Composing with Tones’

Kathryn Bailey , ‘Composing with Tones’: A Musical Analysis of Schoenberg's Op. 23 Pieces for Piano ( London : Royal Musical Association , 2001 ). x + 134 pp . £25.00 ISBN 0-947854-09-6 (hb) . The composition of the Fünf Klavierstücke Op. 23, Serenade Op. 24 and Suite für Klavier Op. 25 occupied Schoenberg intermittently between the summer of 1920 and the spring of 1923. As his experiments in incipient dodecaphony, they represent a compendium of the multifarious compositional practices and techniques essayed during this period. The two ‘series’ of piano pieces, as they are denominated in the manuscripts, probably became independent works in the summer of 1921 when Schoenberg began composing the Intermezzo of Op. 25 using the same pitch material as that of the as yet incomplete Prelude. By contrast, the absence of a unifying device in the Fünf Klavierstücke resulted in pieces of sharply differentiated character. Notwithstanding the proliferating literature on the evolution of Schoenberg's method of composing with twelve notes, Kathryn Bailey's monograph is the first study devoted exclusively to the examination of all five pieces of Op. 23 and, as such, the format and size of the book are ideal.1 As the title indicates, its stance is analytical, Bailey defending her adjectival ‘musical’ rather than ‘music’ as appropriate to an analysis ‘concerned with the pieces not only as structural entities but more specifically as music’ (p. 10). Rather than considering them ‘as some sort of intriguing and perhaps mysterious constructions which have little or nothing to do with music’ (p. 99), she conceives an analysis ‘that discusses [the pieces] in musical terms, considering the way they sound and the way they look on the page’ (p. 10). To this end, she perceives the set-theoretical approach as ‘an analysis . . . of a rudimentary sort, which . . . must be followed by an examination of the music in the context of musical tradition’ (p. 9). In the absence of tonality, the importance attached to traditional means of formal delineation – repetition, tempo modifications and textural contrast – is both welcome and appropriate. While the examination of the pitch material and its contribution to the formulation of the twelve-note method is not eschewed, Bailey's primary concern is with the pieces’ formal structures, which, in her view, have been ‘largely ignored – or misread’ (p. 3). In the context of the breakdown of tonality in 1908 and the consequent dissolution of large-scale form, she contends that Op. 23 represents a ‘revivification of traditional forms’ after a period of twelve years (p. 3) and, moreover, that each of the five pieces is a sonata form, albeit an ‘eccentric’ one (p. 123) sometimes fused with other formal prototypes. This view contrasts with Erwin Stein's comment that sonata form was regained only in the Bläserquintett Op. 26 after an absence of fifteen years, and with Schoenberg's belief, expressed in 1923, that ‘for the first time again for 15 years’ he had ‘found a key’.2 Crucially, Bailey believes that analysis should be informed by the composer's writings and should reflect ‘the way in which the composer's mind may have been working when he wrote the piece’ (p. 9): in the same way as her analyses of the music of Webern consider topics ‘about which he wrote and spoke’ (p. 9), she here invokes Fundamentals of Musical Composition to illustrate that the musical logic of Schoenberg's compositions derives from his analyses of the Austro-German musical canon. Implicit in Schoenberg's theoretical writings, however, is a conceptual and terminological precision and a consistency and appropriateness of application.3 While Bailey espouses Schoenbergian Formenlehre, she neglects its contrasting principles of polyphony and homophony, which underpin Schoenberg's unique conception of music history. One of the tenets of his theoretical writings is the intimate relationship between the technique of motivic presentation and the resulting form: ‘the principle of homophonic music is “developing variation” (entwickelnde Variation), that of contrapuntal music is “unfolding” (Abwicklung)’.4 Musical evolution, according to Schoenberg, was cyclic and predicated on the presentation of the musical idea in musical space. The polyphony of the renaissance and baroque periods was distinguished by vertical presentation – since the idea was articulated simultaneously in all voices – and was superseded in the classical era by a homophonic style of melody and accompaniment, in which a main voice assumed supremacy over all others and the idea was presented in the horizontal dimension.5 This consanguinity between form and mode of presentation is reaffirmed by Webern: ‘from the basis of horizontal presentation grew the cycle-forms of the sonata, symphony, etc.’, whereas ‘from vertical presentation grew polyphony, and with polyphony the forms involved therein – canon, fugue, etc.’.6 The ramifications of this bifurcation permeate Schoenberg's musical morphology. On the one hand, homophonic forms rely on the confrontation of stable and loose formations (to use Schoenberg's preferred translation), such that main and subordinate themes, for example, exhibit contrasting formal organisation, linked by developing variation: ‘Music of the homophonic-melodic style of composition . . . produces its material by . . . developing variation’.7 As distinct from motivic variations, which exist merely to provide interest, the basic criterion of developing variation, that ‘something new always has to come into being’, is exemplified by the generation of the subordinate theme, the motives of which are derived from variants of the main theme.8 Developing variation in homophony is thus dependent on the mutability of the motive. On the other hand, the omnipresence of the contrapuntal motive in polyphonic music obviates the necessity for thematic contrast, since the purpose of contrapuntal composition ‘is never that of producing new motivic forms’.9 Variation is achieved, in the first instance, by operations such as ‘the comes in fugue, and augmentation, diminution and inversion [which] do not aim at development but only at producing variety of sound by the changing of mutual relationships’ and, in the second instance, by ‘unravelling’ the ‘basic configuration or combination’ of the motive as presented in a number of voices and reconstructing its elements into a seemingly new arrangement comprised of the same material.10 Unfolding or unravelling in polyphony presumes the immutability of the motive. That Schoenberg's compositions of the early 1920s represent a return to such polyphonic thinking is borne out by a section added to the 1922 edition of the Harmonielehre: ‘For it is apparent, and will probably become increasingly clear, that we are turning to a new epoch of polyphonic style, and as in the earlier epochs, harmonies will be a product of the voice leading: justified solely by the melodic lines!’.11 The role of counterpoint in the evolution of dodecaphony was further elucidated by Stein in a seminal essay entitled ‘Neue Formprinzipien’ of 1924. The Grundgestalt or basic shape – understood, at that time, as a melodic motive devoid of rhythmic characteristics – is modified by transposition, inversion and retrograde; consistent with the practice in contrapuntal composition, however, the intervals arising from the ordered succession of notes are fixed. According to Stein, the ‘derivative forms’ that we now recognise as serial variants ‘change the physiognomy of the motif but retain its structure’.12 Both the presence or absence of ‘contrasts and disruptions’ and the deployment of twelve-note compositional procedures inform Bailey's grouping of pieces within the Op. 23 set (p. 121). Her analyses demonstrate a shared dependence on sharp contrast as a means of formal articulation in nos. 1 and 2 and a lesser degree of structural demarcation in nos. 3 and 4, an observation supported by the compositional chronology, since nos. 1 and 2 were the only movements to be completed in the summer of 1920. This distinction echoes Stein's remarks: [nos. 1 and 2] develop their thoughts into a well-defined sentence (zu einem geschlossenen Satz), before submitting them to extensive modifications. The formal effect, therefore, is of theme and variations. In the later pieces, on the other hand, the basic shapes are from the outset not only the thematic material, but in every respect the constructive matter for the entire movements. The form is more homogenous, showing a certain affinity with that of fugue, in that the musical thought is exposed in open form (in sozusagen offener Form).13 One might perceive the accretion of closed musical units and the theme-and-variation effect in No. 1 as a way of implying a type of structural demarcation appropriate to homophonic form. The recreation of contrast in the absence of tonality through modifications of tempo, texture and articulation reinforces Charles Rosen's claim, cited by Bailey, that the piece resembles a Brahmsian intermezzo. Despite Bailey's assertion that ‘it is sometimes difficult to know what to make of such first-generation descriptions’ (p. 20), Stein's account of No. 1 as ‘a three-voice invention’ betraying affinities with Bach's practice is nevertheless apposite for the technique of motivic presentation employed in the outer sections of the tripartite structure. Bailey does illustrate lucidly the generation of the three-voice texture from three ‘rows’; having demonstrated the recurrence of the ‘rows’ and their fragments in the closing section, however, she concludes that the coda constitutes a second ‘development’ within the sonata design. The passage she construes as developmental is more readily identifiable as an example of polyphonic variation: the three ‘rows’ that are presented in a particular combination at the opening are merely realigned by ‘shifting the position of the various constituents . . . in a kaleidoscopic manner’ to create a different temporal relationship between the voices.14 The ‘open form’ to which Stein refers seems applicable to a contrapuntal composition typified by an absence of cadential definition since, in contradistinction to the collaboration of melody and accompaniment in homophonic music, independent voices in polyphony rarely cadence at the same structural point.15 Bailey begins her detailed investigation of No. 3 by claiming that ‘the third piece is a fugue, though a fugue that has strong family ties with sonata form’ (p. 58). Working on this premise, she identifies the manifold occurrences of the five-note ‘fugue subject’ and employs nomenclature associated with both fugue and sonata: the ‘exposition’, for example, comprises ‘opening entries’, a ‘second group’, ‘stretto entries’ and ‘closing entries’ (p. 59). The presupposition that, for Schoenberg, sonata and fugue can coexist is, however, erroneous. On the contrary, they represent the acme of homophonic and polyphonic forms respectively: ‘A fugue is a method of developing musical pictures from a basic construction and its meaning is a counterpointal-one [sic] which does not correspond with the method of Sonata-forms, which develops their ideas in an [sic] perfectly other way’.16 Citing Schoenberg's definition of fugue as ‘a composition with maximum self-sufficiency of content’ in which ‘nothing would claim a place . . . unless it were derived, at least indirectly, from the theme’ (p. 58), Bailey acknowledges that the decision to cast No. 3 as a fugue is a manifestation of Schoenberg's search for greater unity. In this respect, the piece is the locus classicus of Schoenberg's ‘composing with tones’ (a phrase which, in spite of the monograph's title, receives no comment) in that a five-note Grundgestalt is treated in the manner of an ordered set and forms the basis of the entire piece.17 Although much of Bailey's analysis is concerned with demonstrating the ubiquity of this Grundgestalt in its various guises, she concludes that the fugue subject does not saturate the entire texture. Studies by Hans Oesch and Martina Sichardt (neither of which appears in Bailey's bibliography) in contrast corroborate Stein, maintaining that almost all of the piece's pitch material is extrapolated from the Grundgestalt.18 Moreover, Bailey considers the inversion of voices to be a ‘developmental technique’ (p. 62), whereas Schoenberg, in a document coetaneous with the composition of No. 3, refers to such processes as variety within a polyphonic context: ‘In polyphonic music, motivic shapes, themes, phrases and the like . . . are never developed, never split off new shapes and are seldom varied: for all (almost all) development (Entwicklung) takes place through alteration of the mutual relation to each other of the various components of the idea’.19 Such inversion may also be understood as an example of Schoenberg's notion of counterpoint ‘as a many-sided presentation of the idea’.20 Consistent with his conception of a fugue, the Grundgestalt remains inviolate in No. 3, although it is concealed within the texture through presentation in both the horizontal and vertical dimensions and by interleaving statements of its serial variants to produce composites bearing little apparent resemblance to the opening ‘fugue subject’. In the light of Ratz's comment of 1920 that Schoenberg's music signifies the ‘true rebirth of polyphonic music’, it seems appropriate that the formal scheme of No. 3 should be predicated on the specific techniques of motivic manipulation exhibited in the piece.21 Composed in February 1923, immediately after the completion of Nos. 3 and 4 and over eighteen months after the Prelude of Op. 25, No. 5 stands apart from the preceding pieces for a number of reasons: first, it is the only piece based on a referential linear ordering of twelve notes; second, its texture is predominantly homophonic in that there is a principal content-carrying melodic voice; third, its melody is distinguished by repetitions of rhythmic motives, something Stein perceives as contributing to its ‘lighter character’;22 and fourth, it is alone in Op. 23 in bearing a title, ‘Waltz’, possibly significant in view of Schoenberg's statements that ‘one would scarcely write a waltz in the form of a symphony’ and that ‘in general, light, graceful, simple moods will not require complicated forms nor adventurous elaboration’.23 Bailey takes cognisance of the title, yet identifies a sonata form: Like all the other movements in this set of pieces, the waltz is governed to a considerable degree by the requirements and expectations of sonata form, though, as with two of the earlier pieces (nos. 1 and 3), to call it a sonata and leave it at that would be to miss the subtlety with which aspects of this form are integrated with the ternary form implied by the title. (p. 104) Her reading of the piece's design as ABCBA1 and coda, where A and B are defined as a period and sentence respectively while C contains a trio and development, is problematic because the presence of two successive stable structures is unsubstantiated by Schoenbergian functional morphology. Schoenberg notes that a subordinate theme is differentiated from a main theme by its loose structure and is thus characterised by ‘direct and immediate repetition of segments [and] juxtaposition of contrasting segments’, a description that fits the organisation of the B section.24 Inasmuch as Schoenberg perceived ‘dance forms’ as being ‘among the simplest forms’, perhaps his principle of juxtaposition provides a more fruitful model for engaging with the Waltz's formal simplicity and explaining the way in which disparate sections are arranged alongside one another to produce a paratactic structure.25 Reflecting Schoenberg's conception of a popular tune, each of the sections of the Waltz is self-contained, in that the motivic variations within these discrete sections neither demand continuation nor create consequences in the course of the composition. Bailey sets out to provide an analysis of the Klavierstücke grounded ‘in the tradition of Schoenberg's musical forbears’ (p. 123). As I suggest, she falls somewhat short of her objective; in this respect, her excoriation of the work of North-American music theorists seems inappropriate.26 Furthermore, the extent to which she seeks to explain each of the five pieces in terms of sonata form (however qualified) might lead us to believe that Schoenberg's intention was consistency of form within the set of pieces; the titled pieces of opp. 24 and 25 suggest otherwise, as does Schoenberg's conception of the formal contrasts that underpin the sonata cycles of Viennese classicism.27 Theodor Adorno, in his frustratingly brief comments on Op. 23, proposes a conspectus of formal schemes that reflects better the diversity of motivic technique, mode of presentation and character.28 The significance and range of the individual ‘attempts’ that characterise Op. 23 are thrown into the sharpest relief when considered alongside the contemporaneous movements of the Serenade and Suite, particularly those composed in manifest haste and enthusiasm in February and March 1923 when, for Schoenberg, the recapturing of large-scale homophonic form finally seemed possible.29

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