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Shades of the Double's Original*: René Leibowitz's dispute with Boulez

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 February 2010

Reinhard Kapp
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Extract

LEIBOWITZ IS DEAD, but the hostility smoulders on, and one wonders what, beyond personal involvement, lay behind it. Boulez, too, has long been relegated to the unending line of historical cases—as can be seen from the ‘dated’ impression made by the second volume of Musikdenken heute. It seems difficult to revert to an earlier stage of musical theory, let alone one even earlier than that, without invoking purely ‘historical interest’. But the pre-history of the serial movement, which has left its traces on everyone's consciousness, could explain both its signal success and its ignominious failure. Its collapse has been total; the ostensible reasons for the abandonment of the movement were no less threadbare than for its inception. Leibowitz, the ‘classic dodecaphonist’, left some theoretical loopholes, but one can hardly make him the scapegoat for errors lying outside his responsibility. Even in retrospect, his mowing down by ‘progress’ cannot be justified; but it is not merely an act of reparation if one still, or once more, gives him serious consideration.

Type
Research Article
Information
Tempo , Issue 165 , June 1988 , pp. 2 - 16
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1988

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References

† Musikdenken heute 2, trans. Häusler, Josef (Mainz: Schott 1985)Google Scholar, corresponds approximately to the newly-published material in the collected English edition of Boulez's writings. Orientations, trans. Cooper, Martin (London: Faber. 1986)—EdGoogle Scholar.

* For an outline account of Leibowitz's life and compositions, see the two articles byjan Magnire published in TEMPO 131 and 132. Reinhard Kapp has published a bibliography of Leibowitz's, writings: ‘Materialien zu cinem Verzeichuis der Scbriften von René Leibowitz,’ Zeitschrifl flir Musiktheorie 2 (1987), Heft 3, pp. 275ff—EdGoogle Scholar.

1 The reproach of academicism, which was raised by all the interested parties on the most various occasions, for that reason lost much ot its force; I think one can leave it at that.

2 At present in the Schoenberg Museum, Mödling, Vienna.

3 Besuch bei Arnold Schöherg, in: SMZ 89 (1949), p. 324Google Scholar.

4 La Revue musicale 17 (1936), p. 167Google Scholar (Works by Schubert, Herscher-Clément, Leibowitz, Waterman): ‘Nullc musique ne pouvait faire un plus violent contraste avec celle des Danois, que le Concertino pour alto de René Leibowitz. Ici, toute la volonté est tendue vers les extremês limites d'une expression âpre et inéprouvée. La syntaxe, issue de celle des Viennois de la lignée Schönberg—Alban Berg—Webern, ne fait nulle concession â nos habituelles performances auditives. M. Korner, altiste, et le pianiste Michel Elosegui triomphêrent avec unne habilité surprenantc des difficultés de toute nature dont cette oeuvre intéressante est hérissée.’

5 ‘… des Acquisitions Schocnbcrgiennes’, heading of Chap. X in Sehoniberg el son École, Paris 1947, p. 212Google Scholar.

6 Ursula Stürzbecher, Werkstattgespäche mil Komponisten, Munich 1973. p. 54Google Scholar.

7 Leibowitz's footnote: ‘I am thinking especially of Stravinsky. Cf. my previously cited article [= ‘Igor Stravinsky ou le choix de la misère musicale’, Les Temps motlemes. No. 7]’.

8 Schoenberg et son École. pp. 276, 278. [Quoted here in the translation by Newlin, Dika. Schoenberg and His School(New York: Philosoplical Library. 1949. hereafter Newlin). pp.274, 276Google Scholar. The passage in square brackets restores a phrase elided by the translator.—(Ed.)]

9 Op. 13 in the original French; op. 12 in Newlin; performed in Darmstadt as op. 20; op. 12A in Leibowitz's definitive list of works; op. 1213 is a violin version for Rudolf Kolisch.

10 loc. cit. pp. 283, 285 (Newlin pp.281, 282). The ensuing discussions are also of interest with regard to Boulez.

11 Boulez, Pierre, Par volonté et par hasard: Conversations with Célestin Deliège, trans. Wangermée, Robert (London: Eulenburg, 1976), p. 13Google Scholar. On the connexion between Leibowitz's Sonata and Boulez's Sonatina nowadays see alsoHirsbrunner, Theo, Pierre Boulez undsein Werk, Laaber 1985, p. 46Google Scholar.

12 Cf. Schubert, Giselher, Werkidee und Komposilionstechnik. Zur seriellan Musik von Boulez, Stockhausen und Ligeti, in Die Musik der Flinfziger jahre, ed. Dahlhaus, Carl (Publications of the Institut fur Neue Musik und Musikerziehung Darmstadt, Vol. 26)Google Scholar.

13 No. 2(1948)

14 This means, if I interpret it correctly, that rhythm- and interval-defined motifs separate off and are worked out independently of each other.

15 Boulcz, Pierre, ‘Proposals’, in Notes of an Apprenticeship collected by Paul Thévenin, translated by Weinstock, Herbert (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1968: hereafter Notes), pp. 67–8Google Scholar.

16 Later on Boulez would learn to value Berg's contributions to ‘rhythmic explorations’ more justly. In the Deliège Conversation he claims to have known it even then; not yet, on the other hand, the exceptional status of Webern:'… in the Webern pieces I knew at that time, I had not found that type of very dense rhythmic structure—though it does exist in works by Webern that I discovered later… In the first works I got to know—the Symphony op.21 for example—the writing is extremely classical: it consists of canons such as can be found above all in pre-classical or Baroque music. In fact there is not really any very profound rhythmic elaboration in the whole of the modern Viennese school. But another thing that attracted me was what Berg called ‘monorhythmica’—used in certain passages of this music ‘hellip;’ Conversations with Deliégc(cf. Note 11), p. 13.

17 Notes, p. 64.

18 ibid., pp. 71.

19 ibid., pp. 64, 70, 71.

20 ibid., p. 64.

21 Trajectories: Ravel, Stravinsky, Schoenberg', in Notes p. 242ff.

22 Let us simply assume that Boulez has no sense of humour. Or that Boulez's wit was baffled by Leibowitz's theory, which could not be less of a platitude (cf. ‘Proposals’ in Notes, p. 61.

23 Cf. ‘If, in fact, I want to go further with my inquiry into Schocnberg's language, I shall necessarily recognize that the adoption of the dodecaphonic writing style—I insist on the word style and what it may represent, in this case, of incompleteness—did not change the basic principles of the tonal language. I refer to ideas of melody, harmony, and counterpoint envisaged as separate functions, ideas valid in the language of the 18th and 19th centuries, although the superiority of Bach, for example, or of the late Beethoven, resides precisely in the intimate unification of these three aspects of the tonal system’. Notes, p. 256.

24 Notes, p. 258.

25 Quoted from Musik-Konzepte 22, Béta Bartók, p. 19f.

26 ‘Someone now might ask me how I choose the rhythms—and that is a question to which no verbal reply is possible; it is one that can be answered only by the music that one writes …’ (‘Proposals’, in Notes, p. 70).

27 Melos 17 (1950), p. 361Google Scholar.

28 Rufer, Josef, Die Komposition mit zwöf Tönen, Berlin and Wunsiedel 1952, p. 161 fGoogle Scholar. The appendix is only found in the first edition. Incidentally, Rufer also discovers in Schoenberg a sort of ‘isorhythmic procedure’: p. 109, 122, 146 f.

29 Journal of the American Musicohgical Society 3 (1950) No. 165, p. 59fGoogle Scholar. Cf. also in the same number the abstract of a paper read by R. H. Hoppin: ‘Rhythm as a Structural Device in the Motet Around 1400’.

30 The temporary alliance between Boulez and Cage could be seen as confirmation.

31 ‘Stravinsky Remains’ in Notes, p. 143. (For the first passage cited we have preferred a translation by Inge Goodwin to Weinstock's freer version—Eds.)

32 ‘A time for Johann Sebastian Bach’ in Notes, p. 11 (Weinstock in fact translates ‘dissolution’ as ‘suspension’—Eds.)

33 ‘Stravinsky Remains’ Notes, p. 143.

34 ibid., p. 143–5 (with Editorial revisions.)

35 Notes, p. 72. Rudolf Stephan had already pointed out this connexion early on.

36 One need only go through the early post-war years of Melos, in those days dedicated to neo-classicism: hardly one author omits this cliché.

37 It is interesting also to note the conversion of Heinrich Strobcl, a former fierce opponent of Schoenberg, to the patron of the serial movement.

38 Cf. Weber, Horst, Dallapiccola – Madema – Nono: Tradition among the Italian Modernists, in: Stephan, Rudolf and Wiesman, Sigrid (Ed.), Report on the 2. Congress of the Internationale Schönberg-Cesellschaft, Vienna, 1986, p. 97Google Scholar.

39 This reminds one a little of that retrospective anti-Fascism so often mentioned and discussed by Klaus Heinrich, which with the demolition of the 19th century facades expected to strike at the root of all evil.

40 [‘ultra-conscquente’], if I understand the word correctly which Pierre-Michel Menger, in Le Paradoxe du Musicim: Le compositeur, le mélomane et l'État dans la sociéte conteinporaine (Flammarion), 1983, p.59, quotes without substantiation and clearly also out of context.

41 The invitation reached Leibowitz too late.

42 Despite Heinz-Klaus Metzger's responsive ‘Addendum in motu contrario’ (cf. Miuik-Konzepte, monograph on Anton Weherti, pp. 2O7ff), which refers to expressive requirements being the motive for the utmost differentiation in serial music—to which I would merely add ‘It would be nice if it were so’; and despite certain ideas about realization, composing-out and rationalization of the Espressivo, which Scherchen and Kolisch also got hold of—the Darmstadt music had expressive requirements, of course, but no Espressivo.

43 Qu'est-ce que la Mmique de douze Sons? Le Concerto pour neuf Instruments Op. 24 d’ Anton Webem, Liege 1948, p. 61Google Scholar.

44 I am indebted to Rudolf Stephan for my knowledge of this document.