keys. Clearly, this second, “black,” variant of the theme is derived from the first, and the single

figure of notation is the evidence of their unity. The mediation between poles, then, resides in this enigmatic notational figure. A remarkable example of combined oppositions of black-and-white and high-and-low is found in “Fantasy-Piece VII,” subtitled “Tora! Tora! Tora! (Cadenza Apocalittica)” of the same Makrokosmos cycle. Here Crumb places 7 white keys on the top staff and 5 black keys on the lower. The resulting twelve-tone aggregate also constitutes a single “sonic entity,” according to

Ibid., 148. |

PeThe Music, 1971-1975, of George Crumb: A Style Analysis,” DMA dissertation, Peabody Conservatory, 1979, 242.

42 The Prime Structuring “Molds” of Myth and Music Shuffett.*’ Clearly, it must have been conceived as a whole, containing all pitch classes classified according to the specific piano arrangement of black and white, low and high, left and mght—a sort of micro-picture of an entire musical, if immanently pianistic, universe. In his earlier famous score Black Angels (1970) Crumb also emphasized the symmetrical aspects of opposites, but in combination with numerology. His preface to the score of Black Angels contains a diagram clearly demon-

strating the oppositions in numerical organization of the symmetrically juxtaposed movements: “13 times 7 and 7 times 13” in the first movement is the direct opposite of “7 times 13 and 13 times 7” in the last (Figure 9). FIGURE 9: Crumb’s program for the Black Angels (from the preface to the score)

L DEPARTURE (NUMEROLOGY) 1. (Tutti) THRENOOY I: Night of the Electric insects 7 times 13

2. [Trio] Sounds of Bones and Flutes 3. [Duo] Lost Bells 4. [Soio: Cadenza accompagnata] Devil-music

/ Ye ‘Duel ae atari Dies Irae)

2 (rate ,

/ | /6. Il. ABSENCE (Trio) Pavana Lachrymae (Der Tod und das Madchen) (Solo obbligato: Insect Sounds)

. {Trio} Saraba ra

| sore Solo obbligato: Insect Sounds)

9. [Duo} Lost Belis (Echo)

\ (Duo aiternativo: Sounds of Bones and Flutes)

\ tI, RETURN 10. (Solo: Aria accompagnata] God-music 11. [Duo] Ancient Voices

12. [Trio] Ancient Voices (Echo) {13 in 7} / 13.[Tutti] THRENODY Ill: Night of the Electric insects Rimes ancl

#) This central motto is also the numerological basis of the entire work 13 times

I would like to draw attention to the oppositional structure in which the composer presented the numbers. The center movement, the seventh piece, which Crumb marks as “the numerological basis of the entire work” in the footnote to the diagram, combines the numbers 7 and 13 in a reconciliatory

manner: “7 times 7 and 13 times 13.” This middle is framed by two “Ibid, 281.

Binary Opposition 43 movements that also contain uniform numbers, instead of being juxtaposed: “13 over 13” in the Sarabanda and “13 under 13” in the Pavana.

Crumb wrote about the opposition of “light” and “dark” in regard to Star-Child (1977). According to the composer’s notes, these oppositions, which underlie the texts chosen for this work, are expressed through means of orchestration: There are certain pertinent references in Star-Child’s Latin texts to “children of light” in the Biblical quote (in “Hymn for the New Age’) and to finding the light in a world of darkness (in “Advent of the Children of Light”). Binding the work together is a sense of

progression from darkness (or despair) to light (or joy and spiritual realization) as expressed by both music and text. [...] The

idea of dark and light is reflected in the orchestration, for the earlier sections of Star-Child favor the darker instruments (the lower brass, bassoons, contrabassoon), while near the end the effect is quite different when the children sing amidst the luminous sounds of handbells, antique cymbals, glockenspiel, and tubular

bells.”

In the context of Crumb’s programmatic ideas for both aforementioned works, oppositions served as the composer’s tools for mythologizing. By emphasizing numerical mysticism and the systemic nature of opposites, he categorized, at least for himself, certain qualities of sound and structure as being either “godly,” or “devilish” (in Black Angels), and “light” or “dark” (in Star-Child).

Both Crumb and Stravinsky visualized oppositions and made them straightforward, sometimes presenting them as inseparable from very basic instrumental or notational ideas, such as white and black keys or sharps versus flats. Stockhausen’s compositional treatment is closer to Schoenberg’s more ambiguous method of dealing with oppositive categories. He, like Schoenberg, theorized on the issue and focused on its application to nontonal music. In particular, speaking about the nature of serialism, he actually conflated the terms “mediation” and “two extremes:” Serialism is only a way of balancing different forces. In general

it means that you have any number of degrees between two extremes that are defined before starting to compose a work, and you establish a scale to mediate between these extremes.” “George Crumb, “Annotated Chronological List of Works,” in Don Gillespie, ed., George Crumb: Profile of a Composer (New York: Peters, 1986), 110-11.

Karlheinz Stockhausen, Towards a Cosmic Music, trans. Tim Nevill (Dorset: Element Books, 1989), 7.

44 The Prime Structuring “Molds” of Myth and Music The two extremes Stockhausen typically dealt with in his early works were determinacy and indeterminacy; other categories include static and

dynamic, and the discrete and indiscrete. An example is his Refrain for Piano, Celesta and Vibraphone (1959).“ Stockhausen divides the material into two parts, placing one part on a transparent band over the other—the paper score—in a manner chosen by the performers. The material of the band constitutes the refrain, which was intended, using glissandi, clusters, trills,

and bass notes, aggressively to disturb the initial “quiet and spaciously composed continuity of sounds” of the main score.*° The composer prescribes six such disturbances over the course of the piece. Judging from the structure, it seems that he attempts to locate that point where the static and the dynamic are reconciled. He writes: Within a static condition, a dynamic formal process is awoken by

unforeseen disturbances; and the one influences and leaves its mark on the other without any conflict arising.”°

The trills and glissandi of the band material are based on the pitches of the main score, over which these former happen to be placed by chance, and the main material is changed at the spot where the band covers it. As soon as

the position of the band is fixed, the composition temporarily loses its indeterminacy, which returns again before another performance. Through this dialectic, Stockhausen looks for a balance between the two extremes— determinacy and indeterminacy—1in finding a point of mediation where the elements of each are present. Karl W6rner also points out the unifying tendency found in Refrain: A single composition can occupy various places on the scale between the extremes of complete determinacy and extreme indeterminacy. [...] These aesthetic forms seem to Stockhausen to be

at the same time forms of thought. A further task is to set up relationships between these forms [...] to bring to a higher unity those distinctions that [...] a scientist can only grasp by means of observation and description [...] and only relate to each other in an abstract and theoretical way.*’ “For analyses of Refrain see Jonathan Harvey, The Music of Stockhausen (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975), 86, and Robin Maconie, The Works of Karlheinz Stockhausen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976), 130. A note by the composer and other

comments on this piece are in Karl H. W6rner, Stockhausen: Life and Work (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973), 44-45 and 106-107. Quoted in Worner, Stockhausen: Life and Work, 44. **Tbid., 45.

*’Worner, Stockhausen: Life and Work, 107.

Binary Opposition 45 In Mantra (1970), which combines electronic and acoustical media, Stockhausen again explores binary oppositions, as noticed by this critic: “Using two pianists, Stockhausen is able to exploit the familiar polarities: differentiation-harmonization, analysis-synthesis, static-dynamic.”** The most

explicit oppositions are those between the serial nature of the composition, on the one hand, and occasional consonances, on the other, and between the conventional piano capabilities and their electronic extension (short-wave radio receivers, modul B modulation circuits, sound projection). The tendency toward reconciliation of various opposites constitutes the pathos of the

work, symbolically expressed in the melodic contour: a symmetrical countermotion (low to high and high to low) 1n the piano I| and piano II parts

at rehearsal number 110. Symmetrical procedures seem to mark a kind of

mediation field, where opposites might neutralize each other.

The Idea of Symmetry and Mythological Twins Many mythologies of the world contain the so-called “twin myths,” groups of myths with antagonistic twins, creating an idea of symmetry. The

oppositions of male-female, day-night, good-evil, and others, are often associated with the opposition between two mythic twins.” For example, among the Kahuilla, a North American Indian tribe, one of the twins, Mukat, who created people and the Moon, competes with Temayauit, who descends to the underworld.’ The symmetrical organization of the mythic cosmos is

illustrated most clearly by the mythologems of the circle (mandala), the World Tree, and others.°' Toporov writes: A regular succession of elements, which are governed by a certain combinatorial text-producing principle, is characteristic for myth and ritual. In this realm, combinatoriality complements symmetry.” *8Maconie, The Works of Karlheinz Stockhausen, 194.

“Examples of twin myths are cited in Donald Ward, The Divine Twins (Berkeley: The University of California Press, 1968), and E. M. Loeb, “The Twin Cult in the Old and New World” in Miscellania Paul Rivet Octogenario Dicata, 31, International Congress of Americanists, 1 (Mexico City, 1958): 151-74. ° “Vyacheslav V. Ivanov, “Bliznechnye mify,”[The myths about twins] in Mify narodov mira [Myths of the world’s peoples], ed. Sergei Tokarev, v. 1 (Moscow: Sovetskaya encyclopedia, 1991), 174. >More examples of symmetrical structures in myths are cited in “Rapports de symétrie entre rites et mythes de peuples voisins,” in The Translation of Culture: Essays to E.E. EvansPritchard, ed. T. O. Beidelman (London: Tavistock, 1971): 161-78. . Vladimir N. Toporov, “K proishozhdentyu nekotoryh poeticheskih simvolov: Paleoliticheskaya epoha,”[On the sources of some poetic symbols: the Paleolithic period] in Rannie formy iskusstva [Early art forms] (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1972), 79.

46 The Prime Structuring “Molds” of Myth and Music Toporov discusses the possibility of applying the mathematical theory of symmetry to the study and description of mythic texts. Along this path, he points to four possible forms of symmetrical transformations: “movement,” “anti-movement,” “mirror movement” and “mirror anti-movement.”” It is not hard to see that these four forms are also characteristic of twelve-tone technique.” The concept of twelve-tone “systematic symmetries” is one of the core notions associated with this distinctive twentieth-century technique. It seems that along with other “prime molds,” symmetry as a structuring principle is fundamentally reactivated in the century’s musical thought. Davorin Kempf’s study of symmetry fuels my argument about the new

release of the “prime molds” of structuring in the absence of classical tonality.°> Although he considers symmetry one of the universal principles of musical form in the history of music, and a specific aspect of repetition, most of his article on symmetry in music 1s tellingly devoted to twentiethcentury repertory. The reason for this, as Kempf concludes, is that literal

symmetry has more possibilities for realization outside tonality. Certain forms of symmetry, such as a postponed double mirror, an example that Kempf draws from the Postludium of Hindemith’s Ludus tonalis, were never used in classical tonal music. The twentieth century introduced not only the most intricate systems of symmetrical interrelations, exemplified by Webern’s String quartet, op. 28, and his Variations from Symphony, op. 21, but also the

concepts of chordal and intervallic structuring based on the principle of symmetry, including the use of symmetrical scales and centric pitch set collections in the harmonic systems of Scriabin, Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Bartok, Messiaen, and others. In addition to this, symmetry defines the construction of musical form on the large scale, as 1s well known in Bartok’s compositions. On a detailed level of consideration, some asymmetry 1s always present in any pair of symmetrical opposites in mythological texts, as Lev Abramian states.°° An example is the pseudo-symmetrical arrangement of archaic social

structures, where “the incomplete symmetry creates a certain element of motion.”’’ This approach finds its counterpart in Stravinsky's music, in the

Ibid. *Wintle, “Schoenberg’s Harmony,” 54. >“What is Symmetry in Music?” International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music 27 (1996): 155-65. “Lev Abramian, Pervobytnyi prazdnik i mifologia [Primordial holidays and mythology] (Erevan, 1983), 157. *Thid., 179.

Binary Opposition 47 key opposition of symmetry versus asymmetry. The composer believed that “to be perfectly symmetrical is to be perfectly dead.””* His ideal structure would lean toward symmetry but then avoid it. Figure 10, from The Rite of Spring, demonstrates symmetry on one level and asymmetry on the other. Stravinsky presents a melody with a simple song form—A B A B structure. When the melodic phrase A returns, it is one-quarter longer than the first (A1). However, due to the insertion of two additional eighth notes (G# and B) in the third measure, both phrases become equal in length (six quarters each), even though the second phrase contains an augmentation of the first thematic element. On a thematic and rhythmic level, the two phrases remain slightly

asymmetrical, yet symmetrical on the surface because of equal phrase length.”’

A B A! (aug) B

FIGURE 10: Stravinsky, The Rite of Spring [132]

men

6a 6a

That the idea of oppositions and their reconciliation is akin to that of symmetry is most explicitly expressed in Stockhausen’s Pole fiir 2 (1970) for two players with short-wave receivers. A critic characterized the piece as a “symmetrical composition that one might almost describe in terms of a classical formal dance where male and female partners execute complementary patterns of movement [...featuring] mirror-image processes and dialogues.” At the end of the work, the “partners” (instruments unspecified) exchange material and achieve parallelism.

Within some other styles of the same period (1970s), symmetrical procedures also play a very important role—consider, for example, the works of Crumb, who widely employed symmetry on a micro-level (the symmetri-

cal disposition of intervals) and on a macro-level of construction, using

8Robert Craft, Conversations with Igor Stravinsky (Berkeley: University of California Press, | 1980), 19-20.

-?On the extensive role of symmetry in both the early and late works of Stravinsky see Richard Taruskin, The Oxford History of Western Music, vol. 5, The Late Twentieth Century (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 125 and 135. °Maconie, The Works of Karlheinz Stockhausen, 167.

48 The Prime Structuring “Molds” of Myth and Music retrograde inversion and other kinds of serial-like techniques.®' This composer even draws a pictorial, unconventionally scored portrait of the mythic twins in his Makrokosmos II cycle—in the piece “Twin Suns (Doppelganger aus der Ewigkeit)’, corresponding to the Zodiac sign of Gemini. The Odd and Even from Stravinsky to Reich

A most basic kind of binary opposition is that of odd and even. In mythology, it is often symbolically associated with the opposition of feminine versus masculine and stability versus activity. For example, as Toporov demonstrates, in some cosmogonic myths the feminine is characterized by the even number four that embodies steadiness and peace. The masculine is personified by the odd number three, the symbol of activity, instability, and dynamic process. Toporov refers to an anthropological study

describing a Siberian ritual dance after a successful hunt in which a slaughtered male bear was struck three times on the back and a female bear four times.” However, as Toporov and other scholars agree, the correspondences even/female and odd/male are not absolutely fixed and can vary even within the same tradition. Only the principle itself, the relationship of oddeven and male-female, remains fundamentally unchanged. Les Noces, with its ritual ecstatic character, possesses a strong symbolicmythological sense of rhythm. In Stravinsky’s music, the odd-even opposition is heard as odd or even numbers of beats in the shifting irregular meters. The composer often alternates even and odd meters, and juxtaposes odd

versus even numbers of rhythmic units within a phrase. Figure 11 demonstrates the opposition of even (2) and odd (1) rhythmic strokes typical of Les Noces. The vertical graphs of the example represent tutti exclamations

“Hoy! Lay!” of the choir and soloists supported by the percussion, juxtaposed to the tenor solo “Letala gusynja, letala.” In Figure 12, four groupings contain different combinations of three elements, creating an opposition of

three (odd) against four (even). In Figure 13, duple opposes the triple structure. The graphic design of the score seems to stress the opposition “low

versus high,” despite the fact that the Gp of the “lower” element is higher than the F of the “higher” element.

©! See detailed analyses of these procedures in Shuffett’s dissertation, 245 and 293.

Vladimir Toporov, “O chislovykh modelyakh v arkhaicheskikh textakh” [About the numerical models in archaic texts], in Struktura texta [The structure of text] (Moscow: Nauka, 1980), 25. |

Binary Opposition 49 FIGURE 11: Diagram demonstrating the opposition of one and two rhythmic strokes in Stravinsky, Les Noces [94]

Hoy! Lay! Hoy! Hoy! Hoy! Letala gusynja, letala Letala seraja, letala FIGURE 12: Stravinsky, Les Noces, two measures before [22], piano I

a2 Awa aw eas MM CAG WT AREY EEE AREER EEGY EW AEG! SE ) eee

FIGURE 13: Stravinsky, Les Noces, three measures before [96], piano LI

pyifi_bl go p35 Ge as SS eee

ae Mirae ii.0S A OY 0A eS 2 DE Ge2ee | We There are many more examples of the games Stravinsky plays with odd and even opposition in Les Noces. These games relate to the ritual of marriage and, correspondingly, the opposition of male and female, groom and bride. The general form of the work unfolds accordingly: the odd-numbered (first and third) scenes are devoted to the bride, and the even-numbered are associated with the groom. The first part of the composition is characterized by female singing, while the second 1s dominated by male dancing. The opposition of odd and even is a part of a larger cross-cultural tradition of attaching sacred meaning to primary numbers. Some of these meanings were preserved by written traditions, such as Ancient Greek numerology, retold by Aristotle. Losev summarizes Aristotelian numerology of prime numbers as the following:

50 The Prime Structuring “Molds” of Myth and Music [Number] ONE is concerned with the nature of even and odd [...] being applied to the even [number], it makes the even odd, and being applied to the odd, it makes the even from it.™

ONE symbolizes unity, the root, the basis. TWO—meaning, organization, arrangement. THREE—eternal mobility and fluctuation.”

The mythological attention to prime numbers seems to be revived in some “minimalist” scores of the second half of the twentieth century. For example, certain pages of The Desert Music (1984) by Steve Reich force

listeners to experience the pure energy of contrast between the prime numbers. At rehearsal numbers 82, 94, and 114, among others, Reich plays with the basic numbers 1, 2, and 3 on the level of grouping (patterns such as

I, 1-2, or 1-2-3 are divided by rests), despite the notated meter or pitch pattern. A typical example may be seen at rehearsal number 94: 1-2 /1/ 1-2

/123/1/... (Figure 14). FIGURE 14: Steve Reich, The Desert Music [94]

cont

l21l2 #l 712aw1 Ww ae” 7: 2 3 l 12 3 ] l

In Reich’s musical thought, a spontaneous expression of the pure energy of prime numbers is combined with the energy of repetitiveness—the other essential feature of mythic thought.

®3 Alexei Losev, Antichnyi kosmos i sovremennaya nauka [Ancient cosmos and modern science] (Moscow: by the author, 1930), 38. “Tbid., 92.

Mythic Repetitiveness and Musical Ostinato 51 Mythic Repetitiveness and Musical Ostinato Repetitiveness, characteristic of myths and rituals, already pervades the concept of mythic time, with its endless recurrences, as Mircea Eliade has proposed. Ancient ritualistic texts are usually highly repetitive, with slight modifications, as 1n this rain-inspiring song of the Pima Indian tribe: Hi-ihiya naiho-o! The blue light of evening Falls as we sing before the sacred amina. About us on all sides corn tassels are waving. Hitciya yahina! The white light or day dawn Yet finds us singing, while corn tassels are waving. Hitciya yahina! The blue light of evening Falls as we sing before the sacred amina. About us on all sides corn tassels are waving Hitciya yahina! The white light or day dawn Yet finds us singing, while squash leaves are waving.”

The following archaic hymn about Mother Holy Earth is by the Dakotas, the Sioux Indians from the North American prairie: And all creatures that live are her songs, And all creatures that die are her songs, And the winds blowing by are her songs, And she wants you to sing all her songs.®”

The use of repetitiveness in mythological structures demands a different understanding of the device, one that goes beyond its traditional interpretation in music.

To illustrate, let’s return to Scriabin. Richard Taruskin claims that Russian music has a predilection for certain types of repetition, namely, literal and sequential. He connects repetitiveness in Scriabin’s music to this Russian tradition. Yet, a wider, cross-cultural and “archetypal,” interpretation of the source of Scriabin’s repetitiveness is possible.

Mircea Eliade, The Myth of the Eternal Return, trans. Williard R. Trask (New York: Pantheon Books, 1954).

Quoted in Melvin Randolph Gilmore, Uses of Plants by Indians of the Missouri River Region, enlarged ed. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1991), 67. *’Trans. A. McG.Beede, ibid., 34. “'Review of Scriabin: Artist and Mystic, by Boris de Schloezer, in Music Theory Spectrum 10 (1988), 165-166.

52 The Prime Structuring “Molds” of Myth and Music Consider repetition of an initial phrase at the interval of a fourth (dimin-

ished, augmented, or perfect), such as the one in the Poéme Op. 32, no.2 (Figure 15). This feature follows the model of binary opposites, represented

by the juxtaposition of contrasting keys, in this case D-G). The common melodic content of both phrases mediates the opposition. Perhaps Scriabin’s

desire to transform matter into spirit finds its reflection in this unique structural formula, for transposing an initial phrase a diminished fourth higher transplants the original material into a remote, “elevated” tonal plane. FIGURE 15: Scriabin, Poéme op. 32, no 2, mm. 1-7

-———_——# phrase, D major ————_____

\ ee

peo £ $ § $ € SS SF $6» Ee Allegro, con eleganza, con fiducia 4 = 84-88

(a= SSS SS Se TS |

3 CT ; ge en

_——— ——— eee —s re

3 be ese 21 y ¥ -~ >> "he See phrase, G flat major ———————_____-

ns TT — , , > > >

CS ES SY SS - aT « ¥ ——— a >t +4 — -—4 5 ——|

_jesees weces | eeges ed == — wilt wil. 4 com s ¢ 4 cd 7

—_ . . |

2 a ees pt} p——

L___—_’LDL™hD>S> ESE SSS

pot SES Fag. ee ee Pam PD rey _ prem :

eel oe |e ee Po |. ee eee Se eae ee Cl. b. ~ wyer a a ae rr

(tres en detors }

ae eee ee ee —

P

V-c. sale SSS SS IS SLL SS E_ SS ES SS ES SS SS SSS aS SS SSS Figure 18, the song Natashka (Le Four), from Pribaoutki (Chansons Plaisantes), contains four such “characters,” or ostinato layers in the piano part (these are outlined on the diagram in Figure 19). Polyostinato is generally one of the most characteristic textures that Stravinsky used. Debussy’s works, such as the symphonic Nocturnes (1899) or Voiles from Book I of the piano preludes, composed in 1910, may have influenced Stravinsky’s application of polyostinato in Natashka, composed in 1914. The possibility of such an influence does not disprove my main argument that archetypal structures, such as the World Tree, receive new life

in various forms in the twentieth century and the fin de siécle. I chose Stravinsky to demonstrate this idea because his use of polyostinato offers a high degree of intervallic and tonal independence of the layers. Stravinsky’s polyostinato cited here more explicitly corresponds to some samples of folk music, whose structure is based on a similar mythologem of the World Tree.

56 The Prime Structuring “Molds” of Myth and Music

f) eee Pom ot |

FIGURE 18: Stravinsky, ““Natashka” (Le Four), no. 2 from Pribaoutki (Chansons Plaisantes), voice and piano version, mm. 15-17, voice part omitted

Obs ee | ets Re | Se

FIGURE 19: The intervallic structure of the piano part shown in Figure 18

Layer Interval

upper M.2 upper middle m.3 lower middle Aug.5 lower M.7

One such folk sample offers a simultaneous presentation of six diverse rhythmic combinations within a given metric segment, stacked vertically in a score (Figure 20), analogous to various species piled vertically on several levels of the World Tree: FIGURE 20: Rhythmic score of a Lithuanian dance-song”’

ti - ti tiu ti - tiut

via hit. u - ti - u - ti u - ti

tiu - ti - ti tiut

do har ll F3

vd dir had

" Quoted in Atlas muzykal’nykh instrumentov narodov SSSR [Musical instruments of the peoples of the USSR], ed. A. Vertkov (Moscow: State Museum of Musical Culture, 1975), 100.

Mythic Repetitiveness and Musical Ostinato 57 In Stravinsky’s music, long stretches of material, sometimes even whole miniatures, such as Natashka, consist entirely of different ostinato figures.

: Because each part is “fixed” in its range and tessitura, the overall vertical multi-layered structure of many of his scores resembles the organization of The World Tree. Stravinsky highlighted the independent function of each ostinato layer in his own arrangements of the piano part of his songs for small ensembles, since those layers literally became separate parts of the

score. The fact that Stravinsky made so many such arrangements 1s characteristic, as if the piano version did not convey fully his compositional idea. (See Figure 21 for a list of arranged songs.) FIGURE 21: Stravinsky’s arrangements of his songs”

Pastorale for Soprano and piano (1907) S., ob., Eng. hn., cl., bn (1923) Deux poémes de Paul Verlaine op. 9 for

baritone and piano (1910) Bar. and chamber orchestra (1953)

Two poems of K. Balmont

for S/T and piano (1911) S/T, 2 Fl., 2 Cl., pf, str. qt (1954)

, . (1929-30)

Three Little Songs “Recollection of ; ;

My Childhood” (1906) for 1 voice Voice (unspecified) and small orchestra (unspecified) and piano

Trois histoires pour enfants for voice no. 1 - for orchestra (1923)

(unspecified) and piano (1915-17) wsira

Quatre chants Russes for voice nos. 1, 4- for 1 voice (unspecified), fl.,

(unspecified) and piano (1918-19) harp, guitar (1953-4) Besides “Natashka,” Stravinsky uses as many polyostinato layers as there are parts in “Tilim-bom” from Quatre chants Russes (Figure 22). ” This chart is based on a list of Stravinsky’s works presented by Jeremy Noble in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, vol. 18 (London: Macmillan, 1980), 263.

py Fl"

58 The Prime Structuring “Molds” of Myth and Music FIGURE 22: Stravinsky, “Tilim-bom,” from Quatre chants Russes J = 108

SOPRANO Efe a ae ee Ti - lim-bom, ti - lim-bom, Za - ga - rye - lisa ké - ziy dom. jTiztimctom TE timctom, __Stve_the_gpt-shed_ fom ts doom!

FLUTE Re et ape em ee Ee ee ee ee 7 i a —— ——

we ealeee Sys)ele ee eee GUITAR FAR SSCS EER SSCS EER CCS S EER EDS OSS EEE

wie, "OASESE REE eS CEE SSE Se recommended to use plectrum

The World Tree can be perceived in a variety of different aesthetic and stylistic contexts, as shown by comparing the above examples to one drawn from a quite different composer. Charles Ives’s scores often contain somewhat similar multi-layered structures. Different popular tunes or idiomatic references to popular musics, such as a marching drum cadence, or an “oompah” bass, occupy the niches of Ives’s World Tree. Consider this example from Putnam’s Camp (Figure 23). In his analysis of Ravel’s Bolero, Lévi-Strauss demonstrated the mythological roots of musical ostinatos.’? Mache supported this idea: “The affinities of myth and music suppose a search for universals, of which the ostinato most likely forms a part.””* Continuing my rebuttal of Taruskin in the vein of these two statements, I suggest that literal repetition is not an attribute exclusive to the Russian tradition, but flourishes and reveals its mythological character in some Western styles of the second half of the twentieth century, such as minimalism. Below, I randomly select only one of many possible examples to show the universality of the argument. ® Claude Lévi-Strauss, Introduction to a Science of Mythology, vol.4, The Naked Man (New York: Harper & Row, 1981), 660-71. ™Miache, Myth, Music and Nature (Philadelphia: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1992), 27.

Pp eee

Mythic Repetitiveness and Musical Ostinato 59 FIGURE 23: Ives, Putnam’s Camp, mm. 27-28”

[27] fl. el., hn

SS Soo rt temo | a ae aa ra a, ae Gan’ on oa Pe fin ob.—3— Liberty Bell 5 33 ‘ ob., el. [Piano omitted] Massa in de Coid Ground

tpt. Arkansas Traveler

NS Se; 0 IEEE WF DE NES D AE CURTAEE OV AUTEN GRSRREE ° SUSE SRE: SCRE an EOF WS

r vin. A —_ en... . onan, A —I— 3 —3—

eh eee ee

25 ee Se Se ee a mpony ¢ Y g 1 g Y g y gi 2 poy

Strb., a | tuba ——— —Fidelis 3 Semper

Wa.ta) bq 7od 3 —? rawd rc?DIEESE eevee e4e oe mag De gd HE, OF NOE ES A, ED LT, AAAS CET a rere L— mf ue 9 wl a f eb., ve. 7 7 7 p 7 J 7 7 1 p77 ee le call

3

The Meaning of Ostinato in Minimalism: Steve Reich’s The Desert Music Mache pointed to minimalist music as a reaction to serialism, known for its avoidance of repetition. The aversion of neo-serialist composers to all ostinato has been very strong. [...] It is this ostracism which has in turn given rise to the simplistic approach of the American minimalists. There

is nothing surprising in this: linking all their activity to the The identification of tunes is provided by Jonathan Kramer in “Postmodern Concepts of Musical Time,” Indiana Theory Review 17 (1996), 54.

60 The Prime Structuring “Molds” of Myth and Music discursive powers of the consciousness in the fifties and sixties, they apparently felt a kind of sacred horror before a profound

force endowed with such a dangerous potential for stasis. [Schoenberg’s] conception of note combinations was threatened by the works of composers such as Bartok or Stravinsky, in which the use of ostinato illustrated another means of escape from tonal

routines.’

Although Mache’s idea of ostinato providing “an escape from tonal routines” seems plausible by itself, and the juxtaposition of serialism versus minimalism is justified, he may be mistaken in dismissing the use of ostinato in the twelve-tone method. In fact, the continuous recycling of the initial row does create a kind of ostinato. Moreover, Schoenberg’s music in general is

not totally devoid of repetition. Crumb notes: “Curiously, both types [of music, the ‘non-repetitive’ and the ‘minimal’] are represented in Schoenberg’s music [in particular,] the ‘minimal’ in the Sommermorgen an einem See from the Five Pieces for Orchestra.”” In what follows I argue that, although seemingly mutually exclusive, both serialism and minimalism are

comparable in their mythic components. Each of these stylistic trends explores different aspects of mythic thought. For Mache, neither minimalism nor modernism proves to be a successful experience along the path that connects music and the mythological. Here is his critique of minimalism: American neo-primitivism has rarely managed to endow its ostinati with the mythic authenticity of certain real, primitive musics, their sparkling superficiality most often proving to be a kind of sound-carpeting rather than an evolution of profound images.”

This passage seems to express the personal aesthetic preferences of the writer, who is also a composer devoted to the truly “mythic” spirit, with dozens of pieces in his output whose titles reflect Ancient Greek myths. Nevertheless, Mache was not alone in reproaching minimalism for its super-

ficiality. Another critic called it “pseudo-art for cultural bottle babies.”” Clearly, at least part of the reason for this denigration lies in the fact that the minimalist composers most directly applied the “primitive” tool of repetition as a dominating and organizing force, seemingly for the sake of repetition itself. 7®Mache, Myth, Music and Nature, 37.

"The Profile of a Composer, 18. ® Mache, Myth, Music and Nature, 37.

™1an Macdonald, “What Is the Use of Minimalism?” The Face 38 (March 1987), 109.

Mythic Repetitiveness and Musical Ostinato 61 The text of Steve Reich’s monumental The Desert Music exemplifies such a philosophy. Reich found support in the poetry of William Carlos Williams; the strophe he chose for movement IIIB, in its original layout by Williams, is reproduced here: it is a principle of music to repeat the theme. Repeat and repeat again, as the pace mounts. The theme is difficult but no more difficult than the facts to be

resolved.”

In this verse from the poem 7he Orchestra, Williams assigns a task to

music: “the facts to be resolved.” In mythic thought, too, the power of repetition serves as a magic tool to resolve certain tasks. As Mache points out, an ancient hunter believed that if he repeated the name of the animal many times during the pre-hunting ritual, his success in the hunt would be assured. Mache notes, moreover, that in myths similar motifs can be repeated indefinitely.*

The idea of repetition reveals itself in the composition on three levels apparent through Ian LaRue’s categories of “large,” “middle,” and “smal!” dimensions. The first lies in the composition’s arch form. As Figure 24 demonstrates, the arch form is redolent of many aspects of the structure of The Desert Music. Beginning with movement IIIc, Reich repeats the same harmonic material (slightly changed), previously employed tempi, and twothirds of the verbal texts. FIGURE 24: Large-dimension shape of Steve Reich’s The Desert Music

movements | II Ila Ib Ile IV V

textform x A B C B A-gsy harmonic

cycles A B | [-------C-------] B' A’

tempo F M M S M M _ F

Quoted in the foreword to the score, Copyright © 1954 by Williams Carol Williams. The Orchestra, from Pictures from Breughel and Other Poems, originally published by New Directions Publishing Corp. * Mache, Music, Myth and Nature, 9.

62 The Prime Structuring “Molds” of Myth and Music In its middle dimension, The Desert Music is characterized by the use of

ostinato in what Reich termed “harmonic cycles.” These are a series of pulsing chords; each series is replicated a number of times until it shifts to

a new textual, rhythmic and timbral version. An example of the new appearance of the first harmonic cycle, for instance, can be found at rehearsal number 22. Figure 25 shows the timeline analysis of a single harmonic cycle, including a four-bar introduction and a five-bar harmonic cycle taken from

the opening measures of the score. The diagram shows three layers of orchestral texture (a, b and c) as they create the increasing and decreasing sound waves along with the larger crescendo and diminuendo of the whole piece (shown on Figure 25 as > ). FIGURE 25: Timeline analysis of the “harmonic cycle I” of Steve Reich’s The Desert Music

C--------------- eee

eee b--------b---------------b----ee © eel °c [5/4 - -|6/4 - - - |4/4 - -| - - -][6/4 - - -| --- |---| - - -/4/4--]

l23456789

“Intro”

On the score’s micro-level, Reich uses a permanent, repeating pulsation of the chords. For the opening, for example, he chooses the eighth-note as the “atomic” ostinato unit; ultimately, the composer breaks up a single chord into a number of its replications. In Reich’s own words, the music represents a kind of chorale, only instead of individual chords sounding for a given length of held notes, they are pulsed; instead of a steady tone you get rapid eighth notes repeating over and over again, which sets up a kind of rhythmic energy that you’d never get if the notes were sustained.”

The meaning of repetitions in a minimalist composition, like The Desert Music, differs from that in Classical music, where it served as the rational articulation of a musical idea. The meaning of minimalist repetition can be

related to archaic ritualistic speech formulas, rather than to logically constructed speech, in which the rules of rhetoric were the recognized counterparts. In an archaic ritual, repetitions are typically arranged 1n a certain order, as Lévi-Strauss emphasized: ®°Steve Reich, The Desert Music, author’s preface to the score (New York: Hendon Music, 1985). 3 Steve Reich, The Desert Music, in Steve Reich in Conversation With Jonathan Cott, cover from LP sound recording 79101, Electra/Asylum/Nonesuch, 1985.

Mythic Repetitiveness and Musical Ostinato 63 [ritual] gives the impression of “slow motion” camera-work mark-

ing time to the point of stagnation, it [...] goes in for a riot of repetition: the same formula must be repeated a great many times

running, or alternatively, a sentence containing a very slight meaning is sandwiched, and almost concealed, between accumulations of identical and meaningless formulae. The Iroquois and Fox rituals provide striking examples of such repetitions of the same formulae: thrice, four times, once, thrice [...]. During a single phase of the ritual, the same formula may be uttered consecutively in blocks of ten, twelve, twenty and twenty-five repetitions.”

Note that the blocks of repetitions in these rituals are of irregular length, resembling the principles employed in The Desert Music. As demonstrated

in Figure 26, Reich uses different-length blocks of repetitions of the replicated “harmonic cycle.” Even though each harmonic cycle consists of the same material, its duration varies. Cycles alternate between five, four, and sometimes three measures. Figure26 shows the first section of the first movement, where the harmonic cycle replicates twenty times before it appears in a new rhythmic, textual and timbral version at rehearsal number 22. FIGURE 26: Steve Reich,7he Desert Music, I, opening fragment [1]-[22]. The irregular durations of “harmonic cycle I,” with crescendi and decrescendi (in measures).

(4)+5,4, 4,4,5,4.5,4,.445,4,4 4 5,4 5, 4,4 8,3, 3 OOOO SOS SOS LOS OWLS SO SOS OO SOO OT OTC SOOO SOOO SOK

Besides the irregular length of each harmonic cycle, the composer also chooses irregular meters within each block. The crescendo and decrescendo articulate the phases of the continuum; after each such “fade in-fade out” cycle, a listener hears the cycle as complete. The similarity between some of Bartok’s works and The Rite of Spring, on the one hand, and compositions like The Desert Music, on the other, has

a deeper basis than just stylistic influence. Their connection lies in the reconstitution of the mythic logic of reiteration—in neo-mythologism. The insightful scholar 1n the field of myth and music comparisons, Eero Tarasti,

suggests that mythic references may be produced by means of rhythm, through imitation of a dance performed in a mythic ceremony.® This approach is justified by such examples as Les Noces and The Rite of Spring. Many twentieth-century stylistic idioms were born as a result of interactions *47 évi-Strauss, referring to an ethnographic study by T. Michelson, The Naked Man , 673. ® Myth and Music. A Semiotic Approach to the Aesthetics of Myth in Music, Especially That of Wagner, Sibelius and Stravinsky (New York: Mouton, 1979), 75.

64 The Prime Structuring “Molds” of Myth and Music between diverse cultures, in which archaic layers of mythology were still alive, including Russian and Hungarian paganistic cultures, and the nonWestern, traditional and pop cultures of interest to the minimalists.*° These cultures became the channels through which the mythological archaic layers of consciousness transmitted themselves into the sophisticated Western professional musical culture of the twentieth century.

“The Quest for the Invariant”: Variability and Combinatoriality Both in archaic mythic texts and in some twentieth-century “neomythological” texts, repetition provides the ground for variability. The goal

of variability, the feature so typical of mythological thought, can be characterized in the words of Lévi-Strauss concerning the essence of the structuralist approach: “it is the quest for the invariant, or for the invariant elements among superficial differences.”*’ Myth seems to be collecting variants of the same idea, or archetype, even within one story; this archetype reveals itself through its multifarious appearances. Because of the paradig-

matic character of mythic consciousness and the cyclic nature of mythic time, a precedent is kept as an invariant of multiple replicas and versions of the same event. Transformations of a mythical hero constitute another form of mythic variability.*® Lévi-Strauss writes: Mythic thought operates essentially through a process of transformation. A myth no sooner comes into being than it is modified through a change of narrator. [...] Some elements drop out and are replaced by others, sequences change places. [...] Theoretically, at least, there is no limit to the possible number of transformations.®

“Terry Riley and La Monte Young, for example, led an Indian lifestyle and played nonWestern music regularly, and Reich admitted the influence of jazz and flamenco on his mature works. For an extended discussion of both non-Western and Western influences on these minimalists, see Keith Totter, Four Musical Minimalists (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), especially 247-248. 87 Myth and Meaning (New York: Schocken Books, 1979), 8.

*8Toseph Campbell, Hero with a Thousand Faces (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968).

®°1 évi-Strauss, The Naked Man, 675.

Variability and Combinatoriality 65 Mythic thought also is characterized by combinatoriality because the paradigmatic sequence implies interchangeability of elements.” There is

nothing “new” in the mythic world, which 1s fundamentally uniform: everything that exists only repeats, with slight variation, the initial order of things. Variability works on different levels of construction in mythic texts. An example of this can be drawn from Lévi-Strauss’s analysis of the myth of Oedipus.”! He groups the mythical motives into vertical columns by the common features they share, even though those motives at first seem to be different and to belong to different time periods of the story. After a detailed consideration and comparison of columns, it appears that each consists of variants of the same motive; only by considering all the variants can one understand the archetypal message of the myth. On this level, variability of myth is valid within one mythic story. Another level of variability has to do with different versions of the same myth, as it is modified by a myth-teller.

Lévi-Strauss, who points to a certain recycling of the same mythic themes, writes of mythic thought as “a kind of intellectual “bricolage’,” and of the myth-maker as a “bricoleur” who deals with “a set of tools and mater-

ials which is always finite.””’ The finite set of twelve tones—the row— , comes to mind as a parallel. It would be an oversimplification to speak about the idea of twelve-tone music in general as offering more “finite sets of tools and materials” than does tonality, because one then would have to abstract from the non-pitch parameters of a twelve-tone composition. The bricolage,

or manipulations of the row, is the main structuring idea of twelve-tone music, while in tonal music, thematic transformations are subordinate to the logic of tonality. The row is a subject for variability, but not for extension or renewal of its contents, recalling Lévi-Strauss’s description of the typical operations of the mythic mind. By contrast, a non-mythic (scientific) mind

operates in a way that is not limited to a finite set of transformations but “opens up the set being worked with.”

Mikhail Bakhtin writes about “the reversibility of moments in a temporal sequence,” and “their interchangeability in space” when describing the chronotope of early Greek literature (apparently influenced by myths). “Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel,” in The Dialogic Imagination, ed. Micharl Holquist, trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981), 100. ”! Structural Anthropology, 210-13. Claude Lévi-Strauss, The Savage Mind, trans. George Weidenfeld (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1966), 17. *Thid., 20.

66 The Prime Structuring “Molds” of Myth and Music Not only has the mythic quality of twelve-tone music remained unnoticed, but this music has been criticized for a total absence of mythological imagination. Mache especially believes that modernist formalism prefers linear development, which reflects our modern world view with its “concern [...] for constant industrial development [...] and the perpetual mnovation necessary for maintaining the cycles of consumption.” By contrast, Mache implies, the time of myth is non-linear, and the significance of myth lies in the repetitions of the same motives that build “one eternal present.” Despite this criticism, it is through variability, the cornerstone of serialism, that modernism nevertheless exhibits its neo-mythological aspect. Modernism has its own mythology, one engaged with the idea of eternally recycled series. It is variation, including Schoenberg’s principal concept, derived from Brahms, of developing variation, that in the composer’s mind seems to mediate between the two opposites—repetition and contrast. Schoenberg’s model of music suggests a situation where “variation almost complete-

ly takes the place of repetition.””? Schoenberg’s beloved notion of historic progress might not look so totally irreconcilable with the idea of repetition,

if one refers to the Old Testament as Schoenberg’s possible conceptual model.” The Old Testament has commonly been viewed as the first Western written history of mankind, introducing the sense of a linear unfolding of history into the Western European mentality. Whereas this would represent the diachronic aspect of the text, its synchronic aspect reveals itself through similar motives that are repeated throughout the Old Testament and through the recurrent miraculous events and ritual practices associated with this text.

Schoenberg’s special interest in the Old Testament may have been reflected in the structure of his own thought. The idea of eternal recurrence in the form of spiritual rebirths is found in the poetic libretto Schoenberg wrote for his Biblical oratorio Die Jacobsleiter (1922, unfinished). Three

related sources influenced the text: the fragment Jacob Ringt from the autobiographical text Legender (1898) by the Swedish playwright August Strindberg (1849-1912), the philosophical novel Seraphita from La Comédie humaine by Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850), and the writings of the Swedish mystic Emmanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772).”’ 4Mache, Myth, Music, and Nature, 9.

Schoenberg, Style and Idea, 102. See Alexander L. Ringer, Arnold Schoenberg: The Composer as Jew (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990). "For more detail on the effects of Swedenborg, Strindberg and Balzac on Schoenberg see Hanz H. Stuckenschmidt, Schoenberg, His Life, World and Work, trans. Humphrey Searle

(New York: Schirmer, 1977), 234-6, and Walter B. Bailey, ed., The Arnold Schoenberg Companion (London and Westport: Greenwood, 1998), 25.

Variability and Combinatoriality 67 The second part of Schoenberg’s libretto of Die Jacobsleiter describes the fragmented beings—the doubters, the rejoicers and the indifferent—who, assisted by the Archangel Gabriel, go through a series of rebirths to achieve the status of wholeness. It is through the notion of multiple rebirths that Schoenberg’s adaptation of Swedenborg-Balzac-Strinberg connects him also to theosophy. The importance of the idea of eternal recurrence, presented in the poem in philosophical and mythological terms, has also been noticed on the level of compositional thought of both Schoenberg and his Viennese

pupils.” Lévi-Strauss’s notion of bricolage corresponds to such features of twelve-tone method of composition as interchangeability of direction and the opportunity for “producing strongly related configurations which 1n sound

are essentially different.””’ From a more general perspective, looking at -Schoenberg’s own mythmaking and his interest in combining elements of different mythological systems, his preference for variation would seem a natural choice. Lévi-Strauss’s idea that myth consists of all its variants corresponds to Schoenberg’s idea of a piece of music as a unity that results from the sum of all its variants, that 1s, the variants of the same row. “It is all ‘the same thing’ [...] It really does not in any way exist ‘in itself’? but only in view of the possibility of the entirety”—1in these words Adorno characterizes

the thematic material that undergoes variation in a work by Schoenberg.'” Moreover, Adorno’s view of Schoenberg’s variation fuels the argument

regarding neo-mythologism. He emphasizes that Schoenberg calls his material the “model,” and thus firmly established thematic material “is of such a nature that to attempt to secure it is tantamount to varying it.”!”’ Compare this to Plato’s presentation of myth as a model (paradigma) that is constantly varied through consequent incarnations. Webern’s interest in metamorphosis and the associated practical application of this concept in his music—serial transformations—finds its correlation in the mythic notion of metamorphosis. As is well known, Webern was *8On the idea of cyclical time in the music of the Second Vienna School see Robert P. Morgan, “The Eternal Return: Retrograde and Circular Form in Berg,” in Alban Berg: Historical and Analytical Perspectives (New York and Oxford: Clarendon, 1991): 111-149,

and Manfred H. Schmid, “Fortschrittsdenken und Zeitbewusstein in der Musik,” Musicological Annual 26 (1990): 5-16.

”Schoenberg’s description of the Miracle Row cited in Alexander Ringer’s “Schoenberg’s Last Musical Utterance,” Journal of the Arnold Schoenberg Institute 6 (1982), 88. '0Theodor W. Adorno, Philosophy of Modern Music, trans. Anne G. Mitchell and Wesley V. Blomster (New York: Seabury Press, 1973), 55-6.

tid.

68 The Prime Structuring “Molds” of Myth and Music familiar with this concept from Goethe’s writings. “Metamorphosis or trans-

formation is a mythological sheath for the idea of development,” Bakhtin writes, referring to Hesiod’s Theogony, which presents the mythic theme of metamorphosis in nature.'” FIGURE 27.1: Stravinsky, The Rite of Spring, 4 measures before [33]

—~ = — F = pattie gilt) ile fe eit) Jee Piccolo Cl —— — ———————— — ——

— — a2 —=

Variability and combinatoriality in non-twelve-tone styles are wellknown, for example, in Stravinsky’s music, but they have not been correlated

with the variability of mythic thought. The passage at 4 measures before rehearsal 33 from The Rite of Spring (Figure 27.1) features the bricolage of a few components (see the list of those on Figure 27.2), which interchange

freely in different combinations as shown in Figure 27.3. Stravinsky’s variation technique is comparable to the structuralist definition of myth as consisting of all its versions, neither the true version, nor the earlier one, nor more-or-less authentic versions, 1n contrast to a historical study of a nonmythical text.’ As there is no single true version of a myth, so Stravinsky’s

melodic and rhythmic ideas, especially in his earlier works, are rarely presented as single versions in the written score. Characteristically, a ‘Bakhtin, “Forms of Time,” 113. 7 évi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology, 213.

Variability and Combinatoriality 69 Stravinskian motivic “archetype” consists of several versions of the same motive, sometimes ironically presented as a “list” in sequential order. FIGURE 27.2: a list of motivic components of the fragment shown in Figure 27.1

aJC— Pi

A

b' —— € a 7

FIGURE 27.3: a formal diagram of motivic components of the fragment shown in Figure 27.1

ab ac | deb' | ab ab"'|ac db | ab''! ac| deb'lacf | ac db" |

Saland BS I ab"'ac|deb'|acf|acdb"" *|| acf lact| act | acdb' | Here is a chart from a study of the composer’s rhythm, containing several motivic cells used in the beginning of the opening “Marche” from Renard (Figure 28).'™

'04V7alentina Kholopova, Voprosy ritma v tvorchestve kompozitirov pervoi poloviny dvadzatogo veka [Rhythm in the music of the first half of the twentieth century] (Moscow: Muzyka, 1971), 212.

70 The Prime Structuring “Molds” of Myth and Music FIGURE 28: a chart of

ae

motivic versions from = = mm. 3-4

Stravinsky’s “Marche” ~ >

(Renard, mm. 3-19) 4.5 ice

a tie» 3

Boss Among these motivic cells, none is a “main” or “archetypal” motive; it is the sum of all the motives, their paradigmatic reflection in each other, that here constitutes Stravinsky’s melodic and rhythmic idea. In the second half of the twentieth century, the libretto of Stockhausen’s seven-opera cycle Licht (1977-2004) demonstrates the use of variability as a major structural mechanism.’ In this libretto, written by the composer, a micro-process of verbal variability based on the exchange of syllables serves

as a structural model for the music. This is characteristic in particular of Donnerstag aus Licht (1978-80)—the “Thursday” (each opera corresponds to one of the days of the week). In Stockhausen’s own words: The phonetic juxtapositions generate [...] a series of neologisms full of extraordinary messages. The names altered by the continual exchange of the syllables disclose an infinite number of combinations. Michael-Lucifer-Eve become Micheva-Luzeva and Michavael, Mondeva—the Eve of the moon. The hundreds of verbal conjunctions create among the characters involved situations that are always new. Thus the secret meaning of the words surfaces at the level of consciousness, and music is made. [...] The operation whereby life becomes music begins here.’”°

105For general information on the work, see Maconie, The Works of Karlheinz Stockhausen, 2nd ed., 261-294; John Allison et al., “Whither Opera: The Composers Speak Out,” Opera 52 (2000), 170-172; on symbolism in Licht, see Ginter Peters, Holy Seriousness in the Play (Cologne: Stockhausen-Verlag, 2004), ch. 4.

Miya Tannenbaum, Conversation with Karlheinz Stockhausen, trans. David Butchart (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), 60.

Variability and Combinatoriality 71 The entire libretto of Donnerstag is a constant bricolage of syllables and phonemes of speech. These correspond to the cells of the musical fabric. Just one example demonstrates the combinatoriality in the text of the libretto. In Act 1, scene 3, “Examen,” the vocal part of the main character, Michael, contains various permutations and exchanges of syllables among the names

of the three central characters: Michael, Eva, and Lucifer. Multiple neologisms are thus being formed. In section VI of the lst Exam, in particular, the following combinations of syllables and phonemes appear:

u 1a LUM-MI-NA u i aLU-CIFA

u ea LU-CE FA u ea LU-CE-VA 1 ea LI-CHE-VA i ea MI-CHE-VA 1 ae MI-CHA-VE 1 ae MI-CHA-EL MI-CHA-HELL

Through the combinatorial operations with these particles of speech, Stockhausen uses 7 consonants (L, M, C, H, F, N, V) and 4 vowels (u, 1, a, e), achieving the following 14 combinations:

Lum (Ci Na

Lu Ce Fa Li Che Va

Mi Cha Ve eL Hell

Each column displays modifications of syllables in their succession. They are connected by a common phoneme (either a consonant or a vowel), for example, an assonance Li-Mi, or an alliteration Che-Cha. Sometimes a form of altered reversal is used, such as in “eL”’ as a variant reversal of “Li.”

A meaningful modification of the name of the protagonist of the opera, Michael, as MI-CHA-HELL, marks the end of this section (VI) of the libretto. This modification clearly has a marked function. In the German original, the combination “CHE” in words like “MI-CHE-VA” phonetically approximates “HE” in “HELL,” and thus is prepared by the whole process of combinatoriality. In the same fragment Stockhausen builds 4 combinations of 4 vowels, 3 in each group:

uia

uea I Ca lace

72 The Prime Structuring “Molds” of Myth and Music In the construction of meaning, the outcome of the combinatoriality of vowels remains, of course, an abstraction. The newly formed vowel combinations lack the play of meanings that resulted from syllables regrouping in the previous example. Operations with vowels alone resemble the operations

with musical “particles.” In this sense, Stockhausen’s combinatorial operations with vowels represent an intermediate zone between music, on the one hand, and verbal text, on the other. The source of pitch and the melodic contents of the entire cycle is the pre-composed tone formula of Licht (Figure 29), while more detailed sources of those and other primary elements (duration, rhythm, articulation, dynamics) are found in individual formulas for each of the seven operas (see Figure 30 for Superformel Donnerstag). The composer does not merely follow the formulas as an opera unfolds; instead, he tosses around the given elements of the formulas in ways similar to the kind of combinatoriality we observed in the previous examples with syllables and vowels. FIGURE 29: Stockhausen’s “Superformula” for Licht

f (be t ey }ol—j¢ "= —\ be — o- )3 = 13

5 Glieder ) | (ve | | & )! ars.

_— Hp 4) : ! 7

ON

A ee i 6 ee a eee eT : (A —— period A a .

- ' ae v. 4 _

6 laa @ ol bo | a8 | Oo of 7 gered \ SEY SSO CT RRAG 61 Se ee

T 7 |m@iwr\¥\u we Get)

MONTAG DIENSTAG MITT. 2) DO MMERSTAE FReiRg ANSTAS SONNTAG

Stockhangye

ee

Variability and Combinatoriality 73 FIGURE 30: Stockhausen, Formel for Donnerstag aus Licht

ely Ba (x) vib. in it ee AeA |aLXre.

Supe rforme(| DONWERS TAG SfocKha 2

‘pj om [2] |# vibr. . ravath- me § In cosonci

ip a Es WE Gs A ee Set oe eee eee CE PS Se a A

’, ed cmeume

= ee > a2oder4nn aan a x od. 3—3 >——____-_—_-») A4 ee 3 x Oe a ===

oo. Ceelnes 0s Ghee ee eee eT ann Ce een

Sa ai FE a f P mp oder 7AU:

Oy a ir ete et et tt pg u Pad f =< FP

sr ys, . da Sb aL RE > b 2. be...

Ww) etwas IY game hinein w)

* e)) EER ne Pee i ace. ’ 3 _* 3 HX A} oon h b A!

: Pp Puy Pp > ; > [e—“lo—-wa u oaaarovu a © C® varegelin. eas, E © ® oO©7 \

ee GE enews Legend ~— 2 as . = oe 3

, ee kuf3 geravyeh rin rs cranrcncs “Wind” j33 SS Se Se A Ss. SSS Sh oT oo as ce |r oo

Erguechsel )= Halbventsl

OLR EEE C6 ES 1.4 GE 09a, Ola GEE. 4 £14 CERES 6068 0880 1 620 ee 6 ee CN eee ae

"9 ao9——olu Jfn--- - - — - -tatakz} ta]

= 4 Zungen rtoft, Raum Tew jeq mp ————— (Cp)

ae . Pamae” wie Jodiefooher and ta: ;©.rind” SOR SE Yhcher A A, 2 SS +: | TS “ee NS 9 a Oe 0 0 8 eee ee

OP en SERN CSE - K aSS Geees ESG5 2S Oe. — Es (AUP OUR Ce OPer:eeP08? ee SsTOY “SEPe OGD in— aeSE ee ee ee .

i An Pare $ Ne ee osteoma tS py SE Ambre ttt fied ; avseatarara. eoceea.eg-Pr: - ° —- tT (ap) brit peda |t2[os "gef. Pause P t ———— r— 3 varegelm. (tea i—— r —j—y

rere e ee

Ce SD Ws 22ee eee Sees ee A) CR OEsee Se2 eeeeee ES OE 8: 9 9 cer ee eeSN OS&es& 2&OE OV EDCS GPCS GSSES SE TE ©ES> 0S es 0SE ee GPG EERE SARS BEES OEAoe” (ED TE CP CE ES ta LP” oe ee ™ = 5 EES SS Se 8 ES ve ae aa e 4a zt an 6 ee

[>ua] [ao} [3] “wind” Crim ~~] Win ne ae as | (< P) _ wa ( ~ > ~ >

Fee Se GE SE ES) OS ee Se oe ee soc, A oe es coe Ae oe ae og Soe Sees

Ptr tes f a a a G81 1 2 ES t 6 o See. 1 8s < SOS ANE a@., O8.1 i. Ae Laaagpeeeeend ».

Rr rr tT — | wr Dott. wu fer —— > Erb r4 Se? tp—¥ mpd Vp

vereselon ftonl . . ; Pen. . as om Fa ¢o> z efarbte 3 Oras: ae ete

And ~~ "Ging xe rHermlos Cog Berber e 4 ta dre-2ehw: ( F ) Fp py *F Zahlennamian 4 &a

Variability and Combinatoriality 75 In the “Examen” episode, for instance, Stockhausen applies combinatori-

ality to pitch and rhythm. Most of the text in Michael’s part is set to a rhythmic-ostinato recitation on the pitch “B.” The Superformel Donnerstag, in which Michael’s part occupies the highest staff (Figure 30), contains three instances of recitation, neither one employing the pitch B. Instead, the note seems to derive from the central pitch 1n this character’s column for Samstag in the tone formula for Licht (Figure 29). The pitches G and E) appear later in Michael’s part of the episode in question, which finally corresponds to the presence of these two pitches in the Donnerstag column of the Licht tone formula. The latter does not specify any rhythmic prerequisites. The rhythmic formula in Michael’s part of the episode under consideration—four groups

of three eighth-notes in a measure—is a modification of the rhythm in measure 15 of the Superformel Donnerstag in Eva’s part (middle staff). The

accompaniment of the piano solo, which is heard along with Michael’s recitation, employs an augmented version of the rhythm of the same measure (15) of Michael’s part in Superformel Donnerstag. In Lévi-Strauss’s mythographic terms, Stockhausen’s formulas for Licht represent ideal invariants, which in two particular respects pertain to perceptions of myths and the specific processes of mythmaking. First, like mythic time, the combined formula and the local formulas contain models for consequent reincarnations of themselves in varied forms, using transpositions, inversions, rearrangements and exchanges of components, as well as multiple

other techniques of combinatoriality. | Secondly, as far as the superformulas remain outside the score itself, being

only formal sketches and never actually sounded as they are, they can be compared to the totality of combined variants of a given myth but none of them in particular, an ideal paradigm of a myth in the mind of a comparative mythographer. However, since Stockhausen conceived his formulas long before the entire cycle was complete, their primary roles contradict the specific nature of archaic (genuine) mythmaking, as we know it from Lévi-Strauss’s

definition. In the archaic mythmaking process, the invariant itself, the primary source of many variants of the same myth, is not available in an abstraction or in a pre-conceived form, such as we see in the superformula for Licht. Instead, the sum of all known versions of a particular myth constitutes the combined invariant of that myth. Therefore, Stockhausen’s individual neo-mythologism is in this respect opposite to traditional collective mythmaking. Compared with some other twentieth-century projects featuring combinatoriality, Stockhausen’s Licht is much more formalized, due to not only to the very presence of pre-composed formulas for each separate opera of the

76 The Prime Structuring “Molds” of Myth and Music cycle, but also to the fixed form in which the score is available to the perfor-

mers and the audience. One contrasting example is the form of the opera Votre Faust (1967) by Henri Pousseur, an aleatoric work, with episodes of free exchange determined by the drawing of colored balls by audience mem-

bers. A completely different example is Crumb’s chamber piece Dream Sequence (1976). The segments of form progress in interchangeable order. In the notes to the score, Crumb includes a chart illustrating the six possible orderings of these segments. The composer’s description of his method of formal construction in most of his works as a “mosaic design” evokes LéviStrauss’s concept of bricolage as used in application to myth analysis.'©’ The study of structural characteristics of myth in their relation to the

fundamental procedures of music undertaken in this chapter provides an opportunity to discern the mythic on the level of the musical fabric itself. The next step is to examine how other characteristics of specific mythic logic and traditional functions of mythic thought translate into music.

'07See the discussion of Crumb’s “mosaic design” in Shuffett, The Music of George Crumb, 146-47.

THREE

Towards the Universality of Myth “Wie ein Naturlaut”: Reaching Beyond Culture At the end of the twentieth century, a group of scholars claimed that the search for the “universals of music” 1s possible only on the level of animal sounds—the sounds of nature.’ Composers have explored the languages of nature: the bird songs transcribed by Messiaen and the recorded sounds of other animals and natural noises that became an integral part of compositions

using pre-recorded tapes. These attempts are reminiscent of the mythic Siegfried, who is miraculously given the ability to make the language of animals his own. The gesture of the mythic hero, Siegfried, is universalizing, for a mythic mind believes that a single truth is expressed in many different ways. The mythic mind attempts to comprehend the universe 1n its wholeness and to view the different parts of the universe as congruent, organized in a predictably correspondent manner. In its proud belief of possessing one absolute truth, mythic thought knows no blank spots on the mythic map of the Universe; nor is there a question that remains unanswered, contrary to scientific

thought.’ In its claim for being comprehended in its entirety, the mythic world 1s virtually devoid of incompatible elements because of the “miraculous” logic of mythic thought. To achieve “wholeness” through myth and

ritual also meant to reactivate the notion of unity between humans and nature. The widely understood framework of multilingualism embraces both culture and nature, culture being represented by different styles, and nature by natural noises and animal sounds. When composers record (that is catch, ‘“The Necessity of and Problems with a Universal Musicology,” in Universals in Music, in The Origins of Music, ed. by Nils L. Wallin, and others (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001): 473-480. “Juli Margolin, the Russian philosopher of the twentieth century, highlights this feature of the mythic mind in “K dialektike mifologicheskogo myshlenija” [On the dialectics of mythological thought] in Vozdushnye puti [The airy ways], vol. 4 (New York: Grynberg, 1965), 144-153.

77

78 Towards the Universality of Myth or transform into a fixed state) these natural sounds, they essentially fulfill

the traditional function of a shaman who tames the spirits of nature. Moreover, the act of cultivation of natural, or raw, sounds by including them in cultural contexts reveals the opposition between culture and nature—the

cardinal opposition of the mythic mind, according to Lévi-Strauss, whose The Raw and the Cooked specifically addressed this opposition.’ Earlier in music history, one can discern an opposition of instrumental, or “man-made,” and vocal, from nature, sounds; in the twentieth century, this opposition is superseded by the sound produced by traditional media versus electronics.

The recorded sound, which is applicable to both, can be viewed as the “mediator” in this opposition. One aspect of reaching beyond culture 1s the liberation of sound from the meaning attached to it within its local culture. Cage, for example, deliberately disregards the fact that the meanings of certain sound ideas are often socially constructed, when he writes: “Sounds by their nature are no more American than they are Egyptian.” In this remark, Cage suggests that sounds can be devoid of their immediate cultural context and treated as universal. Another aspect of reaching beyond culture is a movement towards such models that present human speech as one among other equal languages. At

the beginning of Korwar for harpsichord and magnetic tape (1972), the composer Francois-Bernard Mache, in his own words, creates an ambiguity between animal sounds (clicks by a shama) and human speech including clicks ({taken from] national poems in xhosa, South Africa). The end of the piece is a long rhythmic toccata derived from rain sounds. In between are [recorded voices of] frogs, guanacos, boars, whales.”

By placing human, animal, and nature-derived sounds in one context,

Mache clearly expresses the mythic notion of wholeness and unity of the world. This and other similar compositional experiments by Mache correspond to his views as a philosopher of music, expressed in his book Myth, Music and Nature, where he connects the sounds of nature to myths (especially in the chapters titled “The Universality of Sound Models,” and “Zoomusicology.”’) Natural phenomena were traditionally mythologized in the archaic mind.

Twentieth-century music has its own tradition of “worshipping” nature. ‘Introduction to a Science of Mythology, vol. 1, The Raw and The Cooked (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983). ‘John Cage, Silence (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1961), 71. °Francois-Bernard Mache, personal communication, Paris, September 15, 1998.

“Wie ein Naturlaut”: Reaching Beyond Culture 79 Composers have come to use the natural, the primordial wholeness, and equality of ways of expression as models for artistic creativity. At the outset of the century, the cult of nature was characteristic of the Secession movement in Vienna. Glenn Watkins, who documents the influence of the Seces-

sion movement on Mahler and the composers of the Second Viennese School, writes that the Viennese Secession offered aesthetically “a new cult of Nature,” and “a study of forms drawn from nature.” At the same time, Debussy spoke of a “natural union” or a “mysterious collaboration between music and nature,” and of music “learning a fine lesson from the greening trees,” although recent studies have scrutinized these views, limiting them to a brief time period.’ Bartok initiated his special “night music” genre in Musiques Nocturnes from the Out of Doors suite (1926), which involves chromatic motives and cluster-chords that represented, according to the memoir of Bart6k’s son,

“the concert of frogs heard in peaceful nights.”* The night music theme

continued in Bartok’s later works through the third movement of the Concerto for Orchestra; a specific example of “insect music” 1s “From the Diary of a Fly,” no. 142, from vol. VI of the Mikrokosmos (1926-1939).

Crumb’s “Evocation of Nature”: Drones It took a later composer, who pronounced himself heir to Mahler’s, Debussy’s, and Bartok’s notions of nature, to list all these and some other aesthetically diverse precedents together as one tendency. This tendency carried on in the second half of the century in the works of Crumb. During an interview with the composer, which I conducted in 1997, he said: G. C. There is a concept [of] the voices of nature, which I [...] derive from Mahler, Debussy and Bartok. It is a certain representation of nature, which goes beyond programmatic imitation. This is what Mahler called ein Naturlaut, the sound of nature. Sometimes it is using the birds’ sound or insects’ music, or sometimes it goes beyond that. It is the sense of nature represented in music. ‘Soundings: Music in the Twentieth Century (New York: Schirmer, 1988), 17. ’Claude Debussy, “Outdoor Music,” in The Poetic Debussy: a Collection of His Song Texts and Selected Letters, ed. by Margaret G. Cobb, 2™ ed., trans. Richard Miller (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 1994), 262-3, and Brooks Toliver “Debussy after Symbolism: The Formation of a Nature Aesthetic,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, 1994. “Béla Bartok, Jr., “Remembering my Father, Béla Bartok,” The New Hungarian Quarterly 22 (1966), 14.

80 Towards the Universality of Myth V. A. Isn’t it the same tradition that Francois-Bernard Mache follows in one of his pieces for harpsichord and magnetic tape, where the imitation of frogs’ sounds and other animal noises are intermingled with human speech? G. C. O yes, I love this! I met Mache at one of the composers’ seminars. I love this tradition that involves phonetic elements.

Messiaen also contributed to it. It goes further than just his imitation of bird singing. It is an evocation of nature.’

Crumb refers here to his own “Electric Insects” (as derived from Bartok’s “insect music’”’), a subtitle in the “electric quartet” Black Angels (1970), which he described as just a sound of nature, not a symbol of evil. [...] It is only after I completed the piece, it became obvious to me that there was a

certain psychological connection to the hysteria of that time period [the Vietnam war]. A composer’s intention is one thing, but music naturally picks up [a mood] from the air of the time.’”

The expression Wie ein Naturlaut, which Crumb adores so much, refers to Mahler’s First Symphony, specifically the heading for the first movement: Langsam. Schleppend. Wie ein Naturlaut. Crumb used the expression “like a sound of nature” in the opening movement of his Apparition for Soprano and Amplified Piano (1980). Elsewhere Crumb elucidates what he actually understands by this “evocation of nature.” What is being “evoked,” in fact, is the “natural acoustic,” which, in Crumb’s words, is “acquired by every

composer during his formative years as a child. I feel that [the echoing acoustic of an Appalachian river valley where Crumb grew up] was ‘structured into’ my hearing, so to speak, and thus became the basic acoustic of my music,” Crumb attests.'’ Being stored “at the deeper levels of [one’s] psyche” for the rest of a composer’s life, “the truly magical and spiritual powers of music arise” from these “deeper levels.” Thus, Crumb’s concept of “evocation of nature” is based upon a notion of a pre-existing, nature-given precedent. Myth also presents a recollection of a precedent that happened in the past. The nature-given acoustic precedent, which Crumb mentioned, 1n this context functions like the mythic precedent: it defines the consequent unfolding of the “magic powers of music” in the hands of an individual. *From an interview with the author at Rutgers University, December 9, 1997 (see Appendix for a complete transcript).

‘From a telephone interview with the author, September 11, 1999. ''George Crumb, “Music: Does It Have a Future?” in George Crumb: Profile of a Composer, ed. Don Gillespie (New York: C. F. Peters, 1986), 19.

Crumb’s “Evocation of Nature”: Drones 81 Characteristically, Crumb believes that this line of thought is capable of somehow connecting the present with the past—the problems of modern

music with ancient models. He writes: “Perhaps many of the perplexing problems of the new music could be put into a new light if we were to reintroduce the ancient idea of music being a reflection of nature.”” What other precedents does nature provide for music, besides the built-in natural acoustic? Crumb answers this, as he refers to the following example of “whale music”: After all, the singing of the humpback whale is already a highly developed “artistic” product: one hears phrase-structure, climax and anticlimax, and even a sense of large-scale musical form!"

Like “whale music,” “insect music” 1s another “first music” provided by nature. The mythic mind presents it as a precedent for subsequent imitations or allusions. Despite Crumb’s claim that the “Night of the Electric Insects”

from his quartet Black Angels represents “just a sound of nature,” Crumb refers not only to the actual natural “music” of nocturnal insects but to its cultural imprints. He partially unveils his field of references (or “precedents”), which include “musique nocturne” from the Out of Doors suite by Bartok, and the two Nachtmusik movements 1n Mahler’s Seventh symphony.'* Moreover, Crumb’s “universal” animal sounds are mediated by the poetry of Federico Garcia Lorca—Crumb’s beloved source of inspiration in many of his works. Lorca’s texts feature the image of insect drones as a symbol of primal

energy. Rupert Allen considered the early poem jCicada! to offer the “mythic perspective of the Macrocosm.”” Incidentally, Allen’s description of the cicada sounds in connection to Lorca’s poem as “electric [...] charging the whole atmosphere [...] on a hot summer afternoon [...] with a frantic intensity” matches somewhat Crumb’s subtitles in the scores of Black Angels (“Night of the Electric Insects’), Dream Sequence (“as an afternoon in late summer’), and Makrokosmos II (“Music for a Summer Evening”’). The coda of Crumb’s Dream-Sequence (1976) is subtitled “cicada drone.” With the ostinato of high harmonics in the cello part and the sul ponticello chromatic glissando in the violin, the effects seem to imitate insect sounds. '*Crumb, “Music: Does It Have a Future?” 19. “Tbid.

'*Edward Strickland, American Composers: Dialogues on Contemporary Music (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), 161-162.

Rupert C. Allen, The Symbolic World of Federico Garcia Lorca (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press), 1972.

82 Towards the Universality of Myth Drones, the typical sounds associated with insects and other natural phenomena, are presumably one of the earliest forms of music and thus can assist Crumb in his quest for mythification and the musical embodiments of “primitive” or “ancient.” They play a prominent role in serving as natural “precedents” for subsequent recurrences in culture. Characteristically, Crumb uses drones in his piece titled “Myth,” number four from Makrokosmos III,

1974. The following conversation with me reveals the associative link between myth, primeval sounds, and drones: V. A. You have a piece entitled Myth. Did you think of any particular myth, or does it refer to myth in general? G. C. I was thinking of ancient, prehistoric music, the primeval sounds like the droning sounds.'°

The primeval sounds originate in imaginary mythic times, hence a link between drones and myth. In some works, Crumb builds his drones, often comprised of an acoustically perfect interval repeated for a long stretch of time, in the manner of a pedal. One of these is “the continuum of chords built upon the interval of a perfect fifth [...] a kind of background music””’ in “Musica Mundana” from Star-Child (1977). He previously had used a similar pedal, consisting of six

perfect fifths in the left hand part in the fifth piece from Makrokosmos I (1972). The primeval quality of this type of drone results from the culturally and historically established perception of the interval of a fifth as one of the

foundational elements of Western music since Antiquity. | Crumb seems to perceive the drone to be one of the archaic layers that still survive in musical culture; this parallels how mythic thought is still a part of contemporary culture. In other words, it is music in certain universal forms, such as drones, that still carries the quality of being “ancient” or “primeval,” or rooted in nature, and thus assumes mythic qualities.

Imagining the Pre-Cultural: Babbitt’s Philomel The ability of myths to transcend the border between humans and animals has attracted even those composers who are commonly considered to be super-rationalists, such as Milton Babbitt (b.1916), who turned to the Greek myth of Philomela, the story about the miraculous transformation of human beings into birds. Ovid, in the Sixth book of his Metamorphoses, ‘Interview at Rutgers University, December 13, 1997.

Crumb’s foreword to the score, Peters, 1977.

Imagining the Pre-Cultural: Babbitt’s Philomel &3 retells the Greek myth where Philomela was transformed into a swallow (in Ovid’s version, a nightingale), her sister, Procna, into a nightingale (in Ovid’s version, a swallow), and the king, Tereus, into a hoopoe. In Philomel (1964),

Babbitt creates a stark contrast between the live sound of a soprano solo presenting the text and electronic noises that serve as a kind of background or accompaniment. This contrast, in fact, reveals an opposition of nature (live sound) and culture (electronic sound), mediated by their combination in a recorded soprano voice, played by a tape recorder, sometimes joining the

live soprano in a duet. The opposition, along with the mediation, is a characteristically mythological construct, according to Lévi-Strauss, who

) considered 1t the central construct of the mythic mind. A special kind of drone at the beginning of Philomel—the initial long “Eeeeeeeeeeecee” produced by both live and recorded soprano— seems to symbolize the speechless Philomel whose tongue was cut off, but also represents a certain initial animalistic or pre-speech state of expression. It is from this initial phoneme that the entire verbal text gradually is born: Babbitt

emphasizes the assonances abundantly provided in the text by Hollander: “Feel a million trees.. .heat...tears...filament...=Philomel...no true trees. ..= Tereus”. Thus, the names of mythic characters (Philomel and Tereus) and the entire story about them emerges from that pre-cultural state of sound where it is still speechless. Rousseau, who called the primary language of humankind “the cry of nature,” considered the borderline between the language of nature and cultured language to be indistinct. According to him, the first language was also “the most universal language,” and simultaneously the most artistic language, for “people spoke only in poetry” then.’ In the twentieth century,

some artists became “archaeologists of culture,” to paraphrase Michel Foucault’s famous 1969 term L'Archéologie du savoir, as they plough into the first cultural layer where it verges on nature. Because myth presents itself as a recollection of old (mythic) times, the imaginary first layer is always the subject most treasured by the mythic mind.

The Composer as “Archaeologist of Culture” The simplifying tendency in twentieth-century music, the turn to reduced and elementary materials, signifies the restoration of the imaginary initial, primitive stages of music, and of the imaginary elementary stage of culture "Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Guvres completes, vol. 3 (Paris: Pléiade, 1964), 148. The passage is translated in Steven Cassedy, Flight from Eden: The Origins of Modern Literary Criticism and Theory (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 21.

84 Towards the Universality of Myth in general. That stage is often identified with the mythic past itself— the time of precedents. From Orff and Stravinsky to minimalism and the “tunnel hum,” this tendency to use primary materials ranges widely. Some of the most pioneering and radical works of the twentieth century have been perceived as a return to the primordial or pre-historical state. For

example, this is how Charles Martin Loeffler reacted to the premiere of Edgard Varese’s Hyperprism in 1924: It would be the negation of all the centuries of musical progress, if I were to call it music. Nevertheless, I seemed to be dreaming of rites in Egyptian temples, of mystic and terrible ceremonies which history does not record. This piece roused in me a sort of subconscious racial memory, something elemental that happened before the beginning of recorded time.”

I will point to a few examples from both halves of the century to illustrate the connection of the “elementary” tendency in music to neo-mythologism. One of the most explicit examples is Stravinsky’s music, especially his early output. Stravinsky’s Russian critic, his contemporary Alexey Karatygin noted that the seeming complexity of the composer’s scores was to some extent only an illusion, being a result of the simultaneous combination of a number of the simplest components.” Indeed, a typical polyostinato texture of Stravinsky’s “Russian” works can be split into a few figures as “elementary” as a single interval followed by a rest, such as in Selezen’ (Canard) from Quatre chants russes (1918-19), demonstrated in Figure 31.

In the part of the harp, the pitch classes C and D represent “the first pitches” of the European musical universe. The parts of the guitar and the flute contain a major triad (B major) interlocked with its relative-minor triad (G#-B-D#) the other “elementary” materials. The four initial notes, D#-F#A-B, in the flute and guitar parts, is the classical V°°/E chord. The overall complexity of sound results from the tonal independence of the layers. Certain primary elements, that is, those belonging to the imaginary first layer of musical language remain in Stravinsky’s works beyond his “Russian period.” Svetlana Savenko uses the term “universals of style” when speaking of certain constant elements of Stravinsky’s texture, harmony and motivic work. The “universal” character of these elements reveals itself, as Savenko

claims, in that Stravinsky treats them not so much as representatives of concrete stylistic systems but rather as perpetual and primary “bricks” of the The remark is cited in Fernand Ouellette, Edgard Varese, trans. Derek Coltman (New York: Orion, 1966), 78.

Vladimir Karatygin, Stat'i i materialy [Essays and materials ](Moscow: Muzyka, 1973), 159-60.

The Composer as “Archaeologist of Culture”’ 85 FIGURE 31: Stravinsky, Selezen’ (Canard) from Quatre chants russes, mm. 24-28

= es a ce maa[Fe ones Pb >| Soprane ee POs, Gis so-myo- to oo- ep [aC Pa a vn a Tee ee ~ 3 3 Z SS a eS ee catch her up your mice young OC rennet

.aad g i Ae gi B22. ee —

———— a ee | ee ee nae

musical Universe. Among these elements are fundamentals such as scales, triads, arpeggios, other figurations, and Fortspinnungen; symbolic motives,

such as the Dies Jrae or those reminiscent of Bach (such as the BACH motive) and intervals of a diminished seventh and diminished fourth.”! Even

in Stravinsky’s serial period, triads and the interval of a third serve as the archaic caryatids that support the newly built vaults of the dodecaphonic system. While Stravinsky’s musical archaeology still employs traditional forms, the second half of the century discovers forms that more immediately recall the imaginary first music. In Bonnie Barnett’s Tunnel Hum 1984 and in the

other hums she has conducted, there are no notated musical scores; the hummings are intended for everyone, including those with no musical background. “Listen for the tonality in which the entire group is singing,” she instructs. “Tune to that tonality.”** Aside from a printed performance instruction leaflet, providing the initial vowel and general performance directions, such as those just cited, the hums are oral artifacts that resemble the form in which myth and ritual unfold. Extremely simplified in its musical aspect, and using a single pitch and just a few different vowels, this collective action uncovers the imaginary first layer of music. *1Svetlana Savenko, Mir Stravinskogo [The world of Stravinsky] (Moscow: Kompozitor, 2001), 111-137.

“Bonnie Barnett, Tunnel Hum 1984: Performance Instructions for Vocal Participants. A leaflet by the author.

86 Towards the Universality of Myth The Mythic “World Body” and the Idea of Global Communication Musical happenings, such as Barnett’s hums, aim to establish a new ritual of global healing through musical communication. The idea of global communication, increasingly prominent in the music of the second half of

the century, corresponds to the mythic notion of this world as a holistic entity. Indeed, some myths present this world as one living organism. The Mesopotamian Enuma elish creation myth, for example, relates that different parts of the world were made of the parts of the body of the primary mother, the goddess Tiamat,” and in Hindu myths, the cosmos emerges from what originally was the body of the first man, Purusha.”* Certain healing rituals derive from these and similar myths. Some twentieth-century musical phenomena also serve the function of healing the organism of the world, intending to restore and sustain its wholeness and the coordination of its parts. For example, specific technical devices of twentieth-century music, such as radio broadcasting, are sometimes thought to serve as a medium for a world auditorium. Along these lines, some composers believe that global communication by means of music is possible. Varese, for instance, as his biographer

attests, “had imagined a performance of the work being broadcast simultaneously in and from all the capitals of the world. [...] The work would have

been divided up into seconds, with great exactitude, so that the chorus in Paris—or Madrid, or Moscow, or Peking, or Mexico City, or New York— would have come onto air at exactly the right moment.””’ The function of the musical work in this global communication would be comparable to that of a transcultural mythologem, that is, an object that many cultures share and use for similar purposes of symbolization, healing and meditation. The idea of a simultaneous performance was accomplished in Barnett’s Tunnel Hum 1984, which connected choruses in New York, San Francisco and Seattle on September 30, 1984, and later, in her other hums, broadcasted transcontinentally through satellite-uplinked radio.” In an interview, Barnett

has said her biggest aspiration is to produce an intergalactic Hum.’’ The cosmic size of Barnett’s concept 1s akin to Stockhausen’s cosmic projects. | This myth is cited in David A. Leeming, The World of Myth (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 18-22. 4\7ladimir Toporov, “Purusha,” in Eleazar Meletinsky, ed., Mifologicheskii slovar' [The dictionary of mythology] (Moscow: Sovetskaya encyclopedia, 1991), 455. Fernand Ouellette, Edgar Varése (London: Calder and Boyars, 1973), 132. **Other similar attempts include Alvin Currans’s work Crystal Psalm, which was broadcast on the 50" anniversary of Kristallnacht, on November 9-10, 1988. Mary Beth Crain, “Bonnie Barnett: Hummer,” LA Style 7 (October 1991), 120.

The Mythic “World Body” and the Idea of Global Communication 87 The goal behind collectivity is “to generate energy for positive change [...], the goal of pooling your individual energy with the others.”

Universality and the mythic notion of the world body alsoreveal themselves in the creation of “world music.” For example, Hans Werner Henze (b. 1926) in Voices (1973) uses seventy different instruments and many diverse styles representing different parts of the world. A predecessor of Voices, Stockhausen’s Telemusik, is based on the idea of bringing together very dif-

ferent traditional musics—Japanese, Chinese, Balinese, Spanish, Vietnamese, Indian, Hungarian, African, and others—using electronic music, equally foreign to all of these, as a mediator. Written in 1966, this was the first composition in which Stockhausen attempted to write not “his own music,” but “the music of all the Earth, of all countries and of all races.””’ Here, the language of electronic music serves as Esperanto that is supposed to provide communication between the different traditional musical languages. Stockhausen offers only slight hints of the elements of national traditional styles;

most of the sounding material is heard as nationally neutral. Thus, he attempts to transcend stylistic pluralism and establish one mythic universal style. Stockhausen states: “I am trying to go beyond collage, heterogeneity

and pluralism, and to find unity: to produce music that brings us to the essential One.’’® He believes that his credo is characteristic of his entire generation:

Around 1950 a new generation had begun to formulate a new musical language, one which contained all the qualities required to make a collective, extranational, and to a large extent, a superpersonal music language possible.”

In 1968, Stockhausen enthusiastically defended such an artistic expres-

sion “when people are less interested in writing their own music [... but more in] creating a very open musical world where diverse pluralistic manifestations can find an integrated place.”*” In the same interview, he talks

about “a polyphony of styles, times, and areas.” This polyphony of styles

1971), 76.

**Bonnie Barnett, Tunnel Hum 1984: Performance Instructions for Vocal Participants.

°K arlheinz Stockhausen, Texte zur Musik: 1963-1970, v. 3 (Cologne: DuMont Buchverlag, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Towards a Cosmic Music: Texts by Karlheinz Stockhausen, trans. Tim Nevill (Longmead: Element Books, 1989), 12. ‘Karlheinz Stockhausen, Stockhausen in Calcutta, a Commemorative Collection, sel. HansJurgen Nagel, trans. Sharmila Bose (Calcutta: Seagull Books, 1984), 33-34.

Stockhausen, Towards a Cosmic Music, 25.

88 Towards the Universality of Myth also bears a mythological function, for it implies the existence of one univer-

sal language of culture, in which different cultural strata freely interrelate with each other.

From Universal Nature to Universal Culture Following the dichotomy “nature—culture,” which Lévi-Strauss singled

out as the most characteristic dichotomy of the mythic mind, I began this chapter with discussion of the mythic function of the natural, that is, what

composers themselves regard as representations of nature. I will now consider the mythologized notion of the cultural. Neo-mythological creative consciousness perceives the musical styles of the past and the representative elements of those styles as certain cultural mythologems which one refers to as precedents either playfully, with an ironical estrangement, or, sometimes, more seriously, as an expression of the distance that divides us from mythic times. The incompatibility of these diverse components, stressed by some

authors, becomes a basis for play with different traditions, whether in a remote geographic space or in time, as are historical styles. The pathos of neo-mythologism lies in the emphasis of their congruency, of their belonging to the paradigm of world culture as a whole: another opportunity for universalization. As in literary neo-mythologism, where, according to Minz, well-known

works may function as myths, this process also takes place in twentiethcentury music. Composers who borrow material from earlier periods emphasized the abyss between the era of tonality or modality, on the one hand, and the present time, on the other. When dissonantly atonal music is juxtaposed to tonal quotations, the myth of the lost Paradise is recalled, as is the myth of the consonant world of the classics. Crumb, in Black Angels, for instance, conveys the image of the lost Paradise through the quotation of Schubert’s original theme from Der Tod und das Madchen, surrounded by harsh sounds of the “electric insects,” as if to represent the mythic past, the harmonious

“initial time” of Eden. When, in the alternative version of the ending, the borrowed material is presented in a distorted form (the “scordatura” effect shown in Figure 32), it seems to express the impossibility of a return to the cloudless blue sky of the tonal era. Thus two versions of the same myth, the

impossibility of returning to Eden, can be seen to belong to the same paradigm. When a composer does not intend to emphasize a contrast between the newly composed and the borrowed materials, a mythic ideal of wholeness is reactualized more explicitly. One example is Crumb’s Lux Aeterna, for

from Universal Nature to Universal Culture 89 FIGURE 32: Crumb, “Pavana Lachrymae” from Black Angels

SS ee i a a Pia aaa) 6. Pavana Lachrymae [Trio] - Alternate Version seve senate event evil

43001 Ay on ptatytute pa ee ce us ancora ib tena = 40)

SE SS ee == SS SS

aS ee et Se eee = SS e

soprano, bass flute, soprano recorder, sitar, and two percussionists (1971). Crumb adapts stylistic features of North Indian ragas and aims to adjust his own style so that the stylistic borderline will not be noticeable.** Crumb’s goal of creating this stylistic “whole” corresponds to the meaning of the “wholeness” of human life, usually attached to a Requiem Mass, from which the title of this composition derives. Many compositions combine stylistic contrasts with a tendency toward unification of style. I will now present an extended discussion of one example, Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms, using the concept of polystylistics offered in 1971 by the Russian composer Alfred Schnittke (1934-1998).** The twentieth century’s increased preoccupation with styles can be seen as a reactivation of certain traditional functions of myth and ritual, such as the evocation of ancestors and the reawakening of cultural memory. Stravinsky’ works contain fine allusions to the well-known stylistic idioms of world

musical literature, which may function as myths in the sense of being samples, precedents, or archetypes.

“Christopher Rouse points to this stylistic adaptation in “The Music of George Crumb: Stylistic Metamorphosis as Reflected in the Lorca Cycle,” Ph.D. dissertation (Cornell University, 1977). Crumb uses quotations from other composers in many instances, including Berlioz’s La Damnation de Faust (Makrokosmos I), Beethoven’s Hammerklavier sonata (Makrokosmos IN), Schubert’s The Death and the Maiden (Black Angels), Bach’s Aria from the Notebook of Anne Magdalena Bach (Ancient Voices of Children), and The Well-Tempered Clavier (Makrokosmos If). | do not intend to provide a comprehensive survey of Crumb’s stylistic operations.

Individual works by Crumb have been examined from the point of view of style and borrowing technique. See, for example, Kenneth N. Timm, “A Stylistic Analysis of George Crumb’s ‘Vox Balaenae’,” Ph.D. dissertation (Indiana University, 1977).

“The term “polystylistics” was previously used in the 1920s by the Russian composer Scherbachyev.

90 Towards the Universality of Myth Polystylistics in its Neo-Mythological Function: Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms Schnittke wrote: “by the polystylistic method I mean not merely the ‘collage wave’ in contemporary music but also more subtle ways of using elements of another’s style.”°° Schnittke cited Stravinsky’s Pulcinella as an example of adaptation, which is one of the three principles of polystylistics, the other two being allusion and quotation. In his view, “the polystylistic tendency has always existed in concealed form in music, and continues to do so. Such traditional forms of European music as parodies, fantasies, and variations all contain overt polystylistic elements.””’® However, it is in the twentieth century that, as Schnittke emphasized, the polystylistic method has become a conscious device. Even without making direct quotations, a composer often plans a poly-

stylistic effect in advance, whether it be the shock effect of a clashing collage of music from different times, a flexible glide through phases of musical history, or the use of allusions so subtle that they seem accidental.*”

The rise of polystylistics in the twentieth century, as Schnittke understood it, can be seen as a feature of the neo-mythological trend, because the

use of borrowed material in some musical works bears certain mythic functions, such as evocation of ancestors, reawakening of cultural memory, remembering of things past, and actualizing the precedent. In the following, I will explore the cultural roots of this phenomenon through a concrete analysis of the stylistic blend perceptible in Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms, the choice of which does not mean to imply the absence of this perspective in Stravinsky’s other compositions. Although Schnittke did not cite Symphony of Psalms as an example of polystylistics, its subtle stylistic allusions certainly fit Schnittke’s general description. The richness of stylistic sources and their symbolic associations behind the Symphony of Psalms 1s remarkable. Although Stravinsky set the text in Latin, he claimed to have experienced the influence of the Russian Orthodox liturgy during the composition process:

Alfred Schnittke, “Polystylistic Tendencies in Modern Music,” in A Schnittke Reader, ed. Alexander Ivashkin, trans. John Goodlife (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2002), 87. *Tbid., 89.

"bid.

Polystylistics in its Mythological Function 9] I did start to compose the Psalms in Slavonic, and only after coming a certain distance did I switch to Latin. [...] The rest of the slow-tempo introduction, the Laudate Dominum, was originally composed to the words of the Gospodi Pomiluy. This section is a prayer to the Russian image of the infant Christ.*®

Stravinsky often had the assistance of ghost writers 1n his prose writings, so it is often difficult to decipher what are Stravinsky’s actual statements.”

Nevertheless, even if we are not wholly to trust the composer’s official testimony, the music itself provokes polystylistic complexity in its perception. While the allusions Stravinsky makes in this work to the Baroque idiom of Bach and Russian Orthodox chant are long acknowledged, I encountered yet another allusion—to the third movement, the scherzo of Tchaikovsky’s Pathetique Symphony, which so far has evaded scholarly attention. Before I unfold the stylistic analysis that demonstrates this allusion, I would like to make a disclaimer. The central task of this book is not a stylistic analysis, but rather a hermeneutic analysis. The fact that Stravinsky often based his work on multiple models, a technique he called “recomposition,”

has long been acknowledged. Yet, how does one present such seeming eclecticism of style components, and how does one interpret such a coexistence of diverse cultural layers in one composition? Neo-mythologism is a useful hermeneutical model that emphasizes the importance of Jung’s examination of the unconscious and its role in artistic creativity, and LéeviStrauss’s structural analysis of mythic thought. In this domain one finds scrutiny of such concepts as the “universal,” the “symbolic,” the “archetypal,”

the “unconscious,” and the “ritual.” These notions have appeared in the writings of the composer or those of his commentators. It is time to reexamine these notions in their particular contexts with regard to their specific meanings within modernist culture.

The Symphony of Psalms (1930) chronologically paralleled Jung’s theory. Charles Joseph is clearly correct in pointing out that in the 1930s, an interest in Freud’s theory of the subconscious was widespread 1n artistic intellectual circles, and, Joseph even speculated, “no doubt that Stravinsky believed in the powers of the subconscious as a reliable guide.””” In his 1930 work, Psychology and Literature, Jung wrote:

*8Igor Stravinsky, Dialogues and a Diary (London: Faber and Faber, 1961), 77-78.

See Charles M. Joseph Stravinsky Inside Out (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2001), 24.

Tbid., 24-25.

92 Towards the Universality of Myth The artist is not a person endowed with free will who seeks his own ends, but one who allows art to realize its purposes through him. As a human being he may have moods and a will and personal aims, but as an artist he is “man” in a higher sense—he is “collective man,” a vehicle and moulder of the unconscious psychic life of mankind.”

Stravinsky alludes to unconscious stylistic influences in this comment

on the process of composing the Symphony of Psalms: I was not aware of Phrygian modes, Gregorian chants, Byzantinisms, or anything of the sort, while composing this music, though,

of course, influences said to be denoted by such scriptwriters’ baggage-stickers may very well have been operative.”

In a series of ritualistic compositions starting with Le Sacre through Les Noces, Oedipus Rex, and the Symphony of Psalms, Stravinsky created an image of a collective sacred action, whether pagan, Ancient Slavonic, Ancient Greek, or Latin. Although the composer has not really become the “collective man,” his fascination with that image is clear. Not surprisingly, LéviStrauss used a score fragment of Les Noces as an epigraph to his chapter on the mythology of pagan wedding ceremonies.” Ifa new myth can indeed be formed by artistic means through and in a

work of art, including a musical work, then what new artistic myth was formed in the Symphony of Psalms? In order to answer this question, I will first interpret the circumstances of the work’s initial conception and then its genre and stylistic features from a mythographic perspective. As Stravinsky noted in his Autobiography, the suggestion for the composition came from Serge Koussevitsky on the occasion of the fiftieth anni-

versary of the Boston Symphony orchestra. Elsewhere, the composer famously attested: The commissioning of the Symphony of Psalms began with the publisher’s routine suggestion that I write something popular. I took the word, not in the publisher’s meaning of “adapting to the understanding of the people,” but in the sense of “something universally

admired,” and I even chose Psalm 150 in part for its popularity, though another and equally compelling reason was my eagerness *'The Collected Works of C.G Jung, vol. 15 ( New York: Pantheon Books, 1966), 101. First published as “Psychologie und Dichtung” in Philosophie der Literaturwissenschaft, ed. Emil Ermatinger (Berlin, 1930).

“Stravinsky, Dialogues and a Diary, 77. ST évi-Strauss, The Raw and The Cooked, 319.

Polystylistics in its Mythological Function 93 to counter the many composers who had abused these magisterial verses as pegs for their own lyrico-sentimental “feelings.”

One learns from the above quotation that Stravinsky decided to set Psalm 150, which for him represented a popular subject in the sense that it was “universally admired.” The notion of universality was in opposition to a narrower view, an attempt on the part of a critic to interpret the used texts of the Psalms as a sign of a particular “local color:” Soon after the first performance of my symphony, a criticism was forwarded to me in which the author asked: “Has the composer attempted to be Hebrew in his music—Hebrew in spirit, after the manner of Ernest Bloch, but without too much that is reminiscent

of the synagogue?”

Stravinsky dismisses this interpretation as irrelevant: Apparently people have lost all capacity to treat the Holy Scriptures otherwise than from the point of view of ethnography, history, or picturesqueness. That anyone should take his inspiration from the Psalms without giving a thought to these side issues appears to be incredible to them, and so they demand explanations.*°

Stravinsky wrote his Autobiography in 1934, when anti-Semitism was on the rise in Nazi Germany. In light of recent research on the composer’s denial of any links between himself and synagogue traditions, it does not seem accidental that he would refute this particular association.*’ Three decades later, when the intensity of anti-Semitism had long past, Stravinsky, describing the same work, volunteers the word “Hebrew” in his dialogues with Craft, revealing his personal secret associations: Psalm 40 is a prayer that a new canticle may be put into our

mouths. The Allelujah is that canticle. (The word allelujah still re- , minds me of the Hebrew galosh-merchant Gurian who lived in the

apartment below ours in St. Petersburg, and who on High Holy Days would erect a prayer tent in his living-room and dress himself in an ephod. The hammering sounds as he built this tent and the idea of a cosmopolitan merchant in a St. Petersburg apartment simulating the prayers of his forefathers in the desert impressed “Dialogues and a Diary, 44. * An Autobiography (New York: Norton, 1962), 162.

“Ibid. *7See Joan Evan, “Stravinsky’s Music in Hitler’s Germany,” Journal of American Musicological Society 56 (2003): 525-594.

94 Towards the Universality of Myth my imagination as profoundly as any direct religious experience of my own.)*

This passage shows that the notorious, ignorant critic whom Stravinsky scorned in the 1934 Autobiography was not totally wrong when sensing a “Hebrew spirit” in connection with the Symphony of Psalms. To treat the Psalms “otherwise,” in Stravinsky’s words, “than from the point of view of ethnography, history, or picturesqueness,” meant to treat them “universally” —a concept derived from late nineteenth-century German culture, associated with the idea of “absolute music.”” Richard Taruskin points to the prominence of the panromanogermanic self-orientation by Stravinsky of the socalled “neo-classical” period, which has grown into a self-made myth about “the purity and absoluteness of Stravinsky’s music.””’ The first objection against an “ethnographic” interpretation that Stravinsky presents to his critic, is that the Psalms are currently “not necessarily associated with the synagogue,” but are the domain of the Church. However, the attribution to the Church would still localize the Psalms within a particular province instead of opening a door to an ideal borderless realm of the “absolute.” Therefore Stravinsky continues, But, apart from [the critic’s] real or pretended ignorance, does not the ridiculous question he asks reveal only too clearly a mentality that one encounters more and more frequently today?

He goes on to his well-known complaints that the audience is “looking in music for something that is not there,” desiring “to know what the piece expresses,” and not understanding the fact that “music has an entity of its own apart from anything that it may suggest to them.””’ Stravinsky here is fighting the “philistines” in the tradition of the Davidsbtindler. While he presents his Symphony of Psalms to be transcending and “universal” in character, he seems not to have been aware of the limitations or even the myth-making

nature of these notions as they function within a modernist hierarchy of values. From his defense of mythic purity and universality we perceive that the work of art shall remain “a thing in itself’ instead of “a thing for us.” Dialogues and a Diary, 46. See the discussion of the nineteenth-century Euro-centric concept of “universality” in Daniel

Beller-McKenna, “How ‘Deutsch’ a Requiem? Absolute Music, Universality, and the Reception of Brahms’s ‘Ein deutsches Requiem,’ op. 45,” Nineteenth-Century Music 22 (1998): 3-19. Richard Taruskin, “Stravinsky and Us,” in Cambridge Companion to Stravinsky, ed. Jonathan Cross. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 264. > Autobiography, 162-63.

Polystylistics in its Mythological Function 95 The composer’s 1960s comments on the Symphony of Psalms quoted above contain no trace of his previous detestation of ethnographic picturesqueness and even include what we today might call “extra-musical” associations. In spite of this recourse to ethnography and to what lies outside the music itself, Stravinsky still insists in the Dialogues on the notions of purity and universality, which now are implied to be in opposition to other composers’ “own lyrico-sentimental feelings” while setting Psalm 150. Charles Joseph, in his recent attempt at demythologizing Stravinsky, demonstrated that the composer was trying to purge music from not only traditional emotions but also from political implications. Joseph, on Stravinsky’s behalf, justly rejects a politically loaded notion of universality, as he sets the background for Stravinsky’s commission in 1927-28 for Apollon Musaget from the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Foundation: In the principled spirit of the Kellog-Briand Pact of 1928, wherein almost all nations agreed to “outlaw” war as a means of deciding foreign conflict, [Mrs.] Coolidge hoped to enfranchise the idea of

music as a universal language capable of cutting across cultural and political barriers. Her goal of a global community of musicians

working together for world peace would probably have amused Stravinsky, who often pooh-poohed such grandly proclaimed humanitarian goals.”

What Joseph juxtaposes to this politicized universality—an intrinsic musical logic, and “the immutable laws of compositional order and coherence” —constitute, in fact, universality of a different kind, purged of politics and emotion, and pertinent to what Stravinsky himself advocated. This was an

ideal of music neither possessed by nor replaceable by, nor serving any particular ideology or emotional mode. In order to remain purely “universal,” Stravinsky in 1934 also resorted to what Joseph calls “the immutable laws

of compositional order and coherence.” In Autobiography, Stravinsky admitted that in the Symphony of Psalms, as in the case of my Sonate, I wanted to create an organic whole without conforming to the various models adopted by custom, but still retaining the periodic order by which the symphony is distin-

guished from the suite, the latter being simply a succession of pieces varying in character.**

Charles M. Joseph, Stravinsky Inside Out, 44, emphases added. “Ibid. “Autobiography, 161.

96 Towards the Universality of Myth Stravinsky implies here that reliance on the genre of the symphony might guarantee “wholeness.” In particular, the mature nineteenth-century symphony would seem to present such a model. From Beethoven to Mahler, the genre

grew to contain in itself a whole world or even a whole cosmology. This mature symphony also fully employed such closely interwoven and carefully derived thematic processes that gave it the organic wholeness of a complete “body,” as opposed to “simply a succession of pieces.”°? Simultaneously, Stravinsky insisted that his model for the Symphony of Psalms was a principle of balance between the vocal and instrumental sections, “which coincided

with that of the masters of contrapuntal music, who also treated them as equals.”°° Clearly, the sources Stravinsky refers to—the mature symphony genre (secular) and, by contrast, old polyphonic music (sacred)—make a blend of two different ingredients. Without acknowledging concrete styles as his prototypes, Stravinsky here attempts to ascend to a universal level, where he envisions the whole beyond stylistic contrasts and “without conforming to the various models adopted by custom.” Thus the work was conjured up as a celebration of universality and wholeness, the concepts that are typically celebrated by “the mythic mind,”

the type of mentality reconstructed in the writings of several twentiethcentury mythographers, from Jung to Campbell, that is: a re-establishing of “universal” values in the present by equalizing the present with the past and re-creating, through a ritual, wholeness as an ideal and primary state.”’ The ritual character of the Symphony of Psalms, inspired by the sacred genre, fits the work’s immersion in mythic thought: ritual as an embodiment of a myth. Stravinsky stated that “the first movement was composed in a

state of religious and musical ebullience,” and that the first figure he sketched (Figure 33) turned out to resemble closely Iokasta’s repetitive phrase “Oracula, oracula” from his earlier oratorio Oedipus Rex:

FIGURE 33: Stravinsky’s sketch from >

his note to the Swmphony of Psalms.**® 2 I J IY] | o “eae

The theoretical counterpart of this practice reached its peak in Schenker’s writings. See, for example, Robert Snarrenberg, “Competing Myths: The American Abandonment of Schenker’s Organicism,” in Theory, Analysis and Meaning in Music (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994): 29-56. © Autobiography, 162.

°’See, for example, Joseph Campbell’s The Mythic Image (Princeton: University of Princeton Press), 1974.

Dialogues and a Diary, 76-77.

Polystylistics in its Mythological Function 97 Regardless of whether Stravinsky’s recollection of this figure as the first sketch for the work is correct, the composer’s comparison of the two works

is characteristic in itself. Clearly, Stravinsky was aware of the ritualistic character of both works. Although the Symphony of Psalms 1s based on the Bible, some pages nevertheless evoke the more explicit ritualism of other works, such as Le Sacre and Les Noces. In all four compositions mentioned, the ritualism is embodied in the musical fabric itself, rather than serving a descriptive programmatic function. As Taruskin justly notes about one of

them: “The Rite of Spring [...] would not tell a story of a pagan ritual; it would be that ritual.”°’ Regarding the Symphony of Psalms, it can also be said that it was conceived as a ritual, though, this time, not a pagan one. If this is the case, what formal characteristics are we to expect from a ritual? Most typically, certain names of the deceased, or spirits, are pronounced during an archaic ritual in order to evoke the past and the transcendent. These serve as references to the precedent, which resides in the past or in the transcendent. Do we find such references in the Stravinsky work in question?

The title of the Symphony of Psalms refers to the Baroque tradition represented first by Giovanni Gabrieli’s Sacrae Symphoniae (1597), which also uses chorus and settings of psalms, and continued in the Symphoniae sacrae (1629) and Psalmen Davids (1619) by Schiitz. Stravinsky, from his twentieth-century modernist perspective, hints at Schiitz and Gabrieli’s sacred symphonies as historical precedents in which both symphonic/ instrumental and sacred/vocal idioms are unified as one whole, in a way similar to how a mythic hero would view the past as a primordial state of the inseparable unity of things. In mythic terms, his reference to the time of the first use of the generic term can be seen as a reactualization of the precedent.

Musically, the characteristic motor rhythms of Baroque style and the basso ostinato principle are evoked already in the first movement by the use of multiple ostinato figures and perpetual motion. However, the long crescendo wave in the second part of the movement brings a level of intensity yet unknown to Baroque style. Moreover, the first movement is as much selfreferential as it is neo-Baroque. Some pages echo Stravinsky’s own previous works. For example, the opening page of the Symphony of Psalms (Figure 34) features typical Stravinskian oppositions of solo texture with tutti strokes. Compare this to a fragment from Les Noces, rehearsal 94 (Figure 35), where the vocal parts contain the opposition of tutti and solo.

In the opening passage of the Symphony of Psalms, Stravinsky rearranges in his own signature manner, octatonically, some of the most standard “The Rite Revisited,” in Music and Civilization: Essays in Honor of Paul Henry Lang, ed. Mari Rika Maniates and Edmond Strainchamps (New York: Norton, 1984), 185.

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Polystylistics in its Mythological Function 99 “universals” of traditional tonal language: an E-minor triad for the tutti chord, and a V’ chord from B,, followed by a V®° chord (in descending order, G-F—D-B) in the parts for solo bassoon and solo oboe.” The actual succession of these three components would look disorderly 1f examined from the Baroque perspective. In particular, the tritonal relationship between the E-minor chord and a B}-based V’ chord, and the immediate succession of the V’ and the V*° chords based on different roots is illogical from the point of view of Baroque standards. Metric irregularity adds to this sense of “blurred” Baroque. Although Schnittke did not analyze the Symphony of Psalms, he pointed to a similar kind of illogical tonal combination found in Stravinsky’s other so-called neo-classical compositions. Schnittke names this kind of illogical tonality a quasi-tonality. He shows how Stravinsky’s quasi-polyphonic voiceleading results in the use of parallel octaves and unisons along with unusual sustained pedal tones and how the apparently sustained and “pretend-to-beresolved” dissonances and similar “games” contradict the overall context modeled on eighteenth-century samples. In Schnittke’s view, 1t demonstrates

“the impossibility in principle of repeating the classical models today without falling into absurdity.’ The “paradoxical” logic of Stravinsky, as Schnittke calls it, has its counterpart in the ironic estrangement from the chosen tradition, which Meletinsky attributes to neo-mythologism. In an absurd, unorthodox way, Stravinsky is persistent in his effort to create a whole out of the disparate “universals” of the Baroque, each of which seems to acquire an independence of its own, akin to the geometric figures in an abstract painting. However, perhaps precisely because of the emphatic quasi-absurdity of relations between the elements, the entire action can be described as a form of re-actualization of the precedent in its quasiprimordial, and thus sacred, serious naivety, as if the proper logic of classical harmony were now a paradise lost, hopelessly forbidden. At the same time,

octatonicism serves as a unifying force that provides an alternative logic, however implicit. As is well researched by now, Stravinsky learned the use of the octatonic scale from his professor, Rimsky-Korsakov, who himself utilized it in a number of operas. Pieter C. van den Toorn points to the octatonic procedures in the Symphony of Psalms and in many other works in Stravinsky and ‘The Rite of Spring’ (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1987), 125, and provides a detailed analysis of the octatonicism in the first movement of the work in The Music of Igor Stravinsky (New Haven and London: Yale University Press,

1983), especially 269, 345-351, and more in portions of chapters 9, 10, and 11. See also Arthur Berger, “Problems of Pitch Organization in Stravinsky,” in Perspectives on Schoenberg and Stravinsky, ed. Benjamin Boretz and Edward T. Cone (New York: Norton, 1972). °!Paradox as a Feature of Stravinsky’s Musical Logic,” in A Schnittke Reader, 170.

100 Towards the Universality of Myth At rehearsal number 6 of the Symphony of Psalms, the oboe solo contains a passage of sextuplets, which functions as a miniature cadenza, or, in

terms of the Baroque concertato principle, a typical solo section placed between tutti sections. The first movement in general is rich with decorative figuration. Both the cello solo at rehearsal number 2 and the restatement of the same motive by the altos contain a reiteration of a minor second, which hints at the so-called “sigh,” or lament figures of Baroque melodic style. The recollection of the Baroque is amplified by the allusion to the style of Bach in the Fugue (2nd movement), confirmed by the use of the mono-

gram BACH hidden there. The subject “C-E)-B-D” is also based on the octatonic subset B-C-D-E) and thus may be considered to be self-referential, as well as to provide coherence with the first movement on the level of pitch organization. It seems that Stravinsky utilized both referential planes. The second half of the theme of the Fugue contains BACH spelled backward as pitches H (which is the German labeling of pitch B), C, A, and B} (Figure

36), and Louis Andriessen and Elmer Schonberger have sensibly demonstrated that the subject includes even two transpositions of this backwardspelled monogram.”

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FIGURE 36: The subject of the Fugue, Symphony of Psalms

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H Cc A B However, I find it hard to agree with these two authors that the subject is stylistically neutral, or, as they put it, that “it reminds us of itself.’’ The presence of the C minor tonality, the expressive use of intervals such as the augmented fifth E} to B and the descending major sixth B to D, featuring the raised seventh and the second degrees, the counterbalance of ascending and descending melodic direction, and the chromatic line with a hidden two-part polyphony in measures 4 and 5—all these features are reminiscent of Bach’s fugue subjects. The obsessive repetition and rhythmic variation of the first

four notes of the subject in the next two measures also is reminiscent of Bach, who, of course, used repetitions of the first three notes of the subject, for example, in the fugue written in the same key as that of Stravinsky, the **T_ouise Andriessen, and Elmer Schonberger, The Apollonian Clockwork (New Y ork: Oxford

University Press, 1989), 35-36.

Polystylistics in its Mythological Function 101 Fugue in C minor of the Well-Tempered Clavier, Book I. As in the fugue by Bach, these repetitions in Stravinsky contnbute to the dance-like nature of the subject. Stravinsky wrote: “I regarded Psalm 150 as a song to be danced,

~ as David danced before the Ark.’ References to Bach, particularly his cantatas and Passions, are especially evident in the fragment from rehearsal numbers 4 through 8. Stravinsky uses here a conventional middle register, correctly resolved suspensions, and the

kind of chromatically inflected leaps that strongly evoke Bach. From the

mythographic point of view, the significance of this reference lies in identifying Bach’s treatment of the sacred musical genre for chorus and orchestra as a past precedent for its reactualization in the present. Gabrieli’s Symphoniae sacrae may be viewed as another such precedent. Regarding the third movement, Stravinsky wrote: The allegro in Psalm 150 was inspired by a vision of Elijah’s chariot climbing the Heavens; never before had I written anything quite so literal as the triplets for horns and piano to suggest the horses and chariot.”

In this fragment, Stravinsky seemingly remains in the stylistic field of

his earlier allusion to the Baroque by using certain Baroque rhetorical figures: in particular, anabasis (ascending motion) and catabasis (descending motion). The anabasis (Figure 37) is represented by ascending scales in the parts for bassoons, double basses, piano II, and harp glissando, and, in Figure 38, arpeggios in the flutes, oboes, and piano. Figure 37 also demonstrates the use of catabasis, or descending motion, in the parts for trumpets, pianos, and low strings. The episodes containing triplets, to which Stravinsky refers in the above quotation, occur twice in the course of the third movement: first, at [5]; second, as a recapitulation, at [18], where solo horns are featured. The music of both episodes evokes the third movement, Allegro molto vivace, from Tchaikovsky’s Sixth symphony, which, in turn, features anabasis and catabasis. Both the triplet eighth-notes (compare Figures 39 and 38) and the graphics of Tchaikovsky’s score, featuring ascent and descent, are recalled in the corresponding passages of Stravinsky’s finale. Dialogues and a Diary, 44. “Tbid., 78.

On Tchaikovsky’s uses of the rhetorical figures anabasis and catabasis, see Irina Skvorzova, “O proekte mifologicheskoi opposizii vremeni i vechnosti na komposizzionno-dramaturgicheskom urovne”’[On the project of the mythic opposition of time and eternity on the level of dramaturgy and composition], Ph.D dissertation (Moscow: Moscow Conservatory, 1991).

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Composition as a Total Picture of the Universe 145 Yet another attempt at comprehensiveness is apparent in Crumb’s polymodality. In the first movement of Ancient Voices the composer balances the whole-tone modality with the chromatic modality. During the soprano’s initial four phrases Crumb gradually builds a collection of three whole steps, divided by a major and a minor third, 1n ascending order, GA-C#-D#-F#-G#. At the end of the soprano solo, Crumb introduces chromatic intervals—an augmented sixth (ascending, F-D#), an augmented octave (descending, D#-D), and a diminished octave (descending, B}-B). As instruments enter, the whole-tone idea is retained in the form of a drone by the electric piano, and the chromatic idea is continued in the harp, whose part contains two pairs of pitch classes that are a half step apart (F#, G, D, and E}). The other instrumental parts contain three pairs of pitch classes that are a half step apart from each other (A} and G; F# and G; A} and A). In this and other works, Crumb attempts to create a comprehensive picture of the world by both musical and poetic means. Correspondences, such as between “water” and “maternity,” which we observed in the poetic text of Ancient Voices, are characteristics of mythic systemology that can

have an effect on the level of musical composition as well. Systematic correspondences or associative chains between different media or elements of music contribute to the construction of modern artistic cosmologies. Artistic Systemology

The systems of correspondence play a special role in cosmology. They illustrate the rational character of myth and form its inherent systemology. Examples of mythic systemology can be found in astrology and

associated esoteric doctrines; these derive, in many cases, from older mythic systemologies. Marius Schneider, in his study of various ancient cosmologies, points to sets of correspondences that were used as early as the Megalithic era.’® Astrology, an art form of cosmology, also deals with the four main elements (earth, fire, water, air), ordering these and other components of the universe through correspondences, numerology, and mythologems (for example, a cross, circle, or square). Music since early times has been part of cosmology through correspondences between the planets, the elements, and the musical tones. In the twentieth century, systems of correspondences remain a useful tool to '8See J oscelyn Godwin’s summary of Schneider’s study in Harmonies of Heaven and Earth: The Spiritual Dimensions of Music from Antiquity to Avant-Garde (Rochester, Vermont: Inner Traditions International, 1987), 163. Marius Schneider considers sets of correspondences that

connect human culture (tones) and nature (main elements, animals) in Greek and Indian cosmologies in “Kosmogonie,” in Jahrbuch fiir musikalische Volks- und Vélkerkunde, vol. 14, ed. Joseph Kuckertz (Kassel and New York: Barenreiter, 1990): 9-51.

146 Cosmologies structure artistic thought, and some composers attempt to present a whole cosmological picture in a single work using these correspondences. A correspondence between colors or lights tied to certain sounds has traditionally related cosmology and music at least as far back as Haydn’s The Creation (1798). Lawrence Kramer discusses how light 1s associated

with the “primeval consonance” of a C-major chord in the “creation cadence” in Haydn’s oratorio. Kramer points out that the mystical tradition of “hearing the light” has a significant counterpart in the discourse of musical cosmology.’’ Correspondences of this kind flourished in the early twentieth century; Scriabin’s well-known music-color symbology (as in Prometheus and the Preliminary Action from the Mysterium) is only one of many examples. Scriabin’s contemporary, the critic Leonid Sabaneev, linked Scriabin’s syncretism to his all-explanatory systematizing ambition: (Scriabin’s] mental make-up inclined him towards schematization and craving to know and explain everything to the end, and therefore was forced to make up schemes which seemed to him explanatory, and at an early stage made all the arts identical. He was the artist to whom the secret of combining all the arts was bound to be revealed.””

Mel Gordon names, in addition to Scriabin, other Russian artists of the time—Nikolai Kulbin and George Gurdjieff—from whose writings he compiled impressive charts of tone-color-image/meaning corresponden-

ces.” Neither Gurdjiev nor Kulbin were composers in the true sense, although music was a part of their creativity. While the systems of correspondences suggested by Scriabin, Kulbin,

and Gurdjiev in early twentieth-century Russia necessarily involved theosophical meanings and colors, those in Paul Hindemith’s opera Die Harmonie der Welt (1957) provided for planets and types of human personalities represented by the opera’s characters (Figure 56).

'°T awrence Kramer, Classical Music and Postmodern Knowledge (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 87-89. 207 eonid Sabaneyeff [Sabaneev, a more commonly accepted spelling of the author’s last name], Modern Russian Composers, trans. Judah A. Joffe (New York: International Publishers, 1927; reprint: Da Capo, 1975), 41-42. 71 Mel Gordon, “Songs from the Museum of the Future: Russian Sound Creation (19101930),” in Wireless Imagination: Sound, Radio, and the Avant-Garde (Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 1992). See the chart for Scriabin (p. 209), for the “Inner Octaves” of Gurdjiev (p. 201), and for Kulbin’s Sound-Color Symbology (p. 206).

Composition as a Total Picture of the Universe 147 FIGURE 56: Tonal symbolism in Hindemith’s Die Harmonie der Welt’?

Character Heavenly bodies Key

Kepler Earth D/C Emperor Rudolph Sun C Kepler’s mother, Katharina Moon Ep Kepler’s wife, Susanna Venus A Tansur Saturn Fe Pastor Hizler Mercury Ab

Ulrich Mars Wallenstein Jupiter F B

The correspondences between the musical tones and the planets that Hindemith uses here derive from the concept of the music of the spheres, which continued to function as an artistic myth in the twentieth century. Already in the seventeenth century this concept became perceived not scientifically, but symbolically.*? What is mythic in the concept of the music of the spheres is the ambition to embrace the whole universe, to fold it into one relatively simple structure and to structure this entity as a system of correspondences.

The subject of Hindemith’s opera did not dictate his turn to the correspondences between the tones and the planets. Twenty years prior to composing the opera about Kepler, Hindemith described his own musical cosmology on the pages of his treatise The Craft of Musical Composition: If we think of the series of tones grouped around the parent tone C (as in series 1) as a planetary system, then C 1s the sun, surrounded by its descendant tones as the sun is surrounded by its planets. Series 1 shows us the distance of the planets from the

central star. As the distance increases, the warmth, light, and power of the sun diminish, and the tones lose their closeness of relationship. The intervals correspond to the distances of the various planets from each other. In their melodic function, the

two successive tones of an interval are like two planets at different points in their orbits, while the formation of a chord is like a geometric figure formed by connecting various planets at a given instant.”* *2Based on James D Angelo, “Tonality Symbolism in Paul Hindemith’s Opera ‘Die Harmonie der Welt,’” Hindemith-Jahrbuch/Annales Hindemith 14 (1985), 99. For an updated account on this opera see Siglind Bruhn, The Musical Order of the World: Kepler, Hesse, Hindemith (Hillsdale, NY: Pendragon Press, 2005).

Godwin, Harmonies of Heaven and Earth, 127. *4paul Hindemith, The Craft of Musical Composition, vol. 1, trans. Arthur Mendel, 4" ed. (New York: Schott, 1942), 57.

148 Cosmologies Similarly to the Pythagorean version of the music of the spheres, Hindemith points to the correspondence between musical and planetary intervals. For the composer, this correspondence is neither a theoretical concept nor a metaphor, but a piece of reasoning in constructing his tonal system—the basis for Hindemith’s harmonic language—for he perceives the planetary relations as the “raw model.” His version of the music of the spheres has a distinctive direction, namely, a “descending” one: We shall not do as the ancients did, and carry over earthly relations to happenings far out in space. Rather, we shall observe in the tiniest building unit of music the play of the same forces that rule the movements of the most distant nebulae.”

Stockhausen also used a system of correspondences in the mythic sense. In his cosmology, the composer closely approaches Boethius’s categories of musica mundana and musica humana. The coordination between the two has a fundamental significance for Stockhausen. It is demonstrated in a series of questions about his work that Stockhausen himself posed for future critics as “remaining still open”: “What are distinctively new vibrations and rhythms in my music, and what laws of the universe are transmitted in them?’*° The composer considers his own creativity as a sweeping embrace of both macrocosms and microcosms. That becomes clear from this question: “Which [of my pieces] transport us to worlds far removed from our planet? Which works allow us to experience the way of life of much smaller creatures, down to the smallest

micro-organisms?” The partial set of correspondences that Stockhausen uses in Licht connects the days of the week, the characters of the opera, the associated heavenly bodies, Greek gods and their German counterparts, numbers, and colors (Figure 57).

*Tbid., 53.

*°K arlheinz Stockhausen, Foreword to The Works of Karlheinz Stockhausen, by Robin Maconie, 2™ ed., (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), v. *"Ibid., vi.

Composition as a Total Picture of the Universe 149 FIGURE 57: Correspondences between characters, intervals, and instruments in Donnerstag from Licht

Character Opening interval Instrument

Eva Major third Bassett horn

Mondeva

Luzifer Major seventh Trombone

Luzimon

Michael Perfect fourth Trumpet Yet another set of correspondences the composer employs in Licht is between the characters, instruments, and melodic materials. In the “Superformula” for Licht, each character of the opera cycle receives a “melody” (see chapter 2, Figure 29). As the opera progresses, the opening intervals of these melodies and their timbres gradually become identified by the ear

as emblematic of particular characters. Thus, Stockhausen apparently attempts to reveal the intervallic and timbral “ethos” associated with each of them. The opening chord of the “Kindheit” scene in Donnerstag is a

mixture of three timbres associated with all three—Michael, Eva, and Lucifer.

Furthermore, Stockhausen presents correspondences between the planets and representatives of different arts, an apparent influence of The Urantia Book cosmology. According to the composer, one of the seven operas, Sonntag, must itself embody a solar system with relationships between the planets that we as earthlings don’t yet know. [...] There are windows and doors in planets. [...] Singers, instrumentalists and dancers live in these planets, emerge, and establish contact with one another by way of linking bridges.”*

Since the planets are communicating by means of music and other arts, one might say that Nietzsche’s idea of unification through Dionysian

joy is carried out in life: Now, with the gospel of universal harmony, each one feels himself not only united, reconciled, and fused with his neighbor, but as one with him. [...] In song and dance man expresses himself as a member of a higher community.”” *8 Stockhausen, Towards a Cosmic Music, 87.

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, trans. Walter Kauffman (New York: Vintage Books, 1967), 37.

150 Cosmologies The “higher community” is even more than just one planet. It is a Nietzschean “universal primordial unity” on the level of interplanetary, cosmic relationships. Stockhausen aims to obtain the universality that normally characterizes myth, with its trans-historical and archetypal similarity of mythic motives in different cultures: My theatre is not symbolic, or even historical. I do not want to recreate the past or go over social subjects. [...] My theatre tells a universal story: the story of human existence. [...] I am concerned with archetypal situations.*”

| Although Stockhausen’s ideas also evoke the Pythagorean concepts of the healing effects of music and of the human relationship with the supernatural through music, Jamie James correctly points out that for all his insistence on the Spirit and spirituality, Stockhausen still places his emphasis on the self, and that is what makes him an utterly modern man and alienated from the Pythagorean ideal.*!

This description fits the characteristics Meletinsky gives to neomythologism: a sense of alienation from a collective mythological consciousness through Jungian psychology and focus on oneself. Although Meletinsky applied these notions to the twentieth-century novel, many musical compositions of the period demonstrate similar traits. Namely, the result of remythification “is a series of parallels and a certain degree of unity in much modern writing, despite superficial differences.”””

In quite different aesthetic contexts, there are more examples of mythic systemology at work in the second half of the century. Two sets of twelve pieces after the signs of the zodiac—Crumb’s Makrokosmos | and II

(1972-73)—form a part of this composer’s sounding cosmology. John Carbon has fully discussed their astrological connotations.*’ The fact that

Crumb repeatedly went through the zodiacal circle in a systematic way again recalls the “totalitarian ambition” of the mythic consciousness. ; °Mya Tannenbaum, Conversations with Karlheinz Stockhausen (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), 83 and 60. >! The Music of the Spheres: Music, Science, and the Natural Order of the Universe (New York: Grove Press, 1993), 240. *°The Poetics of Myth, trans. Guy Lanoue and Alexandre Sadetsky (New York: Garland, 1998), 277-278. >John Carbon, “Astrological Symbolic Order in George Crumb’s ‘Makrokosmos,’” Sonus 10 (1990): 65-80.

Composition as a Total Picture of the Universe 15] Such a phenomenon of twentieth-century musical thought as total serialism, with its strict systems of correspondences among different parameters of dynamics, pitch, and time, is, in fact, based on a principle that strongly resembles mythic systemology, with its all-embracing attempt to systematize all available elements using chains of correspondences. The style that represents an opposite pole from serialism—indeterminacy—in

its own way, also welcomes correspondences between different parameters of a composition. For example, Cage, in Aria for voice (1958) suggests that a performer may establish his or her individual set of correspondences between ten different styles of singing and the colors used in the score’s notation. Cathy Berberian, the first performer of the work,

chose the individual set cited in Cage’s foreword to the printed score (Peters, 1960). Figure 58 demonstrates that Cage constructs a system of correspondences not unlike those in mythic systemologies of planets, tones, and gods; a synesthesia of sound and color. FIGURE 58: Correspondences in Cage’s foreword to Aria

Singing style Color

Jazz Dark blue Contralto Red Sprechstimme Black with parallel dotted lines Dramatic Black Marlene Dietrich Purple Coloratura Yellow

Folk Green Oriental Orange

Nasal Brown Baby Light blue

The tendency toward artistic systematization through sets of correspondences is characteristic of several twentieth-century styles, from the tonal orientation of Hindemith’s music to serialism and indeterminacy. The neo-mythological nature of this phenomenon reveals itself in the fact that each such-system of correspondences is assigned individually. Each composition thus offers its unique systemology.

152 Cosmologies Cosmogony and Eschatology Traditionally, cosmology myths include both cosmogony and eschatology. Cosmogony myths constitute a special group within cosmological myths that tell about the origin and the creation of the world. Cosmogony myths are more sacred than etiologic myths, which tell about the origins of cultural objects and habits.

Eschatological myths comprise yet another group within cosmological myths. As the antipodes of cosmogony myths, they tell about the end of the world. Already Wagner’s Ring presented eschatology, the downfall of the gods, along with cosmogony. Scriabin intended to unfold both genesis and eschatology in his Preliminary Action. According to Faubion Bowers, Scriabin originally planned this work as a purely eschatological

picture, of which World War I was a prelude, but in 1915 he decided to present “the cosmo- and anthropo-genesis of the human race,” “growing from Oneness to Duality” and ending with the initial Oneness.** At the end of Scriabin’s Preliminary Action, “All earth and earthly feelings would

scorch in Scriabin’s flaming soul. Man would be stripped of fleshy clothes. Matter would dematerialize in toto, and return to its purely naked, spiritual state [...] invisible and nonexistent.” God as Composer, Composer as God, and Music as Religion Because of the special sacrality of cosmogonic myths, their application to music results in the interpretation of music as a universal religion. The figure of the creator, then, becomes synonymous with the composer. Earlier, Kepler, in Harmonice Mundi (1619), and Romantic philosophers saw God’s creation as a work of art. Thus, for Schelling, “The universe is formed in God as an absolute work of art and in eternal beauty.”*® Stockhausen repeats the idea expressed by Kepler that God the creator is God the composer. Stockhausen’s God is “the greatest musician of all times, the greatest composer.””’ Scriabin—who, in the course of his life, passed through atheism and

solipsism, the study of Nietzsche and Schopenhauer, gnosticism, the theosophy of Blavatsky, and Brahmanism—combined elements of these *“Faubion Bowers, The New Scriabin: Enigma and Answers (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1973), 124. *>Bowers describes Scriabin’s program in these words, ibid., 126. *°Friedrich Schelling, The Philosophy of Art, ed. and trans. Douglas W. Stott (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989), 31. >7Stockhausen, Towards a Cosmic Music, 114.

Cosmogony and Eschatology 153 philosophical doctrines, myths, and mystic teachings®® as he created his own mythology, centered on himself as a Messiah. “Nobody called oneself God so boldly and loudly before,” Losev noted.”’ As the critic Leonid Sabaneev recalled, Scriabin compared his own birthday on December 25 with that of Christ, and regretted that it wouldn’t be possible to hang big bells from the skies for the performance of his Mysterium.”° In the beginning of his career, Scriabin viewed himself as “the supreme high priest at the altar of the universal temple.’™' Scriabin also commented on the similarity of Prometheus and Christ. [...] “For my part, I prefer Prometheus or Satan, the prototype of revolt and individuality. Here I am my own master. I want truth, not salvation.” Were the historical Christ ever to be disproved, Scriabin said, his provenance in Greek legend would still stand eternal.’

All three figures—Christ, Prometheus, and Satan—seem to constitute a single archetype in Scriabin’s mind. The universalization of the image of Prometheus, understood as the element of cosmic fire, led the composer beyond Christianity and beyond theosophical symbolism to a cosmological myth. Scriabin’s neo-mythologism justifies his unique mixture of paganism, demonism, and Christianity, along with the other philosophical constituents

| determining the composer’s creative self. I will briefly refer to these other components in order to demonstrate the mechanism by which the reconcillation of these diverse entities becomes possible on a mythological level. Scriabin’s theosophical interests constitute one important component

of his individual mythology. Beginning in 1905, the composer became familiar with the works of the Russian-born theosophist Helena Blavatsky (1831-1891)* —The Secret Doctrine (1888) and The Key to Theosophy *8For a detailed discussion of Scriabin’s philosophical interests and their sources, see Boris de Schloezer, Scriabin: Artist and Mystic, trans. Nicolas Slonimsky (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1987), and Simon Morrison, Russian Opera and the Symbolist Movement (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2002). ? Alexei Losev, Mirovozzrenie Skriabina [Scriabin’s Weltanschauung ] in Strast’ k dialektike [Passion for dialectics] (Moscow: Sovetskii pisatel’, 1990), 295. Ibid. 296. Losev refers here to his private conversation with Sabaneev, who, in his turn, recalls this passage from his conversation with Scriabin. “Bowers, The New Scriabin, 125. **Faubion Bowers, Scriabin: a Biography, 2" ed. (Mineola, NY: Dover, 1996), 207. “Helena Blavatsky spent her life traveling through India, Tibet, Greece, Mexico, and Egypt, studying ancient theosophical concepts. She founded the Theosophical Society in New York in 1875 and published her books there in 1887-8.

154 Cosmologies (1889). In her works, Blavatsky examined traditional Indian teachings about Karma,” dealing with the rebirth of a human soul and the transformation of Spirit from the terrestrial to the Cosmic. Scriabin was deeply influenced by these books.” According to Sabaneev, the Secret Doctrine

“was a greater authority for Scriabin than the New Testament.”*° Blavatsky’s dreams about the “universal brotherhood of humanity” and her attempts to investigate the powers latent in humans must have elicited Scriabin’s sympathy, for he himself was concerned with these issues. Yet another component of Scriabin’s mythology is rooted in gnosti-

cism—the “secret doctrine” that was banned as heresy by the Russian Orthodox Church.*’ In gnosticism, the material is juxtaposed with the spiritual. The savior recuperates our knowledge, thus releasing it from the material world, while the non-gnostic is doomed to reincarnation. Scriabin

became familiar with gnosticism through private conversations on the subject with Prince Sergey Trubetskoy (1856-1905).** The Russian musi-

cologist Igor Belza speculates that several important characteristics of gnosticism may have found reflection in Scriabin’s Prometheus.” For example, the notion of the renewing fire became one of Scriabin’s favorite images, embodied in the subtitle of Prometheus and in its climax. Belza also believes that the opening six-note chord in Prometheus, which he calls

“the chord of the Pleroma,” is associated with gnosticism. The Divine Pleroma is defined as the universal source of all things in one of the gnostic documents—the Apocrypha of John. Although Belza’s argument “Tn the classical Indian philosophical tradition, Karma means action, bodily or mental, which predetermines the quality of the future life. Fora good documentation of the influence of Theosophy and Brahmanism on Scriabin and his Mysterium project, see Morrison’s Russian Opera and the Symbolist Movement, ch. 3.

*°Natalia Grebennikova cites Sabaneev’s comment in her abstract “Scriabin and Blavatskaya,” in Razlichnye aspecty tvorchestva Skriabina [Various aspects of Scriabin’s work]: The Materials of the Conference in the Memory of Scriabin’s 120" Birthday (Moscow: Scriabin Museum, 1992), 27.

*7Gnosticism combines elements of Christianity with Platonism, drawing in particular from the creation myths of Genesis and of Plato’s Timaeus. This teaching originated from the second through the fourth centuries A.D. *8Troubetzkoy was the president of the Moscow Philosophical Society and gave lectures at Moscow University. According to Boris de Schloezer, Scriabin read a few initial chapters

from Troubetzkoy’s Study of Logos, the book that Scriabin had in his library. See de Schloezer, Scriabin: Artist and Mystic, 71. “Igor Belza, “Filosofskie istoki obraznogo stroya Prometeya” [The philosophical sources of

the imagery in Scriabin’s Prometheus], Materials of the Conference in the Memory of Scriabin’s 120" Birthday (Moscow: Scriabin Museum, 1992), 17-21.

Cosmogony and Eschatology 155 lacks substantial documentation to confirm his assumptions, Taruskin points out that Scriabin himself described the gnostic concepts to Rachmaninov.”°

The attitude toward a universal religion implies searching for God among different sources, as in Scriabin’s case. Stockhausen’s biography also reveals him as a person seeking his own gods, and along the way he has studied various mythologies of the world. When Catholicism became restrictive for Stockhausen, he turned to non-European religions and myths. Finally, he concluded, “I understood that the origins and the aim of every theology are the same. I have kneeled to pray in both synagogues and mosques.”*' In his turn, Crumb states: “There’s some spiritual energy that is burning all over the world that takes different forms. [...] I can say

music is equally religion.” Many twentieth-century composers are theists outside of any specific orthodoxy. Some justify this approach by criticizing the modern church; others believe that the cultural aspect of any religion is its most important aspect. The way in which Stockhausen criticizes the modern church is quite representative: The Church is no longer able to act as a guide, nor does it want to. It does not want to give up everything either; but it isn’t able to renew itself in the universal and spiritual sense of the word. The fact is that the Church has remained anchored to a parochial clericalism without content. I’m not saying that its rules haven’t ever been valid; just that gradually they’ve lost their reason for existing.”

Crumb, on the other hand, holds a view of religion where cultural values transcend particular denominational limits: I would think of religion as just one more cultural inheritance. [...] Apart from what religion might mean to any particular person, it also has an enormous purely cultural presence.”

Defining Russia Musically, 264. >! Tannenbaum, Conversations with Karlheinz Stockhausen, 3.

"Edward Strickland, American Composers: Dialogues on Contemporary Music (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), 168. -5Tannenbaum, Conversations with Karlheinz Stockhausen, 65. 4 Strickland, American Composers, 168.

156 Cosmologies These two approaches are similar in stressing the interdenominational character of their religious thinking. Both agree that music is, in essence, a religion.

Stockhausen speaks about a work of art as a prayer, which can be made by an artist like himself, as the following dialogue between the composer and Mya Tannenbaum illustrates: K.S.: The work of art represents, as I see it, our transcendental consciousness; just like prayer. M.T.: But Stockhausen made the prayer. K.S.: Yes, indeed.”

Taruskin warns: “Only by dint of extreme measures could the romantic sacralization of art continue into the age of science.””° If a twentiethcentury composer assigns to music the significance of a religion, such re-

sacralization of the musical art puts it on the same plane as the sacred narratives of old—the cosmogony stories. According to mythographic research, many archaic societies distinguished between the sacred cosmological stories and profane stories, such as fairy tales, which often were

modified, desacralized myths.°’ The “high” art music of the nineteenth century likewise produced a repertoire that Carl Dahlhaus associated with a “religion of art” (Kunstreligion). Defining the term, Dahlhaus referred to Wagner’s essay Religion and Art (1880)—in particular, to this passage: “Where religion 1s becoming artificial it is for art to salvage the nucleus of religion by appropriating the mythic symbols.” Dahlhaus comments: Parsifal is [...] undeniably a document of the nineteenth-century “religion of art.” This does not mean that art should be venerated as religion—or as pseudo-religion, for the holder of fundamentalist Christian views—and works of art worshipped as religious icons, but that religion—or its truth—has passed from the form of myth into the forms of art.”°

>>Tannenbaum, Conversations with Karlheinz Stockhausen, 71. Richard Taruskin, The Oxford History of Western Music, vol. 5: The Late Twentieth Century (Oxford and New York: 2004), 101.

*’Eleazar Meletinsky, “Obshee ponyatie mifa 1 mifologii” [The general notion of myth and mythology], afterword to Mifologicheskii slovar’ [The dictionary of mythology] (Moscow: Sovetskaya enziklopedija, 1991), 657. >8Carl Dahlhaus, Richard Wagner's Music Dramas, trans. Mary Whittall (New York, London: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 144. Dahlhaus does not supply edition and page of Wagner’s annotation.

Cosmogony and Eschatology 157 Kunstreligion also came to be commonly associated with Beethoven’s Ninth and Mahler’s Resurrection symphonies.” The “extreme measures,” that, according to Taruskin, would allow the romantic sacralization of art to continue in the twentieth century included the familiar ones of late Romantic art: significant length, unprecedented performing forces, and an attempt to create not just a work of music, but the whole world musically. Consider again Stockhausen’s Licht or, for example, Schnittke’s First symphony, which lasts more than an hour. The combination of occasional Parsifal-like solemnity of tone with an apparent Mahlerian skepticism leaves one with a question: Could Schnittke’s First symphony be a distant reflection of Kunstreligion? Kunstreligion extended through Shostakovich, whose music Margarita Mazo characterized as “a sacred experience [...] for many of us [in the

Soviet Union].”” The late years of Shostakovich’s symphonic career (Fourteenth symphony, 1969; Fifteenth symphony, 1971, premiered in 1972) coincide with Schnittke’s work on the First symphony. Viewed within the context of Soviet ideology, Schnittke’s symphony, whose gigantic size mimicked the official grandiose representational scale, evokes the tragic sense of the end of the world. As it turns out now, considering the Soviet Union’s later decline and collapse, Schnittke’s mockery of

Soviet attributes of high art, such as pompous heroism, false pathos, optimistic “building of the luminous future,” was a prophecy of disintegration in the form of an end-of-the-world mythologem. In 1974, the year of its premiere, the symphony represented “an extreme measure,” using Taruskin’s words, creating an aura of scandal and dissidence. Like Mahler and Shostakovich, Schnittke mocked the noble character

of an art-religious work by eliminating the balance between and the classical synthesis of the “high” and the “low” realms, shockingly tossing together both the vernacular and serious episodes. On the other hand, the very shock of such a welter is manifest in the search for the sacred, lost Paradise. The Soviet atmosphere, sterilized of religion by the power of the state, created a special condition for the kind of transfiguration Dahlhaus described in regard to a nineteenth-century art-religious phenomena, albeit provoked by a different cause. See the discussion of Kunstreligion as applied to Wagner’s Parsifal and Mahler’s Symphonie der Tausend in Constantin Floros, “Sterben, um zu leben: Mahlers Auferstehungssymphonie und seine Weltanschauung,” Neue Zeitschrift ftir Musik 151 (1990): 13-17.

From a public discussion at the end of the October 1998 Boston AMS session on Shostakovich. Cited in Paul Mitchinson, “The Shostakovich Variations,” in A Shostakovich Casebook, 318.

158 Cosmologies Schnittke’s First Symphony

Just as a complete cosmology myth traditionally offers both cosmogony and eschatology, Schnittke, in his all-embracing First symphony explores mythologems of both creation and the end of the world. I will first comment on the cosmogony elements, and then continue with more details of his eschatology. Creation myths typically list primary elements such as air, fire, earth, and water. In the beginning of the symphony, Schnittke, too, introduces several primary elements, including both major and minor triads and a series, as if he were listing the basic “bricks” of the Western art-musical universe to date. Although the twelve-tone row and the diatonic triads are stylistically contrasting, Schnittke makes them interlock as mutually complementing elements. He introduces the root of the major triad, the pitch A, within the series, while three measures later, the A-major triad supplies the last two pitches of the series (C4 and E).° Schnittke adds a cosmogonic dimension to the instrumental theater he offers in the First symphony. Some of its gestures appear to have been

conceived in terms of the creation story. The collective improvisation during the musicians’ entrance in the beginning of the first movement embodies original, pro-creative chaos. The audience sees the orchestra musicians walking onstage and hears seemingly disorganized rehearsal warm-up sounds that the composer wrote into the score. Metaphorically,

however, the conductor enters and shuts the chaos down (Figure 59), creating a solemn moment when silence precedes organized sound. This gesture reflects the order of cosmologically prime elements, such as light and darkness, in the book of Genesis.” Immediately following the conductor’s entrance, Schnittke marks the highest, the lowest, and the center points of the total range of the orchestra. First, an improvised ascending passage in the solo contrabass outlines its entire range (Figure 60). Then we hear a response from the highest and the lowest ranges of both the flute piccolo and the contrabassoon ([{32] in Figure 59), capstoned by a cluster in the middle register of the cembalo.

©! Svetlana Kalashnikova’s study corroborates that in Schnittke’s system of pitch organization, major and minor triads hold equal rights with series and often appear as joint components. “Universal’nost’ i lakonizm? Paradoksy i tainy zvokovysotnogo pis’ma Al’freda Shnitke,”

[Universalism and laconism? Paradoxes and mysteries of pitch organization in Alfred Schnittke’s works] Muzykal ’naja akademiya 2 (1999), 85. °2 According to the memoir of Schnittke’s tutor and friend, the composer began to explore the Bible in depth around 1965. Ryzhkin, “Faustovskaya,” 73. It was not until 1980 that Schnittke was baptized into Roman Catholicism, while he was abroad and away from Soviet authorities.

Cosmogony and Eschatology 159 FIGURE 59: Schnittke’s First symphony, I, selected parts

aA Wt ao GP GP. ro

{Conductor's Entrance]

4 Cl. SSS SSS

Ps es Ss ee

C-Fag, || PS seeeeee Ea

Eg DS ree rr See eee en ee These outlining gestures recall the litany in the Genesis prototype, which

line by line incrementally defines cosmic space: “And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament. And God called the firmament heaven.” Schnittke does not use precise pitches yet. Once he identifies the space limits in instrumental registers, Schnittke offers the primary pitch and primary interval—octave “C’’s, sounded in the various instrumental groups, seemingly as a metaphor for the building of the European tonal musical universe. FIGURE 60: Schnittke, First symphony, I, [32], contrabass solo

Sff furioso

Creation myths rely upon the archetypal opposites of chaos and cosmos. In correspondence with that tradition, Schnittke offers a prime conflict with the octave Cs, an immediate juxtaposition with discord, comprising a chromatic cluster in the divisi strings two measures after rehearsal number

33. Rehearsal number 37 articulates another basic opposition—that between major and minor, as represented by A-major and C-minor triads.

The direct clash fortissimo of the two contrasting triads recurs several times in the course of the symphony, establishing a motto in the manner of an idée fixe.

160 Cosmologies Earlier, I discussed Schnittke’s name encoding, in particular, the pitches A, C, E, and E) in the First symphony, as an example of mythic communication expressed through music and word syncretism (see chapter 4). Here I would like to examine his name encoding from a different perspective, as a tool for structuring a cosmology. Cosmogony myths have traditionally derived the origin of the world from a single name or tell about the process of naming that took place in mythic times. The first words or names pronounced by God constitute the very first events of creation. The following example is taken from the Rig Veda: In the beginning, this universe was Soul in the form of the Man [Purusa]. He looked around and saw nothing other than himself. Then, at first, he said, “I am,” and thus the word “I” was born.°?

Because the self plays an extremely important role in twentiethcentury neo-mythologism, a monogram, or a personal name, is sometimes placed in the center of the neo-mythological universe. Such a name may serve as the source for a basic element of a piece, a motto. The motto Schnittke uses in the First symphony illustrates this process. At rehearsal number 42, the composer transposes the A-major and C-minor triads of the motto to D} major and E minor. This supplies the rest of the pitches of his musical monogram (AIFrED and ScHnittkE), the combination “Des” being an abbreviated name of D) major in German and Russian music theory. Another transposition of the progression, in reverse order—first minor, then major—appears in the Finale movement [89], an E}-minor chord followed by a C-major triad. That one also contains the letters E, S, and C from the composer’s monogram, the combination “Es” standing for E}. The letter E, which twice appears in the composer’s full name, is present in all three of these combinations. Thus, the composer’s

personal name lies at the very core of the symphony, which metaphorically represents the entire world. Would it be possible to create this idiosyncratic cosmos without acknowledging the creator? The musical monogram functions here as a mythologem of a self-constructed cosmogony.

An eschatology model, on the other hand, is apparent through Schnittke’s scrutiny of the traditional ethos associated with the symphonic genre from his perspective as a “posteverythingist,” in the appropriately

chosen word by Taruskin.™ Another witty tag that Taruskin puts on Schnittke’s First symphony, “it’s-all-overism,” unmistakably refers to the See, for example, Leeming, The World of Myth, 31. at. Posteverythingist Booms,” The New York Times, July 12, 1992.

Cosmogony and Eschatology 161 eschatological aspect of the work.® In this respect, the First symphony

prepares the way for his Third symphony (1981), which Alexander Ivashkin has characterized as “reflecting [...] hypertrophy and bankruptcy of the idea of the classical symphony as a model of a clear and rational perception of the world.” The documentary The World Today, which served as a source for the

music of the First symphony, aimed to dramatize visually the diverse problems of the world as perceived in the late 1960s (the Vietnam war, the nuclear threat, hunger, leftist student movements, narcotics, the Cultural Revolution in China, environmental pollution, and more). The film’s critical attitude toward humankind seems to justify Schnittke’s choice of harsh dissonances, collages, and vulgar tunes, in the same ways that the subject matter of his earlier oratorio Nagasaki (1959) and opera The Lucky One (1962) had justified the inclusion of avant-garde atonality symbolizing the evil of the first atomic bomb dropped by an American pilot, though the composer later asserted this a naive association.” Schnittke intentionally presents several of his attempts to unfold a

symphony in the beginning of the first movement as logical failures. Episodes that initially display classical voice-leading, for instance, end up clashing with purely chromatic harmony and clusters of all twelve pitch classes. Schnittke exaggerates the failure effects, as if making the venerated temple of the classical tradition crumble before our ears. Continuing his assault on classical symphonic architecture, Schnittke

offers, in place of the second theme group, variations on one pitch centering on G, the dominant of the opening C. The pointilistic texture of the episode ironically exaggerates the sense of instability expected from the classical dominant harmonic function, and offers no chances for a Gmajor tonality to be established. For a few measures at [52], B} suggests G minor, but soon G provides the foundation for a diminished triad in the flute and cembalo parts, and even ceases to exist as a G. Instead, Schnittke

notates it as F double sharp in a cumbersome chromatic chord on the piano (Figure 61), causing the “second theme group” of the movement to

fail. Regarding this, Valentina Kholopova describes the second theme as , “a speech that never took place.’® © Defining Russia Musically, 100.

6 4 lexander Ivashkin, Alfred Schnittke (London: Phaidon Press, 1996), 164. °’See Shulgin, Gody neizvestnosti, 36-37. Valentina Kholopova and Yelena Chigareva, Alfred Schnittke (Moscow: Sovetskii kompozitor, 1990), 78.

RO

162 Cosmologies FIGURE 61: Schnittke, First symphony, I, 3 bars before [53] [diminished

triad |

Cel. , ee ee ———S Ren. 3

As a self-acknowledged heir of the German tradition, Schnittke could not leave untouched Beethoven’s iconic, optimistic ethos. Thus, he signals the recapitulation of the first movement by quoting the victorious theme — from the finale of Beethoven’s Fifth,” a quotation that brings momentary relief after the chaos of the spooky development. But the optimism of the

quotation, too, soon goes sour, when the famous theme is teasingly reharmonized in the parallel minor, and then overpowered by the harmonic motto of Schnittke’s symphony—the A-major and C-minor ‘tutti chords, containing the musical monogram of the composer’s name. The top voice features E} (Es), which provides a link to the first letter of Schnittke’s last

name. The link is between Beethoven “made-minor’ and Schnittke’s persona, as if signing a document with a sign of personal nihilism and resignation.

At rehearsal number 46, as the voices of the quasi-classical chorale become confused, defying logical resolution and sliding into nothingness, the traditional ethos of “consolation” or “peace” proves unattainable. Schnittke wrote, analyzing Stravinsky’s neo-classicism, of “the impossibility in principle of repeating the classical models today without falling into absurdity.”’”” If the classical models cannot be repeated, neither can their ethos (the heroic, optimistic, reverent, or victorious). Herein lies Schnittke offers formal analysis of the movement’s sonata form in Shulgin, Gody neizvestnosti, 65.

«Paradox as a Feature of Stravinsky’s Musical Logic,” in A Schnittke Reader, 170.

Cosmogony and Eschatology 163 Schnittke’s tragic sense of the loss of the entire world of musico-ethical

experience, which he felt was already becoming distinguishable in Stravinsky, “who was among the first to understand this [tragedy].””’

Would not the embodiment of this tragedy appropriately suggest tragic theater in order to induce catharsis? The tragic sense of this work stands in contrast to John Corigliano’s Promenade Overture (1981), in which he reiterates 1n reverse the musicians’ exit of Haydn’s Farewell symphony, as Schnittke does in his symphony. Corigliano’s overture opens as a symmetrical and artful replica of Haydn’s piece: the theatrical entrance of all instrumentalists in systematic order, from piccolo to tuba, is preceded by an inversion of the last five measures of the Farewell sym-

phony. While Corigliano further canonizes Haydn’s model through a witty compositional solution, the original Haydn finale offers a hint of resignation, with which Schnittke displays solidarity. The entire introduction repeats at the end of Schnittke’s symphony, as was suggested by the conductor Gennady Rozhdestvensky, with the note “sinfonia da capo al segno.” A recording of the last fourteen measures of the Farewell symphony is played at the end of the Finale. The Farewell symphony’s exit 1s now repeated not only in reverse, but in forward linear motion as well, followed once more in reverse order. In addition, the band leaves the stage at the end of the second movement, only to re-enter at the beginning of the Finale. Eschatology myths are traditionally sacred. While admitting chaos to

the “sacred” place—the performance stage, this tribune of a canonical symphony—Schnittke simultaneously offers a sign of sacredness. The semantic function of the opening bell chime (campane solo) is one of a momentary incarnation, in short, of a liturgical atmosphere. The timbre evokes Wagner’s famed chimes in Parsifal, which Dahlhaus called a “document of the nineteenth-century ‘religion of art.’”’? With this gesture,

Schnittke hints at the seriousness of the question he raised in the First symphony: Will the world end? Will the world of the symphony end? Cosmogony in Licht Stockhausen created his own sounding cosmos as if he were attaining the role of a mighty musical architect of time and space. First, he formed

time: the procession “Jahreslauf” (1977), with which the composition of

the opera cycle Licht began (currently a part of the opera Dienstag), depicts, in the composer’s own words,

Ibid. ”Dahlhaus, Richard Wagner’s Music Dramas, 144.

164 Cosmologies a picture of time running in the world. Millennium, century, decade and year depicted by dancers who implement these four speeds simultaneously together with four groups of instrumentalists [...] and manifesting the different levels of time through the tempi of the music.”

Then Stockhausen created space. In “Unsichtbare Chore” (1979) from Donnerstag aus Licht, he produced a large spherical space by means of sound permanently emulating from sixteen loudspeakers surrounding the auditorium. The critic Robin Maconie named it “a distant sound horizon.”

One expects the use of raw materials for the representation of the cosmological beginning. Such a tradition can be traced back to Haydn’s The Creation where, in the opening measures, an unharmonized C and mixed timbres illustrate the primordial chaos—what Lawrence Kramer calls “an Urklang, not yet intelligible, not yet even music.””° In “Kindheit,” the first scene of Donnerstag aus Licht, Stockhausen uses raw materials both

verbally and musically. The first pages of the text of his libretto contain the primordial sounding fundamentals of a human life: laughter, exclamations, hammer-tapping, onomatopoeia, and a child’s babbling. The infantile babbling in this scene, when Michael learns his first words from his mother, gains a special significance. Its function in the opera is comparable to that of giving first names in a creation myth. The mother teaches her son to distinguish days of the week, using the resonant names of the mythic gods, both Norse (Wotan, Donar, Freia, Tiu), and ancient Roman (Venus, Jupiter), as well as the names of the opera protagonists (Eva, Michael). The mixture of names results in new combinations, such as Michaelstag, Evatag, Wotanstag... Freia generates Freitag (Friday), while Tiu produces Tiustag, which immediately modifies to Dienstag (Tuesday in modern German). Some of Michael’s first words (“Moon-day’”—Monday, “Tiu’s day”—Tuesday) become the first objects of creation. By pronouncing them, Michael, Licht’s principal character, generates the days of the week in Stockhausen’s cosmology. The composer identifies him as “the creator-angel,” one of those who “can themselves create an entire universe in their own image,”” evocative of the same archetype that Schnittke uses by placing a monogrammed motto in the center of his symphonic universe. ® Stockhausen, Towards a Cosmic Music, 86.

™The Works of Karlheinz Stockhausen (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), 271. ™>Kramer, Classical Music and Postmodern Knowledge, 74. 7©Stockhausen, Towards a Cosmic Music, 89.

Cosmogony and Eschatology 165 In order to show an early stage of the world’s formation, Stockhausen employs certain features of minimalism in the beginning of “Kindheit.” As in the creation myths that restrict the initial matter to a few primordial

elements, such as earth, air, water, and fire, Stockhausen begins with sustained single pitches—C#, B}, and C—and gradually introduces other intervals and pitches, as if unfolding the process of creation. The initial chord-drone itself may symbolize the first stage—the long-lasting state before the birth of different elements from the primordial unity.

The idea of a long-lasting prime element in the beginning of a composition derives from the famous sustained triad in the beginning of Wagner’s Das Rheingold. Stockhausen’s chord contains the initial pitches subsequently sung by the main characters. Thus it symbolizes the unity of

three substances, Michael (his pitch, C, played by his instrument, the trumpet), Eva (B}, played by her instrument, the bassett horn), and Luzifer/Lucimon (C4, played by trombone), all of whom will inevitably

disintegrate. The chord also embodies the union of the two principal “atoms” from which the entire European musical world is built: a halfstep interval (C to C#), and a whole-step interval (B) to C). According to Stockhausen’s gospel, in the beginning was the chord. Ritualism Ritualism seems to be an inescapable feature of a cosmological com-

position, not only in the twentieth century. Looking back again to Haydn’s The Creation, which Kramer calls “an utopian ritual,” one of the distinctive elements in the contemporary reception of The Creation was the conviction that the work would somehow form a ritual nucleus for the renewal of spiritual community.”’

Some twentieth-century works are not simply influenced by myth and

ritual, but actually re-enact certain ritualistic forms of myth narration. Characteristically, Scriabin’s late works were conceived as ritualistic actions. Stockhausen conceived his Licht project as an opera that involves music, words, dance, mime, and gesture—syncretism, also characteristic of ritual. The abundance of repetitions brings a ritualistic cast to several scenes, especially “Kindheit” from Donnerstag, where seemingly senseless babbling features the process of giving names to the days of the week: “Tiu diu diu tiu diu diu diu tiu mars tiu mars. Mo-hon-tag E-va-tag Tiustag Kriegs-tag Diens-tag...”

"Kramer, Classical Music and Postmodern Knowledge, 90.

166 Cosmologies Many scenes from Licht are ritualistic due to processions, costumes, masks, and actions of “instrumental theatre.”” One example is the piece of 24 exercises “for hearing and purification,” a part of Samstag, played by a flutist. Stockhausen’s musical cosmology includes the notion of Purgatory,

where human souls are collected before their reincarnation on planets other than Earth. Stockhausen consciously borrowed both the idea of rein-

carnation and the notion of hearing a special “mantra” after death from Tibetan and Egyptian myths.” The exercises are called on to play a decisive

role in this process. Stockhausen warns: “Anyone who has not during their lifetime practiced exercises in concentrated listening to sound can easily be tempted [...] and drawn into rebirth without being able to escape the earth’s atmosphere.””” The composer creates a new ritual: This is [...] a genuine and true examination. [...The exercises] are played by the cat as flautist and six grave attendants (the six mortal senses) as percussionists all in black with silver faces and hands, utilizing in the most extraordinary fashion self-invented, surrealistic instruments strapped to their bodies. Three of them stand to the right and three to the left of the public, each between

two silver sound-plates. Finally they go in procession to the grave [the opened grand-piano without legs], and each throws in

one of these sound-plates. The cat then mounts into the grave and plays strange sounds—a mixture of laughter and flute music

which is very witch-like. Then she uses her lips to blow

| trombone sounds into the mouthpiece, exerting a truly magical impact, and utters a heart-rending cry. The grave is covered.*”

The essence of this musical purification is very important for the concept of the entire Licht project: the ritual embodies the search for the “Lux aeterna,” the symbol implied by the title of the opera cycle. According to its author, “listening, concentrating on the act of attentiveness and on the sound, is meant to liberate the soul, bringing it, free of images, to the White Light.’””®’

“Instrumental theater” 1s another phenomenon employing ritualistic elements. The term, which has become widespread in European literature

on music of the second half of the twentieth century, first appeared in ’8Stockhausen refers to Tibetan and Egyptian books of the Dead, in Towards a Cosmic Music, 91.

“Ibid. “Ibid. “Ibid.

Cosmogony and Eschatology 167 1966 in an essay by Mauricio Kagel, one of the phenomenon’s practical proponents.” Theatricality in Crumb’s Vox Balaenae (1971) is tied to this work’s program, which is based on both the scientific geological chronology of the Earth and the mythic notion of the beginning and end of time. Crumb

wrote, “the emergence of man in the Cenozoic era is symbolized by a partial restatement of the Zarathustra reference” (a parody of the opening measures of Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra).*> Crumb confirmed that his intention was to refer not so much to Strauss motto as to the soundtrack of Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), where this motto plays a vital role.** The creation myth Crumb composes into this work is a new, ironic one, in correspondence with Meletinsky’s concept of modern ironic estrangement from well-established myths. While archaic mythology humanizes the gods, Crumb suggests that the masks worn by the performers of Vox Balaenae should “represent, symbolically, the powerful impersonal forces of nature (nature dehumanized).”*° Crumb’s suggestion to perform the work under a deep-blue stage lighting, and his choice of B major (a key he defined as “luminous’’) as the main tonality of the piece reveal the syncretism and even synesthesia of the composer’s overall concept. This example shows that musi-

| cal neo-mythologism engages such attributes of traditional mythic consciousness as syncretism and ritualism, but at the same time overturns other conventions of archaic cosmology. Ritualism in modern music is not commonly looked at as an enactment of certain myths. Yet, this ritualistic aspect apparently arises from the traditional association with rituals of initiation, during which cosmological myths were often chanted or sung by a shaman. Ritualism, when it

is understood in a narrow sense, reveals itself in apparent associations with archaic rituals, in certain aspects of performance and styles that link

with the syncretism of a work’s conception. In a wider sense, a whole artistic movement in response to a societal need may sometimes unfold as a ritual of initiation.

8 Annotated Chronological List of Works, in Don Gillespie, ed., George Crumb, Profile of a Composer (New York: Peters, 1986), 108.

168 Cosmologies How Myths are Retold: the Initiation Rite of Modernism Is it possible to draw an analogy between the myths of archaic cultures aspiring to revive themselves in crises, on the one hand, and some

ideas of twentieth-century modernist culture, on the other? As mythographic research has demonstrated, various cultures, both oral and written,

collective and based on individual authorships, independently come to embody similar archetypes. As early as 1724, Joseph-Francois Lafitau (1685-1740) introduced the classic thesis regarding the uniform nature of all myths around the world, a conclusion based on his comparison of the ancient Greek and North American Indian myths.® Later scholars in com-

parative mythology, from Frazer, to Freud, to Jung and Eliade, emphasized the presence of the same logical patterns and archetypes in myths throughout the world.*’ Precisely because an independent embodiment of the archaic archetype is possible within modern culture, it is not my intent

here to single out Eastern influences or features of orientalism and exoticism as possible protagonists of initiation rituals within Viennese and German modernism; this is a task in its own right.** Instead, I will merely

point to the presence of such an archetype within a specific context of European modernist history and culture and show how Schoenberg’s life, his work, and his ideas embody it. One of the traditional functions of cosmological myths is reasserting the notion of unity and wholeness, restoring cosmic order. In the process of this ritual, the shaman recreated the unity of a ritual object, which had been previously disassembled and is consequently re-assembled in a new order.”

As Eliade notes, this pattern of dismemberment and rearrangement is °° Moeurs des sauvages ameriquains, comparées aux moeurs des premiers temps, 2 vols. (Paris). English translation: Customs of the American Indians Compared with the Customs of Primitive Times, trans. and ed. William N. Fenton and Elizabeth L. Moore (Toronto: Champlain Society, 1974). ®’See, for example, Carl Jung and Carl Kerényi, Essays on a Science of Mythology: The Myth

of the Divine Child and the Mysteries of Eleusis (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971), and Joseph Campbell, The Masks of God: Creative Mythology (New York: Penguin Books, 1968).

$8 4 mong recent studies that are aimed at investigating the East-West connection of modernism, one of the most penetrating is W. Anthony Sheppard’s Revealing Masks: Exotic

Influences and Ritualized Performance in Modernist Music Theater (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2001). Vladimir Toporov, “O rituale: vvedenie v problematiku” [On ritual: an introduction. ] Archaicheskii ritual v folklornykh i ranneliteraturnykh pamyatnikakh [Archaic ritual in folk and early literary monuments] (Moscow: Glavnaya redakzija vostochnoi literatury, 1988): 760.

How Myths are Retold 169 found almost everywhere in mythology.” In Hindu myths, for example,

the primeval God and Man, Purusha, originally the whole creature, undergoes sacrificial dismemberment, resulting in the creation of the four castes, that is, the basic components of the Hindu world.”’ This act serves as a model for future rituals, in which Purusha’s image is disassembled and rearranged anew.

In the Siberian version of this archetype, a shaman himself is dismembered and revivified in order to guarantee his future power: According to a Yakut informant, the spirits carry the future shaman to Hell and shut him in a house for three years. Here he undergoes his initiation; the spirits cut off his head (which they set to one side, for the novice must watch his own dismemberment with his own eyes) and hack his body to bits, which are

later distributed among the spirits of various sicknesses. It is only on this condition that the future shaman will obtain the power of healing. His bones are then covered with new flesh, and in some cases he is also given new blood.”

Australian, African, and other initiation rites and associated myths contain a similar archetype of symbolic death and resurrection. Sometimes myths tell of a monster who kills a man and then brings him to life again, better than before.” Initiation rites are typically performed when someone enters a secret society or is granted the status of a shaman. In the secret society of the Bakhimba, in Mayombe, the novice must be [symbolically] “killed” [... as] one of the old men spins him around until he falls to the ground. Then all cry: “Oh, so-andso is dead!” A native informant adds that “the dead man is rolled along the ground, while the chorus sings a funeral chant: ‘He is dead! Ah, he is dead indeed...I shall never see him again!’ ” In the

village, his mother, brother, and sister mourn him in the same fashion. Then the initiated relatives of the “dead” men take them on their backs and carry them to a consecrated enclosure called the

court of resurrection. [...] The novices’ heads are then shaved; they are beaten, thrown on the ground, and finally resuscitated by having a few drops of a peppery liquid dropped into their eyes and nostrils.” Mircea Eliade, Rites and Symbols of Initiation: The Mysteries of Birth and Rebirth, trans. Williard R. Trask (New York: Harper & Row, 1958), 91. ”!Mythographers refer to Rig-Veda (X, 90), which contains a hymn about Purusha. See Benjamin Walker, The Hindu World: An Encyclopedic Survey of Hinduism, vol. 2 (London:

Allen and Unwin, 1968). :

*Fliade, Rites and Symbols of Initiation, 90.

Tbid., 75. ""Tbid., 76.

170 Cosmologies The initiation rites contain symbolic suffering, illness, mental disorder, and the disintegration of the mind and personality, for extreme suffering is likewise an expression of initiatory death. Certain serious illnesses, especially psychomental disorders, are regarded as the sign that superhuman beings have chosen the sick man to be initiated—that is, tortured, dismembered, and “killed,” so that he may be resuscitated to a higher existence. [...] The tortures of the candidates for secret societies are the homologue of the terrible sufferings that symbolize the mystical death of the future shaman.”

The total crisis of the future shaman [...] can be evaluated not . only as an initiatory death but also as a symbolic return to the precosmogonic Chaos, to the amorphous and indescribable state that precedes any cosmogony. [...] For archaic and traditional cultures, a symbolic return to Chaos is equivalent to preparing a new Creation. It follows that we may interpret the psychic Chaos

of the future shaman as a sign that the profane man is being “dissolved” and a new personality being prepared for birth.”°

In modern society, where art assumes some of the functions of archaic ritual, the composer may take over the shaman’s tasks of healing reunification and restoring order out of chaos. Was not Schoenberg, for example, such a composer? Let us consider the similarities hidden underneath the apparent and vast differences between the crises faced by both archaic and modern societies. The initiation rites involving dismemberment and rearrangement traditionally took place in a crisis, such as a drought. By analogy, such a crisis in Austrian, and specifically Viennese, culture characterized the time from the fin de siécle through World War I. Cultural historians have pointed to social, political, and psychological problems experienced by Viennese society, sharply felt by the intellectuals and the artists of Schoenberg’s

circle, including the thinkers who influenced him—for example, the Viennese journalist, critic, playwright, and poet Karl Kraus (1874-1936).”’

The classic study by Janik and Toulmin, in particular, addresses “the Kakanian syndrome,” “the Viennese malaise,” the general sense of the society’s disease shared by many creative people, and leading to the Rliade, Rites and Symbols of Initiation, 76. **Thid., 89.

"’See Allan Janik and Steven Toulmin, Wittgenstein’s Vienna (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1973), 93; and Carl Schorske, Fin-de-siécle Vienna: Politics and Culture (New York: Knopf, 1979).

How Myths are Retold 171 popularity of suicide among its distinguished members. Characteristically, in describing this phenomenon, the authors favor expressions borrowed from medical vocabulary: consider, for example, the statement regarding Kraus’s belief “that major surgery alone could save the society,’”® and

that, while “Hofmannsthal hoped to regenerate the society in which he lived,” Kraus criticized that as “another ‘cure’ which was merely ‘part of the disease.’””” The arts suffered from the crisis of the accepted means of expression and the “decadent aestheticism” (the latter being “the rule rather than the exception”)."°’ In this condition, many intellectuals of Schoenberg’s circle felt a call for a prophetic or mediating type of artistic activity that was needed to save both society and its arts.

There could be a similarity between the ways in which a modernist society finds its solutions through individual artistic efforts, and how an archaic pre-industrial society seeks mediation between life and death in a crisis through the initiation ritual. There may be a similar archetype, although the distance between the societies and the diverse cultures 1s enormous. The Transformations in Schoenberg’s Life

Schoenberg’s life during the period that preceded the establishment of the new twelve-tone method reflects the mythic stages of crisis, chaos, dismemberment, and revival in terms of his compositions, his theories,

and his biography. Compare the vocabulary John Covach chooses in reviewing the argument of Schoenberg’s student, Erwin Stein, in the latter’s 1924 article “Neue Formprinzipien,” devoted to the twelve-tone method: Stein casts Schoenberg’s method in the context of the “crisis” of modern composition, by which he means the collapse of tonality and the loss of the form-building potential tonality provides.’”!

Characteristic words and phrases such as “crisis,” “collapse,” and “the loss of the form-building potential” could be readily applied to the stages of ritual dismemberment described earlier. Erwartung (1909, premiered in 1924), along with such works as Three Pieces for Piano, op. 11 (same year), and Six Little Piano Pieces, op. 19 (1911), became the arena

bid., 80. :

*8Janik and Toulmin, Wittgenstein’s Vienna, 67.

Ibid. 83-84.

Ol ohn Covach, “Twelve-tone Theory,” in The Cambridge History of Western Music Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 610.

172 Cosmologies of destruction and death of the “old” art with all its logic. Especially in

Erwartung, Schoenberg consciously rejected all the basic means for creating unity that were available in the old music, including tonality and motivic unity. The single unifying component that survived was not an element of musical logic but an extramusical component—the verbal text. Schoenberg attested: I strive for complete liberation from all forms, from all symbols

of cohesion and of logic. Thus, away with “motivic working out.” [... My music] should be an expression of feeling, as our feelings, which bring us in contact with our subconscious, really are, and no false child of feelings and “conscious logic.” [...] No formal, architectural, or other artistic intentions (except perhaps

of capturing the mood of a poem) [...]; at most this: To place nothing inhibiting in the stream of my unconscious sensations. Not to allow anything to infiltrate which may be invoked either by intelligence or consciousness. !”

According to this testimony and the characteristics cited by John and Dorothy Crawford, the time in Schoenberg’s life of Erwartung and Die

gliickliche Hand (1910-1913) was the time of “unconsciousness” (or rejection of conscious clarity) and shapelessness.’” Francois-Bernard Mache describes the use of ostinato in Erwartung as a “dive into the depths of the unconscious,” where repetition “immobilizes the psychic area where

the self and the non-self are still confused,” as is presumed to have been

the case in the primary mythological state of human mind in the prehistoric era.‘ Jelena Hahl-Koch reasonably pointed to “the will to express the primordial” and “the predilection for the archaic and primitive” as “the common basis” for the artistic phenomena of the time of Schoenberg’s communication with Kandinsky.’” This is not to imply that Schoenberg intentionally fashioned his work

after the stages of initiation rites of certain concrete archaic models. Rather, this is an instance of spontaneous correspondence between different 1026 choenberg’s letters to Busoni, in Ferrucio Busoni, Selected Letters, trans. and ed. Antony Beaumont (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987), 396 and 389.

‘The Crawfords view Erwartung as “written at the borderline of conscious control.” Expressionism in Twentieth-Century Music (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993), 80.

104 Music, Myth and Nature, trans. Susan Delaney (Philadelphia: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1992), 36-37. 10> Arnold Schoenberg/Wassily Kandinsky: Letters, Pictures and Documents, ed. Jelena HahlKoch, trans. J.C. Crawford (London, Boston: Faber & Faber, 1984), 142.

How Myths are Retold 173 cultures. Schoenberg’s “unconsciousness” correlates to Meletinsky’s concept of neo-mythologism with its emphasis on the unconscious, including

the Jungian collective unconscious, in the literature and culture of the early twentieth century.

Schoenberg’s twelve-tone theory is comparable to the model of the shaman’s symbolic unconsciousness and destruction of his body before his transformation. The world of the unconscious in Schoenberg’s early works resembled the ritual madness and chaos of an archaic initiation. In this sense, the “new body” gained by the novice archaic priest parallels that of the “new form” (the twelve-tone principle) found by Schoenberg in

the next period, opening with Die Jakobsleiter, which was begun in 1917.’ The “destructive action” that the composer undertook in his pre-

twelve-tone works thus reflected his mythic vision of the historical situation. As one Schoenberg scholar insisted, writing and composing during World War I, Schoenberg saw nothing less than the end of culture and civilization as he knew them—the “total collapse of things.” Only in the metaphysical realm could hope be found.’””

Severine Neff recently pointed to Schoenberg’s symbolic representation of tonality in a musical work and his form construction as a living,

whole body.'® For Schoenberg, the dismemberment of this “body” of tonality happened during the period he himself characterized as “the total collapse of things.”’” Analogous to the symbolic sufferings required to

pass through traditional rituals of initiation, the sufferings of Expressionism were required for Viennese and German musical modernism to find a new form. After the “killing” of the old art and its dismemberment and suffering, after the released chaos of the psyche, the next step in the sequence of the archaic initiation ritual was to resurrect art on a new plane and to begin a newly consecrated artistic existence. The new explicitly emerged as “Neue Formprinzipien,” the title of Erwin Stein’s 1924 article devoted to Schoenberg. The path to it signified a religious experience:

1067, their own different ways, such Schoenberg works as Verkldrte Nacht (1899) and the String Trio, op. 45 (1946) are also associated with the theme of revival. '07Crawford, Expressionism in Twentieth-Century Music, 89. 08S everine Neff, “Schoenberg as Theorist: Three Forms of Presentation,” in Schoenberg and his World, ed. Walter Frisch (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), 57. 109 arnold Schoenberg Letters, ed. Erwin Stein (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1965), 71.

174 Cosmologies all power of invention, all energy, all ideas, proved helpless, for a man for whom ideas have been everything it means nothing less than the total collapse of things, unless he has come to find

support, in ever increasing measure, in belief in something higher, beyond. You would, I think, see what I mean best from my libretto Jacob’s Ladder (an oratorio): what I mean is—even without any organizational fetters—religion. This was my one and only support during those years.'!°

Initiation rituals of many cultures include references to the original divine creation; Schoenberg famously opened his 1941 lecture at UCLA describing his twelve-tone method with a reference to creation in the book of Genesis and by drawing parallels between human creativity and the godly creation act.''’ This gesture imparts a certain quality of sacrality to his own actions as a composer because these actions are presented and conceived as comparable to the actions of the Supreme Creator. It seems no coincidence that Schoenberg found his new twelve-tone method while working on a Biblical oratorio, Die Jacobsleiter. For the composer, who | characterized himself as “the modern man, having passed through materlalism, socialism and anarchy,” the return to the ancient faith became a chance to ask for redemption from individuality, just as for the hero of the oratorio.'’” According to a retelling of Schoenberg’s program, in the second part of the poem, “the fragmented beings are brought together again after a series of painful rebirths. Matter and spirit, dispersed in a thousand particles, reassemble, purified, in order to become a whole, a whole of which we are the parts.”’”’ In a palpable way, the oratorio then represents a metonymy of Schoenberg’s overarching mythic project. The Biblical topic, long before Moses and Aron, was a desirable subject for him to embody the mythic mediation between the opposites: in this case, between old and new languages and between fragmentation and wholeness. The twelve-tone method Schoenberg found in Die Jacobsleiter, conceived under the sign of rebirth and unification, bears an aim similar to that of an archaic ritual—that of bringing order out of chaos. This may be compared with Schoenberg’s reorganization of what he termed the “old resources.”

'tpid. "John Covach effectively contextualized this fact in “The Sources of Schoenberg’s ‘Aesthetic Theology’” Nineteenth-Century Music 19 (1996), 252-253. 112 Schoenberg’s letter of December 13, 1912, Arnold Schoenberg Letters, ed. Stein, 35.

3 Clytus Gottwald, “Die Jacobsleiter,” trans. Stewart Spencer. Annotation to CD: Arnold Schoenberg, Die Jakobsleiter (Fragment). BBC Symphony Orchestra, Pierre Boulez, conductor. Sony Classical, SMK 484622 ADD, 1993.

How Myths are Retold 175 A Passage to the Future in Secrecy While Schoenberg’s biography and his conceptions for his works are redolent of mythic transformations, these conceptions also informed, to some extent, his theoretical thinking. The principle of thematic or motivic unity has priority over all Schoenberg’s other theoretical concerns. The

notion of unity, in this sense, has the significance of a myth. In the paradigm of history, the notion of thematic unity has been deeply inherent in German musical tradition; in this sense it grew into a national cultural belief. Schoenberg’s epoch is a peculiar intersection on the path of music history: the composer, as we know, believed that in the future his twelvetone language would become comprehensible. This conviction is based on the inner unity of a twelve-tone composition and corresponds to the traditional attempt of a mythical mind to guarantee the future by recreating a

new unity from pre-existing components. An initiation rite 1s always clearly focused on the future, since the moment of entering a new stage is emphasized. The ways in which a shaman communicates to a deity are mysterious and incomprehensible for the non-initiated. Eliade describes one of the African rites of initiation as following: Before their “resurrection,” [the novices] have taken an oath of absolute secrecy: “All that I shall see here I will tell to no one, neither woman, man, non-initiate, nor whiteman; otherwise,

make me swell up, kill me.”

Eliade points out that rites for entrance into secret societies correspond in every way to tribal initiations. Both may include such forms as seclusion, initiatory ordeals and tortures, bestowal of a new name, revelation of a secret doctrine, and instruction in a special language. One of the purposes of entering a secret society is to bring the initiated closer to the deity, to sacralize the profane subject or object of initiation.

The implicit nature of twelve-tone theory and its importance for Schoenberg as a “secret language” is another point where modern and archaic cultures intersect.'’? Schoenberg’s deliberate incomprehensibility '*Bliade, Rites and Symbols of Initiation, 76.

'’? As Manuel Gervink indicates, the ideas of a mystical order stemming from Balzac and Swedenborg influenced Schoenberg while he was searching for a substitute for tonality. Manuel Gervink, “Zwischen Theorie und Mystik: Arnold Schoenbergs Weg zur Reihentechnik” [Between theory and mysticism: Arnold Schoenberg’s path to the serial technique], Die Sprache der Musik: Festschrift Klaus Wolfgang Niemdiler zum 60. Geburtstag (Regensburg, 1989): 201-216. Gervink’s thought has a counterpart in John Covach’s “Schoenberg and the Occult: Some Reflections on the Musical Idea,” in Theory and Practice 17 (1992), 103.

176 Cosmologies may be rooted in his tendency to use his secret language which, in contrast to the explicit language of the mass culture, would express a certain mystical order. As he poetically expresses this in Die Jakobsleiter, I must, it seems, go into the thick of things, although my Word remains uncomprehended.

Schoenberg’s conscious avoidance of the traditional means of the comprehensibility in music, such as repetition and interval ethos (the “pleasantness” of consonance versus the “unpleasantness” of dissonance)

signifies his rejection of profane art in favor of a sacralized musical language, the language of the future. He explicitly links repetition with comprehensibility, the popular, and the primitive, which also can be interpreted as ordinary, profane expression: Repetition is one of the means (in presenting an idea) to promote the comprehensibility of the idea presented. [...] I mean specifically that [...] mostly unvaried repetition is the one and the only

means by which primitive music can fill out a time span that lasts beyond the duration of the motive.

The popular effect of popular music is based on its broad under-

standability [....] The frequent repetitions of each part play a

large role.’ !®

The popular, from the perspective of mythology, would fall under the category of the non-initiated and profane. On the contrary, the twelve-tone

series is based on the absence of repetition, if on the pre-compositional level; a varied and sophisticated repetition unfolds in twelve-tone composition itself. Thus, twelve-tone composition belongs to the realm of the incomprehensible and non-popular, and therefore, non-profane or sacred. To mediate between the two opposite realms, Schoenberg hints that

his twelve-tone compositions are the shorthand versions of otherwise perfectly comprehensible compositions. Schoenberg described skipping repetitions as a sort of deliberate device: the repetitions he originally implied, but omitted for the reason of being “too comprehensible.”'’’ The

omission of some implied chord resolutions may stem from the same "6A rnold Schoenberg, The Musical Idea and the Logic, Technique, and Art of Its Presentation, ed. and trans. Patricia Carpenter and Severine Neff (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), 299, 301. '” Schoenberg writes in “Twelve-tone Composition”: “Perhaps (or even, certainly) the further development and the tempo of the presentation [in twelve-tone technique] depend on whether in its first form it was sufficiently comprehensible, or, on the contrary, whether it was perhaps too comprehensible (laws of popular expression!).” Style and Idea, ed. Leonard Stein (New

York: St. Martins Press, 1975), 208. .

How Myths are Retold 177 reasoning. While Schoenberg presents logical resolutions in his instructional examples, in his artistic creations he omits such resolutions and thus reaches beyond popular comprehensibility. This secret language, in contrast to the language of the mass culture, expresses a certain mystical order. It has historical justification, which Albrecht Diimling invokes when he points out the antifascist potential of twelve-tone music.’ Schoenberg’s society for private performances, which he founded in Vienna in 1918, was one of his tools for building the circle of “initiated”

adepts that surrounded him: his prophet-like relationships with his students and admirers also contributed to the aura of a chosen society. However, neither the immediate socio-political stimulants, nor personal preferences, such as a presumed association of Schoenberg’s search for a new language with his Jewishness and the secrecy of the Kabbalah, can exhaust the larger meaning of modernist secrecy.''’ This larger archetypal meaning reveals the analogy between Western artistic-spiritual experiences and non-Western traditional cultures. Meletinsky defines high modernism in literature as “pan-mytholog!-

cal,” for, in the absence of the socially defined psychology that characterized nineteenth-century literary “realism,” the twentieth century was preoccupied with the socially neutral Jungian psychology of archetypes.

This linked a de-contextualized individual with the collective unconscious, which itself became synonymous with myth. The increased awareness of the unconscious and its power was part of

the general artistic conception in central Europe from the fin de siécle through the first half of the century. Schoenberg’s life (in particular the period from Erwartung through World War I) recalls the ritual transfor-

mation of the initiate. Having passed through a stage Schoenberg characterized as “the total collapse” of form, and in search of new spiritual energy, the composer took a consecrated approach to art in his Biblical oratorio Jacobsleiter, which coincided with the beginning of his twelvetone composition and thus with finding a new form. This transformation

can be viewed as Schoenberg’s personal embodiment of the universal archetype of initiation but also as a collective European ritual of an artistic sort. 8 lbrecht Diimling, “Zwé6lftonmusik als antifaschistisches Potential: Eislers Ideen zu einer neuen Verwendung der Dodekaphonie,” in Die Wiener Schule und das Hakenkreuz: Das Schicksal der Moderne im gesellschaftspolitischen Kontext des 20. Jahrhunderts (Wien: Universal Edition, 1990): 92-106. 9Gien Alan Bauer, “A Contextual Approach to Schoenberg’s Atonal Works: Self-Expression, Religion, and Music Theory,” Ph.D. dissertation, Washington University, 1986.

178 Cosmologies The Musical Mythification of Technology and Science Throughout the past century, people have tended to accept science and technology almost in the same way as the ancients believed in their myths.'”° The past century’s “theory of mind whose keynote is the symbolic function, whose problem 1s the morphology of significance,” according to Susanne Langer, supported the vague border between a scientific hypothesis and a fact of life, since this theory was not obliged to draw that bifurcating line between science and

: ; :; _ 121

folly. It can see these ructions and upheavals of the modern mind not as lapses of rational interest, caused by animal impulse, but as the exact contrary, as a new phase of savagedom, indeed, but inspired by the rational need of envisagement and understanding.

Although some scientific hypotheses later proved false, they had, at the time of their first appearance, offered artists certain justification of ideas, not unlike “the myth of the muses” in Hesiod’s Theogony. “The muses possess a great gift of invention or that ‘lie’ which they can present as a ‘pure truth.’”’”” Plato stated that the entire aspect of myth, despite its lies (“pseydos”), always contains something true; this inner truth is not contradictory to myth’s fiction-like nature. Myth by its essence is a sacred word as if told by an oracle, therefore, it has the authority of a proof, of a law!”

Notably, Plato’s predecessors Parmenides and Empedocles considered myth to be a “learned word” and a “way of investigation,” and even to be a “science.” !~*

In the twentieth century, these notions receive new significance. Various composers view current scientific data as trustworthy objective law that can be used to justify subjective choices. Music takes part in the process of mythification, providing an artistic proof for those ideas that

revealed an appealing mythic truth. An example is Wilhelm Fliess’s theory of life cycles and chance events ruled by the numbers 23 and 28, 20S ee, for example, the chapter “The Religion of Science” in Robert Jastrow, God and the Astronomers (New York: Norton, 1978): 111-118. 121 Susanne K. Langer, Philosophy in a New Key (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969), 293. 1227 Fesiod, Theogony, 24, as cited in Aza A. Takho-Godi, “Mif u Platona kak deistvitel’noe i voobrazhaemoe” [Myth in Plato’s works as the real and as the imaginary] in Platon i ego epokha [Plato and his time], ed. F. Kessidi (Moscow: Nauka, 1979), 62. 123 Takho-Godi, “Mifu Platona,” 60-61. *“Thid., 64-65.

The Musical Mythification of Technology and Science 179 which became a model for Berg’s musical numerology.’ Fliess’s theory, which scientists first enthusiastically accepted, later proved suspiciously close to a recognized category of mythic thought, such as the belief in the dramatic power of numbers.

Iannis Xenakis, according to Jamie James’s characteristic wording, “would give musical compositions the same inevitable and absolute correctness as a mathematical expression in physics,” and thus extol science, [which] discovered that [...] things generally come into existence with no causality whatsoever. Genes mutate randomly,

and subatomic particles decay according to no fixed program. Ultimately, the whole notion of an orderly cosmos ruled over by

a Divine Intelligence is just a sentimental delusion. Xenakis

would make the mathematics of chance work on behalf of art.'”°

Xenakis indeed mythologized set theory and computerized calculus through his stochastic music. The theory of probability became the basis for Xenakis’s science-born cosmology, which mythologizes the mathematics of chance as the objective law that is a truer model for music than causality, even with the traditional concept of pre-designed order. The Mythification of the Cosmos The cosmology of the cosmic era has retrieved many mythic concepts

in a new way—that is, recognizable in terms of modern science and its reflection in fiction, films, and the media. Crumb’s fascination with the hypothesis that the “fundamental tone of the Universe” is the key of B} 1s reflected in his The Haunted Landscape (1984) in the form of a B) pedal point held throughout the whole composition. Crumb read an article from The New York Times in which, 1n his own words, somebody was proving that the Bp should be the central note [of the Universe] because its frequency is lower than [that of] the electro-magnetic current. It is a totally wrong thing, because the electromagnetic current is a ‘man-made’ thing, and it can be anything. But I thought then “It is great! It 1s the Hammerklavier key. It appeared to be all wrong [later]. 7’ Douglas Jarman considers in detail this theory and its influence on Berg’s numerology in “Alban Berg, Wilhelm Fliess, and the Secret Programme of the Violin Concerto,” in The Berg Companion, ed. Douglas Jarman (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1989), 183-88. '2°yames, The Music of the Spheres, 235. 27 Interview at Rutgers University, 1997 (see Appendix). This story also appeared in Crumb’s comments to his work in the Stagebill of The Philharmonic Society of New York, ed. Phillip Ramey, June 7, 1984.

180 Cosmologies In present-day cosmology, scientists have made the electromagnetic

data associated with stars and planets available to human senses by converting it into sound frequencies. This is a modern version of the music of the spheres, of that traditional mythic concept for which Crumb

was eager to accept a new rationalization. 4 Haunted Landscape 1s its echo. The low B} pedal, which Crumb calls a “cosmic drone,” is played by two double basses pianissimo and “more felt than heard,” using Bruce Archibald’s expression.’”* Crumb practically hides this element of the score from the listener, just as he does with his so-called symbolic notation in the other works dealing with the cosmos, whose hidden dimensions the ordinary senses cannot perceive. The twentieth century had its own “rules of cosmic poetry,” to use the expression of Gaston Bachelard.'*” Asked about the sources for his search for harmonia mundi, Crumb mentioned Hindemith’s Die Harmonie der Welt and what he called “the ‘cosmic’ sense in Debussy and Mahler [...] not from specific titles, but from the quality of their music. Mahler creates his own world and his music is ‘cosmic.’ This is his cosmology in purely musical terms.””*°

Beyond mere poeticizing, Crumb also attempts to create musical cosmologies. First, by using circular notation, which he associated with the images of the heavenly bodies, the composer paints these bodies into his

music. Crumb attested that in his first piece notated circularly, Night Music I (1963), he used Lorca’s poem “The Moon Is Rising”; as suggested by the poem, the two circles in the score represent the moon.’*' In the next composition using circular notation, Songs, Drones and Refrains of Death (1968), the text for the movement “Casida of the Dark Doves” refers to the sun and the moon; correspondingly, the composer subtitled one of the notational circles “The Sun,” for, in his words, “the circular notation here was suggested by the sun.””””

In some of the works that followed, Crumb’s cosmology becomes more systematic and rooted in tradition, as he contributes to the timehonored practice of imagining the diagram for the music of the spheres— the attempt of many generations of philosophers, astrologists and scien'28Bruce Archibald, from the Annotation to the recording of A Haunted Landscape, Recorded Anthology of American Music, 1985, LCC 85-743004. '29Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, trans. Maria Jolas (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969), 239.

'3°F rom the interview at Rutgers, December 1997 (see Appendix).

bid. Thid.

The Musical Mythification of Technology and Science 181 tists.'°> As the composer himself acknowledged, the music of the spheres

inspired his works Night of the Four Moons, Makrokosmos, and Star-

Child.’

In both The Night of the Four Moons (1969) and Star-Child (1977) Crumb uses subtitles derived from Boethius’s terms musica mundana and

musica humana. In the Epilogue from The Night of the Four Moons, Crumb adds the remark “like emerging radio signal” to a crescendo on a page where the term musica mundana also appears, thus filling the archaic

notion with a new sign that stands for a contemporary picture of the cosmos. Crumb marked the score as having been “composed during the

Apollo 11 flight—July 16-24, 1969,” apparently regarding it as a documentary of that cosmic epoch, a parallel musical diary. With its huge orchestra, soprano, organ, bell-ringers, children’s voices, and a male speaking choir, Star-Child is Crumb’s largest-sounding model

of cosmos. The composer characterized the episode he titled “Musica Mundana” as a “representation of nature.’’”° It signifies that late-twentieth-

century music returned once again to the mythification of natural phenomena and the cosmos—the traditional subjects of archaic myths. The Mythification of Industrialization In the beginning of the century mythification had spread to the industrial

world. New objects—machines, factories (earlier in the century), atomic structure and physical processes (later in the century)—underwent mythification. Musical mythification of the industrial world in the beginning of the century received some scholarly attention. Lev Akopian suggested that

Honegger, in his Pacific 231 (1923), had attempted more than just a picturesque musical depiction of a train. In the environment of the modern industrial jungle, the imitation of a train would function somewhat like an

imitation of an animal’s voice in the primeval forest. Just as, in the primordial ritual, the evocation of the animal spirit constituted the attempt to recognize its power and subdue it, the evocation of the industrial voice characterizes a similar attempt by a creative artist.’”° '33Tn the decade following the composition of Star-Child, Joscelyn Godwin offered a comprehensive collection of historical circular diagrams representing the music of the spheres, in Harmonies of Heaven and Earth. The Spiritual Dimension of Music from Antiquity to the Avant-Garde (Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 1987). '3“Tnterview at Rutgers (see Appendix).

Tid.

367 ey Akopian, “Muzyka i mifotvorchestvo v dvadzatom veke” [Music and mythmaking in the twentieth century], Sovetskaya Muzyka 10 (1989), 80.

182 Cosmologies Mache shares this idea, arguing that the imitation of a train in Pacific 231 replaced folk practices, such as imitation games. The imitation of animal sounds by primitive ethnic groups of hunters is likely to give us the most direct image of the common source of myth and music.'*’ When it is no longer wild animals but instead mechanical sounds which are taken as the theme of these games [...] a similar path to music from imitation occurs in a programmatic piece [...] to arrive (just like Honegger’s Pacific 231) at the euphoria of a pure, thythmic motoricity.'**

Varése’s Jonisation (1931), inspired by the process of atomic change and

: the creation of new atomic polymers, mythologizes this scientific data, according to Akopian: {In Jonisation], not only the objects of the surrounding world become animated and transformed into a mythic state, but the discoveries in the realm of science are represented in a mythological form. It is a totally unique experience of the new music.’

The inquiry into the “atomic” structure of music opens the microcosmic dimension of an artistic cosmology, while the renewed interest in the music of the spheres constitutes its macrocosm. Already in the first half of the century Hindemith drew a parallel between, on the one hand, “today’s astronomer [who] cannot understand his reckonings in light-years, or the

equalization of time and space, without knowing the workings of the electrons within the cosmos of the atom,” and, on the other hand, “the believing musician, [for whom] the sense of his musical material, the earthly image of the harmonious music of the universe, can never be clear unless he continually returns to the deepest kernel of the single tone, and seeks to understand its electronic flux—the overtones in their proportional

relations.” This “atomic” level ranges from simple intervals (such as those that symbolically define Stockhausen’s first chord of creation), along

with single tones, overtones, and microtones, to acoustically split com-

ponents of sound. : '37Mache, Myth, Music and Nature, 36.

*Ibid., 39-40. 3 ” Akopian, “Muzyka i mifotvorchestvo v dvadzatom veke,” 81.

40The Craft of Musical Composition, vol. 1, 54.

STIX

Numerology When studying multiple examples of numerological applications in twentieth-century music, some scholars establish a direct link between numerology and music. An intermediary in this connection, the cosmologi-

cal myth, has remained outside the main focus of such studies, although numerology as such originally pertained to cosmological myths and associated rituals. Numerology is a part of cosmology.

Numbers’ Role in Cosmology Numbers used in creation myths establish the order of creation and hierarchical systems of relationships. For example, the classification of

nine great gods in ancient Egyptian mythology worked through this progression: 1-2-2-4 (= 9). Atum-Ra (one) created Schu and Ternut (two); both Schu and Ternut created Geb and Nut (two); those two created Osiris, Isida, Seth, and Neftida (four), altogether nine gods.'

In ancient Chinese mythology, the main elements of the cosmological picture each bear an associated number: the sky, 1; the earth, 2; the human being, 3; and so on. Number 5 was a canonic model to categorize the main

elements of both macro- and microcosmos, such as the five elements of nature, the five senses, five classes of animals, five parts of the human body, and five emotional states.

Many archaic texts, such as The Elder Edda or the Rig-Veda, treat

numbers as venerated and potent entities because of their role in creation—for example, the three stages of creation described in the RigVeda.” Toporov refers to a group of archaic folk texts unfolding sacred ‘Vladimir Toporov, “Chisla” [numbers], in Mify narodov mira [The myths of the world’s peoples], ed. Sergei Tokarev, v. 2 (Moscow: Bol’shaya Rossiysskaya Enziklopediya, 1997), 630. Stella Kramrisch, “The Triple Structure of Creation in the Rg.- Veda,” Journal of the History of Religions 2 (1962).

183

184 Numerology operations with numbers, the operations intending to establish order out of chaos and to segment the continuity of time. Some of these texts are magic spells, in which the undesirable elements are asked to leave the world one by one (“from nine eight, from eight seven,” and so on.)

Some simple folk texts preserve the cosmological myths with their numerical components. Such a text is a Russian folk puzzle describing the year and the World Tree: There stands a pillar to the sky. It has twelve nests; Each nest has four eggs; Each egg has seven embryos."

In archaic myths, each number had a unique meaning attached to it. Number 3 appears as the fundamental and dynamic structural element of the cosmos. In the Indian mythology of Jainism, three layers—dense water,

dense wind, and thin wind—separate this world from the outer world. This world itself consists of three pyramids, the lower, the middle, and the higher worlds. The lower world has seven discs, which are occupied by

seven hells.? In the Rig-Veda, a group of gods holds three heavens and three grounds.° In other myths, the number 3 represents the divine unions of three deities, such as Trimurti of Hindu mythology (the triad of Brahma,

Vishnu and Shiva), or a three-headed or three-faced deity.’ The goddess Hecata of Greek mythology has three faces. In the myths of Baltic Slavs, the three heads of Triglav symbolize three kingdoms: heaven, earth, and the underworld.® The World Tree of many mythologies typically divides the world horizontally into three layers, as well as marking the four points of the compass. By contrast to the dynamic 3, 4 appears in mythologies throughout the world as a static and stable structural element of the cosmos. The sum of these numbers is the number 7, which is a magic number in many mythologies. >Toporov, “Chisla,” 631. “Ibid. > Alex Terentiev, “Addkhaloka,” in The Dictionary of Mythology, ed. E. Meletinsky (Moscow: Sovetskaya enziklopediya, 1991), 20. Other sources on Jain mythology include Chimanlal J. Shah, Jainism in North India: 800 B.C.-A.D. 526 (New Delhi: A. Sagar Book House, 1989), and Margaret S. Stevenson, The Heart of Jainism (London: Oxford University Press, 1915).

SDescribed in books II and V, hymns 27 and 29 of the Rig-Veda. "Sergei D. Serebryannyi, “Trimurti,” in The Dictionary of Mythology, 549. *Vladimir Y. Petrukhin, “Triglav,” ibid., 548.

Return of Number Symbolism 185 Return of Number Symbolism The numbers in archaic myths “were connected to each other not mathematically, but rather symbolically, associatively, aesthetically, and

mnemonically,” according to Alexey Kobzev, an expert in Chinese cosmology.’ While modern science deprives all numbers of any extramathematical semantics, in the twentieth century, Toporov wrote, a tendency to return semantic significance back to numbers is being realized in the arts and poetry—the realm that serves as a sanctuary for the achievements of archaic epochs. [...] Archaic numerical notions continue their life in the modern creative mind;

moreover, those notions undergo development and transformation, as they serve again and again as nascent material for the new mytho-poetical images and concepts."

Neo-mythologism promotes the reattachment of semantic values to numbers. The importance of numerology in twentieth-century music is a reflection of the increasing role of mythification in artistic consciousness. I will use some random examples of numerological applications by various composers to illustrate this idea. Many of these examples have already been recognized, while others have received less attention.'' My goal is to consider even those better-known examples in a new context: numerology as a part of cosmology and, ultimately, neo-mythologism. I will present this material according to the different levels of composers’ thought— from philosophical views and theoretical systems to operatic librettos and the musical fabric itself, including form, pitch organization, choice of instruments, and other parameters. Boris de Schloezer, in his description of the philosophical views of Scriabin, who approached numerology from a theosophical perspective, uncovered the special role of the number 7:

? Alexey I. Kobzev, “Metodologia kitaiskoi klassicheskoi filosofii: numerologia 1 protologika” [The Methodology of Chinese classical philosophy: numerology and proto-logic], Ph.D. diss. (Moscow University, 1988), 21.

OT oporov, “Chisla,” 631.

‘lin addition to the works cited below, for the significance of numerology to twentiethcentury composers, see Douglas Jarman, The Music of Alban Berg (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), 228-30; George Perle, The Operas of Alban Berg, vol. 1 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), 128-29; Robert U. Nelson, “Schoenberg’s Variation

Seminar,” Musical Quarterly 50 (1964), 148; and Walter Rubsamen, “Schoenberg in America,” Musical Quarterly 37 (1951), 487ff.

186 Numerology His conversation was full of theosophical allusions to [...] Seven Planes, Seven Races, and the like; he used these terms volubly

as if they were familiar to all and as if they reflected inconvertible truths.”

Hindemith singled out the number 7. In his “new method of erecting a scale,” Hindemith emphasized an exceptional role of the seventh overtone (B flat in an overtone series based on CC of the Great Octave). While the first six overtones of that pitch “can establish their own households,”

each producing other tones derived from them in accordance with Hindemith’s special rules, the seventh overtone should not be used for this

purpose, for “the result would be chaos.”’? Hindemith’s mathematical method of scale construction, based on the number of vibrations per second and representing each note of the overtone series divided by the

ordinal number within the series, does not work for the seventh overtone." Hindemith interprets such a discrepancy within his method in a rather

metaphysical way. He recalls the “impure” quality of the seventh, surrounding the number 7 with a mystical aura that guides us back to the ancient mythic interpretation of this number: Numbers and number-relations meant more to antiquity than they

do to us, for we have lost the sense of the mystery of number through our familiarity with price-lists, statistics, and balance sheets. The secret of the number 7 was well known; to conquer it

was to become the master or the destroyer of the world. It is understandable that such a mystic and unfathomable number should have been looked upon as holy. And in the world of tone, too, we must acknowledge the holy circle to be inaccessible.’°

In his appeal to mythical concepts of the past, Hindemith not only identifies with the holiness of the number 7, but also uses another mythic motive—that of the holy circle—to justify the limitation of his theoretical system with only six prime tones of the overtone series. Thus, mytho-

logical imagery reawakens in one of the major musical-theoretical systems of the twentieth century. Boris de Schloezer, Scriabin: Artist and Mystic, trans. Nicolas Slonimsky (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 67.

'SPaul Hindemith, The Craft of Musical Composition, vol. 1, trans. Arthur Mendel, 4th ed. (New York: Schott, 1942), 38. “Tbid., 32-8.

Ibid., 38.

Numerology in Musical Fabric 187 The number 7 plays an important role as part of the whole cosmological picture in Stockhausen’s Licht. It exemplifies the treatment of numbers in a mythic way in an opera libretto. Seven stops during the principal character’s journey relate to seven languages and cultures. In the “Examen” scene it takes seven moments for Michael’s mother to find him a name. Furthermore, she considers seven versions of his name, including the final one, in this seven-day opera. Subsequently, the mother experiences seven events in a mental hospital.

Another important number in this libretto is 3. There are three versions of personification, for example: the father as singer, mime, and trombonist. The number 3 also embodies the triple unity of Eva, Luzifer, and Michael; this is shown, in particular, in the “Kindheit” scene, when Stockhausen introduces the first two as Michael's parents. This three-fold unity corresponds to a traditional mythic connotation of the number 3.

Numerology in Musical Fabric and in Piece Grouping Some composers have structured rhythm according to numerological notions. In her analytical sketch of Anton Webern’s Symphony, op. 21, Elizabeth Kerr expressed durations numerically, so that a sixteenth-note unit equals 1, and discovered that the numbers 5 (predominantly) and 8 control the rhythm in the fifth variation on many different levels.'° Even more astonishing is that Webern employs complex numerical correspon-

dences, for example, between the number of sets and the variation number.

John Carbon discusses numerological connotations in Crumb’s Makrokosmos."’ This is a work in which numerology implicitly determines the ordering of pieces within the cycle. Carbon connects the three

groups of four pieces in Makrokosmos with the Christianity-based astrological tradition of “trinity times the cross.” Keeping in mind, however, that Crumb is not a practicing believer, I suggest that we examine Crumb’s piece grouping within the Makrokosmos cycle outside a

particular religious orthodoxy.’* For Crumb, religion and mythology !OFlizabeth Kerr, “The Variations of Webern’s Symphony, Op. 21: Some Observations on Rhythmic Organization and the Use of Numerology,” Jn Theory Only 8 (1984): 5-14. Tohn Carbon, “Astrological Symbolic Order in George Crumb’s ‘Makrokosmos,’ ” Sonus 10 (1990): 65-80.

'8The interview that I took with Crumb at Rutgers University in 1997 explores the composer’s views on myth and religion: see Appendix.

188 Numerology equally represent a number of poetic truths. In this broader perspective, the “trinity times the cross” formula is only one version of a “3 times 4” archetype, which appears in various mythological traditions. The formula demonstrates the ties between the two cosmologically important numbers 3 and 4, which together produce the other sacramental numbers: 12 and 7. Multiplication, addition, and subtraction serve to structure and explain creation in cosmogony myths.

Before Crumb utilized the “3 times 4” multiplication formula to organize pieces within a cycle, Schoenberg, in Pierrot lunaire, used the subtitle “Three Times Seven Poems,” employing two mythologically significant numbers, 3 and 7. According to Jung’s theory of the collective unconscious, retrieval of archaic mythological archetypes in the artistic creations of modern times are typically unconscious, and from this perspective, different artists may come up with similar results quite independently. Douglas Jarman, for example, remarks that, “although the tradition

of applying numerology to music has been established long ago, a twentieth-century composer such as Berg was hardly aware of it.””””

In both Schoenberg’s and Crumb’s scores, numerology plays an important role in structuring the pitch organization. For example, as Alexander Ringer has demonstrated, Schoenberg used the number 6 for his hexachordal row of the unfinished Modern Psalm (1950) listed as op. 50c

and in the “sixfold six-tone pattern” in the opening of Die Jakobsleiter. Ringer also links Schoenberg’s employment of a six-part texture in the Psalm to the numerological significance of the number 6. Some mythological traditions regard 6 as a “perfect number.” One example is in the book of Genesis, when, famously, God creates the world in six days.””

Sterne, in his analysis of Schoenberg’s Pierrot lunaire and other works, demonstrates how numerology defines several parameters of music simultaneously: Five numbers, 3, 7, 1, 11, and 22, governed the format of the work [Pierrot lunaire], its time span, pitches and intervals, timbre, and

instructions to the performer. [...] Even more importantly, the | Douglas Jarman, “Alban Berg, Wilhelm Fliess, and the Secret Programme of the Violin Concerto,” in The Berg Companion, ed. Douglas Jarman (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1989), 181. 20 alexander Ringer, “Faith and Symbol: On Schoenberg’s Last Musical Utterance,” Journal of the Arnold Schoenberg Institute 6 (1982): 87-94. As Ringer notes, the six days of creation were a foundation for additional meanings in Emanuel Swedenborg’s theosophical novel Arcana Coelestia, as described in Balzac’s Seraphita. It is the source to which Schoenberg referred in his lecture “Composing with Twelve Tones.”

Eclecticism and the Attachment of Private Meanings 189 five-number set controlled [...] not only all the rest of Schoenberg’s atonal music, but, beginning with his Opus 1, his tonal music, and, amazingly enough, even his twelve-tone compositions. [...] Even the texts Schoenberg wrote himself were con-

trolled by the same small group of five numbers with seven digits”

: According to Sterne’s description, Schoenberg limits the variety of numerical relationships to only five numbers, which implicitly penetrate many parameters of his compositions. This is comparable to some archaic mythic systems that limit the elements of the cosmos to only five fundamental numbers. These represented the combination of 1 (the center of the world) and 4 (the points of a compass).

Michael Votta writes that numbers, in particular, the number 3, govern “all levels of musical organization” in Alban Berg’s Kammerkonzert.”* Berg not only uses three distinct types of pitch organization— tonal, atonal, and twelve-tone—but he employs the number 3 to manage other aspects of the work: the number of movements, the sections of the

. form (grouped in three), the measures (divisible by three), the rhythm (three types of rhythmic ideas), meter, and even the instrumentation (three groups of instruments).

Eclecticism and the Attachment of Private Meanings Eclecticism of sources, typical of neo-mythologism, allows blending of the incompatible elements of various mythologies, religions, quasiscientific beliefs, and products of individual mythmaking. Numerology itself is eclectic in its origins, as Sterne notes: [A numerologist] traces his belief back through antiquity—to the Egyptians, Hebrews, Chaldeans, Phoenicians, Chinese, and Hindus—but it is Pythagoras, called the “Father of Number,” who is given credit for establishing the system in the West.”

*lColin S. Sterne, Arnold Schoenberg, the Composer as Numerologist (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen, 1993), vi and 4. By his phrase “time span,” Sterne means the total number of beat units in a composition, which is a product of the total number of measures and the value of a unit (for example, a quarter note equals 4).

*2 Michael Votta, “Pitch Structure and Extra-musical References in Alban Berg’s “Kammerkonzert,’ ” Journal of Band Research 26 (1991): 1-32. *3Sterne, Arnold Schoenberg, the Composer as Numerologist, 9.

190 Numerology Schoenberg’s source of numerology, as Ringer indicates, was an eclectic combination of Judaic and Christian numerological traditions.” Schoenberg combined the traditional with the idiosyncratic, to the point that his individual mythmaking contradicts established numerological symbolism. Sterne says:

Though 22 (1939), 3 (39), and 11 (65) are all considered auspicious by numerologists, there is no way for us to deny that Schoenberg may have interpreted them as omens of disaster.”°

Kerr cites another instance of a privately attached meaning in Webern’s Concerto, op. 24, which he dedicated to Schoenberg. In it, Webern makes use of multiples of the number 13, Schoenberg’s own “number of fate.””° Berg’s music displays a numerological encoding of similarly insistent personal character. In Berg’s Kammerkonzert, as in literary neo-mytholo-

gism, where traditional symbolism blends with individually attached meanings, the traditional significance of unity associated with the number 3 has a unique personal nuance. As Votta notes, [Kammerkonzert| represented a point of unity among the three composers of the Second Viennese School. In his Open Letter to Arnold Schoenberg, Berg frequently mentions a “Holy Trinity,” which presumably refers to teacher and students. In addition, the work marks a three-fold anniversary: Schoenberg’s 50th birthday, Berg’s 40th, and the twentieth year of their friendship.”’

Jarman writes: Whatever Berg’s numbers symbolize, they represent something that is purely personal: even when the private significance of a number is known, Berg’s reasons for choosing it often remain obscure. [...] It is clear from the annotations in the score of the Lyric Suite and from the Open Letter on the Chamber Concerto [...] that the numbers upon which he based these schemes had, for Berg, a deeply subjective and almost mystical significance.”*

Jarman documented the unique nature of twentieth-century musical numerology, including its extremely closed and private character. He noted *4Ringer, “Faith and Symbol,” 80-95.

*°Sterne, Arnold Schoenberg, the Composer as Numerologist, 5. 6x err, “The Variations of Webern’s Symphony, Op. 21,” 11. 27" otta, “Pitch Structure and Extra-musical References in Alban Berg’s ‘Kammerkonzert,’” 2.

28y arman, “Alban Berg, Wilhelm Fliess, and the Secret Programme,” 181.

Eclecticism and the Attachment of Private Meanings 19] that the symbolic arithmology of the Renaissance and the Middle Ages, as well as the famous three opening chords of Mozart’s Magic Flute “made reference to a body of knowledge that, if not generally well known, was at least familiar to the cognoscenti,” but that “the numbers employed in Berg’s music [...] have no such generally understood significance.”

Jarman’s observation that Berg’s numerological encoding is even more subjective than that of preceding historical periods is applicable to the notion of neo-mythologism as a whole. Jarman contends that since the

Baroque era, numerological encoding fell into disrepute and almost disappeared from European music. The “Masonic” music of Mozart was one of the few exceptions. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the

fascination with number symbolism returned, along with an unprecedented burst of interest in the occult, theosophy, and quasi-religious thought. That was precisely the period when, as Meletinsky noted, neomythologism peaked. The reawakening of numerology was part of the neo-mythological trend of the time.

Others place twentieth-century musical numerology in a historical context by comparing it to earlier periods. In Peter Stadlen’s impressive

sketch of the numerological tradition in music through Berg (notwithstanding the sketch’s role as only an introduction to an article on Berg), he places works of Dufay, Dunstable, and Bach in a context of ideas deriving from Plato, the Pythagoreans, and Christian traditional numerology.*’ Ringer points to Zarlino’s Senario as one of the examples of the use of the “perfect number six” in Renaissance musical thought.”’ Indeed, in a historical perspective, modern number symbolism evokes earlier eras of numerology, from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance and to Bach. However, the self-centered character of neo-mythologism and its lesser orientation on religious convention makes the numerology of the modern period particular, as Stadlen shrewdly noted in regard to Berg: Berg has by no means disclosed all the countless secret features which he said in his Open Letter he had built into the Chamber

Concerto and some of which may never be revealed. [...] In Berg there has reappeared for the first time a mentality which we

had virtually forgotten had existed. He shared this—not with Schumann or even with Bach—but with those early composers who were positively set on secretiveness. [...] The only difference

"Ibid. Peter Stadlen, “Berg’s Cryptography,” in Alban Berg Symposion, vol. 2 (Wien: Universal Edition, 1981), 171-73. >! Ringer, “Faith and Symbol,” 86.

192 | Numerology lies in the motivation: the religious and philosophical ideologies prevailing in the age of the Renaissance are replaced, in the case of Berg, by an individual’s unique psychological peculiarity.”

Of course, the secretiveness with which composers integrate numerology is a feature not exclusive to Berg’s music. This secretive character of numbers present in the musical fabric contributes to the aura of sacred-

ness in twentieth-century musical numerology. Another contributing factor is the belief in the actual ruling power of numbers.

From Beliefs to Games with Numbers Colin Sterne demonstrated how Schoenberg seriously believed in lucky and unlucky numbers and their impact on his personal fate and his works.*’ In this respect, Schoenberg’s thinking carries the quality of a mythic thought recognizing the authority of numbers to govern the universe. In modern numerology, the quasi-science that preserves the numerology of cosmological myths, and with which Schoenberg was apparent-

ly familiar, specific meanings are attached to numbers, as in archaic cosmological myths.” Alfred Schnittke’s employment of numerology in his First symphony is an expression of both rationalism in his approach to the construction of form and a reverence for the mytho-symbolic properties of numbers. In his 1978 conversations with Dmitry Shulgin regarding the work, Schnittke cited the “row of Eratosthenes”*’ as his model for a systematic procedure of composition. Schnittke recalled: [during the composition of the First symphony], a [...] composer Vieru came to Moscow. He showed me some compositions based

on the row of Eratosthenes, employing very witty technique. I

could not resist the temptation of using it in the symphony, although in a modified form.*° *2Stadlen, “Berg’s Cryptography,” 177.

For example, Schoenberg considered the number 3 to be extremely good and 13 to be extremely bad. See Sterne, Arnold Schoenberg, the Composer as Numerologist, 1-4. *4Steme refers to Schoenberg’s own numerological calculations found on the margins of his early composition Lied ohne Worte, in Arnold Schoenberg, the Composer as Numerologist, 3.

The Eratosthenes’s progression—named for the Greek astronomer Eratosthenes of Cyrene (c. 276-194 B.C.)}—consists of prime numbers: 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, etc.

Dmitry Shulgin, Gody neizvestnosti Al’freda Shnitke [Alfred Schnittke’s obscure years] (Moscow: Delovaya liga, 1993), 64.

From Beliefs to Games with Numbers 193 He goes on to explain how he incorporated compound numbers along with prime numbers, aiming for a total formal control through the use of

three types of pitch organization: serial, tonal, and one based on Eratosthenes’s progression of numbers.

[In the symphony] it serves as the basis for some chords, melodic lines; some pitches in the beginning are derived from it

in a complex way, as well as the flute solo from the second movement, the climax chord from the Finale, and all the Finale’s “disintegration,” where I calculated all the chords, their various

intervallic structure (for example, the chords made of minor seconds, major seconds, minor thirds, major thirds...).°’

Such a systematic process is evocative of the archaic tectonic model typical of cosmological myths, in which genesis is described as a process of continual expansion and addition. Toporov refers to a group of archaic

texts (including the book of Genesis), in which the process of adding numbers served as the basis for an unfolding cosmological myth.** In the episode immediately following the “failed” second theme, Schnittke applies an additional formula. A crescendo wave rolls in further instruments

and pitches, expanding orchestral tessitura in a systematic manner. The progressively widening intervals appear both underneath and above the initial single pitch E-flat, creating a consistently expanding space around that pitch until a sorcerer’s gesture, the three chords, stops the process. The six distinct steps of this widening musical “cosmos” correspond to six consecutive intervals that one might easily associate with the six days of creation (Figure 62). In the cosmological picture Schnittke draws in the beginning of the First symphony, particular importance is attached to the symbolism of the numbers 3 (the three Grand Pauses separating “chaos” from “cosmos’’), 30 (the rehearsal number marking the conductor’s entrance), and 33 (the rehearsal number at which the first consonant “event” occurs—the octave tutti of “C’’s). To these latter can be added the symbolism of 12 and 7. A

discomfiting rag melody in the piano part (rehearsal number 34, whose digits result in 7 as their sum) 1s only one of as many as 12 thematically and rhythmically independent layers that Schnittke imposes on each other in a simultaneous intrusion, stylizing them as fragments of pop music. “Ibid. 8 Vladimir Toporov, “O chislovykh modelyakh v arkhaichnykh tekstakh,” [About numerical models in archaic texts] in Struktura teksta [The structure of text] (Moscow: Nauka, 1980), 40.

194 Numerology FIGURE 62: Schnittke, First symphony, I, pitch accumulation

| A Fo DOU a Ao

[63] 4] [65] fo] rehearsal ;umbers

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This section occupies seven measures, ending as abruptly as it has started,

as if the window to a different world momentarily opened. In light of Schnittke’s deep interest in Christianity, which brought the composer from an atheistic environment typical for the Soviet era to formal baptism and regular confessions to a Russian orthodox priest, the meaning of numerology in Schnittke’s works is not merely poetic or fanciful. Considering the significance of the numbers 3, 7, and 12 in the Bible and its cosmology, Schnittke’s choices of these would hardly seem accidental. Neo-mythologism embraces diverse and even conflicting approaches, from serious beliefs, mysticism, and a tendency for sacralization, to irony

and estrangement, or, sometimes, a mixture of both the serious and the ironic. The title Giinter Peters chose for his recent book on Stockhausen, Holy Seriousness in the Play, effectively reflects this phenomenon.

The irony typical of neo-mythologism may welcome games with numbers, although the numbers still carry the sacredness attached to them

in the contexts of many modern compositions. On the one hand, Dolly Kessner calls Crumb’s preoccupation with numerology, in particular in Gnomic Variations, “number games.””’ On the other hand, she claims that 7 (half-steps, or a perfect fifth) in Black Angels symbolically represents

“God and Life,” while 13 (half-steps, or a minor ninth) stands for the Dolly Kessner, “Structural Coherence in Late Twentieth-Century Music,” Ph.D. diss. (University of Southern California, 1992), 114.

From Beliefs to Games with Numbers 195 “Devil and Death.’””’ Crumb himself decoded his association between 7 and the tritone in this manner: “In Black Angels I used a tritone, which

corresponds to the number seven.’ During the interview at Rutgers University, the composer drew a sketch illustrating what he later called the “basic sound,” or the “tritonal axis of the piece””” (Figure 63). FIGURE 63:

Crumb’s sketch illustrating oe. “the tritonal axis” in Black Angels © [1s The contradiction between a double association between 7 as both a

tritone (with its historically notorious “bad” intervallic ethos) and a perfect fifth (with its culturally rooted connotation of “good” intervallic ethos) is only apparent, for the number 7 is applicable to interval calculation in two ways—expressing either a number of half steps, or the pitch names involved. From Figure 63 it is clear that Crumb has used the latter to assign the number 7 to F# on the sketch, while a subtraction of 7 from

13 till gives 6 as the expression of the tritone’s intervallic size. This multivalence of associations is likely to be an intended effect on Crumb’s part in the general equilibrium-like atmosphere of this work. In the foreword to the score, Crumb indicates that “an important pitch element in the work—ascending D#, A and E—[...] symbolizes the fateful numbers 713.” Based on the number of half steps, the tritone D#-A corresponds to 6, and the fifth A-E corresponds to 7, while the sum of these two numbers is 13, which is also a standard numerical expression for a minor ninth (in this case, D#-E) as a minor second (1) plus an octave (12).

The essential difference between mathematical operations in the modern sense and operations with numbers in myths lies in the fact that in

myths, each number or combination of numbers carries a unique and tangible “ethos,” meaning, or mode; as a result of this, formulas such as “13 times 7” and “7 times 13” would never be equal, while in the abstract

science of mathematics these do not differ in their resulting values. Crumb’s program in the preface to Black Angels contains a diagram clearly demonstrating this type of operation: “13 times 7 and 7 times 13” of the first movement is the direct opposition of “7 times 13 and 13 times 7” of the last. How is this opposition realized in the inner structure of both movements?

Ibid. “lI nterview at Rutgers University, December 1997 (see Appendix).

Phone conversation, June 5, 2001.

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198 Numerology The first movement contains bracketed groups of notes with numbers under them that indicate the number of repeats of that group (Figure 64).

Crumb fills the entire movement with quintuplets as beat units, each of which equals one second, or an eighth note, as he indicates in the score. Each labeled number indicates duration in seconds, as well as the number of repeats. The total number of eighth notes in the movement equals 91—

precisely the product arrived at by multiplying the two fatal numbers 7 and 13. Since an eighth-note beat unit equals one second, the total sounding time ideally should also be 91 seconds. However, performances vary in this respect; here lies the natural borderline between the numerologically ideal model and the actual reality of performance. The number 7

, predominates among all bracketed indications of the first movement— namely, 7 is met here six times. (This seems to be not accidental, for both 6 and 7 are significant in the pitch formula of the piece).

Let us compare this to the last movement. Including the “bridge” from the previous movement—a sustained high D in the cello part, marked 13 seconds (Figure 65)—-and excluding the Coda that begins on page 9

of the score (Sarabanda de la muerte oscura), this movement (“13. Threnody III: Night of the Electric Insects’) contains an approximately similar number of units, or seconds, if we apply the same rule of counting bracketed groups as in the first movement. New here, however, are eight groups, each labeled 13 seconds. Their overlap makes calculation of total

time less precise. Nevertheless, there are clearly three continuous 13second durations in the first segment (shown as figure 65). With the cello and violin I groups only slightly overlapping, the overall duration of the segment results in ca. 39 seconds. The similar brackets of the second segment carry the sacramental numbers 7-3-4-7 (totaling 21 seconds), which

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A@ + ss Ton wa Jung rediscovered the mandala as one of the “archaic remnants” (a term he borrowed from Freud) that reveal themselves in modern thought through dreams or artistic creations. Analyzing both, Jung discerned images—chiefly visual sacred symbols, such as the cross and the magic circle (mandala)— that were typologically similar to those found in archaic myths, collective in their nature and origin and “emanating from primeval dreams and creative

fantasies.”

24 3 : : 99° °

*3Robert Fludd, Utriusque cosmi (Oppenheim: Johan-Theodori de Bry, typis Hieronymi Galleri, 1617-21). Carl Jung, “Approaching the Unconscious,” in Man and His Symbols (New York: Ferguson, 1964), 55.

Crumb’s Mandalas 209 The application of Jungian theory to such twentieth-century musical phenomena as circular notation reveals that in contemporary culture the traditional mythic tool for ordering chaos—the circle—still retains this function. In Jungian terms, the composer’s self filters the chaos through the unifying shape of the circle, and the adherents of circular notation attempt to overcome the fragmentation of contemporary mentality.

Crumb’s Mandalas Like Jung, Crumb reserved a very special place for night dreams—the realm of imagery he explored in pieces such as Night Music (1963, rev. 1976) and Dream Sequence (1976). From the perspective of Jungian thought,

it is not surprising that Mandala was a projected title for one of Crumb’s unrealized compositions, as he admitted. When asked if any of his circles were associated with the mandala, the symbol typical of Eastern religions, he said: “I was thinking of things associated with the mandala while working on a piece that was never completed. I sketched this piece and used the word

Mandala as the title.” Although Crumb never realized his Mandala project, some of his other “circle-music” scores, upon closer examination, show their connection to the mandala as an archetypal idea. Divisions within a circle-score often recall a mandala, with its segmented structure. The number 4 represents the four points of a compass and the four segments of a mandala, the map of the universe. In “Agnus Dei,” the concluding piece from Makrokosmos II, Crumb features the number 4 by placing four identical segments of notation in a

symmetrical arrangement over the circular staff (Figure 70). The four segments indicate phrases whispered by the pianist while performing the principal material, which Crumb also divided into four segments, labeled from A to D. In Star-Child, the four conductors, especially in the context of the circular notation present in the score, evoke the archetypal structure of mandalas. By rehearsal number 38, the four conductors are each performing one of the musics: “Musica Humana,” “Musica Mundana J,” “Musica Mundana II,” and

“Musica Apocaliptica,” acting simultaneously, but not synchronically, in order to create the image of four different sub-systems within one whole cosmos.

Interview at Rutgers University, December 1997 (See Appendix).

210 The Mythologem of a Circle FIGURE 70: Crumb, Makrokosmos II, “Agnus Dei”

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The Centerpiece in an Enigma Ritual 233 By employing circular notation, Terry Riley, in Keyboard Studies No. 7, (Figure 81) emphasizes the cyclic repetitive structure of music. Looking at these concentric circles, one has no clue where to begin; one is hypnotized by this symmetrical self-sufficiency, this enigmatic sign. This is an example of how modern mythmaking imbues objects of art, including musical scores, with sacred connotations. FIGURE 81: Terry Riley, Keyboard Studies No. 7

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Geometrical abstractionist painting of the early twentieth century (Mondrian, Malevich) comes to mind as a parallel to some of these enigmatic musical scores. Malevich’s famous Black Square (1915), with its density of

234 The Mythologem of a Circle archetypal meanings, incorporates mysticism and sacredness, as in ritualistic

or magic signs—for example, a magic square. A glance at Crumb’s “The Magic Circle of Infinity,” “Twin Suns,” or “Spiral Galaxy” (nos. 8 and 12 of Makrokosmos I and no. 4 of Makrokosmos IT) also evokes enigmatic and

mystical objects, for these pieces are notated as independent single-page circles, although they are parts of larger cyclic compositions. Many compositions in circular notation owe their aura of sacredness partly to their design—so neatly similar to a compact artifact—and partly to other ritualistic features. Among these are sacred texts (as in Star-Child) and vocalizations that function in the manner of ritualistic spells—for example, those in Ancient Voices and Oliveros’s “sonograms.”®' Another form of ritual-like syncretism is a combination of music and dance, a characteristic feature of several compositions that feature circular elements in melody, texture, and form.

Stravinsky’s “Wheel” and the Folk Round Dance Folk art presumably inherits syncretism from archaic synesthesia: the correspondence and mutual equivalence of different senses or forms of expression, which the mythographers of the Moscow-Tartu school commonly ascribe to the original mythic consciousness. Sergei Tokarev and Eleazar Meletinsky write: “Although myth conveys a story, it 1s not specifically a genre of literary art but only a certain worldview; often it is storytelling, but in other cases, the general mythic worldview expresses itself through rites, dances, and songs.””” In particular, a folk round dance is a visible version of the same mythologem that a circularly organized musical form presents audibly.

From this point of view, it is no coincidence that Stravinsky favors circular rondo-like forms in his Les Noces. In this folk-inspired ballet with singing, based upon a traditional Russian wedding ritual, Stravinsky uses the

rhetorical figure circulatio (Figure 82). Here, the lower and the higher curvilinear melodic lines are each notated to stress graphically their symmetrical relationship. This circular structure results from Stravinsky’s use of oppositions of flats versus sharps and ascending versus descending motion. *| Oliveros writes: “My sonogram MMM is the exclamation of pleasure, joy,” Software for People, 215. 82S ergei Tokarev and Eleazar Meletinsky, “Mifologia,” an Introduction to Mify narodov mira [The myths of worlds’ peoples], vol. 1, 2" ed. (Moscow: Bol’shaja rossijskaja enziklopedija, 1997), 14.

Stravinsky's “Wheel” and the Folk Round Dance 235 These picturesque “curls” in the music correspond to the words of the libretto: “Oh, Virgin Mary, come, help us to comb the groom’s hair!” The combing and/or the curling of a groom’s and a bride’s hair, as was typical for

a traditional Russian wedding, symbolized fertility. Another mediating symbol was a plant used in weaving wattle fences.** The reference to the latter can be found further on in the libretto, at rehearsal number 78: “as the hop weaves along the wattle-fence, let our newly-weds weave along each other.”

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reactivate the link between human affairs and the cosmos through the concept of fertility.** Some Slavic traditional weddings, in particular, evoke cosmic images by using a wedding ritual pie called misyachko (little moon)

or describing a groom as the moon. Understanding this symbolism the context of its mythological roots enhances our perception of the circular structures of Les Noces. 83.45 a student in Russia, I participated in field studies recording, collecting, and analyzing the elements of Russian archaic wedding rituals and then wrote a course paper on the subject as a part of a seminar in Russian folk music at the Gnesin Music Institute, 1987. 8 Pervobytnyi prazdnik i mifologia [The primeval holidays and mythology] (Erevan: Aiastan, 1983).

236 The Mythologem of a Circle Crumb notes that “Stravinsky has rotating figures, such as at the end of

the Symphony of Psalms, which I call ‘the Wheel.’ This remark demonstrates Crumb’s own special sensitivity to instances of circularity in earlier music, which does not necessarily contradict the composer’s claim of his artistic independence from historical predecessors.

The Cyclic Time of David Demnitz Although in the 1920s Stravinsky was already using circular figures, more explicitly circularly designed compositions blossomed in the second half of the twentieth century. One might expect that Crumb’s “circle music”

must have had a strong resonance among the younger generation of composers. Yet David Demnitz, in his composition Sixties, for gamelan,

(1987) offers an example of an independent approach (Figure 83). As Demnitz attested, he was not familiar with Crumb’s scores. When asked about influences, Demnitz wrote: My influence is, primarily, the clock face. There was a time when I stupidly thought it might disappear, when digital clocks seemed to be taking over. [Sixties] is an expression of cyclic time, and a

whole way of thinking and being which is threatened by our narrative, historical paradigm.”°

In Sixties, Demnitz explores the circular structure typical of gamelan music. He writes: As taught to me, the structure of gamelan pieces was often represented by acircle. This structure is called “colotomic punctuation,” and the pieces are usually in 8, 16, and 32 beat cycles. The “colotomic punctuation” is usually a great gong on the last and first beat of the cycle, which is the same beat. Javanese theory insists that the last beat of the piece is the first beat, and it is often said that the “piece begins with the last note.” While this strikes most westerners as odd, we deal with exactly the same idea at noon and midnight, so much so that no one is sure if noon 1s a.m. or p.m..°”

® Interview at Rutgers University, December, 1997 (See Appendix). ’°David Demnitz, personal correspondence, February 26, 1999. *"Tbid., January 30, 1999.

The Cyclic Time of David Demnitz 237 FIGURE 83: Demnitz, Sixties

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Let us examine this sketch in detail. Schnittke indicates three types of potential dramaturgy or three possibilities of the relationship between the soloists and the orchestra. The composer’s writings on this page translate as follows: Relationships 1) Dialogue (2 individuals) [Orchestra is a supporting background] 2) Antagonism [Orchestra is the third party that takes one of the sides] 3) The individual and the “soul”

(Mann — Anima

Frau — Animus)

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Jlurhe ‘Utopia of a Unified Style,’ or The Musical Narrativity of Alfred Schnittke’s Polystylism,” a paper presented at the national meeting of the American Musicological Society, Washington D.C., October 27-30, 2005.

248 Myth as a Figure of Speech Schnittke marks the third group with an exclamation point and explains the third group of terms: An episode where the orchestra carries out new ideas (still expressed very imprecisely) later occurs at the soloists’ parts. Who is

Person and who is Anima? They both interchange. Dynamic increase is a growing disagreement between Person and Anima. Culmination—a disturbed soul. Dissolution: a transfer of all disagreements to the higher transcendental plane, where the diversities occur as unities.

Tremblay is correct in linking the Animus/Anima opposition to the original performers, Gidon Kremer, and Tatiana Grindenko. Clearly, Jungian theory affected Schnittke’s plan for dramaturgy in this work, which makes

this composer a counterpart of Thomas Mann and other twentieth-century writers who, as Meletinsky claims, consciously applied Jungian psychoanalysis when creating neo-mythological works. Another of Schnittke’s handwritten memos for the Concerto Grosso No. 1 from the London archive (Figure 86) also contains the terms Animus and Anima in the upper-left FIGURE 86: Schnittke’s note for Concerto Grosso No. 1 (Schnittke Archive at Goldsmiths College, London)

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Schnittke ’s Mythological Outlook 249 corner, in addition to “dusha” (soul) “ten”? (shadow) on the lower left, and Papageno and Papagena on the upper right. The oppositions are set here in Jungian terms. Furthermore, Schnittke’s notes and sketches reveal that in his picture of the creative process, the composer placed the collective above everything. Schnittke’s archive in London contains a little handwritten diagram (Figure 87), which represents a layered structure. The top layer Schnittke marks as “super-music” (nadmuzyka), from where one descends through the layers of “hyper-idea” (giperzamysel), “the idea of a work” (zamysel proizvedeniya), to a “rational concept” (razionalnaya konzepziya) and, finally, to the musical text using notation (notnyi tekst). “The collective” (kollekt[ivnoe]) occupies the highest level in this diagram, while Schnittke separates the stages that lead to the musical text with a line marking all of the lower categories as “individual” (indiv[idual ’noe]). This evokes Jung’s emphasis on the collective and, more generally, the collective nature of archaic mythology. FIGURE 87: Schnittke’s diagram of the creative process (Schnittke Archive at Goldsmiths College, London)

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Schnittke’s Mythological Outlook Schnittke’s involvement with mythology and religion still remains largely uninvestigated, although the composer openly acknowledged the role of the mythological on his creativity in conversations. Thus, he supported the

idea, which Alexander Ivashkin quoted from Auguste Comte, that “a new mythological age is beginning.”’? A memo from Schnittke’s archive in London contains references to myth, mythology, and mythologism, and lists the names of two Moscow-Tartu school mythographers: Lotman and Minz (Figure 88). 22 alexander Ivashkin, ed., A Schnittke Reader (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2002), 3.

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250 Myth as a Figure of Speech FIGURE 88: References to myth in Schnittke’s memo

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On this memo, Schnittke added handwritten notes over the typescript of what looks like a plan for an article (possibly on Ives). Schnittke jotted down next to one of the statements of the outline: “To develop at the end” (razvit' v konze). The fragment in Russian shown in the lower part of Figure 88 translates: Myth: Certain mythology—always (Jakobson about Pushkin)

Wagner’s mythologism and exposure of primary elements as leitmotivs Lotman, Minz: Epics—Drama—Novel—Cinema

The memo demonstrates that the composer was familiar with contemporary studies in mythography. In particular, he refers to the notion of “a permanent mythology” that Roman Osipovich Jakobson (1896-1982) applied to the works of the Russian poet Aleksandr Pushkin (1799-1837): In any work of a great artist there are elements, which are the imprints of the poetic personality of this artist. These elements provide the integrity of the individual mythology of this poet. These elements are found as invariants in any of this poet’s work; they create some sort of a permanent mythology, which lies in the foundation of a poetic cycle, or, not infrequently, in the foundation of the entire body of works by the poet.” *3RomanJ akobson, Statuya v poeticheskoi mifologii Pushkina [Statue in the poetic mythology of Pushkin], in Raboty po poetike [Essays on Poetics] (Moscow: Progress, 1987), 73.

Schnittke ’s Mythological Outlook 251 Jakobson, one of the most influential linguists of the twentieth century, pioneered the concept of artistic myth in the 1930s, along with structural analysis of language, poetry, and art.-* Although early in his career he left

Russia for Prague before emigrating to America to teach at Harvard, the Russian intelligentsia of the 1980s highly valued Jakobson’s publications, which were available in Russian. Furthermore, Schnittke mentions /eitmotiv in the same sentence with Wagner’s mythologism, which reflects the initiative in contemporary mythography (Lévi-Strauss, Meletinsky) that links Wagner’s /eitmotiv with his mythologism.” Schnittke also mentions in the memo the name of Alexei Losev, a prominent Russian mythographer (in the lower portion of the same

sheet, see Figure 89). The line of the text, which Schnittke crossed over, reads: “Symbolism—trealism (Losev, conversation).” FIGURE 89: a reference to Losev in Schnittke’s memo

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The memos from Schnittke’s archive indicate that the composer perceived certain musical phenomena in the context of cosmology and archetypes. For example, on one undated sheet (Figure 90), Schnittke sketched down his impressions from a concert in which the composer Vladimir Marty-

nov destroyed a musical score in the course of an avant-garde performance—“a sort of an instrumental theatre,” as Schnittke characterizes it: An “ideal” score (a clear sheet of paper) is placed on the conductor’s stand, when the conductor appears (Martynov himself), who makes a creative act of destruction (i.e., tears the score apart), thus

overthrowing the musical universe into the abyss before the audience. 74 Andrej Kodjak et al., eds., Myth in Literature (Columbus, OH: Slavica, 1984). This book of essays, dedicated to the memory of Roman Jakobson, was published as a result of the conference “Myth in Literature,” New York University, 1981.

>See, for example, Eleazar Meletinsky, Poetika mifa (Moscow: Nauka, 1976; reprint, Vostochnaya literatura, 2000), 296.

252 Myth as a Figure of Speech FIGURE 90: Fragment of a memo in Schnittke’s handwriting (Schnittke Archive, Goldsmiths College, London)

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Faust and Godliness Like Crumb’s works of the 1970s, Schnittke’s pieces of the same period create an idiosyncratic mythological world. Schnittke’s neo-mythologism, unlike Crumb’s, was rooted in the composer’s active and growing religious consciousness, concealed from most audiences and the critics of the time. When Taruskin sees “the world of early Schnittke [as] Dostoevsky’s world

without God,” this exclusion of God robs the picture of its spiritual diversity.*° According to Irina Schnittke, the composer’s widow, “God was there [in Schnittke’s life] from the beginning.””’ She confirmed that Dostoevsky, with his constant search for God, deeply influenced the composer. Other facts also prove that the concept of God was not at all foreign to Schnittke’s

philosophical and religious views and had made its way into his compositions.”* “Richard Taruskin, Defining Russia Musically (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 1997), 100. *"Interview, February 26, 2006, London.

*8On the secret program featuring the crucifixion of Christ for the Second violin concerto (1966), see Dmitry Shulgin, Gody neizvestnosti Al'freda Shnitke [Alfred Schnittke’s obscure years] (Moscow: Delovaya liga, 1993), 46-47, and on the Bible as Schnittke’s favorite reading since his early years see Joseph Ryzhkin, “Faustovskaya zapredel'nost’,” Muzykal'naja akademija 2 (1999), 73.

Faust and Godliness 253 However, Schnittke fused a variety of sources not limited to a single form of Christian orthodoxy: the Faustian myth (based primarily on the folk legend of Faust), elements of Hinduism, Kabbalah, ecumenism, Jungian psychoanalysis, and more.” His archive contains a sheet of paper in his own

handwriting that appears to be a reading list (Figure 91). It includes references to the philosophical and theological treatises of Jakob Bohme, Angelus Silesius, Novalis, and San Juan de la Cruz. Although the date of this bibliography is unknown, and it is not clear whether Schnittke actually read

these works, its very presence among Schnittke’s papers confirms the composer’s general interest in the antiquated literature of the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries. The German Romantic poet Novalis is the sole nineteenth-century author on the list. FIGURE 91: A bibliographical list (Schnittke Archive at Goldsmiths College, London)

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La Musi ce Silencio S06

) ° a M USr eR colle ole While Novalis longed for a restoration of pre-Enlightenment, preReformation European medieval culture under an imaginary universal church, Schnittke was interested in ecumenism” and in the archaic medieval 27In an interview, February 26, 2006, London, Irina Schnittke confirmed her late husband’s interest in these phenomena.

Trina Schnittke, interview, February 26, 2006, London. She also mentioned that in the 1980s, Schnittke underwent a ritual allowing him to confess to a Russian Orthodox priest, after having been formally baptized into Roman Catholicism, thus creating a unique interdenominational aspect or a certain universality of Schnittke’s faith.

254 Myth as a Figure of Speech flavor of the Volksbuch vom Doctor Faust. Johann Spies published the book in Frankfurt in 1587, but the folk stories it contains probably date from even earlier periods. In 1983, Schnittke composed his Faust Cantata, and in 1994, the opera Historia von D. Johann Fausten, both based on the Volksbuch.”’

As a student in Moscow during the 1980s, I encountered a growing opinion among the intellectuals who observed Schnittke’s creativity that the

composer identified himself with the mythic Faust. This perception was based on the composer’s obvious involvement with various signs, symbols, and archetypes, and with the medieval image of Faust, all of which created a certain aura around his identity. The memo from Schnittke’s archive that refers to Losev and other mythographers also mentions the Middle Ages and the role of signs and symbols during different historical eras (see the lower portion of Figure 89). The typewritten text in Russian translates: Middle Ages: an intensive use of signs, symbols The New Age: multiplicity of new sign systems

Joseph Ryzhkin, Schnittke’s music theory professor and later his friend, expressed the association between Schnittke’s persona and the mythic Faust

in his in memoriam Schnittke article “Faustian Transcendence.” Ryzhkin recalls “the many hours of conversations about Thomas Mann’s novel Doctor Faustus”’ that took place between him and Schnittke. According to this memoir, when Ryzhkin was diagnosed with cancer, the diagnosis later proving erroneous, Schnittke told him: “The Devil was fighting with you. He

has not won. Now [...] he must return all these years, which he had taken away, back to you.”** The language, in which Schnittke engages the Devil as an identifiable participant in life’s events, 1s characteristic. The perception

(and, as Schnittke’s friends have speculated, the self-perception) of the composer’s identity in relationship to the myth of Faust is typical of neo-

310On Schnittke’s incarnation of the Faustian myth, see Wolfgang Gratzer, ““Eine negative Passion’: Alfred Schnittkes ‘Faust-Kantate’ als Paradigma Postmoderner Mythenrezeption,” Maria Kostakeva, “Der Teufel als Symbol des totalitaren Systems: Die Neuen Mythen der Sowjet-Ara am Beispiel von Alfred Schnittkes ‘Faust-Kantate,’” both in Europdische Mythen der Neuzeit: Faust und Don Juan, Gesammelte Vortrige des Salzburger Symposions 1992 (Salzburg: Ursula Miiller-Speiser, 1993): 596-609 and 611-620; Joseph Ryzhkin, “Opernosimfonicheskoe voploshenie mifa v ‘Istorii doktora Ioganna Fausta’ Alfreda Shnitke” [The operatic-symphonic embodiment of myth in “Historia von D. Johann Fausten” by Alfred

Schnittke], Studies of Gnesin Musical-Pedagogical Institute, vol. 96, ed. E. Durandina (Moscow, 1998). According to Ryzhkin, (“Faustovskaya,” 74), Schnittke read and approved the text of the latter article. >2Ryzhkin, “Faustovskaya,” 73-74 and 76-77.

Faust and Godliness 255 mythologism, where the center of the mythic universe coincides with the artist’s inner self.*°

At the beginning of Schnittke’s creative path, several literary masterpieces that feature Faustian myth and examine religious concepts in the light of the modern world had a great impact on him. These include Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita and Thomas Mann’s Doctor Faustus. According to Ivashkin, the composer read Doctor Faustus soon after its publication in 1947 in the original German.** Mann’s novel focuses on the opposition of the banal and the divine, while promoting a Nietzschean view of the inseparability of music and the tragic myth. The protagonist, the composer Adrian Leverkiihn, embodies irony and skepticism linked to the diabolic, while striving for angelicism. In addition to Mann’s Doctor Faustus, Ryzhkin lists other literary sources dealing with Faust—the second part of Goethe’s Faust (1832) and The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus (1604)

by Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593)}—which both he and Schnittke discussed as potential material for a musical-dramatic work.” In its November 1966 and January 1967 issues, the monthly magazine Moskva published, for the first time, Mikhail Bulgakov’s novel The Master

and Margarita, which was written as early as 1940 but remained unpublished, for political reasons, for more than two decades. The novel featured the dichotomy between the sacred and the sacrilegious in the terms of Christian religion—a topic tabooed by official Soviet cultural policy— although Bulgakov mythologized the religious subject matter. The novel instantly became a must-read in cultural circles: The 150,000 copies sold out within hours. In the weeks that followed, group readings were held, people meeting each other would quote and compare favorite passages, there was talk of little else. Certain sentences from the novel immediately became proverbial.*°

The Moscow intellectuals welcomed the publication of The Master and

Margarita as a miracle. Not only did it contain political satire, but it reactualized traditional religious concepts, juxtaposed with the atheism of

*3In a conversation during “Schnittke Day” in London, February 25, 2006, Alexander Ivashkin, Schnittke’s biographer and friend, noted that the composer identified himself with Faust. 344 lexander Ivashkin, Alfred Schnittke (London: Phaidon Press, 1996), 152-54.

*°Ryzhkin, “Faustovskaya,” 76-77.

*oRichard Pevear, Introduction to Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita, trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (London and New York: Penguin, 1997), vii.

256 Myth as a Figure of Speech contemporary society and the vulgarity of literary tastes and mental clichés that bloomed in the writer’s professional circle. The characters Yeshua HaNozri and Voland, who embody the de-mythologized and re-mythologized

figures of Jesus Christ and Satan, clearly resonated with the composer’s personal fascination with Christianity, while the comic and trivial characters that group around Satan represent the longed-for ironic skepticism toward contemporary society. Bulgakov surrounds Voland with the conventional and recognizable attributes of the operatic Mephistopheles from Gounod’s Faust.*'

Bulgakov’s novel remained suspicious in the eyes of many Soviet officials at the time of its publication, and no composer could hope to obtain

permission for a performance of a work based on such a source. Only in 1993 did Schnittke and his son Andrey work on the music for a movie based

on the novel; however, the film was never released. Clearly, the Faustian myth was among the forces that supported Schnittke’s dialogue with the past and shaped his identity.

The Devil and the Perception of Schnittke’s Early Style A sole focus on Schnittke’s concept of polystylistics as a single methodological key to his music, which has been dominating Schnittke studies, obstructs a fuller picture of the composer, whose heritage demonstrates his great complexities. In recent debates over the larger issues of meaning in Schnittke’s music, historians sometimes underestimate the quality of the composer’s early works. For example, Arnold Whittall notes that Schnittke’s early collage-style works are “unrefined.””® Yet several of these early works already feature elaborate dramaturgical concepts, which match their highly structured pitch and formal structures. They reveal certain constants of the composer’s personality and his dialogue with the archetypal, which later also shaped his more mature works. In particular, the First symphony (1972), with its Gregorian chant in the Finale, foreshadowed Schnittke’s Second symphony, the St. Florian (1979), which was conceived as a hybrid of symphony and mass. At the same time, the mockery of the traditional symphony that Schnittke offers in the First symphony looks toward the Third (1981), which questions the iconicity of the symphonic genre. °7On the role of the Faust motive in Bulgakov’s novel, see Bojidar Spassov, “Uber einige Faust-Motive in Bulgakovs Roman ‘Der Meister und Margarita’ und ihre musiktheatralische Interpretation,” in Europdische Mythen der Neuzeit, 621. $8 Fudging Schnittke,” subchapter in Exploring Twentieth-Century Music (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 121.

The Devil and the Perception of Schnittke’s Early Style 257 The composer’s evident skepticism in the First symphony casts such

icons as the Finale of Beethoven’s Fifth symphony and the opening of Tchaikovsky’s First piano concerto as clichés. However, Schnittke’s irony is not limited to trivializing elements such as “low” vernacular and pop music—a practice that puts the composer, in his own words, into a symphonic league with Mahler, Shostakovich, Ives, and Zimmerman.” Nor do Schnittke’s desacralizing gestures consist solely of distorted quotations of existing works or the intentional undermining of certain traditions. In discussing the work with Ryzhkin, the composer posed a characteristic question: “Is this a

symphony?”” He first titled the work K(eine) Symphonie, also calling it Symphony-Antisymphony, Antisymphony-Symphony.”' Such dialectical pair-

ings in these titles point at once to both negation and at least potential positive reinforcement. In other words, Schnittke is here putting the

symphony to a test.

Since the symphonic genre represents a cosmological model, it is also a test for the world, which, according to Schnittke’s later conversations, should be inclusive of all pre-existing traditional concepts, and their wholeness should not be usurped by a selective model based on a single new concept. The composer described such a possibility as devilish: “At a particular moment, something turns into a dangerous substitute for the whole world, and this can lead to a catastrophe.””? The composer was especially fearful of “the new” as the Devil’s temptation to substitute a complex perception of the world with a simplified and one-sided view: The Devil is most of all aware that the way to deal with everything that is new has not been worked out in as much detail as the way to deal with what has long been known. So what is new may lead to exaggerations, and that’s when the Devil can “play his tricks.”

In his earlier years, Schnittke would have been unable to express publicly these views on the Devil, considering the exclusion of religious subject matter during that time by official censorship. Nevertheless, retrospectively Schnittke identified as “devilish” the intentional banality in the

Finale of the First symphony, his early work, in a comment he issued

Quoted in Ivashkin, Alfred Schnittke, 121 (the source of the quotation is not supplied).

R yzhkin, “Faustovskaya,” 74. “lIvashkin, Alfred Schnittke, 118. 42 4 Schnittke Reader, 27.

Ibid., 26.

258 Myth as a Figure of Speech regarding his treatment of the Dies Irae tune.” In his later compositions and conversations, Schnittke explicitly linked the elements of banal pop music with the diabolic.*” However, with respect to his early works, musicologists until now had no documents to trace this association. The Dies Irae melody in the Finale of the First symphony is just such a document. Schnittke points to the fact that the Dies Jrae tune shares two pitches with the melody of a popular hit song (Schlager)—a discovery that the composer later explained: “Dies Irae and the diabolic banality (teuflische Banalitdt) interlock here.’”® Paradoxically, the very conservatism of Schnittke’s religious outlook was socially subversive in his day. His contemporaries perceived the First symphony as an avant-garde composition, although the composer, with his religious fear of the new, conceived it on the grounds of staunch conserva-

tism in his treatment of the symphonic genre. Schnittke in the First symphony embraces virtually all the traditional and modern methods of musical organization available to him and avoids focusing on a single, new method. As he later expressed in his conversations, this demonstrates the concept of religious-mythological fear of the new as the Devil’s temptation

to replace a multifaceted insight of the world with a narrow progressive outlook. Even a seemingly original structure derived from Eratosthenes turns

out to be based on an ancient formula. A wealth of quotations and quasi-

quotations serves, it seems, to guard against any possible intrusion of demonic progress. Strategically placed climactic major and minor triads and perfect consonances of octaves and unisons also bear a special function in restoring the antiquated symbolism of these elements as presented in old

speculative treatises featuring the notions of concordance, unity, and Christian symbolism of the trinity associated with the triad. A twelve-tone row appears in the violins at rehearsal number 34, but its tenth, eleventh, and twelfth tones coincide with the triadic harmonies. The row is a feature representing progress in the context of Soviet music. Since Schnittke associated narrowly defined progress with “the Devil’s tricks,” expectedly, he counterbalances the series with triadic harmonies. The final Joachim Hansberger, “Alfred Schnittke in Gesprich tiber sein Klavierquintett und andere Komposition,” Zeitschrift fiir Musikpddagogik (1982), Heft 20, cit. in Alfred Schnittke zum 60.Geburtstag (Hamburg: Sikorski, 1994), 86. In the Faust Cantata, for example, both the tango as a symbol of the demonic, and the vulgar and loudly amplified manner in which it is performed by a pop singer elicit the figure of the Devil. On Schnittke’s interpretation of pop music as a symbol of evil and on his acknowledgement of a “constant struggle against the Devil,” see A Schnittke Reader, 32 and 22, respectively. * Alfred Schnittke zum 60.Geburtstag, 86.

The Mythologems in Schnittke ’s Symphony 259 C unison at the end of the Finale connotes “simplicity itself,’*’ according to Taruskin, and therefore a retreat instead of progress. Multiple octave consonances in the beginning and end of the symphony stand for consonance in the antiquated philosophical and religious sense of the word as opposed to modernist dissonance.

The Mythologems in Schnittke’s First Symphony As the score of the First symphony remains unpublished and less known

than some other of Schnittke’s works, the employment of symbols or mythologems in this work escaped the attention of most scholars. In particular, Schnittke identified the form of the third movement as a “dynamic triangle”’**—the image that carries a link with the mythologem of the “magic mountain” or “world mountain” known to many cultures.*” Golgotha with the crucifix is a particular representation of that mythologem.”° That archetypal

figure marks the center of the world, or Axis Mundi, while beneath its foundation lies the entrance to the underworld. The center-defying essence of such an archetype is analogous to the position of the dynamic triangle within Schnittke’s symphony. Since Schnittke uses unmeasured music in

several instances, one can not precisely number the measure where the climactic point of the triangle is achieved. However, according to the 1987 recording, the climax occurs at 36 minutes 30 seconds, which falls roughly in the middle of the symphony’s overall length of 64 minutes 51 seconds. Clichés of pop music cacophonously surround the peak of this triangle. Considering Schnittke’s reading of the popular as infernal, then, this frame around the triangle may be characterized, like the crucifix on Golgotha, as the border between the infernal and the transcendental domains. This moment of transcendence evokes the final chapters of Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita, which depict a transformation of ordinary earthly time into an expanded “Night at the Satan’s” and, ultimately, into a plane of timelessness and eternity. The characters, also transformed, now soar among

the stars in a weightless cosmic ride on flying horses. The graphics of Schnittke’s notation reflect the figures of ascent followed by descent * Defining Russia Musically, 100.

*Ibid., 65. See, for example, Gertrude Jobes, Dictionary of Mythology, Folklore, and Symbols, v. 2 (New York: Scarecrow Press, 1962), 1129-31. See Vladimir Toporov, “Gora” [Mountain] in Mify narodov mira [The myths of the world’s peoples], ed. Sergei Tokarev, vol. 1 (Moscow: Bol'shaja Rossijskaja Enziklopedija, 1997), 311.

260 Myth as a Figure of Speech (Figures 92 and 93). Bulgakov indicates that the riders “flew to their goal,” the ultimate place of eternal peace. In Schnittke’s score, between the ascent and the descent, he achieves a symphonic goal: the dissonant sonority that dominates the ascent episode gradually transforms into an A-major triad,

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which establishes itself with more and more certainty in all instrumental parts. The crescendo tremolo of the cymbals further highlights the “magic” character of this climactic moment. A C-minor triad follows, completing the symphony’s recurring harmonic complex. FIGURE 92: Schnittke, First symphony, III, the figure of ascent

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The Mythologems in Schnittke ’s Svmphony 261 Although Ivashkin briefly pointed to the importance of the publication of The Master and Margarita for the composer’s work,”' musicologists have not examined the relationship between the novel and Schnittke’s ideas in detail. Yet, an implicit conceptual similarity between the two texts—Bulgakov’s and Schnittke’s—is as striking as the meta-descriptive resemblance between them. As they begin their flight towards eternal rest, Bulgakov’s characters first say farewell to the earth; for a while, they still distinguish a few landmarks of the earthly life before completely disconnecting from it. As a parallel to this, in the beginning of the third movement of Schnittke’s symphony, listeners still discern what sounds like earthly voices: occasional short solo phrases of the piano, cembalo, electric guitar, campanelli, campane, and tamtam in contradictory styles. These sounds, however, gradually fade to an inaudible pianissimo before completely disappearing. Soon, only the strings— which are progressively added, divided, and subdivided into multiple solo parts—fill this new landscape, devoid of any references to genre. Without any heavy metric accents, the listener receives the impression of soaring. The micropolyphonic and ametrical writing gave Schnittke the possibility, in his own words, of “creating [...] a musical symbol [...] of stasis,’”°* which he admired in Gyorgy Ligeti’s scores, such as Atmospheres (1961), Volumina

(1966), and Lontano (1967). Schnittke analyzed these in his theoretical

writings of the 1970s, when he noted that stasis manifests itself in a “flowing, seamless music whose meditative profundity captivates listeners and carries them away from any real sense of time (one has the feeling of making contact with eternity).””’ Schnittke counterbalanced the nihilism of the first two movements with the transcendental plane of expression in the third movement. The former are polystylistic, especially the mundane second movement in a scherzo mode, and both have a collage-like cinematic display, which conveys vulgarity, mocking, and scoffing. In opposition, the third movement is strictly monostylistic. Schnittke, like Bulgakov in the cosmic

ride episode, clearly emphasizes the dichotomy of the earthly and the transcendental.

14 Schnittke Reader, “Chronology,” xxi. >? Alfred Schnittke, “Static Form: A New Conception of Time,” in A Schnittke Reader, 147. However, Schnittke emphasized fundamental differences, on the structural level, between his adaptation of micropolyphony as a technique and Ligeti’s overall compositional logic, in Shulgin, “Gody neizvestnosti,” 25-26. 3 Schnittke, “Static Form,” 147.

262 Myth as a Figure of Speech Postlude Neo-mythologism offers, at times, powerful reincarnations of mythic

archetypes, providing the channels through which individuals seek to transcend their immediate social and psychological identities and to connect with the imaginary communal and universal world. Numbers and number progressions, technical data, name encryption, visual and geometric archetypal images, archaism, ritualism, syncretism—all these serve as channels for various twentieth-century composers in their attempts to imitate an imaginary archaic collective worldview or to escape into a newly built mythology, a mixture of pre-existing components, from theosophy to modern scientific cosmology. Meletinsky insisted that, although different writers’ approaches to myth vary, neo-mythologism 1s one wide-ranging, if loosely defined, trend, rather than a collection of multiple “neo-mythologisms” with only surface similarities.’ The present study adopted this view, acknowledging the fact that the

degree of involvement with mythic imagery and archetypes ranges significantly from composer to composer. Some composers indulge in mythic thought with a seriousness equivalent to religious faith, like Scriabin, or with a deep interest for, and an eventual practical involvement with an established religion, although in an idiosyncratic manner, like Schnittke. Others convey a fascination with the mystic aura and sheer imagery of mythic expression while blending archaism with “deep psyche” in a Jungian sense, as Crumb, or with irony, estrangement, and playfulness, as Stravinsky. The artistic results also vary in different cases, from the extreme “holy sacrifice” that led to Scriabin’s creative silence, according to Simon Morrison’s shrewd observation,” to characteristic stylistic and technological allinclusiveness. In combining seemingly incompatible stylistic gears, often including allusion and quotation, and thus implying their stylistic interchangeability, the multiculturalism of some twentieth-century musical styles contributes to a notion of wholeness similar to that of mythic thought. The multilingual tendency is another reflection of this ideal of wholeness. In

combining several different languages in the texts of one work, some composers strive to return to that one universal language that existed only in mythic times—as in the myth of Babel, before people attempted to build the tower. ~“Meletinsky, Poetika mifa, 298. See also the English translation, The Poetics of Myth, trans. Guy Lanou and Alexandre Sadetsky (New York: Garland, 1998), xx1.

Simon Morrison, Russian Opera and the Symbolist Movement (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 185.

Postlude 263 In a musical sense, the twentieth century has more different “languages” at

its disposal than ever before in history—serialism, tonality, atonality, modality, electronic music, and others. Some composers tend to mythologize the “older” languages, such as tonality and modality, as corresponding to the imaginary “first times” of music, and associate these with older set of values, akin to the mythic Urzeit.

The role of mythmaking, this fundamental layer of human creative consciousness within cultural consciousness, often remains undervalued in the analysis of modern cultural phenomena, including music. This is despite several efforts of mythographers to point out the importance of mythological thought in modern culture. Within mainstream musicology, the interdisciplinary approach connecting music and mythmaking has remained a hidden dimension, which requires a more thorough study than it was possible to undertake in this book. The author hopes to provoke thought that will lead to further explorations and more detailed and comprehensive approaches in this vast field.

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Appendix I An Interview with George Crumb Transcript of a conversation with George Crumb, December 9, 1997, Rutgers University’

Victoria Adamenko: Could you tell me, how did you come to circular notation? Were you influenced by the notation used by Ross Lee Finney— your teacher—in his Spherical Madrigals?

George Crumb: I did not know this piece. I knew Stockhausen’s Refrain before I did any of my own circular works, but his work was not a direct influence on me. I use a different principle when drawing my scores. My pieces of circular notation are aleatoric just in a sense that they erase the vertical alignment of the score. My first circular notation was a piece called Night Music I, in 1963. It was also my first setting of a [Federico Garcia] Lorca poem. The poem set with circular notation was called “The Moon Is Rising.” The two circles in the score were supposed to represent the moon, and so it was suggested by the poem. Another composition in which I used circular notation was The Songs, Drones and Refrains of Death, of 1968. That has a title, Casida of the Dark Doves, which refers to the sun and the moon. One of the circles is titled “The Sun.” So the circular notation here was suggested by the sun.

VA: So you refer here to heavenly bodies. Is it therefore connected to the concept of the music of the spheres?

GC: It is later, in the Star-Child, that the circles are connected to the medieval concept of the music of the spheres, as well as in Makrokosmos. There is another work called Night of the Four Moons, where I used “Musica Humana” and “Musica Mundana.” It has Lorca’s text. At the end of the work I have the two musics going at the same time. The “Musica Mundana”’ is quasi-pentatonic: it has really four notes, only white notes. “Musica Humana” This private, tape-recorded interview took place at the Douglass Café on campus a few hours

prior to Mr. Crumb’s public appearance at the Mason Gross School of the Arts.

265

266 Appendix I is in Fg major. I was thinking very much about the opposition of those two.

The “Humana” is kind of Ragtime—the music of the people—and the “Mundana” is in the strings, just open fifths throughout the whole piece, a

sort of a metaphysical kind of music, a representation of nature. I was thinking of the dichotomy of a similar kind that Ives uses in his Central Park in the Dark: the music of nature opposed to the popular music of the time.

VA: In the Makrokosmos, some pieces have titles with Christian religious connotations, such as “Agnus Dei” or “Crucifixus,” and one piece is called “Myth.” From placing these within one large composition, it seems that you put mythology and religion in a somewhat similar context. GC: In a way, I do. I am not attached to one religion. I sometimes refer to different religions, and in the same sense, to myth, which is a sort of prereligion or early religion...

VA: Primordial, or ancient faith... GC: Yes. VA: What is mythology? Is it a kind of religion that we no longer believe, in comparison to a living religion, in which we believe as we worship our gods?

GC: That’s true, but also myths and those mythical gods continue to live culturally. They represent poetic truths. VA: What is your religious background? GC: Presbyterian, Protestant, but that was only when I was a kid. VA: You have used many Latin religious titles... GC: | use those as cultural symbols, not as expression of my own belonging to a certain religion.

VA: In what way, then, are you personally attached to those symbols?

GC: I include some tunes that I love, like in the music of Charles Ives, revival tunes—something that he used for the first time. Those have a powerful emotional meaning for me, even though I am not such a practicing believer. VA: So you approach many of these symbols through music—through Ives’s music, for example?

GC: Yes.

An Interview with George Crumb 267 VA: As you encounter myths or religions that become an inspiration for you, do you study them? How conscious are you in approaching these myths or religions?

GC: There is nothing systematic in my approach. I don’t know much about astrology. It is just a casual encounter, and I come with my own response to what I heard about this science. VA: What were your sources to refer to the ancient concept of the music of the spheres?

GC: There was Die Harmonie der Welt, a symphony by Hindemith. I’ve read someplace, maybe in a music history, or in an article, about the music of the spheres, and the topic fascinated me. I know a very good book by the

famous British astronomer Fred Hoyle—his best-known scientific book, called The Nature of the Universe. He also wrote science fiction. One [story] was called The Black Cloud. The black cloud was a living thing that was to

choke the Earth without realizing that it would harm the people. So the people wanted to communicate to the cloud by sending messages in all

languages. All was useless until somebody suggested to play the Hammerklavier sonata to the cloud. The cloud understood that there was a superior civilization that was able to produce the Hammerklavier sonata, and withdrew from the Earth. Fred Hoyle incorporates a lot about music in his writings. He is a real scientist who uses his imagination to write science fiction. He was the one who formulated the steady-state universe concept as opposed to the big bang.

VA: Is there a special reason why you used a particular kind of interval in your “Musica Mundana” and “Musica Humana” [movements]? Was the choice dictated by the ancient Pythagorean interpretations of the intervals and their cosmological meaning? GC: I was not that systematic in my music. I did not use any written source,

I just heard about some early music theories, and I did not think of the Pythagorean tradition. However, in Black Angels I used a tritone which corresponds to the number 7.

VA: And this number has numerological connotations for you in this composition?

GC: Yes, and also the number 13.’ VA: Why is there the number 11 in your piece Eleven Echoes of Autumn? *Crumb draws a picture illustrating the numbers of Black Angels (see ch. 6, figure 63).

268 Appendix I GC: I wanted to create a symmetrical grouping, and this is the same case with the Black Angels.

VA: Is this fondness of symmetrical structures something that derives from Bartok’s tradition?

GC: Yes, for instance from his Fifth quartet, with its related scherzos. VA: Was the application of numerology here something that you approached consciously or was it rather spontaneous? GC: When I was writing Black Angels, it occurred to me that these numbers appeared all the time in my sketches, and that was when I decided to make use of them. It started, I think, with the thirteen pieces, so I had that [type of

numerology] from the beginning. Later it expanded with the ritualistic chanting in different languages, but there was no system in using such things. These were rather references in the manner of Debussy, who knew from an archeologist about some sunken cathedral, and referred to it in his title.

VA: You said, in your first circular score you wanted to imitate the moon... GC: This was the way it has started, but later some of the music set this way somehow becomes circular, too. That was just an image of the galaxy that we

know from those photographs. Twin Suns sure was the representation of suns, but the music wasn’t circular. The Prophesy of Nostradamus was a

kind of a central music, like a nut in a shell. In Star-Child, the circle expresses a symbol of perfection, divinity...

The visual aspect of music is fascinating for me. I love to look at facsimiles of the original scores—for example, of Mahler. When we don’t see the facsimile, we lose in our perception of music. There is one practical dimension to the question why I use circular notation sometimes: in the Eleven Echoes of Autumn, the music that is on the circles is played at the same time as the music that is on the Hosanna system; and these musics should be “free of each other,” completely independent. There 1s no vertical alignment. If these were both printed horizontally, it might sort of link them up.

VA: Is the circular notation [of Ancient Voices of Children] connected in your mind with the ideas of reincarnation, changes of seasons, and other symbolic meanings that different mythological traditions attach to the figure of a circle? GC: It is connected to all of those things.

An Interview with George Crumb 269 VA: Are any of your circles associated with mandala, the symbol typical for Eastern religions?

GC: I was thinking of things associated with mandala while working on a piece that was never completed. I sketched this piece and used the word Mandala as the title. I just like poetic-mythological titles, such as Makrokosmos, Proteus, and a couple of others.

VA: Joscelyn Godwin, the author of the book Harmonies of Heaven and Earth, describes many various concepts that relate astronomy and music— the schemes of heavenly and earthly musics connected often being expressed as circular diagrams.

GC: I am not familiar with that book. VA: In my research, I use the term “mythologem of a circle” meaning that each culture in some way uses the figure with certain symbolic meanings attached to it. If one looks at your circular music in this context, they will also see the reflection of the structure of myth, because as you draw a circle, you convey this mythological symbolism. GC: Yes, that makes sense to me. The very fact that I don’t use conventional notation says something. Music tends to be mythological, at least some of it. Some of my music is mythological just in expression. People tell me that it

has that sense sometimes—ancient. My music 1s not programmatic in the 19"-century sense of this word. If you use words, the programmatic sense comes automatically, don’t you think? The music of Sibelius is mythological in this sense, too. He influenced

many American composers, even though his music is remote in time. Stravinsky has rotating figures, such as at the end of the Symphony of Psalms, which I call “the Wheel.” VA: For Sibelius his native Finnish folklore provided a lot of mythological references. For an American composer, like you, are there any specific native sources of mythology that one would refer to? GC: In Ancient Voices of Children \ recorded an Indian Ghost Dance, which

was an ancient mythological dance. I used it just as a title, referring to a mysterious character, after reading about it in one of the books on Indian mythology.

VA: You have a piece [movement] entitled “Myth.” Did you think of any particular myth, or does it refer to myth in general?

270 Appendix I GC: I was thinking of ancient, prehistoric music, the primeval sounds like the droning sounds. VA: How do you approach mythology in your works?

GC; I have Edith Hamilton’s book on Greek mythology. I have read that book: she is very good on the myths! These are retellings of the myths in a very concise way. She also has a short book on Norse mythology. She has also written The Way of the Greeks, which is one of the greatest books ever written. VA: Did you ever use these myths in your works? GC: Not literally, but I suspect reading these books becomes a part of your thinking. Myths are generalizations or symbolic representations of things that are happening or have happened in history. VA: Are you familiar with Campbell’s writings on mythology? GC: No, I am not. There is another writer, Bulfinch, who has a book called World Mythology, which I read, and looked through some other books by him.”

VA: Jung taught that as we create or recreate myths, we do it unconsciously—

GC: I have some of Jung’s books in my library.

VA: However, some modern writers find that artists would turn to myths quite consciously. For instance, a composer might take a scientific idea and rely on it, or believe in it, just as one believes myths, and even use it as a foundation of his work. I remember, you used low B} as a pedal point in one of your compositions after learning that this pitch is considered by modern science as the “fundamental tone” of the universe. GC: Yes, it later appeared to be a false idea. I read about it in an article from The New York Times. Somebody wrote an article proving that the B} should be the central note because its frequency is lower than the electromagnetic current. It is a totally wrong thing, because the electromagnetic current is a man-made thing, and it can be anything. But I thought then, “It is great! It is the Hammerklavier key.” It appeared to be all wrong.

VA: Do you associate certain keys or tonalities with certain colors or other images? Thomas Bulfinch (1796-1867) was a popular Victorian mythology writer.

An Interview with George Crumb | 271 GC: Not in the way Scriabin and Berlioz did, but E} major is the key of Eroica symphony; F is the pastoral key... These traditions seem to continue along, so G minor by Brahms seems to have some connection with Mozart’s G minor. VA: You mentioned Hindemith’s Die Harmonie der Welt. Can you name other composers and compositions that influenced you in your search for harmonia mundi? GC: “Cosmic” sense in Debussy and Mahler, too. But it was not from specific titles, but from the quality of music. Mahler creates his own world and his music is “cosmic.” This is his cosmology in purely musical terms...

VA: So that certain elements of musical languages—for example, chords— attain symbolic meaning...

GC: In his Sixth symphony a major triad turns to the minor, like a color modulation.

VA: And so you picture yourself in that tradition? GC: Yes, I do. My Makrokosmos is written in this “cosmic” sense. There 1s

another concept—the voices of nature, which I also derive from Mahler, Debussy, and Bartok. It is a certain representation of nature, which goes beyond programmatic imitation. This is what Mahler called ein Naturlaut, * the sound of nature. Sometimes it is using the birds’ sound or insects’ music, or sometimes it goes beyond that. It is the sense of nature represented in music.

VA: Isn’t it the same tradition that Francois-Bernard Mache follows in one of his pieces for harpsichord and magnetic tape, where the imitation of frogs’ sounds and other animal noises are intermingled with human speech?° GC: Oh yes, I love this! I met Mache on one of the composers’ seminars. I love this tradition that involves phonetic elements. Messiaen also contributed to it. It goes further than just his imitation of birds singing. It is an evocation of nature.

“The term Naturlaut is referred to Mahler’s First symphony (see heading for the first movement: Langsam. Schleppend. Wie ein Naturlaut.) > Korwar (1972).

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Appendix 2 The English translation of the texts by Garcia Lorca from George Crumb’s Ancient Voices of Children’

1

The little boy was looking for his voice. (The king of the crickets had it.) In a drop of water the little boy was looking for his voice. I do not want it for speaking with: I will make a ring of it so that he may wear my silence on his little finger.

2

I have lost myself in the sea many times with my ear full of freshly cut flowers, with my tongue full of love and agony. I have lost myself in the sea many times as I lose myself in the heart of certain children.

‘Translations by W. S. Merwin (1), Stephen Spender and J. L. Gili (1), J. L. Gili (III and V), Edwin Going (IV), published in 1955 by New Directions Publishing Corporation.

273

274 Appendix 2 3

From where do you come, my love, my child? From the ridge of hard frost. What do you need, my love, my child? The warm cloth of your dress. Let the branches ruffle in the sun and the fountains leap all around! In the courtyard a dog barks, in the trees the wind sings. The oxen low to the ox-herd and the moon curls my hair. What do you ask for, my child, from so far away? The white mountains of your breast. Let the branches ruffle in the sun and the fountains leap all around! I'll tell you, my child, yes, I am torn and broken for you. How painful is this waist where you will have your first cradle! When, my child, will you come? When your flesh smells of jasmine-flowers. Let the branches ruffle in the sun

and the fountains leap all around! 4

Each afternoon in Granada, a child dies each afternoon. 5

My heart of silk is filled with lights, with lost bells, with lilies, and with bees, and I will go very far, farther than those hills, farther than the seas, close to the stars, to ask Christ the Lord to give me back my ancient soul of a child.

Appendix 3 Text excerpt from Act 1, scene 3, “Examen,” Donnerstag aus Licht by Stockhausen: VI

(MICHAEL wird mit Gewalt in Anstalt gezerrt.) (mimt 7 Momente in der Heilanstalt.)

1. (Fluchtversuch:) uia LUM-MI-NA uia LU-ZI-FA 2. (MICHAEL liebkosend) u e a LU-ZE-FA 3. (sich ausziehend) ue a LU-CE-VA 4. (unter Dusche geschlagen werdend) 1 ¢ a LI-CHE-VA 5. (in Zwangsjacke gesteckt werdend) 1 e a MI-CHE-VA 6. (schrumpft, zittert, Finger im Mund) 1 ae MI-CHA-VE 7. (10 Finger als Gitterstaébe vorm Gesicht, schreiend) 1ae MI-CHA-EL MI----------------CHA--------------HELL (setzt sich auf Hocker.)

VIL (MICHAEL): (SOPRAN): E MI-CHA-VA-EL E MI-CHA-EL E VA E------ MI-CHA-EL VA MI-CHA E-VA

E MI CHE VA

E MI CHA EL MI E CHA MI VA EL

‘For the full text see Karlheinz Stockhausen, Donnerstag aus Licht, trans. Irina Brown (London: Royal Opera House Covent Garden, 1985).

275

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Selected Bibliography Akopian, Lev, “Muzyka i mifotvorchestvo v dvadzatom veke.” [Music and mythmaking in the twentieth century], Sovetskaya Muzyka 10 (October 1989): 78-82. Andriessen, Louis and Elmer Schonberger, The Apollonian Clockwork, New York: Oxford University Press, 1989.

Arkelova, Anna, “Problema mifopoetiki v teatral’nom tvorchestve Stravinskogo.” [The problem of the mythic poetics in Stravinsky’s theatre], Ph.D. diss., Astrakhan’ Conservatory, 1991. Bachelard, Gaston, ““The Phenomenology of Roundness,” in The Poetics of Space, translated by Maria Jolas, Boston: Beacon Press, 1969.

Bakhtin, Mikhail M., “Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel,” in The Dialogic Imagination, edited by Micharl Holquist, translated by Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist, Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981: 84-258. Baldick, Chris, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms, New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. Barthes, Roland, Mythologies, translated by Annete Lavers, New York: The Noonday Press, 1972.

Bell, Catherine, Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice, New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.

~ Bolle, Kees W. and Richard G. Buxton, “Myth and Mythology,” in Encyclopaedia Britannica, 15th ed., vol. 12, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1979: 710-22. Borchmeyer, Dieter, ed., Wege der Mythos in der Moderne: Richard Wagner, Der Ring des Nibelungen — Eine Miinchner Ringvorlesung [Paths of myth in modernism: Richard Wagner, Der Ring des Nibelungen — A Munich lecture series], Munich: DTV, 1987. Borroff, Edith, Three American Composers, New York: University Press of America, 1986. Bowers, Faubion, The New Scriabin: Enigma and Answers, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1973.

Brown, Malcolm, “Skriabin and Russian ‘Mystic’ Symbolism,” Nineteenth-Century Music 3 (1979): 42-51.

277

278 Selected Bibliography Bruhn, Siglind, ed., Encrypted Messages in Alban Berg’s Music, New York: Garland, 1998.

— , The Musical Order of the World: Kepler, Hesse, Hindemith, Hillsdale, NY: Pendragon Press, 2005.

Bruns, Steven and Ofer Ben-Amots, eds., George Crumb and the Alchemy of Sound: Essays on His Music, Colorado Springs: Colorado College Press, 2005. Burkholder, Peter J., “Museum Pieces: The Historicist Mainstream in Music of the Last Hundred Years,” The Journal of Musicology 2 (Spring 1983): 115-134.

Campbell, Joseph, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968. —— , The Masks of God: Creative Mythology, New York: Penguin Books, 1968. —— , The Mythic Image, Princeton: University of Princeton Press, 1974.

Carbon, John, “Astrological Symbolic Order in George Crumb’s *Makrokosmos’.” Sonus 10 (1990): 65-80. Cassedy, Steven, Flight from Eden: The Origins of Modern Literary Criticism and Theory, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. Cassirer, Ernst, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, vol. 2, Mythical Thought, translated by Ralph Manheim, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1955.

— , Language and Myth, translated by Susanne K. Langer, New York: Dover, 1953. Clinton, Mark and Peter Csobadi, eds., Antike Mythen im Musiktheater

des 20.Jahrhunderts: gesammelte Vortrdge des Salzburger Symposions 1989, in Wort und Musik, Salzburger Akademische Beitrage, no. 7, Salzburg: Ursula Mueller-Speiser, 1990. Cott, Jonathan, Stockhausen: Conversations with the Composer, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1973. Covach, John, ““The Sources of Schoenberg’s ‘Aesthetic Theology’,” Nineteenth-Century Music 19 (1996): 252-62.

Dahlhaus, Carl, “Neo-Romanticism.” Nineteenth-Century Music 3 (1979): 97-105. Danuser, Hermann, “Musical Manifestations of the End in Wagner and in Post-Wagnerian Weltanschauungsmusik,” Nineteenth-Century Music 18 (1994): 64-82.

Selected Bibliography 279 Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari, “On the Refrain,” in A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, translated by Brian Massumi, London: Athlone Press, 1988. De Rico, Ul, Der Ring des Nibelungen: Richard Wagners mythologischdramatische Dichtung in einer Nacherzahlung, Herrsching am Ammersee: Schuler, 1980. De Vries Robbé, Charlotte Anne Rothschield, “Religion ‘Without Any

Organizational Fetters’: A Study of Schoenberg’s Concept of Judaism,” Ph.D. diss., Cambridge University, 1996. Doty, William G., Mythography: The Study of Myths and Rituals, University, Alabama: University of Alabama Press, 1986. Dressen, Norbert, Sprache und Musik bei Luciano Berio: Untersuchungen zu seinen Vokalkompositionen, Regensburg: Gustav Bosse, 1982.

Dupriez, Bernard, A Dictionary of Literary Devices, translated and adapted by Albert W. Halsall, Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 1991. Edler, Arnfried, “‘ ‘Die Macht der Tone’: Uber die Bedeutung eines antiken Mythos im 19. Jahrhundert” [‘Die Macht der Téne’: The significance of an ancient myth in the 19th century], in Musik in Antike und Neuzeit, Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 1987, 51-65. — , Studien zur Auffassung antiker Musikmythen im 19. Jahrhundert, Basel: Barenreiter, 1970. Eisenstein, Sergei Mikhailovitch, The Collected Works of Sergei Eisenstein, edited by S. I. Jutkevich, vol. 5: Voploshenie mifa [The incarnation of myth], Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1966, 329-59. Eliade, Mircea, Symbolism, the Sacred, and the Arts, edited by Diane Apostolos-Cappadona, New York: Crossroad, 1986.

—— , Rites and Symbols of Initiation: The Mysteries of Birth and Rebirth, translated by Williard R. Trask, New York: Harper & Row, 1958. ——., The Myth of the Eternal Return, translated by Williard R. Trask, Bollingen Series 46, New York: Pantheon Books, 1954.

Feldman, Burton and Robert D. Richardson, The Rise of Modern Mythology: 1680-1860, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1972. Franz, Marie-Louise von, C.G. Jung: His Myth in Our Time, translated by William H. Kennedy, New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1975. Frazer, James George, The Golden Bough, New York: Macmillan, 1944.

Gerver, Larisa L., Muzyka i muzykal’naia mifologia v tvorchestve russkikh poetov {Music and music mythology 1n Russian poetry], Moscow: Indrik, 2001.

280 Selected Bibliography Gillespie, Don, ed., George Crumb: Profile of a Composer, New Y ork: Peters, 1986.

Godwin, Joscelyn, Harmonies of Heavens and Earth: The Spiritual Dimensions of Music from Antiquity to Avant-Garde, Rochester: Inner Traditions International, 1987. Gojowy, Detlef, “Ritualisation et musique contemporaine,” in Music

and Sacred and Profane Ritual. Proceedings of the 13th Congress of the International Musicological Society, vol. 1,29 August - 3 September 1982, Strasbourg: University of Strasbourg, 1986 Griffin, Jasper, The Mirror of Myth: Classical Themes and Variations, London and Boston: Faber & Faber, 1986. Haimo, Ethan, Schoenberg's Serial Odyssey, Oxford: Clarendon, 1990.

Harvey, Jonathan, The Music of Stockhausen, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1975. Hindemith, Paul, The Craft of Musical Composition, translated by Arthur Mendel, 4th ed. , New York: Schott, 1942. Hokusawa, Shuhei, Review of Myth and Music: A Semiotic Approach to the Aesthetics of Myth in Music, by Eero Tarasti, in International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music 11 (1980): 262-65. Hopkins, Pandora, “The Homology of Music and Myth,” Ethnomusicology 21 (1977): 247-61. Horton, John, Review of Myth and Music:A Semiotic Approach to the Aesthetics of Myth in Music, by Eero Tarasti, In Music Review 74 (1983): 310-13. Htibner, Kurt, Die Wahrheit des Mythos, Munich: Beck, 1985. —— , Die Musik und das Mythische, Basel: Schwabe, 1996. —— , Critique of Scientific Reason, translated by Paul R. Dixon, Jr., and Hollis M. Dixon, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1983. Ivashkin, Alexander, Alfred Schnittke, London: Phaidon Press, 1996.

— ,ed., A Schnittke Reader, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002.

—— ,ed., Besedy s Al’fredom Shnitke [Conversations with Alfred Schnittke], Moscow: Klassika XXI, 2003.

James, Jamie, The Music of the Spheres: Music, Science, and the Natural Order of the Universe, New York: Grove Press, 1993. Jung, Carl G., Mandala Symbolism, in The Collected Works, edited by Sir Herbert Read, Michael Fordham, Gerhard Adler and William McGuire,

translated by R.F.C. Hull, vol. 9, Part 1, Bollingen Series, no. 20, New York, Princeton and London: Princeton University Press, 1953-76.

Selected Bibliography 281 Jung Carl G. and Carl Kerénnyi, Essays on a Science of Mythology: The Myth of the Divine Child and the Mysteries of Eleusis, translated by R.F.Hull, Bollingen Series, no. 22, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963; reprint, 1971. Kempf, Davorin, “What is Symmetry in Music?,” International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music 27 (1996): 155-65. Kerr, Elizabeth, “The Variations of Webern’s Symphony, op. 21: Some

Observations on Rhythmic Organization and the Use of Numerology,” /n Theory Only 8 (1984): 5-14. King, Arden Ross, Review on Les Mythologiques by Claude LéviStrauss, Ethnomusicology 18 (1974): 101-11. Kitagawa, Joseph M, and Charles H Long, eds., Myths and Symbols: Studies in Honor of Mircea Eliade, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1969. Kivy, Peter, The Fine Art of Repetition: Essays in the Philosophy of Music, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Kholopova, Valentina, Kompozitor Al’fred Shnitke [Alfred Schnittke, the composer], Cheljabinsk: Arkaim, 2003.

—— and Elena Chigariova, Al’fred Shnitke, Moscow: Sovetsku kompozitor, 1990. Knoh, Hans, “Orpheus und Eurydike: Der antike Sagenstoff in den Opern von Darius Milhaud und Ernst Krenek” [Orpheus and Euridice: The classical myth in the operas of Darius Milhaud and Ernst Krenek], Ph.D. diss., University of Cologne, 1977.

Kramer, Lawrence, Classical Music and Postmodern Knowledge, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. Kraussold, Mark, “Music and Myth in Their Mutual Relations,” in Reflections on Art, edited by Susanne K. Langer, London and New York: Ayer, 1979, 328-341. Kroo, Gyorgy, “Mitoszteremto vers es zene” [Verse and music creating myth], Magyar zene 25 (1984): 59-63.

Lanham, Richard A., A Handlist of Rhetorical Terms, 2nd ed., Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991.

Langer, Susanne K., Philosophy in a New Key: A Study in the Symbolism of Reason, Rite and Art, 3rd ed., Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969. Larue, Gerald A., Ancient Myth and Modern Man, Englewood Cliffs,

NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1975. : Leeming, David Adams, The World of Myth, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990.

282 Selected Bibliography Lévi-Strauss, Claude, Myth and Meaning, New York: Schocken Books, 1979. —— , The View From Afar, translated by Joachim Neugroschel and Phoebe Hoss, New York: Basic Books, 1985.

—— , Structural Anthropology, translated by Claire Jacobson and

Brooke Grundfest Schoepf, New York: Basic Books, 1963. ——., Introduction to a Science of Mythology, vol. 4, The Naked Man, New York: Harper & Row, 1981.

—— , Introduction to a Science of Mythology, vol. 1, The Raw and The Cooked, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1983. — , The Savage Mind, translated by George Weidenfeld, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1966. Lévy-Bruhl, Lucien, La mentalité primitive, Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1922; Primitive mentality, authorized translation by Lillian A. Clare, New York: Macmillan, 1923; Boston: Beacon Press, 1966.

— , The “Soul” of the Primitive, New York: Macmillan, 1928; Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1971. —— , Primitives and the Supernatural, New Y ork: Dutton, 1935; New York: Haskell, 1973. Lincoln, Bruce, Theorizing Myth: Narrative, Ideology, and Scholarship, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1999. Losev, Alexei, Dialektika mifa [The dialectics of myth], Moscow: by

the author, 1930; 2nd ed. in Opyty. Literaturno-filosofskii ezhegodnik (Experiences: literary and philosophical yearbook], Moscow: Sovietski pisatel’, 1990; 3rd ed. in Filosofia. Mifologia. Kultura [Philosophy. Mythology. Culture], Moscow: Izdatel’stvo politicheskoi literatury, 1991, 21-186. —— , Mirovozzrenie Skriabina [Scriabin’s Weltanschauung], in Strast’ k dialektike [Passion for dialectics], Moscow: Sovetskii pisatel’, 1990.

Lourié, Arthur, “Fenomen i noumen v muzyke” [Phenomenon and noumen in music], in Vozdushnye puti [Aerial Ways], edited by R.N. Grynberg, vol. 4., New York: Grynberg, 1965, 158-161. —— , “Detskii rai” [Children’s paradise], in Vozdushnye puti | Aerial ways], edited by R.N. Grynberg, vol. 3, New York: Grynberg, 1963: 161-72.

Macdonald, Ian, “What Is the Use of Minimalism?,” The Face 38 (March 1987): 105-109.

Mache, Francois-Bernard, “La musique equale du mythe” [Music equals myth], in: Silences 1 (1985):143-48.

— , Music, Myth and Nature, translated by Susan Delaney, Contemporary Music Studies Series, edited by Nigel Osborne, no. 6, Paris and

Philadelphia: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1992.

Selected Bibliography 283 Maconie, Robin, The Works of Karlheinz Stockhausen, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990. Madou, Jean-Pol, “Langue, mythe, musique” (Language, myth, music], in: Literature et musique 28 (1982): 75-110.

Mali, Joseph, Mythistory: The Making of Modern Historiography, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2003. Martin, Timothy Peter, “The Influence of Richard Wagner and His Music-Dramas on the Works of James Joyce,” Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1981. McClain, Ernest G., The Myth of Invariance: The Origin of the Gods, Mathematics and Music From The Rg Veda to Plato, New York: Nicolas Hays, 1976. Meletinsky, Eleazar, ed., Mifologicheskii slovar' [The dictionary of mythology], Moscow: Sovetskaya Enziklopedija, 1991. —— , Poetika Mifa [The poetics of myth], Moscow: Nauka, 1976; The Poetics of Myth, translated by Guy Lanoue and Alexandre Sadetsky, New York: Garland, 1998.

Menezes Basstos, Rafael Jose de, “Myth, Music and Dance in the Formation of Ritual Discourse Among the Xinguano Indians of Central Brazil,” in La musique et le rite sacre et profane, vol. 1, Strasbourg: University of Strasbourg, 1988. Middleton, Richard, “After Wagner: the Place of Myth in Twentiethcentury Music,” The Music Review 3 (1973): 307-27. Miller, David L., The New Polytheism: Rebirth of the Gods and Goddesses, New York: Harper & Row, 1974.

Minz, Zara, “O nekotorykh ‘neomifologicheskikh tekstakh v tvorchestve russkikh simvolistov” [About some ‘neo-mythological’ texts in the works by Russian symbolists], in Tvorchestvo Bloka i russkaya kultura XX veka. Uchionye zapiski, 459 [The work of Blok and Russian culture of the

, twentieth century, scholarly proceedings, vol. 459], Tartu: Tartu University, 1979: 76-120.

— and Jury Lotman, “Literatura 1 mifologia” [Literature and mythology], in Trudy po znakovym sistemam 13, Uchionye zapiski, 546, [Studies on sign systems, no. 13, scholarly proceedings, vol. 546], Tartu: Tartu University Press, 1981: 35-55. Le Moigne-Mussat, Marie-Claire, “Nouveaux rituels danc la musique d’aujourd’ hui” [New rituals in today’s music], in: Music and Sacred and

Profane Ritual. Proceedings of the 13th Congress of the International Musicological Society, vol. 1, 29 August - 3 September 1982, Strasbourg: University of Strasbourg, 1986, 255-72.

284 Selected Bibliography Monelle, Raymond, Review of Myth and Music: A Semiotic Approach to the Aesthetics of Myth in Music, by Eero Tarasti, in Music Analysis 3 (1984): 208-14. Morrison, Simon, Russian Opera and the Symbolist Movement, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2002. Murray, Henry A., ed., Myth and Mythmaking, Boston: Beacon Press, 1960.

Nasreddin-Longo, Ethan, “Sites of Musical Praxis: Inter-Generative Elements 1n the Practice of Western Art Music,” Ph.D. diss., The University of Chicago, 1991.

Nietzsche, Friedrich, The Birth of Tragedy, translated by Walter Kauffman, New York: Vintage Books, 1967. Normet, Leo, “The Mythical in Non-Programmatic Music,” In Musical Signification: Essays in the Semiotic Theory and Analysis of Music, edited by E. Tarasti, New York: Mouton de Gruyer, 1995, 559-74. Odam, George, ed., Seeking the Soul: The Music of Alfred Schnittke, London: The Guildhall School of Music & Drama, 2002. Oliveros, Pauline, Software for People: Collected Writings 1963-80,

- Baltimore: Smith Publications, 1984. Osmond-Smith, David, “From Myth to Music: Lévi-Strauss’s Mythologiques and Berio’s Sinfonia,” Musical Quarterly 38 (April 1981): 230-60. Pernye, Andras, “Alban Berg es a szamok” [Alban Berg and numerol-

ogy], Magyar zene 8 (1967): 248-61. ' Peters, Giinter, Holy Seriousness in the Play: Essays on the Music of Karlheinz Stockhausen, Kiirten: Stockhausen-Verlag, 2004. Ringer, Alexander L., “Arnold Schoenberg and the Prophetic Image in Music,” Journal of Arnold Schoenberg Institute 1 (1976): 26-38. Russkie propilei: Materialy po istorii russkoi mysli i literatuty [Russian propylaea: Materials on the history of Russian thought and literature], edited by Mikhail Gershenzon, vol. 6, Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Sabashnikovykh, 1919.

Ryzhkin, Joseph, “Faustovskaya zapredel’nost’,” Muzykal'naja aka~ demija 2 (1999): 71-78. Sabaneev, Leonid Leonidovitch, Vospominania o Skriabine {Memoirs of Scriabin], Moscow: Muzykal’nyi sektor gosudarstvennogo 1zdatel’stva, 1925.

Sachs, Curt, The Wellsprings of Music, The Hague: Nyhoff, 1962; New York: Da Capo, 1977.

Selected Bibliography 285 Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm J., The Philosophy of Art, edited and translated by Douglas W. Stott, Theory and History of Literature series, no. 58. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1989. Schloezer, Boris de, Scriabin: Artist and Mystic, translated by Nicolas Slonimsky, Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1987.

Schneider, Marius, Primitive Music, in The New Oxford History of Music, vol. 1, London: Oxford University Press, 1957.

Schoenberg, Arnold, Style and Idea, edited by Leonard Stein, translated by Leo Black, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984. Scriabin, Alexander, Pis ’ma [Letters], edited by A.(?)V.(?) Kashperov, Moscow: Muzyka, 1965. Senior, Michael, Who is Who in Mythology, New York: Macmillan, 1985.

Shuffett, Robert V., “The Music, 1971-1975, of George Crumb: A Style Analysis,” Ph.D. diss., Peabody Institute, 1979. Shulgin, Dmitry, Gody neizvestnosti Al'freda Shnitke [Alfred Schnittke’s

obscure years], Moscow: Delovaya liga, 1993.

Solomon, Maynard, “The Quest for Faith,” in Beethoven Essays, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 216-32. Sterne, Colin C., Arnold Schoenberg, the Composer as Numerologist, Lewiston: Edwin Mellen, 1993. Stockhausen, Karlheinz, Stockhausen on Music, Lectures and interviews compiled by Robin Maconie, London, New York: Marion Boyars, 1989,

—— , Towards a Cosmic Music, selected and translated by Tim Nevill, Dorset: Element Books, 1989. Strauss, Walter A., “Airs from Another Planet: The Second Viennese

School and the Poetry of George, Rilke, and Trakl,” in Studies in the Schoenbergian Movement in Vienna and the United States: Essays in Honor of Marcel Dick, Lewiston, NY: Mellen, 1990, 1-31. Strickland, Edward, American Composers: Dialogues on Contemporary Music, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991. Takenouchi, Aleksei, “Numbers and Proportions in George Crumb’s Solo Piano Works,” Ph.D. diss., University of Washington, 1975. Tarasti, Eero, Myth and Music: A Semiotic Approach to the Aesthetics of Myth in Music, Especially that of Wagner, Sibelius and Stravinsky, New York and The Hague: Mouton de Gruyer, 1979. Taruskin, Richard, Review of Scriabin: Artist and Mystic, by Boris de Schloezer, in Music Theory Spectrum 10 (1988): 143-169.

286 Selected Bibliography —— , “The Rite Revisited: The Idea and the Source of its Scenario,” in Music and Civilization: Essays in Honor of Paul Henry Lang., edited by Mari Rika Maniates and Edmond Strainchamps, New York: Norton, 1984. —— , Defining Russia Musically: Historical and Hermeneutical Essays, Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 1997.

Tokarev, Sergei A., ed., Mify narodov mira [Myths of the world’s peoples], 2nd ed., vols. 1-2, Moscow: Bol’shaja Rossijskaja enziklopedija, 1997.

Toporov, Vladimir, “O chislovykh modelyakh v arkhaicheskikh textakh” [About numerical models in archaic texts], in Struktura texta [The structure of text], Moscow: Nauka, 1980.

— , “K proishozhdeniyu nekotoryh poeticheskih simvolov: Paleoliticheskaya epoha” [On the genesis of some poetic symbols: the Paleolithic era], in Rannie formy iskusstva (Early art forms], Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1972, 77-103. — , “O rituale: vvedenie v problematiku” [On ritual: an introduction],

in Archaicheskii ritual v folklornykh i ranneliteraturnykh pamyatnikakh [Archaic ritual in folk and early literary monuments], Moscow: Glavnaya redakzia vostochnoi literatury, 1988: 7-60. Val’kova, Vera B., ed., Muzyka i mif[Music and myth], A collection of

scholarly essays by the Gnesin Musical-Pedagogical Institute, vol. 118, Moscow: GMPI, 1992. Votta, Michael, Jr., “Pitch Structure and Extra-Musical References in Alban Berg’s Kammerkonzert,” Journal of Band Research 26 (1991): 1-32.

Warburton, Dan, “A Working Terminology for Minimal Music,” Integral 2 (1990): 135-59. Watkins, Glenn, Soundings: Music in the Twentieth Century, New York: Schirmer, 1988. White, David A., Myth and Metaphysics in Plato’s “Phaedo,” Selinsgrove: Susquehanna University Press, 1989. Willnauer, Franz, ed., Prometheus — Mythos Drama Musik: Beitrdge zu Carl Orffs Musikdrama nach Aeschylos. [Prometheus—myth, drama, music: Articles on Carl Orff's music drama after Aeschylus], Ttibingen: Rainer Wunderlich, 1968.

Worner, Karl H., Stockhausen: Life and Work., translated by Bill Hopkins, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1973.

List of Illustrations 1 A Tibetan mandala in C.G. Jung’s Mandala Symbolism 21

2 The World Tree of Sumatrian mythology 23 3 The World Tree of Siberian mythology 24

: 4 Schoenberg’s demonstration of roving harmonies 37 5 The harmonic progressions in Schoenberg’s op. 11, no. 2, 37 mm. 10-13

6 Triadic harmonies in Schoenberg’s op. 11, no. 2, mm. 7-8 37 7 Stravinsky’s Les Noces, the opposition of flats versus sharps 40

8 Crumb, “Morning Music” from Makrokosmos II 41

9 Crumb’s program for Black Angels 42 10 Stravinsky, The Rite of Spring [132] 47 11. Diagram demonstrating the opposition in Les Noces [94] 49

12 Stravinsky, Les Noces, two measures before [22] 49 13. Stravinsky, Les Noces, three measures before [96] 49

14. Steve Reich, The Desert Music [94] 50 15 Scriabin, Poeme op. 32, no. 2, mm. 1-7 52 16 Scriabin, Poéme op. 41, mm. 28-44 53 17. = Stravinsky, The Rite of Spring [7] 55 18 Stravinsky, “Natashka,” from Pribaoutki, mm. 15-17 56

19 The intervallic structure of the piano part shown 1n Figure 18 56 ,

20 Rhythmic score of a Lithuanian dance-song 56

21 Stravinsky’s arrangements of his songs 57 22 = Stravinsky, “Tilim-bom” from Quatre chants Russes 58

23 ~—Ives, Putnam’s Camp, mm. 27-28 59 24 ~~ Large-dimension shape of Steve Reich’s The Desert Music 61 25 Timeline analysis of the “harmonic cycle I” of The Desert Music 62

26 The Desert Music, 1, opening, the irregular durations 63 27.1 Stravinsky, The Rite of Spring, four measures before [33] 68 27.2 A list of motivic components of the fragments shown in 27.1 69

27.3 Motivic components of the fragment shown in 27.1 69

28 Stravinsky’s “Marche” from Renard, mm. 3-19 70

29 Stockhausen’s “Superformula” for Licht 72 30 Stockhausen, Formel for Donnerstag aus Licht 73-74 287

288 List of Illustrations 31 Stravinsky, “Selezen’ ” from Quatre chants Russes 85 32 Crumb, “Pavana Lachrymae” from Black Angels. 89 33 Stravinsky’s sketch from his note to the Symphony of Psalms 96

34 Symphony of Psalms, opening (selected parts) 98

35. Les Noces [94], instrumental parts omitted 98 36 The subject of the Fugue, Symphony of Psalms 100 37 Symphony of Psalms, four bars before [18], selected parts 102

38 Symphony of Psalms, Ill, [5], selected parts 103 39 Tchaikovsky, Symphony No. 6, III, opening 103

40 Tchaikovsky, Symphony No. 6, HI, mm. 221-22 104 41 Tchaikovsky, Symphony No. 6, III, mm. 49-50 104 42 Tchaikovsky, Symphony No. 6, II],mm.11-12 - 105

43 Symphony of Psalms, Ill, mm. 4-5 after [3] 105 44 Symphony of Psalms, Il, [22], piano arrangement 105 45 Denisov, Requiem, V, 135-37, instrumental part omitted 119

46 Crumb, Ancient Voices of Children, opening 120

47 Crumb, Madrigals, book 1, no. 1, mm. 1-3 121

48 Berio, Sinfonia, I, eight bars before [A], vocal parts 124

49 Stockhausen’s diagram for Stimmung 124 50 Denisov, Requiem, V, mm. 91-97 132-33 51 Denisov, Requiem, the closing bars (selected parts) 135 52 Denisov, Requiem, IV, the canon BACH, mm. 21-23 136 53 Elements of Cosmology in the text of Ancient Voices of Children 140

54. Ancient Voices of Children, I], 12 pitch classes 143 55 Sevenths and ninths in “Dance of the Sacred Life-Cycle” 144 56 Tonal symbolism in Hindemith’s Die Harmonie der Welt 147

57 Correspondences in Donnerstag from Licht 149 58 Correspondences in Cage’s foreword to Aria 151 59 Schnittke, First symphony, I, selected parts 159

60 Schnittke, First symphony, I, [32], contrabass solo 159 61 Schnittke, First symphony, I, three bars before [53] 162 62 Schnittke, First symphony, I, pitch accumulation 194 63 Crumb’s sketch illustrating “the tritonal axis” in Black Angels 195

64 Crumb, Black Angels, opening 196

65 Crumb, Black Angels, XIII, opening segment 197

66 Crumb, Black Angels, II 199 . 67 Loudspeaker distribution at Osaka auditorium 203

68 Chronological list of circular scores 206 69 The Anima Mundi 208 70 Crumb, Makrokosmos IT, “Agnus Dev’ 210

List of Illustrations 289 71 Crumb, Ancient Voices of Children, “Dance of the Sacred 212 Life-Cycle”

72 Recurring pitch classes, Ancient Voices of Children, TI 217

73 Ancient Voices of Children, V, symmetrical chords 217

74 Ancient Voices of Children, Il, fragment 218 75 Crumb’s movements with circular notation and special time 220 characteristics

76 Ross Lee Finney, Spherical Madrigals, cover page 221

77 Ramos de Pareja, Sive lidum 223 78 Canon clama ne cesses 224 79 Oliveros, Mandala-Titled Composition 226 80 Victor Ekimovsky, Up in the Hunting Dogs 232 81 Terry Riley, Keyboard Studies No. 7 233

82 Stravinsky, Les Noces, [28] 235

83 Demnitz, Sixties 237 84 Demnitz’s explanatory diagram for Sixties 238

85 Schnittke’s plan for Concerto Grosso No. 1 247 86 Schnittke’s note for Concerto Grosso No. 1 248 87 Schnittke’s diagram of the creative process 249 88 References to myth in Schnittke’s memo 250 89 A reference to Losev in Schnittke’s memo 251 90 A fragment of a memo in Schnittke’s handwriting 252

91 A bibliographical list from Schnittke Archive 253

92 Schnittke, First symphony, III, the figure of ascent 260 93 Schnittke, First symphony, III, the figure of descent 260

BLANK PAGE

Index Adorno, Theodor: on Schoenberg’s the- Bakhtin, Mikhail M., 65n; on metamor-

matic material, 67; on the tension of phosis in mythology, 68; on poly-

dialectical contradictions, 33 glossia, 109

aleatorics, 25, 76 Balmont, Konstantin, 15

Anima Mundi, 207-208, 214 Balzac, Honoré de, 66, 175n, 204n

anti-Semitism, 93 Barnett, Bonnie: Tunnel Hum 1984, 84-

archetypes: of the child, 210-21 1n, 87 214n; forming a myth, xiii, 11, 242, Barthes, Roland: on the definition of

251, 262; Jungian, 13, 19-20, 246; as myth, 3 models for composition, 25; 246-49; Bartok, Béla, 46, 63; ostinato in, 60

in musical structures, 69, 164, 218; WORKS: Concerto for Orchestra, on similarity of in multiple cultures, 79; Mikrokosmos, 79; Out of

34, 168; of the soul of the dead Doors, 79, 81 preserved in a musical instrument, Beethoven, Ludwig van, xvii, 12-13;

215 symphonies of, 95

Arbor Mundi, 20, 22. See World Tree, WORKS: Piano Sonata, op. 106

the; and Cosmic Tree, the (“Hammerklavier’), 89n, 179; Aristotle, 49; numerology of, 50 Symphony No. 5, 162; Symphony

Asafiev, Boris, 117 No. 9, 18, 157

astrology, 145, 150 Bely, Andrei, 15-16, 114 asymmetry in myths, 46 Belza, Igor, 121, 154 atheism, 255 Berg, Alban, 67n, 204n; irony in, 111;

atonality, 31, 34-39, 88, 110, 140, 263 numerology in, 179, 188-92, 200; Averintsev, Sergey: on irony in myth- encoding of names in, 127-130

making, 11 WORKS: Kammerkonzert, 130,

Axis Mundi, 22, 259 189-90; Lyric Suite, 190; Violin Concerto, 179n; Wozzeck, 111

Babel, the myth of, 108, 119, 122, 262 Berio, Luciano, 113n Babbitt, Milton, xvii; Philomel, 82-83, WORKS: Circles, 121; Sinfonia,

118, 214n; Phonemena, 116 121, 123-24; Visage, 121 Bach, Johann Sebastian: BACH Berlioz, Hector: La Damnation de

motive, 85, 100, 131, 134; Faust, 89n

quotations from, 89n, 211; Bible, 174; numerology in, 194; quotareferences to by other composers, 101, tions from, 43, 110, 117; as a source

106, 191 for composition, 66, 126, 138, 158-

Bachelard, Gaston, xix, 180, 239 59 29]

292 Index Blavatsky, Helena, 152-54 mythology, 25, 262; on “circle-

Bloch, Ernest, 93 music,” 236; definition of myth by,

Boethius, Anicius Manlius: musica 1-2; on independence of historical mundana, musica humana, 148, 181, circular scores, 221-22, 236; on the

222 “mythological expression,” 1-3, 243;

Bohme, Jakob, 253 numerology in, 188, 194-200; quasiBoulez, Pierre: Structures, 201; Pli symmetry in, 216; on Schoenberg, 60;

selon pli, 121 on the significance of deep psyche,

Brahmanism, 152, 154n 25, 80, 211, 230; symmetry in, 47-8,

Brahms, Johannes, 66 215, 217-18; syncretism in, 243-44

Brown, Malcolm H., 16, 139n WORKS: Ancient Voices of Children,

Bruhn, Siglind, 147n, 204n 25, 120, 140-45, 209, 211-13, 216Buddha, 207; Buddhism, 39 18, 220n, 234, 243; Apparition, 80; Bulgakov, Mikhail: The Master and Black Angels, 42-43, 80-81, 88-89,

Margarita, 255-56, 259, 261 108, 131, 194-200; Dream

Bussotti, Sylvano, 121 Sequence, 76, 81, 206, 209, 220, 246; Echoes of Time and the River,

Cage, John: Aria, 109, 151; on space 205n, 219-20; Eleven Echoes of and time equivalence, 202; on the Autumn, 206, 220; Five Pieces for

universality of sounds, 78 Piano, 246; Gnomic Variations,

Campbell, Joseph, xvi, 96, 168n; on 194; Haunted Landscape, The, “creative mythology,” 6-8; on trans- 179-80; Lux Aeterna, 88-89; formations of a mythic hero, 64; on Madrigals, 121; Makrokosmos I, the universality of mythic motives, 150, 206, 218n, 220, 234, 244n;

22 Makrokosmos II, 41, 48, 82, 150,

Cassirer, Ernst, 125, 127, 130-131 206, 209-10, 220, 222, 234, 244n; Chagal, Mark: on the disintegration in Makrokosmos IIT, 81-82;

twentieth-century culture, 7 Makrokosmos cycle incl. all, 180, Christ, Jesus, 2n, 90, 153, 207, 214, 256 187, 243; Night Music I, 180, 206, Christianity, 2n, 8, 12-14, 17-18, 153, 209; Night of the Four Moons, 131,

253, 255, 256; symbolism of, 22, 181, 218n; Songs, Drones, and

258 Refrains of Death, 180, 206; Star-

Combinatory operations: in myths, 24; Child, 43, 82, 181, 202, 206, 234;

in music, 25 209, 211, 213, 219-20; Vox BalaeComte, Auguste, 249 nae, 167, 219, 243 Corigliano, John: Promenade Overture, Cruz, San Juan de la, 253 163

Cosmic Tree, the, 20. See Arbor Mundi —_ Dahlhaus, Carl: on “the religion of art,”

correspondences, in myths, 26, 145-46 7, 156-57, 163

Covach, John, 171, 174n Debussy, Claude, 55, 180; on music Crumb, George, xvi, xix, 79, 130, 155, and nature, 79; on music as a spatial

240; aesthetics of, 245; association art, 201 of the timeless with the circular in, WoRKS: Nocturnes, 55; Preludes,

219-20; background in Jung and Book I, 55

Index 293 Deleuze, Gilles, 204 Glinka, Mikhail: Ruslan and Ludmila,

Demeter, the myth of, 22 40

Demnitz, David: Sixties, 206, 236 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von: Faust,

Denisov, Edison: Requiem, 109-10, 255

118-19, 132-34 Golgotha, 259

Devil, 254, 256-59; “devilish” aspect in Gounod, Charles: Faust, 256

music, 43. See Satan Greimas, Algirdas-Julien, xiv Dies Irae melody, 85, 258 Guattari, Félix, 204 Dostoevsky, Fyodor, 252 Gurdjiev, George, 146 Echo: the Greek myth of, 214n Handel, George Frideric, 106

ecumenism, xvilin, 252-53 Haydn, Franz Joseph, xvii; Creation,

Eden, 88. See Paradise The, 12, 18, 146, 164-65; Symphony Eisenstein, Sergei: on the mythological, No. 45 (“Farewell”), 163

6 Henze, Hans Werner: Voices, 87, 109

Ekimovsky, Victor: Up in the Hunting Hermetism, 207

Dogs, 206, 232 Hesiod: Theogony, the mythic theme of

Elder Edda, The, 183. See Older Edda metamorphosis in, 68; “the myth of

Eliade, Mircea, 168-69, 229; on the muses” in, 178 initiation rituals, 175; on myth as Hindemith, Paul: binary oppositions in,

“anti-history,” 51, 242; on myth 29; numerology in, 186; on a parallel from a religious perspective, 7 between an astronomer and a

Empedocles, 178 musician, 182

Eratosthenes, 192-93, 258 WORKS: Harmonie der Welt, Die

exoticism, 168 (opera), 30-31, 146-47, 180; Ludus tonalis, 46

Faust, the myth of, 252-56 Hinduism, 253 Finney, Ross Lee: Spherical Madrigals, | Hofmannsthal, Hugo von, 171

206, 221-22 Honegger, Arthur: Pacific 231, 181-82

Fliess, Wilhelm, 178-79

Florensky, Pavel, 130 “instrumental theater,” 166-67 Fludd, Robert: “Utriusque cosmi,” 207- —‘ Ivanov, Vyacheslav, 16; on the devel-

208 opment “from symbol to myth,” 14 Frazer, James, 168 255, 261 Foucault, Michel, 83 Ivashkin, Alexander, 139n, 161, 249,

Freud, Sigmund, 168 Ives, Charles, 140, 250, 257; Putnam’s Camp, 58-59

Gabrieli, Giovanni: Sacrae

Symphoniae, 97, 101, 106 Jakobson, Roman Osipovich, 250-51

gamelan, 236 Janacek, LeoS, 54 Genesis, the book of, 158-59, 193 Janik, Allan, 170-71

Gerver, Larisa, 113-14 Jarman, Douglass, 179n Glass, Philip, 204n, 239 Jewish mysticism, 33

294 Index Joyce, James, 13 the body,” 225; on the mediation of Jung, Carl Gustav, x11, 9-10, 96, 150, the opposites, 28-29, 33; on music 168, 200, 229, 262; applications of rediscovering structures known in his theory, 25-26, 106-107; on arche- myths, 8, 13, 203, 251; on the oppotypes, 6, 11; on the collective uncon- sition nature versus culture, 32, 78, scious, 13, 19, 25, 92, 172, 177, 188, 83, 88; on ritual, 62-63, 119, 239; on 208; influence of on composers, 25, structuralism, 64, 91; on the “‘totali91, 246-49, 253; on mandalas, 21n, tarian ambition” of the mythic mind, 208, 229n; on wholeness, 131, 207, 137; on variability and invariants in

238 myths, 65, 67, 75-76, 126 Ligeti, Gyorgy, 261

Kabbalah, 177, 208, 253 Lincoln, Bruce: on the validity of myth,

Kagel, Mauricio, 167 2

Kalashnikova, Svetlana, 158n Lorca, Federico Garcia, 81, 89n, 121,

Kandinsky, Wassily, 172 140-42; mythic motives in, 214

Kayn, Roland: Galaxis, 206, 222 WORKS: Yerma, 214; Gazela X

Kepler, Johannes, 147, 152 (De la Huida), 215; De Divan del Khlebnikov, Velimir, 114-15 Tamarit, 216; “The Moon Is

Kholopova, Valentina, 161 Rising,” 180

Kramer, Lawrence, 146, 164-65 Losev, Alexei, 17; on myth, 1; on the

Kraus, Karl, 170-71 mythological perception of number, Kubrick, Stanley, 167 49-50, 199; on the philosophy of Kulbin, Nikolai, 146 name, 125; in Schnittke’s memos,

Kunstreligion, 7, 156-57 251,254; on Scriabin, 5-6, 15-16,153 Kupkovic, Ladislav: “...” for bass Lotman, Yuri, x1i1, 9n, 249-50 clarinet (or cello) solo, 206, 222 Lutoslawski, Witold, 121 Kutavicius, Bronius: circularly-notated

works of, 206 Mache, Francois-Bernard, xiv, 27, 80,

172; Korwar, 78; on the affinities of

La Monte Young, 64n myth and music, 58, 182; on linear

Lafitau, Joseph-Francois, 168 development in contrast to myth, 66; Langer, Susanne, xv, 6, 8, 230; on the on minimalism as a reaction to seriadisintegration in modern culture, 8; lism, 59; on repetition in myth, 61 on the theory of modern mind, 178 “magic mountain,” mythic motive of

Leitmotiv, 14, 251 the, 259. See World Mountain, the Lévy-Bruhl, Lucien, 26 Maconie, Robin, 123n, 126, 131n, Lévi-Strauss, Claude, x11, xvi, 105, 148n, 164, 239

107-108, 113n, 116-17, 123; on Mahler, Gustav: references to by other alliterations in myths, 118; on the composers, 131, 180; representation analogy between myth and a musical of nature in, 79; symphonies, 18, 95, score, 29, 58; on a priori “molds,” 139-40, 157, 246, 257 biologically rooted, 19-20, 24, 28; WORKS: Lied von den Erde, Das, on combinatory “mold” in myths, 211; Symphony No. 1, 80; 24, 27; on a definition for myth, 202; Symphony No. 2 (“Resurrection’’), on geometrical figures “inscribed in 157; Symphony No. 7, 81

Index 295 Malevich, Kasimir, 233 Morrison, Simon, 10n, 15n, 16, 262

Mallarmé, Stéphane, 113n Moscow-Tartu school of semiotics, the, mandala, 20-21, 232; as a map of the 9, 234, 249. See Tartu-Moscow universe, 207; Tibetan, 21; unifying school

shape of, 209 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 191

Mandelstam, Osip, 114 multilingualism, 77, 108-109, 119, 262 Mann, Thomas, 7; Doctor Faustus, 5, music of the spheres, the, 148, 180, 222

214, 254-55 myth: definition of, 1-2; as a set of

Marlowe, Christopher: The Tragical precedents, 19, 24, 117, 220; famous

History of Doctor Faustus, 255 work as, 89; Martynov, Vladimir, 251 mythic consciousness, 77, 234; and

Mazo, Margarita, 157 mind, 96; and rationality, 230; McClary, Susan, 241-42 modern mythmaking or

Meletinsky, Eleazar, x111, 22n, 177, 200; mythification, 4, 15, 92, 107, 233;

on the general mythic worldview, operations of mythic thought, 28, 45, 234; on Jungian psychoanalysis, 9, 68; universality of, 27, 168 172, 229; on the mythic properties of | mythic time, 19, 24, 83, 263; cyclic

leitmotiv, 13, 251; on the nature of character of, 51, 64, 238, 240 neo-mythologism, 11, 99, 111, 167, mythology: American Tukano and

244, 262; on the peak of neo- Aravaks, 215n; Balinese, 22; Baltic, mythologism, 191; on the poetics of 184; Brazilian, 123; Chinese, 126n, myth in twentieth-century literature 185; classical, 13, 126n; “Christian,”

and culture, 4-5, 7, 9, 222 14; Eastern, 13; Egyptian, 13, 141,

menorah, 33 166, 183; function of, 242; German, Messiah, 153 14, 148; Ancient Greek, xiv, 14, 25,

Messiaen, Olivier, 46, 77, 80 60, 83, 148, 153, 168, 184, 215; micropolyphony, 140, 261 Hindu, 86, 125, 169, 184; Indian, 13, Middleton, Richard: on myth in 26, 141; of Jainism, 184; MesoSchoenberg and Stravinsky, 3n; and potamian, 86, 141; Norse, 25, 164;

in Wagner, 14 North American, 28, 45, 168;

minimalism, 25, 59-60, 62, 84, 204n, 239 Siberian, 22, 24, 169; Slavic, 40; Minz, Zara, xiii, 14, 89, 249-50; on fam- Sumatrian, 22, 23; Sumero-Babyous works functioning as myths, 88; lonian, 22; Tibetan, 21, 166; on mythologem, 20; on “novel-myth” “world,” 25 and “poem-myth,” 15; on Romantic mythologem, 20, 33, 145; of the “end approach to mythology, 12; on “text- of the world,” 157; as superseding a

myths,” 5, 11 literary device, 215; transcultural

modernism, xv; echoes of, in criticism, character of, 86 244; engagement with numerology Navajo: sand painting and circles, 228

in, 200; German, 168, 173; neo- Neff, Severine, 173, 176n mythological aspect of, 5, 66, 97, neo-mythologism: definition of, xii, 2, 168, 171, 177, 230; preference for 11; ironic estrangement in, 99, 111; linear development in, 66; Viennese, literary, 88; self-centeredness of, 31,

168, 170, 173 127, 150; universality in, 88

296 Index

Nietzsche, Friedrich, 5, 7, 14, 113n, Osmond-Smith, David, 123

149-50, 255 Otto, Rudolf, 7

notation: “graphic,” 202; twentieth- Ovid: Metamorphoses, 83; play with century circular, xviii, 205-206, 239, archetypes in, 11 244n; symbolic, 245

Novalis, Friedrich Leopold, 253 paganism, 17-18, 40; Hungarian, 63; numerology, xviii, 108, 145; Ancient Russian, 63, 92; rituals of, 97 Greek, 49; as the “first principle” of pantonality, 35-36

mythology, 26; in Crumb’s Black Paradise, 88, 157 Angels, 42-43; in Schnittke’s First Pareja, Ramos de: canon Sive lidum,

symphony, 140 222-23

Parmenides, 178

octatonicism, 41, 99 Persephone, the myth of, 19, 20, 22

Oedipus, the myth of, 65, 105 Peters, Giinter, 139n

Oliveros, Pauline: on circle-score Philomela, the myth of, 83 organization, 202, 225, 245; on her Plato, 154n, 191; on the authority of works as “psychosonic meditations,” myths, 178; on the difference

227; on Jungian interpretation of between mythos and mandalas, 229; on “sonogram,” 234 logos, 2; on the divine androgyny, 39;

WoRKS: AOK, 206; Bonn Feier, on myth as a paradigm, 19, 67 206; Crow Two, 206; Crow’s Nest, — polymodality, 145

206; Mandala-Titled Composition, polyostinato: in Debussy, 55; in

206, 226; Meditation on the Points Stravinsky, 55-57 of the Compass, 206; MMM, A polystylistics, xviii, 89-90, 256, 261 Lullaby for Daisy Pauline, 206; polytonality, 35, 111 Pieces of Eight, 206, 225; Relicario postmodernism, xv, 241; its quest for

de los Animales, El, 206; Rose myth, 230 Moon, 206; Wheel of Fortune, The, | Pousseur, Henry: Phonémes pour

206, 228; Yellow River Map, 206 Cathy, 121; Votre Faust, 76

Old Testament, 66, 141 Prometheus: the myth of, 16, 153

Older Edda, 16 Purgatory, 166

oppositions, binary: of black against Purusha, the myth of, 86, 169 white keys, 40-41; in Crumb’s Black Pushkin, Alexandr, 250 Angels, 42-43, and Star-Child, 43; of | Pythagoras, 189; ideas of, 147, 150;

determinacy against indeterminacy, Pythagoreans, 191 44; of flats against sharps, 40; in myths, 28-29, 32, 40-41; in orchestra- Rachmaninov, Sergei, 155

tion, 43; in Stockhausen’s Refrain, ragas, Indian, 89 44; in Stravinsky’s Les Noces, 40-41, | Rands, Bernard: “...as all get out...”, 206

48-49 Ravel, Moris: xvi, Bolero, 8; mythologOrff, Carl, 84 ical roots of ostinato in, 58; oppoorientalism, 168 sition between ternary and binary

Orlov, Henry, 139 rhythms in, 29 Osaka World’s Fair 1970, 20

Index 297 Refrain: as “the a priori form of time,” Schelling, Friedrich, 152; mythopoetic

203; structures based on, in Crumb, philosophy of, 15

216 Schenker, Heinrich, 96n

Reich, Steve, 204n; The Desert Music, Schneider, Marius, 118, 145

50, 59, 61-63 Schnittke, Alfred, 90, 127, 164; on

Renaissance: numerology in, 192; mythology, 249; numerology in,

palindrome forms in, 204 192-94, 200; on “polystylistics,” 89; Repetition: in music, 60, 233; incl. on quasi-tonality, 99; religion in the classical, 62; in myths, 24, 27, 51, life of, 158n, 252, 258, 262; on

64; in rituals, 63, 120 “static form,” 261; on Stravinsky,

Rieman, Erika, 110-11 106, 162

Rig-Veda, 118, 141, 160, 169, 183n, WORKS: Concerto Grosso No. 1,

184; 207 247; Faust Cantata, 254, 258n;

Riley, Terry, 204n; Keyboard Studies Lucky One, The, 161; Nagasaki,

No. 7, 206, 233 161; Symphony No. 1, 127, 139-

Ritual, 91; as a subtitle for a musical 40, 157-63, 192-94, 256-59; composition, 228; African, 169, Symphony No. 2, 256; Symphony Australian, 169; 175; Bayreuth as a No. 3, 256

temple for, 14; compared to history, Schoenberg, Arnold, xviii, 60, 66, 168; 242; evocation of animal spirits in, atonality in, 31, 34-35; binary oppo181; of healing, 85; of initiation, xix, sitions in, 29, 32-33; “developing

167-69, 173; involving sacred or variation,” 66; Klangfarbenmelodie quasi-sacred objects, 20-22, 168, in, 244; mediation of the opposites 232, 234; musical work as, 97; as re- in, 33-35; mythologism in, 3; numeenactment of myths, 19, 96; religious, rology in, 189-90, 192, 200; repe-

253n; speech formulas in, 62, 119; tition in, 60; on repetition, 176; on

the static nature of, 239, and religion, 174; on “rowing harmony,” repetitive, 51; of wedding with links 36-37

to cosmology, 235 WoRKS: Die gliickliche Hand, 172;

ritualism, 165, 245, 262; new ritualism Erwartung, 171-72, 177; Five

in music, 167, 228-29 Pieces for Orchestra, Op. 16, 60;

Roman Catholicism, 155, 253 Harmonielehre, 12; Jakobsleiter,

Romm, Mikhail, 139; The World Today, Die, 66-67, 173-74, 176, 188; Mo-

161 dern Psalms (Moderne Psalmen),

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 12, 83, 113n Op. 50C, 188; Moses and Aron, 12, Ryzhkin, Joseph, 139n, 158n, 252, 254- 31, 33-34, 38, 174; Pierrot lunaire,

55, 257 188; Six Little Piano Pieces, Op.

19, 171; String Quartet No. 1, Op.

Sabaneev, Leonid, 146, 153 7, 12, 38; String Quartet No. 4, Op.

Sachs, Curt, 117, 120 37, 12, 38n; Three Piano Pieces,

Saints, 131 Op. 11, 12, 37-38, 171; Traum-

Satan, 153 leben, Op. 6, no. 1, 12, 38 Satie, Erik, 54 Schoenberg, Mathilde, 130 Scelsi, Giacinto, 204n

298 Index Schostakovich, Dmitry. See a dualism, 43, 231; on reincarnation,

Shostakovich, Dmitry. 166, 231; symmetry in, 47; univer-

Schubert, Franz: Der Tod und das sality in, 86-87, 155, 230

Madchen, 88 WORKS: Carré, 239; Licht, 18, 70-

Schulgin, Dmitry, 140n, 161n 75, 108, 116, 122, 125-26, 137-38, Schiitz, Heinrich, 106; Symphoniae 148-49, 163-66, 187; Mantra, 45; sacrae and Psalmen Davids, 97 Mikrophonie I, 239 Mixtur, 239; Scriabin, Alexander, xvi, 5, 12, 14-18; Plus-Minus, 239; Pole fiir 2, 47; numerology in, 185-86; resolution of Refrain, 44, 206, 222, 230; Spiral, oppositions in, 39, 152; repetition in, 202; Stimmung, 123-24; Telemusik, 51-54; ritualism in, 165; theosophical 87; Zyklus, 232 interests of, 152-54, 262; universality Strauss, Richard: Capriccio, 113, 116;

in, 153 Also sprach Zarathustra, 167

WORKS: Mysterium (project), 10, Stravinsky, Igor, xiv, 41, 84, 89-91,

16, 152; Piano Sonata No. 7, 17; 130, 236, 262; adaptation of WagPiano Sonata No. 9, 17; Poem of ner’s mythologism 1n, 3; dodecaEcstasy, The, 17; Poeme op. 32, no. phony in, 85; on “neo-classicism” 2, 52; Poéme op. 41, 53; Preliminary of, 162; oppositive structures in, 39-

Action, alt. trans. Preparatory Act 40; ostinato in, 60; “paradoxical (sketches), 10, 39, 137, 146, 152, logic” in, 99; on the phonetic 202; Prelude, op. 11, no. 4, 54; Pro- characteristics of words, 115-16; metheus, 121, 146, 154; Symphony symmetry in, 47; universality in, 94-

No. 3, 17 95, 107 Secession movement, 79 WoRKS: Abraham and Isaac, 122; Second Viennese School, 67, 79, 190, Apollon Musaget, 95; Canticum

205 Sacrum, 122; Japanese Lyrics,

serialism, 8-9, 43, 85, 263; variability 116; Mass, 122; Noces, Les in, 66; symmetry in series, 28; ap- (Svadebka), 40, 48-49, 63, 92, 97proach to repetition in, 59-60; total, 98, 106, 234-35; Oedipus Rex, 96, 151. See twelve-tone composition 107n, 122; Persephone, 122;

shaman, 168-69, 173, 175 Pribaoutki, 55-57; Pulcinella, 90; Shostakovich, Dmitry, 127, 139, 257; Quatre chants Russes, 57-58, 84symphonies, 157. See Schostakovich, 85; Rite of Spring, The (Le Sacre),

Dmitry 8, 47, 54-55, 63, 68, 92, 97, 99n,

Sibelius, Jan, xiv, 3 106; Renard, 69-70, 116, 122;

Siegfried (the mythic hero), 77 _ Sonate, 95; Symphony of Psalms,

Silesius, Angelus, 253 89-105, 116, 122, 131, 236

Solovyev, Vladimir, 15 Strindberg, August, 66 Somers, Harry, 121 Swedenborg, Emmanuel, 66, 175n Stein, Erwin, 171, 173 symbol: musical, 261; in Lorca’s

Stockhausen, Karlheinz, 12, 152, 156, poetry, 214 182; circular notation in, 245; on symbolic: death and resurrection, 169; “mmner space,” 240; on the “moment suffering, 170; function in the theory form,” x1x, 239; on reconciliation of of mind, 178; meaning in music, xv

Index 299 symmetry: as a basic idea in myths, 24, —_ universality: as Europeancentric con-

27, 45-46; in chords arrangement, cept, 94n; of myths, 21, 27, 86, 168; 215; in circular notation, 233-34; in “universal religion,” xixn dynamics, 218; incomplete, in myths, —_universals of music, 77; ostinato as, 58;

46; and in Stravinsky, 47; mathemati- drones as, 82 cal theory of, 46; as a neutralization

of opposites in music, 45; in scales, Varése, Edgar, xvii, 86, 108-109;

46; in series, 28, 38 Hyperprism, 84; Ionisation, 182

synesthesia, 151, 234 Venus, 116, 164

Vergil: Aeneid, 214n

Takho-Godi, Aza, 178n Vico, Giambattista, 120

Tantrism, 120 Villa-Lobos, Heitor, 54 Tanzer, Francisco, 109-10, 118 Vivaldi, Antonio, 106 Tarasti, Eero, xiv, 3; on mythic

references in music, 63 Wagner, Richard: xvii, 3, 5, 12-18; defiTartu-Moscow School, xiii, xvi. See nition for myth by, 202; mythologism Moscow-Tartu School of semiotics in, 3, 105, 250-51; on religion, 156 Taruskin, Richard, xiv, 40n, 47n, 51, 58, WoRKS: Lohengrin, 14; Parsifal, 155-56, 201; the definition of myth 156, 163, 201; Ring des Nibelunof, 1; on “panromanogermanic self- gen, Der, 20, 137, 152, 165; Tannorientation” in Stravinsky, 94; on The hduser, 17 Rite of Spring as a ritual, 97; on Watkins, Glenn, 121 Schnittke, 140, 160, 252, 259; on Webern, Anton: 28, 46; interest in

Scriabin, 113 metamorphosis, 68; spatial symme-

Tchaikovsky, Peter, 106; Symphony try in, 202 No. 6 (“Pathetique”), 91, 101, 103- WORKS: Concerto, Op. 24, 190;

105 String quartet, Op. 28, 46;

Tenney, James: Rose Is a Rose Is a Symphony, Op. 21, 46, 187

Round, 206 Whittall, Arnold, 256

theosophy, 191, 262 whole-tone scale, 41

Tithonus: the Greek myth of, 215 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 170n, 171n tonality, xvi, 25, 28-30, 32, 35-38, 46, World Mountain, the mythic motive of 88, 110-11, 133-34, 140, 172, 175n the, 21, 137. See “magic mountain”

Toulmin, Steven, 170-71 World Tree, the mythologem of the, 21, Tree of Life, the, 33. See Arbor Mundi 23-24, 45, 137, 184; compared to a

and World Tree, the musical score, 54-58. See Arbor

Treitler, Leo, 242 Mundi and Tree of Life, the

twelve-tone composition, 32, 36, 171, World War I, 34, 152, 17, 173, 177 175-76; and pitch collection, 41, 143,

161; and technique, 46, 107, 158; and Xenakis, Iannis, xviii, 179 theory, 172; and method, 174; variability in, 65, mythic quality of, 66. Zhukov, Sergei: Bach-Variations, 206

See serialism Zimmerman, Bernd Alois, 257

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