helmut lachenmann's concept of rejection

Helmut Lachenmann's Concept of RejectionAuthor(s): Elke HockingsSource: Tempo, New Series, No. 193, German Issue (Jul., 1995), pp. 4-10+12-14Published by: Cambridge University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/945557 .

Accessed: 08/04/2014 09:17

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Cambridge University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Tempo.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 143.106.219.66 on Tue, 8 Apr 2014 09:17:58 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cup

http://www.jstor.org/stable/945557?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


Elke Hockings

Helmut Lachenmann's Concept of Rejection

1. German-English-Modern

The eminent German composer Helmut Lachen- mann enjoys an exalted reputation among a small circle of English contemporary music enthusiasts. To the wider English music public, though, he is little known.1 There are hardly any compre- hensive accounts of Lachenmann in English.2 His consciously elusive compositional style could even be introduced to the English audience as 'old-guard avantgarde'3 without being challenged at all.

The apparent confusion about Lachenmann's music in English-speaking countries is somewhat surprising. His persistently unusual and challenging instrumental treatments - often associated with modernism - can be only one reason for this hesitant Anglo-American reception. Compositions that explore unusual sounds are by no means uncommon in these parts of the world. The problems might stem less from the disposition of Lachenmann's music than from the way his music

l One only needs to compare the English and German version of the Heritage of Music series eds. Michael Raeburn, Alan Kendal, co-eds. Felix Aprahamian, Wilfried Mellers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989). Lachenmann, who did not feature at all in the original English version, was given due respect in its German counterpart. 2 Although Lachenmann is listed in English encyclopedias as early as 1974, only three of Lachenmann's articles have been translated into English so far. One of these, 'Die Sch6nheit und die Sch6nt6ner. Zum Problem musikalischer Asthetik heute', appeared in Tempo 135 (December 1980) as 'The "beautiful" in music today'. The third article, 'On Structuralism', was to appear in the summer of 1994. Selected statements by the composer were offered in English translations in the composer brochure Helmut Lachenmann (Wiesbaden: Breitkopf, 11980,

21986, 31990). Various passages by and on Lachenmann have appeared in English as programme notes (e.g. Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival 1986, Warsaw Autumn 1979, 1981, 1988, 1991) or as record/CD notes. Three English articles by Robin Freeman, David Smeyers and John Warnaby are held at Breitkopf & Hartel in Wiesbaden. Only David Smeyer's account was published, in an American journal, The Clarinet. A number of performance and CD review articles have appeared in English language daily newspapers and music periodicals. Two of 23 recordings are presently available, according to the Gramophone Classical Catalogue (the Opus catalogue still does not list any). 3 George Benjamin, programme brochure Meltdown (South Bank Centre, London 18-25 July 1993), n.p.

is made palatable. On the European continent, Lachenmann's music is more or less successfully merchandized by means of a highly philosophic vernacular. This dialectic rhetoric has seldom been attractive to English-speaking music enthusiasts. Against the music lovers' inclination for loosely-linked literary metaphors, English speaking academia in general appears to be plagued by a bad conscience. It strives for the positivist's rhetoric, full of factual information and one-dimensional logic (this understanding of logic excludes the most stimulating logic of

oppositions). There is a general resistance to anything that is by definition ambiguous: for example, the aesthetic experience.4

On the other hand, English music literature is less filled with home-made philosophical speculations than its German counterpart. One would be hard pressed, for example, to find in an English article an argument that builds on such monstrous universalities as 'art worthy of its name is . . .:

... art worthy of its name should also always have a futuristic, utopian character . . . (Walter Gieseler)5

... art worthy of its name . . . wants to be more than an art work . . . (Rudolf Stephan)6

... That means conclusively that every art work worthy of its name adds something new to the universe ... (Konrad Boehmer)7

The gusto invoked by a phrase like this exhibits - if nothing else - the speaker's self- confidence. As if he knew what art is! Does the

4 The author can ensure the support of an English opinion. See Christopher Fox, 'British Music at Darmstadt 1982-92',

Tempo 186 (September 1993), p.25. 5 Komposition im 20. Jahrhundert. Details - Zusammenhdnige (Celle: Moeck Verlag, 1975), p.3, trans. E.H. All translations are by E.H.; original German omitted only to conserve space. 6 'Uber Schwierigkeiten der Bewertung und der Analyse neuester Musik', Vom musikalischen Denken. Gesammelte Vortrage, eds. Rainer Damm, Andreas Taub (Mainz: Schott's Sohne, 1984), p.350. 7 'Wider der Strategie der Verinnerlichung (Zur kompositor- ischen Methodik und Asthetik) (1990)', Konrad Boehmer. Das bi;se Ohr. Texte zur Musik 1961-1991, ed. Burkhardt Soll

(Cologne: DuMont, 1993), p.225.



Helmut Lachenmann's Concept of Rejection 5

valuable attempt to tell justify the method of excluding what is supposedly not worthy?

Generalizations in the vein of German versus English or dialectical versus positivistic do not help to clarify what may be seen more as disjoining tendencies rather than as opposing facts. Making a case for the differences between German and English ways of verbal communication in music-writings emphasizes the need to understand the German attributes in Lachenmann's language, and to separate German modernist rhetoric from Lachenmann's individual concepts. Only then can one start understanding these concepts as complex, fascinating and even at times paradoxical expressions of a creative mind.

It would exceed the scope of this article to investigate comprehensively all of the apparent distinctions, but a few thoughts about some underlying German values might be helpful. Many German texts on contemporary music lose their rhetorical energy when translated into English. In their original German version, they gathered their main momentum out of a battle with an abstract enemy: society. This version of German idealism has infiltrated all strands of social communication. It has to be said that lingering German guilt about fascism and the two World Wars, the resistance to overpowering state intervention in personal matters, the urge for salient individuality in a tightly controlled infrastructure, and the opposition to over- consumption in one of the richest countries of this world, are issues not shared to the same existential degree by Anglo-Americans.

The continuous reference to German history and to the political world at large was able to fuel German modernist music aesthetics. The global issues that were meant to be present in human behavioural issues were, at their core, middle- class conventionality and ignorance. Philosophical and political criticism moved onto a highly abstract level and became, inevitably, somewhat diluted by focussing on the symptoms of human behaviour rather than insisting on specific assessments of concrete political and economic realities. It has been said that a dose of sensual provocation will alert a critical mind to whatever it is that might be wrong in this world. Unfortunately, the enemy has never been less abstract than 'society'. The main regulatives of this society, namely the market and the resulting performance-pressure, have never been targeted (who, after all, would like to saw off the branch on which they are sitting?8) so the impact of

8 As Jiirg Stenzl has rightly pointed out in respect to the bourgeois model of the German new music industry, 'Tradition und Traditionsbruch', Die neue Musik und die

such protest has been very limited. Heinz-Klaus Metzger even claims that modernism never really existed.9

Not only were the objects of this criticism too abstract. An aesthetic aim that bows exclusively to the 'lord of specialized work'10 in that it celebrates detail, the intensity of the extreme and the effort to decipher multiplicity, cannot care about anything else. This is a fact, not a judgement. After all, the functions of music are manifold! Those composers (including Lachenmann) who wanted to combine social criticism with a sophisticated structuralism have had to face the 20th-century dilemma: there is not enough scope for an individual person - and the aesthetic experience is foremost an individual one - to engage in both aesthetic sophistication and the solving of such global problems as, for example, starvation in the Third World, ecological disaster or Serbian militancy. German modernism has defensively ridden the horse of guilt a touch too noisily, while underrating the individual's decision-making ability.

At the same time, one should never under- estimate the enormous creative power that has resulted from this frustration with the undeni- ably poor state of the world. Moreover, the composers who admitted to feelings of increasing powerlessness have retained a personal integrity that others, who appropriated various artistic styles from the fashions of the day, have not. In assessing theoretical writings of modernist composers the task is to cut through this honourable frustration, without minimizing the global problems, while reflecting on inadequacies of language.

Lachenmann's verbal strategies are a heavily intertwined conglomerate of social, aesthetic and technical issues that can best be understood when read against the German contemporary music

Tradition. Sieben Kongressbeitraqe utid eine atialytische Studie, Veroffentlichungen des Instituts fiir Neue Musik und Musikziehungt Darmstadt 19, ed. Reinhold Brinkmann (Mainz: Schott's Sohne, 1978), particularly pp.94-97. 9 'K6olner Manifest 1991', Blick zuriuck tnach vort. eini Buch zur paemoderne, eds. Ingrid Roschek, Heribert C. Ottersbach, Manos Tsangaris (Cologne: Thiirmchen, 1992), pp.80-83.

l0 See 'flying from the social pressure to explain everything .. into an ethos of work', Lachenmann in an interview with Heinz-Klaus Metzger, 'Fragen und Antworten (1988)', Musik- Konzepte 61/62. Helmut Lachenmann, eds. Heinz-Klaus Metzger, Rainer Riehn (Munich: edition text + kritik, 1988), pp.118-119.

Similarly, Morton Feldman: 'I know nobody except Inyself who works so intensely . . . But they (younger composers. E.H.) do not understand the amount of work that is necessary to write a piece . . .', in '. . . wie eine Ausdiinnung der Musik durch Terpentin. Morton Feldman und lannis Xenakis in Gesprach', MusikTexte 52 (Jan. 1994), pp.44-45.



6 Helmut Lachenmann's Concept of Rejection

Helmut Lachenmann (photo: Charlotte Oswald)

scene of the last 25 years. This background could be outlined with the following key stages: Cage's appearance in Darmstadt in 1958, the 'Art and Politics' debate in the late 1960s/early 70s, Lachenmann's argument with Friedrich Neumann about the achievements of serialism in 1971, the revival of the aesthetic category of the beautiful (in reaction to Peter Michael Braun, 1975/76), the joint appearance of Lachenmann and Wolfgang Rihm in Darmstadt 1982, the Henze-debate about 'musica negativa' 1983, and the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Generally, Lachenmann's aesthetic thoughts have been formulated against the background of a wider paradigmatic shift: the problems of employing the metaphor of structure were fully abandoned for the problematic metaphor of speech in the middle of the 1970s.

Anyone who familiarizes himself with Lachenmann's verbal intentions is bound to recognize the obvious change in his rhetoric, from paradigmatic conviction to a more personal view. His early writings continually interwove social interpretations and personal accusations with logical arguments. Increasingly, though, Lachenmann has admitted that while his personal aesthetic philosophy stimulates him, the issue of music perception is finally 'left to the demons'. From the programme notes to Tanzsuite mit Deutschlandlied (1980) onwards, Lachenmann increasingly stresses the personal nature of his statements:

Meanwhile, I find it more and more dull to formulate a kind of programme about my work ... my trust in language is receding. What happens in programme notes like this one is a manifold hiding of composers. The art consists of distinguishing the mask from the face. I do not exclude myself, because I feel that everything that we composers utter - in the silly perception that the verbal medium is more coherent than the aesthetic - is more or less the debris of sense and feelings. We throw them behind us in odd persecution mania in the hope of escaping control of this perplexity for which no magazine is responsible. (1980)11

This perplexity seems to have grown even

greater, because in 1988 Lachenmann gave this

surprising answer to a question from Heinz-Klaus Metzger:

I am always turning around in circles, as you probably have realized, when I think about the relationship between material and intentions ... But nobody should ask me, how this mechanism of disturbance and bringing to consciousness really functions and why this process of disturbance through structural reinterpretation appears to be not only mere resistance but an expressive act. I believe in this mechanism, and the older I become the more I fly from the horrible social pressure to explain everything into a kind of ethos of work. (1988)12

Despite the change in rhetoric, Lachenmann has formulated most effectively an approach to composition which relates to the structuralists' concept of rejection 13 with a specific consider- ation of the 'aura'.14 The following outline of

11 programme brochure Donaueschinger Musikta,qe 1980, pp.22-23. 12 'Fragen und Antworten', p. 119-120.

13 The label Verweigerungsmusiker (musician of rejection) has often accompanied musicians around 1969 (and after) who composed and verbalized in the vein of Lachenmann. The author is thinking here of Nicolaus A. Huber, Friedhelm D6hl (around 1970), Hans Ulrich Lehmann, Dieter Schnebel (around 1970) and Hans-Joachim Hespos (with different political motivations), and more recently Mathias Spahlinger and Gerhard Stabler. But the concept of rejection is the core of any modernist thought going back to the first half of this century. More specifically, Thomas Meyer coined the term 'Lachenmann-school' - to indicate the familiarity of musical textures (unusual instrumental treatments, 'qualified' silence) - originally published in a supplement of the Tagesanzeiger (15. Dec. 1989), partly reprinted MusikTexte 32 (Dec. 1989), p.53. Naturally, Lachenmann has tried to demonstrate that he is not joining the 'exploiting tourism' of estranged instrumental sounds. 'Fragen und Antworten', p.133. 14 The term 'aura' is supposed to describe a phenomenon which is less concretely associable with certain structural paradigms than the term 'meaning'. Contrary to the common assumption, the term 'aura' was first mentioned by Adorno in a letter to Walter Benjamin (Feb. 1940): 'The term aura ... not fully thought through . .' in Th. W. Adorno Uber Walter Benjamin Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1970), p. 160. It is true, though, that the term 'aura' became a crucial backbone




his concept of rejection is not exhaustive but aims at specification. Otherwise, Lachenmann loses against generalities; as Tristan Murail put it recently: 'Every composer rejects, since every composer has choices'.15

It is important, in what follows, to keep in mind that, at least since 1982, Lachenmann has denounced the concept of rejection.16 He repeatedly claims that this concept has been widely misunderstood.

The term [rejection, E.H.] is unfortunately not my invention but used by me ... in relation to the term of beauty and of rejection of habits; and then the whole rubbish started. I then had to dig myself permanently out of all sorts of, even well meaning, interpretations ... (1992)17

Despite these denunciations, 'Je refuse le refus',18 Lachenmann spoke in 1990 about the 'good old days of estrangement',19 recalling the stimulating spirit of resistance that has certainly played a crucial part in his conceptualization. At the same time as his denunciation of rejection one can read, reassuringly,

The task of the composer finally implies the creation of a context which cleanses it [the sound, E.H.] and which gives it back its virginity under a new perspective. And this means less: to make, but to avoid, to exclude the self-evident, to invoke creative resistance. (1993)20

A 'Lachenmann concept of rejection' cannot be simply extracted from Lachenmann's written words, nor can the silent consent of the composer be assumed. This particular issue rather unearths

of Benjamin's argument in Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1963), particularly p.18. Lachenmann absorbed this term through Gy6rgy Lukacs's writings. 15 Tristan Murail, pre-concert talk to the concert on 25/07/ 1993 (Meltdown festival 1993, London - South Bank Centre. 18-25 July 1993). 16 In the open discussions with Wolfgang Rihm at the Darmstadt summer course 1982, tape recording, Internationales Musikinstitut Darmstadt, No.810.

17 Lachenmann in an interview with Christine Mast, Hessischer Rundfunk II (18 Feb. 1992), 14-page mss., held at Breitkopf, p.12. 18 Lachenmann in an interview in Paris during the Festival D'Automne a Paris (1 Oct. 1993, Salle Olivier Messiaen, Radio France), reported by Anne Rey in Le Monde and by Clytus Gottwald, 'Helmut Lachenmann', Komponisten der Gegenwart, eds. Hanns-Werner Heister, Walter Wolfgang Sparrer (Munich: edition text + kritik, 4th subsequent delivery, 1994), n.p. 19 Sketch book (rot; fest; gross) 262 S., Paul Sacher Stiftung, n.p. 20 Lachenmann in an interview with Peter Szendy, 'Des paradis 6phemeres. Entretien avec Helmut Lachenmann', programme brochure Festival D'Automne a Paris 1993. Helmut Lachenmann, p.5; trans from Lachenmann's German translation, n.p.

representative problems. Firstly, the reception of Lachenmann's music is already strongly established using 'well meaning interpretations' that do not necessarily reflect Lachenmann's own ideas. Secondly, his concepts have evidently undergone a development in the last 30 years. The same statement can mean different things at different times. Thirdly, even the most dedicated disciple of Lachenmann's music will have to admit that there are a number of issues that are not completely rational in Lachenmann's writings. Hence, to follow Lachenmann's theoretical reflections requires an awareness, not only of the German attributes and modernist language, but also of the irrationalities woven in the verbal expressions of a living composer who had set out to, and succeeded in, writing original music.

2. The Development of Lachenmann's Concept of Rejection21

2.1 Provocation Against What? Lachenmann's questioning of social conditions

is undoubtedly reflected in the provocative pose of his music. It reveals on the first encounter - next to an impression of seriousness and a somewhat exotic ingenuity - a strong sense of alternative thinking which is supported by his writings. He has the courage to verbalize experiences that are different from our everyday ones. This almost reminds one of enlightened religious elements and has been described - against an undoubtedly different representation by Lachenmann himself - as Catholic.22

Lachenmann's concept of rejection is most audibly an attitude of general provocation. His musical 'language' is, on the first encounter, that of an 'enfant terrible' who provides an aesthetic experience by means of an 'intense shock'.23

21 See Peter Becker's general discussion of the concept of rejection 'Neue Musik zwischen Angebot und Verweigerung', Komponieren heute. Asthetische, soziolo,ische und paidagogische Fragen. Sieben Beitraiqe, Ver6ffentlichung,en des Instituts fur Neue Musik und Musikerziehung Darmstadt 23, ed. Ekkehard Jost (Mainz: Schott, 1983), pp.24-37. 22 Frank Sielecki categorized Lachenmann as catholic in his PhD, 'Das Politische in den Kompositionen von Helmut Lachenmann und Nicolaus A. Huber', Rheinische Friedrich Wilhelm Universitat Bonn, Germany, 1991, unpublished.

Sofia Gubaidulina referred to the music of Helmut Lachenmann to illustrate her idea of music's spiritual quality, 'The Hand of Fate', Composer to Composer. Conversations About Contemporary Music, ed. Andrew Ford (St. Leonards: Allen & Unwin Pty Ltd, 1993), pp.124-125.

It might be noteworthy to point out that Lachenmann grew up in a clergyman's household. Lachenmann's own view is expressed in the following statement, 'I am actually not a marxist, rather religiously minded - and at the same time full of doubts towards all' (1993), in the interview with Peter Szendy, 'Des paradis ephemeres', programme brochure Les Festival D'Automne a Paris 1993, p.4.



8 Helmut Lachenmann s Concept of Rejection

Regular sound-waves and an uninterrupted flow of sounds are suppressed. His continuous scorings of unusual instrumental treatments, his expanded recourse to silence and statics, immediately stir the attention and create a suspenseful intensity of unfulfilled expectations.

In the context of recent German discussions24 silence, equilibrium and quietness are celebrated as the ultimate modernist's rejection. They are used to refuse communication and to manifest defiance against the industrious performance of our century. Since Cage and Feldman, however, silence was not only understood as disruption or confrontation but also as an act of opening. The use of silence has extended the spatial dimensions within which the perception of musical motion proceeds. But there are certainly more aspects to silence and quietness. They demonstrate a composer's personality which could probably be described as self-critical. The modesty of acoustical means conveys a sudden bewilderment. At this point, hysterical and grotesque laughter and depressive mania succumb to the admission of a very personal responsibility. Various religious practices have tried to reach this point of identification with one's own responsibilities. Christians have emulated this striving, in their call dona nobispacem. It is this aspect of silence that will retain an ethical value long after the effects of the unexpected novelty and the provocation have subsided.

When Lachenmann first mentioned the term

rejection in 1973, he would define the normal tone as an object of rejection primarily to provoke.

Together with temA and Pression for cello, Air exemplifies in my creative process a conscious break in social-aesthetic matters of course: an attempt and offer of beauty not by mere rejection of the common but also through disguising the conditions of ruling beauty: as suppression of the underlying physical requirements and energies, as suppression of the underlying efforts;

23 Lachenmann, 'Luigi Nono oder der Riickblick auf die serielle Musik (1969)', Melos 36/6 (June 1971), p.225. 24 For example, the Becker lecture at Darmstadt (see note 21).

Clytus Gottwald, 'Ton und Laut. Abschied von Hegel', Neuland. Ans'tze zur Musik der Gegeinwart II, ed. Herbert Henck (Bergisch Gladbach: Neuland Musikverlag Herbert Henck, 1982), pp.97-109.

Gerhard Stabler, 'Silences. (Ver-)Schweigen', Schtebel 60

(Hofheim: Wolke 1990), pp.231-255, trans. into Engl. (Gerhard Stabler), 'About Silence or What happens when

nothing happens?' Eonta 1/2 (1991), pp.68-81. The same article modified as 'Stille. Schrei. Stille. Den Sacke- schmeissern', Positionle 10 (1992), pp.24-26.

The issue of the last-mentioned periodical Positionet was devoted to the issue of silence (with contributions by Walter Zimmermann, Eric de Vischner, Wolfgang Gratzer, Gerold W. Gruber). So are recent contributions by Mathias

Spahlinger, Heinz Holliger or Nikolaus A. Huber.

if you like: the hidden work. (1973)25

Increasingly, Lachenmann's muted sounds and extinguished noises have been joined by traditionally-produced tones. By 1988, he claimed that he is,

. . . less happy to employ 'exterritorial' sound material. Since the issue is not about new sounds but about new listening, this has also to stand the test with the 'beautiful tone' of a cello string. (1988)26

The incorporation of normal tones and

flowing gestures have proven to be an addition to the brand-name 'Lachenmann'. Far from neo- romantic or 'Klangfarben'-composers, Lachen- mann's primary palette of textures is still arousingly elusive.

Beyond the experiments with instrumental

alternatives, Lachenmann's main object of

provocation has been tonality as an incarnation of human ignorance. In the vein of Walter Benjamin, Lachenmann has led a complex argument that connects a compositional technique (e.g. traditional tonality) with reception habits in the 'age of technical reproduction'. Against an anonymous enemy - the complacent mass - the participants called for an 'Aesthetics of Resistance'.27 Tonality was used as a euphemism not only for habitual

reception but also for concert hall music

representation, for an ignorant audience and for a

musicianship of mere virtuosity. The attack

against traditional tonality was moreover a

provocation against a multitude of implied musical phenomena: such as, for example, established genres, commercial dance rhythms, orchestral hierarchy or formal schemata that were associated, unquestioned, with bourgeois music making.

If one investigates Lachenmann's attack against tonality in his music, rather than in his

writings, one detects an aspect of tonality other than the proclaimed listening convenience or functional tutelage. Lachenmann's attack against tonality has mainly been an attack on the

perception of directed musical motion.28 Two of his critical comments from 1969 and 1979 suffici- ently demonstrate this misnomer (tonal suction, tension, pulse). Directed musical motion is

indeed, to Lachenmann's discomfort, not confined

25 'Die gefihrdete Kommunikation Gedanken und Praktiken eines Komponsiten (1973)', Musica 28/3 (May-June 1974), p.230. 26 'Fragen und Antworten', p. 120.

27 Peter Weiss, Asthetik des Widerstandes I-III (Berlin:

Henschelverlag, 1983).

28 This appears to be one possible metaphor applied in musical percption. An article on musical motion by the author has been recently submitted for publication in Contemporary Music Review.




\' ,.h j.' < r d& < u; 7- )i r 1 + _;f i - Xi,z; a>;

? 1989 by B.ritkopf& Hitel, Wiesbaden

Figure 1. Opening page of Lachenmann's second String Quartet (1989) (reproduced with permissionfrom Breitkopfl. This published score still retains the 'structural melody' (R. Toop) at the top. This device of rhythmic nets is the basisfor almost all of Lachenmann's compositions since the end of the sixties.

to tonality (nor is tonal music, by the way, 'only' a directed process). While in 1969 he still asked,

How do I free myself finally from the obviously obsolete tonality, its mental models and forms of communication - or in other words: how do I get to a kind of music beyond the laws of experience of the tonal consciousness and its aesthetic taboos?29

in 1979 he had to conclude,

It does not matter how much one wants to free oneself from tonality [directed motion, E.H.]. It always catches up on you. The problem is also not: How do I escape from the tonal suction?, also not: with which tricks do I adjust myself to it?: rather, the task is to understand those tonal determinations of the material together with the continually changing whole.(1979)30

If one reads 'musical motion' instead of tonality, one has to agree with Lachenmann that the categories of tension and relaxation (disso- nance/consonance, cadence) can be present in all music. Yet he has failed to acknowledge that the possibilities of tonal motion are not necessarily exhausted by composing it as a directed process of goal and solution, as some harmony theories might want us to believe. Lachenmann, secondly, 29 'Luigi Nono oder der Riickblick auf die serielle Musik', p.225. 30 'Vier Grundbestimmungen des Musikh6rens (1979-80), Neuland. Ansdtze zur Musik der Gegenwart I, ed. Herbert Henck (Cologne: Musikverlag Herbert Henck, 1980), p.68.

also missed the point that directed 'gestures and movements' are not determined by an increase or decrease of tonal tension alone, but by any directed change of acoustic parameters (increase or decrease of volume, widening or narrowing of the overtone band, acceleration or deceleration, tendency to either pulsed or pulseless fields) and, most importantly, by the abstracting levels of human perception.31 Whatever metaphorical terms are employed in explaining human perception, the mental switch between concentration on detailed gestures or orientation towards more cohesive movements applies in the same way for functional tonality as for post-tonal music. The more information the perceiving mind receives, the more it will abstract, but a direction it will have.

Lachenmann's compositions try to suppress the direction of identifiable gestures and movements. The ratio of changing acoustical parameters is 31 This phenomenon of human perception, called 'perceptual streaming' and 'stream segregation', has been a recent focus of music psychology research (e.g. Fred Lehrdahl, S. McAdams and A. Bregman). This mainly American research was accessible and known in Germany through the work by Helga de la Motte-Haber. Her book on music psychology was published in 1985. Her paper in the Darmstadt spring symposium in 1992 explicitly quoted Lehrdahl. De la Motte- Haber, 'Uber die Wahrnehmung musikalischer Formen', Form in der Neuen Musik. Veroffentlichungen des Institutsfiir Neue Musik und Musikerziehung Darmstadt 33, ed. Ekkehard Jost (Mainz: Schott, 1992), pp.26-35, particularly p.32, 33.

.4i -11 - IfIgI

V




often either radically low, so that his gestures appear totally isolated, or so high that fields of manifold overlapped activities freeze into static blocks.32 Lachenmann's resistance to motion/ tonality has matured since his outspoken offensive around 1970. Although he has continued to equate 'gesture and the dialectic mechanism of tension and relaxation' with tonal thinking,33 tonality has faded as the main object of his attacks, both in his writings and in his compositions.

For the sake of consolation, I have decided from my current perspective to have no more conflict with tonal means whatsoever. Hence, no more fear of contact, because I simply tell myself I have been there ...

(1992)34

One can therefore not help noticing in

Lachenmann's later works an increased cohesive

gesticulation, which he had once damned as absurd forms. In an introduction to his first string

quartet Gran Torso (1971-72, 76, 88), Lachenmann admitted that since Klangschatten (1972) his

musical form has displayed an 'immediately comprehensible, unequivocal gesture'.35 This

process has taken place since Accanto (1975-76, 82) both within his own musical idiom and by the incorporation of recognizable quotes.

Lachenmann's concept of rejection has obviously lessened its provocative habitus, both

as regards the unusual treatment of instruments as

well as his milder attitude to tonality. His provocation has formed, in any case, only the starting point from which he 'pursues his way to the end'.36 By turning his provocation into compositionally-shaped processes, Lachenmann's works have succeeded beyond those of his many followers.

2.2 Interference to what extent? It is essential to demonstrate the point where

Lachenmann's provocative attitude feeds into his

compositional works. The success of his compositions has not rested on 'ritualizing the sad and

annoying social conditions'37 with squeaking

32 Lachenmann used other metaphorical terms for what the author calls static blocks: he compared the composer with an

'organ player manipulating whole pipe=sound families'

(blocks?). At a different place he called a composition a 'polyphony of orders' (of blocks?), 'Vier Grundbestim-

mungen', p.73. 33 'Bedingungen des Materials. Stichworte zur Praxis der

Theoriebildung (1978)', Ferienkurse '78, Darmstddter Beitrdge zur Neuen Musik 17, ed. Ernst Thomas (Mainz: Schott's S6hne,

1978), p.93. 34 Lachenmann in the interview with Christine Mast, p.10.

35 Held as an introductory paper at a 'musica-viva' concert in

Munich, recorded 8 April 1984.

36 'Fragen und Antworten', p. 131.

noises, but on an involvement with the mystery of an aesthetic experience that even Lachenmann will finally leave 'up to the demons'.38 Until 1988, he strove verbally to pinpoint the goal of his compositional endeavour. The keywords in understanding have been 'structuralism' with the inclusion of the 'aura'.

For Lachenmann, provocation against the common always included interference with familiar sound combinations. In his words, the structuralist's approach expressed itself with calls for 'individuation of the means in a work',39 for a 'confrontation with interconnections and neces- sities of the musical material' (1979),40 for a 'detachment' of 'means out of their common speech connection' (1982),41 for a 'structural refraction of old relationships' (1988),42 for a

'sensitive, keenly heard handling of the musical material' (1990).43 While these underlying ideas of de- and reconstruction stem from post-war serialism (with reference to the German Beet- hoven-Brahms-Schoenberg variation tradition), Lachenmann's reflective language initially took its impulse from the Weiss/Benjamin/Lukacs tradition, and later shifted to the language of post-structuralist philosophy.

The artwork is meant to be a complex organism of reshuffled and adjusted particles in an ever-changing context. Lachenmann expressed his thorough sympathy with the premises of serialism. This is why he has often been assigned the role of defender of modernism.44

. . . the thought of the serial as a speculative process to detach the consciously levelled modification of the

original material from the common, materialized

(verdinglichten) context, and additionally to mediate the

abrupt, this has remained for me, and not only for me, a valuable idea out of the serial lesson. Beyond the mechanical-academic misuse, it is possibly the core element of musical structuralism which is able to lead our merely hearing ears to an alternative listening, and 37 Hans Werne Henze, Die englische Katze. Eit Arbeitstagebuch 1978-1982 (Frankfurt a. M.: S. Fischer, 1983), p.346. 3S Lachenmann quotes here a phrase by Luigi Nono, 'Musik hat ihre Unschuld verloren', Musik und Gesellschaft 8-9 (Aug/ Sep. 1990), p.414. 39 'Bedingungen des Materials', p.97.

4) 'Vier Grundbestimmungen des Musikh6rens', p.67. 41 'Accanto. Einfiihrung zu einer Auffiihrung in Zurich am 23. November 1982', Musik-Kontzepte 61/62. Helmut Lachen- mann, p.63.

42 'Fragen und Antworten', p.120. 43 'Musik hat ihre Unschuld verloren', p.416. 44 For example, within the Miinchner Biennale 1990 a

symposium was held under the title Moderne versus Postmoderne, which thrived once again upon the polarization between Helmut Lachenmann and Wolfgang Rihm, alias modernism versus postmodernism.




beyond that, to a new way of feeling by taking the common apart. It has to be assumed, however, that the expressive determinations ('relationships'), which are entailed in the sound material, are not blindly overruled, ignored, raped. (1986)45

The fashionable terms de- and reconstruction are easily translatable into the classic term variation. Lachenmann himself recognized this.

The compositional process which causes such preliminary and incidental negation could almost be described in the categories of the classic thematic development. On the opposite side, I have analytically illustrated the definite negation and transformation processes in the first movement of Beethoven's Harfenquartett and the fourth piece out of Weberns op. 10. (1988)46

The emphasis of this approach is not the proclaimed de- and reconstruction but the totality of its applied variation principles. 'Expressive reinterpretation through compre- hensive variation', naturally leaves many questions unanswered which cannot be taken up here. One query might, however, be directed to the degree of variation, as no composition is completely free of variation, and therefore of 'individuation and estrangement'. How much variation destroys common associations, and up to which point is it 'mere stylistic imitation'? The subtleties of various degrees of estrangement would be more effective subjects of reflection than some extremist deconstructivist slogans.

Lachenmann has increasingly conceived musical material in terms of sound and action categories 47

rather than physical parameters. Attention should be directed to his statement from 1988 about 'graded scales of qualitative jumps':

Already in the forefront of composing, I happen upon a for me incalculable mental connection of more or less complex categories. Including their fragility, they form my compositional instruments. This relates to the thinking in parameters of the fifties, but which initially started from quantitive grading, and played, so to speak, with previously installed regulators. The graded scales that I create for myself consist rather out of qualitative jumps that make a pizzicato to an arco and a pianissimo to a fortissimo, and the regulators and their way of functioning are determined by myself. (1988)48 45 'Uber das Komponieren (1986)', MusikTexte 16 (Oct, 1986), p.12. 46 'Fragen und Antworten', pp.123-4. 47 'Siciliano - Abbildungen und Kommentarfragmente (1983)', Musik-Konzepte 61/62. Helmnut Lachenmann, pp.76-77. The translation of Bewegutngskategorien into action not movement categories is not perfectly correct, but expresses better what the author believed Lachenmann was meaning to

say. There is reason to assume that he is more concerned with various ways of sound-production rather than with musical motion as mentioned earlier in this article.


Once the awareness of Lachenmann's thinking in complex acoustic ('qualitative jumps that make a pizzicato to an arco . . .') rather than physically measurable events49 has been acknowledged, his article from 1983 on the 'Siciliano' from his Tanzsuite yields ample examples. For example, he differentiates between a 'distorted sound level', 'sounds which relate to blown tones but are beaten, plucked or touched' and an 'effectively toneless and hoarse tonelessness'. His treatment of those unique categories in 'Siciliano', however, employs traditional variation principles such as 'exposition..., combination..., separation.... addition . .., intensification and extension'.50

Lachenmann's fascination with extreme sounds and with various types of natural and manipulated echoes has much in common with the thinking in electronic studios of the 1950s and 60s. There is reason to believe that he conceived timbre, tone- motion and echo very much in terms of electronically produced music.51 Titles such as Echo Andante, Klangschatten, Schattentanz, Ausklang have hinted at his preoccupation with various echo phenomena.

As a more important extension to the structuralist's concept, Lachenmann has taken the philosophically abstract concept of 'aura'52 into account in his compositional manipulations.

I think, the decisive specification of compositional thinking can be extracted from the particular way of reducing the term of structure in favour of inclusion of the 'aura', because through this procedure the social reality and the existential experience of the individual

49 Acoustic events out of a multiplicity of physical data were

already Karlheinz Stockhausen's starting point for further construction ('Empfindungsqualitdten') in his Gesang der

Juinglinge (1955/56) and in his Kontakte (1959/60) as Christoph Blumenr6der pointed out in 'Serielle Musik um 1960: Stockhausens Kontakte', Analysen, Beitraie zu einer Problem- geschichte des Komponierens. Festschrift fur Hans Heinrich

E,qebrecht zum 65. Geburtstag (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1984). p.504.

5( 'Siciliano', pp.76-70. See Lachenmann's description of the

process.

5l Lachenmann's concept of'musique concrete instrumentale' is as complex a topic as his concept of 'rejection', and is therefore not pursued here any further.

52 The term 'aura' is described by Lachenmann in 'Die vier

Grundbestimmungen', p.72; also in 'Bedingungen des Materials', p.96; Lachenmann also uses the term 'existential

aspect' synonymously with 'aura' in 'Bedingungen des Materials', p.93.

Confusingly, Lachenmann's term 'aesthetic apparatus' (first mentioned in 'Die Schonheit und die Schont6ner. Zum Problem musikalischer Asthetik heute (1976), Neue Musik- zeitung 26/1 (Feb-March 1977), pp.1-7) is sometimes used

synonymously with all 'aspects of the musical material' (see 'Uber das Komponieren', p.9) and sometimes synonymously with the 'aura' only (see 'Musik als Abbild vom Menschen',

NZ/M 146 (Nov 1985), p.17).




appear not only as a component to hide from or to reject but as an essential component of musical information, however mirrored (1978)53

Lachenmann's increasing reference to the 'speech quality' (rather than 'auratic quality') might have been the result of confrontation with semiotic theory. Foreign and native literature on semiotics appeared in publication lists54 from the early 1970s onwards and spread among German intellectuals. Lachenmann's struggle for credibility in a commercially-oriented music industry expresses itself as avoidance of unequivocality, even if his theoretical writings apparently disguise precisely this degree of imprecision. The resulting 'speechless gesticulation' (Konrad Boehmer55) of his music cannot rely on an established system of communicational signs but operates on other cognitive levels of game and perceptual ambiguity/mobility. One of Lachen- mann's achievements rests in the subtle shadings that can be made out in this zone between the definitely familiar and referential chaos.

Lachenmann's attempt to restore credibility to music's 'speech quality' through structural interference occurs on at least two levels. He disappoints expectations conjured up by symbolic signs and he avoids clearly articulated form 'from above' (Adorno). The first approach can be loosely described; the second necessitates analysis that cannot be done independently of the composer. Lachenmann manipulates associations with, for example, tonal gestures (e.g. Mozart's clarinet concerto in Acccanto), folk songs (e.g. the nursery rhyme 'Hanschen klein' in Ein Kinderspiel), dance rhythms (as for example a siciliano in Tanzsuite mit Deutschlandlied), musicians' habits (e.g. the virtuoso), quotes in quotes (e.g. the folk song 'Oh du lieber Augustin' that Schoenberg used in his Second String Quartet is used again in Lachenmann's Mouvement), orchestral mannerisms (e.g. the unresolved romantic swell

53 'Bedingungen des Materials', p.97. 54 For example, Umberto Eco's Einfiihrung in die Semiotik was translated into German in 1972; his Opera Aperta as Das Offene Kunstwerk in 1973; Jean Piaget's Der Strukturalismus was translated in 1973.

Hans-Georg Gadamer, Die Aktualitdt des Schonen. Kunst als

Spiel, Symbol und Fest (Stuttgart, 1977). Adorno's Musik, Sprache und ihr Verhiltnis im gegenwirtigen

Komponieren was published in 1978, Gesammelte Schriften 16 (Franfurt am Main: Suhrkamp), where he states on p.650: 'Music has to have a speech character', it is not enough just being an 'acoustical kaleidoscope'.

Naom Chomsky. Aspekte der Syntax-Theorie (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1983). 55 'Sprachlose Gestik als Formproblem neuer Musik', Form in der Neuen Musik, Veroffentlichungen des Institutsfjur Neue Musik und Musikerziehung Darmstadt 33, ed. Ekkehard Jost (Mainz: Schott, 1992), pp. 16-25.

gesture in Kontrakadenz) as well as certain musical articulations such as arpeggio- and glissando patterns, Bartok pizzicati (Gran Torso), or even concrete sounds of children, as in Fassade.56

Lachenmann has seldom specified his objectives more specifically. In the introduction to the clarinet concerto Accanto (1982), he lists the destruction of the melody, harmony and the beautiful tone. Beyond a provocative rejection, he consciously works against 'a pulsing meter as basis for every familiar tonal time determin- ation'.57 During the whole clarinet concerto, for example, Mozart's concerto runs silently on a tape. Only once does it break into the region of acoustic perception. Already on an exposed level, Lachenmann deconstructs Mozart's masterwork, the tonal language, the genre of a concerto, the expectations on a virtuoso soloist and the capacity of a clarinet.

In the article on his 'Siciliano' (1983), Lachenmann talks about resisting 'pitch order (in a tonal or serial sense) by integrating unexpected noise spectra of all kinds of definite-pitch- instruments with indefinable pitches'.58 In response to Heinz-Klaus Metzger (1988), he also mentions musical contradictions whose exhibition results in a compositional strategy, namely between 'polyphonic order and sound', between 'musicians' habits and a new action repertoire', between the 'varying treatments of the fifth tuning of instruments, of tremolos, down and up- bows'.59

Lachenmann's sophisticated confrontation with expectations employs much more than a

quotation/variation technique in a familiar sense. His hinting at the common is so elusive that it demands intensive deciphering. At its best, the aura is conjured up but not real. For example, what could be heard as a tango gesture at the end of Gran Torso cannot be identified in separate hearing of those individual bars. Taken out of context, the sounds that supposedly articulate gestures of tango rhythms here can only be taken as such if one has been left craving by the

suspense-inducing harshness and suppressed motion of the previous 15 minutes. What follows overwhelms with the same intensity by which a piece of dry bread will appear a culinary feast for the starving. This perceptive ambiguity forms a crucial aspect of Lachenmann's composition. 56 Some of those examples are taken from Michael Mairkelmann, 'Helmut Lachenmann oder "Das neu zu rechtfertigende Sch6ne",' NZfM 123/6 (Nov. 1985), pp.21- 25; and Lachenmann, 'Fragen und Antworten', pp.128. 57 'Accanto'. pp.70. 58 'Siciliano', p.76. 59 'Fragen und Antworten', p.124.




The shift of emphasis in Lachenmann's concept of rejection was strong: from a general social critique manifested in a provocation against the beautiful tone and functional tonality, to the rejection of the associated 'aura' by means of an extended structuralism. The extreme consequences of such an approach resulted, finally, in the rejection of any personal expectations of the composer Helmut Lachenmann, as he demanded from himself,

... a kind of intensive inner provocation, which follows (him) into (his) sleep. The issue is not to propel into a new and interesting structural world. This should only be exciting because it excites us and demands an alternative behaviour of us. The excitement should take place within our self-discovery (1988)60

Following Lachenmann's statements through the self-evident and the extreme has not solved many questions for theoreticians. Admittedly, he has outlined his internal concerns, has defined his emphasis at different stages and has demonstrated open questions. After attraction to and involvement in Lachenmann's theoretical statements one is likely to arrive, once again, at the question of the importance of a composer's verbal expressions in relation to their music. Without demanding rational validity, we are prepared to accept that birds and religious notions have been intensely inspiring for Olivier Messiaen. Just because Lachenmann's statements appear to be rational does not mean they have not stimulated him in the same way as the birds did for the French master. After all, it was Lachenmann himself who disclosed to Ulrich Mosch that his thoughts have been 'the work accompanying mental gymnastics': A stretching exercise for the triple flip of the actual performance?

What is the actual performance of a musicologist interpreting the Lachenmann-sources and verbalizing the experience of his music? How successful will the musicologist's attempt be to force the ambiguous into the unequivocal?


Obviously, little analytical work has been done on Lachenmann's music.61 In the few examples available, speculations appear in such awkward language as 'inner and outer pedal points...(?)' or 'moments of orgasm.. .(?)'62 Lachenmann himself consciously avoids specifying technical procedures. Like those of Pierre Boulez, Brian Femeyhough and others the compositional constructions are complex to such a degree that empirical analytical research is bound to get lost. What can be deduced are numerical orderings on a very superficial scale.

One can bear a number of prejudices towards academia, but it gives the time and scope to linger on contradictory issues without having to solve them short-sightedly. The analytical problems with music like Lachenmann's can indeed be addressed if one allows what appears to be contradictory in the first instance to become the crucial stimulus. If one is prepared to explore the field of perceptual mobility between various levels of abstraction and focus, one is able to break out of both German generalizing philosophy and English positivist analysis. One is not surprised to find in Brian Ferneyhough a person who bridges those worlds:

... in my own works I attempt to ensure a style- immanent double coding in and through the space opened up by perceived dissonantial mobility of relationship both from the objective and the subjective standpoints, the former by means of 'structural multi- tracking'63 ... the latter, subjective, viewpoint is, meanwhile, manifest in the way the shadowy, rationally-repressed 'Other' is allowed the opportunity to thrust a painful wedge into the monadic carapace of order ...64

The subject analysis is another chapter in the life of the present musicologist. As long as this issue cannot be comprehensively discussed - and it can, unfortunately, not be done at this point -

the topic of Lachenmann's rejection will inevitably remain fragmented. The fragments, nonetheless, are telling.

61 The more substantial ones,. e.g. by Hans-Peter Jahn, Peter

B6ttinger, Robert Piencikowski and Lachenmann himself

appeared mostly in Musik-Konzepte 61/62. Helmut Lachenmann.

62 Yuval Shaked, "'Wie ein Kifer auf dem Riicken zappelnd". zu Mouvement (- vor der Erstarrung-) (1982-84) von Helmut Lachenmann', MusikTexte 8 (Feb. 1985), pp.9-16. 63 See Lachenmann's 'polyphony of order'.

64 'Parallel Universes', Asthetik und Komposition. Darmstddter Beitrage zur Neuen Musik 20, ed. Gianmario Borio, Ulrich Mosch (Mainz: Schott, 1994), p.22.



helmut lachenmann's concept of rejection

Documents