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Wolfgang Rihm (b. Karlsruhe, 1952) is the most performed living German composer. With his personal, expressive, and vers

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Wolfgang Rihm, a chiffre : the 1980s and beyond
 9789461662378, 9461662378

Table of contents :
Part I. Style --
1. Between classical and individual --
2. Between modernism and postmodernism --
3. Musical traces --
4. Fine arts --
5. Repetition --
6. Nature and proportions --
7. Studying proportions --
part II. Analysis --
8. Integrated approach --
9. Parameter characteristics --
10. String quartet in the 1980s : string quartets nos. 5-8 --
11. Group formation : Chiffre cycle --
12. Chiffre cycle : harmony --
13. Chiffre cycle : resonance --
14. Chiffre cycle : cyclic elements --
15. Chiffre cycle : symmetry --
16. Chiffre cycle : proportions.

Citation preview

WOLFGANG RIHM, A CHIFFRE The 1980s and Beyond

Wolfgang Rihm, a Chiffre The 1980s and Beyond

Yves Knockaert With a Foreword by Richard McGregor

Leuven University Press

© 2017 Leuven University Press / Presses Universitaires de Louvain / Universitaire Pers Leuven, Minderbroedersstraat 4, B-3000 Leuven/Louvain (Belgium) All rights reserved. Except in those cases expressly determined by law, no part of this publication may be multiplied, saved in an automated data file or made public in any way whatsoever without the express prior written consent of the publishers. ISBN 978 94 6270 123 6 eISBN 978 94 6166 237 8 D / 2017 / 1869 / 48 NUR: 663 Layout: Friedemann Vervoort Cover design: Griet Van haute

Table of Contents

Foreword by Richard McGregor 11 Introduction 19 Analysed Compositions 27

Part I - Style

29

1 Between Classical and Individual 31 Individual Position 31 Specific Terminology and Tools 34 Generative Pole and Generated Elements 35 Generative Pole versus Rewriting and Overwriting 36 Fragmentation 37 Disturbance 38 Single Event 40 Focal Pitch and Focal Pitch Aggregate 40 Process and Planning 42 Form 43 Relationship between Form and Structure 45 Conclusion of the Composition 48

2 Between Modernism and Postmodernism 51 Position towards Postmodernism 52 Position towards Modernism 57 Musical Backgrounds in Modernism and Nineteenth Century 59 Philosophical Influences in Postmodernism 63 Philosophical Influences in Modernism 69

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3 Musical Traces 73 Dealing with Allusion and Quotation 73 Verbal Allusions in the Chiffre Cycle 75 Allusion to a Style: Baroque 78 Allusion to a Composer: Varèse 81 Allusion to a Composition: Schubert’s Octet 87

4 Fine Arts 93 The Music of Painting 94 Fine Arts Parallels: Different Viewpoints 96 Fine Arts Parallels: Rihm’s Viewpoints 97 Line Drawing 99 Colour 104 Layering and Overpainting 105 Large Drawing 110 Kurt Kocherscheidt 111 The Sound of Wood 113

5 Repetition 115 Create a State by (non-)Repetition 116 Repetition as Questioning 118 Repetition as Writer’s Block 119 Repetition as Unique Event 120 Repetition versus Generating Elements 120 Repetition in the Context of Style 120

6 Nature and Proportions 123 Rhizome 123 Proportions in Nature 124 Symmetry and Balance 125 Proportions in Music 128

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7 Studying Proportions 131 Dis-Kontur, Sub-Kontur and Klavierstück Nr. 4 132 Schwebende Begegnung 136 String Quartet no. 4 140 Proportion Typology 140

Part II - Analysis 143 8 Integrated Approach 145 Sound as a Whole 145 Some Examples 147 Integrated Analytical Tool 148 Moment Analysis of the Chiffre Cycle 149

9 Parameter Characteristics 157 Melody 157 Melodic Compositions 157 Melodic Element 158 Harmony 161 Metatonality 161 Micro-interval Dissonance 164 The Tritone-Triad 165 Chord Chain 166 Cluster 169 Informal Harmony and Texture 171 Tempo – Metre – Rhythm 171 Dynamics – Articulation – Timbre 173 Youth Experience 174 Timbre and Resonance 176 Resonance and Fine Arts 177 Silence 177 Texture 180

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10 String Quartet in the 1980s: String Quartets nos. 5-8 183 Aesthetic viewpoints 184 Group Formation versus Individual Quartets 187 Common First Note f# 187 The Importance of Pitch f# 188 Transitions in String Quartet No. 5 188 Transitions in String Quartet No. 6 193 Transitions in String Quartet No. 7 193 Transitions in String Quartet No. 8 194 Closing Pitch 195 Two Pairs of String Quartets 196 Notebook Quartets: Hidden Structure 197 String Quartet no. 7: Arch Form 205 String Quartet no. 8: Structure based on Fibonacci Series 206

11 Group Formation: Chiffre Cycle 209 The Meaning of “Chiffre” 209 Chiffre: a Cycle 211

12 Chiffre Cycle: Harmony 213 The Tritone-Triad 213 Chromatic Cluster 219 Harmonic Rhythm and Chordal Density 221 Consonance versus Dissonance 223 Focal Pitch 225

13 Chiffre Cycle: Resonance 227 Chiffre I: Resonance Space versus Sound Space 227 Chiffre IV: Resonance Research 229 Chiffre VIII: Meta-resonance 231 Sound Space 232

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14 Chiffre Cycle: Cyclic Elements 235 Cyclic Elements: Typology 235 Repeated Passage 236 Overwritten Passage 236 Repeated Single Instrumental Part 237 Cyclic Elements: Similar Event 239 Returning Concept 239 Cyclic Elements: Three Figures 243 Figure 1: Generated Elements 246 Figure 2: Generated Elements 249 Figure 3: Generative Poles and Generated Elements 253

15 Chiffre Cycle: Symmetry 259 Melodic Symmetry 259 Rhythmic Symmetry 261 Time Signature Symmetry 262 Harmonic Symmetry 262 Total Symmetry 263 Symmetrical Placing 264

16 Chiffre Cycle: Proportions 265 Tempo Indications 265 Tempo Changes 266 Time Signature 267 Proportions in the Chiffre Cycle 268 Proportions in Chiffre I 268 Proportions in Chiffre II 270 Proportions in Chiffre III 272 Proportions in Chiffre IV 275 Proportions in Bild 277 Proportions in Chiffre V 278 Proportions in Chiffre VI 279 Proportions in Chiffre VII 281 Proportions in Chiffre VIII 282 9

Proportions in Nach-Schrift 283 Proportions of Length in the Chiffre Pieces 283 Comparison: Chiffre II, V and VI 284 Comparison: Chiffre II and VII 285 Conclusions 287

Final Conclusions 289 Appendix – Division in Sections 297 Notes 301 Selected Bibliography 323 General Index

333

Index of Compositions by Wolfgang Rihm

337

Foreword by Richard McGregor Wolfgang Rihm: “Nun weißt du es”1

H

ow to deal with Wolfgang Rihm” asks Seth Brodsky somewhat disingenuously at the beginning of his article on the composer2 and for some analysts this has been THE question. Rihm’s fecundity and apparent lack of system have been a stumbling block to in-depth analysis of the generating processes in his work, although as Alastair Williams has shown in various articles, such engagement is perfectly possible in traditional, aesthetic and poetic terms. The “fly in the ointment” for many writers on Rihm in the past has been their heavy reliance on the composer’s copious and highly individualistic writings on music and the compositional process, often in the course of programme notes written as an afterreflection on the specific work. The essence of the problem is that Rihm’s writings are themselves like codes or signs (indeed, chiffre) without complete definition, open to interpretation, “in the moment”. An understanding of Rihm’s compositional processes has suffered from the lack of an overview of a range of compositions which cover an extended period of time. The only substantive work in this regard is Brügge’s 2004 study of the string quartets, but this is the study of the genre and is not an analytical study per se since it does not investigate Rihm’s processes of composition in depth other than to show sketch material where it exists. Brügge’s work certainly does not propose a vocabulary for objectifying the musical elements in order to identify recurring stylistic traits. The present book on the other hand begins the process of shaping an analytical vocabulary to do so.

The Sign and its Meaning I have argued elsewhere3 that Rihm’s development as a composer was given impetus through his reaction to criticism received in the late 1970s, as well as his encounter with the works of Antonin Artaud and Arnulf Rainer in 11

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Wolfgang Rihm, a Chiffre

particular, artists for whom signification was a fundamental aspect of their work. Alastair Williams has presented an overview of Rihm’s output in his book Music in Germany since 1968, a date significant enough for Rihm who recognised as opus 1 the work Gesänge, started in that year although it only appeared in its final form in 1970. As Williams shows, the student years culminated in several significant works, particularly Dis-Kontur (1974/1984) and Sub-Kontur (1974-5) which pointed forward towards later developments.4 Following on from his time as a student Rihm’s name became associated with group of composers lumped together, in a term promulgated by Aribert Reimann,5 as exponents of New Simplicity (Neue Einfachheit). Rihm himself, writing in 1977, expressed a preference for the descriptors New Multiplicity (Neue Vielfalt) and New Clarity (Neue Eindeutigkeit),6 not surprisingly, since the original term had something disparaging within it, and was hardly applicable to some of the outputs which it purported to describe. For most of his mature composing life Rihm has been concerned not with “the cycle” as such but with the idea of continuity, or of the unique sound, or the effect the musical idea, or the potentialities of work that is “in progress”, and so on. For example, in the 1980s, at exactly the time he was writing the cycle of works under the title Chiffre (the seventh of which was completed at the end of July 1985) he was also sketching (and “completed” in early June 1985), the work Zeichen I – Doubles. Chiffre VIII did not appear until March 1988 (but listed as 1985-88) and by that time Zeichen had spawned three “extensions” to itself under the new title Klangbeschrei­ bung. Rihm’s programme note for Zeichen, despite its brevity, contains several very specific pointers to his processual thinking: Zeichen is a work in progress. This first part bears a subtitle: ‘doubles’, a music for two soloists and two orchestral groups. The term ‘Zeichen’ is a central concept of my musical thinking. ‘Zeichen’ includes: the setting. The act of ‘Zeichen’ setting is an act of freedom. The sound writes itself as script, soundscript. The solos are one in a dialogical solo. The ‘Zeichen’ originate from realms that are not accessible with language. Because of this they sound. Perhaps there is suggests a reference to an ‘arte cifra’, but it must not be looked for.7

Foreword by Richard McGregor

13

In the first place, the terminology “work in progress” denies finality to the work in question: it leaves open the possibility that there is more to come, not in the Boulezian way of revision but in the notion of re-imagining and re-imaging. This approach allows for the reworking of previous material into a new structure – such as happened with Tutuguri, or, the adding to a group of works, where the link might just be through the genre itself, such as in the string quartets, or, an expanding, overwriting, re-envisioning as in Klangbeschreibung.8 It is then the word “Zeichen” which provides the focus for discussion into the essence of Rihm’s musical processes when he asserts that the word defines a “central concept” of his musical thinking. Knockaert suggests that the word can mean “character, sign, signal, mark, marker, reference, symbol [or] indication”.9 This implies that any distinctive musical utterances can be “Zeichen”: from a musical idea that catches the attention, to the markings through which individual pitches are articulated, to the very act of inscribing music – the placing or setting (Setzung) of material. For the semiotician, the “Sign” is a mediator and in Rihm’s usage it balances, as Alastair Williams puts it, the composer’s “mixing of inner subjectivity with semiotic codes”.10 Rihm’s inner subjectivity has never been satisfactorily explored because it touches on the very personal reaction to stimuli that produce his highly individualistic musical response. From time to time he gives clues, but these are rarely precise explanations. His writings and interviews, which are often mined by authors seeking to explore the “meaning” of a composition, are either aesthetic-philosophical or, con­ versely, aphoristic – and he has no hesitation in resorting to neologisms where he perceives the lack of a suitable word to express his processes. It is therefore the balance between “inner subjectivity” and “semiotic code” that permits “Zeichen” its multiplicity of meanings. It is noticeable, nevertheless, that Knockaert avoids using the word “gesture” in his definitions, possibly because the word has different meanings in varied linguistic contexts, and yet in English language usage it has both literal and semiotic meaning, both of which can be applicable to an individual work. Rihm uses words in an ambiguous way without necessarily ever explaining their significance. In a forthcoming article Barbara Zuber constructs an understanding of the somewhat contested term “Gestalt” in the context of Rihm’s Verwandlung works.11 In practice, “Gestalten” could be “Zeichen” –

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Wolfgang Rihm, a Chiffre

for it is signification which defines meaning at a particular contextual point in Rihm’s work. Of course, in analysing the composer’s work there is always the danger, in the absence of “direction” from the composer, of over-interpreting. Taking the 1979-80 work Nature Morte – Still Alive for thirteen solo strings as an example – should one look for a connection with Lutosławski’s Preludes and Fugue for thirteen solo strings written between 1970 and 1972? Naturally comparisons can be made regarding possible similar, or conversely diverse, treatment of the equivalent forces by the two composers. But any idea of influence from the older composer’s work relies on clues from Rihm himself, and there are none, unlike his reference to the music of Edgard Varèse whose ideas are at least suggested by, for example, Rihm’s use of Varèse’s Arcana score instruction “Silence to be Beaten”.12 While the affective, subjective or personal interpretations of “Zeichen” are difficult to explicate, the purely musical signs are much more apparent: Nature Morte is built on the pervasive use of the (pp) < (fff) > dynamic shape which alternates with other related shapes such as pp < sffz, and switching between p and f. Completed just three months later than Nature Morte, in April 1980, also during his time in Rome at the Villa Massimo as recipient of the German Art Academy Fellowship, 1. Doppelgesang is a work whose connections and significations lie closer to the surface. Rihm’s “inner subjectivity” is strongly and intriguingly suggested by his comment (contextualised by Andrew McGregor in his CD review of the work) that “this is the poetry of violence, and Rihm admits that the shattering sidedrum outbursts that destroy the ending were composed ‘from the depths of a wretchedly quaking uncertainty’.”13 On another level Rihm conceived this work thinking of the “friendship of Rimbaud and Verlaine” and on the musical semiotic level “the free forms of lyrical prose and musical hybrids…”.14 There is, however, a “sign” in the title which suggests a broader more long-term musical thread going right back to his opus 1. The work is Gesänge and Rihm has commented on his 2. Doppelgesang that it is “Janus singing”.15 Again, when interviewed by Laurie Shulman concerning 3. Doppelgesang, placing the 2004 work in the context of the others, the composer points to numerous “signs” which suggest how these “double songs” should be understood: they are “concertante works of a cantabile,

Foreword by Richard McGregor

15

arioso character – instrumental music to be sung, as it were” … he “endeavour[s] to write ‘singing’ solo parts with well-nigh no figuration or ‘padding’; a pure drawing, a sung line” … “the ‘Double Songs’, the dialogue character is embedded in the line itself: two voices sing one [sic] which is a dialogue within itself ” … “interior dialogue of the single voice made up as it is of two personalities: separation within the smallest space”.16 With so many musical indications as to how Rihm understands the “Double Song” it is a small step to reconsidering and re-evaluating the composer’s approach to song setting – especially in the knowledge that he frequently sets texts by schizophrenics – classically double personalities or as he put it when interviewed by Luca Lombardi in Rome in 1979 “using texts by schizophrenic writers, or writers not categorizable in an unequivocal way, such as Artaud or Nietzsche”.17 And it is to Nietzsche one might look for origins. The poem Ruhm und Ewigkeit contains the following stanza: Ich sehe hinauf – Dort rollen Lichtmeere – oh Nacht, oh Schweigen, oh todtenstiller Lärm!... Ich sehe ein Zeichen –, aus fernsten Fernen sinkt langsam funkelnd ein Sternbild gegen mich…18

The double-voice re-emerges in other contexts and notably, for example, in Die Eroberung von Mexico.19 It is through connections such as these that a greater understanding of the Rihm’s treatment of line is to be found. In his programme note for Zeichen, as we have seen, he asserts that the “sound writes itself as script … soundscript”. The act of writing is a function of maintaining a single line – as with words each pitch is the product of a continuous line from the point that the pen touches the paper. Zeichen therefore, as a work, can be interpreted on many levels, but clearly the composition itself, and specifically what Rihm has written about it, offer various clues to an understanding of “Zeichen” as a “central concept” of Rihm’s thinking. Although Knockaert does not analyse the work of that title in this book, it is through his analysis of the effect of Rihm’s use of “signs” that characterise the composer’s music which will undoubtedly contribute to a greater understanding of Rihm’s work, and in particular of the string quartets and the Chiffre cycle.

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Wolfgang Rihm, a Chiffre

Eine Chiffre In 1985, with seven works collectively called Chiffre behind him, as well as the composition Bild – eine Chiffre (1984), and having used the word in the programme notes for Sub-Kontur (1974-5), Jakob Lenz (1977-78), and Erscheinung (1978),20 Rihm’s final comment on Zeichen is revealing: “perhaps this suggests a reference to an ‘arte cifra’, but it must not be looked for”. Arte Cifra (also known as Transavantguardia), an Italian neoExpressionist movement of the late 1970s/early 1980s was presented in an exhibition in Cologne at the Paul Maenz Gallery in June and July 1979, curated by the German art critic Wolfgang Max Faust. In an article published the following year he questioned whether this movement represented “New Subjectivity” in which was found “courage, irony, aggression, fun…”21 including “free figuration, emotional pathos, ironic citations and mostly [by] a clear individualization”.22 On several levels these words could describe Rihm’s music, but he is quite clear that “arte cifra … must not be looked for” in his music. It is entirely possible that Rihm is seeking not to be characterised as “belonging” to this group, especially since the German group of painters born in the 1950s, and therefore contemporaries of Rihm – known as Die Junge Wilden (or Die Neue Wilden) as exponents of Neo-Expressionism – were being associated with the Italian Arte Cifra group. This group’s work has been categorised as “bold, raw, brutish, spontaneous, messy, vital, emotional, sensual, anti-modern, anti-progressive and at times nihilistic…, intentionally male-dominated [promoting] the idea of the artist as hero”.23 Perhaps Rihm’s music does not go that far, but, judging from the painters represented in the 60th birthday tribute to Rihm, and in particular Georg Baselitz, there are undoubtedly areas of congruence between the ideas of this group and Rihm’s compositional thinking.24 It is not that Rihm denies that there could be a connection between his “use” of “Chiffre” and the art movements – in fact quite the opposite. Alastair Williams suggests that Rihm’s use of the word changes in meaning and intent from the 1970s into the 1980s. In the earlier decade, Williams contends that Rihm used the word to suggest “the way that allusions participate in a larger sign system”. Citing use of the word in relation to the programme notes for Sub-Kontur, Jakob Lenz and Erscheinung. Williams suggests that in the 1980s Rihm began to use the word “to convey the direct

Foreword by Richard McGregor

17

presence of something … [and] with regard to the [Chiffre] pieces … the word denotes a fusion of sign and meaning …”.25 If Williams is correct then Rihm’s comment that “arte cifra” should not be looked for, simply means that the music is stripped of allusions, just as one might interpret Ohne Titel, the “non-title” of String Quartet no. 5 as implying perhaps that the work is “abstract”: except that the very “non-title” brings with it allusions to the graphic arts. Always in the 1980s Rihm is pulling analogies from Fine Arts to describe the compositional processes – as indeed he did when speaking of 3. Doppelgesang as “pure drawing”.26 It is therefore essential when considering Rihm’s music to have a vocabulary which deals with the musical elements – the actual signs – first and foremost, and the present volume aims to fill the gap that exists in this area. Until we understand the relationship of different musical elements to each other in Rihm’s music – the essential threads that bind his work together and which interact in interpretable ways on the music canvas, such allusions that Rihm evokes can only be partially understood. If that is achieved in part as a result of this volume, then it will be a valuable document.

Introduction

W

olfgang Rihm (°1952) is one of the most prolific and most performed composers of his generation. By 2017 he had written over 400 compositions in all genres: operas, compositions for solo voice(s) and orchestra or ensemble eventually combined with choir, works for choir a cappella, songs for voice and ensemble or piano, orchestral pieces, concertos and other works for solo instrument(s) and orchestra, compositions for chamber orchestra, chamber music and pieces for a solo instrument, mostly for the piano and organ. Many compositions form groups or series; a peculiarity of these series is the mixture of settings, going from solo to orchestra, pairing instrumental and vocal. Together with his compositions, Rihm offers a large collection of texts and interviews: next to comments on his music and essays on aesthetics and theory, he reveals which composers he admires and which have had great influences on his musical thinking. He started writing texts as a young composer in the 1970s and deliberately stopped doing so a few years before 2000. In truth, Rihm has always been quite reluctant to write about his own music, especially when asked for information on a (new) composition for a programme booklet. From time to time, he has not hidden his unwillingness in his comments, using a peculiar sense of irony. Apart from this reluctant attitude, there is no clear reason why he stopped writing texts. Maybe it was the Zeitgeist, since the same happened for instance to Helmut Lachenmann, also a frequent writer, who stopped providing texts on his own music around the same time. Having by text explained and justified their music in extreme detail, as did Stockhausen for instance, composers are now again persuaded by the fact that all is in their music and that the music has to speak for itself. The lack of texts in Rihm’s hand is largely compensated for by interesting interviews. The purpose of this book is to give an insight into Wolfgang Rihm’s musical concepts, aesthetic and technique in general, and more specifically in the 1980s. As it is based on the results of a PhD in Musicology (Leuven University, June 2016), devoted to the analysis – including unavoidably and consequently the analysability – of some instrumental music of the 1980s, 19

20

Wolfgang Rihm, a Chiffre

the music of that period is at the core of this study. During the 1980s Rihm wrote about 100 compositions, more than 70 of which are instrumental, containing the String Quartets nos. 4-8 and the Klangbeschreibung (198287)1 Tutuguri (1980-82) and Chiffre series. Because the presence and importance of the string quartet as a genre are obvious in this period, with five of his 13 numbered quartets, String Quartets nos. 5-8 are given special attention; String Quartet no. 4, a transitional work mostly in the style of the 1970s, although composed in 1980-81, will be referred to when necessary. Because the variety within the ten pieces of the Chiffre cycle, with settings varying from trio to chamber orchestra, and also while these pieces constitute a cycle, this cycle is the second main core of my book. Compositions standing on their own, such as the string quartets, can reveal quite different approaches to the setting of a specific genre – a question will be whether these independent works are also related and, if yes, to what extent – while a series of works can only be defined as a “cycle” for reasons of common and unifying characteristics. Indeed, Rihm claims that the Chiffre cycle is conceived as a “work cycle” (Werkzyklus), different from non-cyclic series, such as Jagden und Formen (1995-2008). Furthermore, the focus on compositions of the 1980s is due to fundamental aspects of Rihm’s musical development. In the late 1970s the young composer started to develop his personal style, feeling the need to explore a specific “lack” in the rich collection of methods that he had had to study in previous years. Witnesses of the diversity of his study are found in his early compositions, where he applied a wide range of techniques, as well as formal and structural possibilities, such as A-B-A scheme, variation, motivic cell, dodecaphonic row, 12-tone aggregate, indeterminacy, palindromic construction, mirroring around a pivot, and small-scale symmetry. The lack, in fact the only thing he had not been taught, was composing without the use of a system, including composition without any preplanning: “[i]t was important for me to leave coherence behind, at least spiritually.”2 Rihm imagined the possibility of escaping from any system: “[t]he education based on systems of the far and recent past opens the unique utopian state to be able to compose systemless.”3 Nevertheless, Rihm did not look for a break with the past. In a public discussion in 2002, when asked how he had struggled to break free from the rigid serial way of composing and when the break exactly took place, he

Introduction

21

replied: “I don’t know anything about that break. I consider everything that I make as a continuity.”4 Consequently, Rihm denied not only any system coercion or Systemzwang in the 1980s, but also – perhaps surprisingly – the constraint of creating in a systemless way. In fact, he was challenging the need for coherence or Zusammenhang in a series of attempts or trials, defined in German as Versuch and Suche: the “search” for the composition, the “attempt” at composing a piece, replacing the aesthetic of the final version of a composition as a sublime stage of perfection. Commenting on the Sixth String Quartet, Blaubuch, Rihm put it as follows: “I believe that I was conscious of the fact that the quartet was, in its genesis, the search for a quartet.”5 And even more concise: “The attempt is the purpose”, on the occasion of the composition of La musique creuse le ciel for two pianos and orchestra (1977-79).6 However, near the end of the same decade, the 1980s, Rihm had to admit the limitedness of his utopian quest: I am not capable of making a work of art without coherence. I can’t achieve it. Nobody can. I say this often: just try to write a work without coherence, you won’t succeed.7

Worth mentioning is the fact that the above quotation was preceded by the following subtle suggestion by the interviewer Martin Wilkening: “If someone reads your texts before having heard any of your music, the idea could arise that your music is without coherence.” Quite the opposite was asked by Joachim Brügge: More than once you have spoken about the processuality in your music, mostly the result of an undetermined start. Would you experience it as a restriction or even more as a ‘threat’ (Bedrohung) of your work, when in your alleged ‘unbound’ music someone as a result of in-depth analysis could demonstrate formal connections, an inner coherence (as musical ‘organisation’ or ‘logic’)?

Rihm’s answer can be as surprising as the question: Absolutely not. I am very happy when this happens. But I don’t work with such evidence in my mind. My aim is the most free-floating, multi-layered possibility feasible: to reach a musical work of art. There is no ‘threat’ by insight or knowledge, only structural growth of the conceptual organic kind.8

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Wolfgang Rihm, a Chiffre

Maybe there is a way in between coherence and the absence of it, as a reconciliation of the system and systemlessness: in 1985 Rihm described this in between situation as “a new kind of coherence, no longer only restricted to the process”. With this utterance he was referring to two of his preferred predecessors, Debussy and Schönberg (more precisely: Schönberg around 1910); he was also making use of his preference for dialectical thinking, as “the contradiction of the fixation and the freedom toward the fixed (already a strong contradiction), emerging energy”.9 In spite of the fact that Rihm is writing in the same text Spur, Faden that “musical logic is absurd”, he finds salvation as he assumes that a new way of thinking music is closer to growth than to fixation. He introduces the organic as a looser (less logical) but at the same time firmer coherence, indispensable for growth in nature, where invisible roots and visible plants producing fruits are inseparable. Rihm’s experiments in loosening coherence vary in nature. In the socalled Notebook Compositions (Musik für drei Streicher (1977), Zwischen­ blick: “Selbsthenker!” for string quartet (1983-84) and the String Quartets nos. 5 and 6), he immediately composes the final version, writing it down in a notebook, without any preplanning, without sketches, excluding all possibilities of revision and correction. The Chiffre cycle is defined as a series of single or unique events, put next to each other without any relationship between them: … attempts to find a musical language, free of restrictions in the course and the processing. It is about the free setting of single events, without causal relations, without commitments to order or sequence.10

Another argument for concentration on the 1980s is revealed by prominent musical aspects emerging immediately afterwards. In the string quartets of the 1990s for instance, Rihm clearly restores traditional or classical principles and techniques, such as the imitation at the beginning of the Ninth String Quartet, Quartettsatz (1992-93) or the references to music history and historical examples in the Tenth String Quartet (1993/97), where the second movement is Battaglia/Follia. He also resumes more openly references to the style of composers of the past: allusions can be found in Quartettsatz to the French baroque overture, to Vivaldi, Beethoven, Schubert (already in the title), Mahler, Janáček, Busoni, Schönberg and

Introduction

23

Berg.11 As I shall demonstrate, these allusions were not completely absent the decade before, but from 1990 on they are much more in the foreground. Other statements by the composer confirm the turn away from his aesthetics of the 1980s, for instance when he admitted in 1995: “For some time now I have felt a growing inner need to regain something in my instrumental music that I could define as ‘flow’.”12 The turn away was in fact more a slight bend or a correction of some aspects, while Rihm’s music after 1990 stays absolutely recognisable compared to that of the 1980s. At the core of my doctoral study were the analysis and analysability of instrumental compositions. This has certain consequences: for example, the unavoidability that less considered in this book are interesting domains, such as opera, music theatre and vocal music, performability and perfor­ mance practice, reception and reception history, the perception and percep­ t­ibility of Rihm’s music. However, aspects of these fields will be discussed in relation to stylistic characteristics, and to analytical, more precisely structural principles when necessary. Indeed, a certain friction between structure and perception is a possibility, as is clear from this quotation: And when after more than two minutes the music calms down into pianissimo, the ones who still have the f#1 from the beginning in their memory will be happy to discover that the whole fragment ends with the same f#1. However, to try to build a general construction principle upon this and upon the rivalry with another pitch is absurd in view of the multitude of fast and intertwined events. What immediately follows already gives sufficient proof of this.13

This is an ambiguous comment on Rihm’s Fifth String Quartet by Ulrich Dibelius. In fact, he admits that there is a structural function given to that particular pitch, while at the same time he questions its validity, based on its presumed imperceptibility. Judgements on the probability of the perceptibility of a musical phenomenon are subjective to a certain degree, just as analytical results cannot exist without a certain (subjective) interpretation. There is no doubt that Rihm’s music reaches the goal of his so often quoted credo of “wanting to move and being moved”. That “all in music is emotional” becomes clear from the first hearing of any Rihm composition. Therefore it is not necessary for me to deepen or explore what has been written so repeatedly: statements such as this music is direct, nervous and

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Wolfgang Rihm, a Chiffre

hectic with excessive stress on dynamics and accents, this music is louder and very loud than it is soft, it grabs you by the throat, it keeps you on the edge of your seat. I refuse to deliver a format for analysis together with what I make. It is often that a form of art simultaneously advertises for its research tool. And I do not offer it, which is true. One has to look for access by means of fascination.14

Indeed, the only thing that is missing in Rihm’s impressive body of texts and interviews is the analysis of his own music, next to the description of his composition methods and processes. For almost every composition until 1997 he wrote a short introduction or comment, using mostly a metaphorical language, which aims at a good understanding of his music and which creates an access point for the interested listener. Regrettably, this enormous source of information has caused writing about Rihm to be very often based on copying and paraphrasing his own ideas, instead of trying to find new independent approaches. Ulrich Dibelius put it very clearly and pitilessly in his essay on Rihm’s string quartets: It is my opinion that ultimately in this case every analytical attempt has been particularly pleonastic and inadequate, every quoting of Rihm’s own utterances has been an excuse and any hermeneutic bridge building has been threatened with the decay into nice word images, into the anecdotal or the overvaluation of the particularistic. What this music requires is immediate confrontation.15

Among musicologists, the idea of the un-analysability of Rihm’s music is rejected. Beate Kutschke writes about “… the choice of compositional method and elements, which are conventionally granted as rather random and therefore un-analysable…”16 Barbara Zuber is the devil’s advocate, defining the form of Jagden und Formen as ein wirres Mosaik or: … as a confused mosaic of countless previously made or revised fragments. I put it so deliberately, taking a risk that promptly again the un-analysability of Rihm’s works, in fact their illegibility, is asserted – which after examination of the score in depth obviously turns out to be invalid.17

Introduction

25

It is also Joachim Brügge’s opinion that Rihm’s un-analysability is no more than a “nimbus”.18 The utopian systemlessness of the composer does not automatically imply its un-analysability for the musicologist. While Rihm does not rely on systems, or at least not consistently, the analyst must develop flexible analytical tools. To what extent is this music systemless? What stays system-bound and what indeed is freed from any systemic coercion?19 And from a more global viewpoint: do looser systems imply stylistic changes in Rihm’s personal music style, developed in the 1980s? Is it possible to describe specific characteristics for this period different from the previous and the ensuing stages? In my attempt to bring the matter to a favourable conclusion, I feel supported and encouraged by Rihm himself when he says: “Anyone who sets out to search with the passion of a real researcher will reveal everything.”20 In fact, I also feel supported by Rihm’s statements and utterances on his working process: that he does not describe his methods and processes exhaustively or systematically does not exclude the fact that he might give information on his compositional approach, albeit not in a systematic way. Reading through Rihm’s texts and interviews, these certainly reveal a lot of useful clues about his compositional processes. Clues like these will be confronted with my own design and application of analytical tools and methods. Rihm is a genuinely individualistic composer who developed his own concepts and ideas. As a postmodernist, he is not reluctant to apply modernist methods and develop all of the past in the direction of the new. This will be described in chapters 1 and 2, Between Classical and Individual and Between Modernism and Postmodernism. The third chapter goes back to the past and analyses Musical Traces, although Rihm was searching for systemlessness in the 1980s. Chapter 4 is devoted to another extremely important aspect of Rihm’s aesthetic: his relation to Fine Arts. Rihm was able to allot new meanings to one of the most enigmatic elements in his music: chapter 5 deals with Repetition. Could it be that the “coherent systemless” finds its origin in nature itself? Chapter 6 explores how Nature and Proportions can go hand in hand. Studying Proportions receives more attention in chapter 7.

26

Wolfgang Rihm, a Chiffre

From chapter 8 on, the accent is more on analytical features. Since Rihm designs each sound directly as a whole, an adequate analytical method must be based on an Integrated Approach (chapter 8). Chapter 9 offers considerations on different Parameter Characteristics: melody, harmony, tempo, metre, rhythm, dynamics, articulation, timbre and texture. In chapter 10 a series of results of the analysis of the String Quartets nos. 5-8 is discussed. The study ends with the analysis of several aspects of the Chiffre cycle: why it is defined as a cycle rather than a series is commented on in chapter 11 Group Formation. Chapters 12-16 are devoted to different analytical aspects: harmony, resonance, cyclic elements, symmetry and proportions.

Analysed Compositions

D

ata follow Rihm’s official Catalogue by Universal Edition.1

Chiffre cycle Chiffre I, 1982, 8’

piano and 7 instruments: cl & bcl, bn, tpt, trbn, vc1-2, db

Chiffre II, Silence to be Beaten, 1983, 14’

14 [or 15] players: fl & pic, ob & eng hn, cl Bb & cl Eb & bcl, bn & dbn, hn, tpt & pic tpt, trbn, pf, 1 [or 2] perc, vn1-2, va, vc, db

Chiffre III, 1983, 10’

12 players: eng hn, bcl, bn & dbn, hn, btpt, trbn, pf, 2 perc, vc1-2, db

Chiffre IV, 1983-84, 9’

bcl, vc, pf

Bild (eine Chiffre), 1984, 9’

9 players: tpt & high tpt, hn, trbn, pf, 2 perc, va, vc, db

Chiffre V, 1984, 8’

orch: fl & picc, ob, cl & cl Eb, bn, hn, tpt, btpt, trbn, pf, 2 perc, vn1-2, va, vc1-2, db

Chiffre VI, 1985, 6’

8 players in 2 quartets: bcl & cl Eb, dbn, hn, db and vn1-2, va, vc

Chiffre VII, 1985, 15’ orch: fl & pic, ob & eng hn, cl A, bn & dbn, hn, tpt, btpt, trbn, pf, 2 perc, vn1-2, va, vc1-2, db, Chiffre VIII, 1985-88, 4’

8 players: bcl, dbn, hn, trbn, pf, vc1-2, db

Nach-Schrift, eine Chiffre, 1982/2004, 10’

ens: fl, ob, cl A & bcl, bn, hn, tpt, btpt, trbn, pf, 2 perc, vn1-2, va, vc1-2, db 27

28

Wolfgang Rihm, a Chiffre

String Quartets Ohne Titel, String Quartet no. 5, 1981-83

1 movement, 27’

String Quartet no. 6, Blaubuch, 1984

1 movement, 45’

String Quartet no. 7, Veränderungen, 1985

vn1-2 and va play deep woodblocks



1 movement, 17’

String Quartet no. 8, 1987-88

1 movement, 15’

PART I Style

1

Between Classical and Individual

F

rom a strictly technical point of view, one could argue that Wolfgang Rihm is a “classical” composer. At the same time, he can be characterised as an Einzelgänger, an individualist searching for his own path, independent of current tendencies in the music of the 1980s or recent developments in classical music in general. What is his particular position with regard to these tendencies?

Individual Position Rihm writes in classical genres, such as opera, orchestral and ensemble work, string quartet. He proceeds in a classical way: writing the score note by note, using pencil or ink. Only classical instruments are involved in his pieces, mostly played in the traditional way: despite percussive effects, extreme timbres and noise-like sounds, unconventional or avant-garde sound production is highly exceptional. Like most composers, he applies the results of avant-garde experiments and the search for new sounds, done by Mauricio Kagel and Helmut Lachenmann for instance or by Luciano Berio in his Sequenza series. Furthermore, he does not feel tempted to integrate computers or other high technological devices. Rihm does not have any feeling for the use of electronic and digital media, as is the case with French composers. Early in the 1980s, Pierre Boulez started to work with live electronics in Répons; the French group Spectralists made use of computer analysis to develop complex harmonies. In 1985, Gérard Grisey finished his great cycle Les espaces acoustiques, started 11 years before. It is only by great exception that Rihm applies electronic sounds with a specific aim: to emphasise the very low bass sounds of the instruments in Séraphin (1994) and Etudes d’après Séraphin (1997) for instance.

31

32

Part I – Style

Another striking feature of Rihm’s music is the deliberate absence of any influences of or references to non-classical musical genres, such as ethnic music, jazz, pop and rock. Rihm dislikes all kinds of crossover. Collaboration with pop musicians was a rather new phenomenon in the 1980s for composers such as Philip Glass, who became a public figure: too “simple” for Rihm. He does not mince his words when he argues that he is an enemy of the incorporation of extra-European music, being “allergic” to musical genres that can only be approached in the capacity of “a tourist, a dilettante”. Although he makes a joke of the “tourists”, his underlying thought is very serious when he wonders to what extent it is possible to have an understanding of an unfamiliar musical culture. He proposes to consider it the other way round: how is Western music, for instance, perceived by Asian people? Anyway, to empathise with a non-Western musical culture remains impossible for him. Rihm has no affinity either for other musical genres, or for any experimental attitudes such as those that declare that everybody can be an artist. When Joseph Beuys, just like John Cage, states that everyone is an artist (Jeder ist Künstler), Rihm replies, fully aware of his very personal viewpoint, that it is his conviction that Beuys’s phrase is a contraction, meaning in fact that every artist is an artist (Jeder Künstler ist Künstler).1 Only later in his life does Rihm start to write religious music (except some juvenile works). DEUS PASSUS was composed in 1999-2000 and followed by Sieben Passions-Texte (2001-06), Vigilia (2006) and ET LUX (2009). On the one hand, Rihm wrote these works for specific performers, such as the Hilliard Ensemble, and for special occasions, such as the Bach anniversary in 2000 with DEUS PASSUS for Helmuth Rilling and the Stuttgart Bach Academy. On the other hand, it is not his aim to preach religion, describing himself cryptically as “one who does not pray, but speaks with God”. Quid est Deus? (2007) shows once more how for the postmodernist thinker the question is more important than the series of answers in the definitions of God. Rihm’s approach has nothing in common with the religious and mystic aesthetic of East-European composers in the 1980s, such as the meditative archaism of Arvo Pärt or the pompous large-scale oratoria by Krzysztof Penderecki. His Polish Requiem was composed between 1980 and 1984. It is also not possible to find a link between Rihm and Western approaches to religious music, such as Olivier Messiaen with his opera Saint François d’Assise or Mauricio Kagel with his

1 – Between Classical and Individual

33

personal religious opinion in the oratorio Sankt-Bach-Passion. Karlheinz Stockhausen had a distinguished personal idea of cosmic mysticism, starting his seven days’ cycle Licht in the 1980s, preceded by Sirius. With a completely different aesthetic, embedded in minimalism, Steve Reich explored his Jewish roots for the first time in Tehillim in 1981. Subjectivity in a more personal way marks György Ligeti’s turn into postmodernism: in almost every work since his famous Trio for violin, horn and piano from 1982 he includes a Lamento, not as a religious, but rather as a universal contemplation. However, his mechanical systematic composition technique is still present in the Etudes for piano. None of these tendencies can be found in Rihm’s music of the 1980s: no system oriented interest of course, no religious or mystic content, no confession of private feelings, no individual subjectivity but an open and therefore undefined expressivity. The full truth is that nothing is exclusive for Rihm, nothing is excluded, for instance it is still possible to allude to Ligeti’s meccanismo di precisione without applying it in a systematic way, but as a verbal allusion in the Chiffre cycle (see p. 75). There are of course also common developments with other composers of the 1980s. Rihm elects for a new kind of literature opera or Literaturoper, meaning not that he works on a pre-existing text, but meaning that the author involved has a very important role and that the literature the libretto is based on can be manipulated, arranged and reworked into the adequate or required operatic form. In that way, Rihm’s collaboration with Heiner Müller for Die Hamletmaschine (1983-86) can be compared to the collaboration of Luciano Berio and Italo Calvino for the azione musicale, an opera with multiple viewpoints, with comments on its own subject: La vera storia or Un re in ascolto (1982, 1985 respectively). Both composers consider the text to be an essential musical aspect of their operas, therefore they become librettist and text editor themselves. Another common aspect, with Boulez for instance, is Rihm’s interest in the use of the space (see pp. 227, 232). How Rihm was opposed to Neue Einfachheit or New Simplicity and which composers had a certain influence on him will be explained in chapter 2, Between Modernism and Postmodernism. The diversity of influential composers can be surprising: Helmut Lachenmann, Morton Feldman, Luigi Nono and Wilhelm Killmayer.

34

Part I – Style

Specific Terminology and Tools As classical or conventional as Rihm’s compositional results – his scores – may seem, in many cases the existing traditional terminology is inappropriate to describe, explain or analyse his music. According to Ulrich Mosch: With categories such as theme, motif, variation, development or division, not to mention traditional formal concepts, we are rather helpless in front of compositions such as the Fifth and Sixth String Quartet or Klangbeschreibungen.2

Indeed, it is also my opinion that neutral terminology is more appropriate in confronting Rihm’s music. “Figure” and “melodic element” for example are neutral while the term “motif ” implies a part of a greater unit and “theme” implies a certain weight or importance in the whole of the composition. I define “figure” as a brief, striking musical element or a musical element with one or a few striking characteristics; “brief ” means as long as a few beats or bars. “Neutral” is not synonymous for “general” or “generalised”; rather, it means “neutralised” towards the historical connotation of the specific term in question. This is more than a question of terminology. Mosch’s utterance includes that existing analytical methods are not appropriate.3 Of course, Rihm’s own terminology – if well-defined in a nonmetaphoric way – is also very useful, including his predilection for neologisms, such as generative Pol (generative pole). In certain cases Rihm’s own terminology will require some adaptation or refinement in order to become useful for my approach. For instance, when Rihm introduces Übermalung (overpainting), he does so in a metaphorical way, while I prefer to replace metaphors with neutral musical terms, which in this case are “overwriting”, “rewriting” and “added writing”. In fact, in most cases, “overpainting” refers to the addition of an element, Zumalung in German rather than Übermalung; sometimes it also means the replacement of an element by a new one.

1 – Between Classical and Individual

35

Generative Pole and Generated Elements Comparable to Boulez’s openness to multiple possibilities and versions of the same composition, one of the general postmodern artistic concepts is defined as the search for pluralism in the elaboration of the same basic material.4 As stated before, Rihm describes a composition as an attempt, as a process of searching for the artwork. In this way, each composition becomes a chain link, whether it is part of a cycle or not. Any material that is not “exhausted” after first use is available to be worked out again. Since the beginning of the 1980s Rihm has defined the original material as “generative pole” (generative Pol). As a consequence, the resulting elaboration can be described as “generated elements”. The fact that Rihm did not stop applying, repeating and explaining this concept until the 2010s stresses the importance of it. Commenting on Gebild, composed in 1982, he wrote: “It is just like a generative pole; the actual sound – at this precise moment the music ‘grows’. One can hear the growth direction.”5 In the same year, the entire composition Chiffre I is supposed to possess the necessary qualities to function as a generative pole: “[t]his short piece could be the generative pole for a larger one: a growth wedge, attracting more and more music.”6 On the one hand Rihm alludes to the whole Chiffre cycle, on the other hand Chiffre I will be the subject of overwriting. Nach-Schrift, the piece that closes the Chiffre cycle in 2004, is an exact copy of Chiffre I, except for a few bars, with added instruments and few new passages inserted (see p. 236). In 1988 Rihm discussed the concept of generative pole with the philosopher Peter Sloterdijk; he described the composer as “a kind of gardener, a searcher for growth”.7 The same definition is repeated in the context of Dunkles Spiel (1988-90).8 A generative pole is a clearly defined composed musical element that will reappear exactly and/or slightly changed, less or more varied, or even totally metamorphosed in a new context; in one word: elaborated. The act of generating elements includes classical and modernist operations, such as Fortspinnung, variation, mutation, extension, expansion, augmentation, addition, insertion, omission, texture change, permutation, mirroring, inversion, retrograde, while the historically loaded concept of “development” is avoided. The new context of the generated elements can be situated in the composition of the original generative pole itself or in a later one. Rihm defines both possibilities at the same moment: for Gebild, he restricts the

36

Part I – Style

effect of the generative pole to the composition itself; for Chiffre I the effect of the whole work as a generative pole lies in other compositions. When the generative pole is of a rather restricted duration, it is marked by strong characteristics in different parameters. It also plays a distinctive role during a (section of a) composition. Therefore, the generative pole – together with its generated elements – has a unifying and structural function. In a broader context, Rihm considers all individual pieces (Einzelsetzungen) as “poles”, radiating energy. Without mentioning the term “generative pole” as such, the concept of dynamic growth energy, comparable to processes in nature, and of “germ pieces” functioning as “genetic material” for other compositions, is continuously recalled in interviews until the 2010s.9 Rihm does not reserve the concept of the generative pole with growth potential exclusively for his own music: in his essay Musikalische Freiheit, dated 1983, when the term was introduced, it is also found in his description of Busoni’s characteristics. Comparing Schubert to Beethoven, Rihm assigns to the latter the use of teleological processes, while the first “does not write poled music, based on development-logic”.10 In this utterance, the logical development of elements is considered as “poled music” or music attracted by a pole.

Generative Pole versus Rewriting and Overwriting When a longer passage or the whole of a composition is used as generative pole, it seems more appropriate to call the generating process “overwriting” or “rewriting”. With this understanding, the compositions Chiffre I and Nach-Schrift, subtitled eine Chiffre, were described in the previous paragraph. The same technique is applied to “CONCERTO” for string quartet and orchestra (2000), where the part of the string quartet mainly consists of material borrowed from the Sixth String Quartet, Blaubuch, although in a changed order; for instance, at the very end of the “CONCERTO”, the passage Zögernd und stockend appears (found in Blaubuch in bar 182), ending pianissimo on the consonant triad d-f-a.11 Another example is Interscriptum, Duo für Klavier und Streichquartett (2000/02): to the score of the Twelfth String Quartet (2000-01), a piano part is added. The added writing in the piano comments on the string quartet in different ways: doubling, imitating or transforming gestures and constel­

1 – Between Classical and Individual

37

lations, adding contrapuntal elements, enlarging string passages, continuing phrases by sounds within rests, functioning as resonator.12 A typology of rewriting and overwriting consists of the following elements: (1) a copy of a whole fragment, all instruments: overwriting by the addition of new material, adding new instruments is not ruled out; (2) a partial copy of a fragment means that only one or some instruments are copied exactly and that the overwriting happens by the addition of new material, adding new instruments is not ruled out; (3) a varied copy of a fragment: rewriting by changing one or more parameters (such as tempo, dynamics, texture, instrumentation); (4) a copy of a process: rewriting by the use of other material, eventually also other instruments, with farreaching changes in any parameter or any combination of parameters; (5) a copy of a concept: rewriting resulting in a quasi-complete metamorphosis.

Fragmentation In his rich vocabulary, Rihm describes “fragmentation” as an aesthetic target in many ways, such as that the “fragment” is “broken” and “split”, it is the “block”, the “chunk”, it is linked with the “unfinished” and involves the “sudden”, the “surprise”. These terms frequently appear in his work descrip­ tions and comments. For Rihm, fragmentation is much more than the divis­ ion of a score into different contrasting units: it designs the lack of connected­ ness because fragments are put next to each other without any relationship between them. By sudden appearances and disappearances or cuts fragmentation further designs the absence of a clear beginning and ending. The term Fragment is applied to different compositional levels from the 1970s on: (1) in a note at the end of the score of the Second String Quartet (1970): “Fragment für Andrea”, (2) as the composition title: HölderlinFragmente (1976-77); Lenz-Fragmente (1980), (3) as a subtitle for a composition: Umhergetrieben, aufgewirbelt. Nietzsche-Fragmente (1981); Schwarzer und roter Tanz, Fragment aus Tutuguri (1982/83); Bildnis: Anakreon. Gedichte und Fragmente (2004), SKOTEINÓS, Heraklit-Fragmente (2008); Kolonos. Zwei Fragmente von Hölderlin nach Sophokles (2008). More applications are found in Rihm’s texts: (4) in his comments on compositions: Alexanderlieder (1975-76), “… fragmentary song accompani­ment…”; cuts

38

Part I – Style

and dissolves for orchestra (1976-77): “… fragmentary character, in form and sound…”; Vorgefühle for orchestra (1984): “Searching for the density of fragmentary temporalities: findings. The fragment can never become an aim.” (5) In his description of the work process of Klavierstück Nr. 6, Bagatellen (1977-78): “I started to write down fragments” and “the selfdirection of the fragments”.13 (6) In vocal music, fragmentation is not only a compositional tool for the music, it is also a way of treating a text or poem. However, in questioning his own aesthetic on the occasion of Frau/ Stimme (1989) and in his attempt to fragment a poem by Heiner Müller, Rihm asks himself: “Why still fragmenting? The coherence is the true chunk.”14 This question can be related to his realisation – almost as a concession – that composing without coherence is impossible. Later on, in the 1990s, when it is Rihm’s intention to regain “flow” and “flux” in his music, one could say that these terms claim the opposite of his ideal of the previous decennium: the “non-flow”, the “non-flux” in music, though it was never verbalised in this way by the composer. Considering the dates in the list above, extending to 2008, it is clear that the concept of fragmentation has never disappeared. Moreover, synonyms for “fragment” have come into use. To provide only an example: Fetzen is the title of a series of short pieces for string quartet and accordion, composed in 1999-2004. Fetzen has a lot of meanings in German: Rihm understands the word as “scraps. That means parts, tears, particles, something frayed, incomplete (be it unfinished, be it fragmented).”15 Contrary to what one might expect, the fact remains that the terms “fragment”, “fragmenting” and “fragmentation” remain unmentioned in Rihm’s most important essays on aesthetic, such as Ins eigene Fleisch…, Der geschockte Komponist, Musikalische Freiheit and Spur, Faden. Zur Theorie des musikalischen Handwerks (1978, 1978, 1983, 1985, respectively). On the other hand, Bruchstücke zum Komponieren or Chunks, Fragments on composing is the title of a section of ausgesprochen containing essays written between 1979 and 1991.16

Disturbance “Disturbance” or Verstörung is already in the 1970s an important issue in Rihm’s music. The sudden break, interruption or cut of a musical flow

1 – Between Classical and Individual

39

cannot just lead to fragmentation, but can also be aimed at for aesthetic reasons. Disturbance in the sense of “interruption” is the main compositional tool in Klavierstück Nr. 7 (1980) where the continuously repeated dotted rhythm (semiquaver followed by dotted quaver) is disturbed more and more during the evolution of the piece, until the complete dissolution (Ex. 1). Quite the opposite, disturbance can appear as a single event, for instance when the one and only abrupt fortissimo unison breaks up the sustained fragile pianissimo in Ländler (1979, version for piano and for 13 strings).

^ b œ ™ n œ. > ^^> ^^ > ^^> ^^ > ^^> ^^ n œ^. ™ nœ^. ? 44 R #œ R J R &bbnnœœœœ ™™™™ œœœœ œœœœ œœœœ ™™™™ œœœœ œœœœ ≈ ≈bbnnœœœœ ™™™™ œœœœ œœœœ œœœœ ™™™™ œœœœ œœœœ ≈ ‰bbnnœœœœ ™™™™ œœœœ œœœœ œœœœ ™™™™ œœœœ œœœœ J

^. ? 44 nœr j r bœ ™ nœ bœœ ™™ œœ œœ œœ ™™ œœ œœ ≈ ≈ bœœ ™™ œœ œœ œœ ™™ œœ œœ ™ n œ bœ ™ nœ b ™ nbb œœ ™™ œœ œœ œœ ™™ œœ œœ n œ. ## œœ ™™ n œ J R n b >œœ ™ œœv œœv >œœ ™ œœv œœv > vv> vv v v. Schneller! 175 > ™ ^ ^ ^. ^. ^. > ^> > > nnnœœœ ™™™™ œœœ^ œœœ^nnn#œœœœ ™™™ œœœœ œœœœ bbnœœœ œœœ œœœ ≈ ≈bbnœœœ^ œœœ œœœ ™™ bbnœœœ^ œœœ^ œœœ^ œœœ œœœ œœœ^ œœœ^ œœœ & nœ œ œ nœ œ œ nœ œ œ nœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ fff sempre

sfffz ppp sfffz ppp sfffz fff

?

3

3

≈≈ n œ ™ œ œ n œ ™ œ œ b b œœ œœ œœ b b œœ œœ œœ nb œœ œœ œœ n>œ ™ œv œv n œ ™ œ œ nb œœ. œœ. œœ. >v v. v. > vvv 177 > > > > b nœœ œœ^ œœ œœ^ œœ^ œœ œœ^ œœ^ œœ œœ^ œœ^ œœ ™™ œœ^ & bnœœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ ™™ œœ ?

3

œœ œ >œ 179 > ^. bbnœœœ ™™™™ œœœ & nœ œ ?

bnb œœœœ b

3

bnb œœœ ™™™ b >œ ™

œœ œœ v

œœ œœ v.

œœ œœ œœ œœ v v œœ^ œœ œœ œœ v

œœ œœ œ œ >œ œv >œ œœ œ œœ œ >œ

œœ œœ œœ œœ v > œœ ™™™ œœ ™ œœ ™™ œœ ™™

œœ œœ v ^. œœ œœ œœ œœ v.

≈ ‰ bbœœœ ™™™ œœœ œœœ œœœ ™™™ œœœ œœœ n bœ ™ œ œ œ ™ œ œ > vv> vv œœ œœ^ œœ^ >œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ

œœ œœ^ œœ^ >œœ ™ œœ œœ œœ œœ ™

™™ ™™ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ b bnb œœœ œœœ œœœ œœœ œœœ œœœ œœœ œœœ œœœ œœœ œœœ œœœ œœœ œœœ œœœ œœœ v. v. > > > v v > v v > v v > > > > > > > > > bbnœœœ ™™™™ œœœ^ œœœ ™™™™ œœœ^ œœœ ™™™™ œœœ^ œœœ ™™™™ œœœ^ œœœ ™™™™ œœœ^ œœœ ™™™™ œœœ^ œœœ ™™™™ œœœ^ œœœ ™™™™ œœœ^ nœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ

œœ œœ ™™ œœ b b œœ ™™ œœ œœ ™™ œœ œœ ™™ œœ œœ ™™ œœ œœ ™™ œœ œœ ™™ œœ œœ ™™ œœ œœ ™™ œœ œœ œœ ™™ œœ nb œœ ™™ œœ œœ ™™ œœ œœ ™™ œœ œœ ™™ œœ œœ ™™ œœ œœ ™™ œœ œœ ™™ œœ œœ ™™ œœ v > v > v> v> v> v> v> v> v> v ^œ. >œ ™ œ^. œ- œ^. nœ^. >œ ™ œ^ œ^ œ^ œœ œœ ™™™ œœ œœ œœ nn œœ œœ ™™™ œœ œœ œœ œ œ œ œ œ nœ œ œ œ œ œœ œœ v.

œœ ™™ œ™ >œ ™

pp

œœ œœ v.

œœ œ -œ

sfffz fff

œœ n œ œ ™ œœ n œ œ ™ v. v. v

Ex. 1. Klavierstück Nr. 7, 173-179. Disturbance of the dotted rhythm.

3 3

œ œ œ œv vœ œv

40

Part I – Style

Single Event In his search for utopian systemlessness, Rihm is permanently looking for tools capable of suppressing coherence and continuity as much as possible, such as fragmentation and disturbance. Another possibility is the com­ position of a musical piece using non-recurrent events as much as possible: “single events” or “unique events” (Einzelereignisse). A single event is marked by a unique combination of characteristics; consequently, a series of single events is marked by a prevalence of non-common characteristics, by contrasting elements and qualities in a rhapsodic or through-composed order.17 In his essay Musikalische Freiheit Rihm combines the concept of single events with the freedom he claims as an artist: “I believe that the freedom of the artistic work is most clearly manifested in the setting of single events.”18 In the Notizen zum Chiffre-Zyklus, he insists on the absence of causal relations or ordering principles in a series of single events, and on the “free procreation of an imaginative space” (freie Fortzeugung eines Imaginations­ raumes). Consequently, Rihm’s textual descriptions of the individual pieces of the Chiffre cycle are conceived as a series of single events: not well-built, rounded phrases, but single words, isolated characteristics, put next to each other without any connection between them.19

Focal Pitch and Focal Pitch Aggregate In his essay Neo-Tonalität? Wolfgang Rihm comes to the conclusion that a Grundton (ground tone) is omnipresent, even when not intended: It is striking though how, without any preplanning, in every com­ position a ground tone is emphasised. That needn’t be a single tone; it can be an endless polyphone sound, a toneless gesture, a noise, a shade, an omitted sound, the gradation of two sounds, a relation...20

Because the omnipresence of a Grundton does not automatically include references to classical tonality, I think it necessary to find a more appropriate term, less strongly related to classical tonality. Neither the terms “ground tone” or “ground note”, nor “central tone” or Zentralton and Tonzentrum in

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German are free of a historical connotation. More neutralised and more appropriate for Rihm’s intention is the German term Zielton, which could be translated as “focus pitch”.21 Anyway, it is my conviction that all these terms express too much the idea that a certain pitch is aimed at, that other pitches are used in function of this only main pitch, that teleology is involved. Reason enough to look for a term as neutral as possible. Therefore, I propose “focal pitch”, defined as follows: a “focal pitch” is placed in the focus in a passage, prominently present, without being aimed or focused at, without any reference or remembrance of functionality in the sense of classical tonality. A focal pitch is not functional: it is present by its simple setting in the score, appearing without any preparation, disappearing after a shorter or longer time. There is no attraction towards the focal pitch. Nevertheless, by its even unintentional presence, the focal pitch obtains a structural function. This is not in contradiction with the non-functional characteristic: it is a consequence of Rihm’s ascertainment that the focal pitch is “automatically” or “unintentionally” emerging. Different focal pitches can follow each other in a slower or faster rhythm. The faster rhythm is more or less comparable to the harmonic rhythm in classical tonality. However, it is my impression that in many cases the focal pitch functions as such over a longer period of a small number of or more successive phrases. A “focal pitch” can be strong(er) or weak(er) in its presence. It can shift from strong to weak and vice versa. It can be in the foreground, it can appear and disappear, not being present all the time. It can even only be present by resonance. Although Rihm claims that there is always a Grundton, passages without (clear) focal pitch cannot be excluded. A composition is characterised by a series of focal pitches, resulting in moments of strong, weak and absent focal pitch. The most prominent focal pitches create the focal pitch aggregate of a composition. For instance, in the analysis of the String Quartets nos. 5, 6 and 7, the question will be raised whether the common opening pitch f# also functions as a focal pitch or not (see p. 187). For the Chiffre cycle, the question will be raised whether the focal pitch aggregates of different pieces have elements in common or not or, in other words, whether or not focal pitches are partaking in a cyclic concept (see p. 225).

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Part I – Style

Process and Planning Rihm’s repeated assertion that he composes without any preparation or preplanning became generally accepted as typical of his style: “[s]o, I don’t make a plan that is realised afterwards, but I plan something while I am doing it, at the same time.”22 This concept was articulated more in detail in a kind of self-interrogation on the occasion of Chiffre VI: And then, while writing it down: Do I know this? Don’t I know this? What is it? What will be next, Without preplanning And without studying the course – To sit entirely free in front of the paper And not knowing what will come; And always with full responsibility For precisely this tone, Which could follow eventually as the next one, Which you have to be waiting for – For a longer or a shorter time; So short often, that you can’t grasp it any more, That you can’t keep it captured while writing.23

It is clear that this procedure may not be identified with a kind of écriture automatique, because the author takes full responsibility for each note he composes. In fact, Rihm did not succeed in his intentions: neither being “entirely free in front of the paper”, nor composing “without studying the course”. Even if the genesis of a structure goes hand in hand with the composing act, this procedure does not exclude the existence or awareness of a concept in someone’s head, before the composition is realised: “[b]efore a piece arises, its aura arises, its atmosphere.”24 It seems logical to me that this “aura” consists of musical ideas; therefore, it is not unthinkable that these ideas could be intended for certain sections of a score or to be presented one by one in the opening bars of a score. In the questions “Do I know this?” and “What will be next?” one could presume a certain tendency to relate the next to the past or the known, therefore the question could be nuanced by asking what could be next after what has already been composed. This nuance provokes a possible relation of the upcoming with the already written, a possible coherence or contrast

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as opposed to the previous. In a conversation with Rihm, Christoph von Blumröder explains how he tried to analyse Antlitz. Zeichnung für Violine und Klavier, composed in 1992-93. He is of the opinion that the work is based on the development of a germ or nucleus and that it is conceived in a teleological way. Rihm answers that this composition belongs to a typical concept where the genesis, the finding step by step are still audible in the result. In order to develop each step, he was looking back: “[b]ut for Antlitz I was looking very closely, looking backwards again and then I have continued again.”25 Looking back, as a very common principle in composition, creates coherence possibilities. And looking back is in fact necessary only when the memory of the already composed fails. In other words, looking back is an exteriorisation of structuring while composing and working without sketches. In this way, the composition indeed creates its own structure during its genesis, its own coherence.

Form While the genesis of the composition coincides with the compositional process, the form and the building components are defined in a particular way. Needless to say, Rihm makes no use of existing classical forms: The form is not measured against a pre-existing form-ideal, but newly developed for each piece, self-creating, self-fulfilling in the moment of the composition.26

Every composition creates a form sui generis, not depending on a form codex. More precisely, by form “result form” is meant: only when the com­ position is completed, does the overall form become a fact. Rihm is expecting the same creativity from the listener, who has to discover his own form. Rihm is aware of the fact that well-known formal problems are not eliminated by this personal concept of form: Hence, the form of music is the most problematic, (1) because it is never possible to be experienced as a whole (only in the synopsis (!) of the memory, utopianly); (2) because music always has a form, even when the composer does not consciously compose it.27

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The second point in the quotation above recalls Rihm’s acceptance of the impossibility of creating music without the slightest coherence. For the first point, he finds a solution in the through-composed form, where the consecutive building blocks or formal elements, his typical “fragments”, are put next to each other. Rihm defines these formal elements, from the smallest to the largest, as “figures” on condition of delineating a “unity” or “entity”. A figure or Gestalt is limited in time and limited when it comes to the number of elements and events it contains, and therefore graspable and comprehensible.28 Rihm’s solution for the impossibility of experiencing the form as a whole lies in the shift from the whole to the partial, the block, the figure. This viewpoint allows the composer to neglect the overall or total form of a composition and to concentrate only on the “moment form” or the “unity form”. The “moment form” can be defined as the form of what is heard at a certain moment in a composition; the “unity form” can be defined by the perception of the experienced listener, replacing the composer in the act of listening to a composition. A returning statement by Rihm in the early 1980s: To hear the music without the crazy notion that its logic is binding. Pure music, self-motion, just sound, just rhythm, mood and expression. Free and without ground and sediment, without a false bottom. – The double abyss.29

This statement is certainly influenced by Stockhausen’s Momente, which treats both the concentration in the individual moment and the undefined order in the “open form”, while the order of the composed “moments” must be redefined for each performance. This is about the free setting of moments and about their “unconnectedness” (das Unverbundene).30 Rihm admires the complete absence of logic here and adapts it in what will become the sequence of single events in his own structure building during the compositional process. He prizes Stockhausen’s combination of legality or lawfulness and breaking his own laws, illegality or lawlessness as illustrated by the use of “insertions” (Einschübe, Eingeschobene). As defined as the form may be, if at a certain moment Stockhausen feels the need, he inserts certain “independent moments” (selbständige Momente), breaking through the previously discursive, reasoned form. In that way, just like Rihm, he stresses the importance of the present moment in the music, giving it

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absolute priority: “[u]nity and coherence result less from external similarities than from immanent, possibly unbroken concentration on the present.”31

Relationship between Form and Structure This concentration on the actual moment in the music leads to a surprisingly positive approach to the phenomenon of “forgetting” in listening to music. Whereas the role of memory in the perception of (classical) music is considered crucial, remembering a theme is absolutely necessary to understanding the structural level: the ability to define the second hearing of a theme as return, varied, extended, etc. Rihm succeeds in the abolition of the primordial role accorded to memory. Forgetting a previous section or forgetting the previous by concentration on the present is an essential part of his aesthetic. In a broader perspective, one could even say that he himself forgets on purpose. Unidentifiable sketches are the first case of this deliberate forgetting. Rihm describes the function of his sketches as “memo”, only used in order to hold an idea in his mind, not to forget what is to be elaborated next, or in order to write down some possibilities a musical element is offering.32 As Rihm does not plan a composition in advance, there are no overall sketches, no sketches of the different stages of the pre-compositional genesis of a composition, nor any sketches of the work in process.33 Rihm’s sketches are mostly brief, concise elements: some pitches, a few chords, a rhythm, a setting, some words and, exceptionally, a short series of numbers. Where indicated by Rihm or by scholars who studied the material, the composition for which the sketches were intended, can be defined unequivocally. Next to the sketch folios catalogued per composition there are also sketchbooks covering several years, with sketches for precise compositions and unidentifiable materials.34 As Rihm regards sketches as temporary memos, asking him for more information about the content, function, meaning or aim of a particular sketch leads to nothing more than a poor result. To give two examples: in his study of Rihm’s string quartets, Joachim Brügge frequently has to state that Rihm, when questioned about specific sketches, did not remember their function or aim or could not match a sketch to a composition, or thought that a suggestion made by Brügge was probably so, or simply

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answered that he was not able to give more information.35 The same goes for Jagden und Formen: the complex network on the origin, the pre-scores and the intertwining and “overpainting” of pre-existing fragments – in one word, the intertextuality of Jagden und Formen – is indeed forgotten by the composer. The evolution of the process can no longer be disentangled by Rihm himself (“no longer be deciphered” could be a Rihm-like translation of “nicht mehr entwirrbar”) and truthful forgetting is incorporated. Rihm compares it with different clouds in the sky, touching each other or layering one above the other: he is not able to reconstruct where and how it happened.36 These examples make clear that once a composition is finished, Rihm is no longer interested in memorising his work process; he seems indeed capable of forgetting the genesis of a work. As a consequence of the quotation above “…because music always has a form, even when the composer does not consciously compose form”, Rihm can in turn consider “structure” as a background phenomenon: “[w]hile everything is structured, structure itself is not a foreground, but a background concept.”37 Again, this implies that all attention will be given to the concise and actual moment, to the “phrase” in the first place, and to the larger unity of the “section” of which a phrase is part. Rihm’s predilection for fragmentation can now also be understood as the logical consequence of his concept of form: fragments are broken comprehensible units, independent of structural relations or coherence. Rihm allots a new function, not only to form, but also to structure; in his words: What is meant by structure in music cannot be something that already exists before the music and upon which music is then poured like a sauce, so that the structure is depicted in it.38

Only at one place in Rihm’s sketchbooks of the 1980s did I find a description of the building of a (part of a) composition, without identification of the piece itself.39 Rihm’s handwriting is schematically transcribed below in Ex. 2.

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Holz à Fell à Holz + Fell A Evolution 23 Takte ff pp perc (Holz + Fell) accel. Takt 23 rit. B Stops perc weiter p Takte 7 fermata 2½ fermata 1½ fermata 3½ fermata à 2 T. Über langsamer kahl C Block 12½ Takte höchste Dichte Metal-perc Schnitt kahl D ’Punkte’ Viele Pausen

12½ Takte: Anfang Tt. Struktur

Ex. 2. Skizzenbuch 1986-1987, p. 67.

Whether or not this sketch has been worked out and without the urge to identify the composition it could have been aimed at, I consider it to be a sketch of the memo type. What is important to me is the data collection offered by this sketch, referring as it does not only to form and structure, but also to proportions. There is a clear division into four parts, labelled A to D. The length of each part is defined by a precise number of bars, except for section D; parts A to C are quite different in length. The further division of part B into shorter units also results in fragments with big differences in length. The description of the characteristics for each part covers different musical fields: instrumentation, dynamics, tempo, density and silence. Rihm makes use of metaphoric adjectives, such as kahl. There are common and contrasting characteristics. Common characteristics relate parts to others. For instance: parts A and C use percussion, but with different timbres. Part B also uses percussion: the indication perc weiter can be understood as a continuation of the same timbres as in part A. By contrasting characteristics, each part is sketched as a single event. The major characteristics are given by the first word of the description of each part. Section A: “evolution” in the timbres of the percussion. Section B: “stops” or a passage broken by fermatas, contrasting

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with the “evolution” of part A. Section C: “block” and “highest density”, contrasting with the “stops” of part B. Section D: Punkte (“points”) with many silences, sparseness contrasting with the density of part C. Each part is marked by a clear start and ending. A part can have a clear start on its own or by contrast with the ending of the foregoing part. To give some examples: decelerating at the end of part A; transition to “bald” (kahl) at the end of part B; contrast between dense and isolated sounds and silences in the transition from part C to D. This way of working with contrasts provokes fragmentation, and loose coherence, towards system­less­ness. Each part can indeed be described as a “single event”. On the other hand, parts can be related by corresponding characteristics: parts B and D are interrupted or broken, although by different means (fermata, rest, respectively); parts A and C can be described as “continuous”, again by different means (evolution, dense block, respectively). This (part of a) composition is through-composed; it could be a composition in one movement. The length of the parts is 23 bars for A, 16½ bars for B and 12½ for C. With one minor change, the addition of the two half bars to part A, the length becomes 24 bars for A, 16 for B and 12 for C. The ratio 24:16:12 shows simple proportions, A:C = 2:1, A:B = 3:2, B:C = 4:3, A:B:C = 6:4:3. By moving two half bars from part A to parts B and C, the exact proportion is lost or approximated or “hidden”. Part B is subdivided into four short periods, four and not five because of the crossed out fermata 7-2½-(1½ + 3½)-2. Again, with a minor change, taking the half bar of 2½ as moved to part A, the series becomes 7-2-5-2. Three members of this ratio are the same as in the proportion 5:7:2:9, which Rihm applied to Dis-Kontur (1974/84). All these characteristics seem to be reason enough to study proportion in depth (see p. 131ff.)

Conclusion of the Composition The ultimate section of a composition, its last phrases or bars, almost always contains unpredictable and unforeseeable characteristics. Consequently, the ending of a composition is never the confirmation of one of the main elements of the music previously heard. Quite the contrary, Rihm prefers to insert an unexpected turn at the end, assigning different functions to it.

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Like no other art, I believe that music has the ability to change everything that was before through the moment of its ending, that functions as a colon or a contrasting statement or even a postscript, interfering in its own course, because of the turn around and the looking back at itself at the end.40

In an interview in 1991, the question about the peculiarity of the endings was asked in relation to the string quartets of the 1980s, the Chiffre and Tutuguri cycles. The question suggested that a composition ends with “a continua, an idea that is started without having reached its end”. That the end offers an outlook is very important to me. Only music as a time-based art has the ability to change its gaze, so to speak, at the end, to face the listener suddenly with a question, or at least with a completely different aspect that was not there before. That can only happen in the time-art music. With the ultimate event, everything that happened before can be dyed completely new.41

In one word: a colon. Rihm comments on Über die Linie VIII (2012-15, for orchestra) that it ends with a colon. The series Über die Linie, begun in 1999, has not yet reached its end.42 The way Rihm defines the ending of a composition as opposite to the piece itself gives the traditional term “coda” a new meaning. The coda is not only the confirmation or conclusion of a piece, it has also the content of epilogue, question mark, denial of the previous and therefore also even prediction, anticipation or teaser towards the next piece, the last certainly within a cycle, such as the Chiffre cycle. On the other hand, Rihm’s stubborn turn at the end of a composition is not so unique and surely not exclusive to music as he assumes here. In many other art forms, such as literature, film, theatre and opera, an open ending is part of the common artistic possibilities, having similar qualities to ideas such as “not confirmation” or “inviting to a sequel”. Rihm’s musical example of this unexpected turn could be his teacher Stockhausen, who once said during a course: “In each work there must be something that is totally the Other.”43 Rihm adds that it is his personal paraphrase of Stockhausen’s statement, but that it stayed in his memory until the moment he himself was able to adapt it. In my opinion, such a turn has no fixed place and consequently it can occur at the end of a composition.

2

Between Modernism and Postmodernism

B

y the end of the 1970s the young Wolfgang Rihm and his contemporaries Hans-Jürgen von Bose, Detlev Müller-Siemens, Wolfgang von Schweinitz and Manfred Trojahn had made their initial impacts. Especially in Darmstadt all the attention of the music experts was focused on the expressivity of the youngsters, on the way they dared to emphasise melody, consonance and classical tonality: aspects which were anti-(post)-serialism. Variations on Schubertian themes and allusions to Schubert and Beethoven in their compositions were enough to label them as conservative and their rejection of absolute modernism as reactionary. They were stigmatised as a neo-romantic and conservative group, adhering to New Simplicity and New Subjectivity. As a consequence, not enough attention was paid to the peculiarities of each composer. At this stage, von Bose, Müller-Siemens and von Schweinitz were much more focused on exact quotations than Rihm, linked more with clearly perceivable allusions to music from the past, allusions to different styles in one and the same composition. Rihm seems always to have “digested” the model from the past in order to be able to adapt it for his music in a very personal way. His music is more an answer to the question what struck him in an existing composition or in a composer’s style. Von Bose’s incentive was based on Sehnsucht, the nostalgic longing for an ideal of beauty from the past, the restoration of what was lost by “pitiless” modernism. He was complaining about the “loneliness of the composer”. Wolfgang Rihm had a different aesthetic view from the beginning: he was free to express himself, free to choose the most appropriated way or style for each composition, not excluding the music of the past, but oriented towards the future, the non-compelling new. As a consequence, Rihm was less melodic than the “group”, more apt to combine modern and postmodern aspects. This attitude opened the way for his 51

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personal search in the 1980s, when he explored possibilities of the denial of composition systems in his unsystematische Musik.1

Position towards Postmodernism It is not surprising that Rihm has always contested the epithet of Neue Einfachheit.2 He did it rightly: only a few exceptional compositions, such as Ländler or different series of waltzes, are apparently simple but at least deliberately ambiguous. Certain aspects of Rihm’s style of the 1980s can be identified with postmodern thought, although Rihm himself never made use of the term “postmodernism” as a self-definition, even though he was clearly dealing with the postmodern Zeitgeist or “spirit of the age”. The rise of Wolfgang Rihm from the mid-1970s on coincides with the deep discussions caused by the emerging postmodernism and the failed abolition of modernism. During the 1980s fierce debates on postmodernism were held in Germany.3 Next to the disagreement as to the exact meaning of the term, the main polemical issues in the field of music were the different understanding of postmodernism in the United States compared to Europe; the enlargement of the musical field with other genres and its consequences towards so called “populism”, together with bridging the gap between art music and popular music, defined respectively as higher and lower in the cultural hierarchy; postmodernism, viewed as a continuation of modernism or its opposite, as a break with modernism and therefore as anti-modernism; postmodernism as the period after modernism, more precisely after modernism has come to an end; hence postmodernism reintroducing tradition, reconfirming the use of melody, tonality and modality, traditional genres such as symphony, string quartet; postmodernism being anti-avantgarde, putting an end to the concentration on the musical material, the material exploration and innovation; the modernist composer with his political, social, human engagement and his critical attitude was contrasted with the postmodern composer, not engaged in politics, but rather directed towards freedom, subjectivity, expressiveness and the rehabilitation of aesthetic pleasure and hedonism; postmodernism was either introduced by the turn of the older generation of Kagel, Schnebel, Stockhausen, Zender, Ligeti, Berio, Nono, Goeyvaerts, Pousseur, Schnittke – certain sources even add the name of Bernd Alois Zimmermann, who died in 1970 – or

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postmodernism was the merit of the younger German generation born around 1950 with Hans-Jürgen von Bose and Wolfgang Rihm, next to the others mentioned above; a third possibility: postmodernism was introduced by both. Nowadays, with a certain distance in time, the discussion has changed: postmodernism is more often approached as a container concept, where the understanding of the different postmodern phenomena by resemblance and common characteristics is more interesting than looking for a common feature uniting all postmodern music. From the beginning, the container concept in postmodernism was inclusive due to the characteristic of pluralism, which is another container term. Pluralism in music and other fields can be understood as “anything from the past” being at the artist’s disposal. The postmodern practice of combining freely what is at one’s disposal enables its original and creative possibilities. Sometimes this practice is described as unique and new, while other scholars deny the novelty of it, referring to the neo-styles of the first half of the century. In any case, there is a much higher degree of difference in the amount and (the speed of) alternation in postmodern applications of all that is at one’s disposal, compared to the way this happened in the neo-styles before 1950. Moreover, for the postmodern artist, modernism also belongs to the past and is therefore available as a creative tool. In this way, postmodernism, as it makes use of modernism, can be considered as a continuation of modernism instead of a reaction to, break from or negation of it. In the 1980s, the debate among German scholars was taken to extremes by Hermann Danuser as a defender of the new aesthetic view and by Helga de la Motte-Haber as an opponent. Danuser originally approached postmodernism as a “counter-current against modern music”, but later on he developed a relational notion of postmodernism, more as a continuation of modernism. He insisted on the issue of fundamental pluralism as a reason for the importance of tradition in postmodernism. At last, postmodernism was recognised as the “modernism of today” while the relation between both was changing towards 1990. For Motte-Haber the postmodernist situation is a much simpler matter: examining the whole of the twentieth century, she finds similar relations to the past in the younger German generation and in early twentieth century composers, such as Max Reger. She states that the “restoration” against modernism was already a

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fact early in the twentieth century: nothing new is happening with the socalled young German postmodernists. She does not understand what Rihm may have added to the debate with his lecture Der geschockte Komponist when the older generation had already realised its turn prior to Rihm’s statement of 1978. Consequently, Motte-Haber replaced the title Musikalische Postmoderne with the neutral Geschichte der Musik im 20. Jahrhundert: 1975-2000 in the series she published: Handbuch der Musik im 20. Jahrhundert. Following Motte-Haber, the term “postmodernism” has always been blurred and vague, although in her opinion nowadays the problem is solved by the abolition of the idea of postmodernism itself, apparently already a fact in the year 2000. Rihm never took an action that could be judged as a voluntary break with the past, with modernism or with any valuable element of his musical education. In this way, he is both a postmodernist who belongs to the generation after or “post” modernism and a continuer of modernism with modernist elements at his disposal. While during the 1970s the tradition of Romanticism was more self-evident in his music, he became, without any solicitation or effort and against his will (and even against all odds), the central figure in the debate described above. The situation changed towards the broader postmodernist attitude in the 1980s, where modernist aspects regain an important place: this new situation is also perfectly suitable for Rihm’s evolution. Rihm remained detached from the whole debate on postmodernism. He ascertains that his work has alternately been admired and blamed either as too much or too little postmodern, either as too much or too little modern. Around 1990 he was even labelled “neo-modern”. He asks himself how long postmodernism will persevere in being the Jetzt-Avantgarde, the avant-garde of this moment: in his opinion the avant-garde has already become a conservative concept. To put it in an unequivocal way: when Rihm was asked in 1988 “What do you think about the postmodernism debate?” his answer was as short as can be: “Nothing”. In his opinion, postmodernism is no more than a “combat term” for journalists and, therefore, it even has a funny and amusing side.4 It seems indeed that in the 1980s and early 1990s the discussion about what postmodernism is about had any significance at all only among musicologists, not among composers and musicians.5

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In spite of the composer’s disengaged attitude, Rihm’s music doubtlessly contains postmodernist characteristics. In the first place this entails the definition of his neologism “inclusive composing”6 (Inklusives Kompo­ nieren), which is marked by its openness to all existing features and the possibility of building them into his own music. Composing in an inclusive way means that no influences whatsoever are to be excluded, that influences can function on different levels of the composition and in different ways from the outside into it, that heterogeneity is a possible outcome and that the principle of stylistic purity (Stilreinheit) is abolished. It is Rihm’s belief that out of a total openness to all existing facts and elements and out of their combinability interesting contemporary novelties can emerge. Another aspect of Rihm’s postmodernism is the extension of the quoted definition of inclusive composing: some materials are not at all “exhausted” after being included in a composition for the first time. Therefore, they invite the composer to rework them. As explained above, they become “generative poles” on the one hand and the subject of “overpainting” on the other. They contain the germs of new elements and new versions, creating a network of relations between the different process stages they appear in, spread over different compositions, all derived from the same basic materials. Rihm’s description of the genesis of his Klavierstück Nr. 6, Bagatellen is a clear illustration of this attitude, of his absolute need to reprocess. He concentrated on earlier processed material that had seemed already partly exhausted, although he felt it could not be left aside. By composing these Bagatellen he was able to bring materials of the intensive creative period of 1977 to an end. In a broader context, the relations within these pluralistic networks can be defined as “intertextuality”, a term borrowed from the study of literature. In a most generalised way, intertextuality can be defined as the network of all art: communication is possible between all artworks, causing relations and dialogues with the tradition. In other words, no artwork can be independent of the context of the past, of tradition. Yet another postmodern aspect of Rihm’s style was already mentioned earlier: the stress on the attempt, on the search for the composition, replacing the absolute perfection of the artwork as an affirmative presentation of the result of the composer’s best and ideal findings, which was a modernist concept. Rihm’s predilection for fragmentation in his

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compositions and for the concept that the ending of a composition should not be an affirmation, but rather a question mark, consolidates this approach. That Rihm is really aware of his aesthetic choices can be made clear by his comparison with his teacher Karlheinz Stockhausen: he defines Stockhausen’s music as “clean” (reine Musik) and marked by a certain degree of “artificiality” (Künstlichkeit), while his own music is “dirtier” (schmuzigere Musik) than his teacher’s. The reason therefore is indeed his typical postmodern attitude: he accepts and admits being exposed to a lot of uncertainties.7 While Rihm’s concept of form is mostly through-composed, based on fragmentation and on building a series of unique events, it is clear that a composition by his hand is not directed by climax building (which does not imply that climactic moments should be excluded) or by logical development of certain presented items, or by discursiveness, in one word: it is not teleological. The general questioning of teleology is one of the main aspects of postmodernism brought up by Judy Lochhead: at first she applies it to concepts of time and temporality, but her conclusion says that time processes, such as music, “are no longer understood to imply a futuredirected progress in which events are causally related”.8 Rihm’s unexpected refusal to write comments and explain his music by means of texts near the end of the 1990s is also accountable to a postmodernist attitude. According to Lochhead, all knowledge is the “result of interpretative understanding” and as a consequence, perception becomes a “creative act”. Transferred to Rihm’s music, one could say that the composer is waiting for a creative perception and interpretation by the listener and that therefore every verbal comment is nothing but an obstacle, dictating a unified comprehension. The composer takes a step back in favour of the multi-interpretability of his music and the listener builds his own relationship with the music through his individual perception. As early as in 1968, Roland Barthes launched the concept of the “death of the author” in his essay La mort de l’Auteur, the crucial closing phrase being “La naissance du lecteur doit se payer de la mort de l’Auteur” or “The birth of the reader must be ransomed by the death of the Author”. Barthes “relocates the source of meaning from the author to an interaction between creator and receiver (reader, listener, viewer), each of whom is understood as part of an inter-subjective context that confers meaning”, certainly when Barthes writes: “To give an Author to a text is to

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impose upon that text a stop clause, to furnish it with a final signification, to close the writing.”9 Rihm’s compositional method is based on decisions taken during the process, the act of composing, without teleological aim, without planning beforehand. That makes his situation comparable or even identical to that of the listener: he perceives what happens at this moment, knowing nothing about the future, open to all possibilities. Of course the difference remains while the composer decides what will come next, as it is his mission as an author. The whole of Rihm’s aesthetic, based on techniques such as generative poles, overpainting, working with insertions, creates possibilities other than the decision taken here and now in the particular case of the processed composition. The unused decision now, in this particular case, is not a rejection but a potential postponement for later use. This understanding makes each decision less absolute, less dominated by its author. To a certain extent, it is indeed possible for the composer to act as a listener. When Rihm explains that the starting point for his Eighth String Quartet was the writing itself, the fixation of signs (das Schreiben selbst, das ZeichenSetzen), he quotes Barthes’s words: “das ‘Bestirnen eines Textes’”, referring to “étoiler le texte” in the phrase “Corrections? Plutôt pour le plaisir d’étoiler le texte” (“Corrections? Rather for the pleasure of starring the text”). Apparently both authors still feel the pleasure of the act of handwriting.10 An interesting coincidence is the fact that Barthes uses the word déchiffre­ ment (decipherment) in La mort de l’Auteur, while Rihm as an author is offering the listener a whole series of Chiffres, which can be deciphered.

Position towards Modernism François Lyotard’s statement that the artwork can become modern only after it has emerged completely in postmodernity is perfectly applicable to Rihm.11 The evolution of the latter from the 1970s onwards can be summarised as follows: the first step consisted of the study and elaboration of all interesting elements of the past, resulting in his compositions being full of allusions and quasi-quotations. After this kind of revisiting the past, in the 1980s the step forward into postmodernism as a new modernism was backed by the permanent conscience of and possible dialogue with the past. This consideration is compatible not only with Lyotard, but also with

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Danuser’s changed viewpoint towards 1990: “postmodernism as the modernism of the present”. The question is: which “modernism” is meant here? Undoubtedly Rihm is not dealing with experiments of avant-garde. His modernism consists of the embedded results of the experimental past of the twentieth century (roughly the period 1910-1970), embedded in his personal style and especially his personal attempts to withdraw any system in the 1980s. His inclusive composing does not aim at a puralism for the sake of “colourfulness” or mixture of style idioms as such, nor does he aim at a pluralism in the sense of a collage of quotations. He is therefore different from historical modernist examples such as Berio’s Sinfonia or Stockhausen’s Hymnen and from contemporaries in the 1980s, who saw the collage as a personal style, Alfred Schnittke’s polystylism for instance, culminating in the same decade with his Concerto grosso no. 4/Symphony no. 5 (1988). As a consequence, Rihm prefers stylistic allusions to exact quotations, although the latter are not completely absent in his music of the 1980s. That is why I understand “never” as an exaggeration in Rihm’s statement: “I never quote literally, always filtered, processed.” Even a more general “intonation” of another composer, which Rihm calls Tonfall, will always be the subject of reflected allusion or processed quotation.12 Furthermore, the concept of pluralism and the openness to pluralistic possibilities in the elaboration of one and the same musical material are concentrated in Rihm’s concepts of the “generative pole” and the possibilities of “overpainting” and “overwriting”. Am I using the same arguments to classify them as modern and postmodern at the same time? Whereas postmodernism is the modernism of the present, my point of view is no longer a contradiction; indeed, Rihm’s characteristics can serve both. Pluralism was introduced as a keyword in the aesthetics of Rihm’s modernist predecessors, such as Pierre Boulez, who refused his whole life to consider some of his compositions as finished or definitely fixed in a “closed” stage, keeping the door open in order not to exclude other possibilities. I am not referring just to Boulez’s works existing in different versions, mostly reworked with expanded settings and duration, such as Eclat, …explosantefixe…, Répons, Dérives or the pairs Domaines, Notations and Incises, originally for one soloist (but already in different versions in the case of Notations and Incises) and afterwards expanded to soloist with other

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instruments. I am also referring to the compositions in Boulez’s catalogue which will forever bear the epithet “unfinished”, existing in only one version or even in different versions, such as Piano Sonata no. 3, Figures-DoublesPrismes, Eclat/multiples, …explosante-fixe… and Répons. On his work list, one finds the exceptional category of “Plans and projects”: here some titles are related to existing compositions, others are not: Un coup de dés, Strophes, Marges and again …explosante-fixe…13 The difference between Boulez and Rihm is that the latter is capable of closing a composition, reserving or postponing the elaboration of the unexhausted materials to future works. At a certain moment, Rihm decides to close his work in progress: even if it was hanging for several years, over different definite stages, it at last reaches its culminating final stage, whereafter the composer no longer returns to this material. One of the early examples is Tutuguri, preceded by five earlier stages: Tutuguri I-IV and VI (all composed between 1980 and 1982; the concept of Tutuguri V was never realised) and not yet finished in its final stage, because it was followed by Schwarzer und roter Tanz, a Fragment aus Tutuguri in 1982/83, hence reprocessed with unexhausted material. A later example is Jagden und Formen, started in 1995 with two versions of Gejagte Form, continued in Verborgene Formen (1995-97) and Gedrängte Form (1995/98) and existing in different stages from 2001 on, the most recent being dated 2008: Jagden und Formen (Zustand 2008). Alastair Williams points out that the difference between Boulez’s “form in progress” and Rihm lies in the fact that Boulez’s approach is about “multi-dimensional proliferation” with “its roots in serial thinking, whereas Rihm’s expansive tendencies resist systematic unfolding.”14

Musical Backgrounds in Modernism and Nineteenth Century During Rihm’s evolution up to today, certain elements of his musical education remain prominent. Eugen Werner Velte was Rihm’s first composition teacher at the Karlsruhe Music Academy (1968-72). Afterwards he studied with Karlheinz Stockhausen (1972-73) in Cologne and with Klaus Huber in Freiburg (1973-76), where he took up musicology with Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht in the same period.

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Velte had conveyed to me the analytical dimension as well as the desire for expression, with all its tensions and emotions. Stockhausen had taught me the significance of intuition and, above all, a sure sense of duration and proportion. Thanks to Huber, the philosophical and ethical aspects of my compositional work had been reinforced, further strengthened by my studies with Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht at the University. Eggebrecht led me to a permanent consideration of the notion of form in music. He was at the time head of the faculty of musicology in Freiburg and his lectures on Mahler gave (after Adorno) a basically new direction to thinking with regard to that composer.15

Although Rihm’s period of study with Stockhausen was not long, its importance should not be underestimated. More than once Rihm expresses his respect for Stockhausen and illustrates how he adapted certain learned compositional concepts in his own way. Rihm will never forget Stockhausen: “… because I keep going back to his music as to a source.”16 Of greater importance in particular is the use of proportions, formal aspects based on individualised “moments” and the priority given to intuition to break through on any occasion when felt necessary in the course of a composition. Older composers also have had a certain guiding role. Rihm describes Velte’s Beethoven analyses as “unforgettable”. For his early compositions, Beethoven and other romantic composers, such as Schubert, Schumann and Mahler, had the greatest influence. For the music of the 1980s, the interest shifts to the turn of the twentieth century: Rihm repeatedly cites Claude Debussy and Arnold Schönberg (the period around 1910) for their ability to combine minimal formalism and system with maximal expression. He adds Edgard Varèse because in his opinion Varèse always presented himself too much as a sound engineer during his life, while in fact he was always overwhelming in his sound phantasy and therefore in fact irrational. Rihm likes to quote Varèse’s radical plea for the abolition of all systems: “[t]o compose with a system is proving creative impotence”17 (see p. 81). However, admitting the impossibility of composing without coherence, Rihm becomes much more subtle in his description of the claim for freedom by his favourite composers:

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For me, the music of Varèse together with Debussy, Schönberg, Feldman and Nono is the freest of this century. Because this music – contradictorily – also articulates this freedom, not only leaving it free as a kind of free system. You can hear its coercion of freedom.18

Rihm elaborately expounds, in an honest and humble way, on the many things he learnt from his encounters and conversations with different colleagues, such as Morton Feldman and Luigi Nono, mentioned above, and further with Wilhelm Killmayer and Helmut Lachenmann. To put things clearly, separating influence, inspiration and his own situation, Rihm himself is eager to add that these experiences have never resulted in imitation or in his becoming a follower of one of those composers. It is indeed more about complicity in aesthetic viewpoints which are partly comparable. In Feldman, for instance, Rihm found a colleague preoccupied with freedom and therefore with the search for systemlessness. Rihm describes how Feldman’s music witnesses his deepest obsession, how the music is composed without any light note, with “delicacy and tenderness” and with “implacability or ruthlessness” at the same time. Feldman was able to create a “free space for his purposelessness, his unintentional writing”. These elements fascinate Rihm, as he encounters his own claim for freedom, his strong belief in taking responsibility for each composed or fixated note, his utopian systemlessness.19 What I can learn from Luigi Nono, a list of more than thirty items, was written by Rihm on the occasion of Nono’s sixtieth birthday, at the beginning of 1984. Recurring issues here are again “freedom”, the fact that learning is always “unaccomplished” or “unfinished” in the sense of “unclosed” or “not ended” (Unabgeschlossenkeit), which, following Rihm, is more important than and quite different from the always quoted openness. Other issues are: the “capacity to take a certain distance from the aesthetic based on coherence”, the “accuracy and multitude of fragments”, the “understanding of the tradition without painful gesture, meaning knowledge”. Rihm stresses that the list contains what he himself can learn, not what one can find in Nono in general. Rihm and Nono became acquainted in 1980. Rihm was certainly attracted by the searching composer, who expressed the importance of going and trying in his late so-called Caminar pieces, whose titles were found in Nono’s preferred

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pilgrim’s quotation, a medieval graffito on a wall in Toledo: “Caminantes, no hay caminos, hay que caminar”, or “Travellers, there are no paths, you have to walk”. However, Rihm is clearly aware of their differences. He denies for instance that Nono’s process of composing his string quartet Fragmente, Stille – An Diotima was “informal”, based on “not knowing at any moment what had to come next”. He criticises Nono for explaining this process as “intuitive” and “written in a kind of confused state of mind”, because the analysis of the score “reveals something completely different”. Rihm concludes that Nono was maybe too much trying to please him in their conversation of 1980 he refers to. Moreover, Rihm admits never to have had any feeling for Nono’s utopian socialism, or for his political engagement.20 At first listening, the relationship between Rihm’s and Lachenmann’s music and aesthetics seems difficult to discern. Lachenmann’s aesthetic is directed against and away from beauty, seeking for an attentive listener with an open attitude towards the unknown and the new, a listener ready to be disturbed and lose his balance, ready to challenge himself in the absence of the slightest permission by the composer for enjoyment in the music. Rihm’s aim is to be expressive and enjoying, even physically while composing: the act of composing is explained as a very physical experience. But next to the expressivity, it is not forbidden for the listener to have a pleasant and hedonistic experience, to be touched by Rihm’s music. Nevertheless, Rihm considers Lachenmann to be an important and influential source, as is embedded for instance in the following confrontation: “For me, Helmut Lachenmann is the other facing me and through whom I come to myself.” Of course, both composers are searching, but their quest is on a completely different level. Rihm is searching for the composition during his creative process while Lachenmann is searching for the non-existent and unheard noise and sound, for the new material again and again, as a mandatory task before the start of each new composition. For Rihm, Lachenmann’s importance and renown “stem from the fact that he took his own individual, unwavering path”. Moreover, according to Rihm, Lachenmann has an extreme awareness of tradition, resulting for instance in the achieved composition as a closed form, taking up “the legacy of the great European art music tradition: through-composed large-scale forms, solitaries appear as the architecture of their own formational processes”. In the end, Rihm brings up a surprising argument

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when he declares that “Lachenmann is perhaps the only composer today who truly composes classically”, glorifying him as the creator of Mouvement (- vor der Erstarrung), “the pinnacle of this masterful classicism”. Following Rihm, “the audible sonic organisation is shaped correspondingly: one responds to the other, the parts are consistently formed in dialogic complementarity.”21 Why is Rihm declaring Lachenmann a classicist? Should Rihm admire this quality as a mirror of his own composing? According to Alastair Williams, as part of Rihm’s modernism, his “aesthetic is better seen as an expansion of constructivist concerns – as his tributes to Karlheinz Stockhausen and Helmut Lachenmann suggest – than as a negation of them.”22 Concerning Wilhelm Killmayer, the musical distance to Rihm seems bigger than that to the other close composers. Maybe their relationship is more based on a long-term friendship. The only link I can find is Killmayer’s open attitude towards the past, especially towards eighteenth- and nineteenth-century music, and the way his own style is built on the reminiscences of earlier musical idioms, albeit that the presence of the past is much more on the surface, much more direct and overwhelming than in the case of Rihm. Killmayer’s predilection for soft dynamics, beautiful sounds, for repetitive elements, for a certain simplicity and direct accessibility, bringing him almost within reach of minimalism, are certainly not characteristics which can inspire Rihm. In my opinion, Rihm’s use of repetition has nothing in common with Killmayer’s sense for repetitiveness. Nevertheless, their conversations have always been interesting and Rihm has learned a lot from his older colleague, as he reveals in his essay on Killmayer.23

Philosophical Influences in Postmodernism In the branch of philosophy, there seems to have been more and easier acceptance of the concept of postmodernism than in music. To find out the extent to which postmodernist philosophy has influenced Rihm, it can be interesting to look more closely at his friendship with the famous German postmodernist philosopher, Peter Sloterdijk. Sloterdijk and Rihm became acquainted in the middle of the 1980s; they became close friends. Rihm is most grateful for their inspiring almost daily conversations and also very

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proud that his friend dedicated the seventh chapter of his essay Weltfremdheit to him: Wo sind wir wenn wir Musik hören.24 On turn, in 2007, Rihm offered the piano piece Wortlos to Sloterdijk for his sixtieth birthday. However, questioned about any possible influence by Sloterdijk’s philosophy, Rihm answers that he is absolutely not influenced in a direct or concrete way, but rather by his friend’s method. Departing from an established concept, he [Sloterdijk] changes the manner of consideration in an infinitesimal way and, by doing so, confers a complete new functionality on it. This manner of changing by almost nothing the angle of view on things I made mine. That’s my way of treating the means of Viennese classicism or serial and postserial avant-garde. In a certain way, my way of considering things becomes audible, and something new is born of it.25

Moreover, this quotation makes clear that both friends prefer not to set foot on the other’s territory: it is all and only about the manner and the method. Indeed, Sloterdijk has never written an essay on Rihm’s music (nor on another composer’s). Following the first publication of one of their public discussions each one stayed his own ground: when Rihm gave his definition of generative pole as applied to his music Sloterdijk was not entering into a discussion about this crucial subject.26 Nevertheless, both intellectuals have more than one concept in common: the next paragraphs will show interesting correspondences, although some may seem to be pure coincidence or just plain anecdotal. Rihm’s concept of the “search” for a composition, Versuch and Suche, is comparable with Sloterdijk’s approach of philosophical thinking from scratch. In Kritik der zynischen Vernunft, Sloterdijk’s main work of the 1980s and a kind of bible of postmodernism, the philosopher starts from the ascertainment that philosophy has been dying for a whole century, without deciding about its dying hour. Philosophy is no longer capable of mastering a synthesis; philosophy is hiding itself in the documenting of the history of philosophy. On the other hand, true philosophy still exists as forschendes Denken or “searching thinking”.27 What Rihm defines as composition is translated by Sloterdijk into philosophy: “[t]he truth of the searching is not the searching for the truth.” Searching becomes more important than finding. The other way around is Rihm’s conviction that

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Sloterdijk’s philosophy is “a way of thinking, showing itself as musical thinking.”28 Inspired by Artaud’s theatre aesthetic and philosophy, Rihm developed the concept of the Vor-Ton or “pre-tone” for Tutuguri: “the hope of entering the never-heard”,29 the stage before the sound is formed or moulded, “rough, unformed, not-yet-sound”. The title of Rihm’s Third String Quartet, Im Innersten (1976), can easily be related to this concept: in the innermost, a sound is not yet formed. It is still rough: a pre-tone. After Kritik der zynischen Vernunft, Sloterdijk became interested in theories about inner objects and their archetypes: for instance, how birds show traces of auditive receptivity in ovo. He refers to what Plato described as the “prenatal information of the ‘soul’” and to the foetal ear of the unborn child.30 Human beings can share inner worlds, according to Sloterdijk. The philosopher illustrates this chapter in Sphären with a score: the opening bars of the sixth and final movement of Rihm’s Third String Quartet, Im Innersten. Apart from the caption, there is no reference to Rihm, or to the title of the quartet in Sloterdijk’s explanation. Going into greater detail, Sloterdijk believes that every kind of life starts with the Ur-Hören, the “pre-hearing” or “primeval hearing”. He sees only one possibility for a philosophy of hearing: as a “theory of the inner” (Theorie des In-Seins). The optimal condition for the inner hearing is indeed the “foetal hearing” (das fötale Gehör). Because this foetal hearing is preworld inner and anticipating the world of noise and sound, Sloterdijk’s concept is completely comparable to Rihm’s concept of the pre-tone: the former’s Proto-Musik and Endo-Musik and the latter’s Vor-Ton. When Sloterdijk is presenting his comments on the universe as a globe, he illustrates his text with a photo of Artaud carrying the globe instead of Atlas. The caption says: “Antonin Artaud, 1926”. Again, however, as was the case with Rihm’s Im Innersten, Artaud’s name is mentioned only in the caption, without any further explanation in the text.31 The following may be pure coincidence, but worth mentioning nonetheless. One page before the passage referred to above in Sphären, Sloterdijk illustrates his reflexions on mystic duality and unity with a picture of the sculpture by Lorenzo Bernini, Ecstasy of Saint Teresa. Fifteen years earlier, Rihm’s ausgesprochen contained only one artwork as illustration: the same Bernini sculpture, more precisely a detail of Teresa’s

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head. At first, the composer writes that he does not know why this sculpture comes suddenly to his mind while he is commenting on Ohne Titel, his Fifth String Quartet, but then he realises that the angel’s arrow is scratching and slashing the music paper, “But you don’t see him”.32 This could be a germ for the Eighth String Quartet, composed four years later, where paper is manipulated and written on. There are more angels: Rihm’s Séraphin (1991-2011) is based on Artaud and deals with the male-female-neutral in one being, as described by Artaud. Already in Die Eroberung von Mexico (1987-91, after Artaud), singing heads were appearing, and these were also männlich, weiblich, neutral at once. In Sphären, Sloterdijk describes angels as “double figures”, not male and female at once, but as twins, doubles: the human being and his angel custodian.33 Of course this is different from Artaud and Rihm; still the idea of the angel with a double appearance returns. What Rihm does not have in common with Sloterdijk is the latter’s predilection for irony and cynicism, already clear in the title of Kritik der zynischen Vernunft. Cynicism is a basic attitude for Sloterdijk, while for Rihm irony is no more than joking about writing a text for a programme brochure for instance. Even Rihm’s song cycle Wölfli-Liederbuch (1980-81, male voice with piano; Wölfli-Lieder, 1981/82, with orchestra) is not written because of the composer’s sense of sarcasm or cynicism, but because of his interest in the poet’s madness. Madness and the boundaries of mental health and illness were explored by Rihm in more than one composition in his early years, such as the chamber opera Jakob Lenz (1977/78), the song cycle Lenz-Fragmente and other song cycles on poems by Hölderlin, Paul Celan and Ernst Herbeck, for instance. Rihm’s interest in Nietzsche, Artaud, Karoline von Günderrode (Das Rot, 1990) and especially Schumann with Fremde Szenen (1982-84) can also partly be ascribed to his interest in phenomena in the circle of madness. On the subjects of Vor-Ton and angels Antonin Artaud’s name was already linked to Sloterdijk. It is Rihm’s conviction that he came to know Artaud’s essays “at the right moment”, at the end of the 1970s. Artaud’s aesthetic views as explained in Le Théâtre et son double (1938), containing his important manifesto Le Théâtre de la Cruauté, have influenced Rihm in his theatre pieces and vocal music throughout his career, starting with Tutuguri, continuing with Die Eroberung von Mexico and elaborated in

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depth in the different stages of the work in progress Séraphin. Artaud’s own understanding of cruauté was an issue of debate during his lifetime: as a result, it was at last replaced by the word double. His aim has never been defined in fewer words than in a letter to his friend Jean Paulhan: “If the theatre doubles life, life doubles the real theatre.”34 Indeed, his aim was a theatre that was identifiable with real life, where cruauté received a double place and meaning: on the one hand the cru or “raw” as the natural and uncultivated situation of a tribe, more precisely in the stage before language was invented, communicating with primary sounds, noises and cries, and on the other hand the unavoidable cru as in cruauté or “cruelty”, in the struggle to survive in such a community. Discussing the most appropriate terminology with Paulhan, Artaud decided to replace the original Théâtre de la Cruauté by Le Théâtre et son double because, in his opinion, the latter would be easier for the public to understand. In his letter, Artaud adds: “This cruelty is not about sadism, nor blood, at least not in an exclusive way.” It is explained as a necessary condition of human life, making it “raw and rough” at the same time. With the right interpretation of Artaud’s theatre approach, Rihm understands this raw/rough as “not in artificial conventions disguised ideas, a theatre of pure affections”. Moreover, because of Artaud’s poetics, Rihm felt it possible to set free his musical language in general. Certainly this general influence leaves its traces in Rihm’s instrumental music of the 1980s, because he objects to the complete separation of a musical language for the theatre and another one for instrumental music. A primary sound is found in the part of the second violin in the Seventh String Quartet (bar 125, eine Art Schrei), which could be seen as a reaction to the first intervention of the woodblock played by the first violinist (first intervention after the isolated woodblock stroke in the opening bar). Another allusion to the primary cry is found in Rihm’s description of Chiffre II. Interpreting the subtitle Silence to be Beaten in different ways, he writes about the pain and torment provoked by “beating” in the sense of “slapping” or “smacking” the silence and he adds: “The cry of the silence is the music.”35 Artaud’s cruauté is literally translated by Rihm as “Musik als Rohzustand”, music in its “raw stage”, before the sound is moulded: Rihm is very detailed about rhythmic and melodic raw stages and about the raw stage being the

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“material, where rhythm and melody consist of, pressed, compressed, returned to its stage-being”.36 In a completely different context, but worth mentioning, is the fact that Rihm describes the music by Anton Webern as “abstract serial raw food” or crudités (abstrakte Reihen-Rohkost).37 At the end of his comment on the Chiffre cycle, Rihm quotes four texts out of his text discoveries, one by Pascal and three by Artaud: (1) about all attempts and searching leading to a work, a composition, (2) about the poetic energy as the only law or norm to create something and (3) about “the secret world of theatre with its dissonance, its staggering of timbres and its dialectic unleashing of the expression”.38 Together with the painter Kurt Kocherscheidt, Antonin Artaud is one of the very exceptional extra-European influences on Rihm. Artaud was clearly influenced by Balinese dance theatre and by his stay in Mexico with the Tarahumaras people. Where the composer has always denied the possibility of merging with other musical genres, such as ethnic music, he admits that listening to Artaud’s voice in the original recording (1947) of Pour en finir avec le jugement de Dieu, made him hear “genuine music from a foreign people, called ‘Antonin Artaud’”.39 This rather unusual formulation shows how the contact with Balinese and Mexican culture through Artaud is important for Rihm, but at the same time filtered by himself: it is never reaching or changing his own compositional concepts. For instance, for Die Eroberung von Mexico, Rihm considers Artaud’s text as music, suppressing any possible exotic influence.40 Next to the woodblocks, the wide range of hard timbres in the Seventh String Quartet, Veränderungen, is caused by high bow pressure, which distorts the sound towards noise. Rihm asks for it in an explicit way: sehr starker Bogendruck, viel Geräusch (bar 176), followed by a non-vibrato fff passage, to be played rauh! and roh! or “rough” and “raw”, comparable to crudo, asked for in Chiffre III. Together with the “kind of yell or cry”, eine Art Schrei (Seventh String Quartet, bar 125), these timbres must be related to the world of Antonin Artaud. More specifically, this is about the category of pre-sound or not yet moulded sound, the Vor-Ton, as elaborated by Sloterdijk. In this way, the noise of the woodblocks in this string quartet suggests different semiotic meanings: it deals with the creation of sound because of the noise, not yet cultivated as sound; it deals with extended string timbres. The woodblock is the first event of the piece but also the

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ultimate one, “as if ” but not really breaking down the obsessive repeated cello figure at the end.

Philosophical Influences in Modernism In his attempt to reach systemlessness, Rihm felt supported by aspects of Adorno’s music philosophy, most of all by his plea for an “informal music” in Vers une musique informelle.41 Others of Adorno’s thought processes, more precisely as found in his Aesthetic Theory,42 consider the balance between formal and informal musical aspects in a very meaningful way and are also applicable to Rihm’s aesthetic. In his Aesthetic Theory, elaborating the concepts of the enigmatic and the truth-content of an artwork in the context of art as mimesis, Adorno condemns the artwork that is too focused on its logical order, on the inner exactitude of its formal elements, on its own inner organisation. He is convinced that the distance to empirical reason becomes unbridgeable: “[t]he more reasonable the work becomes in terms of its formal constitution, the more ridiculous it becomes according to the standard of empirical reason.” As part of Adorno’s mimesis theories, empirical reasoning starts from a piece of evidence, from a fact that is imitated in art, not directed by formal reasons but by intuition. To the extent that the empirical example is absent in the creation of absolute music, one should be tempted to decide that organisational and formal elements are the only truth on which to build a sound construction or composition. However, given the absence of empirical examples or imitable concepts, it should on the other hand be tempting as well to trust and follow intuition or momentary spontaneity in such a way that it results in a formless artwork or a systemless creation without any coherence, and therefore meaningless at the very end. Adorno is countering this in two ways: by his statement that art without the element of intuition would be nothing other than theory, and by the statement that although artworks are not conceptual, they are logical. The principle of logical consistency is declared to be the rational aspect of artworks and therefore becomes art’s antimimetic impulse. How can one understand this logical consistency? Adorno’s masterful example is considering art’s logic with its “undifferentiatedness of spirit and blind necessity” as “reminiscent of the strict lawfulness that governs the succession of real events in history”.

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This must be about a mixture of planning, strategy, anticipation, empathy and reaction to unexpected and unforeseeable occurrences, repetition of earlier successful actions, including indeed a certain amount of intuition. The aesthetic aim of the artwork is to communicate its own logic, that is its content in a formed object: “[i]ncontestably the quintessence of all elements of logicality, or, more broadly, coherence in artworks, is form.” Therefore the content must be sedimented in the form, implying that the form is subordinated to the content, that form is a function of content. The musical content has to create its own form, according to its needs. This results in the concept of minimal formalism. And turning back to the link between art and the empirical, Adorno insists: “The determinate antithesis of individual artworks toward empirical reality furthers the coherence of those artworks.”43 Referring to Adorno and relatable to the theory above, Rihm was already using the term “intuition” (Ahnungsfähigkeit) in his essay Musika­ lische Freiheit.44 Rihm agrees with Adorno that art cannot be a pure proclamation of subjectivity. In his opinion it is the other way round: subjectivity is a condition for musical proclamation, implying a certain articulation within it and without being the aim of music. Therefore subjectivity possesses a certain order – although not a hierarchical one – even before being the subject of music or becoming expressed in music.45 The term “intuition” appears also in the description of what Rihm learned from Stockhausen. Rihm’s intention to eliminate any system is countered by the impossibility of non-coherence; one step backwards could be defined as composing with minimal coherence, which is not identical, though very similar to minimal formalism. Moreover, for Rihm this minimal concept does include a certain degree of complexity: Only the unmanageable form resigns the claim to power and can, in that way, become form as art. Therefore highly complex inexplicable constructions are even more subversive than stringent, simplified ones, which may be striking for one moment, but which let nothing unclear, neither rest nor enigma.46

It is as if Adorno’s essay Vers une musique informelle was almost meant for Rihm personally; that is the composer’s conviction. Upon first reading he

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71

felt directly addressed by several aspects of it. In his opinion Adorno is talking as a musician here, “as the composer he himself never became”, less as a music sociologist or philosopher.47 Rihm likes to quote the last words of Adorno’s essay because of their philosophical openness: “The aim of every artistic utopia today is to make things in ignorance of what they are.”48 In this essay, Adorno again struggles with the aspect of coherence, talking about the paradox or “antinomy of freedom and coherence”, or claiming that “freedom should organise itself in such a way that it need bow to no alien yardstick which mutilates everything that strives to shape itself in freedom”.49 As a result, for both Adorno and Rihm, musique informelle remains in the state of utopia, an ideal impossible to reach. Adorno mentions contemporary painters, such as Bernard Schultze, belonging to the informal painting in Germany around 1960: Informal Art or art informel was a movement in Europe after the Second World War, influenced by American Abstract Expressionism.50 This inspiration by fine arts could be viewed as one more link between Adorno and Rihm, for whom comparison with and viewpoints within fine arts are very inspiring (see p. 93ff.) Adorno also refers to the real possibility that informal music was, around 1910, mentioning free atonal compositions by Schönberg. When Rihm refers to Schönberg as one of his important and influential sources, he never forgets to add “around 1910”. Informal music has its consequences, following Adorno: “in the absence of residual form, musical coherence appears to be quite inconceivable”.51 Not without importance is the fact that Gianmario Borio relates the informal artwork to the music of the avant-garde and explains why it is often declared un-analysable. The cause lies in the character of the process and the improvisatory interventions replacing the constructive moment. Hence, parameters may no longer be considered one by one. Because Borio’s subject is avant-garde of the 1960s, his scope is Ligeti’s sound masses and Eco’s theory on the open artwork, but parts of his statements still have importance for the way informal aspects of Rihm’s music can be approached.52 Carl Dahlhaus also identifies musique informelle with the radical music of the 1950s and 60s, whereas a concept of form implies “musical coherence on a large scale”. In his opinion, the purpose of informal music was “to draw undivided attention to the isolated detail, to the individual musical

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moment.” This can be applied to Rihm whose plea for concentration on the moment, on the sounding music itself (in the sense of musical phrase, moment or short entity) is evident. That this “disconnected matter stands side by side in sharp contrast”, as Dahlhaus continues his definition, can also be so for Rihm.53 When Adorno is arguing in Das Altern der Neuen Musik that technical and constructive inventions in modern music are only trying to hide the subjectivity behind it, he blames Stravinsky, Hindemith and Bartók and praises the example of Boulez who renounces all subjectivity.54 On the other hand, Rihm confirms that it is his conviction that Schönberg’s selfconsideration has always been rooted in the subjective, that Boulez, Stockhausen and Nono have never been against subjectivity and expressivity and that their early works, such as Visage nuptial, Le soleil des eaux, Il Canto sospeso or Gruppen are all “great music” with a high degree of subjectivity. Rihm denies ever having heard an objective puristic sound world in this music. And he adds one more of his favourite composers: Varèse.55

3

Musical Traces

W

ithin the most common types of historical references, allusion and quotation, Rihm clearly prefers allusion with a broad spectrum of possibilities. For instance, while Rihm is impressed by Schubert’s Tonfall or “intonation”, he “quoted” this intonation in Erscheinung, Skizze über Schubert (1978), which is in fact an allusion.1 However, exact quotations – as short as they may be – are also found. For both possibilities the composer explains how he can be struck or touched by particular moments in a composition and consequently inspired for his own music. Although Rihm searched for a high degree of systemlessness in the 1980s, musical traces of the past are not absent in his compositions: examples found in the Chiffre cycle are at the core of this chapter.

Dealing with Allusion and Quotation Rihm’s Third String Quartet, Im Innersten, dated 1976, is a good example of his sense for combined historical references. Not only does the title remind one of Janáček’s Second String Quartet, Intimate Letters, but the musical content also contains many allusions: late Beethoven, Janáček, Bartók and the “expressive” works of the Second Viennese School after 1900, where Alban Berg in particular is mentioned by name.2 In the Third String Quartet, traditional Italian indications for each movement are lacking, as is mostly the case for Rihm’s scores, but in his comment the composer suggests that all movements could be entitled adagio or con moto or a combination of both, again referring to Janáček who makes use of both indications not only in his Second String Quartet, Intimate Letters, but even more in his First String Quartet, Kreutzer Sonata.3 In a broader context, Rihm’s title Im Innersten refers to the expressivity of romanticism in general, and more specifically puts forward “expressivity” as one of the most important aims of his own aesthetic. 73

74

Part I – Style

More than once Rihm opts for a “dialogue” or Auseinandersetzung with a specific composer from the past, writing a new composition to complement an existing one, to be performed in the same concert. To precede Richard Strauss’s Salome, Rihm composed the nocturnal scene Das Gehege (2004-05) on a text drawn not from the same libretto as Richard Strauss, but from a complete different source: the final part of Botho Strauss’s Schlusschor. The plot depicts a woman who falls in love with a caged eagle and undresses in front of the bird. The bird does not react, even when she frees it. At last she curses the animal and finally kills it. This example not only exhibits content related to Salome, but Rihm also refers to Richard Strauss’s music, using almost the same orchestra, where violins divisi play intertwined lines with a ”Jugendstil inspired sophistication” and the Straussian sound is multi-layered, sensual, voluptuous, full of “crystallisations and compactions”, according to Bas van Putten.4 This kind of allusion may not be generalised. For Eine Strasse, Lucile (2011), a scene for soprano and orchestra, Rihm chose a text from Dantons Tod by Georg Büchner, the same source as Gottfried von Einem’s opera Dantons Tod, but Rihm’s text is not in von Einem’s libretto. On the occasion of its premiere, Eine Strasse, Lucile was followed by von Einem’s opera. Rihm did not seek to relate his music to von Einem’s sound. Furthermore, it was only by coincidence that the two pieces were performed on the same evening. The only musical reference in the piece is a self-quotation: Rihm added a march to the score, a juvenile work written 32 years earlier, without even changing its tonal atmosphere.5 Allusions to Bach are heard in DEUS PASSUS, but also much earlier in the chamber opera Jakob Lenz. ET LUX is a contemporary requiem, where the vocal quartet is inspired by Renaissance polyphony and the string quartet sounds like a consort of viols. Still on the subject of dialogue, an Auseinandersetzung with Schumann is composed in Fremde Szenen, especially but not exclusively in the second movement, Charakterstück. Another favourite of Rihm’s is Johannes Brahms. In 2000-01 Rihm composed Das Lesen der Schrift, four orchestral pieces intended to be incorporated between the movements of Ein deutsches Requiem. References in titles and style are found in Brahmsliebewalzer (1985, orchestra; 1987-88, piano) and Ernster Gesang (1996, orchestra) an instrumental answer to Vier ernste Gesänge. Rihm’s description of the composition process of Ernster

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75

Gesang is witness to his dialogue and confrontation with Brahms. For months he was playing and singing Brahms’s Lieder and piano pieces. However, at the moment of the composition “I was both filled with and empty of Brahms (brahmsreich und brahmsarm). The repercussions, the constellations that existed in my memory, disappeared when I wanted to grasp them or force them into a concrete form. Their appearance is thus always their immediate disappearance as well. What remains is an intonation, a turning of events that wavers between arrival and departure.”6 That Brahms can be close and far away at the same time, ungraspable, also explains the title Nähe fern (2012), a symphony for baritone and orchestra, to be performed in a dialogue with Brahms’s symphonies. Listing the different kinds of allusion and quotation found in the paragraph above yields a typology of historical references: (1) allusion by the use of a specific title, (2) allusion to a historical style in general, (3) allusion as a dialogue with a specific composer, (4) allusion to different com­posers within the same composition, (5) allusion to a composer by quoting interpretation indications, and (6) allusion to a specific composition.

Verbal Allusions in the Chiffre Cycle In the Chiffre cycle Rihm is rather tentative with the indications in Italian for interpretation or expression (see p. 265). As often, there is an exception: Chiffre III is unique in several ways because only Italian terms are used. It is the only piece with an indication in the opening bar: Crudo. Concentrated in the middle of the score (the piano solo repeated chord with percussion interventions around bar 76) an accumulation of verbal and musical quotations and allusions to György Ligeti is found. The first one, Prestissimo come una macchina, is a verbal allusion to Ligeti’s String Quartet no. 2, where the third movement must be articulated Come un meccanismo di precisione. It returns also in other pieces, for instance in the third movement of his Chamber Concerto (Kammerkonzert), a Movimento preciso e meccanico and of course as the main subject in Poème symphonique for 100 metronomes. The other Ligeti with his sense of absurd humour is found in Aventures and Nouvelles Aventures. Rihm’s prescription Isterico refers to one of the tableaux of Nouvelles Aventures, entitled Grand Hysterical Scene. Typical of Rihm is that these two individual characteristics of Ligeti are

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applied in a contrapuntal way: while the piano is playing Prestissimo, come una macchina, the two percussionists are asked to play Isterico. Moreover, the percussionists play whistles at that moment (bars 70-79), unique instruments heard only at this particular moment of Chiffre III. In doing so, Rihm combines a musical allusion to Ligeti with the verbal ones: the police whistle is used by Ligeti in his opera Le Grand Macabre (scenes 1 and 3, in the latter accompanying Gepopo, the chief of the secret police and also announcing midnight in the climactic scene with Nekrotzar) and in the related Mysteries of the Macabre, next to Táncdal, the second song and Szajkó, the seventh and last song of the cycle Síppal, dobbal, nádihegedüvel (With Pipes, Drums, Fiddles). Now and again, Rihm chooses unusual German terms with a historical connotation. These terms can be valorised as verbal historical quotations, with a special meaning for the composer. The indication Wie ein Hauch (Like a sigh) appears in Chiffre IV, VI and VIII. As a historical connotation, it refers in the first place to Gustav Mahler and Arnold Schönberg. In the final episode of the second movement of Mahler’s Symphony no. 8, at the start of the Chorus Mysticus, Mahler asks the singers to begin Wie ein Hauch. The sixth and final number of Schönberg’s Sechs kleine Klavierstücke, op. 19, is Sehr Langsam and has only nine bars; in the final bar Schönberg asks for Wie ein Hauch. The same indication is found in different works by Webern: “Entflieht auf leichten Kähnen”, op. 2, where the a cappella choir concludes Wie ein Hauch in the penultimate and ultimate bar. Again in Im Morgentraum, the fourth Lied of Fünf Lieder aus “Der siebente Ring” von Stefan George, op. 3, the voice has to end Wie ein Hauch in the penultimate and ultimate bars. At the end of the final piece, Bewegt, of the Vier Stücke für Geige und Klavier, op. 7, the violin repeats a descending arpeggio: the first time pp, diminuendo and Wie ein Hauch, the second time ppp and diminuendo. Because of Rihm’s special relation with Brahms, I add the following Lied, where Wie ein Hauch is part of the text and not an indication for interpretation: Brahms, Fünf Lieder, Wie Melodien, op. 105/1, on a poem by Klaus Groth. Und schwindet wie ein Hauch is the final verse of the second strophe (of three strophes of four verses each). Graham Johnson comments: “Especially memorable are the third and fourth lines of the second strophe where the phrases ‘Wie Nebelgrau erblaßt’ and ‘Und schwindet wie ein

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77

Hauch’ seem to dematerialise in the modulations descending to a hushed F sharp minor.”7 No more than a coincidence, but worth mentioning: Brahms prefers F# minor just as Rihm chooses f# in the high register of the bass clarinet in unison with the double bass, harmonic sul tasto, Wie ein Hauch in Chiffre VI (bar 25). The special effect Schalltrichter hoch (auf, in die Höhe, aufgehoben) or “bells up”, used not only for brass instruments but also for oboe and clarinet, is found throughout the Chiffre cycle: in Chiffre II, V, VI and VII, four, six, three and five times, respectively. It refers to the work of different composers, firstly again Gustav Mahler: Symphony no. 1, 4th movement; Symphony no. 2, 1st, 3rd and 5th movements. Other composers are Alexander von Zemlinsky, Lyrische Symphonie, 2nd and 6th movements; Igor Stravinsky in Le Sacre du Printemps: Jeu du rapt, Glorification de l’élue, Action rituelle des ancêtres and Danse sacrale (L’Elue); Alban Berg in Wozzeck, Act I, scene 5, Marie and the Drum-major, near the end of the scene, when Marie sings the words “Meinentwegen es ist Alles eins!” (“Have your way, then! It is all the same!”); Altenberglieder, 1. Seele, wie bist du schöner and 5. Hier ist Friede. It is also found at the end of Varèse’s Intégrales.8 In most examples above, the indication “bells up” appears at climactic moments paired with ff or fff dynamics. However, there are exceptions: Mahler, Symphony no. 2, 5th movement: in bar 497 ff. the six horns play mit aufgehebenen Schalltrichter in p, while the other instruments have pp and ppp, creating a dynamic and a timbrally subtle effect; Berg, Altenberglieder, 1. Seele, wie bist du schöner: bar 27: hn: mf, molto crescendo, while the voice is silent. Returning to the Chiffre cycle, there is a remarkable similarity between the locations of “bells up”. In Chiffre V, VI and VII, this prescription appears in the same bars: bar 65 in Chiffre V, VI and VII; bar 67 in Chiffre VI and VII and bar 144 in Chiffre V and VII. With the proportion 3:2:1 in Chiffre II, V and VI, there are also proportional similarities: Schalltrichter oben in bars 216, 144 and 72, respectively. Twice the same combination appears: the indication for different brass instruments is followed a few bars later by the trumpet alone. This is the case in Chiffre V (bars 62 and 65) and Chiffre VII (bars 65 and 67, see p. 284ff.).

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Allusion to a Style: Baroque The musical allusion to the Baroque era is clear in Rihm’s note of “choralelike” (dazu choraliges) on one of his sketches for Chiffre II and III. Slow homorhythmical longer passages with emphasis on the melody of the upper voice allude to a chorale style but remain distant from it by reason of certain characteristics, such as for instance parallel intervals in Chiffre II and Chiffre III (Ex. 3, Ex. 4). q = 80

Tpt Ob-Hn

5 &4 Π^.

& nnœ-œ ™™ v -

155

j nœfi nÆœJ .

- - - 3 œ b œ ˙ nœ n œ b œ nnœœ nnœ bb˙ - - - 3 f, ben articolato -j - -3 - œœ bbœœJ nnœœ nnœœ bbœœ nnœœ -. - - 3

nnœ™ œ™ >nnœœ >

>nnœœ >

bœœ b >™ b b œœ ™ >

bœ™ b œ™ ^. >. >. nœ œ #nœœ n œ œ v. >

nnœœ

Ex. 3. Chiffre II, 153-156. Chorale-like style. Horn: always +.

Pf Bcl

Bn Pf

fff sempre sfffz ^.j sfffz > > >™ nœfi >- n-˙ - bœ n>œ 4 Ó & 4 Œ n˙ nœ nœ bœ nœ n˙ > nœ > nœ > > > > sffz pp sfffz fff sempre > >> > > > ? 44 Œ n˙ nœ #˙ nœ nœ #œ Ó™ nœ #˙ nœ nœ#œ >- >- >- >- > “‘

- >- > œ nœ ™ bœ ™ œ nœ ™ bœ ™ > > > > œ nœ ™ nœ ™ œ nœ ™ nœ ™ - >- >

-j più>-fff œ #œœ™ œ v.

j3 nœ. bœ œ w v >-

˙™

Œ

^. j > bœj œ bœ ™ œJ b œ ™ b Jœ n œ œ w - >- più fff. v >-

˙™

Œ

sfffz

sfffz

3

Ex. 4. Chiffre III, 17-22. Chorale-like style.

A completely different and more complex allusion to Baroque music underlies the famous generative pole of Chiffre I, the vast piano right hand soloist moment, lasting for twenty bars (bars 43-63, Ex. 5).

3 – Musical Traces

Pf

◊-.ÿ # œ ‹ 4 œœ &4 æ

˙˙˙. æ

79

^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ bœ^ b œ nœ^ nœ^ #œ b œ nœ^ b œ bœ^ b œ nœ^ b œ n œ bœ^ œ^ bœ^ b œ n œ nœ^ #œ^

fff (marcatissimo) 45 b œ^ œ^ œ^ #œ^ nnœœ^ ^ ^ n œ^ #œ^ ^ nœ nœ bœ #œ & 3 3 3 ^ ^ 46 b œ j ^ ^ ^ n œ^ n œ œœ œfi ^ #œ #œ^ œ^ nœ^ # œ #œ œ nœ & nœ^ # œ bœ bœ ff pp 5

3

ff sfffz 3

3

3

3

3

3

3

^ ^ ^ n œ^ œ^ œ n œ^ #œ #œ nœ œ nœ 3

^ ^ nœ^ n œ œ nœ^ œ^ œ^ >œ (fff sempre) 3

Ex. 5. Chiffre I, 43-46. Piano, right hand.

Unfamiliar to Baroque here is the extreme high register, but a closer look reveals different Baroque characteristics, such as the almost constant trochaic metre and the concept of Fortspinnung. In bar 44/1-2,9 in the alternation between chromatic notes (f#-f§-eb-e§) and a repeated note (ab): these alternative chromatic notes normally form an unbroken line, a Baroque formula, where Rihm varies with broken chromaticism. This characteristic makes it possible to discern a dialogue between a higher and a lower “instrument”. Even the small ornament is not missing: the acciaccatura in bar 46/1. The harmonic rhythm respects the beats and is rather slow. It is not per chord, but following the emphasised pitches, the focal pitches: ab in bars 43-44, shifting to bb in bar 45/1-2. This long soloist passage is not an isolated case: later in Chiffre I ornaments are played by the piano, such as the gruppetto or turn, which I consider as a Baroque element in this context. Rihm used the turn earlier at different places in his Third String Quartet, Im Innersten (among others in the first movement, bars 4, 8; fourth movement, bar 44), as described by Eike Fess and Joachim Brügge.10 However, following Fess, the gruppetto could be an allusion to Bruckner where it forms a basic component in his symphonies, to Wagner where it is a returning emotional affirmative formulation and to Mahler’s Symphonies no. 4 (3rd movement) and no. 9 (3rd and 4th movements). For Mahler, the opening and main motive of Der Abschied, the finale of Das Lied von der Erde must be added. This gruppetto is prolonged in the chorale-like style and therefore Baroque in my opinion, becoming a melodic element with irregular waveform in the Chiffre cycle, in Chiffre II and III (see Ex. 3, p. 78; Ex. 4,

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p. 78), again in a larger rhythm as was the case in the very first presentation of an important melodic figure in Chiffre I (Ex. 6, see p. 243ff.). Knowing that Rihm likes a personal touch, this turn is irregular: g-bb-ab-g-a-ab instead of the symmetrical turn: ab-bb-ab-g-ab or a-bb-a-g-a. In the same way replacing pitch e by f in the following diminution (bar 141), the result of the fast figure f-g-f-e-f is a classical turn.

3 j 4 & 4 Œnn n n˙˙˙ bœ œbœ œ œ nœ- nœ ˙ b˙ ˙ n b ˙˙

Bcl-Bn-Vc1&2-Db

sffz pp mp

“” ^ nœ^nœnœ^nœ^>œ ™

meno mosso, pesante Pf Vc1&2-Db

ff

mp

f

sffz pp



ffff

3 j‰ Œ Ó n œ œœ œ n>œ >n>>

Ex. 6. Chiffre I, 138-142.

“Hard” evidence is given by the bass clarinet in Chiffre III, where the turn is suddenly in the foreground, in fast rhythm c#-d-c#-b#-c#, in polyphony with the dance-like melodic element in the English horn (bars 98-103; with the turn in bar 101/2-3). Another basic Baroque technique is Fortspinnung. Fortspinnung as in Chiffre I (see Ex. 5, p. 79) deals with growth and the possibility or danger of proliferation: Rihm’s terminology of Wuchs and Wildwuchs. In this way, Fortspinnung could be interpreted as the invisible although audible mycelium, while the fruits or mushrooms are the unexpected suddenly appearing and surprising moments in the piano right hand soloist passage. Examples of these unique moments are: the left hand reinforces the right hand (bars 47/3-48/2), the melodic Fortspinnung is interrupted by a moment of repetition in the ongoing trochaic metre (bars 53/3-4, 55/257/1), an instrument adds a repeated note for a short moment (clarinet in bars 56/2-3, 57/4-58/1), or all instruments join in a fast ascending gesture (bar 60/3-4). I compare this to the first movement of Bach’s Third Brandenburg Concerto; where the Fortspinnung with its steady anapaest metre suddenly results in unique homorhythmic moments, chordal or chromatically shifting, which are indeed never repeated, which is quite exceptional for Baroque music.11

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Allusion to a Composer: Varèse Whenever Rihm lists important and influential composers, Varèse is at the top of the list. By accident Rihm found a recording of Arcana in 1970 and was very impressed by it.12 Listening to Arcana, he recognised his own musical journey: “[o]n first hearing it was completely clear to me: this is something I am myself looking for.” Rihm emphasises that it concerned only his musical search, not the spiritual content of Varèse’s music: he admires Varèse for his “concept, search and hope”. Several times Rihm summarises Varèse’s most important musical issues: “[m]asses, states, bodies and figure”, and “[s]ound of the sounding as visual, tactile, sounding sculpture” and his “plastic-direct invention of sound and sound objects”. He defines Varèse’s composing as physical and present and therefore feels very related to his colleague. As an example, he describes the “culminating ending of Amériques.” There is also a link between Varèse and Artaud. For a short period in 1932, Varése and Artaud tried to collaborate on a music theatre project: Il n’y a plus de firmament. Here Rihm found his title Kein Firmament (1988, for small orchestra). Silence to be Beaten, the title of Chiffre II was borrowed from Varèse in a purely musical way, but belongs also to the world of Artaud’s cruauté, as previously mentioned. According to Rihm, this is an indication found frequently for general pauses on Varèse’s scores, asking for continued conducting during the general pause. This instruction is found in the empty bar just before the end of Varèse’s Arcana.13 After the 1980s, Form/Zwei Formen, composed in 1993-94, is related to Varèse’s Déserts, because it was meant to be a homage for the fortieth anniversary of the controversial premiere of Varèse’s Déserts. Where Déserts “functioned as a model for the scoring”, Hyperprism “served Rihm’s work as the basis of a ‘contrafactum’” for “the structure of the tempi and that of the metrical units and bar groupings”, which are identical to Hyperprism.14 In many ways Varèse functions as an example of Rihm’s search for intuitive, non-system-based composing in the 1980s. Rihm puts it clearly and boldly, saying that Edgard Varèse makes “imaginable non-systematic music of ‘pure invention and feeling’”.15 Put differently in his essay on Busoni: following Rihm, Varèse has realised the concept of “unchained music”, the dream of Busoni in his Entwurf einer Ästhetik der Neuen Musik.16

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Rihm composes specific allusions to Varèse and quotations, even overwritten quotations, mostly borrowed from Densité 21,5 and Octandre. At the very end of the Chiffre cycle, the first melodic element of Chiffre VIII (bar 6) is clearly a transposed quotation of the opening motif of Varèse’s Octandre. Rihm uses e(-13)eb(+11)d (Ex. 7),17 which is a transposition a diminished third lower of Varèse’s figure starting on gb: gb(-13)f(+11)e(-2) d# (Ex. 8). Rihm’s final note should be c# and is missing in the bass clarinet, but present as a harmonic in the second violoncello.

Bcl

? 45 Ó

Wie ein Hauch



°B 5 Vc1 4Ó



Ó

?5 Vc2 ¢ 4Ó

ppp

nœ œ R ≈ ‰ arco ord.n O #œ



## Oœ

ppp arco ord.

Ó



O˙™™

Ó

O˙ ™™

Ó

ppp

Ex. 7. Chiffre VIII, 6-7. Assez lent

Ob

bœ & 44

Ϫ

˙



Ex. 8. Varèse, Octandre, 1st movement, 1-2.

Rihm adds the indication Wie ein Hauch, at the same time suggesting that this is an important melodic element. The high trumpet solo near the end of Bild (bars 132-148) with its preparation (bars 126-131) and continuation (bars 149-160) shows some clear allusions to Varèse’s flute solo Densité 21,5, and indeed certain elements are generated from the flute solo. - Bild, bar 127. The preparation of the trumpet solo is marked by ascending intervals: f#(+7)c#(+3)e (Ex. 9). These pitches are also found in the flute’s opening cell (Ex. 10).

3 – Musical Traces

83

- Reaching the highest register in bars 32-36, the flute several times repeats b(+7)f#(+3)a, which returns as transposed quotation in the trumpet (Ex. 11, compared to Ex. 9).

> 4 #˙ &4

Htpt

fff

> # œ^. n œ ˙ J ‰ J

˙™

˙ pp

ff sffz

3

sffz p

n>œ #>œ n œ^ #>œ ™ > ^. ^. ^. nœ nœ #œ nœ nœ^ J 3

ff sfffz p sfffz p ff

Ex. 9. Bild, 126-129. Boxed: ascending intervals.

4 & 4 œ- œ #œ ˙™

Fl

mf

œ # œ ™ #œ œ 3

f

mf

˙

˙

p

f

Ó

Ex. 10. Varèse, Densité 21,5, 1-3. Boxed: pitches identical with Ex. 9.

q = 60

œ 4J &4

Fl

35

&

Ϫ

“>” œ #œ

“” q = 72œ #œ ™ œ œ œ

œ #œ œ

fff 3

, #œ ™ œ œ œ œ œ™ œ œ œ œ œ 3

3

œ œ œ œ >œ J 3

˙™

3

> œ

œ. J

œ

3

3

>œ ˙q = 60 ≈ R fff

Ex. 11. Varèse, Densité 21,5, 32-36.

-B  ild, bars 128-129 (Ex. 9). In the next bars of the solo preparation, the trumpet is similar to the flute in bars 18-21 (Ex. 12). The trumpet’s figure is based on the pitches g-g#-a-b; the flute uses the chromatic aggregate g#-a-a#-b. The flute continues with the chromatic aggregate b-b#-c#-d, while the trumpet goes on with b-d-d#.

Fl

4 &4 ˙

p sub.

3 j > œ #œ œ. œ œ nœ œ #œ ‰ œ ˙ J

Ex. 12. Varèse, Densité 21,5, 18-21.

p

#˙ #˙ f

˙ ff

œ J ‰ Œ

84

Part I – Style

-A  t different places, Varèse changes abruptly from sharpened to flattened notes: in bars 7 and 13, Ex. 13, further in bars 38 and 56. Rihm does the same in bars 130-150: all altered notes in the trumpet are flats (Ex. 14), while sharps were used before (Ex. 9). -A  large part of the trumpet solo is an expansion over fifteen bars (bars 132-146, Ex. 14) of one bar borrowed from Varèse: bar 13 (Ex. 13), using a-bb-e, enlarged by the trumpet by chromatic additions, becoming ab-a-bb-b-eb-e in the course of the solo. Great ascending leaps occur in both pieces: a(+13)bb in the flute (bar 13) and a(+14)b in the trumpet (bar 138) followed by the extreme reduction to a(+1)bb (bar 140, earlier also in bars 132-136), comparable to the flute (bar 6).

4 & 4 ‰ -œ œ- œ bœ #œ 3

Fl

˙

&

bœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ n˙ ™ J 3

3

fff

, bœ œ ˙ œ

˙

, œ bœ™ œ ™ œ #Jœ œ j œ ™#œ œj #œ ™ œ #œ #œ 3 3 p subito

mf

10

,3 œ œ bœ œj bœ ™

f

f

ff

˙

œ ≈œ J R

mf subito

œ J‰Œ

ff

3

Ex. 13. Varèse, Densité 21,5, 6-14.

4 &4

Htpt 138

& Ó 142

&

œ ™

bw



fff

nœ fff

j bœ -œ >

ΠΠ3

nœ œ

b >œ w

œ™ n œ^. b >œ R R

w

sfffz

n>œ b œ J

w

˙™

sfffz sfffz

pp

w

w

˙ b w-

pp

3

˙™

>œ n œ b >˙

3



˙

sfffz pp, sub.

w

fff



b >œ 3

fff

bœ-^ -^ ‰ nœ 3

Ex. 14. Bild, 132-146.

-B  ild, bar 146: the trumpet solo concludes with a fall: e(-8)a♭(-5)eb(-6) a, avoiding octave doubles (Ex. 14). Varèse uses the same principle although with octave doubling of g# in bars 11-12 (Ex. 13).

3 – Musical Traces

85

-A  fter the solo, the trumpet continues with broken chromaticism (bars 149-154), which cannot be considered as generated from Varèse as such, although it could be viewed as a more general allusion to Varèse’s frequent use of broken chromaticism in Densité 21,5, started already in the opening bars (Ex. 10). -R  esemblance more than allusion: the trumpet ends with a quasirepeated melodic element f#(-4)d(+11)c#(-17)g#, the second time the first note is omitted (bars 154-160, Ex. 15). The resulting tritone d-g# was also found in Varèse’s flute composition (bars 11-12, Ex. 13). The trumpet’s perfect fourth c#(-5)g# can be linked to the perfect fourth of the flute’s opening cell c#(+5)f# (Ex. 10). In a completely different context and very contrastingly, Varèse combines almost the same pitches in bars 26-30 (Ex. 16): c#, d and g# in bars 26-28, f# is accentuated afterwards. -M  ore general allusions concern the intense use of dynamic changes in both composers’ works.

Htpt

4 &4

157

n>œ # œ œ™ fff

pp

‰ nJœ ˙

& Œ

#œ nœ

#œ œ

œ

r #œ. ≈ ‰ Ó v pp sfffz #>œ ˙ œ #œ J > 3

mf 3

w

ppp

fff sub.

∑ œ™

‰ Ó pp

Ex. 15. Bild, 154-160.

Fl

+ + +. ++ + + + 3 j b>œ 4œ 5 œ 3 œ & 4 R ≈ ‰ Œ ‰ ‰ # œj J ‰ Œ # œ œ #>œ ‰ Œ 4 ‰ #œ Œ œ ‰ J Œ 4 > > > 3 mp mp mp p mp > > >œ # œ œ œ # œ œ 29 >œ #>œ ™ œ #œ ‰ #œ ≈ œ #œ ÆœJ œ œ 3 44 J &4 œ ff

Ex. 16. Varèse, Densité 21,5, 26-30.

ff

ff

3

86

Part I – Style

Putting a fall (almost) at the end of a composition is also a characteristic shared by Rihm and Varèse. The most intense falling end is found in Varèse’s Intégrales, where the brass instruments end with a great variety of descending intervals: tritone, octave plus augmented second, octave plus major sixth or augmented sixth, octave plus major seventh (Ex. 17). Moreover, the last chord is played “bells up” (pavillons en l’air).

Hn

Tpt

Trbn

Btrbn

° 5 &4 œ

œ

# œœ # 5 &4

œ œ

œ œ œ

œ ? 45 œ

œœ

œœ

?5 ¢ 4 #œ

œ

œ

Œ

Ó

U Œ

Œ

Ó

U Œ

sffff

Œ

Ó

U Œ

sffff

Œ

Ó

U Œ

pavillons en l'air

sff

œ >

pp

molto

sff

pp

molto

pp

molto

bœ #>œ œœ > sff œ >

sff

œ œ œ œœ œ

pp

˙

j ‰ œ

j bœ ‰ #œ sffff

˙ ˙

j œœ ‰

˙˙

j ‰ œ

˙

molto

sffff

Ex. 17. Varèse, Intégrales, final bars.

Comparable falls are found in Rihm’s Chiffre cycle: -C  hiffre III, bars 151-152, final bars (Ex. 18). Not only does the fall return; the whole final passage is marked by similarities. In both cases, an ascending movement is followed by a percussion intervention ending with a fall, which is in unison in Rihm’s case and quasihomorhythmical in Varèse’s.18

Eh

4 & 4 n˙

a tempo (q = 80)

n˙ >

ffff

3

˙ b˙ n˙

accelerando

-œ n˙ >

sfffz p



œ n˙ ™

n˙ ™ ffff

, j‰ œ.

p

Ex. 18. Chiffre III, 148-152. Eh, unison with some mutations by bcl, bn, hn, btpt, trbn, vc1, vc2, db.

3 – Musical Traces

87

-C  hiffre II, bars 231-234 opening the last section, 18 bars before the end of the piece (Ex. 19). Symmetry is combined with descending leaps. Fl Eh

4 & 4 nw p

j ‰ Œ nœwpp

Ó

n-˙

b˙-

3

> nœ- nœ sfz

˙

3

nw >

sfz pp

Ex. 19. Chiffre II, 231-234.

Opposite to the fall, both composers show a preference for fast ascending gestures. Furthermore, Varèse and Rihm share the predilection for percussion, more specifically for exceptional instruments, such as the anvil in Chiffre II, III and V and the lion’s roar in Chiffre III, VII and Bild. Varèse uses anvils in Ionisation and Hyperprism. The lion’s roar or tambour à cordes is found in Intégrales, Ionisation, Hyperprism, Amériques, Arcana and Offrandes. Both composers also share the bringing in of sudden pulsating rhythms, confirming the beat and metre, as opposed to the practice of composing free rhythm. Both show a preference for the lowest registers of bass instruments, for instance trombone or double bass.

Allusion to a Composition: Schubert’s Octet On the occasion of its first performance, Chiffre VI was performed together with Schubert’s Octet in F major, D 803. As explained at the beginning of this chapter, Rihm often makes use of such an occasion to work out allusions to his colleague’s work. Moreover, in Rihm’s compositions of the 1970s Schubert was prominent: Erscheinung, Skizze über Schubert and Ländler. More recently, Schubert reappears in the Ninth String Quartet (1992-93) with its subtitle reference Quartettsatz and in Rihm’s arrangement of Der Wanderer, D 489, dated 1997.19 One of the most striking and original moments of Schubert’s Octet is the beginning of the sixth movement, the finale: Andante molto – Allegro – Andante molto – Allegro molto. The opening Andante molto of only seventeen bars is full of modulations; it starts with a full bar tremolo in the cello solo (Ex. 20); the tremolo is continued until bar 14, alternating between

88

Part I – Style

°q? = 60 ææ poss. 4 ∑ Flzg Œ Bcl° r ≈‰ nw nææ>˙ ? 44 4∑ Œ n œ. r ≈ ‰ Bcl pp n n ˙ w ffff subito sfffz nvœ ^. > q = 60 j . pp Flzg poss. ?4 nœ ≈ ‰ sfffz Óv Cbn °? 4 r ≈‰Œ Ó ffff‰ææsubito #>œj ^ ¢‹ 4 4 ∑ Œ Bcl ? nsfffz œR. ≈ ‰ Ó ‰ Ór ≈ ‰ ≈‰Œ n w œ # œ n n ˙ w fff Cbn 4 r R .pp n œ. ¢‹ > > > > ffff nw œsfffz ffff subito fff sfffz sfffz v ^ >. ≈‰Œ ?ffff4> ≈‰Œ Ó sfffz nœŒ. ≈ ‰ ∑ Ó ‰r ≈ #œ‰j Ó Hn r Cbn 4 r R ¢ n œ . ≈ fff‰> ?‹ 44 n wœ.≈‰Œ Ó œ ∑ Œ Ó sfffz Hn r>v sfffz >. sfffz vr nœ. r ffff 4 ? n œ sfffz≈‰Œ Ó v ≈ ‰ Œ Ó . sfffz n œ Db r ‹? 44v sfffz Œ Ó v.rr ≈ ‰ Hn ? 4 4 n wr ≈‰Œ Ó œ ∑ Œ Ó ≈‰Œ Ó sfffznnœ.œ. ≈ ‰ . Db 4 r > > nffff œ. sfffz ‹ > v v non dim. sfffz n#O˙ œ. sfffz sfffz r °? 4n4w v ∑ Ó nœÓ ≈ ‰ Vn Œ 4> ∑ > r ≈‰Œ DbI & 4 n#Ó>O˙ ° ‹ 4 ffffn wnon dim. sfffz pp v. sfffz fff œ Ó ∑ ∑ Vn I & 4 > sfffz . >sfffz > 4 ffff non dim. pp n#∑O˙sfffz fff ∑ Vn II °& 4 4 ∑∑ Ó ∑ Vn I & 4 4 martellato ∑ ∑ ∑ pp Vn II & 4 sfffz fff 4 ∑ ∑ Œ Ó Va B 4 martellato 4 nœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ∑ ∑ Vn II & 4 ffff v v v v v v v v 4 ∑∑ ∑ sul p. Óord. martellato Œ Va B 4 r 4 ? K martellato n. œv œv≈œv œv‰ œv œv œv œv ® r nœ Vc n œ œ ffff nœ b œ n œ ¢B 44 ∑ ∑ n œ # œ n œ # œ n œ œœœ œ bœ v Œ Óv n œmartellato w ∑sul p. ord. Va v # œv v v n>œ v v v v v v v ®v Krn vœ v #>œ œ v v v n œnœœr œ≈œ œ‰œ œ œ ? 44 pp Vc ffff n œ œ v .v v v v v v v b œ n œ ffff subito ¢ 4 ∑ n œ n œ # œ w sul p.nœvord. n œv #martellato œv v #œv n>œ v v nœv v vœœœ v v œvK n vœ v #>œ œ v v b œv rv ? 44 ∑ n œ ≈ ‰ ® r pp Vc bœnœ œ nœ #œnœ . nœv nsubito ffff =¢ w œv # œv nœv #œv n>œ v v nœv v vœœœ v v œv n vœ v #>œ œ v v b œv v pp ffff subito = non vibr. lange = °4 U ? Ó Œ ‰ ≈ r nœ. ≈ Œ ‰ n-œ œ ∑ Bcl J nœ œ v non vibr. lange 4 > U Flzg. °? sfffz ppp Œ ‰ ≈ sfffz nsfffz œ. ≈ Œ U ‰ non n-œ lange œ ∑ vibr. r 4?Ó Bcl ∑ ∑ J U Cbn ° nœ œ æ v ¢‹? Ó ∑æ Œ ‰ ≈ >r nœ. ≈ Œ ‰ n-œ œ b w Bcl sfffz sfffz sfffz J ppp >Flzg. n œ œ v U ? > + ffff (non dim.) ∑ ∑ Cbn sfffz sfffz U Flzg.ææ ¢‹ ? U ‰ sfffzœ^.ppp ∑æb w Ó ≈Œ ∑ ∑ Hn Cbn R+ ¢‹ æffff> (non dim.) arco,b w sehr sfffz ^ U > « pizz. dichtes Tremolo ? ‰r ≈ ‰+^œ. U ∑∑ HnDb ? Œ≈Œ ffffæ ∑(non dim.) ÓÓ U R . ? ‹ Ó œsfffz ≈Œ ord.arco, ∑ ∑æ sehr Hn n œ‰ nw ^. nsul ^. pont. U pizz.v. «sfffz R Tremolo >O n >O b O O U b Oœ^. narco, Oœdichtes ffff (non dim.) n O O n ? sfffz b n nœ nœ Œdichtes∑sehræTremolo Ó #œ nœ nœ∑ œ Db ° pizz. Œ« r ≈ ‰ U R ≈ R ≈ R ≈ ‰ Œ ‰ Œ æ ‹ Vn I ? & ‰ Œ ∑ ≈ Ó Db n œr. nw sul pont. ord.æ 3 Uæ sfffz >3 p ‹ ppn On wffff (non dim.) bsfffz O^. sfffz n sfffz Oœ^.^ nnsul Oœ^^. pont. n œ. v sfffz ord. n#>Oœ npnOœsfffz bnOœ Oœ b œ n œ ^ n > . ° U ^ . . ord. vŒ sfffz sul pont. bO n Oœ ffff∑(non dim.) n#>>Oœ n >O bnOœ Oœ Vn I & nnROœO^.≈ nnROœO^. ≈ ‰ bnn OœœRR. ≈ Œ bn‰U O ° Œ ≈ Œ Rœ≈ sfffz Rœ ≈ ‰ Œ ‰ bœ3 ∑ # Oœ n3nœOœ n Oœ Oœ ##sfffz sfffz R VnIII & Œ Vn pp R R p sfffz p sfffz sfffz 3 3 sfffz sfffz 3 pp ^. ord. 3 p sfffz p sfffz pont. pp sfffz sul sfffz sfffz n O U sfffz p> sfffz p ^ ^ > . . b ord. U nn O^œ. OœObOœ ∑ sfffz b‰bU ##Oœ#>OnnOœn>OnnOœnO OœO ###OœO^.≈ sulOœO^. pont. ‰ R ≈ Œ Œ ≈ n œ Vn II & Œ œ b B ∑ ≈ ‰# Rœ‰ ≈ Rœ≈ ≈ ‰ # œŒ n œ n œ œ r ≈‰‰ R ≈ ‰Œ Œ VnVa II & Œ R sfffz R œ œ n œ œ œ œ sfffz n œv œv œv œv œv œv 3 n œv œv œv œv sfffz œv œv œv œv n œv œv œv œv œv œv œv œv œ. 33 3pp v v v v v v sfffz p sfffz pp 3 p v pp sfffz sfffz sfffz U ord. bO sfffz p sfffz p ^ ^sfffzUbbU ^ ? Ó≈ Oœ œ æ ∑ Œ ‰ nœ. ≈ ‰‰ œ. ≈ ‰ nsfffz œ. ≈Œ b Œ ‰ ‰‰ ≈ ≈‰ r VaVc B ¢ n œv œv ≈œv œv œv œv Œ n œv œv œv œv ‰ ‰ n ≈œ. œ.v œv n œvsulœv pont. œv œv Rœv œv œv œv‰ nRœv œv œv œv œv œv œv œvRrœ.≈‰ 3 n w∑>æ Va B n œv œv œv œv œv œv n œv œv œv œv œ œ n œ œ œ œ œv œv œv œv nsfffz œv œv œv œv œv œv œv œv sfffz œ. v 3 ppffff (non dim.) v v ord. v v v v v v sfffz v ^. Uppsehr dichtes ^. ^. sfffz ord.sfffz ? ^ ^.nœ U≈Œ Tremolo ^ Œ ‰ n œ ≈ ‰ œ ≈ ‰ ‰ Ó . ≈ ‰ œ. ≈ ‰ Vc ? Œ ‰ ‰ n œ n œ Ó ¢ ææn wææ R R R≈Œ Vc ¢ nnœœ. œœ. sul sul pont.R R R nw > (non dim.) pont. Ex. 21. Chiffre VI, 1-6. vv. vv. >ffff sfffz sfffz sfffz sfffz sfffz sfffz ffff (non dim.) sfffz q = 60

Flzg poss.

sfffz sfffz sfffz

sehr dichtes sehr dichtes Tremolo Tremolo

3 – Musical Traces

89

the cello and the group of violins and viola. With the return of the Andante molto for six bars (bars 370-375), the tremolos are also recalled for four bars. Schubert’s tremolo is peculiar by its dynamics: always changing from pp to f and back to p, with sudden contrasts from p to f, p to ff. The second Andante molto starts with ffp, followed by crescendos and diminuendos between p and ff. Such nervous changes in dynamics are also typical of Rihm.

Vn1-Vn2-Va Cl-Hn Vc

° b bc Andante molto Œ &b b Ó ? bb ¢ bbc

ææ ˙

pp

ææ ˙

Kr œœ œœ ™™™™ œœ ™ ‰ ≈ œ œ ™™ œ œ ™™ œœ f ææ ˙ f

Kr œœj ™ œœ œœ ™™™™ œœ œœj ≈ œ œ ™™ ‰ œœ œ œ ™™ œœ œœ p f p ææ ˙ p f

p

Ex. 20. Schubert, Octet, Finale, 1-2.

Rihm opens Chiffre VI in a comparable way: not with a tremolo, but with a low sustained note in the contra bassoon and the double bass (bar 1) and a rough timbre, with sul ponticello in the cello (bar 2) and Flatterzunge in the bass clarinet (bar 3). The tremolo is postponed until bar 6, where the timbre is again rough: a low full bar cluster bb-b-c with Flatterzunge in the contra bassoon and sehr dichtes Tremolo in double bass and cello, all ffff and non diminuendo (Ex. 21). The first melodic motif of Schubert’s introduction consists of dotted figures with descending-ascending major second steps, homorhythmic in parallel thirds in the clarinet, horn, bassoon, first and second violin and viola (bar 2 with anacrusis, Ex. 20; returning in bar 6). In bar 4 of Chiffre VI, Rihm alludes to this: harmonics in parallel thirds by the violins, although with one different interval: the descending major second is followed by an ascending minor second: f#(-2)e(+1)f§ instead of Schubert’s f(-2)eb(+2)f. There is no dotted rhythm in Chiffre VI but the middle note is very short. Rihm continues with a repeated note followed by an ascending minor second (only in the first violin), and rests in between (g(0)g(+1)ab, bars 4-5). In doing so, he refers to Schubert’s second melodic motif (bars 11-12, wind instruments, Ex. 22), which consists of a repeated note followed by an ascending second.

90

Cl Hn

Part I – Style

bb &b b c ‰

Kr nœœ œœ RÔ

≈™

nœœj ‰ J

pp

Œ

Kr ≈ ™ #nœœ œœ RÔ



j nœœ ‰ J

Œ

Ex. 22. Schubert, Octet, Finale, 11-12.

Vn1

œbœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœœœœœœœœœ bœbœ J ‰ ® œœ J ‰ c ® œ œ b & bœbœ œœ p

ff

ff

p

Ex. 23. Schubert, Octet, Finale, 371.

Cl

Vn1

Vn2

Va

Vc

4 &4 Ó

° 4 &4 & 44 B 44 ?4 ¢ 4

Œ

langsames qualvolles U w- Glissando

n>œ

Œ



∑ ≤ ≤ - -œ≤ n œ-≤ n -œ # -œ≤ n -œ , ord. b≤œ U ∑ ‰ Œ



U ∑

ord.



U ∑

ord.



U ∑

ord.

3

fff

&

&

ff

3

ff

3

ff

3

ff

3

≤ ≤ ≤ ≤ ≤- -≤ , n œ- -œ b œ- n -œ n œ # œ ≤ ≤ ≤ -≤ ≤ -≤ , #œ- -œ n -œ b œ n -œ n œ ≤ ≤ ≤ ≤ ≤- ≤ , nœ- -œ #-œ n -œ b œ n -œ

‰ Œ ‰ Œ ‰ Œ

Ex. 24. Chiffre VI, 81-83, final bars.

Vn1 Va

œ . & b C œœœœ œ œ œ . p

. œ œ .

. œ œ .

. œ œ .

. œ œ .

Ex. 25. Schubert, Octet, Finale, 367-369.

. œ œ .

. œ œ .

cresc.

bœ œ nœ œ œ œ œ œ bœ œ nœ nœ œ œ œ œ -

-

-

3 – Musical Traces

91

From the second to the final bar in the returning Andante molto, Schubert adds extremely fast ascending arpeggios ending on a repeated note in the first violin (bar 371, Ex. 23). Rihm gives the cello a kind of irregular broken chord ending on a repeated note in the first half of bar 3; it is immediately varied in the second half of the bar, continued this time by a much longer repeated note on the viola. Throughout the whole score, this combination of hectic movement ending on a repeated note returns several times on different instruments. Although the viola champions the repeated note, sometimes it is in the same instrument as the hectic movement. Rihm ends Chiffre VI with a slow and “painful” ascending glissando in the clarinet followed by a series of clusters in the string quartet, ascending by chromatic steps from g-bb to b-d (Ex. 24). This is his last “homage” allusion to Schubert who prepares for the return of the Andante molto with an ascending scale on the first violin, doubled an octave lower by the viola, including chromatic steps (Ex. 25). This is another example of Rihm’s preference for a surprising or unexpected ending to a composition: the allusion to Schubert and the “romantic” concept of ascending chromaticism in crescendo is indeed not the finishing of something but the creation of an expectation, towards an aim. While unfulfilled, this could literally be “an open ending”.

4

Fine Arts

M

any of Rihm’s compositions bear a title referring to the fine arts; to give some examples: Bild, eine Chiffre, part of the Chiffre cycle; Bildnis: Anakreon; Diptychon (2006-07); En plein air (2004/05), referring to plein-airism; Gebild; Nature Morte – Still Alive (1979-80); Ohne Titel, String Quartet no. 5; Ungemaltes Bild (1988-90); Gedicht des Malers (2014). The Über die Linie I-VIII series, research of the line, can be added, knowing that the linear is stressed in plural: “lines, lifelines and growth, or development from a germ cell”.1 Other titles refer to colours: Das Rot, Schwarzer und roter Tanz, a fragment from Tutuguri. Also there are subtitles related to arts, such as Schattenstück, a Tongemälde for orchestra (1982-84). Rihm’s fascination for fine arts is wide in range, from his admiration for masterpieces in museums, galleries and expositions to his attempts to consider a composition as a drawing or a painting. An important question is whether there is more than the classical inspiration by fine arts, more than the parallelism or the mirror of the experience of images in his music. Starting with the anecdotic, for instance, Rihm writes “Schnell mein Lieblingsphoto von Beuys” next to this photo in ausgesprochen, at the moment he is asking himself whether he can find a kind of expression that could sound as music instead of “composing music”. In a critical way and not without humour, at the end of his essay L’art pour l’art, Rihm quotes the painter Arnulf Rainer, the key inspiration for his overpainting technique: “Authentic art is verifiable by three categories: particular form and colour quality, radiating drawing delight and blooming phantasy.” This brings Rihm to the conclusion that composers were better off when they were occupying themselves with painting…2 Serious considerations on the relationship between music and painting are numerous, for instance when Rihm asks himself: “What happens when I mix colours when writing music, draw fine lines, sharpen contours, arrange surfaces and work out perspectives?”3 This composer is not looking 93

94

Part I – Style

for analogous possibilities in the transfer of painting on music: he is trying to overcome the simple and evident solutions, such as comparing a line in painting to a melodic line, a painted shape to a similar melodic shape. In fact, Rihm tries to find out how he can compose starting from an optical dimension, not from existing images, but from the Umsetzung or “implementation” of surfaces, of the strokes by the burin or the brush, an implementation touching all possibilities in the field of the musical texture. For Rihm, perspective gains a certain temporality; colour as timbre is essential, making the answer to the next question obvious: “What is colour in composing? Sauce or the main thing.”4 How does it work, how can it be done, from the optical to the aural?

The Music of Painting The literature and studies on the relations between music and visual arts have rarely used the approach chosen by Rihm. Mostly it is about visual artists who are inspired by music in their artworks and/or theoretical writings; these artists are looking for a pictorial analogy to music. Composers inspired by painting almost always refer to a kind of programme music, a composition with a painting reference in the title, for instance. When Peter Vergo describes Debussy and Feldman in his voluminous study The Music of Painting,5 his ideas are much more original and approach Rihm’s conception. Vergo says that Debussy is an example of a musician influenced by ideas about arts, more specifically by the notion of the visual arabesque. Debussy’s arabesque may be compared to Rihm’s notion of melody as a “line drawing in time” (Linienzeichnung in der Zeit). Both artists try to transpose an optical dimension into their musical world. And this is not the only parallel between Debussy and Rihm. The art critic Camille Mauclair compared Debussy to Monet in his Musique des couleurs: “... based not on a succession of themes but on the relative values of sounds themselves... It is Impressionism, which consists of sonorous spots.” This corresponds to Rihm’s concept of Farbe. In his programme note for the premiere of La Mer, the author (whose name remains unknown) refers to the “palette of sounds” wielded by Debussy; he saw the composer as a painter whose “deft brushstrokes combined all the gradations of rare and brilliant colours so as to capture the play of light and shade and the

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95

chiaroscuro of the endlessly changing seascape”. The subject was not the painting of the sea, but the play of light and shadow, of gradually changing colours in “deft brushstrokes”, which Rihm describes as Strich and Hieb. According to Vergo, Morton Feldman was one of the composers who looked for a more refined relation with visual arts. Feldman did not … believe that music should emulate painting or strive to attain similar goals. On the contrary, he believed music to be fundamentally different from painting and that there was no point in composers attempting to do the equivalent of what visual artists had done, since the painter ‘achieves mastery by allowing what he is doing to be itself ’.

As an example, Vergo explains how Feldman in Rothko Chapel did not seek to imitate or evoke the style of his friend Mark Rothko. In an essay about his composition, Feldman explained that he had written the work with the Rothko Chapel in Houston, the artist’s last project, specifically in mind. He also confirmed that his choice of instruments, especially their balance and timbre, had been affected by the architectural space of the chapel as well as by Rothko’s paintings displayed around the walls. But when it comes to analysing the music itself, the listener soon finds that other, equally important sources of inspiration have been at work.

Following Vergo, these other sources are, for example, a synagogue-like melody for solo viola and Feldman’s typical collage-like technique, inspired not by Rothko but by Robert Rauschenberg, especially by his photomontages. Nevertheless, it is my opinion that Feldman tried to get more inspiration from Rothko and the chapel than Vergo seems to want to admit. Not only was the instrumental choice inspired by the architectural space, but Feldman also searched for a pendant for the paintings in his music on different levels, as he explained in his essay on Rothko Chapel. Rothko’s imagery goes right to the edge of his canvas, and I wanted the same effect with the music – that it should permeate the whole octagonal-shaped room and not be heard from a certain distance. …

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The total rhythm of the paintings as Rothko arranged them created an unbroken continuity. While it was possible with the paintings to reiterate colour and scale and still retain dramatic interest, I felt that the music called for a series of highly contrasted merging sections. I envisaged an immobile procession not unlike the friezes on Greek temples.6

When Rihm thinks of painting, it is clear that Rothko’s colour field can be involved. Feldman’s immobile procession as a musical answer to Rothko could refer to the states or Zustände Rihm tries to create in music. However, it is my conviction that Rihm goes even further than his colleagues.

Fine Arts Parallels: Different Viewpoints Is Ohne Titel or “Untitled” the title of the Fifth String Quartet more than a clever word game? Ohne Titel is not an isolated case on Rihm’s work list. Comparable synonymous titles are the series Unbenannt (Unbenannt I-III, for orchestra, 1986, 1987 and 1989-1990, respectively, Unbenannt IV for organ, 2002-03/04) and Sine nomine (1985), a study for five brass instruments. For Dieter Rexroth, titles such as Ohne Titel, Unbenannt and Sine nomine leave everything open and make questioning possible, questions concerning the problematic unity between work and title, questions on the urge for reflection on the secret character of art, and questions on the understandability of the artwork.7 Ulrich Dibelius’s opinion is quite the opposite. According to him the addition of Ohne Titel denies and rules out all possible extra-musical references, all possible questions. “Untitled” deepens the concentration on the sound itself. As a matter of fact, Dibelius argues that this is completely analogous to painting: the refusal of a title implies that the painter is pressing for full concentration on the painting as such, on the artistic outcome, without a figurative, narrative or referential component, without the need for understandability. In his opinion, the same goes for Rihm’s “untitled” music compositions.8 Ulrich Mosch argues that Rihm’s visual experiences became sound in his music. To give a concrete example, Mosch refers to Rihm’s assertion that there was a lot of eavesdropping in connection with his friend the painter

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Kurt Kocherscheidt. In a more general way, Mosch explains how early in the 20th century painters, Kandinsky for instance, not only borrowed musical terminology for the titles of their works, but also built their theoretical framework on musical concepts, such as sound and image rhythm, and form polyphony. And now Mosch sees the opposite direction in Rihm’s viewpoints: a composer who talks about his own music and his compositional process in terms borrowed from the atmosphere of fine arts. Another interesting approach is the concept of the “haptic”, a term brought into the discussion more than once by Rihm himself. Mosch points out that musical material is directly manageable for Rihm. Sound has a physical or bodily dimension, is tangible and can be modelled or given shape. Sound is as haptic as the material of painting, and for Rihm it makes an integral approach thinkable and possible: musical thinking as Ganzheitlichkeit, nicht das Synthetische.9

Fine Arts Parallels: Rihm’s Viewpoints Rihm refers to fine arts not only in his essays, such as Musik – Malerei. … ungereimt, zur Kunst gedacht… or in his interviews, such as Varèse, Malerei und Schaffensprozeß,10 but also in short comments on his compositions and in general considerations. Fine arts really were the focus at the beginning of the 1980s: the essay and the interview mentioned above date from 1981, the year Ohne Titel, String Quartet no. 5, was begun. Concerning the Neue Wilden for instance, the contemporary movement of the German neo-expressionist painters in the 1970s, Rihm’s obsession with fine arts becomes clear in all its aspects. Trying to understand why his Third String Quartet, Im Innersten, had been reproached for being “fascist music” on the occasion of its first performance in Royan in 1977, Rihm compared himself to Georg Baselitz: it must have been a blame similar to the one put on painters such as Baselitz and Markus Lüpertz.11 The essay Musik vor Bildern (1990) was Rihm’s introduction for a concert programme including his String Quartets nos. 3, 5 and 8 in the Museum Ludwig in Cologne in a hall with paintings by Baselitz, Lüpertz, Kiefer, Penck and others.12 In 2012, on the occasion of Rihm’s sixtieth birthday, his home town of Karlsruhe organised not only concerts and other musical events, but also an exhibition entitled Zeitgegenstände – Wolfgang Rihm, showing

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artworks with outstanding importance for the composer. Among them were the neo-expressionists Baselitz, Lüpertz, next to Per Kirkeby, Kurt Kocherscheidt and Arnulf Rainer. Rihm took his inspiration from Markus Lüpertz in Figur (1989), from Per Kirkeby in Schattenstück, a Tongemälde for orchestra, from the expressionists Emil Nolde in Ungemaltes Bild and Max Beckmann in Versuchung (Hommage à Max Beckmann) (2008-09) and Der Maler träumt (2008-09), the last using Beckmann’s text On my Painting.13 In the violin concerto Gedicht des Malers, Rihm casts the bow of the violin player as the painter’s brush, creating a poem in music, a metaphor borrowed from Beckmann. This detour leads to a musical/painted portrait of the Belgian violinist Eugène Ysaÿe. Geste zu Vedova (2015, for string quartet) refers to the Italian painter Emilio Vedova, considered as one of the most crucial figures of the Arte Informale, the Informal Art movement. This title reveals that Rihm is still fascinated by the “informel” in art, as explained above in his thoughts about Adorno (see p. 69), and as will be further explored in the chapter on Harmony (see p. 161ff.). Another interesting source for Rihm’s vision on fine arts can be found in his correspondence with Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht, his former professor of musicology, who asked him for a definition of music. In his second attempt, Rihm writes: “Music is indeed maybe painting or architecture, in time, depending on one’s viewpoint. For me rather painting, but certainly in space, not restricted to one and the same surface.” And he continues more towards the physical aspects of setting notes on paper with pencil noise, again using the word “stroke”.14 A variant is found in Musik – Malerei. … ungereimt, zur Kunst gedacht…: “I hang around often, wanting to know (?) whether my music is not easily thinkable as image, in surface, as a sound-point-tower of music.”15 To Ohne Titel, String Quartet no. 5, the composer relates a whole series of pictorial terms: Dichte, Dichtegrade (density, degrees of density), Durchscheinungsgrade (degrees of transparency), Farbkörper (colour blocks, colour fields; literally: colour bodies), Fläche (surfaces, fields), Linie, Linienzeichnung, Strich, Hieb (line, line drawing, stripe, streak, stroke), Penetranz (sharpness), Übermalung (overpainting), Undurchdringlichkeit (impenetrability). Ohne Titel is clearly meant as painting in music: the line or Hieb (see Ex. 31, p. 104), the overpainting or Übermalung (see Ex. 32,

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p. 107) and the state or Zustand (see Ex. 33, p. 117) are more than once emphasised. After Ohne Titel Rihm rejected a few title references to fine arts. Ohne Titel II was rejected for the Sixth String Quartet; Zeichnungen, Seiten or “Drawings, pages” for the Eighth String Quartet. The latter was not simply rejected: it was “struck through, overpainted, hatched, shaded, blackened, scratched, etched”. Because of this, the handling of the title became the subject of the composition, which is about writing, putting signs on paper and refers to Roland Barthes in Bestirnen eines Textes (see p. 57). Viewed in the context of a “plural literary text”, the English translation is rather poor: “expanding the text”.16 In the Eighth Quartet the musicians have to write or draw on the paper with the tip of the bow, scores must be scratched, they have to shake the sheets and fumble them up, they have to destroy their sheets as if the composer was not satisfied with his result: “tear to pieces, shake and crush, throw to the ground”. The noise of the writing or drawing, the haptic contact of the pencil with the paper is introduced in the music. These concrete noises make the fine art parallel an undeniable fact, despite the rejected title. On the one hand, maybe the context of the relation to fine arts is dealing more with the composer’s private life, his feelings expressed in the writing of the words con amore by the quartet players, than with his fundamental dialogue with fine arts.17 On the other hand, the drawer with his pencil (or the painter with his brush as in Gedicht des Malers) parallels the way Rihm composes with pencil on paper: this is the subject here, including the physical act of destroying unsatisfactory trials by screwing up and tearing the paper and throwing it to the ground.

Line Drawing Where the Fifth String Quartet can easily be perceived as painting in music, the Sixth is more like drawing. “Drawn” are four figures, well defined and presented at the beginning: one could say that they are clearly drawn, distinguishable and delineated; therefore a parallel with drawing seems obvious. With its duration of 45 minutes, this quartet is indeed a “large drawing”. It stays a drawing while in many passages the four basic figures or line drawings are still recognisable.

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Part I – Style

In the opening bars the four contrasting figures are presented and immediately repeated, varied and developed in a great diversity. This happens in such a condensed manner that the term Fortspinnung is not out of place here: in bars 1-4, the opening figure of the first violin appears no fewer than thirteen times. The first figure is short, fast and rhythmic, based on seconds: bb(-2) ab(+1)a. It is immediately transformed in the following ways: rhythmic augmentation and diminution, transposition, inversion, changes in articulation, shortened to two notes, and growing together in a continuous chain (Ex. 26). This first figure has a clear identity; however, the slightest change in intervals, or the insertion of pitch a as second note, or the place change of the second and third notes causes a chromatic result: I define this as a “systemless consequence” typical of Rihm. It is indeed impossible for the analyst to identify each chromatic (double) step or longer chromatic series as derived from figure 1.

O™ ‰ #œ ™ #œ œ #œ n˙œ ™ ‰ bœ ‰ bœ bœ nœ b œ b b œ n œ . . . va J. vn1 b œ n œ n œ3 3 > pp pp 3 p 3 > 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 ‰ ‰ ‰ ‰ ‰ & ‰ b œ. b œ. n œ. œ. b œ. n œ. œ. b œ. n œ. œ. b œ. n œ. b œ. b œ. n œ. œ. b œ. n œ. œv b œ n œ v v

4 &4 Œ

vn1

3

vn2

sfz p

bœ bœ nœ >

fff

Ex. 26. String Quartet No. 6, Blaubuch, 1-4. Figure 1.

The second figure is presented simultaneously as melodic and harmonic or as broken and simultaneous chord (bar 2, Ex. 27). Melodically it is built on fast ascending leaps, using perfect fourth, tritone and perfect fifth: the overlapping double melodic presentation starts from different bass notes: c-f-b and f-b-f#, with f and b as common elements. Harmonically it results in the tritone-fifth triad c-f#-g, a “tritone-triad”, a type of chord typical of Rihm (see p. 165, 213). The triad will return immediately in the next bar (bar 3), transposed on e: e-bb-b.

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° 4Œ Vn2 Va & 4

?4 Vc ¢ 4‰

> n O nnn ˙O˙ ™™™ ™ . œ nœ sfz p



3



œ-.

œ J



œ 3

Ex. 27. String Quartet No. 6, Blaubuch, 2. Figure 2: double presentation: melodic and harmonic.

The third figure is also composed of ascending leaps. In its first appearances it is introduced by a longer or shorter bass note. Already in the first transformations this note disappears, which makes figure 3 closer to figure 2. The reason why I insist on considering it as a separate figure lies in the interval combination: figure 3 is less defined – meaning that the intervals are not fixed but rather appear as minor and major third, perfect and augmented fifth – than figure 2, which is always reducible to one and the same tritone-triad. As a result of third and fifth, the intervals of figure 3 always build a minor or major seventh. On the other hand, figure 3 is also more defined because it appears very often on the same bass note, pitch c. Figure 3 is presented in bar 3 and immediately varied in the following bars: a chain of semiquaver triplets in the viola, indeed mostly on pitch c. The variety in interval combinations is applied from the outset: minor third plus augmented fifth with major seventh, minor third plus perfect fifth with minor seventh and major third plus perfect fifth with major seventh (Ex. 28).

? 44

vc

nœ- ™

nœ bœ 3

sfz p

n œ.

. bœ. b œ n œ Œ n>œ ™

B

b œ^ n œ^ bœ^ nœ^ nœ^ nœ^

Ó™

va

ff

3

3

n œ^ ^ ^ œ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ nœ^ ^ n œ^ nœ^ n œ^ ^ ^ n œ^ nœ^ n œ^ nœ^ ^ ^ n œ^ nœ^ bœ nœ B bœ nœ nœ #œ œ œ nœ #œ œ bœ^

5

3

3

3

3

3

Ex. 28. String Quartet No. 6, Blaubuch, 3-5. Figure 3.

3

3

3

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Part I – Style

Figures 1, 2 and 3 are very short elements. By contrast, the fourth figure is presented in sustained notes, spread over four bars: an ascending line or scale fragment over a diminished fourth, b(+2)c#(+1)d(+1)eb, intertwined polyphonically with the three other developed figures. The notes of figure 4 are spread over the four instruments and cause a broken down-up line: b(-34)c#(+49)d(+1)eb (Ex. 29). The first transformation consists of a transposition a whole tone lower, combined with a chromatic extension (from a to f#). It also uses repeated instead of sustained notes and dyads with a minor or major seventh interval are formed. Here also, the “systemless consequence” or transformation into complete chromaticism is only one step away. Vn1 Vn2 Va

° 4 &4

4 ™ Vc & 4 Ó ¢

∑ nœ

Œ

nœ ™

œ

Œ

vn2 va

p

n>œ ™

vn1

?Œ ™

ff sffz p

> bw

> nw sffz p

j #œ ˙ > sffz p

Ó

sffz f



ff

Ex. 29. String Quartet No. 6, Blaubuch, 3-6. Figure 4.

In the 1980s Rihm discussed the concept of the “line” in a number of ways: two pitches always stay at the same distance or interval, while for lines this situation of parallelism is exceptional. In a more personal and enigmatic way he compared the space defined by simultaneous lines as a negative form of the line tension, with the envelope of a harmonised melody that is different from the melody as such.18 The melody-dominated homophony in the string quartets divides the quartet into a melodic first violin (and/or second violin) and the other instruments, not accompanying as such but having a highly contrasting part. The melodic violin is situated in the high or highest register and proceeds in long sustained notes, creating a line. On the one hand, the melodic character is diminished by the extremely long durations of the notes: the melodic unity fades away; on the other hand the melodic high violin seems to float or glide above the others (Ex. 30). In my opinion, this melodic treatment could reflect the following aspect in the paintings of Kurt Kocherscheidt: “The wonderful drift of the objects on the canvas or image surface.”19 Rihm adds that both single and gliding events

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are satisfying answers in his search for compositional means that function as opposed to the “avant-garde relation coercion”. Here he is referring to Klavierstück Nr. 6, Bagatellen, dedicated to Kocherscheidt, where lines with long sustained sounds are composed, which does not preclude their application to compositions of the 1980s, written shortly afterwards. In Bagatellen these floating lines are not always in a high register and the continuity of the line is opposed to the sound decay, unavoidable on a piano.

Vn1

#œ ° 4J &4

˙

œ J

sfz pp

4 &4 ≈ ^ nœ. B 44 nœ R

Vn2

Va

nœ n œ. v ≈

œ œ. v

sfz sempre

Vc

?4 ‰ ¢ 4

œ

° & 48

¢



nœ œ sfz sempre n œ œ v. v. nœ^. ≈ nœ ‰ R n œ^. sfz sempre nœ ≈ ≈ R

nœ^. ff

sffz

nœ ™

Ϫ

≈ ≈ œ œ ^œ. v. œR ≈ œ^. œ ‰ R

œ ‰ œ. v œ^. œ^. ≈ œ œ œ^. œ ≈ R

# œ # ˙ ™™ J

r œ ≈ œ. v

” n“œ ™

≈ œ œ ^œ. v. ‰ œ ≈ ^. ^. R œ œ ≈ œ œ ‰

œ ‰ œ. v œ^. ≈ œ R œ^. œ ≈ R

r œ ≈ œ. v



œ^. ≈ œR

nœ ™ nœ

p

r r r r r r r r r r r & ≈ nœ ‰ œ ≈≈ œ ‰ œ ≈≈ œ ‰ nœ ≈≈ œ ‰ œ ≈≈ œ ‰ œ ≈ ≈ œ œ. œ. œ. œ. œ. ^ œ. œ. œ. œ. n œ. n œ. v v v v v v v v v v v ^^ ^^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ . . . . œœ . . . . œœ .. nœ. œ. œ. œ. œ. œ. œ. œ. nœ. nœ. bœ^. nœ^. bœ^. œœ ≈ ≈ bœœ œœ B nœœ≈ ≈ œœ‰ œ ≈ ≈ œ ‰ œ ≈ ≈ œ ‰ nœ ≈ ≈ ‰ R R R R R ^ . nœ ^. ^. ^. ^. ^. ^. ^. ^. ^. ? ‰ nœR ≈ ≈nbœœR ‰ œœR ≈ ≈œœR ‰ œœR ≈ ≈nbœœR ‰ œœR ≈ ≈œœR ‰ œœR ≈ ≈ œœR ‰

Ex. 30. String Quartet no. 6, Blaubuch, 46-49.

In other situations, the line stays absolutely visual in the score. A much simpler transfer takes place when it is not the line itself, but the movement of drawing a line or the brush stroke (Hieb) in a rather fast and violent way,

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that is aimed at. This is mirrored in short and fast ascending melodic elements, whether repeated or not (Ex. 31). This kind of melodic element frequently returns and is found in almost each composition, also because of Rihm’s predilection for ascending melodies.

> #Oœ 4 Œ Vn1 & 4 æ

>. n œ. n œ. n>œ # œ. > n>œ n œ. n œ nœ#œ n œ œ. # œ Oœ b>œ nœ œ bœnœ > ≈‰ Œ bœ nœ œ ≈‰ ‰ nœ nœ ≈‰ æJ œ nœ 3 3 3 3

sul pont.

sfffz p

ff

ord.

sffz

3

p

pp

fff

3

3

(fff)

Ex. 31. Ohne Titel, String Quartet no. 5, 43-45.

Rihm claims that for his concept of implementation (Umsetzung), the art of Arnulf Rainer is always “near at hand”. This refers to his observation that a painter is always working directly on his object, confronted with his canvas or sheet near at hand, while the composer has to write down a code, the notation of music.20 Having his work near at hand could have been Rihm’s intention when he was working out his Notebook String Quartets: during their genesis he always kept his notebook with him in order to continue composing anywhere at any time, immediately writing down the final version.

Colour In a very simple way colour shades or tints in painting can be compared with timbre nuances in music. Rihm starts and ends the Fifth Quartet with shadings: pitch f#1 as a sustained single tone is doubled by the first violin and the viola in bar 1 and continues in the viola solo in bars 2-3. No longer isolated, the same pitch reappears in bar 4 in the second violin and the viola (together for only one quaver) and rhythmically sharply pronounced in the second violin in bars 4-5. At the end of the composition, the sustained pitch b is present in the cello from bar 579, in unison in all instruments in bar 583 and alternating with overlaps in bars 584-585. A variant in the pitch shading of f# is found in the opening bar of the Sixth Quartet: started in the cello, overtaken by the second violin and slightly accentuated by the viola.

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In another way, colour is particularly important for Rihm (in general, not only in these string quartets) because of the accumulation of articulations, such as accents, harmonics, tremolo, martellato, staccato, legato, sul ponticello, sul tasto, molto sul tasto, and especially because of articulations that shift sound into noise, such as for instance a very high note sfffz fff tremolo sul ponticello. Furthermore, I can relate colour as a musical texture element to the fine arts concepts of transparency, density and pastosity (impasto), but also to surface and layering.

Layering and Overpainting It is clear that Rihm has been inspired and influenced by Arnulf Rainer for his use of the Übermalung technique. However, there are remarkable differences between overpainting in fine arts and in music. Rainer’s technique is simple and evident: he takes a photo or a picture, mostly a portrait, and overpaints it with black or coloured brushstrokes, making the underlying portrait partly, almost or completely invisible. Whereas for Rainer overpainting always results in one specific overpainted artwork and never in a series of paintings where the different stages of the application of this technique can be considered, in Rihm’s concept overpainting becomes a typical postmodern way of art creation: reusing, resuming, rewriting the same material in the next composition, since its possibilities are not exhausted after the first artistic realisation. The result is a series of compositions based on the same material. Another important difference lies in the effect of overpainting. There are different degrees of overpainting by Rainer, from the mere addition to the complete blackening. Rihm does much more than just add some colour in his overpainting. For the composer Übermalung has become a wide range of different operations, such as added layers and insertions; in most cases leaving the original partly audible, excluding almost completely the covering of the original sound layer by the addition of new material with extremely loud dynamics.21 Rihm combines the term Schichtung (layering or stratification) with Grundierungen (first layers, ground layers) and with Übermalungen (overpaintings). Further referring to Arnulf Rainer, layering is also combined with density, impenetrability and sharpness, and with “hinter Schlagstrich­

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Part I – Style

gittern verborgene Vorgänge” or “events hidden by grid of slaps and lines”.22 This “grid” can make the underlying layers less visible, quasi or completely invisible; the “slaps” are aggressive brushstrokes. Different sound layers by different instruments are always covering each other in music, albeit in a more or less transparent way: it depends on the dynamics of each layer whether it stays audible or not. For Rihm, “layer” is not a neutral term; rather a layer is always defined by certain characteristics, where multilayered means that layers with different characteristics are stacked. Equally typical of Rihm are the quick changes of layering, the texture changes between homorhythmic and non-homorhythmic or polyrhythmic moments and the alteration between multi-layered moments and unison or monody. Where Rihm’s layering or complex texture application is closely related to visual arts, it treats the appearance and disappearance of layers, it deals with the moving from a layer from background to foreground and vice versa, which is translated by becoming audible, as fading to weakly audible, or as dominating with strong dynamics, accents and sforzandi, etc. Therefore layering also deals with both clearly and vaguely defined elements. A good example is the “enormous” difference between the use of the less defined tremolo and the prescribed fast demisemiquavers, where Rihm adds each time non tremolo (for instance: String Quartet no. 5, bar 113: a non tremolo moment in between long tremolos; bars 304-306: tremolo (va-vc) and non tremolo (vn1-2) at the same time). The term Übermalung appeared for the first time in Rihm’s comments on Tutuguri, composed in 1980-82, not emphasised, but in a list in brackets, without any definition or explanation: (I proceeded often as on image surfaces: density clusters, overpainted, signal, colour fight, attacking the material, sound strokes, free setting, line coercion, grids, plastic, haptic …)23

Surprisingly, no greater emphasis is given to the concept in Rihm’s comment on Ohne Titel, the Fifth String Quartet. Here again the term finds its place in a list: “[o]bjects drifting away from one another. Overpainting, torn surfaces.”24 In the Fifth Quartet, overpainting is literally composed (Ex. 32, showing some bars of a longer similar passage). It seems as if the scratching of both violins, ffff, covers the viola and the cello, which parts are partly inaudible, overpainted in music. As in an overpainted painting, where the

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underlying layer is no longer visible, here too the viola and cello parts have disappeared. Of course, this is an exceptional case, at odds with what Rihm claims to be different in music, where the underlying layers are generally still present and (partly) audible.25

Vn1

Vn2

nn ~w ° 4 ææ &4 ## ~w æ 4 &4 æ

4 &4



¢

? 44



&



B

¢&



?

Va

Vc

n~ 97 n w ° æ & ## ~w æ & æ

nn ~w ææ ## ~w ææ

^ ^ ^. b œ. œ. ≈nœ ≈ R Œ Ó

nn ~w ææ ## ~w ææ

pizz.



5

fff arco sul p.

nn ~w ææ ## ~w ææ n œ^.

sfffz

ŒÓ

pizz. .^ r≈Œ Ó ∑ & nœ Œ Ó #nœœ sfffz . sfffz v nn ~w nn ~w nn ~w ææ æ æ ## ~w ## ~w ## ~w ææ ææ ææ



arco sul p. 3

Œ ‰ nœbœ œ Ó . .. fff v v v ^. Œ ‰ nœJ Ó

(pizz.)

sfffz



Ó



Ó

nn ~w ææ ## ~w ææ

nn ~w ææ ## ~w ææ

nn ~w ææ ## ~w ææ

nn ~w ææ ## ~w ææ

















nn ~w æ ## ~w ææ

6 Œ ≈ nœ ≈ Œ nœj #œv œv œv Ó # œ œ v n œv v v v ^. #œ pizz. arco Œn ≈ ‰ Œ Ó # œœ. œœ. vv sfffz 3

sfffz

Ex. 32. Ohne Titel. String Quartet no. 5, bars 89-101. Both violins ffff from bar 85.

To be comprehensive and in spite of a certain presumption of Hineininterpretierung, I must add that Rihm argues that he acquired the technique of overpainting much earlier, together with the concept of work groups and cycles, already during his study with Huber, 1973-76. His way of improving what Huber indicated as weak moments in his study compositions was not to correct them, but to write a next work, “by fashioning their forms anew, ‘painting’ another layer on top of the existing one, inserting new sections, etc.” Different works, seeking for solutions for similar problems, were “added up to cycles”.26

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Part I – Style

Despite Rihm’s great interest in fine arts, in recent interviews he has been increasingly prone to adopt a terminology that is “musically correct”. More than once he has combined both terms, mentioning both “over­ painting” and “overwriting”.27 Another way of putting it: “[a]n existing text, notes, sounds – or a text-segment, a layer, one part – is confronted with an addition.”28 Here the German word Beschriftung is used, meaning a written addition to an existing score (or text). And Rihm even doubts whether his own introduction of Übermalung into music is appropriate: “’Overpainting’ – I am already using this expression as though it were a universally accepted term from music theory, although I doubt whether this is so –“.29 With the shift towards a more correct and accurate terminology, the field of semiotics comes into the picture as the rewriting and overwriting of existing texts is a matter of “intertextuality”. Scholars, such as Barbara Zuber in her analysis of the complex genesis of Jagden und Formen, refer to it as “the concept of intertextuality”, “intertextual work processes” and a “form building function of intertextual techniques”.30 On different occasions Rihm himself also affirms the terminology of intertextuality, adding the term “pre-text”, convinced of the unique possibilities music offers in that field.31 Adding the dimension of self-criticism to intertextuality, Rihm puts it as follows: “The way I deal with old material is consistent with the way I work: I criticise and comment on my own music with my own music.”32 Rihm extends the terminology to “multiple overpainting”, similar to multi-layered intertextuality: how an added layer in turn becomes the subject of overwriting, how an added layer can be withdrawn, and how the result of an overwritten original musical text can be overwritten a second time. He concludes that the result is “a kind of self-generation, autopoiesis”.33 Reinhold Brinkmann confirms Rihm’s self-analysis in coining the terms “composed self-reflection” (komponierte Selbstreflexion) and “authorial self-confrontation” (auktoriale Selbstbegegnung). He also generalises in a postmodern way and considers Rihm’s reflection on history as an aspect of intertextuality, defined as the “inevitable communication of all works with each other”. According to Brinkmann, due to its reflection on history, a work of art escapes the misunderstanding that art can only be unreflective subjectivity. He praises the quality of intertextuality as it is able to avoid the pure quotation, which he condemns as being “too direct, unilinear and unpoetical”.34

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It is my conviction that there is a certain contradiction between the overpainting technique and the notebook process. In a certain way, the notebook process or the immediate writing down of the composition in its final version rules out the possibility of overwriting. Overpainting or overwriting can only happen afterwards, after a first layer was finished. In the case of the Notebook Quartets, there is only one layer, “all at once”. Therefore, the scratching example given above (Ex. 32), the ideal fulfilling of the need to find an example of overpainting is not what it seems to be. The scratching of the violins, the sounds of the viola and the cello, the silences of the latter, interpreted as a covered layer: all this had to be created as one layer, at once by the composer. In my opinion, while this layer consists of two very different textures plus silence, it could be meant to evoke overpainting and the listener is free to accept or interpret it as such. Another consequence: all examples of overpainting become hypothetical and are subjected to the interpretation of the performers. However, if overpainting can make something almost disappear, I can still propose the following techniques as musical equivalents of overpainting, with examples found in the Fifth Quartet: - B  ars 27-28: simultaneous fff, p and pp The simultaneity of strong and soft dynamics makes the loud ones cover the soft ones, which will be partly audible or entirely inaudible. - B  ars 144-148: all fff, texture of three against one (vn1) While the first violin has a sustained very high pitch e4, the others play semiquavers in triplets, many double stops, all marcato. The risk that they will partially or totally cover the first violin is not inconceivable. The risk diminishes when the first violin changes its rhythm to quavers in bar 148. - B  ars 159-167: fast tremolo semiquavers create a melodic element in viola and cello. The tremolo makes the rhythm unsharp and causes a blurred melodic line. The melodic element is “overpainted” by the tremolo. - B  ars 1-4: appearing and reappearing pitch f# Knowing that the act of listening is based on memory, one could argue that the unison sound opening the quartet, absent and reappearing in the next bars, is overpainted in the absent moments.

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Large Drawing The “total shape” or Gesamtgestalt is what Rihm calls the drawing or Zeichnung. This could refer to the way the painter works: when he is working on a detail in a specific part of a large drawing or painting, he regularly moves back to look at the result and to judge it in relation to the whole work. It is not so easy to imagine that the composer could work in such a way, because he has to proceed in time: the parallelism can only be valid if I consider that, at a certain moment (not to say at any moment), the composer is not only aware of what he wrote before (the already notated) but already knows what will follow afterwards (the not yet notated). This is part of what I earlier described as the “looking back” technique (see p. 43). To find an analogy for the looking back technique, it is easier to turn to the reception of the artwork, to consider the spectator of fine arts. He can indeed overlook a drawing or painting as a whole, from a certain distance, and then step closer to zoom in on a certain detail. This action in time defines how we “read” a painting, with actions such as coming closer, looking at details, overlooking the whole work again, zooming in on another detail, comparing the details, and zooming out again. This means that, through time, the spectator creates his own structure in the painting, together with the presented, inherent or immanent structure of the painting as such, as defined by the artist. The overall structure of a piece of music, conceived by the composer, can be compared with the latter approach; the structure as a result once the composition is finished. Planned beforehand or not, the result is “structured sound”. The former, the spectator-structure of the work as it is created during his observation of the artwork, is exactly what Rihm aims at as a composer (I explicitly have to exclude the listener here): to create the form or the work during the compositional process, without any preparation or planning beforehand. On the other hand, Rihm is aware that it is impossible to escape from form and form-structuring principles. I could argue that he found a solution to reconcile both in the creation of a “pictorial” structure, reflected in “exposition” and “continuation”, a possible analytical approach to both Notebook Quartets. For the Sixth Quartet, the four figures given above (see Ex. 26 p. 100; Ex. 27 p. 101; Ex. 28 p. 101; Ex. 29, p. 102) form the start of the presentation or exposition phase, followed by the continuation or elaboration of the same

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figures. In the Fifth Quartet, the basic material is presented in a different way, not as figures, but as short elements or “states”, whether or not returning during the presentation phase (bars 1-59) and elaborated later in the score. They consist of (1) the ascending and descending line, (2) harmonics, (3) homorhythm, (4) repetition and tremolo, (5) a solo, (6) an isolated element, (7) a sustained element and finally (8) a calmo passage. The exposition with the presentation of the main elements can be viewed now as the global look at the whole of the composition: many elements appear in a very brief form, but all the important elements are there. After the exposition, the “zooming” starts, where the elements of the presentation are developed, multiplied or brought in in augmentation, in one word, where they receive a closer look. Where those elements appear over and over again, within a shorter or longer period, more or less transformed, I can explain this now as repeatedly “zooming” into details of a picture. Here Rihm really found a musical mirror for the way the spectator looks at a painting, using the time or duration of the “observation” and the changes of position through time as a guide. The most eye-catching zoomings in both Notebook Quartets are literal and varied repetition over a long period, phrases in a slower tempo built up with maintained sustained sounds, isolated sounds and long silences, whether or not interrupted by a few sounds. Even the stretto and voice exchange techniques can find a place in this list. However, because music develops through time, it is unavoidable that the composer remains in charge: only he decides on events such as the duration of each zooming action or the order of the different zoomings. The listener is not actively involved; moreover, he cannot be involved without the application of certain aleatoric possibilities.

Kurt Kocherscheidt The Austrian painter Kurt Kocherscheidt was Rihm’s close friend from 1973 until his death in 1992. They became acquainted just after Kocherscheidt’s return from a ten-month trip through South America, considered an “initiation” and provoking a definite turn in his work. The painter was so impressed by the Amazon rainforest that he returned there in 1976. As mentioned above, Rihm is not interested in extra-European art. He seems more influenced by the unrelatedness of the objects in

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Kocherscheidt’s paintings, which can be identified with one of Rihm’s characteristics: the composition as a sequence of unrelated fragments, in one word: his technique of fragmentation.35 With this understanding, I can relate Rihm’s utterance “Objects drifting away one from another”, commenting on his Fifth String Quartet, to Kocherscheidt.36 Rihm used these words in 1983: Auseinanderdriftende Objekte; almost twenty years later, his opinion and vocabulary have not changed: eine wunderbare Drift der Objekte auf der Bildfläche, as quoted above, referring to Klavierstück Nr. 6, Bagatellen and applied by me to a passage of the Sixth String Quartet (see p. 103 and Ex. 30 p. 103). Rihm dedicated no fewer than seven compositions to Kocherscheidt: Klavierstück Nr. 6, Bagatellen and Kolchis (1991) during his life; Pol – Kolchis – Nucleus (1996), Blick auf Kolchis (2002) after Kocherscheidt’s death and three in memoriam pieces: Dritte Musik für Violine und Orchester (1993), In Frage (in memoriam) and Frage (in memoriam II) (both 1999-2000). Kocherscheidt also dedicated works to Rihm: the drawing Klavierküste III (1975, Rihm thanked him with Klavierstück Nr. 6, Bagatellen) and Kolchis. It is surprising that in Brustrauschen, the interesting study on the relationship between Rihm and Kocherscheidt, nothing is found about the latter’s ethnic influences and interests. Next to “nature” as rough material in both, it seems to me that the authors wanted to overemphasise the abstract element in Kocherscheidt, in order to find as many similarities as possible with Rihm’s absolute or abstract musical aesthetic. In the world of fine arts however, Kocherscheidt is understood as being under the influence of ethnic art. On the occasion of a retrospective in 2013, the artist was characterised as follows: the influence of his travels through South America is very important, because there he found inspiration in “archaic rituals”, in masks and discs that would become recurring objects in his work.37 Despite the ethnic outlook of Kocherscheidt’s wooden sculpture The Boys from Kolchis, the title is related to ancient Greece and mythology. But with his music Kolchis, Rihm himself does not enter into these particularities; he only comments on the importance of the material, the wood. In that way, he stays faithful to his refusal to deal with art originating from cultures other than the Western.38 Even when he uses Asian, African and LatinAmerican percussion instruments, as in his opera Oedipus (1986-87) for instance, the way he composes is not influenced by the choice of the

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instruments.39 The choice of these instruments is clearly and exclusively based on their typical sound and timbre. Wolfgang Rihm is a Europecentered person, not interested in “tourist culture”, which often results in precious objects hanging on the wall.40 Commenting on Dritte Musik, Rihm states that he did a lot of eavesdropping (viel ablauschte) of his friend Kocherscheidt: the painting Schwarze Schönheit was constantly in his mind. In this specific case, Ulrich Mosch believes that it is possible to relate characteristics of both works: darkness in colours, mostly black, can be identified with dark timbres, with rough sounds and with solid forms or Geschlossenheit der Formen, as explained in Zur Rolle bildnerischen Vorstellungen im musikalischen Denken und Komponieren Wolfgang Rihms.41

The Sound of Wood Rihm’s treatment of the sound of the woodblock, the typical Holzklang, is very subtle. He explains that he only really imagined what the significance of the “wood sound” in his music was the moment his composition Kolchis was performed in front of Kocherscheidt’s wooden sculpture The Boys from Kolchis (1991).42 One of the percussion instruments in Kolchis is indeed a high woodblock. The Boys from Kolchis is a wooden sculpture, consisting of four standing parts, an imperfect ellipse each, topped by a horizontal beam, the whole painted deep red, a kind of oxblood colour. It resembles a row of discs or shields, together forming a closed gate. The atmosphere and look are definitely ethnic. In many compositions Rihm uses percussion, from the normal 1 or 2 sometimes up to 5, 6 or even 8 and 10 percussionists, with one or more woodblocks. His use of only low woodblocks, as it is the case in the Seventh Quartet with three low woodblocks or Chiffre III with one low woodblock, is exceptional. In most cases high and low woodblocks are used together, as in the Chiffre cycle. Chiffre II, Silence to be Beaten uses 3 woodblocks, high, middle, low; Chiffre V: 2 woodblocks, high and very low; Bild: 2 woodblocks, high and low; Chiffre VII: 4 woodblocks, very high, high, low and very low; Nach-Schrift: 2 woodblocks, very high and low. In his most famous percussion piece, Tutuguri VI, Kreuze for 6 percussionists, Rihm makes use of only one low woodblock. Stück (1988-89) is a short piece for 3

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percussionists: bongo, suspended cymbal and one woodblock. In SKOTEINÓS, Heraklit-Fragmente for 3 male voices and 3 trombones, each singer accompanies himself with a percussion instrument: high bongo (tenor), crotale (baritone) and high woodblock (bass). In Nachtwach (198788) for 8 solo voices, mixed choir, 4 trombones and woodblock, the conductor has to play the woodblock at the very end of the composition, as a hard short noise in contrast to the sustained chords of the singers and the trombones. Much more striking is the solo for woodblock near the end of In-Schrift (1995) for orchestra, embedded in a long percussion passage with drums. The specific attention given to the woodblock seems to be a kind of “composer’s signature”: in the recent Concerto “Séraphin” (2006-08) for 16 players (2 percussionists), the woodblock also appears at the very end of the composition. It is described as “an elating experience: the entry of an impossibly high, plain horn duet flowering into flutter-tonguing and finished with woodblock.”43 In the Seventh String Quartet, Veränderungen, the addition of three low woodblocks for the violins and viola players is not a percussion timbre opposed to the string sound, but clearly an expansion of the timbral possibilities of the strings towards noise-like and percussion-like timbres. Short “hard” and “harsh” string sounds lead “fluently” to the woodblocks, such as pizzicato sfffz combined with staccato and marcato (bar 12, violin 1), Bartók-pizzicato detailed in the same way (bar 102, viola), strings mit Bogenspitze geschlagen (bar 83, violin 1, viola, cello), short arco notes sul ponticello am Frosch (bar 79, violin 2) or arco col legno (bar 98, violin 1). The score opens with one hard woodblock stroke and many phrases begin in the same way, with a short harsh sound as an imitation of the woodblock (for instance bars 12, 101, 136). This list could give the false impression that the woodblocks are used only in a hard and aggressive way. Nothing is less true, as there are also pianissimo woodblock strokes: the woodblock solo passage must be interpreted pp and tenuto, the last being more an intentionality than reality with durations of four to six beats per stroke in a moderate tempo (bars 362-372).

5

Repetition

I

n the previous chapters, the phenomenon of “repetition” and the related “return” or delayed repetition have already been mentioned several times. Rihm opposes obsessively recurring moments and frequent repetitions with the concept of “single event” (see Ex. 1, p. 39; see p. 40).1 “A struggle spreads out; its endlessly seeming repetitions are brought to a climax by accelerating tempo and sharpened timbres.”2 In this way Rihm comments on the moment in his ensemble piece Kalt (1989-91) where the oboe and the English horn have to start a “fight” based on one repeated pitch. Moreover, Rihm’s comment reveals that a repetition passage can be “evolving”, while the unchanged repetition rather creates a “stasis” moment. A typology of Rihm’s use of repetition consists of the following categories: (1) repetition to create a state, (2) repetition as a way of questioning, (3) repetition as “writer’s block”, (4) repetition as a unique event, (5) repetition generating elements, repetition related to a generative pole. Since these categories are partially overlapping, they can be grouped as follows: categories 1, 2 and 3 are focused on repetition of one sound, one chord or one short element. Categories 4 and 5 concern repetition of a (longer musical element. Categories 1, 4 and 5 oppose repetition versus non-repetition. The most important category will be the last one, where the shift of repetition to the generating of elements takes place: certain material is no longer “repeated” literally: it returns with few/some/many changes. The reappearance is different because of the unlimited possibilities a generative pole offers to the composer: generating elements becomes more interesting than repetition.

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Create a State by (non-)Repetition In his commentary on the work Kolchis, inspired by the artwork of Kurt Kocherscheidt, described in the previous chapter, Rihm writes: Nothing occurs twice. Identity exists only as flow. Even in music nothing repeats itself. Time is the greatest enemy of repetition. It has already passed by the time something similar starts to be the same.3

The impossibility of repetition is typical of Rihm’s paradoxes. In the previous chapter on fine arts the concept of “state” or Zustand was found in both the Fifth and Sixth String Quartets. Also in the context of the Chiffre cycle, Rihm stresses the importance of the “state”: “A stage in my constantly interrupted, constantly resumed search for music as a state. Music as a state of music.”4 Whether by using repetition or by other means, such as sustained sounds over a long period, to create a state implies a particular relation to time, as alluded to by Rihm in the quotations above. It also becomes very clear that Zustand cannot be understood as “standstill”, but as “state”. “State” excludes the necessity of evolution, the returning concept of climax building, tension increasing and decreasing, of presentation and development or elaboration: essentially, of traditional processes in music. A composition becomes a state, or rather a succession of different states, where the duration of each state is very flexible and easy to “compose”, meaning here to be “defined in time”. Each passage, section, phrase or moment of a composition can become a “state”. Rihm can define the time lapse of each “state” in a very flexible way. Returning to the combination of state and repetition: small changes in a state built on quasi-repeated elements ask for a change in the manner of listening, for the giving of attention to the nuances of the “inner sound”. (compare Ex. 1 with Ex. 30, Ex. 33, Ex. 34 and Ex. 35). And one step further: by creating a real standstill or stasis, all attention goes to the inner sound-life.

5 – Repetition

Vn1

Vn2

Va

Vc

° 4 &4

4 &4 B 44

117 trem. nn O˙ nn ~w æ æ

O˙ ## O˙

sfffz

##Oœ^ Oœ^ Oœ^ Oœ^ O˙ ™™ æ

fff

sfffz fff

## ~w ææ

44 nnOœ^. >Oœ >Oœ Oœ Oœ^ Oœ^ O˙ & ¢ æ fff

fff

nn ~w ° æ & 477

Vn1

O˙ ææ

trem.

## ~w æ &

3

nn ~w æ

## ~w æ

nn ~w æ

nn~wæ

## ~w æ

Va

Vc

B ¢&

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - subito sffffz ppp







- - - - - - - - - - - - - - subito sffffz pppp







- - - - - - - - - - - - - - subito sffffz ppp

nn ~w æ

## ~w ææ



- - - - - - - - - - - - - - subito sffffz ppp

Vn2

nn ~w æ

nn ~w æ

## ~w ææ





## ~w æ

pppp





pppp



nn ~w æ

nn ~w æ

## ~w ææ

## ~w ææ

diminuendo - - - - - - - - - - - - -



pppp



## ~w ææ



nn ~w æ

## ~w æ

nn ~w æ

diminuendo - - - - - - - - - - - - -













diminuendo - - - - - - - - - - - - -

diminuendo - - - - - - - - - - - - -

non . .trem. . . nn Oœ Oœ Oœ Oœ O˙™™ æ





















non . .trem. . . ## Oœ Oœ Oœ Oœ O˙ ™™ æ ord

ord

pppp

sempre ppp ritardando - - - - - - -

q = 60 ritardando - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

° & ‘













& ‘













B ‘













¢& ‘













485

Vn1

Vn2

Va

Vc

Ex. 33. Ohne Titel. String Quartet no. 5, 470-492.

. . . . . . nn Oœ Oœ Oœ Oœ Oœ Oœ

. . . . . . ## Oœ Oœ Oœ Oœ Oœ Oœ . . . . . . ## Oœ Oœ Oœ Oœ Oœ Oœ

j n#œœ ˙˙ pppp

j œ ˙ nbœ ˙ pppp

j nœ ˙ #œ ˙ pppp

j nnœO. œO. œO. œO. œO. œO. ?nœ ˙ pppp

118

Pf

Part I – Style

^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ nbœœ. œœ. œœ. œœ. œœ. œœ. œœ. œœ. œœ. œœ. œœ. œœ. œœ. œœ. œœ. œœ. 4 &4 fff Snare drum

Perc

4 ° ¢ / 4 œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ ‰ Œ Ó pp

ff

97 q = 56 accel.





&





q = 56 accel.

¢/ {

q = 80

&

°/

Pf

rit. - - - - - - - - - - -



ì&

100



q = 80

Œ



Ó



p

pp

mf

pp

j œœœœœœ œ ‰



Œ





sub. e = 92 pp



‰ Œ

p

Ó

fff

pp

fff



n œ. œ. œ. œ. œ. œ. œ. œ. œ. œ. “p ‘ æ ˙æ Ó

fff

q = 92





rit. - - - - - - - (q = 48) accel. - - - - - - - - -

‰ œœœœœœœœ‰

pp liegende Metalplatte



rit. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - fff

p



Ex. 34. Chiffre V, 93-103.

4 nœ ≈nœ Vn1 & 4 æ nœ# œ œ œ bœbœ œ# œ œ œ œ bœbœnœ# œ # œ œ œ bœbœ æR # œ œ œ b>œbœ. . .v v . n œ œ n œ œ > v v v > n œv œv > vv v v v > vv v v > v v > vv v ord. 6

6

6

6

6

Ex. 35. Ohne Titel, String Quartet no. 5, 204-205.

Repetition as Questioning Within the framework of postmodernism, to recall the music from the past can be considered as questioning the past, as looking for its actual meaning. The search of what remains from the original meaning of a musical phenomenon of the past can happen by extreme concentration on that element. This implies the repetition of this element over a long time. This

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119

can explain the series of repeated rolls on four bass drums, opening the orchestral work Sub-Kontur (1974-75), the repeated timpani strokes at the beginning of Dis-Kontur or the continuous short crescendos on repeated string chords in the first bars of Nature Morte – Still Alive. To this end, Rihm removes the phenomenon from its original context, as a topic of the romantic symphonic world, and places it in his own composition, excessively emphasised through obsessive repetition. I demonstrated already in the previous chapter how this “zooming” process is borrowed from fine arts. The phenomenon of repetition turns from confirmation into its opposite: repetition becomes an element of questioning.

Repetition as Writer’s Block An exclusively personal approach to repetition is embedded in the act of composing. When Rihm gets blocked, not knowing how to continue, he reacts in a very personal way. He is not waiting in silence to find a solution, but repeats the crucial “blocking” element obsessively, until the “way out” of the “labyrinth” is found. Usually, the actual reason is that I’m trying to find out how to proceed when I’ve come to an impasse in the composing process. I am not the type of artist who erases any traces of emergence; quite the contrary. The insistence on and the search for a way out are embodied, specifically, in the sound and the sound description. These moments are not removed from the score to be replaced by the finished version, or the way out, or the solution to the problem.5

For Rihm, this kind of writer’s block repetition deals with energy and expressivity: Such [a moment] intensifies itself; it remains suspended, time and again, remains suspended yet again, even deeper ... it also loses energy ... Suddenly, however, the suspension and lingering becomes an expressive value in itself: a physical gesture of the trembling, the vibrating of the music, the whole musical body quivers.6

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Part I – Style

Repetition as Unique Event Repeated passages are so exceptional in Rihm’s music that they can be considered as “unique events” or Einzelereignisse. Only in two compositions of the Chiffre cycle does he compose repeated passages: twice in Chiffre III: respectively 15 bars (bars 89-103) and 28 bars (bars 125-152, the end of the piece), and in Bild (eine Chiffre), where two bars are repeated (bars 119-120).

Repetition versus Generating Elements “Generating elements” of a “generative pole” can be considered as the replacement of “repetition” by Rihm. Due to his endless imagination, the elaboration of a generated element is obvious and has priority over repetition. This was already largely elaborated in chapter 1: the unexhausted material can continue to generate elements until the composer decides that it shall come to an end. The aspect of repetition is restricted to the recognisability of the original generative pole in the generated elements, which does not mean that complete metamorphosis should be excluded.

Repetition in the Context of Style Different from the immediate repetition of a sound or a figure and also different from musical elements returning in different pieces as generated elements is the concept of “repetition” as returning concepts, gestures or elaborations, leading to a recognisable style. On Bálint András Varga’s question “How far can one speak of a personal style and where does selfrepetition start?” Rihm replied in 1982: I question the very notion of personal style: in my view, ‘personal’ is the antithesis of ‘style’. ‘Style’ – it is something artificial, it is a trademark. ‘Personal’ – it is surging, it is freedom, at least it ought to be. In any case, you cannot coerce anyone to be individual – least of all an artist. ... Self-repetition is basically the same thing as style. It excludes the personal – something which in music we can still only characterise through sound.7

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121

To establish a style is not Rihm’s purpose. The avoidance of self-repetition is a tool to prevent the possible establishment of a recognisable style. Further exploration of the unknown could be considered as an enlargement of the idea of the generative pole and generated elements. The composer sees himself as a generator of new musical creations, without the need to repeat himself.

6

Nature and Proportions

M

ore between the lines than explicitly, Rihm’s predilection for nature as a metaphor appears in a variety of ways: in nature, the “logic” of the coherence (an apparently essential requirement for music) is replaced by the “urge” of the plant to grow, to grow wild, to emerge on the surface in unexpected, unpredictable and unforeseeable places. As mentioned before in relation to Fortspinnung (see p. 79) Rihm’s preferred example is the mushroom, visible on the surface, while the mycelium, the whole linking network of threads or rhizome, stays invisible under the ground.1 He looks for places where growth is possible – his “appetite for language” urges him to opt for neologisms, such as Fühlerwuchs or “growth feeling” –, aware of the difficult relationship between nature and system, something he expresses as Die Konvulsion vom Organischen zum Mechanischen or “the convulsion of the organic into the mechanical” in the context of Chiffre V for instance. Another neologism is Gestaltwuchs or “figure growth”, introduced by Rihm in his comment on Ohne Titel, String Quartet no. 5. One of the first entries of the term “growth” is found in Rihm’s important early essay Der geschockte Komponist, when he states that “musical order” often obeys the character of laws of nature and that the total organisation of a musical piece is experienced as Wildwuchs or “wild growth”. Until today, the composer repeats his obsession with growth, connected to “the dynamic”, “the energy” and “the flow”, daring to define music as follows in 2012: “… what I believe that music really is: a free form of growth, an image of human-possible processes of growth forms.”2

Rhizome Since Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari published Rhizome in 1976, which became the opening chapter of Mille Plateaux in 1980, many artists have

123

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shown their interest in the rhizome philosophy and the possible applications of rhizome structure to art. This concept has been of great value in rethinking music and musical processes, which was described by Edward Campbell in 2013 in his book Music after Deleuze. Campbell not only refers to Aperghis, Boulez, Dusapin, Goebbels, Grisey, Lachenmann (and many others), but also to jazz improvisation, twentieth-century micro-tonality and experimental pop music. However, Rihm is not mentioned in Campbell’s study.3 On the other hand, Rihm does not once refer to Deleuze in ausgesprochen. Daniel Ender relates Rihm’s “overpainting” technique to the Deleuzian philosophy of “proliferation” (Wucherung, prolifération), a possible consequence of the rhizome concept.4 Ulrich Dibelius thinks that the rhizome is at the base of returning opening pitch f# in the Fifth, Sixth and Seventh String Quartet. First, he excludes that three times could be by chance. Than he looks for Rihm’s reason to start three quartets with the same pitch and points out that the same f# also plays an important role in the string quartet Zwischenblick: “Selbsthenker!”, albeit not as opening pitch. For Dibelius the importance of f# is explained by Rihm himself: it is the central tone, the middle of the whole ambitus of the string quartet and therefore it formed a suitable starting point or base. With a nod to one of Rihm’s preferred metaphors, the rhizome or mycelium and the mushrooms, Dibelius describes how the three quartets with the shared f# are comparable to plants with a common root.5 I stressed the fact that Rihm does not feel any relation to the ethnic aspects in the artworks of his friend Kurt Kocherscheidt. Now, I can refine this statement, confirming that Rihm certainly has a connection with the natural aspects of Kocherscheidt’s ethnical orientation.

Proportions in Nature Proliferation and wild growth, Wucherung and Wildwuchs, could be the easy connectable consequences of the composition method without preplanning, preparation or sketching beforehand. Rihm stresses the growth potential of each figure, of each musical element he composes. But the growth in nature or natural growth is not completely chaotic, is absolutely not without any internal kind of order. The invisible mycelium is responsible

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for the result, the visible and audible “fruits” of the composition. The mycelium creates the invisible coherence. The mycelium as Fortspinnung must be responsible for the growth. Perhaps this kind of growth can be defined as “unclear order”, as order and disorder at once, or as coherence and the negation of it on a higher level, with a higher complexity and therefore not recognised as “natural beauty”. Natural beauty stands as a “model” for universal beauty. Natural beauty is based on proportions: on symmetry, on balance and on the golden section. This is not a “mental leap” or a too fast jumping to conclusions. In my opinion, the fact that proportional data are found in Rihm’s music results from this basic natural and universal concept of beauty. Moreover, intuition and proportion can go hand in hand. Rihm is able to keep a lot of data in his memory without feeling the need to write it down on paper, which means without “preplanning”. While he is a hard worker, his “métier” – a preferred term in his personal vocabulary – makes his intuition “sharp”. A composer with such an experience or métier knows by heart and without preplanning where the golden section and the middle will be located and how to deal with Fibonacci numbers when he thinks about a new composition, about the total duration and the average tempo of it, even before putting the first note on the paper. It is more interesting to discuss how these special and single moments, the proportional locations, are defined and when they are not applied to this intuitionproportion-métier context.

Symmetry and Balance Rihm considers symmetry as a kind of play: … often I play with symmetry. Indeed, it has a lot to do with playing. I start dividing a unit and then dividing further in unequal parts, bigger and smaller. Then, I start to hide the smaller parts in the bigger ones.6

This quotation does not refer to a particular composition, but using “often” (manchmal) is an indication of a repeated technique. Indeed, the “looking backwards” technique and the remembrance of what is already written in the “planning while composing” can cause much more than “coherence” (see p. 42). The assignment of a pivotal function to a place in a score can cause symmetrical placement of elements; the pivot could even be in the

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middle of the composition. Referring to Dunkles Spiel for four percussionists and ensemble (1988-90) Rihm relates that he had to lay the score aside for a year before finding what could be “a longer passage in the middle, where almost nothing happens”. He further explains that this finding brought “the solution for the continuation of the composition”.7 Although this is not explicitly said, the quotation above clearly implies that, at a certain moment, Rihm makes a decision about the composition’s middle or middle section. Such a decision, obviously taken during the composition’s process and not beforehand, has its consequences. Making a decision about the middle implies a decision about the entire length and duration of the composition, or more specifically about the length of what is still to be worked out. For instance, the emphasis given to the middle of a work can provoke possibilities for symmetrical elaboration and proportioned elements. That the middle of a composition is given special attention is also stated in other analyses. To restrict these to one example: Papachristopoulos describes “almost the middle” of Ins Offene… (1990, first version; 1990/92, second version) as a climactic moment, as the moment where the metric clarity dominates, as the middle of a bow form development, and therefore even as the moment “aimed at” from the beginning of the piece with augmenting density, dynamics and tempo, growing hectic, enlarging orchestra, one by one increasing and intensifying elements.8 By combining the preference for symmetry with the hiding and playing element mentioned in the quotation above, the search for symmetry and hidden symmetry is not easy to undertake for the analyst. Smaller or larger degrees of divergence can make the symmetry less apparent. The possibility to find what Rihm calls “hidden symmetry” really depends on the degree of “hiddenness”. Only very tentative presumptions or hypotheses can result from the analysis. The analyst has to accept that his result will never be perfect symmetry, but rather “almost” or “nearly”, with a certain margin of error, a margin of tolerance or with slight differences as “part of the game”. This was already the case in the composition sketch analysed in Ex. 2 (see p. 47). Alluding to Hanslick’s definition of music as tönend bewegte Form or “sounding moving form”, in an interview Rihm is questioned about tönend bewegte Ordnung or “sounding moving order”. Aware of the classical identification of order with symmetry, Rihm warns in his answer for an

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order that is “immobilised” or “blocked” and cannot longer be “moved” or bewegt. For him, the term bewegt is the most important in the allusion to Hanslick’s definition as he concludes that “a moving order is an order brought into disorder” and that “music is able to dissolve order, to confront the order with a counterpart”.9 Using completely different arguments than playing and hiding, Rihm explains here that symmetry becomes interesting only when it is “order with the ability of moving”; in other words, provided that the symmetry is imperfect and not aimed at as a perfect stasis. Again for Rihm, two opposites, order and disorder, do not exclude each other when it comes to structural purposes or more precisely symmetry. For all these reasons, symmetry should always be considered in relation to balance. The term “balanced symmetry” can be defined as the result of what Rihm explains in the quotation at the beginning of this paragraph: (1) a game with symmetrical elements that are partly hidden; deduced from the second quotation; (2) imperfect symmetry with elements that are different but in balance; (3) balanced symmetry can be a “moving” or “flexible” symmetry, compounded with almost equal or clearly dissimilar elements. The introduction of the concept of “balanced symmetry” can be helpful in the search for hidden and flexible symmetry. A long sustained note can be “symmetrically balanced” to a repeated pitch in a regular or even irregular fast rhythm. A melodic element can be balanced with a transposition, combined with different dynamics and articulation. Indeed, elements of balanced symmetry can have a completely different expression and content, even resulting in the “balance of opposites”, the “balance of contrasts”, which brings me to the title of one of Rihm’s interviews: Der Taumel der Gegensätze im Gleichgewicht or The Vertigo of Oppositions in Balance.10 In his analysis of Rihm’s Fourth String Quartet (1980-81) and the composition Über die Linie for violoncello solo (1999), two compositions separated by nearly two decades, Gerhard Winkler twice finds a huge number of different symmetrical elements: he lists mirror symmetries (Spiegelsymmetrien), disturbed symmetries, and symmetries with insertions accentuating the middle of the symmetrical element. Consequently, he asks the question whether symmetry could be a structural characteristic of Rihm’s music. He is looking forward to a thorough research on this topic,

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while as to his knowledge Rihm has not given much comment on the use of such structuring models. Therefore, Winkler insists on the necessity of leaving behind Rihm’s own “traces” or indications in his texts and start analysing with independent insights. At the same time, he is aware that Rihm on the one hand very often applies “quasi work models” (quasi Arbeitsmodelle), which are indeed analysable, but on the other hand breaks off and takes down these models or “drops” them once their potential is exhausted in a certain compositional context.11

Proportions in Music The quotation at the beginning of the previous paragraph about “playing with symmetry” was borrowed from Blumröder’s conversation with Wolfgang Rihm, dated 2002. It must be remarked that Blumröder’s question was in fact not on symmetry, but on the use of “mathematic proportions”. Searching for adequate analytical methods to apply to Rihm’s music, his statement was in fact: “Knowing that your music is first of all not designed by sketches by means of mathematical proportions, it makes no sense to choose that kind of structural analytical approach.”12 Mathematical proportions are typical of Karlheinz Stockhausen, Rihm’s composition teacher in Cologne in 1972-73. As quoted earlier, in an interview from 2006 with members of the Ensemble Sospeso, Rihm confirmed this as an influence: “Stockhausen had taught me the significance of intuition and, above all, a sure sense of duration and proportion.”13 Of course, Rihm mentioned Stockhausen and his sense of proportions earlier in interviews, as in 1979 for instance: “I received different impulses from Stockhausen. … But thinking in terms of ‘process’ and ‘moment’ is very important for me. … More than anyone else, Stockhausen has developed the sense for proportions and durations.”14 While Rihm suggests his attention for proportions and his awareness of its importance in general, he never mentions or alludes to specific proportions, such as the golden section and the Fibonacci series in his texts or interviews. Besides Papachristopoulos and Winkler, other scholars also dealt with it. According to the Dutch composer Edward Top, who participated in workshops with Rihm and published an analysis of Rihm’s Third String Quartet, Im Innersten, the fifth and penultimate movement of

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this quartet “appears to be at the Golden Section point in the composition.”15 How Wolf Frobenius analyses Sub-Kontur will be explained in the next chapter. Richard McGregor does mention both proportions in his in-depth analyses of the Fourth String Quartet and Chiffre I.16

7

Studying Proportions

P

roportions belonged to the daily practice of serial and post-serial composers. For Rihm, studying with Stockhausen certainly implied a (renewed) confrontation with a rational proportional outline and development of music, based on the Formelkomposition, the Ausgangsformel and the Superformel. Despite Rihm distancing himself from the ideology and the content of the messages spread by Stockhausen from the early 1970s on, he underlined the importance of his teacher’s sound organisation principles and did not hide his admiration for “the multitude out of the single, the unity of micro and macro structure”. On the occasion of Stockhausen’s fiftieth birthday in 1978, Rihm began his laudation zooming in on “proportion” in all kinds of meaning in connection with Stockhausen’s personality.1 Rihm makes a distinction between intuitive and unconscious use of proportions on the one hand and intended proportions on the other. It also becomes immediately clear that he is not applying proportions in a vigorous or consequent and logical way, matching his non-system based viewpoint. Part of a composition can be organised by strict proportions, while in another part proportions can be looser, and again in another part the same kind of proportions can be completely absent. For the analyst, proportions can only be based on objective musical data, such as lengths in bars or number of bars and particular events structuring the score, since they happen at a specific moment, such as the middle of the score or the location of the golden section. The study of the sketch (see Ex. 2, p. 47) made clear that it is necessary to take a certain freedom in analysing Rihm’s music. However, for proportions, results can only be accepted convincingly and satisfactorily with a very restricted tolerance or counting in a minimal margin of error. While Rihm’s scores are rather hectic in many passages, a lot of events take place over a short time. It is not unthinkable that the analyst tries too hard to find something 131

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that makes his presumed proposition work. It is necessary to stay as object­ ive as possible and to avoid all results which are not based on “hard” data. An interesting question is whether the proportions found in lengths in bars coincide with the timing of the recordings of Rihm’s compositions. To be able to have an idea of it, I compared the timing of the middle bar of some compositions, which exist in more than one recording (Table 1). The result is rather satisfactory: even with a relatively great difference in total duration, the moments of the middle of the pieces are more or less coinciding. This means that my analysis of proportions based on lengths in bars, leaving timing out, is acceptable. Composition Chiffre I

Performer musikFabrik, Asbury Klangforum, Cambreling Chiffre II musikFabrik, Asbury Klangforum, Cambreling Chiffre IV musikFabrik, Asbury ensemble recherche String Quartet no. 5 Arditti String Quartet Minguet Quartett String Quartet no. 8 Arditti String Quartet Minguet Quartett

Duration Middle Bar 9:31 4:41 8:51 4:19 13:10 6:53 12:50 6:36 8:46 4:22 10:20 5:15 25:52 12:52 29:58 15:12 15:03 7:58 15:15 7:46

% 49.2 48.8 52.3 51.4 49.8 50.8 49.7 50.7 52.9 50.9

Table 1. Timing comparison. Percentages in the right column indicate the duration of the first half relative to the total duration (of 100%); in other words, the place of middle, which must be around 50%.

Dis-Kontur, Sub-Kontur and Klavierstück Nr. 4 Composing in an intuitive way does neither exclude the “accidental genesis” of proportions, nor their conscious application later on. In that sense, the proportion 5:7:2:9 was generated unintentionally during the compositional process of Dis-Kontur and later on applied to other compositions. In the intuitive, almost automatic notation of the beginning of the work, I found persevering proportions. I let them then become binding for the whole piece. The at first only rhythmically pronounced proportion 5:7:2:9 was spread over other parameters.2

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Rihm does not give more details on how this proportion was further elaborated. The rhythmical proportion is presented by the solo of the big hammer in units of crotchets and rests in the opening bars: the first sound is followed by four beats rest, what makes a duration of 5 crotchets, the second by six beats rest (7), the third by only one beat rest (2) and the fourth by eight beats rest (9) (Ex. 36).

Big hammer

^. 5 / 44 œ Œ Ó sfffz

^. Œ œÓ sfffz

7



^. 2 ^. œŒ œŒ

sfffz sfffz

9



^. Œ Ó [ œ]

sfffz

Ex. 36. Dis-Kontur, 1-6.

The members of the proportion are extrapolated from number of beats to numbers of bars with a total of 5 + 7 + 2 + 9 = 23 bars. The first and second units of 23 bars (bars 1-46) are set for percussion solo. In the third unit (bars 47-69) the other instrumental groups are added one by one, playing mostly repeated and sustained sounds, meanwhile the order within the proportion is changed into 7:2:5:9 (Table 2). Proportion Bar 1-23 5 1-5 7 6-12 13 2 14-15 9 15-23 23-46 5

23-28

7

29-30 31-36 36-38 38-46 47-70 47-53 54-55 56-60 61-70

2 9 7 2 5 9

Comment Unit 1 big hammer bass drum, big hammer interpolated G.P. bass drum, big hammer timpani, bass drum, big hammer Unit 2 timpani, 2 bass drums, big hammer, 2 tomtoms starting on bar 23/2 instead of 24 interpolated G.P. timpani, bass drum and big hammer timpani timpani, bass drum, big hammer Unit 3 harps, percussion, strings percussion, strings woodwinds, percussion, strings woodwinds, brass, strings (no percussion) 10 bars

Table 2. Dis-Kontur, 1-70. Elaboration proportion 5:7:2:9.

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Once all instrumental groups are introduced, the music starts to move in a hectic way by crossing, ascending and descending movements in fast rhythms (bar 71 ff.). From this moment on, the end of a unit and the approaching beginning of the next one are announced by a musical “event”: a change in time signature and/or tempo. Just before the start of the fourth unit, the time signature changes to 5/4 for one bar (bar 67). The ending of the following unit (bars 70-92) is suddenly much faster, with one bar 5/8 (bar 84) and an accelerando (bars 85-89), falling back to the original tempo of q = 60 (bar 90), followed by another time signature change: 5/4 for two bars (bars 91-92). This next unit (bars 93-115) is characterised by unstable tempo and time signature, respecting the same proportion of numbers of bars. Analysing the units at the beginning of Dis-Kontur, I find a series of proportion characteristics or principles. This series forms the beginning of a proportion typology: - O  ne of the proportion members functions as factor. - The number of all the members of the proportion series, the total or number of bars, functions as a formal unit. - Th  e order of the proportion members may be changed. - Th  e proportions are used with some flexibility, such as prolongations and interpolations. - Th  e duration of the reference member (defined as 1) can be augmented, for instance from one beat to four or one bar, which will be described as “wider” and “narrower” in the paragraph below. - Th  e groups of bars to which the ratio is applied are clearly distinguished by changing musical content; musical elements can function as announcement for the division into units. - The proportion can be applied to different parameters. This last characteristic makes the proportion less “visible” at the surface. Dis-Kontur does not seem to be an isolated case, as I will illustrate by shortly commenting on Paraphrase, Klavierstück Nr. 4 (1974), and Sub-Kontur. Paraphrase (1972-73, for cello, piano and percussion) holds a special place because it was composed mostly during his period of study with Stockhausen: Rihm reports on “the free choice of system coercion”.

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Paraphrase is “a freely conceived serial composition” based on “always wider and narrower shaped proportions” (immer weiter oder enger geformte Proportionen). While this comment was written seven years later, in 1979, he adds that “nowadays” he “emanates from freer premises” than at the time of Stockhausen-like exercises.3 This enlarges the typology started above: - The ratios may be applied rather loosely. Quoting Rihm’s comment on Klavierstück Nr. 4, yet another characteristic can be added: In April 1974, in the middle of my work on Dis-Kontur for large orchestra, I composed Klavierstück Nr. 4. With the following effect: the piano piece copies the basic proportion 5:7:2:9 from the orchestral piece. As is the case in the latter, here also this proportion forms the starting point – source, not standard – for rhythm (duration), melody, harmonic and formal developments.4

- The same proportion series can be the subject of different compositions. Rihm adds that the proportions are applied “in a terse way” (gedrängt) and without excessive elaborations in Klavierstück Nr. 4. A last principle, related to Rihm’s fundamental claim of freedom as a composer, is added here: - Th  e proportion is only a starting point, a source, without becoming a norm or rule. In other words, proportions can be applied in a very strict “mathematically correct” way, but also approximated or rather loose. As early as 1981, in his analysis of the orchestral work Sub-Kontur, Wolf Frobenius already pointed out Rihm’s use of proportions. He declared this to be a Stockhausen influence. Inclined towards an explanation inspired by Stockhausen’s chromatic tempo scale, Frobenius explains how the tempi of Sub-Kontur, indicated by metronome numbers, are based on the proportion 10:9 combined with 2:1. To obtain his results he has to take into account too many exceptions compared to the clear and simple ratio worked out by Rihm in Dis-Kontur. Moreover, Frobenius adds that the real tempo of the

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music lies more in the duration of the notes than in the metronome numbers: an incontestable fact that makes it even more difficult to interpret proportions in Rihm’s works. He concludes that the tempo disposition of Sub-Kontur is without precedent in Rihm’s oeuvre and that, in contrast, other structural components are worked out by traditional means.5

Schwebende Begegnung With great exception Rihm reveals some details of his compositional methods. In the two volumes of ausgesprochen, this happens in the most exhaustive way in his description of the orchestral work Schwebende Begegnung (1988-89). The composition was written during the period of close relationship with Luigi Nono, whose post-serial technique of developing pitch series is recognisable when Rihm explains how nine pitches are presented at the beginning of the piece, organised into small cells closing with fermatas (in kleine Einheiten, die durch Fermaten von einander getrennt sind).6 What Rihm does not mention is the fact that the fermatas are found in bars 2, 7, 10 and 18, the length of the cells defining as 2, 5, 3 and 8 bars, respectively. Without exception, these are the opening figures of the Fibonacci series, but also larger Fibonacci numbers (13, 21, 34, 55, 89) function as indicators of striking events in Schwebende Begegnung: fermata in bar 33 (starting a new passage in the next Fibonacci bar 34) and “unique” repetition of two bars (bars 54-55). Bar 89 puts an end to a chorale-like melody in the string instruments, started eight bars earlier. Part of the introduction of the nine pitches is the descending scale fragment b-a-g-f in semiquavers in the harp in bar 13.7 Not all Fibonacci numbers have the same weight regarding musical content or structural function: the only remarkable fact about bar 21 for instance is its function as final bar, putting an end to the presentation of the series of short cells. It is not before bars 98 and 100 that the still missing pitches of the chromatic scale are introduced, pitch c and, as a dyad, pitches d and e, respectively. This takes place 32 bars before the end of the piece (counting 129 bars) or exactly one quarter from the end. The end of the first quarter of the piece is also clearly indicated and coincides exactly with the fermata of bar 33 mentioned above. The middle of the piece, bars 64‑65, is marked

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by a timbral change: the introduction of the membranophones. Up to this point no membranophones had been heard, except for two notes on the bongos, exactly at one quarter of the piece, again in bar 33. The bongos are also the only percussion present at three quarters, in bars 97-98. Related to the Fibonacci series is the application of the golden section (129 x 0.618 = bars 79-80): from bar 81 on harmonics and a sustained chord announce the already mentioned chorale-like melody. By the alternations of time signatures another clear proportion is revealed: 72 bars 4/4 (bars 1-72) are followed by 16 bars of 6/4 (bars 73-88), whereafter the return to 4/4 for 36 bars (bars 89-124) leads to the concluding 5 bars of 5/4 (bars 125-129). Counting in beats instead of bars the figures of the proportion become 288:96:144:25. With the minimal margin of error of one beat for the last term, 24 (25 – 1 = 24) should fit better in the series: the proportion of 288:96:144:24 being exactly 12:4:6:1. Striking musical characteristics mark the breaking points of the proportions and therefore function as structural demarcations. It is important to stress the fact that both characteristics are independent of each other: not all musical striking events are structural markers at the same time. To give an example of Schwebende Begegnung (Ex. 37): in the repeated Fibonacci bars 54-55, the cellos and double basses continue the previous musical element, a ricochet col legno note. Wind instruments repeat the previous chord, before a staccatissimo repeated note together with the harp: this musical element will catch the attention, it is even a unique event in the whole piece, although it is without structural impact, being placed in the course of a musical phrase (the new phrase starts in bar 52 after the general pause of bar 51). The proportion typology started above can now be extended as follows: - P  roportion series can be based on Fibonacci numbers. Fibonacci series can function for structural purposes. - P  roportions can be based on the golden section. - P  roportion series over a whole composition divide the score in equal parts, which can be expressed by symmetry, by 1:1 measuring the length of the units, or by the ratio 1:2:3:4, making use of the bar numbers.

138

Picc

Cl

Hn

Tpt

Perc 1

Part I – Style

° ‹4 &4

Œ nb#bœœœœ



Ó



Ó



Ó

n +œ Œ nnn œœœ

4 ¢& 4



Ó

Œ





4 &4 ‹ 4 &4





4 ¢& 4 °? 4 4 ° 4 &4

Perc 2

Perc 3

4 &4

G.P.



ppp

# nœœ Œ # œ

ppp

Ó





4 ¢& 4





Hp

4 &4



Pf

4 &4



Perc 4

Perc 5

Vc

Db

° 4 &4 ¢

? 44

∑ ∑

Œ

Ó

œœœ

Œ

Ó

œœœœ

Œ

Ó

Œ

Ó

ppp

bbb œœœ

ppp

Œ

œœœœ

n œ. R ≈ ‰ p secco

œœœ

Ó

Œ

Ó

Œ

nœ ™ œ ≈ J ppp

Œ

r r œ. ≈ ‰ ‰ œ. ≈ Ó v v

Ó

sfz

sfz

æj n>œ

j ‰ ‰ œæ >

Ó

Œ

Ó

Œ

sul la tavola

ricochet

mf ricochet

n>œ æJ

mf

mf

>œ ‰ ‰ æJ

mf



Œ

‰ nœj

ppp

‰ nœj

œ J ‰ Œ

ppp

∑ nœ

ppp

j œ ‰ Œ ‰

r nœ. ≈ ‰ Ó æj n>œ mf

mf

n>œ æJ

mf

o j Œ n œ l.v. > mp marc.

ord.

‰ Ó

‰ Ó

7 – Studying Proportions

° ‹ ™ b b œ™ & ™ n # œœœ ™™ 54

Picc

n œ™ ™ ## œœ ™ ¢& ™ ppp

Cl

p

°? ™nnnnœœœœo ™™™ ™ ppp

Hn

Tpt

Perc 1

Perc 2

Perc 3

Perc 4

Perc 5

Hp

Pf

Vc

™ ¢& ™

p

& ™™

™ ¢& ™

staccatissimo! , œœœœ. . . . . . . . . . . . ‰ 3 3 3 3 œœœ. . . . . . . . . . . . , ‰ 3

ppp

bbb œœœ ™™

3

Ó

j œ ‰ Œ

Ó

Ó

Œ

Ó

Œ

Ó

Œ

l.v.

& ™™ & ™™

Ó

secco sffz

° ™ æj ‰ Œ & ™ n>œ

ricochet col legno

sffz ricochet col legno

n>œ æJ ‰ Œ sffz

3

. nnnnœœœœ

3

sffz

Œ

3

Œ Ó

.j nœç ‰ mp

( >) bœ œ , J Œ ‰ ppp ( >) beim 2. Mal: ff , bœ œ Œ

ppp ( ) beim 2. Mal: ff

. nnnnœœœœ sffz

Ó Ó

Ex. 37. Schwebende Begegnung, 51-55.

™™



, nnbœœ. . . . . . . . . . . . ‰ staccatissimo

™™



3

secco p

^. sul la tavola n n œœ n n œœ ‰ J Œ

? ™ Db ¢ ™

3

3

™™



+. +. +. +. b#nnœœœœ ≈ œœœœ ≈ œœœœ ≈ œœœœ ≈ ‰ R R R R

p ° ™ ppp & ™ œ nœ Œ

& ™™ ‹ & ™™

139

> bœ

. nnnnœœœœ J

œ

ppp beim 2. Mal: ff

sffz

nnœœ pp



Œ œœ Œ Œ

o o

œ >œ > mf

n>œ æJ ‰ sffz

sffz

ppp

Πl.v.

Ó

™™ ™™

Ó

æj nœ ‰ > sffz

3 ppp ^. Œ nœçj ‰ nœj ™™

Ó

(ord.)

Œ

‰ nœj ™™

Œ

Ó

Œ ‰

™™



o

œ > mp

™™ ™™ ™™

Ó

™™

Ó

™™

140

Part I – Style

- P  roportion indicators can belong to diverse musical parameters; to put it the other way around: all kind of musical elements can be involved in the proportional demarcations. - D  ifferent kinds of proportions can function in one and the same composition.

String Quartet no. 4 In turn, the structural basis of the second movement Con moto, allegro of Rihm’s Fourth String Quartet, is formed by the Fibonacci series and further by combining Fibonacci numbers such as 34 + 13 = 47. According to Richard McGregor, there is a certain parallelism with the structure of the first movement, also based on the Fibonacci series.8 In the first half, bar numbers 13, 34 and 55 are marked by a particular event. Once past bar 55, Fibonacci numbers are no longer found. This shows again how Rihm does not consequently apply a system, or how a system can be used only momentarily.

Proportion Typology In the previous paragraphs, the study of the proportions applied to different compositions resulted in a proportion typology. One of the critical elements in this typology is the fact that different kinds of proportion can function in one and the same composition. This raises the question whether it makes sense to mix proportional possibilities in one and the same artwork. An answer to that question can be found in different mixed applications of the most important proportion “laws”: the application of symmetry and the golden section. Both symmetry or quasi-symmetry and golden section are found in a mixed way in nature. The human body combines symmetry with golden section: symmetry is more horizontal or left and right, for instance in both limbs and in the human face in both eyes, ears, nostrils etc., while single elements such as the mouth and the nose are placed in the middle or central, forming an axis for symmetrical elements. In turn, in the human body the golden section is found in a vertical way, in proportions within each limb, for instance the length of the forearm compared to the upper arm. The same double proportion of symmetry and golden section is

7 – Studying Proportions

141

present in objects made by men, such as architecture and painting, or, to give a musical example, the way the violin is built. The next step is the mixture of both in music composition itself. A master example is the first movement of Béla Bartók’s Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta. Bartók applies the Fibonacci series to the treatment of the fugue theme: 55 bars (bars 1-55) with the original theme followed by 34 bars (bars 56-89) with its inversion. This formal elaboration is combined with timbre applications, for instance from bar 34 on the strings play senza sordino. Next to the golden section or Fibonacci numbers applied here, the middle of the movement (bar 44) is indicated by a compact polyphonic moment where the fugue theme is presented on eb, the tritone pole of the original and first presentation on pitch a. As in nature and in objects, Bartók’s example clearly shows that different proportional modes can be applied to one and the same composition. However, there is one restriction, in fact an important difference between the two proportional modes. While the Fibonacci series is clearly applied in a proportional way, the indication of the middle of the piece does not automatically give rise to symmetrical elements, either in the accentuation of places symmetrical with respect to the middle of the score or in the elaboration of phrases or periods of equal duration. The final step is the combination of the golden section with the axis of the middle of a piece. Applying the golden section in both ways (short-long versus long-short or 0.618 versus 0.382), two places symmetrical to the central axis are revealed.

PART II Analysis

8

Integrated Approach

I

n most cases, classical methods of analysis are characterised by the isolation of parameters, which are to be considered one by one, next to the division of a score into entities defined by an emphasised parameter (such as the presentation of a melodic theme or a moment of polyphonic development). Priority is always given to the same parameter(s) in the foreground: the melodic element in the first place, the harmonic and tonal aspects as second, whereas rhythm and certainly dynamics and timbre are mostly considered as secondary or subordinate to pitch qualities and pitch treatment. For Rihm’s works, however, an integrated approach is definitely the most fruitful method of analysis, “glued” to the composer’s techniques.

Sound as a Whole Rihm’s basic technique is the immediate design of each sound as individuality and complete entity at the same time. There is no sequentiality starting with the choice of a pitch, continuing for instance with the addition of articulation, dynamics, expression, to finalise with the definition of the instrument. Each sound is directly set as a whole: pitch, duration, dynamics, articulation and timbre are composed at once. Therefore octaves are absolutely not exchangeable because of the timbral consequences, for instance. As a consequence, a “small” piano version before the instru­m­ entation of a complete score is unthinkable as is the replacement of one instrument by another. For Rihm, each sound possesses its own “aura”. His compositional method is not focused on the pitch but aimed at the “integral sound”, the Gesamt­er­findung.1 A good illustration of his method is found in his comments on the “simple” opening pitch of Antlitz. Zeichnung für Violine und Klavier:

145

146

Part II – Analysis

The genesis started from a setting, the pitch g, although already an instrumented start, a sound-object in itself as given by the piano and the violin, and by its resonance. So, it is in fact not only a pitch g, but in its appearance already an individual with a nose, a mouth, a face, a gaze. It is not only a pitch, a value, but it is precisely that individual event with its vibration and its duration. A body.2

To depict a sound as a “body” or a physical being is constant in Rihm’s vision. Eleven years earlier, he had already mentioned the fact that “the sound has a face”, a “physiognomy” and therefore it is irreplaceable.3 The “gaze” of the sound returns once more in the quotation below, another illustration of Rihm’s striving for originality of each created sound: Therefore, the harmony – the sound inside colour, the incolouring of its inner space – is no longer retrievable from a previously definable syntax, nor can the instrumental, materialised timbre – the utterance of the sound, its ‘gaze’ – be subject to a fundamental pre-understanding. The only possible sound is always the different, new sound.4

Designed as a whole, a string quartet is no longer polyphony of four instruments, nor a dialogue of four individuals. For Rihm it is one sounding “body” merging all parameters in an integrated way.5 Consequently, Rihm can endorse Busoni, who aims at melting harmony and melody into an indissoluble unity and who tries to learn to deny the difference between consonance and dissonance – which is also important for Rihm.6 Even when each sound was to be conceived as a whole, it is clear that the composer always emphasises one or a few parameters. Reconciling Rihm’s obsession with originally created total sound and the classical single-parameter analysis described above, a key for analysis can be defined by the shifting interaction of foreground and background parameters. As a consequence, it is still justifiable to treat the parameters one by one, prioritising the foreground parameters, on one condition: the awareness of the context of the texture, of the whole parameter “polyphony”.

8 – Integrated Approach

147

Some Examples In Ohne Titel, String Quartet no. 5, bars 470-492 (see Ex. 33, p. 117) an example of timbre-dynamic-dissonance interaction is found: the dissonant harmonics chord g-g#-c#-d, repeated simultaneously in semiquavers and tremolo, result in a quasi-noise in fff, but in a quasi-sound when played ppp and pppp; by diminuendo the noise factor decreases, passing from noise into sound; and by replacing tremolo by slower semiquavers in homorhythm and pppp, the degree of dissonance diminishes and again the degree of timbral sound increases.7 In Chiffre V, bars 93-119 (see Ex. 34, p. 118), the piano right hand is uninter­ruptedly repeating the dyad cluster a-bb in semiquavers, accom­ panied from time to time by short interventions of percussion (snare drum, metal plate) or piano left hand. The dyad becomes a sound object, a sharp timbre loosening and losing its dissonant character, changing colour by the moving presence of other elements: sharpening with percussion additions and softening with piano left hand additions. The gradual and sudden changes of tempo and dynamics, independent from each other, create irregular shifts from hammered percussive piano to isolated “halo” sounds. In both examples above, the restriction of the analysis to classical foreground parameters, pitch and chord, would give a false picture of the timbral shifts, a false “stasis” explanation. On the other hand, one must be very sensitive so as to resist the pitfall of over-interpretation. In Klavierstück Nr. 7, bars 173-179 (see Ex. 1, p. 39), for instance, the consonant triad eb-g-bb, isolated and not part of a tonal allusion or context, is doubled with four notes in each hand to obtain a massive sound. It is repeated in fff with different accents and with some rhythmic changes (repeated semiquavers, dotted rhythm, alternation of two semiquavers and a quaver, triplets). Siegfried Mauser describes the consonant chord as the “heroic” key of E-flat major, “the sharpest dissonance possible”, while “the basic emotion is dissolved” and “the catastrophe deliberately takes place within the most old fashioned and most familiar context”.8 For pianist Markus Bellheim this passage sounds as “a hard-fought victory” and he links it to Rihm’s predilection for subjects related to madness in the 1970s, interpreting the consonant chord as “a scream against the suffering waves of madness.”9 The references to “heroism” and “victory” are probably inspired by the opening tonic chords of Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony in E-flat major, while Rihm’s

148

Part II – Analysis

piano piece is based on Beethoven in several respects. Alastair Williams is of the same opinion, describing this moment as “a passage where a tonal chord becomes the most ‘dissonant’ section in the music”, although adding that “it is repeated with such force that it is bleached of its traditional meaning” and concluding that “Rihm’s hammering is eventually sufficient to turn the chord into an object that is too battered to occupy comfortably a tonal frame of reference.”10 In my opinion, the “dissonant” element in this sequence is due to the interruption of the repeated consonant triad by “strange” consonant chords: eb-g-bb, alternated by e-g-b and d-f#-a, returning to eb-g-bb in bar 175; eb-g-bb leading to e-g-b in bar 179. Both interruptions make the tonal fixed chord weak and wavering: they form a disturbance (see also p. 161). Moreover, the real “collapse” happens afterwards, in bar 180, where Rihm asks to repeat three times a chord of eight notes consisting of four minor seconds (c-db-eb-e-gb-g-a-bb) in a way he calls krachend, which can be approximated as “crashing” and “cracking”.

Integrated Analytical Tool As said before, since analysing and saying all at once is an impossibility for the analyst, the integrated approach as such may be undertaken by a method based on the distinction between foreground and background parameters (or foreground and background parameter combinations). This method must take into account the parameter shifts from foreground to background and vice versa. In order to realise this, an integrated analytical tool must be developed. To reach this aim, I must return to Rihm’s appreciation of Stockhausen. Remembering his studies with Stockhausen, Rihm seems to have been very impressed by the rehearsals of the new version of Momente in 1972 (Bonner Version). He does not miss the opportunity to recall it in his lectures and interviews. The concept of “moment” composing and “moment form” is in line with this and found several times in Rihm’s utterances as well.11 Each “moment” of Stockhausen’s composition Momente is based on at least one foreground element, or on the combination of two or three foreground elements, or on the combination of foreground and background elements. The difference between the foreground and the background is made clear by using capital and small letters, respectively. In Momente the

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149

elements are only three in number: M for melody-composition, K for Klang or sound and D for Dauer or duration.12 Inspired by Momente, I developed an integrated analytical tool for Rihm’s music, based on the typology of all important parameters or elements he brings in (Table 3). Each moment is defined by the combination of three main or foreground characteristics, appearing simultaneously in a “polyphonic” way or consecutively in a passage. The method proved to be fruitful by grouping foreground elements and leaving out background elements. Category C D H P R S T V

Description Counterpoint, polyphony, simultaneity of different kinds of elements Duration, rhythmic element, also passage with unstable tempo Homorhythmic texture, harmonic element Pitch accentuation, melodic element Repetition of a single tone, a chord or a short element Sustained sound, sound space, resonance Timbre, colour, articulation Volume accentuation, dynamics, silence

Table 3. Parameter typology.

Moment Analysis of the Chiffre Cycle In order to illustrate how this moment analysis is worked out, I add detailed information on Chiffre I and II, followed by a synthesis of the moment analysis of the whole cycle. Both Chiffre I and II are divided into five sections (A-E).13 Each section is divided into phrases (A1, A2 etc.). Some phrases coincide with a moment because of sustained characteristics combinations. Other phrases are divided into different moments; in this case the starting bar is given in the charts. The moment overview of Chiffre I is given in Table 4; the spread of the different moment types per section in Table 5.

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Part II – Analysis

A1

1-3

RSV

B1 43-56 DPS C1

88-96 HPT

D1 109-118 HST E1

153-156 DHV

A2

A3

A4

3-21

21-27

56-60

60-69

69-75

D3 121-129 DPR

D4 129-136 CPR

3: DRS 7: DHR 11: DRT 17: HPV B2 PRS C2

27-31

DPV

DRS

B3

B4

60: HPR 67: PSV

DPV

A5

32-41 HPT

A6

41-43 RSV

B5

75-87 HPS

96-108

96: CDP 101: HPT 105: PTV D2 118-121 DPR E2

156-168 CPR

E3

D5 D6 136-142 142-149 136: DHR 142: HSV 140: PSV 147: DSV

D7 150-153 CDR

169-176

169: HRV 173: HPV

Table 4. Chiffre I, moment overview.

Section Number Moments A 9

Returning triple High presence combination double DRS (2) DR (4) RSV (2) RS (4) PS (4)

B

6

C

4

HPT (2)

D

9

DPR (2)

PT (3) HP (2) HT (2) DR (4)

E

4

-

HV (3)

Table 5. Chiffre I, moments per section.

High presence single R (6) D (5) P (6) S (4) P (4) T (3) H (2) D (5) R (5) P (4) S (4) H (3) V (3)

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151

Referring to some score examples of Chiffre I (taking into account that in most cases not the full score is given), the moment analysis can be explained as follows: - Th  e opening of the score (see Ex. 52, p. 214, bar 1, full score): RSV indicates the pitch repetition in the piano combined with the sustained sound in the other instruments, while dynamics define the surrounding sound space. - B  ars 37-38 (see Ex. 58, p. 245) are part of a HPT moment. The presence of consonant dyads makes it a remarkable harmonic moment; the pitch evolution is due to an important melodic figure with ascending leaps (see p. 244). The high register of the piano is marked as timbre. - Th  e hectic piano solo (see Ex. 5, p. 79, bars 43-46) is labelled as DPS: a hectic melodic element with repeated fast rhytm. That it is also harmonically important is because of the underlying bourdon bass notes (not in the example). - Th  e combination DPR defines the ascending unison line in bars 121123: unison or attention to the melody is combined with fast rhythm and (see Ex. 65, p. 252). The moment lasts until bar 129: repeated notes follow the fragment in this example. - I n the melodic element at the location of the golden section (see Ex. 73, p. 261, bars 105-110, full score) the PTV combination returns: sustained notes create a melodic element with refined timbre and articulations, embedded in silence. - Th  e moment of gruppetto (see Ex. 6, p. 80, bars 138-142) shows the end of a DHR-combination, a slow turn in unison, followed by PSV for the fast turn in the piano, ffff. For Chiffre I, the following can be concluded: Section A is dominated by repeated and rhythmic elements; total absence of counterpoint. Section B brings melodic elements and stress on pitch in, together with sustained notes and chords; total absence of counterpoint and timbre concentration. Section C continues melodic elements, this time combined with harmonic and timbre attention; no repetition, nor sustained elements.

HTV

B2

100-123

STV

C2

130-137

130: DPR

PSV

B1

69-99

STV

C1

124-130

CPS

189-199

PRV

E2

241-248

PRS

176-188

PRS

E1

231-241

PRS

A3

202: HRV

200: DHR

200-204

D3

HTV

138-142

C3

HSV

9-14

Table 6. Chiffre II, moment overview.

D2

D1

135: HPV

A2

6-9

A1

1-5

A4

CDR

205-208

D4

HPR

143-147

C4

CRV

14-17

A5

HSV

208-214

D5

CHR

147-151

C5

26: DPR

22: DPS

17: DPR

17-30

A6

HPV

215-219

D6

HPS

151-156

C6

CHR

30-34

A7

A8

226: CSV

219: CPR

219-230

D7

HPT

164-171

157-164 HPT

C8

53: PST

48: RST

43: HPR

43-56

C7

38: RTV

34: CPR

34-43

A9

DPR

171-176

C9

RST

56-62

A10 63: HPR

63-69

152 Part II – Analysis

8 – Integrated Approach

153

Section D combines what was in the foreground in sections A and B; it is the first section containing all eight categories. Section E changes in harmonic elements combined with dynamics; no sustained nor timbral elements.

Section A

Number Moments 15

B

2

C

10

D

9

E

2

Returning triple High presence combination double DPR (2) PR (5) HPR (2) RST (2) STV (2) ST (2) SV (2) TV (2) DPR (2) HP (5) HPT (2) HV (3) PR (3) PRS (2) PR (2) PS (2) RS (2)

High presence single R (10) P (8) S (2) T (2) V (2) P (8) H (7) R (6) V (5) P (2) R (2) S (2)

Table 7. Chiffre II, moments per section.

Score examples with moment analysis in Chiffre II (Table 6, Table 7): - Th  e opening of the flute (see Ex. 67, p. 254, bars 1-3) is labelled PSV, because this melodic element is accompanied by sustained chords, leading to sustained fading notes. - B  ars 53-56 are defined as PST: the brass timbre, the creation of a sound space by the contrary movement, using a varied repeated cell of two notes (see Ex. 62, p. 250). - Th  e chorale-like melody is a HPS moment: melody in sustained notes, combined with original dyads (see Ex. 3, p. 78; Ex. 70, p. 256, bars 153-156). - B  ar 170 is part of an HPT moment: in the symmetrical building, the chords are important and pitches develop chromatically. Timbre is chosen because of the unison, involving woodwind, brass, piano and

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Part II – Analysis

string instruments in the bars before (see Ex. 77, p. 263, unison not in the example). - N  ear the end in bars 231-234 (see Ex. 19, p. 87; Ex. 66, p. 253), sustained melodic elements are accompanied by repeated notes (not given in the example): a PRS moment. For Chiffre II, the following can be concluded: Section A is divided into two halves: phrases A1-A4 are more directed towards sustained sounds with much attention for dynamic movements. The second part, A5-A10 is firstly dominated by melodic-rhythmic elements, afterwards by the combination of repeated elements, sustained sounds and timbral attention. Section B is completely built upon one combination: sustained timbre and dynamics development. Section C again pays much attention to melodic elements, this time combined with harmony and homorhythm. Section D is mostly concentrated on repetition, combined with dynamics. The final section E is comparable to section B, restricted to only one combination: sustained sounds together with melodic-rhythmic elements. Applied to the Chiffre cycle, the result of my moment analysis shows a great diversity, as a real escape from any system-based compositional possibility. Following my moment analysis, Rihm indeed succeeds in realising the maximal diversity in his “at once” compositional process. Concerning similar moments (Table 8), in only four pieces of the cycle does one moment combination of the same characteristics appear four times. These four combinations are different, however, each time category duration (D), is involved; in three cases this category is combined with pitch accentuation (P); twice P is linked to repetition (R). One to four combinations return three times in seven compositions of the cycle. Here a great diversity is found. The combination PRS (pitch, repetition, sustained) appears in three pieces; the formations DRV (duration, repetition, volume) and HPS (homorhythm, pitch, sustained) each in two pieces. One to eight combinations are found twice in all pieces.

8 – Integrated Approach

155

There is absolutely no priority given to certain combinations. Only the moment combination of melo-rhythmic elements with repetition (DPR) is recurrent and found in five pieces (Table 8). Number of appearances 4 3

Ch I – HPT

Ch II DPR HPR PRS

Ch III – DRT DRV PRS

Ch IV DPS HSV RSV

Bild

Ch V DRT – DRV DHP HPS PRS

2

CPR DHR DPR DPV DRS HPV PSV RSV

CHR CPS CPR DRS HPT RST HPV HST HSV RST STV

PST PSV

DPR DST HSV PRT PSV RSV

DPR DST

Ch VI – –

DPR RSV

Ch VII DHP CDP HPS PSV STV CPS HPR HSV RSV

Ch VIII – –

DHS

Table 8. Chiffre cycle. Moment analysis. Overview of all moment combinations appearing two, three or four times (four being the maximum).

Concerning unique moments, it is no surprise that in every piece the number of moment combinations which appear only once is the highest (Table 9). As a result, the diversity is much larger than the “recognisability” of combinations. At least one third of all moments are found only once in each piece. In four pieces the result of unique combinations is higher than 40% and in three pieces even higher than 50%. Unique Ch appearance I Number 13 % 41 Total number 32 of moments

Ch II 12 32 38

Ch III 12 44 27

Ch IV 11 44 25

Bild 13 42 31

Ch V 13 57 23

Ch VI 8 67 12

Ch VII 12 33 36

Ch VIII 9 82 11

Table 9. Chiffre cycle. Moment analysis. Unique moments or unique category combinations in absolute number and percentage. The total number of moments per piece is noted in the bottom line.

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Part II – Analysis

The result of greatest variety is confirmed by the total numbers of moment appearances in the whole Chiffre cycle (Table 10). Over the nine compositions the maximum number of appearances of one combination is fourteen or 6% (of 235 moments in the whole cycle): the combination of melodic elements containing repetition and sustained tones (PRS). For only three moments is the result between 5 and 6%: melo-rhythmic elements with repetition (DPR), repetition combined with sustained notes and accentuation of dynamics (RSV) and melodic element with sustained notes and attention for dynamics (PSV). Number 14 PRS

13 DPR RSV

12 PSV

11 DRT HSV

10 HPS

9

DHP DRV

8

HPR STV

Table 10. Chiffre cycle. Moment analysis. Most appearing combinations in absolute numbers.

The application of the integrated analytical tool makes clear that the diversity in moment-shaping is an important condition for the suppression of any systemised composition method. The greater the diversity, the less coherence.

9

Parameter Characteristics

Melody

I

n the previous chapter Rihm’s composition technique of simultaneously planning and realising a composition in all aspects – melody, harmony rhythm, dynamics, timbre, texture, articulation – was described, urging the analyst to take an integrated approach. The fact remains that each parameter considered apart from the others, shows certain typical characteristics of its own. Therefore and notwithstanding the necessity of an integrated approach, it is still reasonable to isolate the parameters for specific research. The next chapters give a summary of the main characteristics of each parameter. Melodic Compositions

The number of solo works and concertos Rihm composed in the 1980s could be an indication of his interest in melody as such. For solo works, the output is minimal: only one instrumental solo work, Kleine Echophantasie for trumpet (1986) with a duration of barely forty seconds, and one duo for violin and cello, Duomonolog (1986/89, 2 movements, 10’). For large instrumental solos, there is no output until 1999, when Rihm started the series Über die Linie that also contains numbers for a soloist and orchestra. The title “concerto” is given to only one composition during the 1980s: Bratschenkonzert, dated 1979-83, and described as fully melodic: “The whole piece is one endless melo-strand” (unendlicher Melo-Strang), the Melos is in the centre and even the orchestra is thought in a vocal way (gesanglich).1 Avoiding the genre name “concerto”, Gebild is written for high trumpet, percussion and strings, and the series Doppelgesang in turn combines “singing” soloists with orchestra: violin and viola, soloists “singing with a double mouth” in 1. Doppelgesang (1980);2 and clarinet and 157

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Part II – Analysis

violoncello in 2. Doppelgesang (1981-83), subtitled Canzona.3 This means that with regard to intense melodic emphasis, it is not until the 1990s that Rihm started writing relevant work: Gesungene Zeit (1991-92) the violin concerto with again the word “sung” in the title, being the most impressive example, is followed by Musik für Oboe und Orchester (1993-94/1995/2002). Taking into account that Dritte Musik for violin and orchestra (1993) or Styx und Lethe for violoncello and orchestra (1997-98) are definitely less melodic, one should not conclude that Rihm’s music is on the whole evolving towards a more melodic idiom. It is nothing more than a testimony of the composer’s versatility, which shows that melodic moments in the 1980s may be fewer in number, but that they are therefore not less lyric or overwhelming. However, for the Chiffre cycle and the string quartets of the 1980s, the situation is different: aspects other than melody will be even more focused upon due to Rihm’s aiming at systemlessness. The Chiffre cycle is described as “the search for sound objects, sound signs, a sound notation”, where “sound” is not a synonym for “melody”.4 According to Rihm, a string quartet is not a “genre” but a “setting”. Putting it that way, on the one hand he avoids the compulsory dialogue with the past and the historical weight of the genre and on the other hand he can concentrate on sound. He defines the “polyphony” of the string quartet as present in the vertical chord and not in the four voices or parts.5 Melodic Element In defining the neutral term “melodic element”, the fragmentary character must be underlined, together with the non-necessity of classical building aspects, such as a beginning, a middle section and a concluding part. The scarcity of melodic elements makes them stand out because of their unpredictability, the way they are inserted in hectic environments and certainly because many times the melodic element is produced by a solo instrument or in unison. In many cases the shortness of these fragments and/or the parameter shift to timbre or timbre-articulation combinations, due to Rihm’s processing of the sound as a whole, reduces their melodious­ ness or melodic power. To give an example of minimal melodic presence: in Ohne Titel, String Quartet no. 5, I discern only eighteen clear melodic elements covering only

9 – Parameter Characteristics

159

61 of the 585 bars. The first emphasised melodic element appears in bars 46-47: it is based on the chromatic aggregate g-c and it is not purely melodic, but also “vertical” by the polyphony based on the same notes in both violins (Ex. 38). The great leaps are hiding the chromatic character and emphasising the descending melodic line.

Vn1

° 4 &4

n>œ

>œ R



> ≈ #œ ™

>œ R

4 n>œ Vn2 & 4 ¢

ffff

sfffz

ffffs

sfffz

n>œ ™ sfffz

sfffz

b >œ 3 nœ bœ J b >œ n>>œ nœ nnœœ 3

b>œ nœ

3

œ œ œ œ

nœ v ^ nœ

œ v ^ œ

œ v ^ œ

3

Ex. 38. Ohne Titel, String Quartet no. 5, 46-47.

The first larger solo melodic element is a rhythmic dance-like repeated moment in the first violin, after one third of the quartet (see Ex. 35, p. 118).6 The greatest melodic emphasis is found in the solo of the second violin, exactly in the middle of the composition (bars 294-301, Ex. 39). This melodic element is characterised by sustained notes and small intervals, within a small range. Sustained notes over numerous beats diminish the melodic fluidity. sul tasto, flautando

Vn2

4 nw &4

ppp

w

w

(non vibrato)

œ n˙ ™

œ™ nœb ˙ J

œ n˙ nœ w pppp

œ

Œ Ó

Ex. 39. Ohne Titel, String Quartet no. 5, 294-301.

In the same quartet, few unison moments and only two clear unison melodic elements are found. In one of them (bars 494-497, Ex. 40), irregular leaps in the first violin make the unisons of all instruments doubled alternately in three and four octaves. The melodic element consists of eleven different pitches: only pitch e is not found while pitches a, bb and b appear twice.

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Part II – Analysis

nœ . n>œ. na-œtempo (q = 60) accelerando - - - - --- - - - - - - - n œ #œ 3 #œ nœ J J #œ ‰ Œ n-œ Œ bœ bœ œ nœ œ J > 3 3 3 nœ

accelerando - - - - - - - - - - -

Vn1

j &44 bœ

sfz pp

ff

pp

ff

pp

ppp

ff

Ex. 40. Ohne Titel, String Quartet no. 5, 494-497.

In contrast to the conciseness of melodic elements in general, some longer melodic lines with specific characteristics are found in other compositions of the 1980s. In Bild the trumpet solo over fifteen bars, continued with accompaniment (bars 132-155, see Ex. 14, p. 84; Ex. 15, p. 85), combines long sustained notes alternating with extremely short ones, and small intervals such as seconds with intervals larger than an octave. The result is a broken melody, by rhythm and by interval. How it alludes to Varèse was explained in chapter 3, see p. 81). The Eighth String Quartet pays special attention to the longer line: a melodic element is introduced by the viola in bars 18-20 and developed in the course of 34 bars, until bar 53. It is still definable as a fragmentary element because of the lack of melodious continuity: compounded of three segments, two pairs of notes and a single one, separated by rests, which diminish its melodiousness (Ex. 41). con sordino sul tasto

Va

B 44 ‰ #œ ™

pppp

bœ ™



Ó

Ex. 41. String Quartet no. 8, 18-20.

ppp

œ J nœ



pizz

‰ #œr ≈ Œ pp

Ó

9 – Parameter Characteristics

161

Harmony In only two texts of ausgesprochen has Rihm given a harmonic example, referring to his own music.7 In his comment on the early orchestral piece Morphonie, Sektor IV (1972-73) – its premiere at the Donaueschinger Festival 1974 was his artistic breakthrough – Rihm notes the dyad a(+6)eb, defining it as a tritone (not as a diminished fifth), the central interval from which the harmony is freely developed. He adds the all interval chord and describes it as equally important.8 The second notated harmonic element is a single chord found in Rihm’s article on the chamber opera Jakob Lenz: b(+6)f(+1)gb. Again the tritone is the central interval, combined with a minor second or a diminished sixth (not notated as perfect fifth b-f#). This triad is omnipresent in the opera Jakob Lenz.9 Its importance will become clear in the paragraph below, The Tritone-Triad. Both examples date from the 1970s. In my opinion, they do not show any attraction to classical tonality. Metatonality Some analysts, such as Wilhelm Killmayer and Edward Top, do not exclude classical tonality from Rihm’s music. In his in-depth analysis of Rihm’s Klavierstück Nr. 6, Bagatellen, Wilhelm Killmayer stated that the piece is in D minor.10 On the one hand he uses classical terminology such as dominant and dominant seventh chord, “ground tone” (Grundton), also stressing the tonal stability (TonartStabilität) of a chorale-like fragment. On the other hand, Killmayer has to moderate his judgement, confronted with “masked” chords, with disturbing tones (Störton) and with the avoidance of normal chord sequences (Fremdhalten gängiger Verbindungen). “However, despite the atonal surface and the apparent formlessness, after repeated listening, an overarching sense of tonal awareness seems to make itself felt.”11 However tentative Edward Top may be in the opening of his analysis of Rihm’s Third String Quartet, Im Innersten, he becomes more direct in his conclusion, finding “a traditional treatment of dissonance in the form of the appoggiatura” and tonality as “intentionally permitted as an expressive means”:

162

Part II – Analysis

When going to the heart of Im Innersten, the most important aspect of the music cannot be found in the score. The expectation raised is achieved through the conventional procedures of functional harmony, of the appoggiatura, through the unfulfilled resolution of the major seventh. What the composer does instead, thwarting the expectation, that it is based on these conventional procedures (i.e., leaving major sevenths unresolved, treating them as octaves in expressive melodic lines, and placing them in a post-Darmstadtian stylistic context), is what makes this work so engaging.12

The “tonal awareness” in the background with its “overarching” capacities can be elements of the definition of “metatonality”. This is about a reminiscence or “rest from the past”, more than allusion to or suggestion of classical tonality without the confirmation of it. The compositions in which the above examples are found date from the 1970s. From the same period, the harmony of the opening bars of Klavierstück Nr. 5, Tombeau (1975) shows both a similar and a different aspect of Rihm’s harmonic concept. The following concerns the description of the chord series that is found three times in the piece: in bars 1-8 and bars 43-52 in irregular rhythm, and in the final section Quasi corale (bars 86-99) in crotchet rhythm with a few different octave settings. The piano starts this passage with the unison c and ends it with the single tone g; pitch c1 is the common top note of 39 of the 40 chords in between and returns three times as a unison. The only disturbance is due to the unison c# a few beats before the final single tone g (Ex. 42).

? 44 #nœœ

pp

? 44 nœ b œ“‘

nn-œœ nnnœ-œœ bnnœ-œœ nnn-œœœ b œ #œ nœ n nœœ nnnœœœ nbœœ b œ- bnbœœœ - n œ-

54 ##n#œœœœ

n -œ # œ-. n -œ bn œ-œ nn#œœœ #œ #œ n bœœ

45 bbnœœœbn nœœœ #œ nbœœ #nœœ n œ- b -œ # -œ. n œ- n œ-

44 Œ #nnœœœ ˙

44 Œ nnœœ Ó nn œ-œ

Ex. 42. Klavierstück Nr. 5, Quasi Corale, 94-97. Unison c# on the third beat of bar 96, g solo in the last bar.

9 – Parameter Characteristics

163

Although the top note is common, all 40 chords are different, with the exception of two chords appearing twice, albeit in another position: the dyad c-c# and the chord c-c#-eb-g-b. I prefer considering c as the focal pitch and analysing the chord series with common c from the viewpoint of an increasing and decreasing tension caused by the degree of dissonance, since the accent is more on the difference and dissonance than on the metatonal c-g relation. Of course, one cannot deny that a pianissimo chorale in equal quavers, as in Ex. 42, sounds more “tonal” than the staccato and secco presentation in short notes, discontinuous by rests, even when the dynamic is ppp in the middle section, which in turn is much more tonal than the irregular rhythms and the hammered articulation in sfffz in the first presentation. This shows how Rihm, even in his earliest period, was calculating the effect of interaction between different parameters. Just as was the case for the focal pitch that is “auto-installing itself ” (see p. 40) Rihm argues about “centres which are not centres” in his typical selfcontradicting way: “By accidentally closer approach during the movements of the tone constellations, centres are created which in fact are not centres.”13 A centre by accident means neither an intended tonal allusion by the composer nor the idea of metatonality kept in his mind. Related to this statement is his denial of the fact that an isolated perfect triad can be analysed as “tonal”, while tonality needs a certain time lapse: To shout ‘This is tonal!’ when the chord d-f-a sounds, is false, not only because a single tonal element does in fact not exist, but above all because this chord can be part of any kind of harmony. Only the temporal environment makes experienceable whether it is a tonic or for instance an exception, an alien element, a mistake or whatever.14

It is incorrect according to Rihm to try to analyse his compositions from the restricted viewpoint of the detection of consonant chords, immediately followed by their tonal identification and classification. However, the tonal allusion cannot be denied, hence my coining of the term “metatonality”. Recalling the emphasised repeated consonant chord eb-g-bb near the end of Klavierstück Nr. 7 (see Ex. 1, p. 39): according to Rihm, as quoted just above, there is no reason to define this isolated consonant chord as “tonal”, as (tonic of) E-flat major. In one of the examples of chapter 8 (see p. 147),

164

Part II – Analysis

I explained how Siegfried Mauser, Markus Bellheim and Alastair Williams stressed the importance of this chord in the framework of classical tonality – something I questioned in my comments because the consonant chord is disturbed several times. In my opinion, looking for a harmonic analysis in the context of classical tonality or rather metatonality, the appropriate key should be G minor, with a broken cadence (dominant chord d-f#-a followed by in eb-g-bb, sixth degree). The chord e-g-b is only disturbing the key to a certain extent by chromatic shifting, while pitch e natural can also function as a sharpened sixth degree. Moreover, looking for a Grundton in Klavierstück Nr. 7, pitch g is the one most prominently present. This is illustrated, for example, by the first longer polyphonic passage (bars 54-58), contrasting with the almost ubiquitous unison (three octave playing) in both hands. This passage consists of two sustained elements: a doubled pitch g in the right hand and the trill d-eb in the left hand, resulting in the consonant ambiguity of eb-g and d-g: in my opinion an even more appealing “dissonant consonant” than the disturbed chord eb-g-bb. A completely different example of how a chord loses its consonant character is given by the presence of the dyad d(+29)g by cello and first violin in the Seventh String Quartet, Veränderungen. The dyad is sustained over 15 bars (bars 289-303), Moreover, the real starting ppp non vibrato, clearly as a consonance, evolving in a crescendo paired with growing bow pressure, ending ffff possibile, sul ponticello, with many bow changes and extremely hard pressure. The “beautiful” consonant sound does not evolve towards dissonant, but towards “ugly” noise-like timbre. This shows once more the need for an integrated approach, already found in the title of the piece: Veränderungen can be translated as “changes”, but also as “modifications” or “transformations” by interacting parameters. Micro-interval Dissonance Another kind of transformation in Veränderungen is the unusual combination of unison with dissonance. As an exceptional unisoncombination alternating in both violins, the double stop f#-gb returns in 74 bars of the passage between bars 163 and 289, containing a long solo in the first violin (bars 244-267, with few intrusions of other pitches). Here timbre and rhythm are permanently subject to modification. In my opinion, the combination of a sharpened and a flattened note is not an easy solution to

9 – Parameter Characteristics

165

notate a doubled unison: Rihm is not asking for a doubled unison, but for the sharpest dissonance possible, the friction of the comma difference between the two pitches. Clear micro-interval dissonance is found in the Eighth String Quartet, where the unison pitch g#-ab in the four instruments changes by quartertone glissandos into the minor seconds g-ab or g#-a, with gradual changes in dynamics and timbre: non vibrato and molto vibrato, sul ponticello and tremolo (bars 120-133). The Tritone-Triad In ausgesprochen, the second harmonic example given by Rihm, already mentioned in the introduction to this chapter, is the triad combining the tritone and the perfect fifth, as found in his opera Jakob Lenz (b-f-gb or b-f-f#, Ex. 43). The omnipresence of this tritone-triad reaches far beyond this opera; its importance cannot be stressed enough. Richard McGregor gives it the exclusive name of Lenz-chord and attributes “unifying power” to it.15 When the perfect fifth is replaced by the perfect fourth, a similar chord can be put next to the original: c-f-f# next to b-f-f#. This is justified by the diversity of appearances in Rihm’s scores. However, expanding the chord makes the original combination of tritone and half tone indistinct and diminishes its original identity. It is typical of Rihm that he can make the chord identity disappear by adding one single note: the chord b-c-f-f# can be viewed as a tritone-triad combination with added b, or as the combination of two tritone-triads: b-f-f# and c-f-f#. The result is that this chord creates the tritone-triad group, which contains no fewer than four tritone-triads: b-f-f#, c-f-f#, f-b-c and f#-b-c, twice the original chord or the tritone combined with the perfect fifth and twice the tritone combined with perfect fourth (Ex. 43). As I prefer a more neutral terminology, the Lenz-chord will be labelled as the “tritone-triad” in my analysis of the Chiffre cycle (see p. 213).

& #nww w

n#ww w

n#ww ww

n#ww w

n#ww w

Ex. 43. Original tritone-triad and tritone-triad group.

nww w

#ww w

166

Part II – Analysis

Chord Chain Apart from Rihm’s mentioned harmonic examples notated in his texts and apart from the two essays on neo-tonality,16 Rihm does not give any indication as to harmonic concepts, except for the unavoidable and selfinstalling focal pitch (see p. 40). Because the focal pitch is accentuated by its presence in a passage, it must be defined as a crucial note of the polyphonic and harmonic development in this passage, although not as a functional element of the harmony. In many cases, this focal pitch will be the common element in a “chord chain”. The typology of chord chains shows a differentiated series of possibilities: - C  hord chain with common notes One or more common notes form the nucleus of the chain. By addition and subtraction of elements the density of the chord chain enlarges and diminishes. To obtain a certain harmonic impact, a chord chain must have a certain time span. In a longer chain the presence of focal pitches can become more evident. - Chord chain with shifting chords The succeeding chords have one or a few notes in common, but there are permanent shifts in the common notes. As a consequence, resulting shifted chords can no longer have any note in common with the original chord they are deduced from. The focal pitch is less in the foreground. - Chord chain with accentuated chord The chain containing common notes expands by added elements towards a climactic chord, for instance a cluster, and backwards to simpler chords. Common notes can function as focal pitches. - Chord chain with breaks By two consecutive chords without common notes, the chain is broken. The break can cause a chord “shock”. In the absence of common elements, the next or new chord can only consist of complementary pitches. In this particular case, the use of “chain” supposes that the break is followed by the return of the previous main pitches. In this case there will be a shift in focal pitches.

9 – Parameter Characteristics

167

It is my conviction that chord chains belong to the most systemless concepts of Rihm’s music. Without the presence of any rules, chord chains create certain coherence by common notes, by the possibility of focal pitches, by climactic growth or by pointing in a certain direction. The driving force behind the chord chain is the increasing and decreasing tension caused by the degree of dissonance. The setting of the chords (narrow or wide, thin or dense) helps to differentiate its tension. Once more, I am alluding to the integral analysis approach, adding that the timbre will also be an important factor to define the chord tension. In Ex. 42 and Ex. 44, for instance, low registers are explored: the lowest ranges are one of Rihm’s predilections. A “textbook case” of the first type of chord chain brings us back to the chorale of Klavierstück Nr. 5, where the c is constantly present and other notes are common as well, with one exception: the break caused by the unison c# on the third beat of the 5/4 bar (see Ex. 42, p. 162). An example of a chord chain combining shifting chords with breaks and accentuated chords is found in bars 103-120 of Bild (Ex. 44). Gradual shifts cause completely different chords at short distance, for instance at the beginning: after only three bars the chord in bar 106/3 has nothing in common with the opening bar of this fragment. There is a first chord break in bar 108/1-2, a second one in bars 112/4-113/1, where the unison c# enters, the exceptional consonance in this passage. However, these chord breaks do not have the strength of blurring or obscuring the overall chromatic chordal development. They only mark short interruptions, whereafter chromatic neighbouring pitches re-enter. Climactic chords can be found near the end of the example. In bar 119 the most complex chords are found: the chromatic clusters g-d and f-d. Even sudden harmonic outbursts, as in bar 113/2 and 115/2, do not disturb the gradual chord evolution. In his sketches Rihm has notated not only short chord chains, but also aggregates in scale form with common notes and chromatic and diatonic shifts. He encircled some notes, put crosses and linked notes by brackets. Apparently, the scales are meant to serve chord formations. In my opinion, these sketches confirm the concept of chord series with common and shifting elements (Ex. 45, Ex. 46 and Ex. 47: boxed notes are encircled in the sketches).

168

& ?

Part II – Analysis

Ó

∑ ∑

? ‹ ˙ww Œ ™

110

&

#˙ ™



œ b˙ ™

bw

wœ Œ Ó

w



#w ww nw w ? nbbww ‹ ?



nœ ? œ ##œœœ

œ #œœ #nœœ

#w w

&

? œœœ #nnœœœ Óœ b #œœ ? ˙˙ ™™ ‹ ˙˙˙

™™



œ #bœ˙˙˙ # ˙ n˙

#œœ

bœ #˙˙ ™™

n# œœœœ Œ ˙™ bb œœœ J ˙ #˙ #˙˙ #˙

œ



Ó



Ó

#w w b œœœ n ˙™

b w ™™ w#w w #˙ n˙ ™ ™™ n˙˙˙ ™

œ n˙ ™

œ b˙ ™

˙

#˙˙ b˙˙˙ n˙ b˙˙ b˙˙ ˙˙ Œ



nw

˙

˙

? #œŒ #œœ‰œ #œœ #nœœ œ #œœ ‹ ˙˙ bœ 118



bw



&





œ ˙ #œœœ#˙ ™™ nbbœœœ b˙˙ ™™™ ˙˙ ™

115

Œ

∑ b˙ ˙

Ó

nœ nœ œ

∑ #ww ˙˙ b˙˙˙˙ ∑

#œ #œœ ™™ #œœœ ™™™ nœ ™ bœœ ™ b nœœ ™ #œ bœ˙œ ™™™™ b œ ™™ ˙™

˙ #˙˙

∑ ww b#w w w bw ˙

n˙˙ #˙

Ó œœ # œœ ˙ n#˙˙˙˙ n #˙˙ #˙ œ #œœ b œœ nœ bn˙˙ n˙˙

Ex. 44. Bild, 103-120. Reduced score.

? w bw w w bw #w w

? #w bw w #w bw bw bw Ex. 45. W. Rihm, Skizzenbuch 1984-86, p. 32. Staff notation. Bottom staff: no clef.

™™ ™™ ™™

9 – Parameter Characteristics

& &

169

bw bw w w w #w w

b w w w bw bw w w

Ex. 46. W. Rihm, Skizzenbuch 1986-1987, p. 24. Letter notation. Not all notes but all positions are linked by brackets, some twice. Encircled are tritone notes. Brackets indicate several intervals, mostly also tritones.

& &

X

b bw bw w bw w w w w w w w bw bw #w

Ex. 47. W. Rihm, Skizzenbuch 1986-1987, p. 55. Letter notation. The cross could indicate the start of the chromatic shift, except for f# and gb, not on top of each other.

Cluster Unexpectedly, certainly in view of the audible result, Rihm is rather economical in his use of large clusters. The average appearance of the complete chromatic cluster is less than once per composition in the Chiffre cycle. A typical cluster-like chord or quasi-cluster is the combination of two small clusters with a larger interval in between, for instance cluster d#-f combined with cluster g-c in Chiffre I (bar 108), or the combination of a single tone with a cluster. To illustrate the sparing use of clusters, some details of clusters in the Chiffre cycle are revealed here. In Chiffre I, III, IV, VIII and Bild the complete cluster does not occur. In Chiffre III and Bild the densest cluster contains ten notes; the number decreases to eight notes in Chiffre I and only seven or a cluster covering a tri­ tone in Chiffre IV, where a culminating combined cluster or quasi-cluster of ten notes is heard once (bars 58-59: cluster c-eb combined with cluster f-bb). Chiffre II, Silence to be Beaten opens with a short symmetrical chord chain of five elements: a consonant dyad (c-f, 1st and 5th element), a sixnote cluster of two blocks with c and f in common (cluster f-g and cluster

170

Part II – Analysis

b-c#, 2nd and 4th element), and an eleven-note cluster in the centre (missing note: g#). The same eleven-note cluster returns once (bars 46-48) and there is also one moment of complete cluster (bars 206/3-207/2), the result of a short climactic chord chain starting one bar earlier and ending in the next bar after the twelve-tone cluster. This time, the exception is Chiffre V, where the complete cluster appears seven times with a huge concentration near the end of the piece (bars 145158 of the 166 bars); the composition contains seventeen clusters of eleven notes, mostly concentrated in bars 5-10 and 138-161, and ten of ten notes concentrated at the beginning, before bar 54. In Chiffre VI, the single complete cluster (bar 67) is attacked after a short unison (pitch e) and followed by a short consonant dyad e-a, as such the cluster is not part of a chord chain. It rather reminds one of an emotional outburst: the unison and consonance are part of it by contrast, the cluster is articulated tremolo and Flatterzunge and is followed by the “slow painful glissando” in the clarinet towards its “highest and ugliest sounds”. This place is surrounded by a cluster concentration, by an eleven-note cluster and by smaller clusters and quasi-clusters. The total cluster functions as a structural element in Chiffre VII: it is achieved in the middle of the piece (bar 99 of 198 bars) as climactic chord in a mostly chromatically expanding chord series, starting from the consonant fifth eb-bb. Apparently, white or diatonic clusters are not part of Rihm’s current vocabulary, but in Chiffre VII the exception occurs: between the opening bars and the flute quotation (with generative pole in Chiffre II in bar 10), white clusters appear: c-g and d-g (bars 6-7). In the last section of Chiffre VII (section D, bars 134-182), there is a great concentration of smaller and larger clusters, up to ten and eleven notes. Near the end of this passage, the white cluster of the beginning returns, transposed to c-f and b-e (bars 167168 and 180-182). Five bars before the end of the short Chiffre VIII, an eleven-note cluster is played in a particular way by the piano: white keys in the right hand and black in the left, all within the same octave db1-c2 (bar 36), the smallest setting possible. As was the case in Chiffre VII, some places are reserved for white chords, combining white clusters (c-d-f-g-a for instance) or a single tone with a white cluster (c-e-f-g for instance, bars 10-12).

9 – Parameter Characteristics

171

Informal Harmony and Texture Drawing a conclusion from this multitude of harmonic approaches is not easy, especially since, as I remarked earlier, harmony seems to belong to the most systemless of Rihm’s music. Hence, “vers une harmonie informelle”, alluding to Adorno, “towards an informal harmony” could be the conclusion. Harmony is formed at the processed moment, as part of the artwork emerging out of the generating process. Harmony is generated, not governed by rules, and therefore “informal”. Rihm’s harmonic concept breaks the boundaries of a classical melody-harmony-tonality “liaison” to become part of the “texture” of the composition, which makes it a fundamental element. And “texture” is understood as the result of all characteristics, as the quality created by the combination of different elements or parameters. A specific textural sound is a complex sound formation, where all active parameters are involved, balanced in different ways, moving from background to foreground and vice versa. Because Rihm’s harmony no longer consists of single elements in a functional coherence, “structural sound” must be replaced by “textural sound”. A certain analogy with Helmut Lachenmann can be presumed. However, I do not think that it is possible for Rihm’s music to go as far as Gianmario Borio does, relating Lachenmann and also György Ligeti to Informal Art, finding in music and in fine arts “the replacement of structure by texture”, because of the simple reason that Rihm admits that he is not able to relinquish coherence – in particular structural elements – and that therefore it is not his aim to do so.17

Tempo – Metre – Rhythm As regards the analysed music of the 1980s, several times Rihm composes straight in 4/4 and in a strict tempo, without or with minimal changes. Chiffre VII and String Quartet no. 7 are permanently in 4/4. Chiffre VI is constantly q = 60 and 4/4, except for one bar ritenuto (bar 61) followed by a tempo, and twice one 5/8 bar (bars 68, 70). Bild starts q = 80, with only one tempo correction: più mosso (bar 102); the time signature is 4/4 interrupted once for two 3/4 bars (bars 74-75). Chiffre VIII is in one and the same tempo, q = 40 except for one bar q = 60 (bar 35). The most convincing example is String Quartet no. 6, amounting to 854 [848] bars, all 4/4 except

172

Part II – Analysis

for one time signature change to 5/4 for no more than eleven bars (bars 430-440 [428-438])18. Other compositions are clearly divided into two parts: constant characteristics of metre and/or tempo versus instability. This is the case in Chiffre VII, where tempo changes are concentrated in the first half of the piece. An unstable beginning is found in String Quartet no. 7 with nine tempo changes in the opening bars (bars 1-21 of 462 [463] bars) and only three times a slight change followed by a tempo afterwards (bars 54-55: accelerando; bars 159-160: fermata; bars 393-396: etwas zögern, wieder schnell). Chiffre II starts in 4/4 with extreme tempi over sixteen bars: q = 120 (bars 1-2/2), decelerating over three bars to q = 40 (bar 5), abrupt change to q = 100 (bar 9), ritenuto over one bar to q = 40 (bar 13), accelerando molto over one bar to q = 80 (bar 16). From then on, the piece continues in a stable tempo, with one nuance più mosso (bar 45), until halfway, while in the second half few tempo and time signature changes occur. There are some unusual cases of tempo and metre change, a combination of experiment and “frustration”. String Quartet no. 8 has an accelerando in its final bar. The same goes for String Quartet no. 5: it hurries to the end in the alternating unison of the last three bars, accelerando molto. In Chiffre III an acceleration is blocked by a fermata (bar 95), another one by the double bar line at the end of the piece, a kind of dead end. Another frustration occurs in Chiffre IV where accelerations are leading nowhere, i.e. to silence (bars 61-68). The piano solo in Chiffre V (bars 93-118) consists of an uninterrupted series of semiquavers with gradual and sudden tempo changes, also notated by changes of time unit, from crotchet to quaver for instance, whether or not combined with a change of metronome number (bars 101-108), such as q = 92, subito e = 92, ritenuto, x = 60, accelerando, subito a tempo x = 60, accelerando q = 100, with more than once a tempo change every beat or two beats (see Ex. 34, p. 118). Nevertheless, even if tempo and time signature may seem fairly stable, the truth lies in the concentration on the rhythm, which treatment is independent of the time signature, independent of the traditional returning regular order of stronger and weaker beats. The result is a Debussyan rhythm, to name it after one of Rihm’s influential composers. Endless possibilities of free rhythm are exploited with the greatest imagination. Instead of metre and tempo variations, accelerations and decelerations are

9 – Parameter Characteristics

173

caused by rhythmic changes: from quavers to triplets to quintuplets and vice versa, for instance. Tied notes (very effective over the bar line) postpone the change of pitch or chord, in order not to be synchronised with the (strong) beat. Sometimes the rhythm seems “constructed” as irregularly as possible, as in Bild (see Ex. 9, p. 83; Ex. 14, p. 84) or String Quartet no. 6 (see Ex. 30, p. 103). A last example introduces another consequence, albeit of a completely different order: in String Quartet no. 5, both the long series of hammering, percussive, regular fast (demi)semiquavers and sustained notes over several bars (see Ex. 39, p. 159) result in a diminished metrical awareness, in the loss of beat and time course awareness. Commenting on Klangbeschreibung III (1984/87, for orchestra), Rihm gives the example of an “endless” series of semiquavers by percussion tutti: “I interpret this as a point zero, where time, in its musical development capacity, is very brutally inhibited.” In Klangbeschreibung I (1982/87, for 3 orchestral groups) the continuous pitch f is of the same order: “a flowing point zero”.19 This is similar to Ex. 30 where the floating first violin line in sustained notes is combined with an irregular timbral shifting unison a, hocket in octaves, soon replaced by other hocket elements. Certainly, rhythm is a predominant element in Rihm’s music. He is able to abolish musical time to a certain extent. Escaping regular metre and setting rhythm free could be enough proof of the highest accessible degree of rhythmic systemlessness, as in the title of Rihm’s essay quoted above: Improvisation on the Fixation of Freedom.

Dynamics – Articulation – Timbre Dynamics are more inclined to the extremes than fitting the normal prescriptions: double and triple forte are more likely than a simple forte; double and triple piano in preference to piano. Diminuendos, noted as sforzando – decrescendo – piano over short durations are normal, the same goes for fast crescendos from pianissimo to foritissimo. The hairpin, a repeated note with repeated crescendo is almost a signature, very typical of Rihm’s early scores, for instance in Nature Morte – Still Alive for strings. Dynamics are intense, but never “formalised” by extreme artificial contrasts or a note by note differentiation.

174

Part II – Analysis

The same goes for timbre and expression: Rihm asks for precise and differentiated timbres by articulation prescriptions. For the string instruments for instance, some extremes of the wide range are dolce and feroce, zart and zäh (tenacious), flautando sul tasto con sordino and sehr geräuschhaft stärkstem Bogendruck. Youth Experience A score by Wolfgang Rihm is immediately distinguishable by the huge number of articulations on every note. Individual notes are very often accentuated in more than one way: by the dynamic indication of sforzando, sforzandissimo or sforzandississimo combined with a normal accent, a marcato accent or a staccato accent. Rihm explains this hypersensitivity for articulation indications as a youth experience: listening to orchestras as a youngster, many times he found out that they performed without commitment. Therefore, he added articulations in his earliest scores, as a psychological tool to keep his performers concentrated, awake and alert all the time, and never ceased doing so.20 Articulation obtains a timbral dimension by added techniques, such as tremolo, Flatterzunge, trills, trills combined with tremolo, which increase the expressivity. Articulation and performance techniques can also be applied as an experiment, comparable to the use of resonance in Chiffre IV. String Quartet no. 8 can be described as a study of ricochet and ricochet col legno possibilities. When Rihm prescribes a certain expression by verbal indications, a double meaning is not exceptional. On the one hand an interpretation is asked for, on the other hand it can be a reference to another composer or an extra-musical field. In the Seventh String Quartet prescriptions such as roh! and rauh! (“raw” and “rough”) refer to the world of Antonin Artaud; Wie ein Hauch makes one think immediately of the music of Gustav Mahler (as explained on p. 69ff. and 75ff.). The feroce repeated rhythmic melodic element d(-7)g(0)g(+5)c(-7)f(0)f in the violoncello solo at the end of the Seventh String Quartet is a good example of the “fading” of melodic strength, taken over by the timbre, due to changes in the articulation. The solo lasts for 37 bars and the character shifts from feroce, non leggiero (bar 436), by sul ponticello am Frosch (bar 455), ending with sehr starker Druck (bar 459), where the pitch component

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is almost lost. This is comparable with the analysis I elaborated in chapter 8 (see p. 147). Of course, melodic elements can also be perceived as expressive by the analyst without any indication by the composer. In my opinion, this can be found in the “parody” in Ohne Titel (Ex. 48): first there is the jumping melodic element in the second violin accompanied by a descending chromatic scale in parallel seconds in the first violin and the cello, all pizzicato, then the second violin is imitated by the viola solo, arco.

Vn1

° 4 pizz. ≈ ‰ & 4 nœ. nœ bœ nœ # œ n œ . . . . . n œ. b œ. n œ b œ. pp . v

3

arco sul p.

Œ

nœ ppp

sffz sffz

Vn2

Va

pizz. 3 arco sul p. nœ 4 Œ nœ. bœ bœ. #œ #œ ≈ ‰ & 4 #œ. bœ. nœ. nœ. . v. . n œ. mp ppp # œ. nœ n œ. n œ. bœ b œ. #-œ # œ 4 ™ nœ &4 Ó pizz.

Vc

3

arco ord. sul p. pp

4 ≈ ‰ ¢& 4 nœ. bœ. nœ. bœ. n œ n œ b œ n œ b œ . . . . . n œ. pp v

3

arco sul p.

Œ

nbœO

ppp

sffz

Ex. 48. Ohne Titel, String Quartet no. 5, 360.

The Fifth String Quartet is Schnell, rastlos, with only once subito calmo; the Sixth starts Schnell und frei; the Seventh Nicht langsam, flüssig!, with feroce at the end and even with a prohibition in capitals: NON DOLCE! (bar 21). Chiffre III bears an indication for expression in the opening bar: Crudo. In Chiffre I (bar 80), the sound of the consonant dyad bb-eb, harmonics on the cellos, must be “cold” (kalt). In Chiffre VI (bars 68, 70, 78) a melodic element turns into timbre with emphasised expression when the clarinet is asked to play notes “as high as possible”, notated as different pitches and at the same time “as ugly as possible” (nur höchste und häßlichste Töne). This is preceded and followed by a “painful” glissando (bars 67, 82).

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Part II – Analysis

Timbre and Resonance Resonance deals with different parameters: sympathetic sounding harmonics or muted keys cause specific timbres. On the piano, resonance also deals with decaying, fading out and soft dynamics and, as a consequence, with sound space and silence. A certain duration is a necessary condition to make resonance perceptible: fermata, sustained sounds or a slow rhythm. Because of the mixture of different parameters, resonance is regarded as a specific category in my integrated approach, in my tool for the “moment” analysis, together with sound spaces and sustained sounds (see p. 148). Chiffre IV can be considered as a study of resonance, not only on the piano, but also in combination with both the other instruments, bass clarinet and violoncello. The search for resonance possibilities is certainly also one of the reasons for the choice of the smallest ensemble of the whole Chiffre cycle. However, the application of resonance is not restricted to only this composition: in other pieces of the Chiffre cycle as well similar moments of resonance can be encountered (see p. 227, 231). Rihm’s research on piano resonance results in the following typology: - Normal resonance The normal decay by keeping keys pressed. - P  edal resonance Use of the sustain pedal for a louder and total resonance. - R  esidue resonance Resonance by different sound lengths: when a sound or chord consists of different rhythmic values, the longer ones can be viewed as resonating after the shorter ones have become silent, as a “rest” or “residue” of the original. - Resonance by muted keys (stummer Anschlag) Resonance by muted pressed keys: the strings of muted pressed keys start thrilling by sounding sympathetic pitches. - Reinforced resonance During its decay, the resonating sound can be reinforced by the impulse of a real or normally played sympathetic pitch, which supposes a loud(er) dynamic and a short(er) duration of both the original and the reinforcing sounds.

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- Performed fading resonance The resonance fading decay is played or performed, for instance as a repeated note in diminuendo al niente. Rihm also explores resonance possibilities on other instruments, mostly by imitating, if possible, the piano types listed above. To this category of “imitation resonance” belong the residue resonance, reinforcement of resonance and performed fading resonances. The related concept of “resonance space” (Resonanzraum) is defined by Rihm in the context of Chiffre I, where the piano functions as soloist and the other instruments build a resonance space around the soloist. The image of the resonance space outside the piano is mirrored in Chiffre IV, where the resonance is “inside” the piano. In my description of the integral approach required by Rihm’s music, I quoted the essay Spur, Faden. Zur Theorie des musikalischen Handwerks, where harmony is described as “sound inside colour, the colouring of its inner space”. Harmony, timbre or colour, space and resonance become the main parts of the same sound design (see p. 145). Resonance and Fine Arts Residue resonance can also be described as the result of sound layers, where the louder ones cover the softer. Recalling Rihm’s interest in fine arts and Übermalung, this is a clear musical application of a louder layer making a softer one hardly audible or even inaudible. Resonance refines the musical overpainting also by the category of reinforced resonance. Muted keys that become audible by sympathetic pitches can now even be explained as an inaudible level brought over the edge of audibility by normal sounds. Instead of “overwriting” as the musical analogy of Übermalung or “overpainting”, the term “oversounding” is certainly suitable in the case of resonance. Silence Different functions are assigned to silence. The most conventional is of course the silence defining the end of a phrase or a section: silence as demarcation, as a structural element. A series of other more original applications can be added.

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Part II – Analysis

Following Rihm, Chiffre IV is the “most silent” piece of the cycle.21 “Silent” here means of course soft dynamics in the first place, but also that resonance is embedded in silence, that silence makes the resonance audible (see p. 227ff.). Silence as “frustration” was already mentioned: the climax expectations of a series of chromatically ascending chords in acceleration are not fulfilled: leading nowhere, blocked by silence (bars 61-68, see p. 172). In a completely different way, the subtitle of Chiffre II refers to silence: “Silence to be Beaten”, the Varèse quotation, asks the conductor to go on and to conduct the silence notated in rests. Rihm also interprets the subtitle in a metaphoric way: beaten or “hit” silence means painful silence, makes silence become “cry” and eventually cry being the music. As a consequence, silence has to be defeated, because silence wants to destroy the music in an existential way. Rihm hopes that this poetic explanation stimulates the fantasy of the listener. Hence, he can define sound and silence as “form” and “negative form”.22 Opening a piece with a full bar of rest is another remarkable use of silence. It happens in Klavierstück Nr. 6, Bagatellen and in Bild, the latter with fermata. The first sound after the rest in Bagatellen is a sustained single tone in ppp, which lets one suppose that the sound has to emerge from the silence, an almost impossible task for a pianist. In Bild however, the function of the opening rest and other silences is completely different. Bild may be played in a normal concert situation or before or after the presentation of the film Un chien andalou by Luis Buñuel. In these conventional cases the music starts with a long silence. The situation is completely different when the music of Bild is played during the film, what Rihm suggests as live music, “overpainting” the film, certainly not “underpainting” (jedenfalls nicht ‘untermalen’). In this case, Rihm forbids music during the opening scene and the opening silence fermata lasts for almost one minute, the duration of the first film scene. Since the synchronisation of music and film is not his aim, Rihm suggests that the music (the score takes eight minutes) can start at any moment during the film, lasting twice as long or sixteen minutes. He even suggests cutting the score into different pieces, spread over the film. According to Rihm, this is possible because both score and film are marked by a certain “awareness of cutting” (Geschnittenheit). Bild in fragments causes shorter or longer silences in between: a completely new

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function is given to silence. In this case, the opening silence fermata can last much longer than one minute. General pauses and fermatas spread over the score can mark the fragmentation of the score and serve as inserted silences of different duration. This is the only occasion in the Chiffre cycle where a score is on the one hand completely defined by the composer, but on the other hand left free for fragmentation by the musicians. Adding “etcetera” to the performance possibilities, Rihm suggests an even greater freedom in “cutting” the music, in defining the “montage” where the original sequence of the score must not be respected.23 In other compositions, long silences are a main characteristic: in String Quartet no. 7, a four-bar rest with fermata right after the beginning (bars 7-11, fermata in bar 10) does not separate the introduction from the piece itself, but presents silence in the introduction as one of the important topics to be elaborated throughout the piece. Silences, lasting from one beat to several bars, frequently return and are very concentrated in specific passages. Apart from this search to give special weight and significance to silences, rests also appear with a conventional structural function, designing a melodic element, for instance. Silences with different lengths separate the three segments of the dominant melodic element in the viola in the Eighth String Quartet (see Ex. 41, p. 160). An even more striking example is the presentation of the unison motif at the beginning of String Quartet no. 4: the successive extended variations of the motif are separated by rests of different duration: 4, 2, 21/3, 11/2, 2, 31/2, 1, 1/3, 71/2, 1, 1, 4 beats, respectively in bars 1-15. Referring to Stockhausen, Ivanka Stoianova asserts that in the Fifth String Quartet, tremolos and harmonics in the highest register become “coloured silences”. Rihm however, gives Stockhausen’s “coloured silences” another meaning: these are absolute silences, characterised or defined by the previous and the following events and hence full of meaning.24 As is the case for other parameters, silence is not applied in a systematic way. To give an example: in Chiffre I, there is only one full bar of silence (bar 108), although not without importance. Here, in my opinion, a “symbolic” and a structural function are combined: the silence is exactly at the golden section’s location.

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Part II – Analysis

Texture Texture is at the same time as predominant in its traditional role and definition as in its more contemporary function of total sound creation, as defined above (see p. 171). In Rihm’s music of the 1980s, changes in texture are mostly fast, because the texture is not directed by the phrase building, but has an added fragmenting function. To give an example: the alternation of texture in the opening bars of the Fifth String Quartet: unison sustained sound (v1-va) in bar 1; solo sustained sound (va) in bar 2; homorhythm (all) in bar 3; polyphony (va-vc) with homorhythm (v1-v2) followed by homorhythm (v1-v2-va) in bars 4-5; polyphony nearing homorhythm (v1-v2) with homorhythm (va-vc) in bars 6-7; almost homorhythm (v1-va-vc) in bar 8; polyphony with different homorhythmic beats in changing instrument pairs in bar 9; homorhythm in pairs (v1-v2 and va-vc) in bar 10; etc. Looking at this example, the texture could also be described as the falling together of instruments for a short moment, leaving immediately after. The conventional categories of texture are enriched with specific connotations. Melody-dominated homophony was already linked with the floating of one instrument above the texture created by the others (see Ex. 30, p. 103). Homorhythm is a moment of “order” in the hectic and multiple changes of texture as described in the example above. Homorhythm seems to be searched for sometimes, when one by one the instruments find each other, to continue synchronised in the same rhythm for a short moment. Again, an example is found in the Fifth Quartet: the repeated semiquaver triplet bb(-1)a(-1)g# by the cello is part of the polyphony of bar 34, joined by the second violin in bar 35/3 resulting in a pair by pair homorhythmic moment; all instruments double the cello figure, although in chords by the first violin and the viola from bar 36/4 to bar 38/4. The next bar continues the semiquaver triplets homorhythmic in an overall descending line, coming to an end in bar 40, continuing in a polyphonic way, whereafter the instruments find each other back in homorhythmic semiquaver repeated triplets and sextuplets seven bars later (bars 47/4-48). Counterpoint appears in different ways: total independence and difference being one of the extreme possibilities, when all voices are evolving independently, having nothing in common. However, in the 1980s, the other extreme cannot be described as literal imitation or fugato,

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181

techniques returning afterwards in the 1990s. When instruments imitate each other, only the idea or the contour is imitated without copying the same figures. To fill in the example given above: the contrapuntal moment (bars 40-47) of the Fifth String Quartet is dominated by a variety of ascending melodic harmonic elements in all instruments. When a fragment of an ascending movement is repeated, it is expanded, prolonged or changed in another way. The example of the Fifth Quartet gives proof not only of the versatility in texture, but also of the lack of hierarchy: all instruments have a part in the texture development, with the same presence and importance. Texture is treated in a different way in the Chiffre cycle, with a certain hierarchy. In Chiffre I Rihm defines the piano as a soloist opposed to the other instruments. For Chiffre II, III and Nach-Schrift, the piano solo is confirmed in the setting on the score and in Rihm’s comments: “The piano is treated as a solo instrument” or solistisch is added to the piano in the setting on the score.25 Generally speaking and apart from the solo piano, texture in the Chiffre cycle is more conceived in groups of instruments: the group of string instruments for instance is set in the same way, at odds with the group of wind instruments. This is already clear in the setting of Chiffre VI: wind quartet opposed to string quartet. For the sake of completeness, I should add that Rihm also “plays games” with texture, when for instance he composes a simple imitation with syncopated triplets in String Quartet no. 5 (bars 217-220) or when he inserts hockets in the Sixth String Quartet (see Ex. 30, p. 103) in bars 44-51, 265266, 301-302, 726-731 [720-725], 806 [800] and in different Chiffre pieces. A hocket also appears in the Seventh String Quartet (bars 238-240, 244, 275-277, combined with the micro-interval dissonance), in Chiffre I (bars 23-25) and Chiffre IV (bars 15-16).

10

String Quartet in the 1980s: String Quartets nos. 5-8

F

rom his early youth Rihm was interested in the string quartet: the very first work on his official Chronological Work List is a string quartet; his interest never waned (Table 11). For Martin Wilkening the string quartet is the only genre with which Rihm has dealt or coped continuously: it is the mirror of his total oeuvre, the most convincing proof of his craftsmanship, the medium in which the artist demonstrates to what extent he is able to formulate his wishes of personal expression within the laws of the art form.1 Year 1966 1968 1970 1970 1971 1976 1980-81 1981-83 1983-84 1984 1985 1987-88 1991 1992-93 1993/97 1998/2010 1999-2004 2000-01 2003-04 2005 2011 2015

Composition String Quartet in G minor String Quartet String Quartet no. 1 String Quartet no. 2 Tristesse d’une étoile String Quartet no. 3, Im Innersten String Quartet no. 4 Ohne Titel, String Quartet no. 5 Zwischenblick: “Selbsthenker!” String Quartet no. 6, Blaubuch String Quartet no. 7, Veränderungen String Quartet no. 8 Zwischen den Zeilen String Quartet no. 9, Quartettsatz String Quartet no. 10 String Quartet no. 11 Fetzen (nos. 1-2) String Quartet no. 12 Quartettstudie Grave String Quartet no. 13 Geste zu Vedova

Table 11. String quartets overview. 183

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Part II – Analysis

In recent compositions Rihm opts for the combination of the string quartet with other instruments. In his early years, this was only once the case: Morphonie, Sektor IV was originally conceived as a movement of a larger composition, which was not worked out hitherto (Table 12). Year 1972 1999-2004 2000 2000/02 2002 2004/05 2006 2006 2009

Title Morphonie Fetzen “CONCERTO” Interscriptum Vier Studien En plein air Akt Akt und Tag ET LUX

Setting orchestra with solo string quartet accordion and string quartet (nos. 3, 5-8) string quartet and orchestra string quartet and piano clarinet and string quartet flute, clarinet, harp and string quartet soprano and string quartet soprano and string quartet vocal quartet and string quartet

Table 12. Compositions for string quartet and other instruments.

Aesthetic viewpoints As pointed out by Ulrich Mosch, with the Fifth Quartet Rihm starts a series of string quartets which deal less with the music of the past than the earlier ones. It is also Mosch’s opinion that the string quartets are at the same time the mirror of and the motor for Rihm’s compositional development.2 This is inspired by Rihm’s statement that the process of composition of the Sixth Quartet (just like many other works) was in fact the search for the string quartet itself, the search for the quartet sound and process. It must be said that Wolfgang Rihm has a clear and precise opinion of the string quartet genre. A second statement concerns the “magic” of the genre, because in Rihm’s opinion the whole secret nature of art resonates in it, which makes the string quartet a “container” not only for all music, but also for all artworks.3 A third statement: Rihm considers the string quartet as a “setting” (Setzung), not a “genre” (Gattung), which sets him free from historical connotations, characteristic of the genre (see p. 157) also for the fourth statement). This confirms Mosch’s statement, quoted above: the string quartets of the 1980s are not indebted to great examples or to geniuses from the past.

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A fourth statement: the string quartet is seen as only “one instrument” with an enormous range and huge timbral possibilities. It is “one instrument”, which contains a diversity of dialogue possibilities in itself. It is even “polyphonic” in the vertical chord, because of the different players who build the chord together: one instrument à quatre étages (see p. 146).4 These statements mark the difference with Rihm’s earlier concept of the string quartet as evidenced by his comment on his Third Quartet, Im Innersten. In the middle of the 1970s he was directed to the past of the genre with Beethoven and Janáček as leading examples. In that time, he defined the four players not as one instrument, but as a unit of four players “tuning” as if they were one “body” not being polyphonic.5 I understand this as follows: a dissonant chord, for example, played by the four members of the quartet is different when each of them plays one note, a consonant or a dissonant double stop. Another example: how consonant or dissonant are the unisons f#-gb and g#-ab in String Quartet nos. 7 and 8, respectively? This was already discussed in the paragraph on Micro-interval Dissonance (see p. 164). Martin Wilkening summarises the different viewpoints as follows: on the one hand music in search for its articulation as a string quartet, on the other hand, a string quartet in search of being music; string quartet generated from the sound instead of “genre tradition”.6 The String Quartets nos. 5-8, the quartets of the 1980s, seem to reveal some autobiographical aspects as if the genre was more personal, more confessional of the maker’s own feelings and private life than other compositions. Of course, titles are gratefully received food for interpretation: Veränderungen for no. 7 cannot be passed without an interpretative explanation, certainly by lack of clarity by the composer. What is the meaning of the words con amore near the end of the Eighth Quartet (bar 273), written with the tip of the bow on the score? Neither does one know what influence Rihm’s hospitalisation for pneumonia had on nineteen pages or circa 170 bars, the first fifth of the Sixth Quartet, composed in hospital during his recovery. The same goes for the inherent characteristic of the so-called “Notebook Quartets”: while Rihm was permanently keeping the notebooks for the Fifth and Sixth Quartet in his pocket during the compositional process, some comments look for a certain autobio­

186

Part II – Analysis

graphical impact as a kind of diary or even a novel.7 In my opinion this impact is no different from that of other works, from “non-notebook” compositions, because Rihm never prepares a composition by comprehens­ ive sketches. What he thinks or prepares in his mind or maybe puts on paper as a fast sketch in order not to forget is as “autobiographical” as a notebook in his pocket. However, it is thinkable that the composition of the Sixth Quartet served as a kind of self-assertion (Selbstbehauptung), but very soon afterwards the compositional process became detached from it.8 It is not too far-fetched to presume that the four basic figures witness this selfassertion (see Ex. 26, p. 100; Ex. 27, p. 101; Ex. 28, p. 101; Ex. 29, p. 102). Material in clearly defined figures can serve as a support, something that can be grasped or easily remembered. This could reflect Rihm’s earlier “style”, because a similar clearly defined figure, c(+2)d(+1)eb(+1)e(+2)f#, is the basis of the quasi-logical development in the first movement of String Quartet no. 4, where it was also presented clearly in the foreground in the opening bar. Moreover, the first and fourth figures of Blaubuch and the opening motif of the Fourth Quartet are restricted to the same intervals: major and minor second. Both the fourth figure of no. 6 and the opening motif of no. 4, are ascending lines; the former bridges a diminished fourth in three steps, the latter bridges a tritone or augmented fourth in four steps. Germ development returns also later in Rihm’s music, as quoted in connection with Über die Linie for example, in the introduction to chapter 4, Fine Arts. To continue my presumption: once recovered, Rihm felt more free, no longer in need of the grasp of his material after ca. 170 bars. However, it is only from bar 250 on that the figures are looser and fuzzier. The beginning of a new section (bar 182) bears the indication Zögernd und stockend or “Hesitating and staggering”. This indication seems more ill than healthy: the recovery might continue until around bar 250. The logical conclusion should be that the Sixth Quartet is more retrospective than the Fifth, but this is contradicted by the composer. In an interview dated 1985-87, discussing the Sixth String Quartet, Reinhold Urmetzer opts for the term dauerndes Fortspinnung as non-teleological ongoing composing, seemingly without any systematics. Urmetzer suggests that Rihm has abandoned modernist principles, which is denied by the

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composer: he still feels related to the alte Moderne, the “ancient modernists”. His aim is to continue their trail, to progress from it, together with the trail of the avant-garde, without belonging or being stuck to the latter.9

Group Formation versus Individual Quartets In several comments on Rihm’s quartets, String Quartets nos. 5-7 are described as a group, cycle or triad. In my opinion there is also enough reason to consider String Quartets nos. 5-8 as individual compositions or to divide them in pairs: nos. 5-6 and nos. 7-8, based on shared elements and common characteristics.

Common First Note f# Can the fact that f#1 is the first note of the Fifth, Sixth and Seventh String Quartets suffice to group them as a triad? In each case the returning pitch is treated in a completely different way: it is a different “sound”. In no. 5 the pitch is ppp, sul tasto, non vibrato, unison over four beats and solo over five and a half beats, in the normal register of violin and viola. In no. 6 the pitch starts in the high register of the cello, non vibrato with an accent sfz p; from the second beat accompanied by other materials. It is overtaken by the second violin and presented for four and a half beats. In no. 7 the situation is different again. The attack of the first beat is given by the woodblock fff together with the sustained f#, ppp and flautando over four beats with fermata and continued in the second bar, shared by three instruments. Taking all these differences into account, it seems to me that timbre and articulation are more important than the pitch as such. Because of the common first note, in 1988 Wilkening defined the three quartets as cyclic, referring to an utterance by Rihm: “basically one quartet”. Kutschke thinks of a “triptych”; Brügge recalls the “triad” idea, following Kutschke.10 As noted in chapter 6 (see p. 124), Dibelius is of a completely different opinion: referring to the composer he underlines that f# is the central tone, the middle of the whole ambitus of the string quartet and therefore a suitable starting point or base.11

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Part II – Analysis

The Importance of Pitch f# Next to the discussion on the consequences of the same opening pitch, all scholars quoted have a proper opinion on the importance and function of pitch f# in String Quartets nos. 5, 6 and 7. More precisely Wilkening stresses the spatial aspects of it in no. 7.12 Kutschke argues about the subordinated role of the pitch in no. 5: “only subliminally appearing in the midfield” or in concurrence with pitch g. This is extended in no. 7 to a competition between pitches e#, f# and g. According to her, the same pitch f# “fulfils basically no significant role” in no. 6. She ends with the metaphor of pas de deux or pas de trois, with f# as the “winner”.13 Brügge is of a different opinion. For him, the pitch f# certainly plays an important role in the three string quartets: “[t]he central pitch f# emerges more often in the formal course and signals (by building caesuras) in a certain way the beginning of a new section or marks the climax of a development.” Brügge concludes that pitch f# has a dual function: on the one hand as opening pitch it functions as a symbol for the “primordial state” (Urzustand) in the indifferent or not yet formed “image” (indifferentes Satzbild); on the other hand, the pitch is used as a hinge to announce changes in the formal course.14 This will be confirmed by my analysis in the following paragraphs. Yet another opinion, already noted in my introductory chapter: Dibelius acknowledges the return of the pitch in question but refuses to ascribe to it any structural function. For him, this pitch cannot function as a constructive principle in the overload of intertwined events. In his opinion, this pitch is even “ominous”: more than once he reflects on the “ominous f#”.15 In the next paragraphs I will analyse the importance of pitch f# and the possible preferential treatment of other pitches, not only in the three string quartets discussed above, but also in String Quartet no. 8. That pitch f# is not the opening pitch in the last is not enough reason to exclude it from a comparative analysis.

Transitions in String Quartet No. 5 The results of my analysis of String Quartet no. 5 in sections (Table 13) show clearly that pitch f# appears in almost every transition to a subsequent

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section. However, the function of the pitch, the emphasis given to it, the presence or duration and the place in the transition are different every time. The way Rihm brings up this specific pitch is completely different for instance from the way Witold Lutosławski applies it to the Introduction or first movement of his String Quartet (1964). The latter frames the different episodes with groups of octaves on one and the same pitch, c. The question whether Rihm’s use of f# functions as a constructive or structural principle can be answered in a negative way when perceptibility is the key, but answered in a positive way when the focus is on the score and the analysis as such. Moreover, it is my conviction that musical events that are not easily or clearly perceptible in the foreground can still have a function as ordering principle, subconsciously or unconsciously perceived, as a background or less audible, not to say inaudible phenomenon. Of course, “inaudible” can never be the case, while the pitch f# is composed, is present and played. In the Fifth String Quartet the more or less emphasised emergence of pitch f# announces on almost every occasion a change in the score, a transition to a new section. Time after time, the treatment of the pitch undergoes a complete metamorphosis. In between the transitions, there are long passages where pitch f# is completely absent. At a certain moment the pitch is reintroduced to announce the impending transition. Therefore, these “announcements” are also listed in the chart below (Table 13), not to weaken the moment of transition as such, but to show how this central pitch is treated in different ways. What is left out of consideration is the use of the pitch as a passing note in fast gestures, as part of a cluster or complex chord or as occasional not accentuated note. Could it be that simple, that all transitions are based on one and the same pitch? My analysis shows that f# is not the only transitional pitch. Pitch c# also plays an important role, whether or not combined with f# (Table 13). An “announcement” of the importance of the dyad of both pitches is found at the beginning of the piece: bars 14/2-15/1, with c# solo in between. The score is divided into eleven sections (A-K). Transitions are on the one hand concentrated on the specific bar where a new section starts; on the other hand, longer transitional passages with a preparation and a continuation last for several bars.

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Part II – Analysis

The transitions are mostly characterised by contrast, sometimes by the continuation or intensification of certain elements. Beginnings and endings are listed separately, which results in 22 instances. The combination of the two pitches, f# and c#, figures in seven cases, while both are absent or not emphasised (for instance as part of a chord or cluster) again in seven cases. Pitch f# is found in six transitions; pitch c# only in two. However, looking at the complete picture, at transitions as combined ending and beginning, both pitches are found, in combination or separately in each transition: combined from transition A-B until transition G-H; pitch f# alone in transitions H-I and I-J; and c# alone in the last transition J-K. The dominance of the combined pitches is apparent. Bar 1-5

57

Section Instrument Ab vn1-va

Ae

vc

vn2-va

Characteristic f# and c# 1-3: f# unison, solo,

sustained, ppp, sul tasto, non vibrato 4-5: f# continued in chords contrast: subito calmo f# crotchet on

unison harmonic eb pppp and partly solo, followed by c# partly solo f# harmonics, pppp, tritone with c§ in vc

59

Ae

59/3

Bb

6162 7879 79/3

Bb

vn1

f# sustained top note

Be

va

repeated alternation f#-c§

Cb

7980

Cb

81

Cb

Characteristic transition unison

vn1-2-va dyad f#-c# sustained tremolo harmonics va: accent f# vn2 c# tremolo (continued and exchanged with vn1 until bar 110)

end subito calmo a tempo, register contrast announcing tremolo harmonics start tremolo harmonics

10 – String Quartet in the 1980s

Bar

Section Instrument 129Ce va-vc 133

137140

Ce

139141 141/ 1 141

Ce

Db

144

Db

145

Db

Characteristic f# and c#

varied melodic element, consonant dyad c#-f# (and c-g), c# tremolo (continued with both pitches in tremolo chords, bars 133-135) vn1-2-va va: repeated alternation f#-ab, vn1-2: c# and f# tremolo harmonic vn1-2 f# exchanged tremolo

191

Characteristic transition

noted “slow” tremolo

tremolo end tremolo

Ce va-vc

f# doubled repeated vn2- va-vc f# on repeated c# in chord vn2- va-vc f# unison (evolving to (quasi cluster, bars 145148) vn2- va-vc vn2-va: consonant fifth f#- c# followed by vc: pizzicato accent c# no emphasis

177

De

178/ 2 203

Eb Ee

vn1-va

204/ 1 205207 230

Fb

vn1

Fb

all

Fe

-

231

Gb

232

Gb

vn1

234235

Gb

vc-vn1

homophony: melodic element vn1 closing: perfect fifth, sustained notes short rest

f# top note of chromatic bow, tremolo solo with repeated c#

end tremolo

imitation and unison with repeated c# no emphasis

dance-like rhythm

dance-like rhythm

slow down rhythm sustained consonant dyads and unisons

c#solo sustained

sfffz ffff

vc: f# pizzicato sfffz continued by sustained c# in vn1, sfffz ffff

192

Part II – Analysis

Bar

Section Instrument 282Ge all 292

-

Characteristic transition the middle of the c#-f# sustained, returning dyad or part of larger chord score (bar 292) is more important than the transition G-H no emphasis polyphony

He

-

no emphasis

G.P.

Ib

va-vn1

homorhythm

436440

Ie

all

440/ 2 440/ 3 440445 495/ 4 495/ 4 495497

Ie

-

va: f# accentuated by different rhythm (353/1) vn1: short notes, also pizzicato f# almost permanently present, starting with consonant fifth (bars 436/4-437/1) no emphasis

302/ 2 352

Hb

353355

573585

Characteristic f# and c#

Jb

shift: deceleration by larger rhythm

end tremolo homorhythm

Jb

all

Je

-

high presence f#, sustained and doubled no emphasis

Kb

chromatic movements fermata unison

Kb

all

Ke

-

unison ascending melodic elements (containing f#) ending on c#, followed by rest absence

Kb: unison

Ke: unison b

Table 13. String Quartet no. 5. Transitions.

To find out whether or not pitches f# and c# are limited to transitions, one must have a closer look at the passages in between. Both pitches are scarcely used as focal pitches, either combined with other pitches or more in the

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background. Only a few places are found where both pitches are prominent: sustained tritone dyad f#-c with doubled f# (bars 339-340) as part of a large ascending line (bars 337-341); f# as sustained pitch quasi-solo (bars 523524), solo (bars 557-558) after an ascending line ending on f#-c# (bar 555) and solo (bars 572-573).

Transitions in String Quartet No. 6 In Blaubuch the situation is no different: pitches f# and c# keep their ordering function. Separately or in combination they mark all eleven transitions between the twelve sections. Compared to the Fifth Quartet the presence of both pitches, f# and c#,is even stronger. In the eleven transitions the result is more towards the combined pitches: eight transitions with both, only two with pitch f# (A-B, C-D) and only one with pitch c# (F-G). Both string quartets, nos. 5 and 6, have the domination of the combined transitional pitches in common. The distribution of the separate pitches, however, is different: in the Fifth Quartet they are found in the second half of the piece, while in the Sixth Quartet they are in the first half (for f#) and the middle (for c#). Another difference is the ending of the piece: in no. 6 both pitches are emphasised, in no. 5 they were absent. As was the case in String Quartet no. 5, also in no. 6 some places other than transitions stress these pitches, f# and/or c#, again not to such an extent that both pitches should be considered as important outside the transitions.16 Reconsidering the initial question of how group formation can be based on transitional pitches, for the time being the answer must be that the Fifth and Sixth Quartets have much in common. The structural function of the same pitches and the fact that both are Notebook Compositions, are strong arguments to consider them as a pair.

Transitions in String Quartet No. 7 In the Seventh String Quartet, the presence of pitches f# and c# is obvious, but they can no longer claim the same framing function as in the previous quartets. The Seventh Quartet is divided into an introduction, followed by

194

Part II – Analysis

five sections and a coda.17 In the transitions, pitch c# is found only once, at the end of the second section, while f# is present only in the transitions of the first half of the piece, until the end of the third section. Afterwards the combination c#-f# also appears once as a consonant dyad at the beginning of the final section. The less important role in the transitions does not mean that the attention given to pitches f# and c# has weakened, but that it has shifted from the transitions to other passages. The consonant dyad c#-f# is emphasised in eighteen bars. Pitch f# is solo or unison in seventeen bars; f# as part of the consonant dyad appears three times. Pitch c# is solo, quasi solo or unison in 46 bars, because the cello solo is based on this pitch (bars 309-356).18 A special case is formed by the combined pitches f#-gb. This combination is mostly used as a focal pitch, but also heard in almost 20 short solo moments, including the double “unison” f#-gb as main feature of the extended violin solo (bars 245-267).19 Both pitches, c# and f#, are still “fundamentals” of the score, certainly more than transitional axes. The timbral subtlety in the treatment of both the c# and the combined f#-gb pitches makes them important in a completely different way from in the previous quartets.

Transitions in String Quartet No. 8 In the Eighth String Quartet the transitional function of pitches c# and f# is abandoned. Looking for clues to pair Quartets nos. 7 and 8, this could be seen as a logical consequence of their disappearance in the transitions of the second half of String Quartet no. 7. The question now is the same as for the previous quartet: whether both pitches continue to play a crucial role in passages other than the transitions. A few times f# is in the foreground: as a whole bar sustained solo (bars 114-115/2) or as a unique pizzicato, which breaks the long held silence (bars 142/1-148/4 interrupted at 143/1). The pitch is also important as the starting note of a seven times returning melodic element in the viola during the first section of the piece (see Ex. 41, p. 160): bars 18, 21, 24 with imitation in the cello, bar 34 with fermata, bars 43, 45 (end note: g#) and bar 47. The short rests emphasise the three limbs of the melodic element, which is permanently varied. In bar 39 pitch e is inserted in the first limb: f#(+10)

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e(-11/-18)dyad bb-e. In the last appearance in bar 47 the ascending interval f#(+4)bb is answered by the first violin with f#(-14)eb. It is also typical of Rihm that at a certain moment a leading element moves to the background or is no longer used: once past bar 47 the interval f#(+4)bb disappears completely from the score. What is found afterwards is a returning cluster dyad combination f#-g followed by g#-a, always heavily accentuated in the viola and the cello (bars 183-194, 199-200, 203, 208209). As a reminder of the melodic element starting with f#, some short fast melodic elements, exclusively in the first violin, are now in turn ending on this pitch: bars 229, 244-245, 245, 246 (exceptionally in the second violin) and 248. The other central pitch c# appears frequently and in very different settings: solo and unison in bar 41, enharmonically as db in a long quasisolo by the second violin (bars 56-64), with fermata (bars 176-177), as repeated bass note in the cello (bars 178-181), as part of the consonant dyad c#-g# (bar 23), and in the smallest cluster combinations b-c# and c-c# in the ultimate bar (bar 304). The consonant dyad c#-f# sounds only once, very shortly, at the end of bar 37, when c# is added to the sustained f#. Though again in a totally different way, the central pitches keep their primary role in this quartet, as it was in the Seventh, no longer as transitional pitches but as central pitches in other passages. This confirms the alternative grouping of the quartets: analysing central pitches, there is more reason to form two pairs, nos. 5-6 and 7-8, than a triad based on the shared opening pitch followed by a single quartet.

Closing Pitch While much attention is paid to the opening pitch, it might also be interesting to have a look at the closing pitches of the string quartets. In String Quartet no. 8, near the end after the already quoted con amore (bar 273), all instruments focus on unisons and single tones, albeit “disturbed” (accompanied and interrupted) by chords or percussive noises. The series of single tones (unisons) consists of g-f-g#-a-b (bars 274/4-277/1, 277/2-4, 278/1-279/2, 279/3-303/2 and 303/3-304/2, respectively). To the concluding pitch b, sustained and accentuated as a double harmonic sffffz in both violins, the pizzicato cluster dyad c-c# is added twice as final sound:

196

Part II – Analysis

a Bartók-pizzicato echoed by a pp pizzicato. However, pitch b is the final arco sound in no. 8, as was the case in the Fifth String Quartet. Moreover, in the Fifth Quartet, the final pitch b is preceded by a passage similar to no. 8: sustained notes solo are “disturbed” by other sounds (even more disturbed in no. 5 than in no. 8). The series starts with f# and continues with a, ab and again f# (bars 557-558/3, 562/4-564/3, 567/2-572/3 and 572/4-574/1, respectively). It is followed by an ascending chromatic series (bars 575-579) to reach the final unison pitch b (bars 579/4-585), emphasised and repeated in all four instruments. In String Quartet no. 7, a pizzicato b by the cello is inserted in the percussive woodblocks of the final bar: the last sound of the quartet is pitch b. Only String Quartet no. 6 is the exception here: no stress on pitch b in its final bars. That makes three of the four quartets closing on pitch b. This resemblance is as strong or as weak as the opening f#, no reason enough to consider the Fifth, Seventh and Eighth String Quartets as a triad.

Two Pairs of String Quartets As mentioned previously, the fact that the Fifth and Sixth Quartets are both Notebook Quartets is the strongest possible argument to consider them as a pair. The other pair, nos. 7 and 8, have timbral aspects in common. Timbral research is an important issue in both, which must not only be concentrated on the central pitches as explained above. In both quartets there are also quasi-stasis moments on other pitches, such as the violins sustaining pitch a in unison harmonics with different dynamics in no. 8 (bars 279-289), or also in no. 8 the same pitch a in the first violin with consonant and dissonant comments by the other instruments (bars 290-303). Another example in the same string quartet is bar 55, repeated twenty-one times with accelerando: trills sul ponticello combined with ricochet col legno create an evolving percussive timbre, and the sound aspect diminishes while noise emerges. In the Seventh Quartet there is a coloured stasis on the perfect fourth d-g, combining cello and violin (bars 289-303) and another one on the tritone dyad c#-g (bars 346-355), next to shorter similar passages.

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Another common aspect: both string quartets have percussive added timbres. In the Seventh Quartet woodblocks are added to the string instruments, in the Eighth the thorough use of ricochet and even more ricochet col legno is percussive and noise-like, as is the manipulation of paper. For both quartets the role given to silence is shared and not without importance. A last common event is the double unison with possible beating or sharp dissonance, as described above: f#-gb in String Quartet no. 7 and g#-ab in no. 8. After its first appearance in the viola (bars 25/4-29/1), the double unison g#-ab is given to all four instruments (bars 120/1-127/2 and 131/13), the beating is really searched for by quartertones and by glissandos over a semitone or quartertone between g#-ab and a (see p. 164). The subtlety of pitch manipulation here towards a timbral effect again confirms my statement that f#-gb and g#-ab are quasi-unisons with inherent beating and not one enharmonically notated single tone. In spite of all arguments listed above, it must be said that, following Rihm, all his string quartets are individual pieces without relation, cyclic intention or grouping. In a recent dialogue between Wolfgang Rihm and Lucas Fels, cello player of the Arditti String Quartet, the question was asked whether all his string quartets (twelve at that moment) form one group or can be divided into different groups. Rihm’s answer was clear: each string quartet is an individual piece, independent from the others.20

Notebook Quartets: Hidden Structure In String Quartet nos. 5 and 6, hidden behind the audible sequence of sections and phrases with their individual foreground characteristics, their breaks, blockings, noise shifts and other unexpected events, lies an inaudible background structure. This background structure is comparable to the geometrical background figures in fine arts and architecture, consisting of symmetry and balance, including also the location of the middle and of the golden section. Next to this, my analytical findings show a probability of the use of the looking back technique and of mirroring, with symmetrical and balanced events as a result, even in the Notebook Quartets.

198

Part II – Analysis

It must be repeated that neither in Rihm’s texts nor in the sketches is symmetry or golden section ever mentioned. However, there is an audible hint: small symmetrical elements could be found at the micro-level, the audible “metaphor” for the large hidden symmetries. To restrict to one example of small symmetrical elements in String Quartet no. 5 I concentrate on the returning short solos of the first violin (bars 17, 59, 204, 462, respectively; Ex. 49). No symmetry is found in the first solo (bar 17). Repeated notes are common in the four passages, but less in the last one. The octave repetition in bar 60 (second solo) can be seen as a symmetrical germ: there is a resemblance in the notes before and after. In the third solo, repetition is again more stressed, but repeated limbs create the feeling of symmetry (see also Ex. 35, p. 118). The last solo is related to the previous ones and results in symmetrical elements (indicated by brackets). 17

bnœœ ] bœ nœ v fff v

& 44 59

&44

[

œ v

œ v

œ v

n œv 3

bœ v

nœ v 3

5

nœ v 3

œ v

œ v

3

bœ nœ bœ nœ nœ œ œ œ œ nœ bœ œ œ Œ n œ b >œ ™ œ. œ. œ. œ. œ. b œv œv v v b œv v v v n œv v œv v v v v v v v fff 3

3

3

4 nœ bœ bœ bœ nœ bœ & 4 ææR ≈nœ nœ œ # œ œ œ >bœ. n œ œ # œ œ œ >bœ. n œ œ # œ œ œ œ >bœ. v # œv # œ œ œ >bœ. n œ œ vvv > vv v v v > vv v v vv v v > vv v 204

4 &4

ord. 6

6

6

6

nœ ™ œ ™ #œ ™ nœ œnœ œ œ œ œ nœ œ n˙ # œ. #>œ nœv. œv. nœ. œ. # œ. # œ #œ > p sfff fff v. > > > v. > # œv sfffz v v v v

462

molto marcato

3

6

œ

Ex. 49. Ohne Titel, String Quartet no. 5, 17, 59-60, 204-205, 462-465. Symmetrical elements indicated by brackets (bars 462-465).

Another audible hint: how small elements disappear or become hidden by transformation and elaboration can be viewed in an example from the beginning of the Sixth String Quartet. Immediately after its presentation, a

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clear figure is elaborated in such a way that it loses its original characteristics to disappear in the anonymity of chromaticism. In Ex. 26, the opening figure or figure 1 of this quartet was defined by two intervals (-2/+1). Ten bars later the Fortspinnung provokes transformations and the disappearance of its identity: (-2/+1) inverted and retrograde, replaced by the complementary intervals, (-11/+10) for instance (Ex. 50).

Vn1

> b >œ nœ bœ nœ ° 4 nœbœ nœbœbœ nœ nœ#œ nœ nœ #œ nœ#œ œ nœ #œ nœbœ nœ #œ bœ & 4 #œ nœ nœbœ#œ nœ nœ

sffz sffz nœ bœ nœ bœ b œ b œ n œ b œ n œ b 4 b œ n œ n œ #œ >œ bœ nœbœ#œ #œ Vn2 & 4 nœ nœ nœ#œ nœ nœ #œ bœ nœ ¢ bœ nœ# œ #œ

^. 15 ° n Rœ r ≈ ‰ ≈ ≈ bœ #œ nœ nœ & # œ nœ n œ nœ # œ bœ nœ. v # œ nœ n œ n œ #œ nœ^. ‰ nœ ¢& nœ nœ n œ nœ bœ n œ nœ #œ ™ sffz

p

ff

Œ b œ. v

Œ

Ex. 50. String Quartet no. 6, Blaubuch, 14-15, vn1-2. Pointed brackets: figure 1, original and transformations.

In the case of the Fifth Quartet, one cannot deny the emphasis given to this particular moment: the longest solo single tone and the longest solo melodic element in the second violin (bars 294/1-297/1) mark the middle of the composition, as explained in Ex. 39. This place functions as an axis or pivot for symmetrically placed events. A first example of symmetry is found in the time signature changes. The score of Ohne Titel is continuously in 4/4, except for one bar of 2/4, four times 5/4 and seven interruptions by short moments of 3/4. With the following symmetries, I can cover all 3/4 time signature changes: - B  ars 149-156: time signature changes to 3/4, with the aim of intensifying the acceleration and bewildering: noch schneller, wild. At the symmetrical place, bar 437, exactly 149 bars before the end, there is a time signature change for only one bar. That these places are almost exactly at one quarter and three quarters of the quartet (resp. bar 146 and 438) can be by coincidence.

200

Part II – Analysis

- B  ar 210: one bar 3/4. Almost symmetrically, bar 373 (instead of 585210=375): one bar of 3/4 is found. There are also some places of presumed hidden symmetry: - B  ar 441: one bar of 3/4. Here I find balance instead of symmetry: in the corresponding bars 144-148 (585-441=144), there is the sudden introduc­tion of ternary rhythms, first homorhythmic except for the first violin playing high sustained notes, and all homorhythmic and martellato in, indeed, bar 149 in 3/4, as noted above in the first comparison. Sustained notes in the high register of the first violin, accompanied by hectic movement in the others is also the case in bars 431-435. - B  ar 357, one bar of 3/4 is symmetric with bar 228 in 4/4 (Ex. 51), but strangely enough with a crossed or deleted bar line after three beats in the parts of the second violin and the viola and after two beats in the cello part, and not in the staff of the first violin playing a whole note. Is this Rihm’s kind of “game” or only a simple “double” mistake, nevertheless exactly at the symmetrical place? That symmetry is an important structuring mean is confirmed by some other events: - Th  e subito calmo after the hectic opening phase ends in bar 59. In bar 528, 57 bars from the end, the obsessive rhythmic repetitions come to a definite end. - Th  e tremolo harmonics in the violins over a long period are symmetrical in bars 81-120 and 470-505 (115-80 bars from the end): using the same pitches c#-d, but also alternating with d-eb in the second passage (see Ex. 32, p. 107; Ex. 33, p. 117). - A  lot of harmonics mark the passage from bar 192 on, culminating in bars 201-204 with a tremolo passage in all strings. At the symmetrical place, bar 382-388 (203-197 bars from the end) a long tremolo passage starts, continued with few interruptions until bar 440, although with subito tremolo sul ponticello in all instruments in bars 390-393 (192195 bars from the end). - Th  e elaboration of the g-c# tritone, introduced by the first violin (see

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Ex. 35, p. 118) in bar 204 and obsessively continued in the viola until bar 213, marks the start of a new section. The same tritone is emphasised in bars 374-375 in the viola (211 bars before the end), also starting a new section, but evolving in a completely different way directly afterwards. - A  last symmetrical event: sustained notes in the first violin (bars 227230) are continued (with a few interruptions) until bar 268, culminating in two harmonics sustained over eleven bars (bars 269279). The symmetrical place is also a long passage with sustained notes in the first violin, lasting over 31 bars: 318-349 (or 236-267 bars from the end) and beginning with harmonics almost over the same length (bars 318-322 and 325-331, in between the first violin continues in the same high register).

Vn1

° 4 &4

Vn2

Va

w

n˙ ™ 4 & 4 n˙ ™ ææ B 44 ‰

> bnœœ J

˙˙

3 œ^ œ^ œ^ œ^ œ œ œ œ bœvœ œvœ œœ > >œ sfffz œœ n bœ

p

fff

^. ^ œ^ nœ^ n œ ^ ^ ^ b œ n œ œ œ ?4 ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ R ≈ Vc ¢ 4 nœ #œ œ œ œ #œ^ w w 229 ° & & ˙˙ ˙ B ˙ ¢&

(fff)

w

sfffz

nb˙˙ > sfffz > n b ˙˙ sfffz

bœœ

Œ

3

bnœœ

w

3



j nbœœ ˙˙ ™™ > sfffz p > nbœœ ˙˙ ™™ J sfffz

p

sfffz

n>œ & J

sfffz

fff

fff

(fff)

Ex. 51. Ohne Titel, String Quartet no. 5, 228-230. Dotted line: originally crossed out bar line in bar 228: not in the first violin, after the third beat in the second violin and the viola, after the second beat in the cello.

202

Part II – Analysis

While unison and consonant moments are rather exceptional in the Sixth String Quartet, there can be a suspicion of purpose in finding them at symmetrical places, although it cannot be proven in an irrefutable way. The first example below can seem more convincing than the second. Nevertheless, if these examples are only similar and in symmetrical places by chance, they still are full proof of the unintentional presence of focal pitches and moreover an illustration of how the same pitch aggregates return at great distance. - B  ars 160-176 and 678-694 [672-688] This moment is marked by single tones and unisons f#, g# c, b (bars 160-165) at the beginning and by the consonant dyad e-b (bar 176) at the end with dissonant sustained chords in between. In the corresponding passage, bars 678-694 [672-688] (160-176 bars from the end), the concentration on the same unison f# is also obvious in bars 678-684 [672-678]. Five bars of dissonance (with focus on f#) lead to the consonant dyad c#-f#, lasting for four beats in bar 690 [684]. The following bars 691-695/1 [685-689/1] are also full of consonant chords, with the dyad e-b in bar 694 [688]. - B  ars 348-355/1 and 496-502 [494-500] The first bars 348-352 of this passage concentrate on the repeated consonant triad d-f-a in an accentuated staccato regular quaver rhythm, alternating with the consonant dyad ab-c (bar 350/1) and ending on f-db in bar 353/4 followed by the consonant triad f-ab-c in the next bars 354/4-355/1. In the symmetrical passage (bars 496-502 [494-500] or 348-354 from the end) the texture is completely different, but the consonant chord f-ab-c is found in bars 496-497 [494-495] (353-354 bars from the end, with f and c in the viola part) with repeated pitch ab and pitch f alternating with the “ominous” f#; in bar 499 [497] d-a becomes the central dyad (351 bars from the end); the consonant chord f-ab-c is repeated in bars 500-501 [498-499] (349350 bars from the end). The episode ends with the consonant dyad d-g, sustained during the whole bar 503 [501]. It contains pitch d as in the corresponding beginning, while the most convincing symmetrical element is of course the consonant triad f-ab-c.

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There is a difference in the use of symmetry between the Fifth and the Sixth Quartets. In the former the symmetry is more exact, for instance in the harmonic tremolo passages on the same pitches. In the latter, it is more about balance than exact symmetry. To give some examples in the Sixth Quartet: - B  ars 44/4-50/3 and 801-809 [795-803] or 45-53 bars from the end The extended hocket moment on pitch a in the first member of this comparison is mirrored in a variety of hocket techniques in the second one. The first hocket is “balanced” in different ways: firstly by short unison single tones separated by rests, then by alternating three players with one (bars 803/4-804/2 [797/4-798/2]). In the next bars a two-note group with the ascending third evolves from hocket to continuous playing with voice exchange in pairs (bars 806-807/3 [800-801/3]). The passage ends with “broken” melodic elements in the violins (bar 809 [803]), a recall of the fast movement of the first violin in bars 44-50, where figures 1, 2 and 3 are identifiable. - B  ars 259-272 and 574-595 [568-589] or 259-280 from the end Strictly symmetrical with bars 259-269 are bars 585-595 [579-589], both marked by repetition. In the second half, from bar 574 [568] on, the dyad c#-d is repeated, also sustained and with tremolo, mostly by all instruments. From bar 585/4 [579/4] on or the exact symmetrical place, the repeated dyad is assigned to the violins while viola and cello play a unison melody. This is in balance with the first member, where c#-d is part of the repeated chord in viola and cello, shifting to a less repeated c#, keeping c#-d as focal pitches and ending with unison d in bars 271/4-272/2. Here also not all instruments take part in repetition until the end of the passage. From bar 265 on, the first violin and the cello play melodic-rhythmic elements, while the others stay concentrated on repetition until bar 269. Repetition with clear focus in the second passage is balanced with partial and looser repetition and focal pitches in the first one.

204

Bars 55-56

Part II – Analysis

Bars Instr. from end v1-vc

404-408

59-55

63-65 400-402

63-61

72-73 390-391 77-78 386-387

73-72 77-76

80-82 381-383

84-85 375-379 89 90-91 373-375

v1-vc v2-vc va-vc vn1-2 vn2-va va all vn2-vc

82-80

88-84

90-88

101-102 105-106

vc-all

vc vc va-vc vn1-2 va-vc vn1-va va-vc

362-372 108-116 123-133

101-91

328-356 135-142

135-107

145 149-155 308-326

v1-vc

155-137

Event first duo, consonant dyads e-b and d-a non vibrato last duo, consonant dyads d-a and c-f, also dissonant, noise-like, glissandos consonant dyad, unison, short accent vn2-va mostly consonant dyads harmonics, consonant dyad, unison consonant dyad sustained note c# vc: sustained note c# others: f# causing a sustained consonant dyad vn2: col legno, Bogen fallen lassen, group of demisemiquavers vc: short f# vc: sustained tritone c#-g others: f# va: group of four demisemiquavers, only group in this passage, balanced with vn2 in bar 80 sustained b sustained tritone c#-g sustained white cluster d-e-f-g, fermata rhythmic consonant dyad bb-eb rhythmic and timbral consonant dyad c#-f# followed by c#-f#-g hard pizzicato, Bartók-pizzicato unison c, contrasting dynamics, pizzicato, Bartók-pizzicato solo duo, changing timbres, also noise-like “duo”: woodblock versus three string players

wb vn2-vc wb vn2-vavc vc-wb mirrored “duo”: cello versus three woodblocks all vn1 solo moments in every bar also vn1-2 unison also vn2 and vc: a few solo moments vc solo vc solo vc solo based on c#

Table 14. String Quartet no. 7. Features contributing to the arch form (Abbreviation wb: woodblock).

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String Quartet no. 7: Arch Form String Quartet no. 7 is original because of many reasons in addition to the added woodblocks. There is a predilection for evolving sustained sounds over repeated elements, except for the coda of course where the cello repeats bar 436 [437] 24 times (interrupted once in bar 450 [451]). The setting of the quartet is also made original by insertions of shorter and longer solos and duos, put in symmetry or balance around the middle, which creates an arch form. The importance of symmetry is suggested from the beginning of the piece. In the introduction, symmetrical groups of three notes and three chords are found: with irregular rhythm f#-c#-f# and f#-g#-f# in bars 1-3; with shorter almost equal durations the dyads f#-g#, f§-a and again f#-g# in bar 4. In Table 14 features that contribute to the arch form are listed. They contain symmetrical and balanced elements, as always with some tolerance. The ending and the beginning of both members of a symmetrical event can coincide, with the members as such spread to the outside of the symmetrical bar. In other words: the ending of the member in the first half is symmetrical with the beginning of the member in the second half of the score. The symmetrical and balanced events involve solos and duos (quasi-solo and quasi-duo). Even balancing a solo against unison from the rest of the ensemble can be the case. Between the two members of the last comparison in Table 14, from bar 155 to bar 307, which is at 75 bars from the middle of the score, the balanced symmetry of the settings in solos and duos comes to an end. The long passage based on f#-gb in the second half of the piece (bars 245-277), mostly in the first violin solo, has no symmetrical answer. However, it is partly balanced by the concentration on the double unison in the first violin, present at bars 195-202 and 216-218 (symmetrical with bars 268-261 and the first bars 247-245, respectively). The fact that the woodblock is heard in the opening and closing bars can be a small contribution to reinforcing the arch form. That the woodblock can find a match in hard pizzicato and Bartók-pizzicato is quite acceptable in view of Rihm’s refined attention to and elaboration of timbral aspects, described in the previous chapter.

206

Part II – Analysis

The balanced symmetry is based not only on the setting (solo, duo, unison group, use of woodblocks), but also on musical characteristics as such (pitch, rhythm, articulation). Once more, this results in coherence more at the compositional process level than in directly audible or easily perceptible events.

String Quartet no. 8: Structure based on Fibonacci Series The fact that bar 55 is repeated 21 times could be a doublehint of the application of Fibonacci numbers in the Eighth String Quartet. Indeed, particular events can be found at most bars defined by a Fibonacci number (Table 15). Fibonacci bar number 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 55 89 144 233

Event ricochet, short G.P. “real” start of the quartet white cluster d-e-f-g: “symbolic” importance first change of time signature and of tempo (accelerando) in bar 9 consonance, fermata, end of “sound” tempo change in the next bar followed by paper manipulation unique event: a sheet of paper is thrown to the ground end of paper manipulation fermata, tempo change in the next bar time signature change bar repeated 21 times, accelerando no special event single pizzicato in long passage of G.P. (bars 138-159) with a few interruptions no special event

Table 15. String Quartet no. 8. Particular events in bars defined by a Fibonacci number.

This first application with the focus on particular events in bars marked by a Fibonacci number is not completely satisfactory: no remarkable event is found at bars 89 and 233. It is typical of Rihm to apply a system inconsequentially.

10 – String Quartet in the 1980s

Section A

Bars 1-8 1-13 2-9

B

14-21 17-30 18-53 35-55 55 60-72 73-106 120-127 128-135 138-150 152-159 138-159

C (159/3) 160-173 177-185 204-212 204-217 215-235 219-241 229-242

D (252/3)

239-252 251-304

207

Fibonacci Event number 8 bar 9: time signature change, tempo change poco accelerando 13 tempo q = 80 with slight tempo change (bar 9) 8 from G.P. to rest on fermata, prolonged with G.P. in bar 10 8 paper manipulation 13(14) tempo q = 80 34(35) returning melodic element 21 tempo q = 80 21 repeated bar, accelerando to presto 13 from G.P. to G.P. 34 repeated ascending three note groups, in 2/4 tempo schneller (so schnell wie möglich) 8 unique slow tempo, q = 40 ca. 8 from G.P. to start passage with rests and short sounds 13 G.P. with three extreme short sounds 8 G.P. with one short sound 21 G.P. with short sounds (addition of the two lines above) 13(14) q = 80 – 100 8(9) time signature 4/4 8(9) tempo meno mosso 13(14) time signature 4/4 21 tempo q = 100 ca. 21(22) time signature 4/4 13(14) repetition

13 54

so schnell wie möglich time signature 4/4

Table 16. String Quartet no. 8. Events whose duration is determined by a Fibonacci number.

I attribute a symbolic meaning to the white cluster in bar 5, since Rihm pays attention to symbols and metaphors in the music of this string quartet. “White” can be a new sheet of paper, not written on yet; it can be a kind of new beginning, in relation to the “message” con amore.

208

Part II – Analysis

The second application of Fibonacci numbers, on durations of a specific item, is spread over the whole composition. Because of their brevity, it is impossible to decide whether or not events lasting three or five bars are inspired by a Fibonacci number. Therefore they are not listed in the chart below. But when, for instance, the time signature 5/4 is found only twice during three bars each (bars 9-11, 248-250), next to twice for one bar only (bars 23, 28), or when frequent time signature and tempo changes last for short durations of one, two, three or five bars, the presumption of Fibonacci series application must not be ruled out. In the chart below the tolerance for Fibonacci linked durations is one bar: bars 1-13 are counted as thirteen bars, so are bars 17-30 (the strict duration without tolerance is noted in brackets); of course some data of the previous chart must be repeated here (Table 16). In Table 16, tempo is listed ten times, silence six times, time signature and composition content (repetition, melodic element, paper timbre) each five times. The different categories related to Fibonacci numbers are quite restricted in number. It may be surprising that the noise-like ricochet and ricochet col legno, the typical timbres of this string quartet, are not related to Fibonacci numbers. The two locations of the golden section (0.382, bars 116-117 and 0.618, bars 187-188) are not given special attention: a solo instrument with a sustained note and a sustained chord followed by a tempo change, respectively, cannot be interpreted as strong indications when compared to unique events linked to the golden section in other compositions. However, the middle of the score is again rather exceptional: around bar 152, a passage of complete silence (bars 138-159) is interrupted only a few times by a short sound, except for a full sounding bar just before the middle (bar 151). In bar 152, the longest silence of the whole quartet begins, lasting for six bars. This passage is linked to Fibonacci numbers as listed in Table 16. From all the Fibonacci numbers mentioned in Table 15, only two coincide with the beginning of a phrase (bars 34 and 55). However, from all bar numbers in Table 16 (defining the beginning of an event), eleven coincide with the beginning of a phrase (more than half of the 20 phrases of the quartet). Moreover, all section opening bar numbers are listed in this table. The conclusion is that, to a certain extent, formal aspects are inspired by Fibonacci numbers.

11

Group Formation: Chiffre Cycle

The Meaning of “Chiffre”

E

tymologically, the word “Chiffre” means “secret character”: unreadable, unfamiliar, not belonging to the well-known alphabet. In his descriptions of the Chiffre pieces, Rihm repeatedly lists the following terms: “cuneiform script” (Keilschrift), “hieroglyphs” (Hieroglyphen), “unfamiliar characters” (fremde Zeichen) and “warning signs” (Menetekel).1 As it is Rihm’s aim to provide the listener with as many “inviting openings” to his music as possible, he links a lot of metaphors and synonyms to the term Chiffre. Most of all he uses Zeichen, which can be translated in many ways: character, sign, signal, mark, marker, reference, symbol and indication. Rihm could probably be referring to the musical notation: both for the composer and the performer, the musical notation exists of a kind of “secret characters” or “chiffres”: clefs, notes, rests, numbers, performance indications. In music the most evident meaning described as Zeichen im Klang, “sound character” and “written sound” (also musikalische Zeichen, Klangzeichen, eine Folge klingender Zeichen, Schrift im Klang, Klangschrift). Referring to the scientist Blaise Pascal, Rihm concludes that a Chiffre has always a double meaning, a clear one and a hidden one: ‘Chiffre’ is an ambiguous term with many meanings: sign, but also number; it is possible to decipher them but not a must. They can also be left as they are, as a sign language, or be understood as a motion pulse.2

When Rudolf Frisius gives a list of musical characteristics in a 1984 interview about Chiffre, Rihm interferes with one word: Zeichen or “signs”.

209

210

Part II – Analysis

There [in the Chiffre cycle] the development starts out from tiny, contrasting elements, from elements that are each by themselves characterised… Signs [Zeichen]… … from intervals (for instance fifths), from well-defined timbres or from a specific touch model on the piano.3

For Chiffre I the composer explains that both the piano sound and the sound of the other instruments form one and the same “character” (Zeichen). While the instruments build a resonance space (Resonanzraum) for the piano, this “character” becomes unreadable when the piano and the other instruments are separated from each other.4 From Chiffre III on, Rihm enriches his comments with specific terminology from the world of fine arts: in Chiffre III the “written-like” (Schrifthafte) is stepping back and the “plastic” is coming to the fore. “Plastic of sound(steel)threads” (Plastik der Klang(Stahl)fäden) is found in the description of Chiffre IV and “sound plastic” goes with Bild. “Plastic units” are at the root of Chiffre V and, like String Quartet no. 8 (see p. 97), Chiffre VI is “blackened”, with a “dark character” (dunkles Zeichen). For Chiffre VII, the terms “perspective” and “melody” are combined in Perspektivische Melodik. “Perspective” returns in the three lines Rihm wrote on Chiffre VIII, accompanied by “black-grey-green sculpture” (schwarz-grau-grüne Skulptur). According to Alastair Williams, the concept of sculpture must be identified with the sculpting of the individual sound, “every sound as a sculpture in itself ”, as described in the context of the Klangbeschreibung series (Klangbeschreibung I-III), composed at the same time as the Chiffre cycle. In his opinion, Rihm’s focus on sound-sculpture is “concerned not with constructivist models of multi-dimensional objects, but with the idea of sound as tactile, as plastic, as something to be moulded in composer’s hands.”5 Anyway, all approaches described above do not exclude the ambiguity and enigmatic character of the term “Chiffre”. Already in the opening phrase of his very first comment on Chiffre I, Rihm introduced the term Arte Cifra, defined as enigmatic and symbolic (rätselhafte, zeichenhafte Kunst). In the same opening line, the composer undermined all possible explanations by the refusal or the confirmation of the impossibility of a definition: “Chiffre ist … eine Chiffre”.

11 – Group Formation: Chiffre Cycle

211

Chiffre: a Cycle Why did Rihm add a tenth piece in 2004 to the “closed” cycle of the 1980s? The reason for this epilogue must be found in Rihm’s changed aesthetic in the 1990s. He concentrates more and more on formal problems related to overwriting and on intertextuality through insertions of existing material into new compositions. Nach-Schrift offers the cycle a rounded form, since it is the overwritten return of the opening piece. The next question is whether or not Chiffre VIII is a fundamental part of the cycle. Like Nach-Schrift, it was written later than the core of the cycle. And because of the addition of Nach-Schrift, Chiffre VIII has lost its concluding function. The continuity of the compositional process of the cycle was broken: a gap of three years between Chiffre VIII and the earlier pieces, composed continuously over a short period of four years. Chiffre VIII is also exceptional for its conciseness: only 40 bars, lasting about four minutes. However, there are different reasons to include Chiffre VIII into the cycle. Its setting is related to the cycle because of the priority given to bass instruments (see the list of Analysed Compositions, p. 27). There is no percussion and the only strings are two cellos, as was the case in Chiffre I. Indeed, the setting of Chiffre VIII is the closest to that of the opening piece, closer than any other number of the cycle. Another reason is that for Chiffre VIII Rihm repeats the same terminology as in his description of other pieces of the cycle. Rihm himself causes a certain confusion when he describes Chiffre VIII as a “remembering, return and anticipation” (Erinnerung, Zurücknahme und Vorgriff) at the same time, followed by: Nichts Finales, Randbereich or “nothing final, on the edge, periphery.”6 Denoting a composition group as a “cycle” is rather exceptional for Rihm. He also described Tutuguri as a cycle,7 but in its final version all previous stages are merged into Tutuguri, Poème dansé: a composition in one movement, lasting for one hundred minutes, where the cyclic idea is dissolved. In other cases, Rihm opts for more neutral terminology: “groups”, “series”, “work in progress” with possibly different preparatory stages or “states” (Zustände).8 More private indications are found when the composer is dealing with close friends: Pol – Kolchis – Nucleus, where the central piece dedicated to the painter Kurt Kocherscheidt is described as a “triptych” (Triptychon) (see p. 112) and the series of five compositions in

212

Part II – Analysis

memoriam Luigi Nono are piece by piece “attempts” in the subtitles (Versuche) (see p. 61). In 2002, Rihm redefined the Chiffre series as a cycle (ein richtiger Zyklus), different from his concept of later projects, such as Vers une symphonie fleuve and Jagden und Formen, where he opts for a series of different stages as “new states” (neue Zustände).9 For this kind of group composition, in 2012 he coined the term “work family” (Werkfamilie), defined as works composed over a period of several years and developed from the same “germ piece” (Keimstück). As examples he adds Séraphin and Jagden und Formen, but also the Chiffre cycle.10 This is rather surprising, for while the function of Chiffre I as “germ” is evident, it is at the same time absolutely different from the germ-functions of the predecessors of the other titles he mentions. Also their genesis is not comparable and the technique of overwriting is treated in a completely different way in the Chiffre cycle compared to Jagden und Formen. With great subtlety Rihm stresses the fact that the Chiffre compositions are on the one hand “independent pieces”, no more changed once finished and existing in only one state, and on the other hand that “certainly ‘genetic’ material from one piece appears in the others.”11 Asked about the origin of his fascination for work cycles, Rihm refers to the cyclic concept in fine arts, where series of paintings cause one and the same theme to become “plural” (Bestimmte Motive werden mehrfach): his examples are the series Venus with Organ Player by Titian and the series of Pope Portraits by Francis Bacon, originally inspired by Velasquez’s portrait of Pope Innocent X. This may be nothing more than coincidence: Bacon also uses a technique with flowing and dripping paint in some of his Pope Portraits, resulting in a deformed image comparable to overpainting. Rihm explains how interesting it always has been for him “to work out something new while working simultaneously at the same”, further described as “staying in the continuity of creative change” and “always getting something new out of the same source”.12

12

Chiffre Cycle: Harmony

I

n this chapter, the accent may seem to be on quantitative analysis, numbers and percentages. The quantitative analysis is not an aim as such: I try to interpret quantitative results in a qualitative way and to link both quantitative results and qualitative characteristics.

The Tritone-Triad Aware of the importance of the tritone-triad, one would expect that it is probably the most present and unifying chord of the Chiffre cycle. Nothing is less true, although the tritone-triad is heard already in the opening bars of Chiffre I. The first chord of this composition (bar 1/1, lasting for a semiquaver, Ex. 52) is another kind of chord typical of Rihm: a quasicluster combining the separate pitch, c with the cluster e-bb. Of course, all attention goes to the hammered doubled pitch a of the piano, and immediately afterwards the other instruments form the resonance space for the soloist. The resulting chord a-bb-c-e-f (bar 1/1-2) is followed by the tritone-triad bb-e-f (bar 1/3-4).

213

214

Part II – Analysis

° 4 &4

q = 80

Cl Bn

Tpt

¢

? 44

4 &4

> nw fff

bw > fff > n˙

>œ R

ff p

sfffz

Db

Pf

? 44

sfffz

œ.

œ.

3

ff



Œ



Œ

œ^. sfffz

3

n œ. > “‘

œ.



Œ

r ≈ œ > fff sfffz



Œ

ff sffz

^ °? 4 #nOœ. sul pont.≈ Vc I 4 nœ R sfffz ^. sul pont. ? 44 #nœœR ≈ Vc II ¢ ?4 ‹ 4 n˙ fff p > “” n>œ 4 &4



œ.

œ.

3 3

œ.

œ >.

œ.

œ.

nb O˙

pp

nn O˙

pp

Œ

Ó

Œ

Ó

Ex. 52. Chiffre I, 1.

It takes until the end of the second phrase before the tritone-triad is present in the foreground. Further striking appearances are rather scarcer than one would expect (Table 17).

12 – Chiffre Cycle: Harmony

Bar

21/1 41/3 43/4-44/2 50/3-4 66/4-67/2 77/3

Chord c-f-f# bb-e-f e-a#-b ab-db-d e-a-bb b-f-f#

89/4-90/2

c-f#-g

110/1 128/2-4 142/1 153/4-154/1

f#-c-db b-f-f# b-f-f# c-f-f# f-b-c

215

Function and Place end phrase announcement piano solo, generative pole chord accompanying piano solo chord accompanying piano solo before golden section (0.382, bar 68) introduction of the melodic generative pole, defined as figure 3 (see p. 244, 253) middle of the composition, part of the non espressivo chorale-like passage, preceded by consonant perfect fourth dyads (bar 88) first chord following the location of the golden section end phrase end phrase opening final section, f-b-c returning in bars 158-160

Table 17. Chiffre I. Locations of tritone-triads.

These findings can be generalised to all Chiffre pieces: there are many cases where tritone-triads are combined with a particular function or characteristic, or found at a particular location or a crucial moment. - C  hiffre II, bar 227/2, c-f#-g in the brass, Schalltrichter oben!, sfffz. Echoed in soft dynamics on pitch a, five bars later (bar 232/2-4), at the start of the melodic element in the woodwind instruments. The final dyad of Chiffre II is the tritone f-b (bars 247-248), preceded by b-f-f# in bar 244/1. - C  hiffre III, bar 94/1-2, c-f#-g in brass, piano and percussion at the location of the golden section (0.618). The same triad c-f#-g lasts for five beats (bars 54/1-55/1), at a Fibonacci number. The sustained triad g#-c#-d concludes the dance-like phrase in bars 104/4-105/2. - I n Chiffre IV, the calm ending of section A is a lange fermata pedal resonance in the piano (bar 29). This is exactly at one quarter of the score, made up of 115 bars. Just before, bars 26-27 are fully occupied by c-f#-g, played normally, mute and also resonating, while in bar

216

Part II – Analysis

28, the tritone-triad eb-ab-a is added to c-f#-g, both resonating in the next bar. Bars 37-44 are centred round pitches c, f and f#, appearing as a tritonetriad in bars 40/4-41/1 and 44/1-2. The same triad is found at the end of the grand pause passage (bar 69/3-4), leading towards the unison moment on pitch c#, at the location of the golden section (0.618, bar 71). Another tritone-triad, f#-b-c (bars 78/4-79/2) is followed by unison c in bars 80-82. The fading endnote g starts on a tritone-triad g-c-c# (bar 114, with resonating f). - Th  e triad c-f#-g is the opening chord of Bild (bar 2/4). The opening chord is repeated in the wind instruments in bar 6 with added notes by the strings. The wind group insists on the tritone-triad: they continue with f#-b-c (bar 10, 12), f-bb-b (bar 15) and b-f-f# sustained in bars 15-18 by the wind instruments and doubled by the others (with added pitch c). In the next bars 19-27, attention turns to pitches c, c#, f and f#. The chord combination of these pitches, containing different tritone-triads, concludes the third phrase (bar 20, see Ex. 43, p. 165, the tritone-triad group). As a result, the whole opening section of Bild is concentrated on tritone-triads. At the middle of the piece the tritone-triads reappear in the piano: f#-b-c (bars 85-86) and c#f#-g (bars 86-87).1 - I n Chiffre V, the second section starts with the triad a-eb-e (bar 32). At the middle of the score, bar 84, pitch eb is added to the repeated dyad a-bb in the piano. Announcing the end of the piece, the tritone-triad f#-c-c# opens bar 157, just before the indication “bells up”. - C  hiffre VI asks for special attention. The tritone-triad reigns over the introduction (Ex. 53): after the unison pitch b starting bar 1, the opening chord is f-b-c on the first semiquaver of bar 2, immediately replaced by the consonant f-c. This is followed by a fast melodic element in the cello (bar 3) where the broken chord g(-1)f#(-6)c is found, and next to pitch c also pitches f and b are stressed, alluding again to f-b-c. A very short c-f#-g is combined in the cello, first violin and bass clarinet (bar 3/3). In bar 4/4, the repeated pitch d of the viola alternates with g-c# in the violins and c§ in the cello. From bar 8 on, the chord is again suggested by the melodic elements of bass clarinet and cello. The repeated pitch d in the viola, overtaken by the bass

12 – Chiffre Cycle: Harmony q = 60 Flzg poss. °? 4 ∑ ææ Bcl 4 nw nFlzg ˙ poss. q = 60 > pp °? 4 ææ subito ffff ∑ Bcl j ? 444 nwr ≈‰Œ Ó n>˙‰ #œ Cbn ¢‹ pp > ffff subito fff nw œ. j ?4 > >r ≈‰Œ Ó ‰ #œ Cbn sfffz ¢‹ 4ffff > ? 44 n wr ≈‰Œ Ó œ. ∑ r ≈ fff‰ Hn > > nœ. ffff n œ. sfffz sfffz v sfffz ?4 v ∑ ≈ ‰ Hn ? 4 r ≈‰Œ Ó nœ. r ≈ ‰ ≈‰Œ Ó Db 4 r ‹ nn œw. sfffz œ sfffz v ? 44 ffff>v non dim. >. ≈‰Œ Ó sfffznœr ≈ ‰ Db r sfffz . °‹ 4 œ. ∑ sfffzÓv Vn I & 4 n w ∑ > > ° 4 ffff non dim. sfffz Ó ∑ ∑ Vn I & 4 ∑ ∑ Vn II & 4

4 ∑ Vn II & 4 ∑ Va B 4 4 Va B ?4 ∑ Vc ¢ 4 ∑ ?4 Vc ¢ 4 ∑ =

=

∑ ∑

w

pp

w b f

c pp f b c

°? Ó Bcl 4 °? Bcl ? Ó Cbn ¢‹ ? Cbn ¢‹ ? Hn



217

r ≈‰ n œ. sfffz v ^ r ≈‰ nœ. ≈ ‰ n Óœ. R sfffz v ^ sfffz nœ. ≈ ‰ Ó R sfffz Œ Ó Œ Œ Œ

n#>ÓO˙ >O fff n#sfffz ˙ ∑ ∑ Œ

Ó KŒ bœnœnœœœœœ® œr nœ n œ n œ # œ sul p. ord. # œv v v n>œ v v v v v v v v n vœ v # œ v n œv martellato ® Kr nœ > ffff subitonœ g-f#-c bœnœ b-f-c nœv n œ # œ v #œv n œ v v nœv vœvœœœ v v œv n vœgf# v #>œ v v >

Œ ∑

∑ ∑

Œ

g-f#-c

‰ ‰

pp pp

sfffz fff

sul p. ord. martellato

4

Œ

Ó Ó

Ó

ffff subito

Œ

b-f-c

≈ r nœ œ > ≈ sfffzr nœ œ > sfffz

c g f# c

martellato

nmartellato œv œv œv œv œv œv œv œv r #œnœffffb œnnœœv. œv ≈œv œv ‰œv œv œv œv œvv v r nœ nœ. ≈ ‰ œ #œv v b œv v

nœ. ≈ Œ v nsfffz œ. ≈ Œ U ∑ v sfffz U ∑

ffff

‰ ‰

U n-œ œ J U sfffz n-œpppœ J

non vibr. lange non vibr. lange



∑ ææ w bFlzg. > ffff (non dim.) ææ b ∑w > ffff (non dim.) Flzg.

sfffz ppp

+ ^ U œ. ≈Œ R+ ^ U arco, sehr sfffz ? pizz. ‰« Ó ∑ œ. ≈ŒU dichtes∑ Tremolo Hn ? ‰ Œ ≈ ∑ Ó R Db r æ ‹ sfffz arco, sehr n œ n wæ Tremolo sul pont. ord. « pizz. dichtes U . ^ > ∑ ^ . ^ U . . ? > v ≈ ‰ Œ nn œO ffffæ (non dim.) Ó bb Oœ n#Oœ nnOœ bnOœ Oœ Db ° r sfffz nn Oœ nn Oœ ‹ R ≈ Œ R ≈ sul R ≈pont. ‰ Œœ. ‰ ord.n ∑wæ n Vn I & Œ ^ > ^ . ^ U . . > v b O sfffz Oœ nnsfffz Oœ 3 b O O n#Oœpnsfffz b sfffz œ n3nppOœ ffff (non dim.) nnsfffz ° sfffz nOœ npœ œ R^ ≈ Œ R ≈ sulR pont. ≈ ‰ Œ ‰ ∑ Vn I & Œ ord. Oœ. U ^. sfffz > ^. b3bpp Oœ 3 nO O nnsfffz sfffz #>Oœpnsfffz # O O n O p sfffz # n œ œ # œ œ R ≈ Œ Œ ‰ ∑ œ ≈ ≈ ‰ Vn II & Œ R sulR pont. ord. nsfffz Oœ^. U ^. sfffz ^. >O n3>O nO O b3bpp Oœ n sfffz # # O O sfffz # œp nsfffz # œ≈ œ ≈ ‰ R ≈ Œ Œ ‰ U ∑ œ n pœ œ Vn II & Œ R R sfffz bb O œ 3 ≈ Œ ‰ ‰ ≈‰ B ‰ ≈ sfffz sfffz sfffz r 3pp ∑ Va n œv œv œv œv œvsfffzœv p sfffz p n œv œv œv œv œv œv n œv œv œv œv œv œv œv œv n œv œv œv œv œv œv œv œv œ. 3bU sfffz v b ppOœ ≈ ≈ Œ ‰ ‰ ord. ‰ ^. ^r ≈‰ U ∑ ^. Va B ? n Œœv œv œv œv ‰ œv œv n ‰œv œv œv œvnœv œv ≈œv œv ‰n œv œv ≈œv œv ‰œv œv œv œvnœ.. ≈Œ 3 ææ Vc ¢ n œvÓ œv œv œv œv œv R R R pp v nord. œ. œ. sul pont. ^ ^. ^. U aab n w > . ≈ ‰ sfffz v v ? sfffz ffff (non dim.) d-c#-g sfffz Œ ‰ ‰ n œ œ ≈ ‰ n œ ≈Œ Ó Vc ææ dichtes sfffz sfffz ¢ eb sehr R R R w n œ.g œ. sul pont. d a nTremolo > v v c# ab ffff (non dim.) sfffz sfffz d-c#-g sfffz Ó

sfffz c sfffz g c# c

Ex. 53. Chiffre VI, 1-6 (see Ex. 21, p. 88).



eb d

sehr dichtes Tremolo

218

Part II – Analysis

clarinet, results in bar 5 in the fermata tritone-triad d-eb-ab, with pitch a§ in the first violin. This added pitch causes the tritone-triad group d-eb-ab-a. Immediately afterwards the tritone-triad is left out of the further development to reappear only when the place of the golden section (0.618) is reached, bars 51-52 and later in bar 65 just before the “painful glissando”, the “ugly sounds” and the 12-tone chromatic cluster of bar 67. - A  gain with “bells up” in Chiffre VII, the triad d-ab-a is found in bars 65/3-67, this time at the location of one third of the piece, counting 198 bars. Before, the first section ends with a series of short tritonetriads: the combined c-c#-f-f# is followed by b-e-f and c#-f#-g (bars 34/4-35/1). In bars 104-105, a few bars past the middle, chord e-bb-b appears in soft dynamics. - I n Chiffre VIII the ultimate chord of the whole cycle (leaving NachSchrift out of consideration) is a tritone-triad: g-c-db (bar 40). Against all odds, this is the only tritone-triad of the whole piece. The number of tritone-triads in each Chiffre piece may appear rather small, but the emphasis on that triad and its particular locations give it an exclusive status: it is more than “privileged” by the composer. The answer to the question whether the tritone-triad evokes tonal reminiscences is negative. In its appearance as tritone-fourth combination, for example c-f-f#, tonal references are completely absent. In the tritonefifth triad, for example f-b-c, it is not used as a kind of double functional tonal chord with a lead note (the tritone) and a tonic (the fifth) at the same time, based on the subdominant. The tritone-triad is clearly used as an independent chord, without any reference to classical tonality. On the contrary, this chord’s quality lies in its ambiguity, containing at the same time the sharpest dissonance in the semitone, the ancient and pure consonance in the perfect fourth or fifth (“pure” in the case of the open fifth because of the absence of the major-minor duality) and the never fitting and all systems undermining interval, the tritone.

12 – Chiffre Cycle: Harmony

219

Furthermore, the tritone-triad can be part of any kind of chord progression or chord series. There are occasions where it is followed by a tritone, by a small cluster, by a dissonant chord, by silence, or even where it functions as the final chord of a phrase, with fermata, as shown in the list above. However, there are a few cases where it is followed by a consonance or unison. In Chiffre IV, g-db-d is followed by the consonant dyads f-c and f#-b (bar 90): tonal references are avoided by the lack of semitone intervals in the chord progression and by two melodic tritone intervals linking the consonant dyads (f(+6)b and c(+6)f#). I could add that both dyads suggest the tritone-fifth chord because of the possible combinations of f-b-c and b-f-f#. In Bild the tritone-triad eb-a-bb is followed by the sustained eb, not a solution but a “silent” or “resonating” continuation of the chord (bar 93). In the opening phrase of Chiffre VI (see Ex. 53, p. 217), the viola insists on the repeated pitch d, martellato and ffff (bars 3-12, with interruptions), functioning as a focal pitch and even as an element of the tritone-triad combination in bar 5 (taken over by the clarinet), again without any tonal reference. Later, the chord eb-a-bb is followed by the unison c, but pitch d is immediately added to c (bars 52-53). As always, there is an exception: in Chiffre VII I could suspect some tonal references when the tritone-triad d-ab-a is followed by the open fifth d-a (bars 65-67) and when e-bb-b is immediately followed by the quasisymmetrically melodic element bb(+7)f(+4)a(-3)f#(-8)bb (bars 104-106), which could be interpreted as a suggestion of F major, except for the “denying” semiquaver f#.

Chromatic Cluster In addition to the tritone-triad it is interesting to discuss another special chord, the large chromatic cluster containing twelve, eleven or ten notes. The latter can also consist of two separate clusters or of a single tone and a cluster, both defined as “quasi-cluster”. On pp. 169-170, some examples of the scarcely used large clusters in the Chiffre cycle were already given. In all pieces of the cycle these three chords are the least in quantity, fewer in number than all other kinds of chords from dyads to 9-note combinations. This seems normal, but, at the same time, it is an indication of the subtlety of Rihm’s harmony.

220

Cluster ChI 10 0 11 0 12 0

Part II – Analysis

ChII 1 3 3

ChIII ChIV Bild 2 1 4 0 0 0 0 0 0

ChV 21 18 7

ChVI ChVII ChVIII 6 5 2 2 10 2 1 1 0

Table 18. Chiffre cycle. 10-, 11- and 12-note clusters.

The total cluster is absent in five pieces (Table 18), while in four of these five pieces the 11-note cluster also is not found: Chiffre I, III, IV and Bild. The highest number of clusters and quasi-clusters containing ten to twelve notes is found in the second half of the cycle, most in Chiffre V, followed by VII and VI. In most cases, these clusters function as the climax of a chord chain, preceded by an extending chord progression and followed by smaller chords. In Chiffre II, bars 206-207 contain the total cluster and form the climax of the chain started in bar 201 and ended in bar 208. The same goes for the presence of 10-, 11- and 12-note clusters and quasi-clusters in the chord chain of bars 4-13 in Chiffre V, with the total cluster in bar 10; later in that piece, the chord chain of bars 142-155 with total clusters in bars 145 and 152 is directly followed by a new chord chain, culminating in total clusters in bars 157 and 158. A variant is the cluster at a climactic moment caused by other sound qualities. In Chiffre VI, a new phrase starts with the total cluster (bar 67) leading to the extreme high and ugly timbres in the following bars. Yet another application of a large cluster is the climax at the end of the composition. The 11-note cluster in bars 36-37 of Chiffre VIII is found three bars before the final bar line. In the same way, a climactic cluster can be found at the end of a phrase or section. In Chiffre III, the two 10-note cluster combinations appear with fermata at the end of a phrase (bar 109, 134). The phrase preceding the trumpet solo in Bild contains 10-note quasiclusters in its penultimate bar (bar 130). A fermata emphasises the 11-note cluster at the end of a phrase in Chiffre V (bar 53). The opposite is the large cluster at the beginning of a piece, section or phrase, often in contrast to consonance. In Chiffre II a consonant dyad opens a symmetrical chord progression/reduction with an 11-note cluster at the centre (bars 1-5, Ex. 54). In Chiffre VII a 10-note cluster is

12 – Chiffre Cycle: Harmony

221

in marked contrast to the opening consonant triad (bar 3); a tempo change with clusters is found at the beginning of a new phrase (bars 153-154). In Chiffre VI a phrase opening contains a 10-note cluster surrounded by consonance (bar 28). In Chiffre IV, a 10-note cluster marks the start of a new section (bars 58-59), in contrast to the silences and the returning harmonic progression in the piano.

w & w ?

w w n##nw ww

w #nnn#nw w ww bw w n#nbbww ww w w

w n##nw w ww

nw

nn~w

Ex. 54. Chiffre II, 1-5, opening chords.

Next to the opening and the closing of a composition, clusters are also found at the middle of a piece. In Chiffre VI quasi-clusters of ten notes (bars 42-44) appear in the middle section (bars 40-49). The clusters at the middle (bars 99-100) of Chiffre VII go hand in hand with tempo changes (q = 88, accelerando, q = 108). Also in Chiffre VII clusters are paired with extreme tempo changes in bars 14-15 (q = 120, ritenuto, q = 40, accelerando); bars 28-29 (q = 66, subito q = 120). Both large clusters and tritone-triads paired with “bells up” are often characterised by a climactic function.

Harmonic Rhythm and Chordal Density The harmonic rhythm is the fastest in Chiffre VI with an average of more than five chords per bar.2 This is much higher than all other pieces: around three chords or almost three per bar in six pieces of the cycle, Chiffre I, IV, V, VII, VIII and Bild. The lowest harmonic rhythm is less than two chords per bar in Chiffre II and III. This concept of the harmonic rhythm is not reflected in the chordal density or average number of notes per chord.3 In most pieces, the result is as could be expected: most-used chords are those with the lowest density, i.e. containing two to six notes, although the quantity of each is slightly

222

Part II – Analysis

different for each composition. To restrict this to one example: chords containing four notes are quantitatively in third place in Chiffre I, IV, V, VI and VII, in fourth place in Chiffre II and VIII, in fifth place in Bild, but in first place in Chiffre III. Because in Chiffre III the same number of chords containing four and five notes is found, both in the first place, it certainly shows a denser harmonic picture as compensation for the slow harmonic rhythm. Looking for the exceptions in the ranking of the most used chords, some surprising information is revealed. In Bild, chords containing seven sounds are in fourth place and in Chiffre V even in third place, where eight note chords appear in sixth place. Also striking is the high number of chords with six and seven notes in Chiffre VIII, in fourth and sixth places respectively. Table 19 shows the percentage of chordal density. In the left column, the number of notes per chord is given, from the unison or 1 (of course not a chord but counted in to give a complete result) to the full chromatic 12-note cluster. Number ChI 1 8.8 2 26.7 3 20.1 4 17.0 5 13.3 6 5.4 7 5.6 8 2.4 9 1.0 10 0 11 0 12 0

ChII 18.8 16.6 12.6 14.7 15.0 9.3 5.7 2.2 3.4 0.2 0.6 0.6

ChIII ChIV Bild 9.3 12.6 20.6 17.9 17.1 19.7 10.0 18.6 14.6 19.3 16.8 9.9 19.3 14.8 9.4 12.0 10.8 8.8 6.3 6.0 10.1 4.7 2.0 5.4 0.7 0.9 0.6 0.7 0.6 0.9 0 0 0 0 0 0

ChV 7.0 15.1 11.8 10.4 10.1 8.3 10.4 9.3 8.1 4.1 3.7 1.4

ChVI ChVII ChVIII 19.1 11.9 20.6 21.4 20.8 22.2 14.8 10.9 12.0 16.4 11.9 10.3 9.6 10.5 5.1 6.4 12.5 10.3 2.5 10.3 6.8 5.7 5.0 3.4 2.1 3.0 6.0 1.4 1.0 1.7 0.5 2.0 1.7 0.2 0.2 0

Table 19. Chiffre cycle. Chordal density: percentage.

Table 20 shows the order of the results of the percentages of the chordal density (highest percentage = 1, lowest is 12), as found in Table 19.

12 – Chiffre Cycle: Harmony

Number ChI 1 5 2 1 3 2 4 3 5 4 6 6 7 7 8 8 9 9 10 10 11 10 12 12

ChII 1 2 5 4 3 6 7 9 8 12 10 10

223

ChIII ChIV Bild 6 5 1 3 2 2 5 1 3 1 3 5 1 4 6 4 6 7 7 7 4 8 8 8 9 9 10 9 10 9 11 11 11 11 11 11

ChV 9 1 2 3 5 7 3 6 8 10 11 12

ChVI ChVII ChVIII 2 3 2 1 1 1 4 5 3 3 3 4 5 6 8 6 2 4 8 7 6 7 8 9 9 9 7 10 11 10 11 10 10 12 12 12

Table 20. Chiffre cycle. Chordal density: ranking.

Consonance versus Dissonance The chordal density as researched above does not give an insight into the proportion or ratio between consonant and dissonant chords: within dyads and triads, both possibilities are valid. Table 21 shows the presence of consonant and dissonant chords in percentage and the ratio between consonance and dissonance. ChI Consonance 29.6 Dissonance 70.4 Ratio 3:7

ChII 26.3 73.7 1:3

ChIII 17.5 82.5 1:4

ChIV 21.9 78.1 1:4

Bild 27.9 72.1 3:8

ChV 11.1 88.9 1:9

ChVI 29.2 70.8 3:7

ChVII 23.6 76.4 1:3

ChVIII 29.1 70.9 3:7

Table 21. Chiffre cycle. Consonant and dissonant chords: percentage, ratio.4

In Chiffre I, VI and VIII, the proportion between consonant and dissonant chords is around 3:7, making them the most consonant numbers of the cycle; the ratio goes up to around 1:3 in Chiffre II and VII and around 1:4 in Chiffre III and IV. The exceptional ratio 1:9 shows that Chiffre V is definitely the most dissonant piece of the cycle. Rudolf Frisius finds an identity between melodic and harmonic consonant intervals and dyads based on thirds and fifths in Chiffre I (bars

224

Part II – Analysis

30-41, bars 77-80).5 It is true that consonant dyads are more frequent in Chiffre I than in the following pieces. In my opinion, there is a specific reason for the creation of a consonant environment here. The stress in this passage is more on the introduction of the important generative pole, which will be defined as “figure 2” (see Ex. 58, p. 245), embedded in a consonant environment to accord an exceptional status to the introduction of this generative pole. Further analysis of the use of consonance leads to the following findings: - Consonant triads are extremely exceptional. - Integral consonant phrases or passages are very rare. - Th  e concentration on consonance in a passage can be based on a repeated or sustained timbral shifting single tone or dyad, or on a moment of monophony, a melodic element in a solo or quasi-solo instrument. - C  onsonance is linked to a particular event or location: the introduction of a generative pole (Chiffre I), a chorale-like passage (Chiffre I), the beginning of a piece (Chiffre II, VI, VII), the middle of the piece (Chiffre VI), the location of the golden section (0.618) (Chiffre I, IV), the concluding bars of a piece (Chiffre IV, V, VII, Bild). In Chiffre VII a new section begins in an astonishingly consonant way (bars 72-92: based on the consonant dyad eb-bb with added pitch a in bar 79/1). - C  onsonance can be applied in a symmetrical way: the consonant dyad c-f opens and concludes the short symmetrical opening phrase of Chiffre II (bar 1, 3-5, see Ex. 54, p. 221). The consonant triad a-c#-e opens Chiffre VII in the first bar and concludes it as penultimate consonant chord, appearing four bars before the end, sustained for not less than five beats (bars 193/4-194/4). While the whole coda, started in bar 182, is mostly consonant, this could be considered as the ending of the piece. Typical of Rihm: it is a false ending, followed by the real and surprising conclusion with a mixture of consonant and dissonant elements.

12 – Chiffre Cycle: Harmony

225

Focal Pitch My analysis of the focal pitches (see p. 40) does not focus on individual chords, but large periods where the same focal pitch is distinguishable. In Table 22, for each composition of the Chiffre cycle the four most important focal pitches are noted in percentage. These percentages express the ratio of the number of bars of a focal pitch versus the total number of bars of a composition. For chords and clusters used as focal pitches, all pitches are listed individually. focal Chiffre pitch 1 I a II f III eb IV c Bild c V a VI bb VII bb VIII c

% 29 25 19 20 20 25 23 18 29

focal pitch 2 b c a g f# bb c eb bb

% 21 21 16 15 16 22 15 12 24

focal pitch 3 c d ab b g f f# f f#

17 16 12 10 15 13 11 11 26

focal pitch 4 f a e & f# f b c f e b

bw w w w

b#w w nw w

%

focal pitch aggregate

% 13 13 7 9 9 7 10 10 7

c-f-a-b c-d-f-a eb-e-f#-ab-a c-f-g-b c-f#-g-b c-f-a-bb c-f-f#-bb eb-e-f-bb c-f#-bb-b

Table 22. Chiffre cycle. Focal pitches.

ww & w w I

ww w w

II

w #bwb w w nnw III

w w ww

IV

#w w w w

Bild

V

VI

bbw w nww VII

b#w w nw w

VIII

Ex. 55. Focal pitch aggregates. Naturals are notated in the lower octave; altered notes in the upper octave.

Although no two pieces of the cycle show the same focal pitch aggregate (Ex. 55), the prevalence of some pitches is clear: c in seven and f in six of the nine pieces; f#, a, bb and b, each four times. It is remarkable that focal pitches a and b are mostly found in the first half of the cycle, while pitch bb only

226

Part II – Analysis

features in the second half from Chiffre V on, and focal pitches c, f and f# are equally spread over the whole cycle. As a tentative conclusion, I can define the “meta focal pitch aggregate” of the Chiffre cycle. It consists of six pitches with the stress on c and f: c-ff#-a-bb-b. In the case of Chiffre I, V, VI and VII the individual focal pitch aggregate is part of the meta-aggregate.

13

Chiffre Cycle: Resonance

O

n pp. 176-177, a typology of resonance was worked out, based on Chiffre IV and referring to Rihm’s note on Chiffre I, describing the wind and string instruments as a “resonance space” or Resonanzraum for the piano (see Ex. 52, p. 214). Resonance can be found in each piece of the Chiffre cycle, of course not with the same frequency and intensity as in Chiffre IV. Therefore only Chiffre I, IV and VIII are elaborated on in the following paragraphs, followed by some thoughts on the issue of sound space.

Chiffre I: Resonance Space versus Sound Space As mentioned before, in Chiffre I the “resonance space” is created by the seven instruments “resonating” the sound of the soloist instrument, the piano. Rihm wants to combine both Resonanzraum (resonance space, the term used in his first comment) and Klangraum (sound space, appearing in the following texts).1 The resonance of the sound of the piano in the other instruments happens by doubling or synchronised imitation. Doing so, they create a sound space around, with, or as a background for the piano. This is different from the “imitation resonance”, as defined in my typology, where the stress is on decaying “resonance” or fading sound. Here the imitation is building the sound space. The manner of doubling the piano by the seven instruments creating the sound space is elaborated in a whole range of varied possibilities: not only by doubling pitches, but also by doubling other parameters, such as dynamics, timbre, articulation and texture. The range covers the following: - Complete pitch doubling All piano pitches are doubled by the other instruments. Bar 20: the

227

228

-

-

-

-

Part II – Analysis

short piano chord f-f#-a-b launches the same sustained chord in the other instruments. Bars 22/3-27: the whole part of the piano is doubled by the others: dyad g#-a, single tone a, cluster g#-bb. Embedded pitch doubling All piano pitches are doubled as part of the setting of the other instruments, by which also other pitches are added. Bar 11: the cluster g-b in the piano is part of the quasi-cluster f#-b combined with pitch e in the other instruments. Partial pitch doubling Only a part of the piano pitches is in common with the other instruments. In the opening bars of the long solo of the piano, starting in bar 43, the left hand of the piano is doubled by the double bass. Piano as instigator The piano brings in an element that is not doubled or imitated by the other instruments, but instigates additions. Bars 4-7: pitch a in the piano instigates the other instruments to create a cluster, adding a# and b. F  ully or partly doubled timbre / dynamics / articulation / texture of the piano by the other instruments Characteristics of the piano are also found in all other participating instruments. Bar 25/2: together with the complete pitch doubling described above, the articulation sfffz with accent in the piano is doubled by the other instruments, varied as sfffz or fff or ff with accent followed by diminuendo into p or pp. The same full doubling happens in bars 88-96, at the middle of Chiffre I: homorhythmic and quasihomorhythmic doubling of the piano by the other instruments in the chorale-like phrase meno mosso, non espressivo; same dynamics, except for a short back and forth between pp and p, which is impossible on the piano.

It is clear that the doubling of pitches and of other elements can be combined in the background, when for instance the piano is playing sfz and ff covering pp in the others. In almost four fifths of Chiffre I the creation of a kind of sound space or resonance space is found.

13 – Chiffre Cycle: Resonance

229

Chiffre IV: Resonance Research As demonstrated by my resonance typology, Chiffre IV offers a kind of encyclopaedic summary of resonance possibilities.2 The whole composition could be explained as a thorough research into resonance diversity. In his programme note, Rihm alludes to a metaphoric resonance inspired terminology: - G  anz Innenspannung (total inner tension) can refer to resonance, a tension “inside” the piano. - H  auch or a sigh of sound. - Z  eichen, kurz bevor sie verschwinden means “signs, just before they vanish” or soft, fast fading sounds. - N  achhal is as clear as possible, meaning “resonance” or “echo”. As in Chiffre I, space is the subject of the piece: Klangraum is varied as Tonraum, with the same meaning of sound space.3 In the 115 bars of Chiffre IV I could find no fewer than 132 cases of resonance and only 15 bars without resonance. The longest passage without resonance is the piano solo with the repeated series of three chromatically ascending chords, three times varied and separated by long rests, starting a few bars after the middle (bar 58) and ending one bar before the location of the golden section (0.618, bars 60/4-69). The following examples illustrate how resonance is refined, compared with the typology of resonance given before. In Ex. 56 the piano chord g-c-f# (bar 26/1-2) is continued by muted keys in pedal for two beats, whereafter its resonance in the muted keys is reinforced by g in the piano left hand (bar 26/4) and f# in all three instruments (bar 27/1). This is combined with the normal resonance of the doubled a in the piano in bar 26/1.

230

Part II – Analysis

Bcl Bb

Vc

4 &4 Ó

Œ

nnOœ^. sul pont. ? 44 R ≈ ‰ Œ

Œ

sfffz

Pf

n œ^. nœ #+OO 4 R n ≈ ‰ Œ &4 nO #-˙˙ 4 n & 4 n˙

sfffz

mf

°

Œ?

#œ^. ^ ™ ‰ r ≈ R ≈‰ n œ. 3 sfffz sfffz ^. pizz. # œ ‰™ r ≈ R ≈ ‰ nœ. 3 sfffz

Œ

Ó

Œ

Ó

sfffz

~~ ~ # œ^. œ, ≈Œ ‰™ n r ≈ n œ. œ 3 v sfffz °

Ó

Ex. 56. Chiffre IV, 26-27.

An accumulation of resonance combinations is offered in bars 78-86 (Ex. 57). Next to pedal and normal decay, pitch b in the left hand of the piano is a residue resonance (bars 79/3-80/4) and can theoretically form a dyad with pitch c (bars 80/4-81/2) because the pedal is pressed before the b-key is released. In bar 79, both clarinet and cello play a resonance imitation: soft sound with diminuendo to pp. Muted keys b-c (bars 82/3-86) can only start to resonate by the sympathetic pitches in the right hand and in the other instruments in bar 83/2-3. The muted pitches will be extremely soft in bar 84 and 86, at the edge of audibility, reinforced by the trill in the piano and maybe “obscured” by the noise-like cello. The dotted tie after the trill suggests added resonance, more a “wish” than reality once the keys are released without pedal.

13 – Chiffre Cycle: Resonance

Bcl Bb

Vc

bœ. J

& 44

mp

?4 4

4 &4 ΠPf

j nœ n œ-.

mp

? 44 #nnœœœ

ppp

& ‰nœ Œ Ó

82

3

p vibr.

& ‰nœ Œ Ó 3

≈ nœ œ ™ n œ. pp

œ ™™ #n œ. ™™ > p Ó

pp

n#˙w n˙

231

Ó

Ó

≈Ó



^r ≈ ‰ Œ # œ.

3 ≈ ^ ^‰ n œ. n œ.

sfffz

, ,

nO O ™ ≈# œR œ ™ ppp

fff

^ œ.

Ó

3

p

-™ + ? Œ n œ ‰nnOO ~~ ppp

5

fff

pp

fff

&

Ó

nœ ˙ J







nœ^. R ≈‰ Œ Ó



Ÿ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ #>˙ ™ Œ

Ó ∑

sfffz arco sul p. am Frosch (sehr geräuschhaft)

sfffz sfffz

pp

‰ nœ ˙ J

Œ Œ

°

^ , œ. ‰ Œ

5 ^^^ - ™ ‰ Œ? Œ ≈nnbœœœ. œœœ. œœœ. œœœ^. n œ Œ & & nœ œ œœœ Œ . . ...



pp

3

pizz.

nOœ ™™

sfffz sfffz

> > , . nœ . œ j j ‰ Œ fi #œ œfi



ppp

˙™™

Ó

Ó

‰ nœ ™

sfffz

~~

+ #n ~~~~



Triller mit fis schließen

sfffz fff non dim.

∑ ~~~~

Ex. 57. Chiffre IV, 78-86.

Chiffre VIII: Meta-resonance To coin “meta-resonance” can be interesting to reveal relations between Chiffre VIII and the preceding pieces of the cycle, giving the latter the full status of conclusion of the cycle. Resonance comparable to Chiffre IV is applied to the piano in three fermatas, sustained until complete silence. The first one is a simple decay of a bass note (bar 18), the second one is picked up by the muted horn (bars 27-28), the last one in the final bar is reinforced by the cello by pitch bb but at the same time disturbed by the battuto noise effect, comparable to the cello at the end of Ex. 57. Another fermata must be held long and is sustained by pedal (bar 33).

232

Part II – Analysis

Resonance comparable to Chiffre IV is not restricted to the fermatas. Next to decaying long sustained sounds, from the second bar on, different kinds of resonance are found. To give some examples: reinforced resonance in the dyad b-c, piano left hand, reinforced by cellos and double bass (bars 2-4); pedal resonance in the quasi-cluster c-g (bar 5); residue and reinforced resonance combined in one pitch bb lasting after a short dissonant chord and reinforced by a short dyad (bars 17-18). More as a metaphor, meta-resonance can indicate recalled elements of earlier pieces in Chiffre VIII. A good example is found in the opening unison with timbral shift, followed by the cluster f#-b (bar 2) and by noiselike sound or “percussion” on the cello: col legno ricochet and col legno battuto (bars 3-4). This is comparable to: - O  pening unison of Chiffre VI followed by noise-like sul ponticello on the cello and Flatterzunge on the bass clarinet. - Opening consonant chord followed by cluster in Chiffre VII. - O  pening unison in the piano and quasi-cluster e-bb with c in Chiffre I, but simultaneously instead of successively. - O  pening of Chiffre III, with percussion, although in a completely different atmosphere. In a similar way, other elements can also easily be explained as metaresonance, such as the piano solo and quasi-solo passage (bars 12-18). The repeated note in the piano solo (bar 34) is clearly recalling, not to say “resonating”, the opening of Chiffre I. The same goes for the percussion on the string instruments near the end of the piece (bars 36-38), a strong reminder of Chiffre III. Not surprising is the fact that the piano is the last sounding instrument of Chiffre VIII, as was the case in most of the other pieces: this is the meta-resonance par excellence.

Sound Space Earlier in this chapter I tried to make a distinction between resonance space and sound space, referring to both terms applied by Rihm to

13 – Chiffre Cycle: Resonance

233

Chiffre I. The detailed study of resonance brings other kinds of sound space, related to resonance, to the surface. Asking the trio of Chiffre IV to behave as a small orchestra is indeed creating a sound space by “interpretation” of the score. The opening of Chiffre V (bars 1-3) is literally the “conquest of the space”: when the extremely short secco cluster a-db of the piano is repeated, it explodes in a sustained dissonant chord in the whole orchestra, with a residue resonance of only one pitch, ab in the piano, reinforced and taken over by the flute with Flatterzunge and by other instruments in crescendo, completely covering the decaying piano. This is a genuine example of the creation of a sound space where resonance space is embedded. The spatial setting of Chiffre VI, the only piece without piano, consists of the opposition of the string quartet to the wind quartet (clarinet, contrabassoon, horn and double bass). The setting on the stage of the double quartet is defined by Rihm in the preface to the score. Spatial development is searched for in the alternation of the two quartets and in shared material: now and then, the interchange of identical material creates a certain sound space. The middle phrase is a good example of it (bars 4049). The speed of alternation of the two groups is also fast at certain moments: the timbre jumps from strings to wind instruments and back every one or two bars; the short coda of the piece (bars 77-83) offers a convincing illustration. The two quartets have different material: mostly repeated elements in the string quartet, mostly melodic elements in the wind instruments. The string quartet is a homorhythmic group, the wind instruments are differentiated with individual parts and some counterpoint. The alternation of the two quartets is strictly organised: one group “acts” while the other stays silent, or while the other has sustained background sounds. There is a culmination with few overlaps after the grand pause of bar 79. A visual movement, linking sound and space, is the returning request for “bells up” (Schalltrichter oben). This happens in Chiffre II, V, VI and VII (see p. 77). Still in the 1980s, next to the Chiffre cycle, Klangbeschreibung I asks for three orchestral groups. In the vocal-instrumental composition Klang­ beschreibung II (1986-87) the horn is placed in the centre of the hall amid the public, and “sound groups” (Klanggruppen) surround the public.4 Later

234

Part II – Analysis

examples are found in the series of five pieces Musik in memoriam Luigi Nono, composed in 1990-92. La lugubre gondola / Das Eismeer (1990-92) is written for two orchestral groups and two pianos; Umfassung (1990) for an orchestra split in two groups. The setting of Cantus firmus (1990) is spatial: the first group of fourteen instruments is placed in a half circle with the piano and the horn in the centre; the second group (without strings) is sitting on a platform in two rows; the harp must be placed on a level in between. With the knowledge that Rihm was getting personally acquainted with Nono no earlier than 1980, and that Rihm had not been very familiar with Nono’s music previously, it seems obvious to me that the creation of a sound space and the awareness of a resonance space were original ideas of Rihm’s. Perhaps later, he was encouraged to explore more spatial possibilities by his friendship with Nono, as he said in 1985 that Nono had been a “revered model” (verehrtes Vorbild) for him. But at the moment of the “germination” of the Chiffre concept at the beginning of the 1980s, Luigi Nono was still at a certain distance.5

14

Chiffre Cycle: Cyclic Elements

T

he aim of this chapter is to find out whether certain elements appear in different pieces of the Chiffre cycle and therefore function as unifying factors or help to create musical relations. Some presumptions of these connections have already been made in the previous chapters, such as the meta-resonance of earlier pieces in Chiffre VIII, the similarities in the focal pitch aggregates and Rihm’s own suggestion that Chiffre I could function as a generative pole.

Cyclic Elements: Typology The typology of the analysed elements consists of the following topics: repeated and returning larger and smaller units (passages and figures), similar elements, similar or comparable concepts and linking elements. Returning passages: - R  epeated passage: the classical definition of “repetition”: a passage is repeated literally without any addition or change. - O  verwritten passage: in the repetition a passage is enriched with added new material. This is Rihm’s typical Übermalung or “overpainting” technique (see p. 105). - R  epeated single instrumental part: a passage of only one instrument is repeated literally in a new context with new material for the surrounding instruments. This could result in a larger overwriting than the previous category.

235

236

Part II – Analysis

Similar events and concepts: - S imilar event: passages with striking similarities in one or more characteristics, such as rhythm or instrumentation. - R  eturning concept: specific concepts are recalled in a different context or worked out with different content. Returning figures: three returning figures, varied and elaborated in very different ways, can be discerned through the whole Chiffre cycle (see p. 243). The first figure is characterised by repetition, the second one by its interval structure and the third one by melodic qualities. They are introduced as three generative poles at the beginning of the cycle, as the origin of many generated elements throughout the cycle (see p. 35).

Repeated Passage - ChII/1-4 = ChVII/10-13 The opening of Chiffre II is characterised by a melodic element in the flute, unstable tempo and a huge contrast between the fortississimo start and the pianissimo continuation of the other instruments, with sustained sounds and pedal resonance in the piano (see Ex. 67, p. 254). This passage returns literally in Chiffre VII as a kind of “second beginning”, preceded by a series of chords related to the soft character of the sustained sounds of the impending repeated passage. This is the only unchanged passage repeat I could find in the whole Chiffre cycle, except for a few bars Chiffre I and Nach-Schrift described below.

Overwritten Passage - Chiffre I and Nach-Schrift The most impressive overwriting in the Chiffre cycle is of course NachSchrift based on Chiffre I. Nach-Schrift was written down on a photocopy of Chiffre I with added staves and inserted moments. It is surprising that only two bars are preserved without any addition (ChI/10, 24 = ChNS/10, 24). In all other bars overwriting by added elements is found. There is a

14 – Chiffre Cycle: Cyclic Elements

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“between” category, where the original is conserved because the overwriting is restricted to doubling by some of the added instruments (for instance: ChNS/4, 23), what could be called an “enriched” repetition. Minor overwritings add only percussion to the existing score (ChNS/49-52). Farreaching overwriting consists of polyphonic additions (ChNS/25-30) or added elaborated virtuoso fast figures (ChNS/7-9, 59-61). Chiffre I 1-74 76-79 95-100 119-151 152-176

Nach-Schrift 1-74 87-90 91-96 97-129 with different tempo in 120-129 148-172 with different tempo

Table 23. Chiffre I and Nach-Schrift. Overwritten passages.

Next to place changes, Table 23 also shows that some passages of Chiffre I are left out in Nach-Schrift. The “gaps” in Nach-Schrift are filled with new material: two inserts in bars 74-87 and 129-147, and a new ending in bars 172-175. For the first insert the piano part is loosely based on the great piano leaps of Chiffre I (bars 157-163), which are further varied and prolonged. For the second insert no relation with Chiffre I can be detected.

Repeated Single Instrumental Part - ChI/43/4-63/2 = ChII/17-36/2, piano The long and hectic soloist piano part in the right hand with sustained chord accompaniment of Chiffre I (see Ex. 5, p. 79) is repeated in Chiffre II, except for the following: - Some different accents in ChI/50ff. compared to ChII/24ff. - D  ifferent dynamics: straight fff marcatissimo in Chiffre I, while ffff marcatissimo, non leggiero in Chiffre II. In Chiffre II, dynamics are more diversified: ChII/22 with contrasting sfffz pp ffff; ChII/27&30 in the repeated moments with subito pp, crescendo, fff. - A  t two places pitches have been changed: in ChI/54/1 pitch b is followed by the dyad f-c while in ChII/28/1 the dyad is changed to

238

Part II – Analysis

d-a; the dyad f#-ab (ChI/54/2) becomes dyad f#-a§ at the corresponding place (ChII/28/2). At the start of this passage in Chiffre I the piano is supported by the low strings. This is overwritten with dense ensemble over several bars in Chiffre II. In the overwriting, woodwinds and strings alternate in doubling the right hand of the original in bars 18-22; from then on only in few bars the doubling is resumed: by strings only in bars 25, 27-28; by strings and woodwinds in bar 31. Next to this long passage, all other repeated individual parts are restricted to very short moments. - ChI/42 = ChII/16 = ChIII/35-36, piano In bars 35-36 of Chiffre III, the piano seems to come up with the preparation of the return of the long right hand soloist moment, already heard in Chiffre I and II. This time the piano climbs from the repeated pitch g# to pitch a instead of proceeding immediately to pitch a, as was the case in Chiffre I. In all three cases the fast repeated cluster g-b follows immediately in the same setting: a-bb-cb in the left hand with fX-g#-a in the right hand, wide in extreme tessituras. However, in Chiffre III this is a “false start” and not the launch of the long piano solo. This proves how the same material or generative pole can be the germ for a complete different development. Indeed, the continuation in Chiffre III has nothing in common with the piano solo, it is blocked by silence and therefore a good example of a disturbance or Verstörung (see p. 38). - ChII/1-2/3 = ChVII/28/3-29/4, flute After the repetition of the whole score of the opening bars of Chiffre II in Chiffre VII (ChII/1-4 = ChVII/10-13), another return is restricted to the flute, slightly varied. The piano part shows some similarity, which is not the case for the other instruments.

14 – Chiffre Cycle: Cyclic Elements

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These long and short returning passages in the same instrument, two or three times in two or three different pieces of the cycle, can only be understood as a tentative indication of cyclic unity.

Cyclic Elements: Similar Event - ChIII/1-29 = ChV/146-155, tomtoms Although the passages are of different length, in both cases the two percussionists play three tomtoms, starting with different pitches on the first beat and continuing with the lower pitch in fast quintuplets of semiquavers, also alternating with moments of different pitches. The tomtom parts are not absolutely identical in this case and dynamics are different, therefore I call this a similar event and not a repeated single instrumental part. - ChV/94ff. = ChVII/26, piano The long piano solo of Chiffre V, with few percussion interventions, is based on the repetition of the dyad a-bb. In the course of one bar, this dyad is recalled in Chiffre VII, accompanied by a sustained chord in the left hand. - ChI/3-6 = ChVII/159, piano Even with a different rhythm and restricted to only one bar in Chiffre VII, the emphasis on the isolated repeated pitch a in the highest register is so striking that it must be labelled as a recall of the opening of Chiffre I.

Returning Concept While in the previous categories of elements considered “cyclic” the identity was complete or almost complete, the next examples will be about more general qualities and therefore may be less convincing of “cyclic” content. A number of idioms or musical gestures belonging to Rihm’s vocabulary in general cannot be omitted here because of the sheer number of their appearances.

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Part II – Analysis

- Solo and soloist passage As Rihm points out that the piano is the soloist for the whole cycle, the great number of piano solos (without any accompaniment) and soloist passages (in concertato style) can be considered as a cyclic factor. Long piano solos or soloist passages are included in Chiffre I to V and NachSchrift. Piano solo moments are shorter and less pronounced but still present in Bild, Chiffre VII and VIII. Solos by other instruments are less numerous: the trumpet in Bild (bar 132ff.), the violins and percussion in Chiffre II (bar 69ff.), again percussion in Chiffre III (bar 1ff.). - Final sounds in the piano Although this aspect could be regarded as a futile detail, in my conviction it has the value of a unifying cyclic element. The final sounds of each piece are assigned to the piano, solo in most of the cases (Table 24). Chiffre I II III IV Bild

Piano melodic element d(+3)f(-1)e on sustained dyad b-f dyad b-f with pedal preceded by acciaccatura dyad gb-c short single tone f, brüsk repeated g, diminuendo  niente

V

dyad ab-d with pedal short single tone e, secco

VII

short chord c#-f#-ab-d-c-f

VIII dyad db-c, völlig verklingen lassen Nach-Schrift bar 172, false ending: identical to Chiffre I: d(+3)f(-1)e 173-175: added coda, final sound in the piano, dyad bb-c

Setting solo final note dyad b-f doubled by violin 1-2 solo solo solo doubled by clarinet added single tone b pizzicato by violin 1 solo doubled by cymbals antiques final noise by the bongos

Table 24. Chiffre cycle. Presence of the piano in the final bar of each composition.

As could be expected, there is one exception (beside Chiffre VI without piano): the end of the cycle is given to percussion after the false ending with the overwritten piano, identical to Chiffre I.

14 – Chiffre Cycle: Cyclic Elements

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The concept of the returning piano is reinforced by similar content: three times a tritone is found as final dyad (Chiffre I, II, Bild); also three times a very soft sound (Chiffre II, V, VII); twice a fading out (Chiffre IV, VIII); twice a short aggressive sound (Chiffre III, Bild). - Final melodic element In connection with the previous paragraph, it is interesting to look in greater detail at the final melodic element in each composition of the cycle, in most cases not given to the piano (Table 25). Chiffre Bar Final melodic element I 176 d(+3)f(-1)e II 245-247 d(+2)e(+7)b g#(+8)e(+1)f III 148-152 a(+1)bb(+1)b(-2)a(+3)c(-1)b(-6)f IV Bild V VI VII VIII

NachSchrift

113-115 e(+1)f(+2)g with long durations a(+1)bb on g, in short notes 163-169 no melodic element 164-166 bb(+7)f(+11)e 82 e with ascending glissando on bb(+3)db 191-198 no melodic element 37-39

Setting piano violin 1-2, homorhythmic quasi-unison winds & strings cello & piano bass clarinet horn clarinet contrabassoon -

d(-14)c(+17)f eb(+14)f

bass clarinet horn c doubled by trombone eb doubled by contrabassoon 172 bar 172: d(+3)f(-1)e piano & cymbales antiques 173-175 added ending: no melodic element -

Table 25. Chiffre cycle. Final melodic element in each composition.

Although the final melodic elements are very different, there are some common characteristics and many returning pitches.

242

Part II – Analysis

- C  hiffre I and II: melodic element with returning pitches d-e-f in changed order. In Chiffre II it is intertwined in both violins, with unison e. Pitch f appears in six endings, pitch e in five. - C  hiffre I and V: end notes f-e are common, small intervals are replaced by great ascending leaps. A certain resemblance to the ending of Chiffre II cannot be denied. - C  hiffre I, II and VIII: melodic element with returning pitches d and f, while pitch e has chromatically shifted to eb in Chiffre VIII. - C  hiffre III and IV: returning melodic element a-bb, pitch f is also common. - C  hiffre I, II, IV and V: pitches e and f appear each time. - C  hiffre IV, V and VI: pitches e and bb return. - C  hiffre IV and V: pitches f and bb return. The concentration on a restricted number of pitches in the final melodic elements may not be overvalued as a cyclic element, but it certainly contributes to the overall unity of the cycle. Pitches f, e and bb are most common. One could be tempted to conclude that the classical key of F major is underlying or intended as metatonality (see p. 161), while the three notes are tonic, leading note and subdominant. In my opinion they are no more than common pitches. It is interesting to add that other similarities can be found, for instance in Chiffre V, five bars before the end (bars 160-161) the low strings play pitch a followed by the dyad b-c, a transposition of d-f-e. This is followed by an 11-note cluster and smaller clusters in the next bar, blocked by a grand pause (bar 163): another false ending. A step further: the great ascending leaps at the very end of Chiffre V return twice in the conclusion of Chiffre VII, as ascending chords in bar 195 and in the final bar 198. In between (bars 196-197) the piano plays dyads b-c, db-g and c-f#, which contain the following melodic turn b(+2)db(-1)c, comparable to d-f-e with the diminution of a semitone in the first interval. - Creating a state A last returning concept: in many cases the long solo and soloist passages are combined with repetition, creating a certain “state” or Zustand. Some state passages are close to stasis or stand still, because of the continuous

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unchanged repetition. Extreme stasis examples are found early in the cycle: the straight on repetitions in the piano in Chiffre I (bars 3ff.); the repetitions in the piano (bars 36ff.) and the drum roll (bars 100ff.), both with subtle dynamic changes in Chiffre II; in the same piece the sustained alternating violins (bars 71ff.) build an absolute stasis, albeit with a few percussion interventions; and the concentration on the low tomtom in Chiffre III (bars 1ff.). It becomes obvious that later in the cycle Rihm is bringing in more variation in the state passages based on repetition, for instance in the frequent and extreme tempo changes in the repeated piano dyad in Chiffre V (bars 93ff., see Ex. 34, p. 118). Another evolution is that passages with repetition become shorter and more varied at the same time, diminishing the degree of “state”. For example: Chiffre VI, where the middle phrase (bars 42-49) is dominated by the sustained pitch f# in the horn combined with fast repetition of the same pitch in the strings. Their repetition is discontinuous because of inserted rests of unequal duration and because the unison pitch is abandoned after six beats. Pitch f# is continued in the horn with isolated accents in the bass clarinet. This short moment of Zustand is a combination of sustained and repeated pitch with a lot of timbral variation, no longer assigned to one and the same instrument. The sketched evolution is confirmed by the change from solo to concertato piano, described above as first “returning concept”.

Cyclic Elements: Three Figures On the micro-level a restricted number of three musical figures are emphasised in different ways in Chiffre I. Since they are returning in the following pieces of the cycle, they can be categorised as generative poles in Chiffre I, creating generated elements later in the cycle. More than repeated, the figures will be varied and elaborated in different ways throughout the cycle. This elaboration starts already in Chiffre I, immediately following the presentation of the figures. The longer the more these small germs offer differentiation in their elaboration in generated elements, leading step by step to almost complete metamorphosis. As a generative pole, each of the three figures is strikingly in the foreground by its dynamics, register and timbre. Each figure can be defined by one dominant element:

244

Part II – Analysis

- Figure 1: based on repetition - Figure 2: based on a striking interval - Figure 3: based on a melodic content. To avoid the total conflation of generated elements, great emphasis must characterise them too, comparable to the generative poles. For instance, repetition in the background will not be considered as figure 1; figure 2 is most striking when isolated by rests or in unison.319 - Figure 1 “As basic as possible” could be the description of the generative pole of figure 1: a repeated pitch in a fast and regular rhythm. This is indeed the way this generative pole is presented in the piano in the opening bar of Chiffre I (see Ex. 52, p. 214): absolutely striking because of its extreme registers, its loud dynamics and positioning the piano as a soloist from the very beginning. The very fact that this element opens the first piece of the Chiffre cycle makes it important: this will have its consequences throughout the cycle. - Figure 2 The main characteristic of figure 2 in its presentation as a generative pole in Chiffre I is the ascending leap: a tritone or a major sixth, an augmented octave, a major ninth or an augmented thirteenth (octave plus tritone) (Ex. 58). To give the ascending interval more emphasis, it is preceded by a small descending interval in its first presentation as generative pole (bars 31/433/1, wind instruments), followed by its most essential appearance, the isolated leap in the piano (bar 32/2-4) and by more complex combinations (bars 35/3-38, piano). As noted in chapter 12 (see p. 224), this figure is embedded in a consonant surrounding. Next to dynamics and other possibilities, consonance is certainly another way to put emphasis on an event. - Figure 3 Melodic elements are grouped in the third category: melody is the predominant characteristic, with an unavoidably greater range of variety than figure 1 and 2.

14 – Chiffre Cycle: Cyclic Elements

245

Because of its melodic character, this figure has a certain duration: it can last for several beats or bars. It often appears in the low register of wind instruments and string instruments, which makes the timbre also an important aspect. However, the combination of the high register with loud dynamics offers other possibilities. Cl Bn

4 &4

.^ ^. œ bœ

> n˙˙ n

.^ ^. œ bœ

.^j nœ n œJ

p

fff

Ó

fff

Tpt Trbn

4 &4

“>” #‹n œœœ. œœœ. ff

Pf

4 &4 ? 44

34

& &

3



Œ

Ó

3 ^. ^. ^. nœ ‰ nœb œ n œ

Œ

Ó

ff 3

3

3

> #‹n œœœ. œœœ. 3

> œ œ

> > ^. œ™ œ œ œ Ó œ™ œ œ œ sfz

≈ ‰ ‰™

^. bn œœ R

f

n>œ >œ ™ œ. J ‰

3

3

fff, marcatissimo

3

œ^. J Œ

> ^. n œ œ >œ œ bœ J

n>œ >œ™ œ. ‰ nœ œ ≈ >J J r ≈ ‰ ‰ ™ & n œr œ b œ b œ 3 bnb œœ. œ œœ. œ bnb œœ. œ .v .v > “‘ “” ” > nn œœœ^ n # ^œœ n#“>œœ œœ >œœ >œœ ^œ. n œ œ >œ >œ œ^. >-œ # . bœ bœ n œœ J J Œ ‰ ™ #R J ‰ ‰ J ‰ J ≈ 3 3 3 mp fff nn œ f œ^ # œ^ ## œœ^ > > > ≈ n>œ œJ œ œ j œ Œ ‰ ™nnœœr ‰ #œ ‰ J ‰ Œ . bn œœ. b œœ. 3 3 v v mf

^ # œ^ “” bb œœ n œ n# œœ n# œœ nn>œœ R ≈ R ≈ J & fff # œ^ 3 ##œœ^ # œR ? n j œ ‰ & ≈ R ≈ n>œ “‘

37

3 ^. ^. ^. nœ ‰ nœb œ n œ

œ^. Œ J



>œ œ œ^. œ œ œ J Œ 3

Ó

sfffz

œœ >œœ n#>œœ ™™n# œœ^ >œœ™™ œœ^ nn>˙˙ J 3

3 œj œ Œ œ >œ

n œ^. R ≈ ‰ Œ sffffz ^ sfffz n œ. ™ R ≈ ‰ Œ ‰ nœ nœ™ mp

sffffz

Ex. 58. Chiffre I, 31-38. The many appearances of figure 2 are indicated by brackets.

246

Part II – Analysis

By trying to define figure 3 as a generative pole, differences in treatment of the figures become clear. For figure 1 one basic generative pole is sufficient for the whole Chiffre cycle: all kinds of repeated sounds can easily be deducted from it. For figure 2, the ascending interval as its origin is not strictly defined: the figure is “woven” around the central great leap, which can change size easily, can become a series of (varied) leaps, can have only one top note or a repeated one. In fact, no more than the presence of the ascending interval is defined. Figure 3 in turn goes a step further: even with restricted interval choice, the characterisation of a melodic figure is not reducible to one and the same generative pole for the whole Chiffre cycle. Still, to be considered as a generative pole, the melodic figure must be striking the ear by being in the foreground, for instance brought by a solo instrument or in unison. As a consequence, there will be different generative poles of the third kind, linked to specific pieces within the cycle. The relations between these melodic generative poles and their generated elements will be looser than it is the case for figure 1 and 2. Although figure 3 is not highly present in Chiffre I, there is a striking example of a melodic generative pole: a large melodic element in wave form, based on the smallest intervals, quasi-unison in wind instruments and strings, followed by diminutions in the piano, resulting in a rhythmic melodic generated element that is subsequently varied (see Ex. 6, p. 80). In chapter 3 (see p. 79), this was given as an example of the melodic turn or gruppetto.

Figure 1: Generated Elements Although figure 1 is mostly characterised by loud dynamics and fast and regular rhythm in its presentation, in generated elements irregular and slower rhythms can occur. As simple as the generative pole is, so diversified will be the generated elements by extension and expansion, ranging from the repetition of a single tone, through the unison doubled twice or more, the consonant and dissonant chord, the quasi-cluster to the cluster. Because repetition as compositional technique was researched in chapter 5, Repetition, a short overview of the different more technical elaborations or generated elements of figure 1 in the Chiffre cycle will be sufficient here, with a few examples.

14 – Chiffre Cycle: Cyclic Elements

247

- R  epetition with changing timbre: when different instruments are involved in a sound repetition, timbre changes occur. Bild: pitch g is repeated alternating different times between the horn and the trumpet (bars 85-88), exactly at the middle of the score. - R  epetition as a hocket: when the alternation of instruments evolves with isolated notes, a hocket effect is reached. Chiffre I: pitch a in quaver sextuplets exchanged between the piano and the clarinet, secco (bars 23-24), continued with other rhythms in clarinet, trumpet and piano (bars 25-26). - C  ulminating repetition: by the addition of instruments, by replacing a unison repeated pitch by a repeated chord or (quasi) cluster, repetition can be combined with an increasing sound or provoke a climax. Chiffre V: starting with unison pitch bb and ending with the quasicluster d-g with added bb, this climax is further caused by crescendo, paired with tremolo ffff. It continues by contrast: subito pppp tremolo with a few instruments (bars 74-77). - R  epeated chord Chiffre III: the repeated cluster is very impressive when all instruments participate, as is the case with the quasi-cluster f-g/b-c, marcatissimo (bar 137). Repeated consonant chords are also given a role in the Chiffre cycle: again in Chiffre III, the piano repetition is concentrated on the consonant dyad eb-ab, although starting with an added g and replaced after seven bars by the tritone eb-a§ (bars 58-82). The longest cluster passage, based on the smallest cluster possible, the dyad a-bb is found in the piano in Chiffre V (bars 83-118) with irregularities due to the piled tempo changes, while the semiquaver rhythm is held constantly. This repetition starts just at the middle of the piece. - Signal-like repetition From Bild and Chiffre V on, the repeated note more and more takes the form of a short “signal” in a particular instrument and becomes a loud overwhelming figure. One could say that the cycle opens and closes with a signal: the short moment of piano repetition in Chiffre I (bar 1) and the full bar of the

248

Part II – Analysis

piano repetition solo just before the end of Chiffre VIII (bars 34), followed by the imitation of percussion repetition on the bodies of the string instruments, the mirror of the col legno battuto of the “percussion” strings in Chiffre I (bar 11): a kind of cyclic closing recalling how it all began. This last example can take the character of a signal as it is found several times in the second half of the cycle, mostly reserved for the horn: in Chiffre VII (bars 161-163; 168-170, Ex. 59), in Chiffre VI (bar 26, bcl; 29-30, hn; 66, hn), in Chiffre V (bar 30) and in Bild, where the horn shares this signal with the trumpet (bars 85-88, mentioned above as repetition with changing timbre). It was formerly up to the soloist of Bild, the trumpet, to introduce the signal (bars 56-57, 6061). Apparently, this kind of signal or short repeated element does not appear earlier in the cycle in brass instruments. Nevertheless, one could say without doubt that its generative pole lies in the very first notes of the piano, opening Chiffre I. Later in Chiffre I, the clarinet is the first to launch this typical signal during the long soloist passage of the piano, ff marcato in the low register (bars 56-58). Repeated notes are mostly in a fast pulsating rhythm, such as the part of the tomtoms in the first section of Chiffre III (bars 1-41). The same goes for Bild, where repetition starts also in the percussion and is taken over by the other instruments until the moment of the long trumpet solo, situated near the end of the piece (bars 131ff.). Short passages of a repeated pitch spread over a larger part of a score have a certain obsessive effect, such as the repeated pitch d in the viola in Chiffre VI, each time over a couple of beats (bar 3ff.), expanded to repeated chords in all strings at certain moments (bars 14-16) until repetition by the whole string quartet in the final bars (bar 77, 79, 81).

Hn

n>œ œ™ 4 &4 Œ ‰ J fff

œ^ œ^ œ^ nœ^ œ^ œ^ >œ œ™ œ^ œ^ œ^ œ^ ‰ œ^ œ^ œ^ ‰ œ >œ >œ. ≈ ‰ R R n˙ 3 3 3 3 3

Ex. 59. Chiffre VII, 161-163.

sfffz p sfffz

pp

14 – Chiffre Cycle: Cyclic Elements

249

- Merging figure 1 with figure 3 When repeated notes are replaced by the smallest intervals, figure 1 merges easily with the fast appearance of figure 3. An example is found in Chiffre IV: the bass clarinet encircles pitch f with the smallest intervals and continues with the repeated f (Ex. 60).

Bcl Bb

3 3 ^. ^3. ^. ^. ^3. ^. 3 3 ≈Ó 4 3 & 4 r ≈ r ≈ r ≈≈ ™ œ n œ n œ. # œ œ b œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ. œ. œ. œ. œ. œ. œ. œ. œ. œ. œ œ œ œ œ œ œ. œ. œ. œ. œ. .

sffz sffz

p

f

ff

p

Ex. 60. Chiffre IV, 37.

Figure 2: Generated Elements If the great ascending interval is depicted as the core element in the generative pole of figure 2, it is immediately clear that a great diversity of elaboration is possible. In fact, the mere presentation of the generative pole in Chiffre I implies a range of generated elements “at the same time” (see Ex. 58, p. 245). Reducing the generative pole to its essence, the ascending interval appears as such in the piano in bar 33, with repeated top note. In the next bars the ascending interval returns several times, isolated or with a repeated top note (bars 34-35), also in a series of dyads with great ascending and descending leaps, with repetition of the last dyad (bars 3536). This passage ends with alternating dyads with more variety instead of repetition and with a double leap in contrary movement, ascending in the left hand and descending in the right hand (bar 38). This kind of generated element returns later in the cycle. An extreme example is the three times repeated enormous ascending leap of the dyads in both hands of the piano in Chiffre VII (bars 87-88), homorhythmically eb(+31)bb and a(+30)eb. Preserving the great interval as the core element, an idea of the diversity of generated elements is given by the following list. - F  igure 2 reduced to its essence The ascending interval eb(+6)b, unison ffff in all instruments in a fast rhythm, isolated by rests before and after, is found in Chiffre II (bar

250

Part II – Analysis

135). The isolated interval returns in Chiffre IV in the piano as an ascending leap of chords with short-long rhythm (bars 9-10), also descending in long-short with fast rhythm in the three instruments (bars 35). In Chiffre V, horn, trumpet and trombone in quasi-unison play a soft metamorphosis of figure 2: two longer notes, descending perfect fifth in ppp (bars 139-140). - F  igure 2 with inserted interval In this case, the interval exists of two sustained notes with a very short inserted note, breaking the great leap. Chiffre III: ascending leap with inserted note in horn and bass trumpet; contrary motion and a pure leap in the trombone (Ex. 61). This generated element is also found in Bild in contrary motion (bars 12-13). Hn

Bass tpt

Trbn

? 44 Œ

b>˙ ™

4 &4 Œ ‹ ? 44 Œ

b˙ ™ > fff b>˙ ™

+ n>œ. b>œ ˙

meno mosso, pesante

Ϫ

fff con sord.

˙

U Ó

nœ. b>œ ˙ >

˙

U Ó

˙

˙

n˙ > sffz p

sfffz fff

Ϫ Ϫ

j n œ. >

fff

sfffz

U

sfffz fff

fff

Ex. 61. Chiffre III, 51-53.

- F  igure 2 in contrary motion Simultaneous leaps in contrary motion (Ex. 61). Contrary motion in series is found in Chiffre II (Ex. 62).

Tpt

Trbn

n>œ œ œ n>œ r 4 J nœ œ ≈ ‰ J nœ &4 Œ ‰ J > >3 sfffz 3 > #>œ œ # -œ >œ >œ n n R ?4 Ó ≈‰ J Œ J 4 3

fff

Ex. 62. Chiffre II, 53-56.

3

n>œ ‰ J nœ >>-œ > ‰ nJœ

Œ nœ Ó > sfffz pp #>œ Œ Ó sfffz

pp

n>œ J nœ œj ‰ U Œ Œ 3

#>œ œ n>œ J ‰ U Œ Œ J

fff

fff

3

fff

14 – Chiffre Cycle: Cyclic Elements

251

- Figure 2 in series Chiffre II: a series of repeated great leaps (Ex. 62). Chiffre VI: more variety is offered by a series of different descending leaps in fast rhythm and separated by short rests (Ex. 63).

Hn

4 &4 ‰

> ^ n>œ nœ bœ. ‰ 3

sfffz

3 n>œ ^ bœ ? ≈ ≈ #œ. ‰ > nœ.

sfffz

sfffz

3 n>œ ^ nœ . ≈ ‰ nœ ≈ > n œ. v 3

sfffz

sfffz

Ex. 63. Chiffre VI, 63.

- F  igure 2 in symmetry The ascending leap followed by the same interval descending creates symmetry within figure 2. This appears often, most strikingly in Bild. To give some examples: - Bar 88/4: c(+11)b(-11)c in the right hand of the piano, in homorhythm with the left hand: f#(+3/-8)dyad a-bb(-3/+8)f#. - Bar 90/1: bb(-7)eb(+7)bb homorhythmically by trumpet and piano. - Bars 100/3-103/4: f(-6)b(+5)e(-5)b(+6)f, symmetrical double leap in the double bass. - Bars 113/1-114/1: c#(+6)g(-6)c#(+10)b(-10)c#(+5/6)dyad f#-g (-5/0) dyad c#-g(-5/0) c#, a series of symmetrical leaps in the viola, partly doubled by cello and double bass. The same leaps are repeated and varied immediately afterwards (bar 115). - Bars 118-121: f#(-1)f(+4)a(-4)f(+1)f# in sustained notes in the horn. - Bars 127-128: e(+1)f(+4)a(-4)f(-1)e by the horn with Flatterzunge. - Merging figure 2 with figure 1 One could say that from its first presentation (see Ex. 58, p. 245), the repetition of the top note of figure 2 causes a merger between figures 1 and 2. This is often the case, for instance in Chiffre IV, expanded with irregular repetitions (bars 39-42).

252

Part II – Analysis

- M  erging figure 2 with figure 3 In an analogous manner figure 2 can be prolonged with a melodic element, with a content similar to the generative pole of figure 3, as shown in Ex. 6. While this happens in the piano already in bars 77-80 of Chiffre I, it must be seen as an announcement of figure 3 because of the scarcely extended wave form b(+3)d(-1)c#(-4)a(+3)c§ (Ex. 64). Bcl

Pf

? 44

∑ ∑ Œ bœv nœ œ. > v fff, marc. “” > > n œ^ ^ # œ n œ^ n>œ ™™ ^. n>œ ™ >œ™ œ^ n œ^ #>œ n>œ n>œ œ ^. n>œ œ >œ >œ œ œ^. nnœœ^. n œ œ 4 bnœœ J nnœœ &4 R 3 3 3 fff, marcatissimo sfffz fff sfffz > > nœ œ œ œ œ œ^. ? 44 & œ > J ˙ œ™ #˙ #˙ bn œ. 3 3 sfffz ˙ œ™ #>˙ #>˙ v sffz accel. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Ex. 64. Chiffre I, 77-79.

 nother way of merging the two figures: a series of ascending A movements starts time after time with an ascending interval followed by a few faster melodic steps. The ascending direction is accentuated by unison: starting in the low register with the lower instruments and climbing to the high register with the highest instruments. The first appearance of this extremely merged or metamorphosed figure is found in Chiffre I (bars 60-61) from cellos and trombone to clarinet, also in bars 99 and 121-123 (Ex. 65).

Bcl

? 44 Ó

n œ^ ^ ^ # œ^ n œ^ # œ^ n œ^ ^n œ^ n œ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ nœ^ nœ^ ^ ^ nœ^ nœ^n œ^ œ^ nœ bœ Œ bœbœnœnœ bœbœnœ bœbœ ≈Ó ≈ ≈ nœ ff

Ex. 65. Chiffre I, 121-123. Unison bcl, bn, trbn con sordino, vc1-2 (vc 2 replaces the two semiquaver rests by c-c#, doubled by the piano).

14 – Chiffre Cycle: Cyclic Elements

253

Figure 3: Generative Poles and Generated Elements Before searching for generated elements from the melodic generative pole, it must be said that there are melodic elements which do not function as a generative pole because they appear only once, confirming Rihm’s predilection for single events. To give some examples: - A  t the beginning of the short section (bars 231-248) concluding Chiffre II, introduced by the flute, the English horn plays a melodic element based on thirds and ending with a descending seventh, partly in parallel fifths with the bass clarinet and the bassoon. In my opinion, this is a kind of concluding melodic element or figure 3, not functioning as a generative pole but fitting well in Rihm’s aesthetic, as he likes a surprising conclusion, in contradiction to what happened earlier (Ex. 66). Moreover, by leaving the final pitch f out of consideration, perfect symmetry is revealed. Fl Eh

4 & 4 nw p

j ‰ Œ nœwpp

Ó

n-˙

b˙-

3

> nœ- nœ sfz

˙

3

nw >

sfz pp

Ex. 66. Chiffre II, 231-234 (see Ex. 19, p. 87).

- A  lthough the dance-like figure 3 by the English horn (bars 98-103) in Chiffre III is heard twice as part of a repeated section, it is not treated as a generative pole. As said, figure 3 is not highly present in Chiffre I. Concentrating on Chiffre II for generative poles and generated elements is more fruitful. Some clear and quite different examples can be found. - Generated elements “at distance” The opening melodic element of the flute in Chiffre II (Ex. 67) is treated as a generative pole; a generated element is not found earlier than at the beginning of Chiffre VII (ChII/1-4 = ChVII/10-13,

254

Part II – Analysis

previously mentioned in this chapter in the paragraphs Repeated Passage and Repeated Single Instrumental Part, pp. 236-237).

nœ^. n>-œ 4 &4 J q = 120

Fl

fff

>œ- #œ. œ#œ J J 3

#œ nœ. nœ. bœ ™ >3

rit.- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

œ



w

3

Ex. 67. Chiffre II, 1-3, returning in Chiffre VII, 10-12.

In this case, generated elements stay restricted to Chiffre VII and mostly reserved to the flute. Embedded at the centre of an expanded melodic element, this figure reappears a few bars later with a varied rhythm and without its original final note (Ex. 68, bars 28/3-29/4). But there is more: the striking descending intervals just before this generated element in the flute (bars 26/4-28/3) are imitated in the bass trumpet, oboe, trumpet and clarinet (bars 27-28), combining chromatically neighbouring pitches of the original. Afterwards, until bar 35, the flute continues with great leaps, again imitated by the oboe (bars 30-31); both instruments conclude with falls in imitation. Another interesting aspect of the melodic element in the oboe (bars 30/3-32/4) is the quasi-symmetry with the sustained f# as pivot note. The symmetry is somewhat obscured by the absence of pitch eb as penultimate note, by the added short f§ after the sustained f# and by the low register of the endnote bb. The aspect of symmetry will be developed further in the next chapter. - M  etamorphosed generated element At other moments in Chiffre VII, the flute plays generated elements that are further removed from the original. In Ex. 69 for instance, compared to Ex. 67, a number of mutations are found: second note b instead of c, fourth note b instead of f#, fifth note g# instead of g, the penultimate eb is omitted. While two of the three mutations are chromatic shifts, the original is still recognisable. However, the completely different rhythm with long notes at the beginning and short notes at the end covers the similarities. This is indeed an example where a generated element is “disguised” by full metamorphosis, but where a closer look still reveals undeniable links

14 – Chiffre Cycle: Cyclic Elements

255

with the original generative pole. On the other hand, the changes cause a certain symmetry in this generated element: the disturbing note is g# (if replaced by c#, the symmetry would be perfect, and the original yet again a step further away).

b >-œ 4 J &4 n-œ p 3 >

n>œ. n>œ ™

Fl

Fl Cl

Ob Tpt Btpt

˙

Œ˙ ˙ ™™

Tpt

pp

subito q = 120

Ob



Tpt

nnœœ bœ

& &

Ó



& 32

3

˙



œ

accel.

˙

‰ n œ^

^ # œ n œ. 3 J nœv. bœ v. b œ. 3 f v p

ff

f

> > nœ œ nœ œ #œ ‰v sfz n œ b œ œJ > Ó nœ œJ ‰

3 pp 3 Tpt

3 #œ. œn œ n œ n j Fl & J n œ #œ œ . . bœ bœ ™ v. n œ œ # œ œv ≈ ‰ > 3 >. - sfzv sfz f p

Ob

nœ ™

œ 3 Œ nn˙˙ Cl

ppp

ppp

& 44 nœœ Btpt

29



œœ Ó b˙ pp œ nU œ™ ˙q = 66

#œ n>œ. J ‰ ‰ J mp

pp

bU Ϫ

œ

pp

nœ^

bœ^ bœ^

bœ ™ œ bœ- ™

3

n œj

#œ nœ J

marc.

nœ^ Œ nœ n œ v bœv bœv J v 3



Ex. 68. Chiffre VII, 26-33. Flute, bars 28-30: core of the generated element (bracketed).

3 . nœ ™ œ n œ 4 J &4 R ord.

Fl

p

ppp

#˙ ææ

Flzg.

pp

3 n˙ ææ

3 #˙ ææ

ord. n > -˙ q = 66 n>œ nœ b œ^. æ æ mf

Ex. 69. Chiffre VII, 20-22. Mutations indicated by arrows.

Œ

pp (non vibr.)

pp

256

Part II – Analysis

- A  t the edge of metamorphosis Starting again from Chiffre II, the passage beginning at the golden section, bar 153, is marked by triple repetition of a new generative pole, immediately followed by generated elements (Ex. 70). q = 80

Tpt Ob-Hn

5 &4 Π^.

& nnœ-œ ™™ v -

155

j nœfi nÆœJ .

- - - 3 œ b œ ˙ nœ n œ b œ nnœœ nnœ bb˙ - - - 3 f, ben articolato -j - -3 - bœœ nœ nœ bœ nnœœ œœ bJ nœ nœ bœ -. - - 3

nnœ™ œ™ >nœœ n >

>nœœ n >

bœœ b >bœœ ™ b ™ >

bœ™ b œ™ ^. >. >. n nœ œ # œœ n œ œ v. >

nnœœ

Ex. 70. Chiffre II, 153-156. Horn: + (see Ex. 3, p. 78).

In the opening section of Chiffre III (Ex. 71) the obsessive tomtom percussion is interrupted by a melodic element in parallel motion, generated from Chiffre II, from the previous example.

Pf Bcl

Bn Pf

fff sempre sfffz ^.j sfffz > > > >™ nœfi - n-˙ - bœ n>œ 4 Ó & 4 Œ n˙ nœ nœ bœ nœ n˙ > nœ > nœ > > > > sffz pp sfffz fff sempre > >> > ? 44 Œ n>˙ n>œ #˙ nœ nœ #œ Ó™ nœ #˙ nœ nœ#œ >- >- >- >- > “‘

- >- > œ nœ ™ bœ ™ œ nœ ™ bœ ™ > > > > œ nœ ™ nœ ™ œ nœ ™ nœ ™ - >- >

-j più>-fff œ #œœ™ œ v.

j3 nœ. bœ œ w v >-

˙™

Œ

sfffz ^. j > bœj œ bœ ™ œJ b œ ™ b Jœ n œ œ w - >- più fff. v >-

˙™

Œ

sfffz

3

Ex. 71. Chiffre III, 17-22.

 t first sight, one can oppose this statement, denying that the passage A in Chiffre III is a generated element. In my opinion, there are enough arguments to claim that that is indeed a generated element of Chiffre II. In the trumpet part in Chiffre II, the generative pole uses all chromatic steps between g and b. In the generated element in Chiffre III, the ambitus of the upper part is enlarged with a semitone:

14 – Chiffre Cycle: Cyclic Elements

257

f# to b: g-a-g-bb-g-a-g-ab-f_#-b-ab. To the original beginning a-bb-g-aab-a-bb-g-ab, pitch g is added three times (italic); at the end two pitches are chromatically shifted and inverted, bb-g becomes f#-b (underlined). To analyse Rihm’s music it is indeed necessary to accept such distant resemblances as belonging to the same root. In the paragraphs above, in the elaboration of figures 1-3, I mentioned “merged figures”: at certain moments the individual figures are no longer clearly distinguishable. The intrinsic qualities of Rihm’s music urge the analyst to be satisfied with open definitions in many cases, such as the three figure-categories. On the one hand, it is not possible to install clear and definite demarcations to the elaborations of the figures; on the other hand, many elements in the Chiffre cycle seem related to the figures, but hard proof is lacking beyond the “gripability” of the analyst.

15

Chiffre Cycle: Symmetry

I

n the previous chapter regarding the treatment of figures 2 and 3, some symmetrical melodic elements on a small scale were already mentioned (examples in Bild of figure 2 in symmetry; figure 3 in symmetry in Ex. 66, Ex. 68, Ex. 69). In this chapter I will show how symmetrical elements appear in all parameters, much more than presumed. Because of its ubiquity, symmetry must be considered as yet another cyclic element. Even if some of the symmetrical elements mentioned here are not immediately perceptible, it is clear to me that they contribute “subcutaneously” to the cyclic unity. Symmetry is found from the very beginning of the cycle. In Chiffre I (bars 12-14), all instruments except for the piano have a double leap, ascending-descending, ending on the starting pitch, both sustained, homorhythmically with a short middle note (for instance: g(+6)c#(-6)g in the clarinet). A few bars later (bars 17-19), an extended symmetrical element is played by clarinet and bassoon (clarinet: a#(+25)b(-24)b(+24) b(-25)a#). In turn the piano plays a similar symmetrical element in both hands in bars 26-27. The same kind of symmetry is recalled at the end of the cycle: in Chiffre VIII, five bars before the end (bar 35), the alternating cellos create a descending-ascending symmetrical element. These examples show that short symmetrical elements are appearing throughout the cycle. In the next paragraphs some longer symmetrical elements are researched.

Melodic Symmetry The generative pole of figure 3 (see Ex. 6, p. 80, and p. 78). becomes a symmetrical gruppetto by mutation of the first note (a instead of g): a-bb-ag-a. In the same way replacing pitch e by f in the following diminution, the result of the fast figure f-g-f-e-f is also symmetrical. The prolonged gruppetto becomes a melodic element with larger rhythm later in the Chiffre cycle, in 259

260

Part II – Analysis

Chiffre II and III (see Ex. 70, p. 256 and Ex. 71, p. 256). Both cases are expanded generated elements, retaining even the slightly imperfect symmetry of the generative pole. Hard evidence is given by the bass clarinet in Chiffre III, where the perfect turn is suddenly in the foreground, in fast rhythm c#-d-c#-b#-c#, in polyphony with the dance-like melodic element in the English horn (bars 98-103; with the turn in bar 101/2-3). At different places the Chiffre cycle shows symmetrical, quasi or partly hidden symmetrical and mirrored melodic elements, related to figure 3, as demonstrated above in Ex. 66 and Ex. 68. Symmetrical elements can be obfuscated by one different note, such as the endnote, by inserted notes between the two symmetrical members, by pitch permutation or place change in the members or by asymmetrical rhythm. A more “compound” example of quasi-symmetrical elements, with great leaps recalling the earlier discussed fragments of Chiffre VII (see Ex. 68, p. 255, and Ex. 69, p. 255) is found in the same piece, again in the flute (Ex. 72). I mention it because it could also be considered as a distant generated element of the generative pole of figure 3, discussed in Ex. 67. By a fourth transposition, combining perfect, diminished and augmented fourths, one can easily relate this example to the original generative pole, with tolerance to the added pitch a in bar 104/4, between f and f# (originally c and c#). The result is the repetition of the melodic element (bracketed), almost symmetrical, between two disturbing pitches, c and eb.

Fl

ord. n>œ #>œ > >œ n>œ #>œ non dim. 3 Flzg. n > œ n > b˙ œ™ b œ ˙ b œ ™ œ™ > b œ œ b ˙ .^ b >œ ™ b w n wææJ ææ > 4 J j fij fi Ó n œ bœ j &4 n œ œ bœv. 3 pp (non vibr.) ffff sfffz sfffz sfffz sub. pp > F F

Ex. 72. Chiffre VII, 104-109. The boxed passage is the generated element or the transposed generative pole. The bracketed passage is returning. The disturbing pitches are indicated by arrows.

In the example above, symmetry of the members is combined with repetition. With short cells, this happens also in other pieces of the Chiffre cycle. At the place of the golden section in Chiffre I, bars 105-110 (Ex. 73), the hectic movement is released for a slow moment with soft dynamics.

15 – Chiffre Cycle: Symmetry

261

Before the full bar rest, the piano plays f(-4)db(-2)cb, which is at the same time quasi-mirrored and quasi-repeated in the double bass db(-2)b(+5)f# (bars 108-109, pizzicato and sustained) and again by the piano left hand in quavers: db followed by the dyad b-f. The exchange of db and b results in the combination of repetition and symmetrical mirror, while the regular pitch f appears in the piano just before the altered f# of the double bass in bar 110.

°? ritardando Db ‹ nwPf

¢

?

q = 40

nw





bw “‘

q = 60

∑ ∑

bw

pizz.

b œ.

pp

Œ Œ ∑

n œ.

arco

#˙ ™ n œj ‰ (pp) # -œ Œ Ó b œ nn -œœ Œ

p

Ex. 73. Chiffre I, 105-110.

A last example: a similar combination of symmetry with even more accent on immediate repetition is found in Chiffre VII (Ex. 74). Both members before and after pitch b consist of the repetition of four notes, with exchange of the first and the second note and enlarged rhythm.

Cl

4 & 4 # œ n>œ n>œ > “‘ sffz p

b>œ ™ f

n œ >œ sffz

.j nœfi

3

nœ. # œ n>œ œ bœ >- >-.

œ

n˙ ™ >

w

p sffz p

Ex. 74. Chiffre VII, 141-144. Quasi-symmetrical members indicated by brackets.

Rhythmic Symmetry On a micro-level comparable to melodic symmetry, symmetrical durational series can be found. Needless to say, this is evident for elaborations of figure 1, restricted to constant pulsating rhythm; here also a disturbing element can break the perfect symmetry. In Chiffre I the hocket passage on pitch a (bars 22-27) concludes with a quasi-symmetrical rhythmic repetition in the trumpet (Ex. 75).

262

Tpt

Part II – Analysis

4 &4 Œ

n œ- œ. œ- œ œ- œ. v mp, marc.



sffz p

œ. œ. v



sffz p

œ. œ- œ. œ. œ ™ n ˙ > > sffz p f

Ex. 75. Chiffre I, 26-27. Bracketed: non-symmetrical moment.

Examples of the following kind can be found several times. In Bild, the trumpet and trombone play a figure of three notes in parallel fifths (Ex. 76). The quasi-symmetry of the pitches is reflected in an almost rhythmic symmetry with a slightly longer endnote.

Tpt

Trbn

4 &4 Ó ?4 Ó 4



b >œ ™

> ‰ bœ ™

sffz p

sffz p

n>œ n œ -œ J

Ó

> nœ nœ -œ J

Ó

3

sfffz fff

3

sfffz fff

Ex. 76. Bild, 47-48.

Time Signature Symmetry A symmetrical bow in time signature changes per bar is found in Chiffre III (bars 83-87): 5/4  4/4  3/4  4/4  5/4. The whole of Chiffre VIII is marked by symmetry in the time signature changes, with only two short insertions: 4/4  5/4  4/4  3/4  4/4  5/4  4/4  3/4  (7/8, 1 bar)  4/4  (2/4, 2 bars)  4/4 (see p. 282).

Harmonic Symmetry Symmetry is found not just in melodic and rhythmic elements. The generative pole, described above as figure 3 in Chiffre II (see Ex. 67, p. 254) and developed in Chiffre VII, is accompanied by symmetrically-placed chords (ChII/1-5 and ChVII/10-15, see Ex. 54, p. 221).

15 – Chiffre Cycle: Symmetry

263

Chiffre III starts analogously to Chiffre II, with a bow chord sequence in the opening bars, this time at a distance because of the tomtoms solo: dyad b-c (bar 1), small cluster c-d (bar 6) and again dyad b-c (bar 7).

Total Symmetry Another example of a symmetrical chordal bow is found in Chiffre II (bar 170) in all instruments, doubling the piano. The series starts with chord b-c-d-f-ab-a, ascending twice chromatically in parallel motion and followed by two chromatic descending steps of the upper triad, while the lower triad descends diatonically (Ex. 77). Moreover, other parameters are symmetrically developed: rhythm, dynamics and articulation. This symmetrical bar closes the long passage concentrated on figure 3, which started at the place of the golden section, fully based on parallelism and small intervals (bar 153, see Ex. 70, p. 256). q = 120

nn>œœ. 4 b & 4 œJ mp 4 & 4 n n œœj n œ. >

##œœ nœ n œœœ

nn>œœ bœ fff

œœ >œ

##œœ nœ œœœ

nn>œœ. bœ J

mp

j œœ. œ >

Ex. 77. Chiffre II, 170.

In Chiffre V, bars 21-22, the clarinet and piano have a symmetrical rhythm: the alternation of a quaver and a crotchet in a septuplet (twice e q e q e) with staccato crotchets combined with the regular alternation of dyads db-b and eb-c. This symmetry returns in a varied way in bar 24 and again in bars 29-30, when the piano, tubular bells and plate bells repeat the c-d dyad in another symmetrical rhythm: e q q q e, disturbed by an acciaccatura on the third note; articulations and dynamics are symmetrically elaborated.

264

Part II – Analysis

Symmetrical Placing Also belonging to the characteristic of symmetry, although from a completely different viewpoint, is the symmetrical placing of similar events at distance in a score. It is superfluous to add that “hiding” techniques, mutation and metamorphosis of the limbs can obscure the clear symmetry. This can be illustrated with an example from Bild: the trumpet solo (bars 131-146) ends at 23 bars from the end (final bar: 169) and is placed symmetrically towards a series of solo passages at the beginning of the piece, starting in bar 22 with the repeated note in the piano solo (bars 2228), followed by the snare drums solo on the background of a ppp non vibrato sustained chord in the strings (bars 29-34) and concluded by the double bass (bars 35-38). Only the “solo” characteristic is common, clearly at symmetrical locations in the score. More examples of symmetrical placing will be analysed in the next chapter.

16

Chiffre Cycle: Proportions

B

efore I analyse proportions in the Chiffre cycle, certain characteristics concerning objective data, tempo and time signature must be given a closer look (see also p. 171).

Tempo Indications For tempo indications over longer periods within the Chiffre cycle, Rihm makes almost exclusive use of strict metronome numbers while Italian or other conventional (less exact) tempo terms, such as allegro or adagio, remain absent. There is one exception in Italian: the prestissimo passage in Chiffre III and another exception in German: So rasch wie möglich in NachSchrift. Another kind of exception is indications with a certain flexibility: “circa” and “if possible” are sometimes added to metronome marks, next to the frequent demand for slightly faster or slower tempi, meno mosso and più mosso (with variants, with or without suggestion by a “circa” metronome figure). For accelerations and decelerations, where the course or speed of the tempo change cannot be given by exact metronome marks, Rihm frequently combines the gradual change indication with a metronome mark to be reached. Sometimes this target tempo must be left immediately; on other occasions, it is sustained temporarily and left after one or a few bars, or it is continued for a longer passage. More affect loaded Italian terminology, such as inquieto, agitato and pesante, only appears in Chiffre I, II and III. Even the subtle indications meno mosso and più mosso are fewer in number from Chiffre IV on and more than once accompanied by a metronome mark in the second half of the cycle. Through the whole cycle, the unit or beat in metronome marks is always the crotchet, with – how could it be otherwise – one exception: in Chiffre V 265

266

Part II – Analysis

the piano solo (bars 93-118) is marked by extreme tempo changes including the quaver and semiquaver as units, although restricted to only six bars and two tempi: e = 92, x = 60.

Tempo Changes In several compositions a constant tempo is found. - C  hiffre VI: q = 60, except for one bar of ritenuto (bar 61). - C  hiffre VIII: q = 40, except for one bar q = 60 (bar 35). - The constant tempo in Bild (q = 80) shifts to più mosso (from bar 102 until the end), which is the only tempo change indication in the score. In other compositions there are frequent tempo changes. Omitting the slight changes (such as più mosso and meno mosso), there are up to nine different tempi in Chiffre III and VII and eight in Chiffre V. The slowest composition of the whole cycle is Chiffre VIII: constantly q = 40 (except for one bar q = 60). A restriction to slower tempo categories is found in Chiffre IV: q = 40, 44, and 52 in the main. The fastest tempi appear in Chiffre III, up to q = 120 and 160, next to prestissimo. As mentioned, So rasch wie möglich is used in Nach-Schrift. All compositions have different tempo combinations, while three tempi return in most pieces of the cycle: q = 60, q = 80 and q = 40. However, these numbers of appearances do not correspond with the predominance of tempo duration, expressed by the total number of bars in a tempo: - A  bsolute predominance of one tempo in Chiffre VI with 99% (of all bars) of q = 60, in Chiffre VIII with 97% of q = 40 and in Chiffre IV with 90% of q = 52. - I n Chiffre I, II, Bild and Nach-Schrift, q = 80 is predominant with 58, 61, 99 and 77% of all bars, respectively. It never seems to have been Rihm’s intention to work out tempo changes in a purely mathematical way, whether by unifying rhythmical values,

16 – Chiffre Cycle: Proportions

267

resulting in “smooth” tempo transitions (such as q becoming e or doubling the metronome number while keeping the same unit), or directing tempi towards Stockhausen’s theory of the chromatic tempo scale. Rihm’s tempo changes are musically inspired: abrupt, indicated by subito, surprising, sometimes not to say shocking, or gradually accelerating or decelerating to arrive at a different tempo or speed atmosphere. Of course, this musical approach does not rule out the possibility of clear and simple tempo proportions, such as reaching double or half speed (q = 60  120 or vice versa). This is also caused by the fact that his metronome numbers are never “searched”: Rihm restricts himself to the average figures. Tempo changes are a function of the course of the music.

Time Signature Like the tempo, the time signature rarely makes use of a unit other than the crotchet. Time signature 4/4 is the only one in Chiffre I, Bild, Chiffre VII and Nach-Schrift. Together with Chiffre IV where the continuous 4/4 is only once interrupted for one bar 2/4 (bar 64), this means that half of the pieces of the cycle are written in 4/4. The other pieces share a completely opposite characteristic: periods of stable time signature alternate with periods of instability. In turn, the longer stable passages are always 4/4. The unavoidable exception in this field is Chiffre VIII with constantly unstable time signatures; here the longest passage without time signature change lasts for no more than five bars. Sometimes time signature changes are limited to one or a few bars, as a kind of breaking through the regularity of 4/4, provoking a short “metrical disorientation” or a sudden and intentional “loss of balance”. This is certainly the case where the beat unit changes. For example: one bar of 5/8 preceded and followed by 4/4 in Chiffre II (bar 177); one bar of 7/16 is inserted in the ongoing 4/4 in Chiffre V (bar 122); and in Chiffre VI the continuous 4/4 is twice interrupted by a single bar 5/8 (bar 68 and 70). Another constant characteristic: all pieces of the cycle start and end in 4/4. Even more important than the analysis of time signatures is the fact that priority is given to the independent and free moving rhythm, over the

268

Part II – Analysis

regularity of the metre defined by time signature and tempo stability. Drawing conclusions based only on the time signature presence could be falsifying the “reality” of the music.

Proportions in the Chiffre Cycle Now and again, the middle and the golden section locations were mentioned in the previous chapters because of important musical facts, such as unique events. Indeed, certain proportions were revealed during the analysis of the different Chiffre pieces when combining tempo and time signature with other objective facts (such as fermatas and general pauses) and other structural facts (such as numbers of bars and parts of equal duration). I will pay attention to both golden section locations (short-long and long-short, respectively noted as 0.382 and 0.618 in the following paragraphs), resulting in symmetrically placed events, with or without common characteristics.

Proportions in Chiffre I - Tempo In Chiffre I four different tempi are used: q = 40, 60, 80 and 120, containing twice the proportion 1:2 for (40:80 and 60:120). Contrary to the short moments of q = 40 and 60, the tempi q = 80 and 120 both appear over a long period, albeit with some slight changes (accelerando, meno mosso and poco meno mosso). Leaving these minor changes out of consideration and reducing to the four basic tempi, the combination of the metronome numbers in the proportion 1:2 gives the following result: the first part, bars 1-107, uses q = 80 followed by q = 40 in only two bars at the end (bars 106107); the second part, consisting of bars 108-176, starts with a short period q = 60 (bars 108-120) and continues until the end of the piece with q = 120. Both parts, 107 bars and 69 bars, respectively, are related by the golden section as ratio (176 x 0.618 = 108.7).320 The shift from the slower to the faster tempo group is a fact not only by the change of q = 40  60, but also by the faster rhythms in bars 109-110 (see Ex. 73, p. 261). Moreover, bar 109 marks the beginning of a new section.

16 – Chiffre Cycle: Proportions

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- Golden Section: bars 108 and 68 The location of the golden section (0.618, bar 108) is marked by a full bar of rest, the only one in the piece. The music comes to a stop: the uniqueness of this silence has a huge impact. The surrounding quasi-symmetrical placement was already discussed in Ex. 73. At the location of the golden section in the first half of the piece (0.382, bar 69 instead of 68), the piano starts a solo melodic element in the right hand: ffff, espressivo, con tutta la sforza (bars 69-75), enclosed between two fermatas. For several reasons this is also a unique event: in no other place in Chiffre I does Rihm ask the piano for this particular articulation. Furthermore, it is the only melodically elaborated solo passage in the right hand of the piano (there is one other shorter right hand piano solo, based on a repeated note, bars 119-121), which could be interpreted as an anticipation of long solo passages in the upcoming pieces of the Chiffre cycle. - Fibonacci The middle of the score coincides with a Fibonacci number with the smallest margin of error possible (89 – 1). From the bar of the golden section (0.618) on to the end of the piece (bars 108-176), the duration in number of bars of passages in a constant tempo are proportioned following the Fibonacci series. Without any exception, all passages are based on Fibonacci numbers, with a tolerance of one bar: - 13 bars, bars 108-120 in tempo q = 60. - 5 6 (55 + 1) bars, bars 121-176 average in tempo q = 120. - Bar 129, 21 bars past the place of the golden section and 8 bars past the start of q = 120: fermata. - B  ar 142, 13 bars later: a tempo, after two bars meno mosso, pesante. - B  ar 150, 8 bars later: poco meno mosso, ma molto agitato. - Bar 152, 2 bars later: fermata. - Bar 173, 21 bars later: ritenuto and fermata. - Bars 174-176: three “final” bars a tempo, più pesante, with a fermata in bar 174, dividing the conclusion in 1 + 2 bars.

270

Part II – Analysis

Another remarkable duration is also defined by a Fibonacci number: the first long piano soloist passage lasts for 21 bars (bars 43-63). - Middle: bar 88 A chorale-like setting is placed in the middle (bars 88-96), also the start of a new section. The tempo indication is meno mosso, making it the first slow phrase of the piece. In bar 96, Tempo I is restored. The passage is non espressivo, a unique indication not only for Chiffre I, but in fact for the whole cycle. The middle is marked by symmetrical melodic elements in different instruments: bass clarinet (bars 88-89): f#(+1)g(-1)f#, isolated by rests, in homorhythm with the second cello: g(+9)e(-9)g. Others have quasisymmetrical elements with a deviation of a minor second. Symmetrical elements of three notes marked by an ascending and descending leap were already presented in the opening section of Chiffre I: all instruments, except for the piano, play such element homorhythmically in bar 12ff.

Proportions in Chiffre II Some similarities with Chiffre I mark the proportions in Chiffre II. - Tempo All tempi of Chiffre I return and q = 100 is added: q = 40, 60, 80, 100 and 120. The piece starts with a moment of unstable tempo (bars 1-15) mirrored in a double tempo deceleration at the end (bars 231-248). In between there are two main periods showing the same speeding up as in Chiffre I: q = 80 in bars 16-169 followed by q = 120 in bars 170-230. The division into two blocks, both marked by a contrast in tempo, is similar to Chiffre I, but the elaboration is completely different. - Golden section: bars 153 and 95 The emphasised melodic element starting at the location of the golden section (0.618) was described earlier as a generative pole (figure 3, see Ex. 70, p. 256). Moreover, bar 153 is marked by the first time signature change of the score, 4/4 to 5/4, introducing a series of time signature changes.

16 – Chiffre Cycle: Proportions

271

Rounding the golden section number 153.3 up to 154, it equals exactly the total number of bars in tempo q = 80 (bars 16-169). At the first golden section location (0.382, bar 95), again a unique event is found: a silence of six beats at the conclusion of the sustained violin harmonics passage in bars 94/3-95. The piece continues with the start of the bass drum roll, almost inaudible (bar 100). - Fibonacci Always with a tolerance of one bar, Fibonacci numbers structure the score. Concentration on smaller numbers in the opening bars, both as durations and as bar numbers, cannot be convincing or proof of the application of the Fibonacci series. Towards the end a few larger figures of the Fibonacci series alternate with smaller ones: -

Bars 216-218: 3 bars q = 120. Bars 219-230: 12 (13 – 1) bars of più mosso. Bars 231-244: 14 (13 + 1) bars of q = 80. Bars 244-248: 5 bars of q = 60.

Some more convincing larger Fibonacci numbers are found over the whole score: - F  ermatas are marked by Fibonacci numbers in bar 9 (8 + 1), bar 33 (34 – 1), bar 56 (55 + 1). - The duration of 21 bars of the soloist passage in the piano (bars 17-36) was already mentioned above in the context of Chiffre I. The transition from hectic movement to repetition takes place in bar 35 after the fermata of bar 33 and a hectic “conclusion” involving all instruments in bar 34. - The solo of the violins and the drums lasts for 55 bars (bars 67/4123/4). The violins start their harmonics with the anacrusis of bar 68, still accompanied by the piano, ending the previous phrase.

272

Part II – Analysis

- Middle: bar 124 The middle is marked by a “new beginning” after more than fifty bars of sustained harmonics in the violins and bass drum roll (bars 68-99 and 100123, respectively). Bar 124 is the start of a new section and opens with the consonant dyad d-a, comparable to the beginning of the piece: the consonant dyad c-f (bar 1).

Proportions in Chiffre III - Tempo Chiffre III is the first piece of the cycle with a great variety of tempi. - Golden section: bars 94 and 58 At first sight bar 94 (golden section 0.618) is not marked by a special event. It is part of the repeated passage which began five bars before (bars 89-103). The dance-like melody begins three bars later (bar 98) with a change of tempo (q = 160  120) and of time signature to 9/8 and with the unique indication meno mosso, inquieto. This is the only place in the cycle where the time signature 9/8 appears, only for two bars, followed by another unique appearance with the time signature 10/8 for only one bar (bar 100), replaced by 5/4 in brackets (bars 101-102). The dance-like melody is played by the English horn and preceded by a sustained note, pitch a, repeated as the first note of the melody. Pitch a is started in bar 95 with a fermata, which makes the sustained note extremely long. In that way, from a timbral point of view, the location of the golden section is indicated in a correct way with the preparation of the melodic element, paired with an accelerando over three bars (bars 95-97), preparing the inquieto expression. Also from a timbral point of view, one could argue that the English horn is inaudible in these bars because it is part of the ffff cluster e-a, played by almost all instruments. The timbre is even more accentuated by tremolo and Flatterzunge in some instruments, recalling the “ugly” sound of the whistles at the middle of Chiffre III (see p. 274). However, pitch a was already introduced by the English horn in bars 92-93 and retaken in bar 95 after a whole bar’s rest, which can be seen as a confirmation of the importance of the exact place of the golden section.

16 – Chiffre Cycle: Proportions

273

The dance-like sequence lasts for six bars and is heard twice, which makes it the most remarkable melodic element of Chiffre III. Next to the appearance of the generated element in bar 17, this is another fact comparable with Chiffre II, where the most emphasised melodic element started at the place of the golden section and returned also several times, albeit more varied than repeated. At the first golden section location (0.382, bar 58) a single event takes place: the introduction to the long piano solo passage built on repetition, comparable to the same golden section place in Chiffre I. - Fibonacci The repeated passage quoted above, containing the dance-like melody, starts exactly in bar 89, a Fibonacci number. In Chiffre III all bars up to 89 are marked by a Fibonacci number and seem to be awarded a particular quality (Table 26). Bar 5 8 13 21

34 55

89

Event 1-5: solo tomtoms 6-7: intervention all instruments in solo tomtoms 8-16: again tomtoms solo, regular rhythm of quintuplets of semiquavers, two players on low tomtom unique interruption of the low timbre in the tomtoms solo by accents on high tomtoms unique event, hocket homorhythm in all instruments, quaver note alternated with quaver rest, opposite in tomtoms, pedal note c in piano also the end of the melodic element started in bar 17 35: first change of time signature: 5/4 35: end of tomtoms passage unique return of the low tomtom after finishing the solo passages and the change for other percussion instruments in bar 36 56: tempo change (a tempo, q = 88) 89-103: repeated passage

144 no special event Table 26. Chiffre III. Events in bars marked by a Fibonacci number.

274

Part II – Analysis

Other applications of the Fibonacci series are linked to the length of passages, although admitting one bar of tolerance: - Th  e double acceleration (accelerando, più accelerando) preparing the prestissimo passage lasts for 14 bars (13 + 1, bars 60-73). - Bars 98-119: 22 bars (21 + 1) marked by a series of time signature changes. - There are 22 (21 + 1) bars between the end of the first repeated passage (bar 103) and the start of the second one (bar 125). - The final section of the piece consists of the second repeated passage (bars 125-152), lasting for 27 bars twice or 54 bars (55 – 1). - The previous finding leads in fact to counting backwards from the end of the composition, which is not common, but justified in this specific case because of the above obtained result. Indeed, counting the repeated passage only once: at 54 (55 – 1) bars from the end, in bar 98, the melodic element inquieto starts. This was already discussed in the comment on the golden section. - At 34 bars from the end, bar 119: definite final return to time signature 4/4. - Middle: bar 76 The bar at the middle of the score is part of the piano solo with short percussion interventions (bars 60-83). However, by the indications prestissimo, come una macchina and isterico, right here a unique moment in the whole of the Chiffre cycle is created, a reference to Ligeti (see p. 75). Moreover, this is the only place where whistles are heard in the cycle: bars 70-81 with 76 exactly in the middle. This means that the piano chord repetition leads from the first golden section location to the middle of the score. In order to obtain perfect symmetry, the repetition should be maintained until the bar of the golden section in the second half (bar 94). Indeed, the repetition of the piano chord is continued after bar 76, alternating with other repeated chords from bar 83 on and replaced by short repeated scale fragments in contrary motion (bars 86-87). At the Fibonacci bar 89, repetition of a whole fragment (bars 89-103) replaces the immediate short chord or scale repetition. At last, the piano ends with

16 – Chiffre Cycle: Proportions

275

short repeated moments by tremolos in bars 95-97, where the second golden section bar is reached. With a lot of imagination, the composer creates a variety of repetition possibilities around the middle of the score and delimited by the symmetry of the golden section bars. - Generated element: bar 17 This coincidence is worth mentioning: bar 17 marks the first melodic outburst of Chiffre III, breaking the domination of the tomtoms. As mentioned before, this melodic element is generated from Chiffre II (bar 153). This is remarkable, because in Chiffre II, exactly at bar 17, the long soloist piano passage, generated element from Chiffre I (bar 43ff.), starts.

Proportions in Chiffre IV - Tempo With q = 40, 44 and 52, Chiffre IV has the slowest tempi of the cycle, next to Chiffre VIII. The piece contrasts with the previous ones by the absolute predominance of one tempo, q = 52, featuring in 104 of the total of 115 bars. Nevertheless, the division of the score can be based on the same tempo relations as in Chiffre I and II. Here, three times a long passage of fixed tempo q = 52 alternates with a very short moment of changed tempo. At the end phase, more tempo changes occur, causing the loss of the predominance of the basic tempo (Table 27). Bars 1-29

Tempo q = 52

30-31

change: q = 40

32-60

q = 52 change: acc., a tempo, (più) acc.

61-64 65-96 97-98

q = 52 change: più mosso

99-105

q = 52, acc.

106-113

change: q = 44, q = 40, rit.

114-115

q = 52

Table 27. Chiffre IV. Tempo overview.

276

Part II – Analysis

The first three periods are of almost equal length: 31 (29 + 2), 33 (29 + 4) and 34 (32 + 2) bars, respectively. The final passage is half as long with 17 bars, resulting in an approximation of the ratio 2:2:2:1. This division is reinforced by particular events in the transitions of the periods: - B  ar 29: general pause with long fermata just before the tempo change. - Bars 62-68: long general pauses in the accelerandi and in the return of the basic tempo, together with the only time signature changes of the whole composition, both for only one bar (1/4 in bar 61; 2/4 in bar 64, Ex. 78). - Bar 99: a fermata at the beginning of the final period combines the bass clarinet and cello with silence in the piano. (più) accelerando - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Pf

& 24 ‰

3

nn-œœ

pp

2 &4 ‰ 3

nbœœ n œ-

>-œ œ

#nœœ # œ>

3

##œ. œ J f

3

j nbœœ b œ.

Ex. 78. Chiffre IV, 64.

- Middle: bar 57 The exact centre of Chiffre IV is not marked by a special event. However, three bars past the middle (bar 60) the piano begins the triple repetition of a series of three chromatically ascending chords, with varied rhythm and dynamics. The chords are in fact quasi-clusters (a small cluster with one separate note, cluster e-g and b for instance on 60/4). The series starts at bar 60/4 (piano solo), 64/1 (piano solo, Ex. 78) and 68/3 (piano with sustained notes in bass clarinet and cello). Long rests separate the three-chord series: a unique event in the whole piece.

16 – Chiffre Cycle: Proportions

277

- Golden section: bars 71 and 44 The passage described above ends in bar 70, at the moment of the golden section. In turn, this place is marked by a unique event. The top note reached by the three-chord series, c#, is continued in unison in the most diverse settings in bars 71-73/3: attacked semiquaver in sfffz, resonating in the piano pedal, harmonic with crescendo in the cello, returning to the piano with an even louder semiquaver sffffz continued in the muted c#, and doubled in four octaves over seven beats. This is the longest and timbrally most varied unison of the score. Other unisons are shorter and of a uniform timbre. The location of the golden section in the first half of the piece (0.382, bar 44) is less emphasised. Bar 46, rather than bar 44, brings the most hectic phrase of Chiffre IV to an end. The fast rhythms are concentrated on pitches c, f and f#, including some repetitions (bars 36-46). Applications of the Fibonacci series are not found in Chiffre IV. The duration of the three equal sections of approximately 34 bars is not convincing, because too much tolerance is needed.

Proportions in Bild Bild takes an exceptional position: no convincing proportional elements are found. As Rihm remarks that Bild is “in the vicinity of the cycle” (im Umkreis), in this field it is clearly an outsider.321 This is the first piece of the cycle in one tempo, q = 80; one of the main tempi of the cycle, combined with the cycle’s main time signature 4/4. The only tempo change is più mosso (bar 102), two bars before the location of the golden section (bar 104). The grade of tolerance is too high to be acceptable. One could say that the signal-like repetition of the horn, followed by trumpet and piano, marks the middle of the score (bar 85), but this is no more than a striking element, absolutely not a unique event.

278

Part II – Analysis

Proportions in Chiffre V Unlike Bild, Chiffre V shows the greatest diversity in tempi of the whole cycle. - Tempo and Fibonacci Chiffre V starts with a moment of unstable tempi, followed by two longer periods of q = 100 (bars 20-47 and 54-73), separated by six slower bars of q = 60. As was the case in earlier pieces of the cycle, successive tempi must be grouped to make the proportions appear, and fermatas confirm the ends of passages. Fibonacci numbers are found, although again with the smallest difference of one bar. - B  ars 1-5: 5 bars q = 80, with a fermata in bar 3. - Bars 6-19: 14 bars (13 + 1) q = 92. - Bars 20-53: 34 bars q = 100, ending with a deceleration q = 60 (bars 48-53). - Bars 54-74: 21 bars q = 100 ending with an acceleration of one bar q = 138 with fermata (bar 74). - Bars 75-77: two inserted bars q = 138 (bars 75-76) and one bar senza tempo (bar 77) with fermata. - Bars 78-166: 89 bars of unstable tempo form the final part of the composition. Within the closing passage of 89 bars (bars 78-166) no further division based on Fibonacci numbers can be discerned. Instead, a division into two and four almost equal parts, based on the stable time signatures, is revealed. - 4 4 bars of 4/4 (bars 78-121). - 1 bar of 7/16 (bar 122). - 44 bars of 4/4 (bars 123-166) with the exception of one inserted bar of 5/4 (bar 143). - Golden section: bars 102 and 64 The place of the golden section (0.618) is situated in the long piano solo containing a lot of tempo changes. Not only do the metronome numbers change, but next to accelerandi and ritenuti, there are also some time unit

16 – Chiffre Cycle: Proportions

279

changes. The first unit change takes place in bar 102: q = 92 becoming subito e = 92 or half tempo, leading ritenuto to the slowest tempo of the piece, x = 60 in bar 105. It could be added that bar 102 is exactly the middle of the piano repetition of the dyad a-bb (bars 86-118, leaving out other repeated chords before and afterwards). The other golden section location (0.382, bar 64) is not highlighted. - Middle: bar 83 In bar 83 the piano starts the obsessive repetition of the a-bb dyad, which becomes the subject of the long lasting piano solo with extreme tempo changes (bars 93-118). Alternating afterwards with other chords, the stubborn piano repetition is continued until bar 125: that is exactly at three quarters of the score.

Proportions in Chiffre VI - Tempo Possibly due to the Schubert references (see p. 87), Chiffre VI seems more structured by specific musical events than by objective structural elements. The piece is constantly at q = 60, with only one bar of ritenuto (bar 61), approximately at three quarters of the total of 83 bars (83 x 0.75 = 62.2). At this moment, the building up of the climax, reached in bars 66-70, begins. Nothing is normal here: timbres are “ugliest”, metre and tempo become irregular by time signature changes (bars 68-71) and fermatas (bar 67, 69). - Middle: bar 41 Chiffre VI is characterised by a particular form: a short introduction, middle, and ending phrase frame two long sections. Bar 41 is part of the short middle phrase, separating the two sections (bars 40-49), and marked by a chordal series. All instruments take part in the longest sustained chords of the whole piece. The horn, for instance, repeats only one sustained note, f# from bar 42 until 49, and is joined in unison by the string quartet (bars 45/4-47/1). The place around the first quarter of bar 20 (bars 19/4-24/1) is similar to the middle of the piece in its use of sustained chords. It is also comparable to the moment of three quarters (bar 62) because of an ascending melodic

280

Part II – Analysis

element: db(+6)g(+2)a repeated in the bass clarinet and transformed to g(+7)d(-6)ab at the end, and freely imitated by the cello (bar 21, Ex. 79). This is augmented and transposed to bb(+6)e(+1)f with inserted notes adding chromaticism in bars 59-62 (Ex. 80), emphasised in the foreground by longer durations in the highest register of the horn. As mentioned above, this is also the moment of the only tempo fluctuation in the piece. Bcl

Vc

? 44

nœ r ≈ Œ nœ ‰ nœ j œ nœ. v. bœv. b œ. nœv. v. b œ nœ . #>œ v > v sfffz pp sfffz fff ffff sul p. 3 j ? 44 Œ ≈ Œ nœœ bnœœ œœ ™™ nœ . > nœ > > sffz pp sffz sffz pp ff 3

3

3

Ex. 79. Chiffre VI, 21.

Hn

4Ä & 4 bœ

ppp

Ϫ

+ + j j nœ^. n>œ œ bœ œ

fff sfffz p

sfffz sfffz p

o œ b˙ 3

Ä n˙

Ä nœ 3

˙

˙

fff

p

ffff

Ex. 80. Chiffre VI, 59-62. Key notes are indicated by arrows.

Based on exceptional musical events, Chiffre VI can be divided into four equal parts. - Golden section: bars 51 and 32 The location of the golden section (0.618, bar 51) is two bars after the ending of the middle phrase. It is not given particular attention, probably since all concentration goes to the preparation of the impending “ugly” climax. The same goes for the first golden section bar (0.382, bar 32): it is rather unique because of the timbre of the string quartet, exclusively harmonics. But one could rightly argue that the ffff horn signals in bars 29 and 30 are much more striking.

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281

Proportions in Chiffre VII Apart from the continuous 4/4 time signature with nine different tempi, Chiffre VII resembles Chiffre III and V. Most frequent are q = 80 and 108. Based on tempi, the structure can be defined as follows: - Th  e first half of the score, bars 1-98 (of 198 bars) is divided into fifteen moments of a minimum of two and a maximum of ten bars featuring the nine different tempi of the piece, including many gradual changes. The first quarter (bars 1-50) is marked by the highest frequency of extreme slow and fast tempi, which do not return afterwards. In the second quarter (bars 51-98) there are fewer changes of moderate to fast tempi between q = 80 and q = 108. - The second half is completely different and marked by only two fixed tempi without any gradual change: starting in bar 99 with q = 108 and changing to q = 80 in bar 154, 55 and 45 bars, respectively. This means that four parts are found, 50, 48, 55 and 45 bars long, respectively, not equal in length. With a larger margin of error than earlier in the analysis of tempi and proportions, one could conclude that the division into four more or less equal parts is comparable to Chiffre VI. Chiffre VII is the only piece of the cycle with such a clear tempo evolution. - Middle: bar 99 In bar 99 the tempo stabilises at q = 108 for a long period, while the next and last change of the piece occurs only 55 bars later, in bar 154 (q = 80). As mentioned above, the middle bar divides the composition into two parts with a different tempo concept. The middle of the score is also characterised by a specific instrumentation. The only moment the piccolo is involved is indeed here: bars 99-102. At the same place, the horn interferes for the first time with a striking melodic element in sustained notes: eb(+13)e§(+13)f.

282

Part II – Analysis

- Golden section: bars 122 and 76 The second time the horn comes to the foreground is at the moment of the golden section (0.618, bars 123-125). A melodic element is accompanied by sustained notes in the string instruments and joined soon by the wind players. It ascends over more than two octaves and is undoubtedly the strongest moment of the horn in the whole of Chiffre VII and therefore a unique event (Ex. 81).

Hn

? 44 Ó

+ + Œ nœ nœ 3

p

>œ ™ nœ >+ o #œ œ n œ b œ nœ J J & bœ œ J n˙ J 3

fff

sfffz

, + #˙ ™

Œ

pp

Ex. 81. Chiffre VII, 123-126.

In the first half of the piece the golden section location (0.382, bar 76) is marked by consonance and unisons, eb-bb and eb, lasting from bar 71 until bar 82. The only exceptional chord is the tritone-triad eb-a-bb in bar 79, obtained by adding pitch a to the sustained consonant dyad eb-bb. Less emphasised, although present sffz in the piano and contrasting in the high register, the tritone-triad is found again on pitch g at the location of the golden section (bar 121/4).

Proportions in Chiffre VIII The order of Chiffre VIII is comparable to Bild and Chiffre VI: one straight tempo, with the exception of only one bar (bar 35). The main tempo is q = 40, the exceptional bar q = 60. This maintained tempo is in great contrast to the unceasing time signature changes, although following an almost regular course, calculating as usual with one bar of margin of error: - Th  e order of 4/4  5/4  4/4  3/4 is repeated twice. The first time lasting 4-3-7-7 bars, respectively, or 21 bars, ordered around figure 7 and lasting half of the composition (21 of 40 bars), the second time 2-2-2-1 bars, together again a group of 7 bars.

16 – Chiffre Cycle: Proportions

283

- A  fter one inserted bar 7/8 (bar 29), the time signature is stable 4/4 until the end, with a two-bars 2/4 insertion, inspired by the contrasting musical content (bars 34-35). Both the unique tempo change (bar 35), five bars before the end, and the single bar where the unit of the crotchet is replaced by the quaver (bar 29) have no other function than to slightly disturb the order. It could be due to the shortness of the composition of only 40 bars that the golden section locations and the middle are not stressed in a unique way. This could also be due to its concluding function, as described in chapter 11 (see p. 211ff.) and in chapter 13 (see p. 231).

Proportions in Nach-Schrift In spite of the almost complete overwriting of Chiffre I in Nach-Schrift, the work received its own tempo design. This shows that tempo can also be affected by overwriting and proves the independence of musical content from tempo: an overwritten musical content or generated element can be metamorphosed by tempo changes. By looking for proportions, it is also clear that the overwriting has priority over the original proportions, which become vague or even completely disappear and are not replaced by other proportional elements. Passages are left out, others are relocated, and interpolations are made. All these operations have an important negative influence on the proportions. Convincing examples are the fact that the middle bar (bar 88) and the golden section bar (0.618, bar 108) of Chiffre I are not preserved in the overwriting in Nach-Schrift (see Table 23, p. 237).

Proportions of Length in the Chiffre Pieces The total numbers of bars of some pieces of the Chiffre cycle show exact and simple ratios, 1:1, 1:2:3, 3:4 and 4:5, counting in one bar of margin of error (Table 28). By these ratios all pieces of the cycle can be related in pairs or triplets, except for Bild with 169 bars and the short coda piece Chiffre VIII with 40 bars.

284

Part II – Analysis

number of bars I:NS II:V:VI

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

Nach-Schrift

176

248

152

115

166

83

198

175

1

1 3

III:IV II:VII

2 4

1

3

5

4

Table 28. Chiffre cycle. Proportions of length.

The ratio 1:1 for Chiffre I and Nach-Schrift is obvious, while the latter is an overwriting of the former.

Comparison: Chiffre II, V and VI Chiffre II, V and VI with 248, 166 and 83 bars, respectively, show the simple proportion 3:2:1, counting in one bar of difference for Chiffre II: 248 bars instead of 249. The comparison of the passage at the middle of each composition, around bar 124, bar 83 and bar 42, respectively, results in the same proportion. - I n Chiffre II, bar 123 marks the end of the long quasi-stasis, double solo passage by the violins and bass drums; its total duration is 66 bars. - In Chiffre V, bar 83 marks the start of a long period of repeated chords in the piano, ending in bar 126, which makes a total duration of 44 bars. - In Chiffre VI, the number of bars should be 22. The middle of the composition is marked by full concentration on one pitch, f# (bars 42-49), with unison f# in bars 45-47. Before, in bar 25, pitch f# appeared already as a sustained unison, accentuated by the indication Wie ein Hauch. The difference between the two unison places is 22 bars. In this way, I can fill in the proportion, not by duration, but by the distance.

16 – Chiffre Cycle: Proportions

285

Around the middle of the three compositions, I find balanced symmetry, proportioned 3:2:1, in three different ways: a sustained characteristic element after the middle in Chiffre V; the same before the middle in Chiffre II; and one single tone (unison), albeit less emphasised, before and at the middle in Chiffre VI. - Historical references The three compositions, Chiffre II, V and VI, refer to Gustav Mahler by the same timbral effect of “bells up” (Schalltrichter hoch, Schalltrichter in die Höhe, Schalltrichter oben), required several times in each piece (see p. 77). Near the end of the three pieces, one particular place of coincidence of “bells up” with the proportion 3:2:1 in location and in duration is found: bars ChII/216-218, ChV/144-145 and ChVI/72 (repeated after the first time in bar 67; no end bar given). These places are 32, 22 and 11 bars, respectively, before the end of each of the pieces and last for 3, 2 and 1 bars, respectively. Moreover, in each case, this timbral effect is linked to a climactic moment: in Chiffre II and V in contrast with a preceding soft passage; in Chiffre VI it is of course the climax with the “painful” glissando and the highest “ugly” sounds in the clarinet. Climaxes are situated at the same proportional places, towards the end of each of the three compositions.

Comparison: Chiffre II and VII For Chiffre II and VII the ratio of the numbers of bars is 5:4. Again Chiffre II is chronologically the first object of the comparison. The opening of both pieces is marked by an identical event. After nine bars of introduction, Chiffre VII continues in bars 10-13 with the exact repetition, including instrumentation, of the first four bars of Chiffre II. Moreover, in both cases the opening bars are consonant: a dyad in Chiffre II and a triad in VII. Only these two pieces of the whole cycle open with consonant chords. These facts could suggest the launch of an elaborated relation between the two compositions. Quite the contrary is true: no striking correspondences based on the proportion 5:4 are found, either in the structural analysis in sections and phrases except for some mere coincidences, or in the developments after the similar opening. The

286

Part II – Analysis

elaborated piano passage, overwritten from Chiffre I in Chiffre II, has no match in Chiffre VII. It is only in the second half of the two compositions that the proportional relationship 5:4 begins to play a role. Right at the middle, bar ChII/124 corresponding with bar ChVII/99, a kind of announcement of the impending correspondences is found: an outburst with striking ascending leaps in most of the wind instruments occurs twice. In bar ChII/153 the extended chorale-like melody starts in the horn, based on the chromatic steps c to f (Ex. 82). It is doubled by the oboe and mostly in parallel upper fifths by the trumpet. At the corresponding place in ChVII/123 the horn again plays a melodic element based on the chromatic steps, this time c# and f. The added pitches a and bb are the first notes of the upper voice of the trumpet in Chiffre II. The resulting melodic element in Chiffre VII is a one-voiced merging of the two-part chorale-like melody and can be considered a metamorphosed generated element with its generative pole in Chiffre II. I am fully aware that the ascending line of this melodic element only at the end shows the small intervals of its generative pole, but the fact that all notes are common and the exact corresponding place (with ratio 5:4) where this horn melody appears are at least striking. To a certain extent, Chiffre II could be a generative pole for Chiffre VII: some elements of the former are rewritten in the latter. q = 80

Tpt Ob-Hn

5 &4 Π^.

& nnœ-œ ™™ v -

155

Hn

j nœfi nÆœJ .

? 44 Ó

- - - 3 œ b œ œ ˙ nnœ b œ nnœœ nnœ bb˙ - - - 3 f, ben articolato -j - -3 - b œ n œ b œ n œ œœ b œJ nnœœ n œ b œ n œ -. - - -

nnœ™ œ™ >nnœœ >

3

+Ä nœ + Œ nœ 3

p

>nnœ œ >

œ b bœ >™ b b œœ ™ >

> o #œ œ Ä œ nœ J J &bœ œ nœ bœ ™ J 3

Ex. 82. Chiffre II, 153-156 (above, see Ex. 70, p. 256). Chiffre VII, 123-125 (below, see Ex. 81, p. 282).

fff

b b œ™ œ™ ^. >. >. nœ œ #nœœ n œ œ v. >

nnœœ

+ nœ n>˙ J sfffz

16 – Chiffre Cycle: Proportions



287

Boxed: notes and chromatically shifted notes borrowed from the lower voice of the melodic element in Chiffre II. Arrows: notes borrowed from the upper voice.

Although Chiffre II is the common element in both comparisons with proportions made above – on the one hand the proportion 3:2:1 in Chiffre II, V and VI, and on the other hand the proportion 5:4 Chiffre II and VII – there are no striking findings based on proportions that could link the two groups; in other words, that could link Chiffre VII to the correspondences found in the three other pieces.

Conclusions The first series of conclusions concerns proportions within each piece of the Chiffre cycle. Applied to the individual pieces are proportions based on equal parts, on the Fibonacci series and on the golden section. Only in the first pieces of the cycle is there a link between the tempo proportions and durations in the piece itself. Division into Golden Golden Fibonacci equal parts section (0.618) section (0.382) series I – x x x II 2:1 x x x III – x x x IV 2:2:2:1 x – – Bild – – – – V 1:1 (second half) x – x VI 1:1:1:1 – – – VII 1:1:1:1 x x – VIII 2:1:1 – – – Nach-Schrift – – – –

Chiffre

Table 29. Chiffre cycle. Proportions overview (x: present; –: not found).

Table 29 shows a clear turn after Chiffre V: Fibonacci series are no longer applied and golden section indications are found only in Chiffre VII. Another kind of proportion is introduced: the division of the score into equal parts. Only once, in Chiffre II, do all proportional possibilities figure.

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Part II – Analysis

Nach-Schrift is really exceptional because all proportions of Chiffre I have disappeared in the overwriting. The second series of conclusions is about comparisons between Chiffre pieces, revealing equal proportions. The analysis of proportions of lengths of the Chiffre pieces yields the remarkable finding that all compositions of the cycle, except for Bild and Chiffre VIII, share the proportion 1:2:3:4:5 as to the total number of bars. The presumption of more detailed proportions, returning in different numbers of the cycle, could be no more than a consequence of the general application of proportions. However, it is worth mentioning that specific elements, such as quasi-stasis and historical references, can be linked by the same ratios, common to different Chiffre pieces. By these findings, not only is the application of proportions as such confirmed, but the degree of coherence, typical of the cyclic concept, has also increased.

Final Conclusions

W

olfgang Rihm is an individual and independent artist, who built – and is still building – his own multidimensional musical universe. To recall a concept of postmodernism: his universe is a “container”, in which elements from nature and proportion, philosophy and fine arts, theatre and literature, music from the past and the present are collected and related to each other by his open pluralistic gaze. It is indeed a “postmodern” container because all these elements are understood and interpreted in a very personal way and applied to his aesthetic aiming at the development of the “new”. All elements are digested or sedimented to be applied in an original way. A convincing example is his preference for allusion or “hidden” quotation, instead of clear and accentuated exact quotation of existing melodies in the oeuvre of colleague composers. Tonfall or what from the past is still interesting, challenging to recompose, to add a personal concept. Rihm’s prolific zeal and endless imagination create an enormous musical oeuvre, diverse and versatile, not to be described in one or a few style names or definitions. The choice of instrumental music (string quartet, chamber music and chamber orchestra; independent pieces and a cycle) composed in the 1980s was based on Rihm’s particular approach to this highly abstract music. Despite the titles of some pieces, this music is abstract, not inspired by a text for instance, but rather referring to a text as a personal reflection, not inspired by an extra-musical subject, but again, rather referring to it in a personal way. Rihm is not interested in the recreation of something existing outside music. A composition cannot be an illustration of something that struck him, nor a comment. It is always about his personal and individual opinion, his direct approach of sound and music. Titles are anecdotical, such as Blaubuch for a string quartet notated in a blue notebook. Titles are “secret” and challenging, since their meaning is not clear or unambiguous: Chiffre for instance, where the composer per­ manently asks himself what the meaning of “chiffre” could be. Com­­po­-

289

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Wolfgang Rihm, a Chiffre

s­ ition titles can be challenging and enigmatic rather than an explanation of the content of the piece, for instance Ohne Titel. During the 1980s Rihm explored the extent to which it was possible to compose without the rigidity of a system. He wanted to be at a certain distance from all systems he was taught during his musical education, to explore what he did not learn: to try to compose without the rules of a system, however flexible they might be. His aim was not systemlessness as such, since he experienced rather quickly that this extreme was impossible to reach. Therefore, it is better to describe his aim in terms of trial and search for freedom balanced with “com-position”, minimising coherence while staying responsible for each created sound, avoiding the pitfall of indeterminacy. Certain stages of systemlessness are purely conceptual without the possibility of concrete realisation. It is a contradiction to compose a VorTon because the unformed condition cannot be maintained once the sound is formed. In the field of instrumental music, the ideas of Artaud and Sloterdijk can be inspiring philosophy for Rihm, but in the analysed compositions as such I could find hardly any musical trace of it. Another systemless tendency is based on the lack of planning of the form and structural course of a composition, hence the scarcity of sketches. However, Rihm’s refusal of a preplanning is replaced by his immediate reaction to each step he takes during the compositional process. “Process” must be understood as a step-by-step progression on an unknown path, leading somewhere by each step, not knowing its course, direction and without aim, no end of the path is foreseen, no waypoints indicated. Necessary decisions are taken at the right moment. Through the results of a significant number of analyses it becomes clear that the composer decided at a certain moment about crucial places, such as the middle of a piece, the golden section locations, the definition of symmetrical events, taking into account the possibility of proportions. However, musical content always prevails over formal exactness, as Rihm saw in Stockhausen’s exceptions to rules or methods. The analyst has to count in a certain tolerance, a margin of error, when he tries to find these crucial locations. In the particular case of the Notebook Compositions, the ad hoc planning during the compositional process is based on the composer’s memory, which can be helped by what I defined as the “looking back” technique.

Final Conclusions

291

The lack of planning goes hand in hand with the non-teleological, the refusal of development, sustained by the immediate effect of sudden contrast, shocking break and unexpected gap. Several times, I found that the definition of crucial places in a score is based on the uniqueness of the moment, on the creation of a unique combination of parameters and sound characteristics, a unique texture, not to be repeated in the whole composition. However, “indication” is a better term than “definition” here. The uniqueness of such a moment is not stressed or accentuated in an exaggerated way. The subtle indication of a special event must be sufficient for the listener (and the analyst) to realise that an important place has been reached. In that way and not as a contradiction, the subtle indication can even exist without structural or formal consequences. Yet another system-denying method is the replacement of exact symmetry by what I defined as “balanced symmetry”. On a micro-scale slight deviations in the second member of a musical element, compared to a former one, resulting in imperfect symmetry, must be accepted as “balanced”. Replacement of a characteristic by a similar one (such as a sustained note replaced by a fast repeated note over the same duration) puts the stress more on the balance than on the symmetry or equality. Hence, on a macro-scale, the indication of symmetrical places can happen by two unique events, which have little or even nothing in common. In other words, the indication of a symmetrical location does not imply the elaboration of a similar event. That is clearly another reason to replace “definition” by “indication”. The results of my analysis show that some aspects of Rihm’s music are more subject to systemlessness than others. Referring to Adorno, I coined the term “informal harmony”: according to me it is not possible to find any system-bound concept in Rihm’s chord formation and series. The lowest limit of holding togethe the chords consists of the presence of a focal pitch and of common elements in chord chains. Their presence seems to be sufficient for Rihm to increase and decrease the harmonic tension. The stock of means and techniques provoking the loosening of the system-bound is not yet exhausted. At certain moments Rihm’s music is illogical in the flexible treatment of all kinds of musical elements, such as a melodic element, a well-defined texture, an instrument. These elements can

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appear and disappear, move from foreground to background and vice versa, be present in a certain passage and never return afterwards. This certainly provokes a degree of formal “anarchy”. Not without reason I chose the term “stock” in the previous paragraph. The stock or multitude of musical elements is limitless: the domination of single events over repeated or returning musical moments, the unlimited possibilities of generated elements from one and the same generative pole, the seizing of every opportunity to vary, to change in such a way that only a presumption of relation is possible, the disappearance of the original in the complete metamorphosis – all these means lead to a through-composed result, where order and system do not seem to be of primary importance. Of course Rihm had to accept the consequences of the limitation of the system-bound. More precisely, he decided on the logical consequences of it and turned negative results into positive ones. At a certain moment, a looser coherence can cause danger for the perceptibility of the composition as a whole. Rihm’s reaction is based on a simple but often denied truth: it is hard, not to say impossible, to “grasp” the overall form of a composition over a longer period of time. With lower coherence-tools offered by the composer, fewer grasp-possibilities exist for the listener. Instead of restoring the system-bound, Rihm opened the way to another attitude for the listener, where absolute freedom of listening is guaranteed, where the spectator is freed of the commitment to understand music by understanding its coherence. The admission of the impossibility of overlooking a whole composition leads to the invitation of listening to particular moments, more precisely to the concentration on the “here and now” sounding moment; hence the preservation of the “traditional” through-composed work, moment by moment, phrase by phrase, section by section. “Grasping” a phrase is indeed possible; the result is that the listener is set free from concentration on the logical thread. This could only be reached by the parallelism with fine arts, based on Rihm’s interest in sculpture, painting and drawing. I commented in a comprehensive way on the fact that Rihm is neither interested in inspiration from concrete fine artworks nor in the search for analogies in music. Rihm looks to where the optical can be a guide for the aural. That is in search of musical pendants for specific qualities of fine arts, from the optical to the

Final Conclusions

293

aural. The quality of wood is interesting, not the wooden artwork as such, but the treatment of the material. Furthermore, Rihm concentrates on the background structures, in fact hidden structures, in painting and drawing: invisible formal balance reached by the golden section for instance, balanced symmetry rather than exact symmetry in the sense of a repeated, mirrored element. At the same time Rihm “discovers” that there is yet another element present, also hidden or not visible at first glance: linked to the golden section is the whole world of proportions. Hence, he brings proportions from the optical into the aural, into his music. By one and the same means reflected in fine arts, the transition from system-loosening to system-restoring or coherence becomes a fact. Proportions indeed create coherence. The same goes for the other parallel I developed: the zooming technique. The spectator creates his “route” from one detail to another, zooming in and out, overlooking the whole and finding relations or coherence. In doing so, the spectator of fine arts creates his personal time span; mirrored in music, the zooming in and out of specific musical elements is done by the composer. I found out that Rihm applies this zooming technique to his Notebook String Quartets: in Ohne Titel, no. 5 more on a pictorial level and in no. 6, Blaubuch more related to drawing. Next to painterly means, there are of course also purely musical systembound actions preserving coherence, order and minimal formalism in Rihm’s instrumental music of the 1980s. Several times I explained how certain tools or elements work in a dual way, both increasing and decreasing coherence. I underlined how the Chiffre pieces form a cycle by the presence of generative poles and generated elements, by returning elements of different weight (whole passages, overwritten passages, individual instrumental parts), and by the application of similar and comparable proportions. However, the fact that a generative pole can be built upon small intervals can cause purely chromatic generated elements, indeed decreasing coherence. In spite of the “informal harmony”, the role of the tritone-triad group is so important that it could even bear the name “Rihmchord”. Another harmonic unifying cause is the great uniformity of the focal pitch aggregate in the Chiffre cycle as well as in the analysed string quartets. In the string quartets, the concentration of the transitions on certain pitches is also an element of coherence.

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Wolfgang Rihm, a Chiffre

A completely different category of coherence is created by traditional means: as opposed to the non-teleological I found the development of a restricted number of figures in the Sixth String Quartet and of three musical figures with typical characteristics in the Chiffre cycle. It is also undeniable that allusions to composers, styles and techniques of the past, once perceived and recognised, contribute to another dimension of coherence in a certain way, even if Rihm moulds these remembrances of the past in a radically personal way. To this category I can add some compositions which are characterised by a particular search. The restricted search “field” yields a certain unity or coherence: the concentration on the timbre “connection” of the woodblocks and the noises of the string quartet, of the ricochet and the paper manipulation in String Quartets nos. 7 and 8 respectively, or Chiffre IV designed as a “resonance-typology” score. At the same time, in his concentration on a restricted item, Rihm demonstrates the greatest possible fantasy in the development of it and an incredible hyper-subtlety in each forthcoming phase or state of it. Many aspects of analysis were intertwined in the different paragraphs of these final conclusions. My analytical approach is as broad as possible. Working with newly developed tools has proved necessary: tools provided by the composer, but also created by the analyst. Certain tools have to be nuanced by the analyst, relative to the definition attributed by the composer. The famous Übermalung technique is a good example. Applying traditional and conventional tools was only possible by “neutralising” the classical terminology, which means depriving it of its historical connotation. A neutral terminology, such as “melodic element” for instance, offers more open possibilities for the subtle attribution of personal characteristics, for the analysis of changing qualities. The development of the integrated approach to examining “sound as a whole” has proven to be fruitful as a response to Rihm’s at once composition method. The integrated analytical tool, based on moment combinations of foreground characteristics, is an interesting addition to the more detailed and scrutinising parameter analysis by “magnifying glass”. However, it stays clear that one cannot do without the other. A final conclusion for the analyst must not be the frustration or dissatisfaction caused by the results, where always a certain margin of error

Final Conclusions

295

or a lack of concrete proof remains. The creativity of the analyst is a necessity. The acceptance of results, open for interpretation and not closed by proof, is closer to the music and more honest than the forced application of alienated analytical tools, leading to nothing more than generalisations, too rough and ultimately meaningless. However, in a more generalising way, the attention paid to proportions, to symmetry on a micro- and macro-level and to the golden section can also be related to codes of universal beauty and even to codes of beauty reflected in nature. Put the other way round: codes of natural beauty have been mirrored in art and architecture ever since. To these natural phenomena of beauty, I dare to say as a final conclusion that Wolfgang Rihm has added his personal idea of natural growth or growth in nature. I described this kind of growth as “unclear order”, as order and disorder at one and the same time, or as coherence and the negation of it on a higher level, with a higher complexity and therefore not recognised as universal beauty by mankind in the past. Indeed, the mycelium with its mushrooms carries with it the risk of proliferation; it is characterised by unpredictability. However, the result of the natural and unbroken or undisturbed evolution of the mycelium is “controlled” and can even be “perfect”: it is the perfect fairy ring or fairy circle. In his early essay of 1978, Der geschockte Komponist, Rihm already stressed the chances and the risks of Wucherung and Wildwuchs: proliferation in need of control. He argued that music is anarchic, revolting against its own “order”.

Appendix – Division in Sections

Ohne Titel, String Quartet No. 5 Section A B C D E F G H I J K

Bar 1-59/3 59/4-79/3 79/3-141/1 141/2-178/1 178/2-204/1 204/1-230 231-302/2 302/2-352 353-440/2 440/3-494/4 494/4-585

See also Table 13, p. 192. String Quartet No. 6, Blaubuch Section A B C D E F G H I J K L

Bar 1-60/2 60/3-118/2 118/1-182/1 182/2-249/4 250/1-347/3 347/4-426/3[424/3] 4276/4[424/4]-533/3[531/3] 533/4[531/4]-620/3[614/3] 620/4[614/4]-677/4[671/4] 677/4[671/4]-726/2[720/2] 726/2[720/2]-790/1[784/1] 790/1[784/1]-854[848]

Pages 1-28 of the score bear no bar numbers. The first bar numbered by Rihm is bar 290 on p. 29.

297

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Wolfgang Rihm, a Chiffre

On p. 39, there is an error in counting: the first bar should be 382 instead of 384. A second error occurs on p. 55: the first bar should be 562 instead of 568. The total number of bars is 848 instead of 854. In my text I use the exact count in square brackets next to the score’s numbers. String Quartet No. 7, Veränderungen Section intro A B C D E coda

Bar 1-20/4 21/1-82/4 83/1-159/4 160/1-289/3 289/3-372/4 373/1-434/4[435/4] 435/1[436/1]-462[463]

On p. 30 there is an error in counting: the first bar of the second system should be 412 instead of 411. The total number of bars is 463 instead of 462. In my text I use the exact count in square brackets next to the score’s numbers. String Quartet No. 8 Section A B C D

Bar 1-72/4 73/1-159/2 159/3-252/3 252/3-304

Chiffre I Section A B C D E

Bar 1-43/3 43/4-87 88-108 109-153/1 153/2-176

See also Table 4, p. 150.

Appendix - Division in Sections

Chiffre II – Silence to be Beaten Section A B C D E

Bar 1-69/1 69/2-123 124-176/2 176/2-230 231-248

See also Table 6, p. 152. Chiffre III Section A B C D

Bar 1-41/3 41/4-97 98-124 125-152

Chiffre IV Section A B C D coda

Bar 1-30 31-58/3 58/4-86 87-113 114-115

Bild Section intro A B C D E coda

Bar 1 2-28/2 28/3-57/3 57/4-96/3 96/4-125 126-162 163-169

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Wolfgang Rihm, a Chiffre

Chiffre V Section A B C D

Bar 1-31 32-77 78-129 130-166

Chiffre VI Section intro A middle B coda

Bar 1-5 6-40/1 40/1-49/2 49/2-77/1 77/2-83

Chiffre VII Section A B C D coda

Bar 1-35/2 35/3-71/1 71/2-134/2 134/3-182/1 182/2-198

Chiffre VIII Section A B C D E

Bar 1-11/3 11/4-18 19-27 28-33 34-40

Nach-Schrift Section A B C D E F coda

Bar 1-43/3 43/4-69/3 69/4-90 91-127 128-148 149-172/2 172/3-175

Notes

Foreword by Richard McGregor 1

2 3

4 5 6

7 8 9

“Now you know”. Reinhold Brinkmann’s ‘arrogant’ response to Rihm who confessed not to know of an “allusion” in Fragment II of his Hölderlin-Fragmente to Webern. Brinkmann quoted himself in the Laudatio für Wolfgang Rihm given on the occasion of Rihm being awarded the Ernst von Siemens prize in 2003. R. Brinkmann (2003). ‘Stichworte, Momentaufnahmen, Zitate. An drei Lesepulten. Laudatio auf Wolfgang Rihm. In: No ed. given. 2003 Ernst von Siemens Musikpreis – Wolfgang Rihm. München, Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung, p. 101. An abbreviated version is found at www.nzz.ch/2003/05/24/ li/page-article8UUVT.html (accessed June 2017). The Webern allusion was already brought up in Musik nachdenken, the discussions between Brinkmann and Rihm published in 2001. Brinkmann stresses the fact that Rihm was not aware of it and Rihm adds that he did not claim of dream it nor of meaning it as systematic art making. R. Brinkmann & W. Rihm, (2001). Musik nachdenken. Regensburg, ConBrio, p. 103. In his analysis of the HölderlinFragmente, Brinkmann also relates Webern’s chord to Schönberg’s String Quartet op. 10. Therefore, he defines it as an example of intertextuality. R. Brinkmann (2004). ‘“… wie Wolken um die Zeit legt …”. Über Intertextualität in Rihms Hölderlin-Fragmente’. In: U. Tadday (ed.). Wolfgang Rihm. Musik-Konzepte, München, edition text + kritik, pp. 132-133. S. Brodsky (Autumn 2004), ‘Write the Moment’: Two Ways of Dealing with Wolfgang Rihm, part 1, The Musical Times, vol. 145 no. 1888, p. 57. R. McGregor (2018, in press). ‘“The explosion arrived at the body”: Wolfgang Rihm’s Creative Explosion of 1981’. In: R. McGregor (ed). Wolfgang Rihm. Contemporary Music Review, Special Issue. A. Williams (2013). Music in Germany since 1968. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press A. Reimann (1979). ‘Salut für die junge Avantgarde’, Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, vol. 140 no. 1, p. 25. W. Rihm (1977), “‘Neue Einfachheit‘ – Aus- und Einfälle”, in: Hifi-Stereophonie, vol. 16 no. 4, p. 420. Reprinted in: U. Mosch (ed.) ausgesprochen. Schriften und Gespräche. Winterthur, Amadeus, 1997, vol. 1, p. 354. W. Rihm (1997). ‘Zeichen: Doubles, eine Musik für zwei Soloisten und zwei Orchestergruppen (1982-1985)’. In: ausgesprochen. Op. cit., vol. 2, p. 343. D. Schmidt (2016). ‘Die Behauptung des Autors’. In: T. Seedorf (ed.). Klangbeschreibung. Zur Interpretation der Musik Wolfgang Rihms. Sinzig, Studio Verlag, p. 53. Y. Knockaert, vide infra, chapter 11, Group Formation: Chiffre Cycle, The meaning of ‘Chiffre’.

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10 A. Williams (2010). ‘Postlude: Helmut Lachenmann, Wolfgang Rihm and the Austro-German Tradition’. In: M. Paddison (ed.). Contemporary Music, Theoretical and Philosophical Perspectives. Surrey, Ashgate, p. 369. See also A. Williams, Music in Germany since 1968, op. cit. Chapter IV deals with Rihm and is entitled ‘Music and signs: Wolfgang Rihm’. 11 B. Zuber (2018, in press). ‘“Nulli sua forma manebat”: Wolfgang Rihm’s orchestral pieces Verwandlung 1 and 6’. In: R. McGregor (ed). Wolfgang Rihm. Contemporary Music Review, Special Issue. 12 Discussed further by Y. Knockaert, vide infra, chapter 3, Musical Traces, Allusion to a Composer: Varèse. 13 A. McGregor, (2007), BBC [CD] ‘Wolfgang Rihm. Volume 1 Review’: http://www. bbc.co.uk/music/reviews/3mf9/ (accessed June 2017) 14 Quoted in the publisher’s webpage note for the work: http://www.universaledition. com/composers-and-works/Wolfgang-Rihm/composer/599/work/2341. Translation by Grant Chorley. Accessed June 2017. 15 Publisher’s note for 2. Doppelgesang: http://www.universaledition.com/composersand-works/Wolfgang-Rihm/composer/599/work/276. Translation by Grant Chorley. Accessed June 2017. 16 Rihm interviewed by Laurie Shulman prior to first performance of 3. Doppelgesang in Minneapolis in 2005, http://www.universaledition.com/composers-and-works/ Wolfgang-Rihm/composer/599/work/12126. Translation by Grant Chorley. Accessed June 2017. 17 W. Rihm, ausgesprochen. Op. cit., vol. 2, p. 61. 18 Several brief sketches exist for a setting of Ich sehe hinauf: in the 1980/81 sketchbook and on small loose-leaf manuscript dated IV.81 (both in the Rihm Sammlung at the Paul Sacher Stiftung in Basle), as well an apparent beginning on the back page of the score of Umhergetrieben, aufgewirbelt. In 1983 Rihm revised 5. Abgesangsszene to include a setting of this for soprano and baritone, and he used the text again in Umsungen, completed in 1984. For the text see http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/buch/ friedrich-wilhelm-nietzsche-lieder-des-prinzen-vogelfrei-3256/5 (accessed June 2017). The emboldening is mine. 19 See A. Williams. ‘Voices of the Other: Wolfgang Rihm’s Music Drama Die Eroberung von Mexico’. Journal of the Royal Musical Association, vol. 129 (2004) no. 2, 240-271 and also see M. Zenck (2003). ‘Die ästhetische Productivkraft des Fantastischen und des Wahnsinns im Werk Wolfgang Rihms’. In: W. Hofer (ed.). Ausdruck, Zugriff, Differenzen: Der Komponist Wolfgang Rihm. Mainz, Schott, pp. 57-82. 20 As noted by A. Williams in Music in Germany since 1968, op. cit., p. 149. 21 W.M. Faust, ‘Arte Cifra? Neue Subjektivität? Trans-Avantgarde?: Aspekte der italienischen Gegenwartskunst’. Kunstforum International, ‘Idylle oder Itensität’, vol 39 (1980), pp. 161-71. See http://www.kunstforum.de for access to the text. 22 See http://www/kettererkunst.de/lexikon/transavanguardia-und-arte-cifra.php, accessed June 2017. 23 https://new.artsmia.org/exhibition/die-neuen-wilden-neo-expressionism-ingermany. Accessed June 2017. 24 Zeitgegenstände – Wolfgang Rihm, Musik Baut Europa, Exhibition at the Städtische Galerie Karlsruhe, 2012.

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25 A. Williams, Music in Germany since 1968, op. cit., pp. 149-50. 26 See note 16.

Introduction 1

2

3

4

5 6 7 8 9 10 11

12

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Dates of composition are given the first time a composition is mentioned, except for the analysed string quartets and the Chiffre cycle: detailed information can be found at the end of the Introduction. W. Rihm, E. Poppe & M. Wiegandt (2012). Gesprächsrunde, Musikhochschule Karlsruhe, iTunesU. https://itunes.apple.com/de/itunesu/gesprachsrundewolfgangrihm/id514305891? mmt=10. Downloaded 20130506. All translations are by the author unless noted otherwise. W. Rihm (1978). ‘Der geschockte Komponist’. In: U. Mosch (1997, ed.) & W. Rihm. ausgesprochen. Schriften und Gespräche. Winterthur, Amadeus, 2 vol., vol. 1, p. 43. Further abbreviated to ‘ausgesprochen’. Most of the essays in ausgesprochen bear a double date, the first one referring to the year of (first) publication of the original text and the second one referring to the moment of editing in preparation for ausgesprochen. Ulrich Mosch confirms that the editing corrections were minimal (Meeting with Mosch, Basle, 12 June 2012). Therefore only the original dates are given in the footnotes. W. Rihm (2002). ‘Wolfgang Rihm im Gespräch’. Interview by Christoph von Blumröder, Eike Fess and Imke Misch. In: I. Misch & C. von Blumröder (2006, eds.). Komposition und Musikwissenschaft im Dialog V (2001-2004). Berlin, Lit Verlag, p. 78. W. Rihm (1984). ‘Mittendrin’. Interview by Rudolf Frisius. In: ausgesprochen, vol. 2, p. 86. W. Rihm (1980). ‘La musique creuse le ciel’. In: ausgesprochen, vol. 2, p. 316. W. Rihm (1988). ‘Fragment und Wahrheit’. Interview by Andreas Raseghi and Martin Wilkening. In: ausgesprochen, vol. 2, pp. 209-210. J. Brügge (2004). Wolfgang Rihms Streichquartette. Saarbrücken, Pfau, pp. 374-375. W. Rihm (1985). ‘Spur, Faden. Zur Theorie des musikalischen Handwerks’. In: ausgesprochen, vol. 1, p. 69, 76. W. Rihm (1985). ‘Notizen zum Chiffre-Zyklus’. In: ausgesprochen, vol. 2, p. 343. B. Kutschke (1997). ‘Anmerkungen zu Wolfgang Rihms Werken für Streichquartett’. In: B. Krüger (ed.). Programmheft der 47. Berliner Festwochen 1997, pp. 10-21. J. Brügge (2004). Op. cit., pp. 336-348. Brügge includes a table with Allusionen on pp. 340-341. W. Rihm (1995). ‘Mitteilungen zu Vers une symphonie fleuve.’ In: ausgesprochen, vol. 2, p. 402. The concept of ‘flow’ is also one of the main issues in Rihm’s interview on the occasion of the Ernst von Siemens-Musikpreis in 2003: W. Rihm (2003). ‘Man darf in der Musik nicht klein denken’. Wolfgang Rihm über musikalischen Fluss, Bewegung des Denkens und die Erwartungen der Öffentlichkeit. Interview by Max Nyffeler. Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, vol. 164 no. 2, pp. 60-63. U. Dibelius (2004). ‘Zwischen Obsession und Obstruktion. Zu den Streichquartetten von Wolfgang Rihm’. In: U. Tadday (ed.). Wolfgang Rihm. Musik-Konzepte, München,

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edition text + kritik, p. 62. 14 W. Rihm (2002). ‘Musik ist nie bei sich’, Interview by Stefan Fricke. In: B.O. Polzer & T. Schäfer (eds.). Katalog Wien Modern 2002. Saarbrücken, Pfau, p. 15. 15 U. Dibelius (2004). Op. cit., p. 61. 16 B. Kutschke (2002). Wildes Denken in der Neuen Musik. Die Idee vom Ende der Geschichte bei Theodor W. Adorno und Wolfgang Rihm. Würzburg, Königshausen & Neumann, p. 29. 17 B. Zuber (2008). Blick zurück nach vorn. Werklandschaften. Zu Wolfgang Rihms ‘Jagden und Formen’. MusikTexte, no. 118, pp. 10-11. 18 J. Brügge (2004). Op. cit., p. 8. 19 For a broader approach and some general statements on the ‘(im)possibility’ of systemlessness see: Y. Knockaert (2004). ‘Systemlessness in Music. Composing without a System: a Comparative Study of Systemlessness in the Works of John Cage, Morton Feldman and Wolfgang Rihm.’ In: P. Dejans (ed.). Order and Disorder. Music-Theoretical Strategies in 20th-century Music. Leuven, Leuven University Press, Collected Writings of the Orpheus Institute, vol. 4, pp. 53-104. 20 W. Rihm (2002). Wolfgang Rihm im Gespräch mit Josef Häusler. Jagden und Formen, Deutsche Grammophon 471558-2, CD booklet, p. 25. English translation by Stewart Spencer, p. 12.

Analysed Compositions 1

W. Rihm (2011). Catalogue. Vienna, Universal Edition. For the division in sections of the analysed compositions see Appendix p. 297ff.

1 Between Classical and Individual 1

2

3

W. Rihm (1991). ‘Tradition et authenticité’. Interview by Wolfgang Korb. In: P. Boulez (ed.). Musique et authenticité. InHarmoniques, no. 7. Paris, IRCAM, p. 44; R. Brinkmann & W. Rihm (2001). Musik nachdenken. Regensburg, ConBrio, pp. 54-57; W. Rihm (2013). ‘Akustischer Blick. Darmstädter Ferienkurse 2012: Wolfgang Rihm im Gespräch’. MusikTexte, no. 136, p. 11. W. Rihm (1981). ‘Musik – Malerei. … ungereimt, zur Kunst gedacht…’ In: ausgesprochen, vol. 1, p. 134. U. Mosch (2001). ‘“… das Dröhnen der Bild- und Farbflächen…” Zum Verhältnis von Wolfgang Rihm und Kurt Kocherscheidt’. In: H. Liesbrock (ed.). Brustrauschen. Zum Werkdialog von Kurt Kocherscheidt und Wolfgang Rihm. Ostfildern-Ruit, Hatje Cantz, p. 77. In the conversations with Reinhold Brinkmann it is clear that Rihm is not experienced with set theory. R. Brinkmann & W. Rihm (2001). Op. cit., pp. 111-115. Analysing harmonic aggregates, I could not find any reference to set theory. My trials to confront Rihm’s harmony (chord chains) with the basic concepts of transformational theory and Neo-Riemannian group formation (based on publications by R. Cohn, J. Hook and M. Siciliano) were unsuccessful. Other musicologists have also developed

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a specific analytical tool for Rihm’s music. Barbara Zuber concentrates on Gestalt developments referring to Ulrich Mosch, on Gestalt des Wandels referring to Rihm’s own comments and on intertextuality. Judy Lochhead presents a graphic description of Rihm’s Am Horizont in the context of Deleuze’s philosophy. In her recent publication Reconceiving Structure in Contemporary Music: New Tools in Music Theory and Analysis, Lochhead proposes alternatives to analytical approaches developed in the mid-20th century, because, while music itself has developed and musical aesthetics have been in constant transformation, analytical tools have changed little since then. Gianmario Borio is convinced that parameters can no longer be considered one by one in an analytical approach (see p. 69). 4 W. Welsch (1993). Unsere postmoderne Moderne. Berlin, Akademie Verlag, p. 25. 5 W. Rihm (1983). ‘Gebild’. In: ausgesprochen, vol. 2, p. 327. 6 W. Rihm (1983). ‘Chiffre I’. In: ausgesprochen, vol. 2, p. 328. 7 W. Rihm (1989). ‘Der generative Pol. Wolfgang Rihm im Gespräch mit Peter Sloterdijk’. Österreichische Musikzeitschrift, vol. 44 no. 6, p. 284. 8 W. Rihm (1991). ‘Dunkles Spiel’. In: ausgesprochen, vol. 2, p. 386. 9 W. Rihm (2003). ‘Man darf in der Musik nicht klein denken’. Op. cit., pp. 60-61. W. Rihm (2012). ‘Was Musik wirklich ist…’. Interview by Achim Heidenreich. Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, vol. 173 no. 3, p. 8. For Richard McGregor the use of the term ‘generative pole’ ‘avoids the notion of development but at the same time implies a sense of progression’. He believes that it is possible to apply the term ‘generative pole’ to earlier pieces: to the Fourth String Quartet and the chamber opera Jakob Lenz. Therefore, he modifies the definition: a generative pole can be ‘a thematic motif ’, such as the opening motif of the first movement of the Fourth String Quartet. He creates the English neologism ‘repoled’ for generated elements: “A repoled idea essentially transforms a preceding idea while retaining the essence of that idea in some form.” R. McGregor (2007). Interpreting Compositional Process in Wolfgang Rihm’s Chiffre Cycle. Frankfurter Zeitschrift für Musikwissenschaft, Online-Publication, p. 29, 31, 33, 40. http://www.european-musicology.eu/assets/Volumes/2007/20073a.pdf, http://www.european-musicolog y.eu/assets/Volumes/2007/20073b.pdf. Downloaded 20120122. As far as I can see, Rihm himself has made use of the term “repoled” (umgepolt) only once, not around 1983 but much later, in 2000: “’Looking through earlier pieces’ evokes the usual ‘mixed feelings’, the components of which might appear in an altered, re-poled constellation the day after.” W. Rihm (2000). Triobeschreibung: Rihm. Interview by Wolfgang Hofer. Kairos 0012092KAI, CD booklet, p. 12. English translation by Peter Ian Waugh, p. 20. It must be said that Rihm was reusing his own material already in the 1970s. As Dorothea Ruthemeier points out, the rhythm of a phrase (bars 164-179, cello and double bass) of DisKontur (1974, for orchestra) returns at the beginning (bars 2-7) of Klavierstück Nr. 5, Tombeau (1975), which is clearly indicated by Rihm on a sketch. D. Ruthemeier (2012). Antagonismus oder Konkurrenz? Zu zentralen Werkgruppen der 1980er Jahre von Wolfgang Rihm und Matthias Spahlinger. Schliengen, Argus, pp. 178-181. 10 W. Rihm (1983). ‘Musikalische Freiheit’. In: ausgesprochen, vol. 1, p. 24. W. Rihm (2012). ‘Was Musik wirklich ist…’. Op. cit., p. 8. 11 According to Wolfgang Schaufler, next to Blaubuch, material from his Ninth String Quartet, Quartettsatz is also quoted and overwritten. W. Schaufler (2009). “CONCERTO”. Kairos 0012952KAI, CD booklet, p. 10.

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12 D. Ender (2011). ‘Übermalung? Montage? Wucherung? Strategien und Wege kompositorischer Selbstbearbeitung in neuer Musik’. Österreichische Musikzeitschrift, vol. 66 no. 1, p. 34. 13 W. Rihm (1976). ‘Alexanderlieder’. In: ausgesprochen, vol. 2, p. 301; W. Rihm (1977). ‘cuts and dissolves’. In: ausgesprochen, vol. 2, p. 307; W. Rihm (1984). ‘Ein obligates Rezitativ. Zu: Vorgefühle’. In: ausgesprochen, vol. 2, p. 339; W. Rihm (1978). ‘Klavierstück Nr. 6 (Bagatellen)’. In: ausgesprochen, vol. 2, p. 315. 14 W. Rihm (1989). ‘Notiz. Zu: Frau/Stimme.’ In: ausgesprochen, vol. 2, p. 384. 15 W. Rihm (2011). Fetzen. Winter & Winter 910 178-2. Reference to additional information in the CD booklet: http://www.winterandwinter.com/index. php?id=1731. Downloaded 201407. Translation: Winter & Winter. 16 ausgesprochen, vol. 1, p. 5. 17 The term ‘Through-composed’ (Durchkomponiert) is defined as in Grove Music Online: “A term describing a composition with a relatively uninterrupted continuity of musical thought and invention”. I. Rumbold (2015). ‘Through-composed’. In: Grove Music Online. Oxford, Oxford University Press. Downloaded 20150320. 18 W. Rihm (1983). ‘Musikalische Freiheit’. Op. cit., vol. 1, p. 31. 19 W. Rihm (1985). ‘Notizen zum Chiffre-Zyklus’. Op. cit., vol. 2, pp. 343-345. 20 W. Rihm (1984). ‘Neo-Tonalität?’. In: ausgesprochen, vol. 1, p. 189. 21 Richard McGregor prefers the term “focus pitch” in his analysis of the Chiffre cycle, and defines it as follows: “Often these pitches are isolated in unison or in octaves as discrete entities, and while they represent a point of harmonic and thematic stasis in the music they will normally have a dynamic envelope which ensures that the sound itself is not static.” R. McGregor (2007). Op. cit., p. 59. 22 W. Rihm (1984). ‘Mittendrin’. Op. cit., vol. 2, p. 86. 23 W. Rihm (1985). ‘Chiffre VI’. In: ausgesprochen, vol. 2, p. 342. 24 W. Rihm (1978). ‘Ins eigene Fleisch…’. In: ausgesprochen, vol. 1, p. 115. 25 W. Rihm (2002). ‘Wolfgang Rihm im Gespräch’. Op. cit., pp. 64-65. 26 W. Rihm (1981). ‘Varèse, Malerei und Schaffensprozeß’. Interview by Wilhelm Matejka. In: ausgesprochen, vol. 2, p. 64. 27 W. Rihm (1985). ‘Was ist Musik?’ In: ausgesprochen, vol. 1, pp. 144-145. 28 W. Rihm (1978). ‘Der geschockte Komponist’. Op. cit., vol. 1, p. 50. 29 W. Rihm (1981). ‘Musik – Malerei. … ungereimt, zur Kunst gedacht…’ Op. cit., vol. 1, p. 135; W. Rihm (1997). Bilder – Echo. Wolfgang Rihm – Kurt Kocherscheidt. Wergo WER 6623-2, CD booklet. English translation by Steven Lindberg, pp. 15-16. 30 W. Rihm (1986). ‘Laudatio auf Karlheinz Stockhausen’. In: ausgesprochen, vol. 1, p. 325. 31 K. Stockhausen (1963). ‘Momente’. In: K. Stockhausen (1971). Texte zur Musik 19631970. Cologne, DuMont Schauberg, vol. 3, p. 31. 32 Asked about the function and importance of his sketches during the Klangbeschreibung conference at the Musikhochschule in Karlsruhe, April 2012, Rihm confirmed that the only function of his sketches is the “memo”, joking about the fact that drawings, caricatures, phone numbers, appointments and other data (without any relation to his music) can also be noted on the same memo-page. 33 Except for some more elaborate sketches, such as the sketches for the opening motif

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35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42

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of the Fourth String Quartet, as analysed by Joachim Brügge. J. Brügge (2004). Op. cit., pp. 214-267. The collection of Rihm’s sketches is archived at the Paul Sacher Stiftung in Basel. Next to the labelled sketches for each composition, there are sketchbooks for the 1980s: Skizzenbuch 1980, Skizzenbuch 1983-1986, Skizzenbuch 1984-1986, Skizzenbuch 1986-1987, Skizzenbuch 1982-1989. For instance: J. Brügge (2004). Op. cit., p. 221 (fn. 340), p. 225 (fn. 343), p. 236 (fn. 351), p. 255 (fn. 371), p. 300 (fn. 483), p. 325 (fn. 541). W. Rihm (2002). Wolfgang Rihm im Gespräch mit Josef Häusler. Op. cit., p. 25. English translation, p. 12. W. Rihm (1985-87). ‘Offene Stellen – Abbiegen ins Andere’. Interview by Reinhold Urmetzer. In: ausgesprochen, vol. 2, p. 183. W. Rihm (1986). ‘Gleichzeitigkeit von Heterogenem’. Interview by Konrad Boehmer. In: ausgesprochen, vol. 2, p. 161. W. Rihm. Skizzenbuch 1986-1987, p. 67. A white piece of paper is glued on a part of the music sheet. W. Rihm (1995). ‘Kunst entsteht aus Zweifel’. Interview by Bas van Putten. In: ausgesprochen, vol. 2, p. 236. W. Rihm (1991). ‘Der Taumel der Gegensätze im Gleichgewicht’. Interview by Silvia Ragni. In: ausgesprochen, vol. 2, p. 218. W. Rihm (2015). Über die Linie VIII. Work Introduction. http://www.universaledition. com/ composers-and-works/Wolfgang-Rihm/composer/599/work/15726. Downloaded 20160622. W. Rihm (1986). ‘Laudatio auf Karlheinz Stockhausen’. Op. cit., vol. 1, p. 325.

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Suche nach einem neuen Schönheitsideal was the title of von Bose’s lecture during the Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik in 1978. On the same occasion, Rihm gave his lecture Der geschockte Komponist. It was the very first time that he mentioned systemlos komponieren and stressed the value of unsystematische Musik. W. Rihm (1977). ‘“Neue Einfachheit” – Aus- und Einfälle’. In: ausgesprochen, vol. 1, pp. 354-356. This paragraph is based on the following sources: H. Danuser (1984). ‘Moderne, Postmoderne, Neomoderne – ein Ausblick’. In: C. Dahlhaus (ed.). Die Musik des 20. Jahrhunderts. Neues Handbuch der Musikwissenschaft, vol. 7. Laaber, Laaber, pp. 392-409; H. Danuser (1991). ‘Postmodernes Musikdenken – Lösung oder Flucht?’ In: H. Danuser (ed.). Neue Musik im politischen Wandel. Veröffentlichungen des Instituts für Neue Musik und Musikerziehung, vol. 32. Schott, Mainz, pp. 56-66; H. Danuser (1989). ‘Zur Kritik der musikalischen Postmoderne’. In: W. Gruhn (ed.). Das Projekt Moderne und die Postmoderne. Regensburg, Bosse, pp. 69-84; H. de la Motte-Haber (1989). ‘Merkmale postmoderner Musik’ In: W. Gruhn (ed.). Op. cit., pp. 53-68; H. de la Motte-Haber (2000). ‘Einleitung. Nebeneinander der Generationen’. In: H. de la Motte-Haber (ed.). Geschichte der Musik im 20. Jahrhundert: 1975-2000. Handbuch der Musik im 20. Jahrhundert, vol. 4. Laaber, Laaber, pp. 13-22; J. Tillman (2002).

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‘Postmodernism and Art Music in the German Debate’. In: J. Lochhead & J. Auner (eds.). Postmodern Music / Postmodern Thought. Studies in Contemporary Music and Culture. New York & London, Routledge, pp. 75-92. W. Rihm (1991). ‘Postmodern? Postmoderne?’ In: ausgesprochen, vol. 1, p. 396. W. Rihm (1988). ‘Avantgarde, Postmoderne, Elektronik und anderes’. Answering questions by the journal Nomos. In: ausgesprochen, vol. 1, pp. 390-391. E. Budde (1993). ‘Der Pluralismus der Moderne und/oder die Postmoderne’. In: O. Kolleritsch (ed.). Wiederaneignung und Neubestimmung. Der Fall ‘Postmoderne’ in der Musik. Studien zur Wertungsforschung, vol. 26. Vienna & Graz, Universal Edition, p. 50. W. Rihm (ca. 1976). ‘Über Dis-Kontur. Notizen zu einem Vortrag’. In: ausgesprochen, vol. 2, p. 293. W. Rihm (1978). ‘Der geschockte Komponist’. Op. cit., vol. 1, p. 50. W. Rihm (1979). ‘Rückkehr zu Unordnung?’ Interview by Luca Lombardi. In: ausgesprochen, vol. 2, p. 61. J. Lochhead (2002). ‘Introduction’. In: J. Lochhead & J. Auner (eds.). Op. cit., p. 24. J. Lochhead (2002). ‘Introduction’. In: J. Lochhead & J. Auner (eds). Op. cit., p. 25. R. Barthes (1968). The Death of the Author. UbuWeb, UbuWeb Papers. http:// www.tbook.constantvzw.org/wp-content/death_authorbarthes.pdf. Downloaded 20150313. Translation by Richard Howard, p. 6. W. Rihm (1989). ‘Achtes Streichquartett’. In: ausgesprochen, vol. 2, p. 371; R. Barthes (1975). Roland Barthes par Roland Barthes. Paris, Seuil, p. 105. J.-F. Lyotard (1986). Le Postmoderne expliqué aux enfants. Paris, Galilée, p. 30. W. Rihm (ca. 1976). ‘Über Dis-Kontur. Notizen zu einem Vortrag’. Op. cit., vol. 2, p. 293. G.W. Hopkins & P. Griffiths (2015). ‘Boulez, Pierre’. In: Grove Music Online. Oxford, Oxford University Press. Downloaded 20150320. A. Williams (2006). ‘Wolfgang Rihm and the Adorno Legacy’. In: B. Hoeckner (ed.). Apparitions: New Perspectives on Adorno and Twentieth-Century Music. New York & London, Routledge, p. 98. W. Rihm (2006). Wolfgang Rihm in conversation with Kirk Noreen and Joshua Cody. http://web.archive.org/web/20060525100029/ and http://www.sospeso.com/ contents/articles/rihm_p1.html, no page numbers. Downloaded 20140507. W. Rihm (1985). ‘… zu wissen’. Interview by Rudolf Frisius. In: ausgesprochen, vol. 2, p. 133. W. Rihm (1981). ‘Musik – Malerei… ungereimt, zur Kunst gedacht…’. Op. cit., vol. 1, p. 135. W. Rihm (1990). ‘Zu Edgard Varèse – Notiz am 3.vi.1990’. In: ausgesprochen, vol. 1, p. 278. W. Rihm (1987). ‘Morton Feldman’. In: ausgesprochen, vol. 1, p. 332. W. Rihm (1984). ‘Con Luigi Nono I’. In: ausgesprochen, vol. 1, pp. 311-313. W. Rihm (2011). ‘Wo die Begabung haust…’ Interview by Rainer Peters. In: B. Krüger & W. Hopp (eds.). Journal Musikfest Berlin 2011. Berlin, Berliner Festspiele, pp. 18-19. W. Rihm (1997). ‘Laudatio auf Helmut Lachenmann’. In: ausgesprochen, vol. 1, pp. 341, 344, 347, 348. English translation by Wiland Hoban (2004). Contemporary Music Review, vol. 23 no. 3/4, pp. 22, 25, 27, 28. Rihm dedicated Gejagte Form to Lachenmann on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday in 1995. A. Williams (2006). ‘Swaying with Schumann: Subjectivity and Tradition in Wolfgang

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Rihm’s Fremde Szenen I-III and Related Scores’. Music & Letters, vol. 87 no. 3, p. 384. W. Rihm (1991). ‘Weiter. Für Wilhelm Killmayer’. In: ausgesprochen, vol. 1, p. 335. W. Rihm (1995). ‘Kunst entsteht aus Zweifel’. Op. cit., vol. 2, p. 244. P. Sloterdijk (1993). Weltfremdheit. Frankfurt, Suhrkamp. W. Rihm (2003). ‘Chasse à l’homme, à la recherche de Wolfgang Rihm’. Interview by Eric Denut. Musica falsa, no. 17. Portail de la Musique Contemporaine, Centre de documentation de la musique contemporaine. http://www.musiquecontemporaine. fr/record/oai:cdmc.asso.fr:aloes:0034103. Downloaded 20121102. W. Rihm (1989). ‘Der generative Pol. Wolfgang Rihm im Gespräch mit Peter Sloterdijk’. Op. cit., p. 284. The discussion was organised on 7 November 1988, following a lecture by Sloterdijk: ‘Phantasie über musikalischen Akosmismus’. P. Sloterdijk (1983). Kritik der zynischen Vernunft. Frankfurt, Suhrkamp, p. 7. H.-J. Heinrichs (2011). Peter Sloterdijk. Die Kunst des Philosophierens. München, Hanser, p. 158. W. Rihm (1984). ‘Notizen zur Tutuguri-Musik’. In: ausgesprochen, vol. 2, p. 326. P. Sloterdijk (1998). Sphären I. Blasen. Frankfurt, Suhrkamp, pp. 527-531. H.-J. Heinrichs (2011). Op. cit., p. 158; P. Sloterdijk (2007). ‘Wo sind wir wenn wir Musik hören’. In: Der ästhetische Imperativ. Schriften zur Kunst. Bodenheim, PhiloVerlag, p. 52, 56; P. Sloterdijk (2007). ‘La musique retrouvée’. In: Der ästhetische Imperativ. Schriften zur Kunst. Bodenheim, Philo-Verlag, p. 11; P. Sloterdijk (1999). Sphären II. Globen. Frankfurt, Suhrkamp, p. 133. P. Sloterdijk (1998). Sphären I. Blasen. Op. cit., p. 573; W. Rihm (1985). ‘Ohne Titel (Fünftes Streichquartett)’. In: ausgesprochen, vol. 2, p. 330. For the sake of completeness: there is also an image with Alberto Giacometti sculpting; a portrait of Joseph Beuys, the artist “as an artwork”, and a photo of Wolfgang Rihm and Kurt Kocherscheidt with (a part of) an artwork by Kocherscheidt in the background (vol. 1, p. 92; vol. 2, p. 366 and 406, respectively). A. Artaud (1936). Le Théâtre de Séraphin. http://les.tresors.de.lys.free.fr/antonin_ artaud/le_theatre_de_seraphin.htm. Downloaded 20141125; W. Rihm (1992). ‘Mexiko, Eroberungsnotiz’. In: ausgesprochen, vol. 2, p. 389; P. Sloterdijk (1998). Sphären I. Blasen. Op. cit., pp. 419-465. Chapter 6: ‘Seelenraumteiler. Engel – Zwillinge – Doppelgänger’. In ‘Wo sind wir, wenn wir Musik hören’ (mentioned above), Sloterdijk goes even further: “Die Engel stellt man sich zu Recht als Musizierende vor – sie klingen nur, sie hören nichts. Wären sie Hörende, so glichen sie uns. Wir aber sind zur Musik verdammt wie zur Sehnsucht und zur Freiheit.” P. Sloterdijk (2007). ‘Wo sind wir, wenn wir Musik hören’. Op. cit., p. 63. A. Artaud (1936). ‘Lettre à Jean Paulhan, 25 janvier 1936’. In: A. Artaud (1964). Œuvres complètes. Paris, Gallimard, vol. 5, p. 272. W. Rihm (1982). ‘Notizen zur Tutuguri-Musik’. Op. cit., vol. 2, p. 327. W. Rihm (2008). ‘Vibrierende Luftsäulen. Wolfgang Rihm zu seinen SéraphinKompositionen’. Interview by Andreas Günther. In: B. Krüger (ed.). Journal Musikfest Berlin 2008. Berlin, Berliner Festspiele, p. 32; W. Rihm (1987). ‘Arie über die Bildzeitung’. Interview by Thomas Delekat. In: ausgesprochen, vol. 2, p. 35; W. Rihm (1983). ‘Chiffre I – Silence to Be Beaten (Chiffre II) – Chiffre III’. In: ausgesprochen, vol. 2, p. 331. W. Rihm (1982). ‘Während der Arbeit an Tutuguri’. Interview by Hartmut Lück. In:

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ausgesprochen, vol. 2, p. 77. W. Rihm (1983). ‘Webern, 20. Oktober 1983’. In: ausgesprochen, vol. 1, p. 277. W. Rihm (1985). ‘Notizen zum Chiffre-Zyklus.’ Op. cit., vol. 2, p. 345. W. Rihm (1993). ‘Musik – das innere Ausland’. In: ausgesprochen, vol. 1, p. 409. W. Rihm (1987). ‘Arie über die Bildzeitung’. Op. cit., vol. 2, p. 35. T.W. Adorno (1961). ‘Vers une musique informelle’. In: Quasi una Fantasia. London, Verso, pp. 269-322. T.W. Adorno (2002). Aesthetic Theory. London & New York, Continuum. Translation by Robert Hullot-Kentor. Originally published in German: Aesthetische Theorie, 1970. T.W. Adorno (2002). Op. cit., pp. 95, 118-122, 136-140, 157. W. Rihm (1983). ‘Musikalische Freiheit’. Op. cit., vol. 1, p. 27. W. Rihm (1985). ‘Spur, Faden. Zur Theorie des musikalischen Handwerks’. Op. cit., vol. 1, p. 72. W. Rihm (1985-86). ‘Tonalität. Klischee – Umwertung – Versuch’, In: ausgesprochen, vol. 1, p. 207. R. Brinkmann & W. Rihm (2001). Op. cit., pp. 28-29. Quoted by Rihm in his laudatory speech for Boulez. W. Rihm (1992). ‘Laudatio auf Pierre Boulez’. In: ausgesprochen, vol. 1, p. 301. T.W. Adorno (1961). Op. cit., pp. 273, 290-293. T.W. Adorno (1961). Op. cit., p. 322. Gianmario Borio and Max Paddison have stressed the fact that Adorno was much more inspired by fine arts than by music for his concept of “informal music”. M. Paddison (2010, ed.). Contemporary Music, Theoretical and Philosophical Perspectives. Surrey, Ashgate, pp. 5-6; G. Borio (1993). Musikalische Avantgarde um 1960. Laaber, Laaber, pp. 77-95, 102-109. T.W. Adorno (1961). Op. cit., pp. 273. G. Borio (1993). Op. cit., pp. 87-88. A. Whittall (2015). ‘Form’. In: Grove Music Online. Oxford, Oxford University Press. Downloaded 20150316. A. Williams (2006). ‘Wolfgang Rihm and the Adorno Legacy’. Op. cit., pp. 86-87. W. Rihm (1991). ‘Tradition et authenticité’. Op. cit., p. 51.

3 Musical Traces 1 2

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W. Rihm (1978). ‘Erscheinung. Skizze über Schubert’. In: ausgesprochen, vol. 2, p. 311. P. Andraschke (1978). ‘Traditionsmomente in Kompositionen von Cristobal Halffter, Klaus Huber und Wolfgang Rihm’. In: R. Brinkmann (ed.), Die Neue Musik und die Tradition, Veröffentlichungen des Instituts für Neue Musik und Musikerziehung Darmstadt, vol. 19. Mainz, Schott, p. 138. W. Rihm (1985). ‘Im Innersten. Drittes Streichquartett’. In: ausgesprochen, vol. 2, p. 304. B. van Putten (2011). Femmes fatales. Program notes Rihm-Resonanz, Zaterdag­ matinee, Concertgebouw Amsterdam, 10 December 2011, pp. 7-9.

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A. Köhler (2011). Wolfgang Rihm ‘Eine Strasse, Lucile’ – Fragen an den Komponisten. Programmbuch Opernhaus, Badisches Staatstheater, pp. 15-16. 6 W. Rihm (1992). ‘Ernster Gesang’. In: ausgesprochen, vol. 2, p. 415. 7 G. Johnson (2012). Brahms, Fünf Lieder, op. 105. Hyperion CDJ 33124. http://www. hyperion-records.co.uk/tw.asp?w=W12033. Downloaded 20130622. 8 Mahler: Symphony no. 1, 4th movement (bar 650: Die Holzinstrumente Schalltr. in die Höhe); Symphony no. 2, 1st movement (bar 41: tpt; 43: ob, cl, tpt; 280: ob, cl; 291: tpt; 304: hn; 317: hn; 357: ob, Eng hn, cl), 3rd movement (bar 270: tpt; 287: cl; 443: ob, cl) and 5th movement (bar 3: hn, tpt; 5: tpt, trbn; 162: hn; 238: ob, cl; 248: hn; 497: hn; 712: tpt, trbn; 721: hn). Zemlinsky: Lyrische Symphonie, 2nd movement (RN (=rehearsal number) 30: tpt; 32: hn) and 6th movement (RN 104: tpt; 124: tpt). Stravinsky: Le Sacre du Printemps: Jeu du rapt (RN 45: hn pavillons en l’air), Glorification de l’élue (RN 106: hn; 116: hn), Action rituelle des ancêtres (RN 134: hn; 138: hn) and Danse sacrale (L’Elue) (RN 176: hn; 183: hn). Berg: Wozzeck, Act I, scene 5, bar 709: tpt; Altenberglieder, 1. Seele, wie bist du schöner (bar 27: hn) and 5. Hier ist Friede (bar 24: tpt). Varèse: Intégrales, final bars, final chord: brass instruments pavillons en l’air. 9 /1-2: indication of the beats in the specified bar. 10 E. Fess (2011). ‘Spuren des Romantischen im Werk Wolfgang Rihms’. In: T. Hünermann & C. von Blumröder (eds.), Topographien der Kompositionsgeschichte seit 1945. Series Signale aus Köln, vol. 16. Wien, Der Apfel, pp. 184-185; J. Brügge (2004). Op. cit., p. 167, 174, 180. 11 In Bach’s Third Brandenburg Concerto, 1st movement, the chromatic shifting chords in regular semiquavers (and quavers for the bass instruments) are found in bars 8790. Another moment of accentuated chords in quavers (bars 97-99) is varied in bars 119-122, just after the unique descent in semiquavers into the deepest tessitura of the bass instruments. 12 On Varèse: W. Rihm (1981). ‘Varèse, Malerei und Schaffensprozeß’. Op. cit., vol. 2, p. 63, 65; W. Rihm (1983). ‘Musikalische Freiheit’. Op. cit., vol. 1, p. 23; W. Rihm (1985). ‘Notizen zum Chiffre-Zyklus’. Op. cit., vol. 2, p. 344; W. Rihm (1986). ‘Gleichzeitigkeit von Heterogenem’. Op. cit., vol. 2, pp. 165-166; W. Rihm (1987). ‘Musik zu Sprache bringen’. Interview by Heinz Josef Herbort. In: ausgesprochen, vol. 2, p. 204; W. Rihm (1987). ‘Arie über die Bildzeitung’. Op. cit., vol. 2, p. 35; W. Rihm (1987). ‘Gangarten, Hamletmaschine, Brief an P.O’. In: ausgesprochen, vol. 2, p. 353; W. Rihm (1988). ‘Kein Firmament’. In: ausgesprochen, vol. 2, p. 371; W. Rihm (1990). ‘Improvisation über das Fixieren von Freiheit’. In: ausgesprochen, vol. 1, pp. 94-95; W. Rihm (1990). ‘Zu Edgard Varèse’. Op. cit., vol. 1, p. 278. 13 Other grand pauses in Arcana are simply indicated as Vuota (Italian for “empty”), without instruction for the conductor. In opposition to Rihm’s statement, in the Varèse editions I consulted, this indication was not found beside this unique note in Arcana. 14 U. Mosch (2006). “Taking Sound in Hand”: Wolfgang Rihm and Varèse.’ In: F. Meyer & H. Zimmermann (eds.). Edgard Varèse. Composer, Sound Sculptor, Visionary. Basel, Paul Sacher Foundation & Woodbridge, Suffolk, The Boudell Press, pp. 434-435, 440. 15 W. Rihm (1978). ‘Der geschockte Komponist’. Op. cit., vol. 1, p. 44. 16 W. Rihm (1981). ‘Ferruccio Busoni’. In: ausgesprochen, vol. 1, p. 263. Alastair Williams believes that Varèse was “exerting the strongest influence”, more specifically for the 5

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recalling of “modernist idioms” in the Chiffre cycle. This influence is most audible in the “blocks of internally clashing brass”, sounding like Varèse in Chiffre II. Williams categorises this as the composer’s “networks and evocation”, because in his opinion Rihm is not concerned with allusions in the Chiffre cycle. A. Williams (2013). Music in Germany since 1968. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, pp. 189, 192-193. 17 In brackets: the number indicates the number of semitones; + or – indicates ascending or descending interval. 18 Rihm: starting 15, 9, 5 bars respectively before the end of Chiffre III; Varèse: starting 11, 8, 7 bars respectively before the end of Intégrales. 19 On Rihm’s allusions to Schubert see Y. Knockaert (2018, in press). ‘Rihm and Schubert’. In: R. McGregor, (ed.). Wolfgang Rihm. Contemporary Music Review, Special Issue.

4 Fine Arts 1

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4 5 6 7 8 9 10

11 12 13 14

W. Rihm (2015). Über die Linie VIII. Work Introduction. http://www.universaledition. com/ composers-and-works/Wolfgang-Rihm/composer/599/work/15726. Downloaded 20160622. Rihm’s title Geheimer Block (1988-89) is inspired by Beuys’s The Secret Block for a Secret Person in Ireland; W. Rihm (1987). ‘Klangbeschreibung – Drei Stücke’. In: ausgesprochen, vol. 2, p. 366; W. Rihm (1981). ‘L’art pour l’art’. In: ausgesprochen, vol. 1, p. 369. W. Rihm (1981). ‘Musik – Malerei. … ungereimt, zur Kunst gedacht…’. Op. cit., vol. 1, p. 130. A shortened version of this essay is reprinted in: W. Rihm (1997). Bilder – Echo. Wolfgang Rihm – Kurt Kocherscheidt. Op. cit., pp. 1-7. English translation by Steven Lindberg, p. 11. W. Rihm (1981). ‘Musik – Malerei… ungereimt, zur Kunst gedacht…’. Op. cit., vol. 1, p. 132. P. Vergo (2010). The Music of Painting. New York, Phaidon, pp. 9, 85, 87, 344. M. Feldman (1972). Rothko Chapel. In: W. Zimmermann (1985). Morton Feldman Essays. Kerpen, Beginner Press, p. 141. D. Rexroth (2004). ‘Werk und Titel bei Wolfgang Rihm’. In: U. Tadday (ed.). Op. cit., p. 98. U. Dibelius (2004). Op. cit., p. 62. U. Mosch (2001). Op. cit., p. 70, 74. W. Rihm (1981). ‘Musik – Malerei. … ungereimt, zur Kunst gedacht…’. Op. cit., vol. 1, pp. 130-136; W. Rihm (1981). ‘Varèse, Malerei und Schaffensprozeß’. Op. cit., vol. 2, pp. 63-68. W. Rihm (1985). ‘Im Innersten. Drittes Streichquartett’. Op. cit., vol. 2, pp. 304-305. W. Rihm (1990). ‘Musik vor Bildern’. In: ausgesprochen, vol. 2, pp. 415-418. W. Rihm (2011). Catalogue. Op. cit., p. 37. W. Rihm (1984/85). ‘Musik ist... Aus einem Briefwechsel von Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht und Wolfgang Rihm’. In: D. Rexroth (1985, ed.). Der Komponist Wolfgang Rihm. Mainz, Schott, p. 86.

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15 W. Rihm (1981). ‘Musik – Malerei. … ungereimt, zur Kunst gedacht…’. Op. cit., vol. 1, pp. 130-131. 16 R. Champagne (1984). Literary History in the Wake of Roland Barthes: Re-defining the Myths of Reading. Birmingham, Alabama, Summa, p. 104. 17 The words con amore are written with the tip of the bow on the score (bar 273). Joachim Brügge gives an autobiographical interpretation to these words, referring to the quartet’s dedication Für Uta; J. Brügge (2004). Op. cit., p. 315 (fn. 535). Brügge is referring to W. Rihm (1990). ‘Musik vor Bildern’. Op. cit., vol. 2, p. 418. 18 W. Rihm (1981). ‘Musik – Malerei. … ungereimt, zur Kunst gedacht…’. Op. cit., vol. 1, p. 133. 19 E. Morat (2001). ‘Gespräch mit Wolfgang Rihm’. in: H. Liesbrock (ed.). Op. cit., p. 94. 20 W. Rihm (1981). ‘Varèse, Malerei und Schaffensprozeß’. Op. cit., vol. 2, p. 64. W. Rihm (1981). ‘Musik – Malerei. … ungereimt, zur Kunst gedacht…’. Op. cit., vol. 1, p. 131. 21 U. Mosch (2004). Op. cit., pp. 27-29. 22 W. Rihm (1983). ‘Ohne Titel Fünftes Streichquartett’. Op. cit., vol. 2, p. 329. 23 W. Rihm (1984). ’Notizen zur Tutuguri-Musik’. Op. cit., vol. 2, p. 327. 24 W. Rihm (1983). ‘Ohne Titel. Fünftes Streichquartett’. Op. cit., vol. 2, p. 329. 25 Ulrich Mosch sees it the other way round: he describes the tremolo of the violins as “disturbed” by the energetic interventions of the viola and the cello. U. Mosch (2001). Op. cit., pp. 77-79. 26 W. Rihm (2006). Wolfgang Rihm in conversation with Kirk Noreen and Joshua Cody. Op. cit. 27 W. Rihm (2008). ‘Vibrierende Luftsäulen. Wolfgang Rihm zu seinen SéraphinKompositionen’. Op. cit., p. 32. 28 W. Rihm (2002). Wolfgang Rihm im Gespräch mit Josef Häusler. Op. cit., p. 21. English translation, p. 8. 29 W. Rihm (2002). Wolfgang Rihm im Gespräch mit Josef Häusler. Op. cit., p. 22. English translation, p. 9. 30 B. Zuber (2008). Blick zurück nach vorn. Werklandschaften. Zu Wolfgang Rihms Jagden und Formen. Op. cit., pp. 7-14. Also: B. Zuber (2008). ‘Übermalungen, Fortschreibungen, Neufassungen. Zum Verhältnis von Text und Prätext in Wolfgang Rihms Werk der 90er Jahre’. In: G. Buschmeier, U. Konrad & A. Riethmüller (eds.). Transkription und Fassung in der Musik des 20. Jahrhunderts. Beiträge des Kolloquiums in der Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur, Mainz, 5-6 März 2004. Stuttgart, Franz Steiner Verlag, pp. 45-59. 31 W. Rihm (2003). ‘Man darf in der Musik nicht klein denken’. Op. cit., p. 60. 32 W. Schaufler (2009). Op. cit., p. 10. English translation by Christopher Roth, p. 14. 33 W. Rihm (2002). ‘Musik ist nie bei sich’. Interview by Stefan Fricke. Op. cit., p. 18. 34 R. Brinkmann (2004). ‘“… Wie Wolken um die Zeit legt …”. Über Intertextualität in Rihms Hölderlin-Fragmenten.’ In: U. Tadday (ed.). Op. cit., p. 133. 35 H. Liesbrock (2001, ed.). Op. cit., p. 94, 108, 135. 36 W. Rihm (1983), ‘Ohne Titel. Fünftes Streichquartett’. Op. cit., vol. 2, p. 329. 37 V. Loers (2013). ‘Der Grosse Unbekannte’. Interview by Gesine Borcherdt. In Art.

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38 39

40 41

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Das Kunstmagazin, 30 October 2013. http://www.art-magazin.de/kunst/66716/ veit_loers_interview. On the occasion of a retrospective in the Essl Museum, Klosterneuburg, Austria. Downloaded 20141213. W. Rihm (2013). ‘Akustischer Blick. Darmstädter Ferienkurse 2012: Wolfgang Rihm im Gespräch’. Op. cit., p. 9. Barbara Niemann describes all percussion instruments in detail, adding their original function for messages or rituals. However, her conclusion is that in this case it is not about an adaptation of an extra-European music culture. B. Niemann (2013). Die musikalische Bearbeitung des ‘Ödipus’-Stoffes durch Wolfgang Rihm. München, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, pp. 156-158. W. Rihm (1986). ‘Gleichzeitigkeit von Heterogenem.’ Op. cit., vol. 2, p. 172. U. Mosch (1998). ‘Zur Rolle bildnerischen Vorstellungen im musikalischen Denken und Komponieren Wolfgang Rihms’. In: H. de la Motte-Haber & R. Kopiez (eds.). Musikwissenschaft zwischen Kunst, Ästhetik und Experiment. Würzburg, Königshausen & Neumann, p. 387. U. Mosch (2001). Op. cit., p. 87 (fn. 28). I. Toronyi-Lalic (2010). Wolfgang Rihm Day, Barbican. The Arts Desk, Classical music reviews, news & interviews, 13 March 2010. www.theartsdesk.com/classicalmusic/wolfgang-rihm-day-barbican. Downloaded 20120608.

5 Repetition 1

2 3 4 5 6 7

This chapter is a short version of my lecture Wolfgang Rihm – The Meaning of Repetition, XIIth Congress on Musical Signification, Louvain-la-Neuve, April 2013. The full text is published in the proceedings: C. Maeder & M. Reybrouck, (eds.). (2017). Making Sense of Music. Studies in Musical Semiotics. Louvain-la-Neuve, Presses Universitaires de Louvain. W. Rihm (1992). ‘Kalt’. In: ausgesprochen, vol. 2, p. 387. W. Rihm (1992). ‘Kolchis’. In: ausgesprochen, vol. 2, p. 396. W. Rihm (1985). ‘Notizen zum Chiffre-Zyklus’. Op. cit., vol. 2, p. 343. W. Rihm (1985-87). ‘Offene Stellen – Abbiegen ins Andere’. Op. cit., vol. 2, p. 195. W. Rihm (1985-87). ‘Offene Stellen – Abbiegen ins Andere’. Op. cit., vol. 2, p. 195. B.A. Varga (2011). Three Questions for sixty-five Composers. New York, University of Rochester Press, pp. 212-213.

6 Nature and Proportions 1 2 3 4

W. Rihm (2002). ‘Wolfgang Rihm im Gespräch’, Op. cit., p. 78. W. Rihm (2012). ‘Was Musik wirklich ist…’ Op. cit., p. 11. E. Campbell (2013). Music After Deleuze. London & New York, Bloomsbury, 2013. D. Ender (2011). Op. cit., pp. 29-37.

Notes - 7 Studying Proportions

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6 7 8 9 10 11

12 13 14 15

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315

Dibelius refers to his discussion with Rihm, following his lecture at the RihmSymposium in Salzburg, 11-13 August 2000, published in Musik-Konzepte. U. Dibelius (2004). Op. cit., p. 6. W. Rihm (2002). ‘Wolfgang Rihm im Gespräch’. Op. cit., p. 66. W. Rihm (1991). ‘Dunkles Spiel’. Op. cit., vol. 2, p. 386. I. Papachristopoulos (2008). ‘Ins Offene… Reflexionen über konstitutive Momente in Wolfgang Rihms Musik um 1990’. Die Musikforschung, vol. 61, p. 363. W. Rihm (1982). ‘Ich weiß nicht, wer ich bin’. Interview by Heinz Josef Herbort. In: ausgesprochen, vol. 2, p. 82. W. Rihm (1991). ‘Der Taumel der Gegensätze im Gleichgewicht’. Op. cit., vol. 2, pp. 213-231. G. Winkler (2003). ‘Das “fluide” Werk und die Krise der Partitur. Zu Wolfgang Rihms 4. Streichquartett und Über die Linie für Violoncello solo’. In: W. Hofer (ed.). Ausdruck, Zugriff, Differenzen. Der Komponist Wolfgang Rihm. Mainz, Schott, p. 136, 145 (fn. 6). W. Rihm (2002). ’Wolfgang Rihm im Gespräch’. Op. cit., p. 66. W. Rihm (2006). Wolfgang Rihm in conversation with Kirk Noreen and Joshua Cody. Op. cit. This was already quoted in chapter 2, Between modernism and postmodernism. W. Rihm (1979). ‘Rückkehr zu Unordnung?’ Op. cit., vol. 2, pp. 60-61. E. Top (2003). Analysis String Quartet No. 3 ‘Im Innersten’ of Wolfgang Rihm. http:// home.online.nl/edwardtop/Im%20Innersten/Zwischenspiel.html. Downloaded 20140724. R. McGregor (s.d.). Wolfgang Rihm’s Fourth String Quartet. Unity – Static and Dynamic. Unpubd; R. McGregor (2007). Op. cit., p. 42.

7 Studying Proportions 1 2 3 4 5

6 7

8

W. Rihm (1978). ‘Karlheinz Stockhausen, anlässlich Geburtstag und Mantra’. In: ausgesprochen, vol. 1, pp. 321-322. W. Rihm (1975). ‘Dis-Kontur’. In: ausgesprochen, vol. 2, p. 289. W. Rihm (1979). ‘Paraphrase’. In: ausgesprochen, vol. 2, p. 284. W. Rihm (1974). ‘Klavierstück Nr. 4’. In: ausgesprochen, vol. 2, pp. 287-288. W. Frobenius (1981). ‘Die “Neue Einfachheit” und der bürgerliche Schönheitsbegriff ’. In: O. Kolleritsch (ed.). Zur ‘Neuen Einfachheit’ in der Musik. Vienna, Universal Edition, Studien zur Wertforschung, vol. 14, pp. 54-55. W. Rihm (1989/97). ‘Schwebende Begegnung’. In: ausgesprochen, vol. 2, p. 372. Rihm’s description restricted to the organisation of pitches and intervals. This scale fragment is found retrograde in semiquavers in bar 46 and varied into a dyad followed by two single tones in bar 71, twice in the harp; that it is not present at other places makes it more striking. R. McGregor (s.d.): Op. cit., pp. 13-14.

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8 Integrated Approach 1

W. Rihm (1985). ‘Spur, Faden. Zur Theorie des musikalischen Handwerks’. Op. cit., vol. 1, p. 75. 2 W. Rihm (2002). ‘Wolfgang Rihm im Gespräch’. Op. cit., p. 65. 3 W. Rihm (1991). ’Der Taumel der Gegensätze im Gleichgewicht’. Op. cit., vol. 2, p. 219. 4 W. Rihm (1985). ‘Spur, Faden. Zur Theorie des musikalischen Handwerks’. Op. cit., vol. 1, p. 75. 5 W. Rihm (1985). ‘Im Innersten. Drittes Streichquartett’. Op. cit., vol. 2, p. 304. 6 W. Rihm (1981). ‘Ferruccio Busoni’. Op. cit., vol. 1, p. 259. 7 The terms “consonance” and “dissonance” are defined in the traditional way. Consonant intervals are perfect unison, fourth, fifth and octave and minor and major third and sixth. Dissonant intervals are minor and major second and seventh and tritone. The term “quasi-noise”, in German Quasi-Geräusch, is also used by Rudolf Frisius in his analysis of Rihm’s Chiffre I for instance. R. Frisius (2004). ‘Wandlungen des musikalischen Denkens über Form und Struktur im Spiegel der Musik von Wolfgang Rihm. Überlegungen am Beispiel von Chiffre I. In: U. Tadday (ed.). Op. cit., p. 81. 8 S. Mauser (2004). ’Vom Modell zum Prozess. Zur Entwicklung der Klavierstücke Rihms’. In: U. Tadday (ed.). Op. cit., p. 48. S. Mauser (1985). ‘Primäre Ausdruksformen. Anmerkungen zum Klavierstück Nr. 7 van Wolfgang Rihm. In: D. Rexroth (ed.). Op. cit., p. 157. 9 M. Bellheim (2007). Das Klavierwerk von Wolfgang Rihm. Piano Pieces. NEOS, 10717/18, CD booklet, p. 2. 10 A. Williams (2013). Op. cit., p. 174; Also: A. Williams (2010). ‘Postlude: Helmut Lachenmann, Wolfgang Rihm and the Austro-German Tradition’. In: M. Paddison (ed.). Op. cit., p. 366. 11 W. Rihm (1986). ‘Laudatio auf Karlheinz Stockhausen’. Op. cit., vol. 1, p. 325; W. Rihm (1985). ‘… zu wissen’. Op. cit., vol. 2, pp. 132-133; W. Rihm (1986). ‘Gleichzeitigkeit von Heterogenem’. Op. cit., vol. 2, p. 159; W. Rihm (1987). ‘Musik zur Sprache bringen’. Interview by Heinz Josef Herbort. In: ausgesprochen, vol. 2, p. 200; W. Rihm (1985). ‘Berg-Bemerkungen’. In: ausgesprochen, vol. 1, p. 283. 12 K. Stockhausen (1963). ‘Momente’. Op. cit., p. 31. 13 For the division in sections of the analysed compositions see Appendix, p. 297ff.

9 Parameter Characteristics 1 2 3

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W. Rihm (1983). ‘Bratschenkonzert’. In: ausgesprochen, vol. 2, p. 328. W. Rihm (1983). ‘[Erster] Doppelgesang’. In: ausgesprochen, vol. 2, p. 325. The title ‘Canzona’ features more than once in Rihm’s oeuvre: Canzona for 4 violas (1982), Canzona nuova for 5 violas (1982/2006), Canzona per Sonare, Über die Linie V for alto trombone and two orchestral groups (2002). W. Rihm (1985). ‘Notizen zum Chiffre-Zyklus’. Op. cit., vol. 2, p. 343.

Notes - 9 Parameter Characteristics

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6 7

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11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

19 20 21 22 23 24

317

W. Rihm (1991). ‘Der Taumel der Gegensätze im Gleichgewicht’. Op. cit., vol. 2, p. 219. Regarding the date of the interview, these utterances clearly refer to the string quartets of the 1980s. It was preceded and prepared by a few shorter solos in bars 17 and 59 without the dance-like character. To be comprehensive: in his essay on tonality, Rihm gives the overtone series and the chord on the seventh harmonic as an example of ambiguity in classical tonality, thereby not referring to his own music. In his comments on early compositions, some details about harmony and chords are explained, for instance the use of Neapolitan chord by Schubert in the text on Erscheinung. W. Rihm (1985-86). ‘Tonalität. Klischee – Umwertung – Versuch’. Op. cit., vol. 1, p. 205; W. Rihm (1978). ‘Erscheinung, Skizze über Schubert für neun Streicher und Klavier ad libitum (1978)’. In: ausgesprochen, vol. 2, p. 313. W. Rihm (1974). ‘In den Spiegel gelauscht… zu: Morphonie (1972/…), Sektor IV für Orchester mit Solostreichquartett’. In: ausgesprochen, vol. 2, p. 286. W. Rihm (1979). ‘Chiffren von Verstörung. Anmerkungen zu Jakob Lenz’. In: ausgesprochen, vol. 2, p. 315. W. Killmayer (1992). ‘Zu Wolfgang Rihms Klavierstück Nr. 6 (Bagatellen)’. In: W. Killmayer, S. Mauser & W. Rihm (eds.). Klaviermusik des 20. Jahrhunderts. Mainz, Schott, pp. 102-129; W. Killmayer (2004). ‘Klangstrukturen bei Hölderlin und in Wolfgang Rihms Klavierstück Nr. 6 “Bagatellen”’. In: U. Tadday (ed.). Op. cit., pp. 5160. E. Top (2009). ‘Expectation and Treatment of Dissonance in Wolfgang Rihm’s Third String Quartet’. Dutch Journal of Music Theory, vol. 14 no. 3, p. 143. E. Top (2009). Op. cit., p. 153, 151, respectively. W. Rihm (1984). ‘Neo-Tonalität’. Op. cit., vol. 1, p. 188. W. Rihm (1984). ‘Neo-Tonalität’. Op. cit., vol. 1, p. 189. Consequently, McGregor expands the chord to the Lenz-chord group by added notes, by adding related and overlapping chords. R. McGregor (2007). Op. cit., p. 39, 44. W. Rihm (1984). ‘Neo-Tonalität?’. Op. cit., vol. 1, p. 185-194; W. Rihm (1985-86). ‘Tonalität. Klischee – Umwertung – Versuch’. Op. cit., vol. 1, p. 194-209. G. Borio (1993). Op. cit., p. 87, 93. In the score of the Sixth String Quartet, on p. 39, there is an error in counting the bars: the first bar should be 382 instead of 384. A second error occurs on p. 55: the first bar should be 562 instead of 568. The total number of bars is 848 instead of 854. The exact count is given in square brackets next to the score’s numbers. W. Rihm (1988). ‘Improvisation über das Fixieren von Freiheit’. Op. cit., vol. 1, p. 97. W. Rihm (2012). Klangbeschreibung. Conference, Karlsruhe, 3-5 April 2012. Rihm answered questions and commented on his aesthetic. W. Rihm (1984). ‘Chiffre IV’. In: ausgesprochen, vol. 2, p. 331. W. Rihm (1983). ‘Chiffre I – Silence to Be Beaten (Chiffre II) – Chiffre III’. Op. cit. vol. 2, p. 331; W. Rihm (1985). ‘Notizen zum Chiffre-Zyklus’. Op. cit., vol. 2, p. 344. W. Rihm (1984). Nebenbemerkung. Bild (eine Chiffre). Wien, Universal Edition, UE 18014. Note on the introductory page of the score. I. Stoianova (1991). ‘En mutation’. In: Streichquartette Nr. 3, 5, 8. Montaigne 1 CD 782001, CD booklet, pp. 7-8. In the Superformel for Licht, Stockhausen defines

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different soft noises as “coloured silence” (gefärbte Pause); W. Rihm (1983). ‘Musikalische Freiheit’. Op. cit., vol. 1, p. 31. 25 W. Rihm (1983). ‘Chiffre I’. Op. cit., vol. 2, p. 328; W. Rihm (1983). ‘Chiffre I – Silence to Be Beaten (Chiffre II) – Chiffre III’. Op. cit. vol. 2, p. 331.

10 String Quartet in the 1980s 1

2 3 4 5 6 7

8

9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

M. Wilkening (2002). ‘Streichquartett als Spiegel des Gesamtwerks. Zu Wolfgang Rihms Werken für Streichquartett’. In: B.O. Polzer & T. Schäfer (eds.). Katalog Wien Modern 2002. Saarbrücken, Pfau, p. 147. U. Mosch (1998). ‘Streichquartett – ein magisches Wort. Zu Wolfgang Rihms Schaffen für Streichquartett’. Positionen, no. 34, pp. 47-48. W. Rihm (1985). ‘Ohne Titel (Fünftes Streichquartett)’. Op. cit., vol. 2, p. 330. W. Rihm (1991). ‘Der Taumel der Gegensätze im Gleichgewicht’. Op. cit., vol. 2, p. 219. W. Rihm (1985). ‘Im Innersten. Drittes Streichquartett’. Op. cit., vol. 2, p. 303. M. Wilkening (1988). ‘Die Streichquartette Wolfgang Rihms’. In: M. Wilkening (ed.). Wolfgang Rihm. Komponistenportrait. Berlin, 38. Berliner Festswochen, p. 25. Joachim Brügge refers to the third Notebook Composition, Musik für drei Streicher, quoting a critic on ein biographisches Schlüsselwerk, and writing about einer deutlich im Werk inszenierten ‘biographisch-tonsymbolischen Aura’. He explains how eine autobiographische Motivation is at the base of the Sixth Quartet. J. Brügge (2004). Op. cit., pp. 187-189. Dibelius combines “diary” and “novel” in his description. U. Dibelius (2004). Op. cit., p. 69. W. Rihm (1985). ‘Sechstes Streichquartett – Blaubuch’. In: ausgesprochen, vol. 2, p. 340. In the context of illness and recovery, Brügge refers to Beethoven’s Heiliger Dankgesang eines Genesenden an die Gottheit, written on top of the third movement, Molto Adagio of String Quartet no. 15, op. 132. J. Brügge (2004). Op. cit., p. 302. In certain editions of Beethoven’s string quartet Genesenen is found instead of Genesenden: someone “recovered” instead of “recovering” or “convalescent”. The difference is that Rihm was “recovering” in hospital when he started the composition of his Sixth Quartet, while Beethoven had already “recovered” when he began the composition of op. 132 after traveling to Baden. At least for Beethoven this makes Genesenen more correct than Genesenden. W. Rihm (1985-87). ‘Offene Stellen – Abbiegen ins Andere’. Op. cit., vol. 2, p. 182. M. Wilkening (1988). Op. cit., p. 29. Wilkening does not add his source; B. Kutschke (1997). Op. cit., p. 12.; J. Brügge (2004). Op. cit., p. 281, 303. U. Dibelius (2004). Op. cit., pp. 62, 68, 68 (fn. 1). M. Wilkening (1988). Op. cit., p. 29. B. Kutschke (1997). Op. cit., p. 12. Kutschke gives no details about the weite Strecken or longer passages of the Seventh Quartet. J. Brügge (2004). Op. cit., pp. 306-307. U. Dibelius (2004). Op. cit., p. 62, 68. Only f#: f# unison short and long (bars 398 [396], 399 [397], 808 [802], 817-818 [811-

Notes - 11 Group Formation: Chiffre Cycle

17

18

19

20

319

812]); f# sustained top note (bars 602-605 [596-599]). Only c#: c# longest note of a melodic element: solo sustained and returning (bars 434-438 [432-436]); unison c# in all instruments (bar 658 [652], surrounded by other unisons); c#-d repeated, sustained and tremolo dyad (bars 574-591 [568-585]). The combination of both: consonant dyad c#-f# (bars 404-405 [402-403]); c#(+5)f# as the beginning of several melodic elements (bars 660 [654], 663 [657]). Because of an error in counting the bar numbers in the study score of the Seventh Quartet, I make use of double numbers: bar numbers as found in the score in normal notation, exact bar numbers in square brackets. The error occurs at bar 410, which was counted twice: from here double numbers are used: the “second” bar 410 becomes 410 [411]. The dyad c#-f#: bars 72, 107, 164, 205-207 (with added notes in bar 206), 218-219 (mostly with added c§), 239, 267 (alternating both pitches), 395, 396-398, 401-402, 426-427 [427-428]. Pitch f#: bars 73-74, 81, 106, 110-111, 114, 142, 208, 227, 233, 356-357, 392, 410 second bar [411], 428 [429], 431 [432]. Pitch f# as part of consonant dyad: bar 102, 195, 285 (with glissando). Pitch c#: bars 76-79, 222, 309-336 and 345355 (vc solo, with some interruptions and c# replaced by db in bars 333-335, also tritone dyad c#-g), 400-401. The solo moments are bars 163-165, 166-167, 168-169, 179-185 in cluster f-f#-gb, 195-199, 201-202, 215-218, 226-227, 228-229, 238-241, 244-267 (vn1 solo), 268, 270271, 272-277, 281-282, 285-286, 287, 288-289. W. Rihm (2012). Wolfgang Rihm in conversation with Lucas Fels. Institute of Musical Research, School of Advanced Study University of London, iTunes U. Quotation: 26:02-26:24 and 28:32-29:15. http://www.sas.ac.uk/node/679. Downloaded 20130601. Rudolf Frisius tries to consider the Tenth and Twelfth String Quartets together with the Quartettstudie as another ‘group of works’. He defines it even as a cycle, albeit not intended beforehand by the composer: “The works in this group were not written as a planned cycle but based on specific, diverse design ideas. This makes clear that cyclical character can develop in the compositional process itself – as a new synthesis of a new unity in diversity.”; R. Frisius (2006). ‘Neue Musik für Streichquartett: Auskomponierte Paradoxien?‘ In: String Quartets, vol. 4. col legno, WWE 1 CD 20227, CD booklet, p. 11. English translation by Steven Lindberg, p. 18.

11 Group Formation: Chiffre Cycle 1

Unless otherwise indicated the sources for this chapter are Rihm’s short comments on the individual pieces of the Chiffre cycle, on parts of the cycle and on the complete cycle. W. Rihm (1983). ‘Chiffre I’. Op. cit., vol. 2, p. 328; W. Rihm (1983). ‘Chiffre I – Silence to Be Beaten (Chiffre II) – Chiffre III’. Op. cit., vol. 2, p. 331; W. Rihm (1984). ‘Chiffre IV’. Op. cit., vol. 2, p. 331; W. Rihm (1984). ‘Bild’. In: ausgesprochen, vol. 2, p. 335; W. Rihm (1984). ‘Chiffre V’. In: ausgesprochen, vol. 2, p. 340; W. Rihm (1985). ‘Chiffre VI’. Op. cit., vol. 2, p. 342; W. Rihm (1987). ‘Chiffre VII’. In: ausgesprochen, vol. 2, p. 343; W. Rihm (1985). ‘Notizen zum Chiffre-Zyklus’. Op. cit., vol. 2, pp. 343345; W. Rihm (1988). ‘Chiffre VIII’. In: ausgesprochen, vol. 2, p. 370.

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R. Frisius (1985). ‘Werk und Werkzyklus. Bemerkungen zum Chiffre-Zyklus von Wolfgang Rihm’. MusikTexte, no. 11, p. 17. (Frisius is quoting from a presentation by Rihm on the occasion of the first performance of Chiffre VI on 16 April 1985.) For the symbolic meaning of ‘Chiffre’ in relation to the philosophy of Pascal and Roland Barthes, see: M. Zenck (2009). ‘Eingemeißelt. Zur “Arte Cifra” in Wolfgang Rihms Chiffre-Zyklus’. Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, vol. 170, no. 2, pp. 26-31; In turn, Dorothea Ruthemeier expatiated on the ethymological meaning of the term and on its relation to Rihm’s attention given to the act of writing: D. Ruthemeier (2012). Op. cit., pp. 183-199. 3 W. Rihm (1984). ‘Mittendrin’. Op. cit., vol. 2, p. 95. 4 W. Rihm (1983). ‘Chiffre I’. Op. cit., vol. 2, p. 328. 5 A. Williams (2013). Op. cit., pp. 194-195. 6 W. Rihm (1983). ‘Chiffre VIII’. Op. cit., vol. 2, p. 370. 7 W. Rihm (1982). ‘Notizen zur Tutuguri-Musik’. Op. cit., vol. 2, p. 327. 8 An example is found in Rihm’s Catalogue: Jagden und Formen exists in Zustand 199599, Zustand 1995-2000 (both withdrawn), Zustand 1995-2001 and Zustand 2008. W. Rihm (2011). Catalogue. Op. cit., p. 8. 9 W. Rihm (2002). ‘Wolfgang Rihm im Gespräch’. Op. cit., p. 68. 10 W. Rihm (2012). ‘Was Musik wirklich ist…’. Op. cit., p. 10. 11 W. Rihm (2002). ‘Wolfgang Rihm im Gespräch’. Op. cit., p. 68. 12 W. Rihm (2002). ‘Wolfgang Rihm im Gespräch’. Op. cit., p. 69. 2

12 Chiffre Cycle: Harmony 1

2

3 4

5

Bild contains more moments with sustained tritone-fifth combinations, but not at particular places: on pitch b in bars 68-69, on eb in bar 93, on c# in bars 159-160, just before the coda. While it is impossible to analyse all chords, I proceeded as follows for the harmonic analysis in general and the harmonic rhythm in particular. All chords are taken into account, except for very fast rhythmical movements, where it is clear that the harmonic value is subordinate to the rhythm and the fast movement. To give some examples: in the first bar of Chiffre I, I discern four different chords (see Ex. 52, p. 214): a-e-g#-g-f#-c-bb-f and a-e-c-bb-f on 1/1, e-c-bb-f on 1/2-4, c-bb-f on 1/4. In bar 44 however, I reduce the piano solo to the sustained dyad b-e in the left hand (see Ex. 5, p. 79. The example only shows the hectic rhythm of the right hand). A combination of sustained and repeated notes is also counted as one chord. The number of different notes per chord is counted, leaving out all doubles. The numbers in Table 21 are based on the number of individual chords, not on the presence per bar. Presence per bar gives a completely different image, for instance in Chiffre I consonance is present in 121 of 176 bars or 69% but the number of exclusive consonant bars is only 33 bars or 19%. R. Frisius (2004). Op. cit., pp. 86-87.

Notes - 14 Chiffre Cycle: Cyclic Elements

321

13 Chiffre Cycle: Resonance 1 2

3 4 5

W. Rihm (1983). ‘Chiffre I’. Op. cit., vol. 2, p. 328. W. Rihm (1983). ‘Chiffre I – Silence to Be Beaten (Chiffre II) – Chiffre III’. Op. cit., vol. 2, p. 331; W. Rihm (1985). ‘Notizen zum Chiffre-Zyklus’. Op. cit., vol. 2, p. 343. Around the same time Helmut Lachenmann also made resonance to a crucial topic of his aesthetic in Ausklang for piano and orchestra (1984-85), followed by Allegro Sostenuto. Musik für Klarinette/Baßklarinette, Violoncello und Klavier (1987-88, rev. 1989, 1990, 1991). In the latter he uses almost the same trio as Rihm: the clarinet plays the first half of the piece and changes to the bass clarinet in the second half. Concerning resonance Lachenmann is using more piano pedal; there are more unisons in the three instruments; the piano pedal is notated rhythmically. Of course Lachenmann incorporates all kinds of sounds belonging to his musique concrète instrumentale and is also focusing on contrasts between sustained pedal sound and secco sound, between sustained stand still resonating sounds and fast movements. W. Rihm (1984). ‘Chiffre IV’. Op. cit., vol. 2, p. 331; W. Rihm (1985). ‘Notizen zum Chiffre-Zyklus’. Op. cit., vol. 2, p. 344. W. Rihm (1987). ‘Klangbeschreibung. Drei Stücke’. Op. cit., vol. 2, p. 362. J. Stenzl (2004). ‘Wolfgang Rihm und Luigi Nono’. In: U. Tadday (ed.). Op. cit., pp. 2122. According to Stefan Drees, Rihm’s consciousness of the sound space, the moving sound through space and the special setting of the instruments on the stage aiming at spatial effects, is influenced by his friendship with Luigi Nono. S. Drees (2012). ‘”Zustände, jeweils andere”: Kompositorische Strategien in Wolfgang Rihms Musik in memoriam Luigi Nono’. Die Tonkunst, vol. 6, pp. 172-173.

14 Chiffre Cycle: Cyclic Elements 1

In his analysis of the Chiffre cycle, Richard McGregor also discerns a number of “repoled” figures. The rhythmic repetition is labelled as one of the four main motifs in his analysis of Chiffre VI, with a reference to the beginning of Chiffre I. The figure with ascending leap is also identified as a generative pole in Chiffre I, described as a “short fanfare-like motif ”. Furthermore, McGregor discerns elements with a melodic character. R. McGregor (2007). Op. cit., pp. 31-33, p. 33 (fn. 17), p. 41. In his in-depth analysis of Chiffre I, Rudolf Frisius defines “repetition” as one of the seven “sound layers” he discerns in the first Höreireignis or “aural event” (bar 1-2/1): “hammered accentuated repetitions, an extreme widely set octave sound, very loud”. Details on later appearances of repetition are revealed, always as part of a more complex “aural event”. Hence, “repetition” is given no more importance than the other composing elements of the different “aural events”: all are classified as Gestaltungselement or “structuring element” and subject of expansion, reduction, integration and accumulation. It is clear that Frisius values “repetition” as a main element without according it the qualities of a generative pole or even an independent “figure”. R. Frisius (2004). Op. cit., pp. 76-77.

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16 Chiffre Cycle: Proportions 1

2

Richard McGregor describes the application of the golden section in Chiffre I in his analysis of the Chiffre cycle. R. McGregor (2007). Op. cit., p. 42. In McGregor’s interpretation, the silence of bar 108 is the subject of “repoling” in the next pieces. W. Rihm (1984). ‘Bild’. Op. cit., vol. 2, p. 335. W. Rihm (1985). ‘Notizen zum ChiffreZyklus’. Op. cit., vol. 2, p. 344.

Selected Bibliography

Texts and Interviews Brinkman, Reinhold & Rihm, Wolfgang. Musik nachdenken. Regensburg, ConBrio, 2001. Misch, Imke & Blumröder, Christoph von (eds.). Komposition und Musikwissen­ schaft im Dialog V (2001-2004). Berlin, Lit Verlag, 2006, pp. 57-84. Mosch, Ulrich (ed.) & Rihm, Wolfgang. ausgesprochen. Schriften und Gespräche. Winterthur, Amadeus, 1997, 2 vol. Rihm, Wolfgang. ‘Der generative Pol. Wolfgang Rihm im Gespräch mit Peter Sloterdijk’. Österreichische Musikzeitschrift, vol. 44 (1989), no. 6, pp. 281-286. Rihm, Wolfgang. ‘Musik ist... Aus einem Briefwechsel von Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht und Wolfgang Rihm’. In: D. Rexroth (ed.). Der Komponist Wolfgang Rihm. Mainz, Schott, 1985. Rihm, Wolfgang. Triobeschreibung: Rihm. Interview by Wolfgang Hofer. Kairos 0012092KAI, CD booklet, 2000. Rihm, Wolfgang. ‘Musik ist nie bei sich’. Interview by Stefan Fricke. Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, vol. 163 (2002), no. 2, pp. 52-55. Rihm, Wolfgang. Wolfgang Rihm im Gespräch mit Josef Häusler. Jagden und Formen, Deutsche Grammophon 471558-2, 2002, CD booklet. Rihm, Wolfgang. ‘Man darf in der Musik nicht klein denken’. Wolfgang Rihm über musikalischen Fluss, Bewegung des Denkens und die Erwartungen der Öffentlichkeit. Interview by Max Nyffeler. Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, vol. 164 (2003), no. 2, pp. 60-63. Rihm, Wolfgang. ‘Chasse à l’homme, à la recherche de Wolfgang Rihm’. Interview by Eric Denut. Musica falsa, no. 17 (2003). http://www.musiquecontemporaine. fr/record/oai:cdmc.asso.fr:aloes:0034103 Rihm, Wolfgang. ‘Hunting and Forms’. Interview by Richard McGregor. In: Paddison, Max. Contemporary Music, Theoretical and Philosophical Perspectives, Surrey, Ashgate, 2010. Rihm, Wolfgang. Catalogue. Vienna, Universal Edition, 2011. Rihm, Wolfgang, Poppe, Eno & Wiegandt, M. Gesprächsrunde, Musikhochschule Karlsruhe, iTunesU, 2012. https://itunes.apple.com/de/itunes-u/ gesprachsrunde-wolfgangrihm/id 514305891?mt=10 323

324

Wolfgang Rihm, a Chiffre

Rihm, Wolfgang. ‘Was Musik wirklich ist…’. Interview by Achim Heidenreich. Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, vol. 173 (2012), no. 3, pp. 8-11. Rihm, Wolfgang. Wolfgang Rihm in conversation with Lucas Fels. Institute of Musical Research, School of Advanced Study University of London, iTunes U, 2012. http://www.sas.ac.uk/node/679 Rihm, Wolfgang. ‘Akustischer Blick. Darmstädter Ferienkurse 2012: Wolfgang Rihm im Gespräch’. MusikTexte, no. 136 (2013), pp. 9-12. Rihm, Wolfgang. Composers and Works. Vienna, Universal Edition, no date. http:// www.universaledition.com/composers-and-works/Wolfgang-Rihm/ composer/599

Fine Arts Rihm, Wolfgang. Bilder – Echo. Wolfgang Rihm – Kurt Kocherscheidt. Wergo WER 6623-2, 1997, CD booklet. Liesbrock, Heinz (ed.). Brustrauschen. Zum Werkdialog von Kurt Kocherscheidt und Wolfgang Rihm. Ostfildern-Ruit, Hatje Cantz, 2001. Loers, Veit. ‘Der Grosse Unbekannte’. Interview by Gesine Borcherdt. In Art. Das Kunstmagazin, 30 October 2013. http://www.art-magazin.de/kunst/66716/veit_loers_interview Mosch, Ulrich. ‘Musik als Malerei in der Zeit. Zu Wolfgang Rihms kompositorischem Denken.’ Positionen, no. 59 (2004), pp. 27-29.

Style and Composition Techniques Dejans, Peter (ed.). Order and Disorder. Music-Theoretical Strategies in twentiethcentury Music. Leuven, Leuven University Press, Collected Writings of the Orpheus Institute, vol. 4, 2004. Drees, Stefan. ‘“Zustände, jeweils andere”: Kompositorische Strategien in Wolfgang Rihms Musik in memoriam Luigi Nono’. Die Tonkunst, vol. 6 (2012), pp. 170181. Ender, Daniel. ‘Übermalung? Montage? Wucherung? Strategien und Wege kompositorischer Selbstbearbeitung in neuer Musik’. Österreichische Musikzeitschrift, vol. 66 (2011), no. 1, pp. 29-37. Knockaert, Yves. ‘Systemlessness in Music’. In: Dejans, Peter (ed.). Order and Disorder. Music-Theoretical Strategies in twentieth-century Music. Leuven, Leuven University Press, Collected Writings of the Orpheus Institute, vol. 4, 2004, pp. 53-104.

Selected Bibliography

325

Knockaert, Yves. ‘Wolfgang Rihm – The Meaning of Repetition’. Maeder, Constantino & Reybrouck, Mark (eds.). (2017). Making Sense of Music. Studies in Musical Semiotics. Louvain-la-Neuve, Presses Universitaires de Louvain. Papachristopoulos, Ioannis. ‘Ins Offene… Reflexionen über konstitutive Momente in Wolfgang Rihms Musik um 1990’. Die Musikforschung, vol. 61 (2008), pp. 349-367. Zuber, Barbara. ‘Übermalungen, Fortschreibungen, Neufassungen. Zum Verhältnis von Text und Prätext in Wolfgang Rihms Werk der 90er Jahre’. In: Buschmeier, Gabriele (ed.). Transkription und Fassung in der Musik des 20. Jahrhunderts. Stuttgart, Franz Steinver Verlag, 2008, pp. 45-59.

Chiffre Cycle Faust, Wolfgang Max. ‘Arte Cifra? Neue Subjektivität? Trans-Avantgarde?: Aspekte der italienischen Gegenwartskunst’. Kunstforum International (Cologne) Idylle oder Itensität, (1980), no. 39, pp. 161-71. Frisius, Rudolf. ‘Werk und Werkzyklus. Bemerkungen zum Chiffre-Zyklus von Wolfgang Rihm’. MusikTexte, no. 11 (1985), pp. 17-20. Frisius, Rudolf. ‘Wandlungen des musikalischen Denkens über Form und Struktur im Spiegel der Musik von Wolfgang Rihm. Überlegungen am Beispiel von Chiffre I. In: Tadday, Ulrich (ed.). Wolfgang Rihm. Musik-Konzepte, München, edition text + kritik, 2004, pp. 75-92. McGregor, Richard. Interpreting Compositional Process in Wolfgang Rihm’s Chiffre Cycle. In: Frankfurter Zeitschrift für Musikwissenschaft, Online-Publikation (2007), pp. 26-70. http://www.european-musicology.eu/assets/Volumes/2007/20073a.pdf http://www.european-musicology.eu/assets/Volumes/2007/20073b.pdf Ruthemeier, Dorothea. Antagonismus oder Konkurrenz? Zu zentralen Werkgruppen der 1980er Jahre von Wolfgang Rihm und Matthias Spahlinger. Schliengen, Argus, 2012. Zenck, Martin. ‘Eingemeißelt. Zur “Arte Cifra” in Wolfgang Rihms Chiffre-Zyklus’. Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, vol. 170 (2009), no. 2, pp. 26-31. https://new.artsmia.org/exhibition/die-neuen-wilden-neo-expressionism-ingermany (accessed June 2017) http://www/kettererkunst.de/lexikon/transavanguardia-und-arte-cifra.php (accessed June 2017)

326

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String Quartets Brügge, Joachim. ‘Zur Form und Ästhetik in Wolfgang Rihms drittem Streichquartett “Im Innersten” (1976)’. Die Musikforschung, vol. 52 (1999), pp. 178-189. Brügge, Joachim. Wolfgang Rihms Streichquartette. Aspekte zu Analyse, Ästhetik und Gattungstheorie des modernen Streichquartetts. Saarbrücken, Pfau, 2004. Dibelius, Urich. ‘Zwischen Obsession und Obstruktion. Zu den Streichquartetten von Wolfgang Rihm’. In: Tadday, Ulrich (ed.). Wolfgang Rihm. MusikKonzepte, München, edition text + kritik, 2004, pp. 61-73. Frisius, Rudolf. ‘Insistenz und Ausbruch. Zu den Streichquartetten 7, 8 und 9 von Wolfgang Rihm. Drei Streichquartette als Marksteine einer kompositorischen Entwicklung’. In: String Quartets, vol. 3. col legno WWE 1CD 20213, CD booklet, 2005. Frisius, Rudolf. ‘Neue Musik für Streichquartett: Auskomponierte Paradoxien?’ In: String Quartets, vol. 4. col legno, WWE 1 CD 20227, CD booklet, 2006. McGregor, Richard. Wolfgang Rihm’s Fourth String Quartet. Unity – Static and Dynamic. Unpubd., s.d. Mosch, Ulrich. ‘Streichquartett – ein magisches Wort. Zu Wolfgang Rihms Schaffen für Streichquartett’. Positionen, no. 34 (1998), pp. 47-50. Stoianova, Ivanka. ‘En mutation’. Streichquartette Nr. 3, 5, 8. Montaigne 1 CD 782001, CD booklet, 1991. Top, Edward. Analysis String Quartet No. 3 ‘Im Innersten’ of Wolfgang Rihm, 2003. http://home.online.nl/edwardtop/Im%20Innersten/Zwischenspiel.html Top, Edward. ‘Expectation and Treatment of Dissonance in Wolfgang Rihm’s Third String Quartet’. Dutch Journal of Music Theory, vol. 14 (2009), no. 3, pp. 143154. Winkler, Gerhard. ‘Das “fluide” Werk und die Krise der Partitur. Zu Wolfgang Rihms 4. Streichquartett und Über die Linie für Violoncello solo’. In: W. Hofer (2004, ed.). Ausdruck, Zugriff, Differenzen. Der Komponist Wolfgang Rihm. Mainz, Schott, 2003, pp. 135-145.

Other Publications on Rihm 2003 Ernst von Siemens Musikpreis – Wolfgang Rihm. München, Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung, 2003. Brinkmann Reinhold (ed.). Die Neue Musik und die Tradition. Veröffentlichungen des Instituts für Neue Musik und Musikerziehung Darmstadt, vol. 19, Mainz, Schott, 1978.

Selected Bibliography

327

Brinkmann, Reinhold. Laudatio für Wolfgang Rihm (abbreviated version): www. nzz.ch/2003/05/24/ li/page-article8UUVT.html Brodsky, Seth. ‘Write the Moment’: Two Ways of Dealing with Wolfgang Rihm I, The Musical Times, vol. 145 (2004), no. 1888, pp. 57-72. Buschmeier, Gabriele, Konrad, Ulrich & Riethmüller, Albrecht (eds.). Transkription und Fassung in der Musik des 20. Jahrhunderts. Beiträge des Kolloquiums in der Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur, Mainz, 5-6 März 2004. Stuttgart, Franz Steiner Verlag, 2008. 1. Doppelgesang: http://www.universaledition.com/composers-and-works/ Wolfgang-Rihm/composer/599/work/2341. (accessed June 2017) 2. Doppelgesang: http://www.universaledition.com/composers-and-works/ Wolfgang-Rihm/composer/599/work/276. (accessed June 2017) 3. Doppelgesang: http://www.universaledition.com/composers-and-works/ Wolfgang-Rihm/composer/599/work/12126. (accessed June 2017) Fukunaka, Fuyuko. Wolfgang Rihm: Interpretive Examination of his Creative Sources. Unpubd. PhD, New York University, 2003. Häusler, Josef. ‘Wolfgang Rihm: Zwei Schwellenwerke’. In: Morphonie, Klangbeschreibung I-III. Hänssler CD 93.010, CD Booklet, 2000. Hofer, Wolfgang (ed.). Ausdruck, Zugriff, Differenzen. Der Komponist Wolfgang Rihm. Mainz, Schott, 2003. Killmayer, Wilhelm, Mauser, Siegfried & Rihm, Wolfgang (eds.). Klaviermusik des 20. Jahrhunderts. Mainz, Schott, 1992. Köhler, Armin. Wolfgang Rihm ‘Eine Strasse, Lucile’ – Fragen an den Komponisten. Programmbuch Opernhaus, Badisches Staatstheater, 2011. Krüger, Bernd (ed.). Rihm &. Programmheft der 47. Berliner Festwochen 1997. Berlin, 1997. Krüger, Bernd (ed.). Journal Musikfest Berlin 2008. Berlin, Berliner Festspiele, 2008. Krüger, Bernd & Hopp, Winrich (eds.). Journal Musikfest Berlin 2011. Berlin, Berliner Festspiele, 2011. Kutschke, Beate. Wildes Denken in der Neuen Musik. Die Idee vom Ende der Geschichte bei Theodor W. Adorno und Wolfgang Rihm. Würzburg, Königshausen & Neumann, 2002. Lochhead, Judy. ‘Logic of Edge: Wolfgang Rihm’s Am Horizont’. In: Hulse, Brian and Nesbitt, Nick (eds.). Sounding the Virtual: Gilles Deleuze and the Theory and Philosophy of Music. Surrey, Ashgate, 2010, pp. 181-198. McGregor, Andrew, Review of 1. Doppelgesang (2007), BBC [CD] ‘Wolfgang Rihm Volume 1 Review’. http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/reviews/3mf9/ (accessed June 2017) McGregor, Richard, (ed.). Wolfgang Rihm. Contemporary Music Review, Special Issue, 2018 (in press).

328

Wolfgang Rihm, a Chiffre

Mosch, Ulrich. ‘“Taktilität” des Klangs – Wolfgang Rihms Poetik’. Österreichische Musikzeitschrift, vol. 63 (2008), no. 8/9, pp. 26-33. Niemann, Barbara. Die musikalische Bearbeitung des ‘Ödipus’-Stoffes durch Wolfgang Rihm. München, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, 2013. Polzer, Berno Odo & Schäfer, Thomas (eds.). Katalog Wien Modern 2002. Saarbrücken, Pfau, 2002. Polzer, Berno Odo & Schäfer, Thomas (eds.). Katalog Wien Modern 2005. Saarbrücken, Pfau, 2005. Putten, B. van. Femmes fatales. Program notes Rihm-Resonanz, Zaterdagmatinee, Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Amsterdam, 10 December 2011. Reimann, Aribert (1979). ‘Salut für die junge Avantgarde’. Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, vol. 140 (1979), no.1, p. 25. Rexroth, Dieter (ed.). Der Komponist Wolfgang Rihm. Mainz, Schott, 1985. Riehl, Lutz. DEUS PASSUS. Internationale Bachakademie Stuttgart, Stuttgart, 2008. Sattler, Mark. Rihm plays with Brahms. Harmonia Mundi HMC 902153, CD booklet, 2013. Schaufler, Wolfgang. “CONCERTO”. Kairos 0012952KAI, CD booklet, 2009. Seedorf, Thomas (ed.). Klangbeschreibung. Zur Interpretation der Musik Wolfgang Rihms. Sinzig, Studio Verlag, 2015. https://itunes.apple.com/de/itunes-u/ internationalesmusikwissenschaftliches/ id524928996?mt=10 Tadday, Ulrich (ed.). Wolfgang Rihm. Musik-Konzepte, München, edition text + kritik, 2004. Toronyi-Lalic, Igor (2010). Wolfgang Rihm Day, Barbican. The Arts Desk, Classical Music Reviews, News & Interviews, 13 March 2010, London, 2010. www.theartsdesk.com/classical-music/wolfgang-rihm-day-barbican Varga, Bálint András. Three Questions for sixty-five Composers. New York, University of Rochester Press, 2011. Wilkening, Martin (ed.). Programmheft zu den 38. Berliner Festwochen, 1988. Berlin, 1988. Williams, Alastair (2004), ‘Voices of the Other: Wolfgang Rihm’s Music Drama Die Eroberung von Mexico’, in Journal of the Royal Musical Association, vol. 129 (2004), no. 2, pp. 240-271. Williams, Alastair. ‘Swaying with Schumann: Subjectivity and Tradition in Wolfgang Rihm’s Fremde Szenen I-III and Related Scores’. Music & Letters, vol. 87 (2006), no. 3, pp. 379-397. Williams, Alastair. ‘Postlude: Helmut Lachenmann, Wolfgang Rihm and the AustroGerman Tradition. In: Paddison, Max. Contemporary Music, Theoretical and Philosophical Perspectives, Surrey, Ashgate, 2010.

Selected Bibliography

329

Zuber, Barbara. Blick zurück nach vorn. Werklandschaften. Zu Wolfgang Rihms ’Jagden und Formen’. MusikTexte, no. 118 (2008), pp. 7-14. Zeitgegenstände - Wolfgang Rihm, Musik Baut Europa. Exhibition at the Städtische Galerie Karlsruhe, 2012.

General Information Adorno, Theodor Wiesengrund. Quasi una Fantasia. London, Verso, 1961. Adorno, Theodor Wiesengrund. Aesthetic Theory. London & New York, Continuum, 2002. Artaud, Antonin. Le Théâtre de Séraphin, 1936. http://les.tresors.de.lys.free.fr/ antonin_artaud/le_theatre_de_seraphin.htm Artaud, Antonin. Œuvres complètes. Paris, Gallimard, vol. 5, 1964. Barthes, Roland. The Death of the Author. UbuWeb, UbuWeb Papers, 1968. http:// www.tbook.constantvzw.org/wp-content/death_authorbarthes.pdf Barthes, Roland. Roland Barthes par Roland Barthes. Paris, Seuil, 1975. Bose, Hans-Jürgen von. ‘Suche nach einem neuen Schönheitsideal’. In: Thomas, Ernst (ed.). Darmstädter Beiträge der Neuen Musik. Ferienkurse 1978, Mainz, Schott, 1978, pp. 34-39. Campbell, Edward. Music After Deleuze. London & New York, Bloomsbury, 2013. Champagne, Roland. Literary History in the Wake of Roland Barthes: Re-defining the Myths of Reading. Birmingham, Alabama, Summa, 1984. Dahlhaus, Carl (ed.). Die Musik des 20. Jahrhunderts. Neues Handbuch der Musikwissenschaft, vol. 7. Laaber, Laaber, 1984. Danuser, Hermann (ed.). Neue Musik im politischen Wandel. Schott, Mainz, Veröffentlichungen des Instituts für Neue Musik und Musikerziehung, vol. 32, 1991. Gruhn, Wilfried (ed.). Das Projekt Moderne und die Postmoderne. Regensburg, Bosse, 1989. Heinrichs, Hans-Jürgen. Peter Sloterdijk. Die Kunst des Philosophierens. München, Hanser, 2011. Hoeckner, Berthold (ed.). Apparitions: New Perspectives on Adorno and TwentiethCentury Music. New York & London, Routledge, 2006. Hünermann, Tobias & Blumröder, Christoph von (eds.). Topographien der Kompositionsgeschichte seit 1945. Wien, Der Apfel, Series Signale aus Köln, vol. 16, 2011. Kolleritsch, Otto (ed.). Zur ‘Neuen Einfachheit’ in der Musik. Vienna, Universal Edition, Studien zur Wertforschung, vol. 14, 1981.

330

Wolfgang Rihm, a Chiffre

Kolleritsch, Otto (ed.). Wiederaneignung und Neubestimmung. Der Fall ‘Postmoderne’ in der Musik. Vienna & Graz, Universal Edition, Studien zur Wertungsforschung, vol. 26, 1993. Lochhead, Judy & Auner, Joseph (eds.). Postmodern Music / Postmodern Thought. New York & London, Routledge, Studies in Contemporary Music and Culture, 2002. Locchead, Judy. Reconceiving Structure in Contemporary Music. New Tools in Music Theory and Analysis. New York & London, Routledge, 2016. Lyotard, Jean-François. Le Postmoderne expliqué aux enfants. Paris, Galilée, 1986. Motte-Haber, Helga de la & Kopiez, Reinhard (eds.). Musikwissenschaft zwischen Kunst, Ästehtik und Experiment. Würzburg, Königshausen & Neumann, 1998. Motte-Haber, Helga de la (ed.). Geschichte der Musik im 20. Jahrhundert: 1975-2000. Handbuch der Musik im 20. Jahrhundert, vol. 4, Laaber, Laaber, 2000. Müller, Karl-Josef (ed.). Chaos und Zufall. Mainz, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität, 1994. Paddison, Max (ed.). Contemporary Music, Theoretical and Philosophical Perspectives, Surrey, Ashgate, 2010. Seedorf, Thomas (ed.). Klangbeschreibung. Zur Interpretation der Musik Wolfgang Rihms. Sinzig, Studio Verlag, 2016. Sloterdijk, Peter. Kritik der zynischen Vernunft. Frankfurt, Suhrkamp, 1983. Sloterdijk, Peter. Weltfremdheit. Frankfurt, Suhrkamp, 1993. Sloterdijk, Peter. Sphären I. Blasen. Frankfurt, Suhrkamp, 1998. Sloterdijk, Peter. Sphären II. Globen. Frankfurt, Suhrkamp, 1999. Sloterdijk, Peter. Der ästhetische Imperativ. Schriften zur Kunst. Bodenheim, PhiloVerlag, 2007. Stenzl, Jürg. Luigi Nono. Reinbek, Rowohlt, 1998. Stockhausen, Karlheinz. Texte zur Musik 1963-1970. Cologne, DuMont Schauberg, vol. 3, 1971. Vergo, Peter. The Music of Painting. New York, Phaidon, 2010. Williams, Alastair. New Music and the Claims of Modernity. Aldershot, Ashgate, 1997. Williams, Alastair. Music in Germany since 1968. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2013. Zimmermann, Walter. Morton Feldman Essays. Kerpen, Beginner Press, 1985. http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/buch/friedrich-wilhelm-nietzsche-lieder-des-prinzenvogelfrei-3256/5 (accessed June 2017)

Selected Bibliography

331

Scores Rihm, Wolfgang. Bild. Vienna, Universal Edition, UE 18014, 1984. Rihm, Wolfgang. Chiffre I. Vienna, Universal Edition, UE 34546, 1982. Rihm, Wolfgang. Chiffre II. Vienna, Universal Edition, UE 34547, 1983. Rihm, Wolfgang. Chiffre III. Vienna, Universal Edition, UE 17865, 1983. Rihm, Wolfgang. Chiffre IV. Vienna, Universal Edition, UE 17877, 1983. Rihm, Wolfgang. Chiffre V. Vienna, Universal Edition, UE 18115, 1984. Rihm, Wolfgang. Chiffre VI. Vienna, Universal Edition, UE 18253, 1985. Rihm, Wolfgang. Chiffre VII. Vienna, Universal Edition, UE 34548, 1985. Rihm, Wolfgang. Chiffre VIII. Vienna, Universal Edition, UE 19035, 1988. Rihm, Wolfgang. Dis-Kontur. Vienna, Universal Edition, UE 13298, 1976. Rihm, Wolfgang. Nach-Schrift. Vienna, Universal Edition, UE 32925, 2004. Rihm, Wolfgang. Nature Morte - Still Alive, Vienna: Universal Edition UE17492, 1980. Rihm, Wolfgang. Ohne Titel, String Quartet no. 5. Vienna, Universal Edition, UE 17869, 1983. Rihm, Wolfgang. Piano Piece no. 5, Tombeau. Vienna, Universal Edition, UE 16608, 1976. Rihm, Wolfgang. Piano Piece no. 7. Vienna, Universal Edition, UE 17216, 1980. Rihm, Wolfgang. Schwebende Begegnung. Vienna, Universal Edition, UE 19147, 1989. Rihm, Wolfgang. String Quartet no. 6, Blaubuch. Vienna, Universal Edition, UE 18069, 1985. Rihm, Wolfgang. String Quartet no. 7, Veränderungen. Vienna, Universal Edition, UE 18423, 1985. Rihm, Wolfgang. String Quartet no. 8. Vienna, Universal Edition, UE 19134, 1988. Schubert, Franz. Octet, D 803. Kassel, Bärenreiter, TP 302, 1969. Varèse, Edgard. Densité 21,5. New York, Colfranc Music Publishing Corporation, 1966. Varèse, Edgard. Intégrales. New York, Ricordi, N.Y. 1817, 1956. Varèse, Edgard. Octandre. New York, Ricordi, N.Y. 1818, 1956.

General Index

A

Dérives 58 Domaines 58 Eclat 58 Eclat/multiples 59 …explosante-fixe… 58-59 Figures-Doubles-Prismes 59 Incises 58 B Le soleil des eaux 72 Bach, Johann-Sebastian 32, 74, 80, Notations 58 311n.11 Piano Sonata no. 3 59 Brandenburg Concerto no. 3 80, Répons 31, 58-59 311n.11 Visage nuptial 72 Bacon, Francis 212 Brahms, Johannes 74-77 Barthes, Roland 56-57, 99, 320n.2 Ein deutsches Requiem 74 Bartók, Béla 72-73, 141 Fünf Lieder, Wie Melodien, op. 105/1 Music for Strings, Percussion and 76 Celesta 141 Vier ernste Gesänge 74 Baselitz, Georg 16, 97-98 Brinkmann, Reinhold 108, 301n.1, Beckmann, Max 98 304n.3 Beethoven, Ludwig van 22, 36, 51, 60, Brodsky, Seth 11 73, 147-48, 185, 318n.8 Bruckner, Anton 79 String Quartet no. 15, op. 132 318n.8 Brügge, Joachim 11, 21, 25, 45, 79, Symphony no. 3, Eroica 147 187-88, 303n.11, 306n.33, 307n.35, Bellheim, Markus 147, 164 313n.17, 318n.7-8 Berg, Alban 23, 73, 77, 311n.8 Büchner, Georg 74 Altenberglieder 77, 311n.8 Buñuel, Luis 178 Wozzeck 77, 311n.8 Busoni, Ferruccio 22, 36, 81, 146 Berio, Luciano 31, 33, 52 La vera storia 33 C Sequenza series 31 Cage, John 32, 304n.19 Sinfonia 58 Calvino, Italo 33 Un re in ascolto 33 Campbell, Edward 124 Bernini, Lorenzo 65 Beuys, Joseph 32, 93, 309n.32 D Blumröder, Christoph von 43 Dahlhaus, Carl 71-72 Borio, Gianmario 71, 171, 305n.3, Danuser, Hermann 53, 58 310n.50 Debussy, Claude 22, 60-61, 94, 172 Bose, Hans-Jürgen von 51, 53 La Mer 94 Boulez, Pierre 13, 31, 33, 35, 58-59, 72, Deleuze, Gilles 123-24, 304n.3 124 Adorno, Theodor W. 60, 69-72, 98, 171, 291, 310n.50 Aperghis, Georges 124 Artaud, Antonin 11, 15, 65-68, 81, 174, 290

333

334

Dibelius, Urich 23-24, 96, 124, 187-88, 315n.5, 318n.7 Drees, Stefan 321n.5 Dusapin, Pascal 124

E

Eggebrecht, Hans Heinrich 59-60, 98 Einem, Gottfried von 74 Dantons Tod 74 Ender, Daniel 124

Wolfgang Rihm, a Chiffre

Killmayer, Wilhelm 33, 61, 63, 161 Kirkeby, Per 98 Kocherscheidt, Kurt 68, 97-98, 102-03, 111-13, 116, 124, 211, 309n.32 Kutschke, Beate 24, 187-88, 318n.13

L

Lachenmann, Helmut 19, 31, 33, 61-63, 124, 171, 308n.21, 321n.2 Allegro Sostenuto 321n.2 Ausklang 321n.2 F Mouvement (– vor der Erstarrung) 63 Faust, Wolfgang Max 16 Ligeti, György 33, 52, 71, 75-76, 171, Feldman, Morton 33, 61, 94-96, 304n.19 274 Rothko Chapel 95 Aventures 75 Fels, Lucas 197 Chamber Concerto 75 Fess, Eike 79 Etudes 33 Frisius, Rudolf 209, 223, 316n.7, Le Grand Macabre 76 319n.20, 320n.2, 321n.1 Mysteries of the Macabre 76 Frobenius, Wolf 129, 135 Nouvelles Aventures 75 Poème symphonique 75 G Síppal, dobbal, nádihegedüvel 76 Giacometti, Alberto 309n.32 String Quartet no. 2 75 Glass, Philip 32 Trio for violin, horn and piano 33 Goebbels, Heiner 124 Lochhead, Judy 56, 304-05n.3 Goeyvaerts, Karel 52 Lombardi, Luca 15 Grisey, Gérard 31, 124 Lüpertz, Markus 97-98 Les espaces acoustiques 31 Lutosławski, Witold 14, 189 Guattari, Felix 123 Preludes and Fugue 14 String Quartet 189 H Lyotard, François 57 Hanslick, Eduard 126-27 Hindemith, Paul 72 M Huber, Klaus 59-60, 107 Mahler, Gustav 22, 60, 76-77, 79, 174, 285 J Das Lied von der Erde 79 Janáček, Leoš 22, 73, 185 Symphony no. 1 77, 311n.8 String Quartet no. 1, Kreutzer Sonata Symphony no. 2 77, 311n.8 73 Symphony no. 8 76 String Quartet no. 2, Intimate Letters Mauclair, Camille 94 73 Mauser, Siegfried 147, 164 McGregor, Andrew 14 K McGregor, Richard 129, 140, 165, Kagel, Mauricio 31-32, 52 305n.9, 306n.21, 317n.15, 321n.1, Sankt-Bach-Passion 33 322n.1 Kandinsky, Wassily 97 Messiaen, Olivier 32 Kiefer, Anselm 97 Saint-François d’Assise 32

General index

Monet, Claude 94 Mosch, Ulrich 34, 96-97, 113, 184, 303n.3, 304n.3, 313n.25 Motte-Haber, Helga de la 53-54 Müller-Siemens, Detlev 51 Müller, Heiner 33, 38

N

Niemann, Barbara 314n.39 Nietzsche, Friedrich 15, 66 Nolde, Emil 98 Nono, Luigi 33, 52, 61-62, 72, 136, 212, 234, 321n.5 Caminar (series) 61 Fragmente, Stille – An Diotima 62 Il Canto sospeso 72

P

Paddison, Max 310n.50 Papachristopoulos, Ioannis 126, 128 Pärt, Arvo 32 Pascal, Blaise 68, 209, 320n.2 Paulhan, Jean 67 Penck, A.R. 97 Penderecki, Krzysztof 32 Polish Requiem 32 Pousseur, Henri 52

R

Rainer, Arnulf 11, 93, 98, 104-05 Rauschenberg, Robert 95 Reger, Max 53 Reich, Steve 33 Tehillim 33 Reimann, Aribert 12 Rexroth, Dieter 96 Rimbaud, Arthur 14 Rothko, Mark 95-96 Ruthemeier, Dorothea 305n.9, 320n.2

335

Sechs kleine Klavierstücke, op. 19 76 Schubert, Franz 22, 36, 51, 60, 73, 87, 89-91, 279, 312n.19, 317n.7 Der Wanderer (D 489) 87 Octet in F major (D 803) 87, 89-90 Schultze, Bernard 71 Schumann, Robert 60, 66, 74 Schweinitz, Wolfgang von 51 Shulman, Laurie 14 Sloterdijk, Peter 35, 63-66, 68, 290, 309n.26, 309n.33 Stockhausen, Karlheinz 19, 33, 44, 49, 52, 56, 58-60, 63, 70, 72, 128, 131, 134-35, 148, 179, 267, 290, 317n.24 Gruppen 72 Hymnen 58 Licht 33, 317n.24 Momente 44, 148-49 Sirius 33 Stoianova, Ivanka 9, 317n.24 Strauss, Botho 74 Strauss, Richard 74 Salome 74 Stravinsky, Igor 72, 77, 311n.8 Le Sacre du Printemps 77, 311n.8

T

Titian 212 Top, Edward 128, 161 Trojahn, Manfred 51

U

Urmetzer, Reinhold 186

V

Varèse, Edgard 14, 60-61, 72, 81-87, 97, 160, 178, 311n.8, 311n.12-13, 311n.16, 312n.18 Amériques 81, 87 Arcana 14, 81, 87, 311n.13 S Densité 21,5 82-85 Schnebel, Dieter 52 Déserts 81 Schnittke, Alfred 52, 58 Hyperprism 81, 87 Concerto grosso no. 4/Symphony no. 5 Intégrales 77, 86-87, 311n.8, 312n.18 58 Octandre 82 Schönberg, Arnold 22, 60-61, 71-72, 76, Offrandes 87 301n.1 Varga, Bálint András 120

336

Velasquez, Diego 212 Velte, Eugen Werner 59-60 Vergo, Peter 94-95 Verlaine, Paul 14 Vivaldi, Antonio 22

W

Wagner, Richard 79 Webern, Anton 68, 76, 301n.1 ‘Entflieht auf leichten Kähnen’, op. 2 76 Fünf Lieder aus ‘Der siebente Ring’ von Stefan George, op. 3 76

Wolfgang Rihm, a Chiffre



Vier Stücke für Geige und Klavier, op. 7 76 Wilkening, Martin 21, 183, 185, 187-88 Williams, Alastair 11-13, 16-17, 59, 63, 148, 164, 210, 302n.10, 311n.16 Winkler, Gerhard 127-28

Z

Zemlinsky, Alexander von 77, 311n.8 Lyrische Symphonie 77, 311n.8 Zender, Hans 52 Zimmermann, Bernd Alois 52 Zuber, Barbara 13, 24, 108, 304n.3

Index of Compositions by Wolfgang Rihm

A

Chiffre II, Silence to be Beaten 27, 67, 77-80, 87, 113, 132, 149, 152-54, 155, 169-70, 172, 178, 181, 215, 220-25, 233, 236-43, 249-51, 253-54, 256, 260, 262-63, 265-67, 270-73, 275, 284-87, 299, 311n.16 Chiffre III 27, 68, 75-76, 78-80, 86-87, B 113, 120, 155, 169, 172, 175, 181, Bild (eine Chiffre) 16, 27, 82-85, 87, 93, 210, 215, 220-23, 225, 232, 238-43, 113, 120, 155, 160, 167-69, 171, 173, 247-48, 250, 253, 256, 260, 262-63, 178, 210, 216, 219-25, 240-41, 247265-66, 272-75, 281, 284, 287, 299, 48, 250-51, 259, 262, 264, 266-67, 312n.18 277-78, 282-83, 287-88, 299, 320n.1 Chiffre IV 27, 76, 132, 155, 169, 172, 174, Bildnis: Anakreon 37, 93 176-78, 181, 210, 215, 219-25, 227, Blick auf Kolchis 112 229-33, 240-42, 249-51, 265-67, 275Brahmsliebewalzer 74 77, 284, 287, 294, 299 Bratschenkonzert 157 Chiffre V 27, 77, 87, 113, 118, 123, 147, C 155, 170, 172, 210, 216, 220-26, 233, Cantus firmus (Musik in memoriam Luigi 239-43, 247-48, 250, 263, 265-67, Nono) 234 278-79, 281, 284-85, 287, 300 Canzona 158, 316n.3 Chiffre VI 27, 42, 76-77, 87-91, 155, Chiffre (cycle) 12, 15-17, 20, 22, 26-27, 170-71, 175, 181, 210, 216-17, 21933, 35, 40-41, 49, 57, 68, 73, 75, 77, 26, 232-33, 239-43, 248, 251, 266-67, 79, 82, 86, 93, 113, 116, 120, 149, 279-82, 284-85, 287, 300, 320n.2, 154-56, 158, 165, 169, 176, 179, 181, 321n.1 209-15, 218-20, 222-23, 225-27, 233- Chiffre VII 27, 77, 87, 113, 155, 170-72, 36, 240, 244, 246-47, 257, 259-60, 210, 218-26, 232-33, 236, 238-42, 265, 268-69, 274, 283, 287-89, 293248-49, 253-55, 260-62, 266-67, 28194, 305n.9, 306n.21, 311n.16, 320n.2, 82, 284-87, 300 321n.1, 322n.1 Chiffre VIII 12, 27, 76, 82, 155, 169-71, Chiffre I 27, 35-36, 78-80, 129, 132, 149210-11, 218, 220-23, 225, 227, 23151, 155, 169, 175, 177, 179, 181, 21032, 235, 240-42, 248, 259, 262, 26615, 220-29, 232-33, 235-49, 252-53, 67, 275, 282-84, 287-88, 300 259-62, 265-71, 273, 275, 283-84, “CONCERTO” 36, 184, 305n.11 286-88, 298, 316n.7, 320n.2, 320n.4, Concerto “Séraphin” 114 321n.1, 322n.1 cuts and dissolves 37-38 Akt 184 Akt und Tag 184 Alexanderlieder 37 Antlitz 43, 145

337

338

D

Das Gehege 74 Das Lesen der Schrift 74 Das Rot 66, 93 Der Maler träumt 98 Der Wanderer (D 489, arrangement) 87 DEUS PASSUS 32, 74 Die Eroberung von Mexico 15, 66, 68 Die Hamletmaschine 33 Diptychon 93 Dis-Kontur 12, 48, 119, 132-35, 305n.9 Doppelgesang (series) 14, 17, 157-58 Dritte Musik für Violine und Orchester 112 Dunkles Spiel 35, 126 Duomonolog 157

Wolfgang Rihm, a Chiffre

I

In-Schrift 114 Ins Offene… 126 Interscriptum 36,184

J

Jagden und Formen 20, 24, 46, 59, 108, 212, 320n.8 Jakob Lenz 16, 66, 74, 161, 165, 305n.9

K

Kalt 115 Kein Firmament 81 Klangbeschreibung (series) 12-13, 20, 34, 173, 210, 233, 306n.32 Klavierstück Nr. 4 132, 134-35 Klavierstück Nr. 5, Tombeau 162, 167, 305n.9 E Klavierstück Nr. 6, Bagatellen 38, 55, 103, Eine Strasse, Lucile 74 112, 161, 178 En plein air 93, 184 Klavierstück Nr. 7 39, 147, 163-64 Ernster Gesang 74 Erscheinung, Skizze über Schubert 16, 73, Kleine Echophantasie 157 Kolchis 112-13, 116 87, 317n.7 Kolonos 37 ET LUX 32, 74, 184 Etudes d’après Séraphin 31

F

Fetzen 38, 183-84 Form/Zwei Formen 81 Frau/Stimme 38 Fremde Szenen 66, 74

G

Gebild 35, 93, 157 Gedicht des Malers 93, 98-99 Gedrängte Form 59 Geheimer Block 312n.2 Gejagte Form 59, 308n.21 Gesänge op. 1 12, 14 Gesungene Zeit 158 Grave 183

H

Hölderlin-Fragmente 37, 301n.1 In Frage (in memoriam) 112 Frage (in memoriam II) 112

L

La lugubre gondola / Das Eismeer 234 La musique creuse le ciel 21 Ländler 39, 52, 87 Lenz-Fragmente 37, 66

M

Morphonie, Sektor IV 161, 184 Musik für drei Streicher 22, 318n.7 Musik für Oboe und Orchester 158 Musik in memoriam Luigi Nono (series) 234, 321n.5

N

Nach-Schrift, eine Chiffre 27, 35-36, 113, 181, 211, 218, 236-37, 240-41, 26567, 283-84, 287-88, 300 Nachtwach 114 Nähe fern 75 Nature Morte – Still Alive 14, 93, 119, 173

Index of Compositions by Wolfgang Rihm

O

Ohne Titel, String Quartet no. 5 17, 23, 28, 66, 93, 96-99, 104, 106-07, 109, 111-12, 116-18, 123, 132, 147, 15860, 172-73, 175, 179-81, 183-84, 188-93, 195-99, 201, 203, 290, 293, 297, 309n.32, 313n.25

P

Paraphrase 134-35 Pol – Kolchis – Nucleus 112, 211

Q

Oedipus 112 Quartettstudie 183, 319n.20 Quid est Deus? 32

S

Schattenstück 93, 98 Schwarzer und roter Tanz 37, 59, 93 Schwebende Begegnung 136-39, 315n.7 Séraphin (series) 31, 66-67, 114, 212, 309n.33 Sieben Passions-Texte 32 Sine nomine 96 SKOTEINÓS 37, 114 String Quartet (1968) 183 String Quartet in G minor 183 String Quartet no. 1 183 String Quartet no. 2 183 String Quartet no. 3, Im Innersten 65, 73, 79, 97, 128, 161-62, 183, 185 String Quartet no. 4 20, 127, 129, 140, 179, 183, 186, 305n.9, 306n.33 String Quartet no. 6, Blaubuch 21, 28, 34, 36, 99-104, 110, 112, 116, 171, 173, 181, 183-86, 188, 193, 195-99, 202-03, 294, 289, 293, 297, 305n.11, 317n.18, 318n.7-8, 318n.16 String Quartet no. 7, Veränderungen 28, 67-68, 113-14, 124, 164, 171-2, 174, 179, 181, 183, 185, 187-88, 193-97,

339

204-05, 298, 318n.13, 319n.17-19 String Quartet no. 8 28, 57, 66, 99, 132, 160, 165, 172, 174, 179, 183, 185, 188, 194-97, 206-08, 210, 298, 313n.17 String Quartet no. 9, Quartettsatz 183 String Quartet no. 10 183 String Quartet no. 11 183 String Quartet no. 12 183 String Quartet no. 13 183 Stück 113 Styx und Lethe 158 Sub-Kontur 12, 16, 119, 129, 132, 134-36

T

Tristesse d’une étoile 183 Tutuguri (series) 13, 20, 37, 49, 59, 6566, 93, 106, 113, 211

U

Über die Linie (series) 49, 93, 127, 157, 186 Umhergetrieben, aufgewirbelt 37, 302n.18 Umfassung 234 Unbenannt (series) 96 Ungemaltes Bild 93, 98

V

Verborgene Formen 59 Verwandlung (series) 13 Vier Studien 184 Vigilia 32 Vorgefühle 38

W

Wölfli-Lieder 66 Wölfli-Liederbuch 66

Z

Zeichen I – Doubles 12 Zwischen den Zeilen 183 Zwischenblick: “Selbsthenker!” 22, 124, 183