musical decay

23
Musical Decay: Luciano Berio's "Rendering" and John Cage's "Europera 5" Author(s): David Metzer Source: Journal of the Royal Musical Association, Vol. 125, No. 1 (2000), pp. 93-114 Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of the Royal Musical Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3250683 . Accessed: 16/02/2011 23:46 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=rma. . Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Royal Musical Association and Taylor & Francis, Ltd. are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of the Royal Musical Association. http://www.jstor.org

Upload: oriol-sans

Post on 27-Apr-2015

73 views

Category:

Documents


8 download

TRANSCRIPT

Page 1: Musical Decay

Musical Decay: Luciano Berio's "Rendering" and John Cage's "Europera 5"Author(s): David MetzerSource: Journal of the Royal Musical Association, Vol. 125, No. 1 (2000), pp. 93-114Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of the Royal Musical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3250683 .Accessed: 16/02/2011 23:46

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unlessyou have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and youmay use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.

Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at .http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=rma. .

Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printedpage of such transmission.

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].

Royal Musical Association and Taylor & Francis, Ltd. are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve andextend access to Journal of the Royal Musical Association.

http://www.jstor.org

Page 2: Musical Decay

Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 125 (2000) @ Royal Musical Association

Musical Decay: Luciano Berio's Rendering and John Cage's Europera 5

DAVID METZER

A well-known painting, perhaps a work by Ingres. The canvas, though, is slit and scarred. No reason for alarm. The gashes are fake. So is the painting. This faux mutilation typifies a series of works by the Russian- born artist Igor Kopystiansky ironically entitled Restored Paintings. His restoration involves copying a famous painting, usually pre-twentieth century, in oil on canvas, defacing the canvas (tears and markings), and finally attempting to mend the damage by painting over the gaps or by other means.1 In these works Kopystiansky not only compacts destruc- tion and restoration into a single creative act but also enlists two of the primary means by which the twentieth century has approached the past: reproduction and restoration (see Figure 1).

Reproduction has offered more than a way of holding on to the past. As cultural critics have long told us, we live in a world of reproductions: the secondary realities of television and computers as well as the cloning first of cells, then of sheep, and possibly even of humans.2 This fascination with copies, albeit in a less portentous and menacing form, has also taken hold in the art world, particularly during the 1980s with the appropriation by Kopystiansky and other painters of past works. Instead of the by now conventional approach of lifting an image from a pre-existent work, these artists have faithfully copied the entire orig- inal, while incorporating key differences.3 This copying has served to critique notions of originality and creativity, concepts that hardened into creed during the modernist period. That practice, though, has proven to have more than one critical life, lending itself to commen- tary on a variety of political and social issues, including commodifica- tion, gender and race.4 Other artists have taken a more historical than

For their advice and encouragement I would like to thank Richard Kurth, Vera Micznik, Robert Morgan andJohn O'Brian.

1 For a discussion of Kopystiansky, see Helena Kontova, 'Igor and Svetlana Kopystiansky', Flash Art, 26/clxxii (1993), 109-12. Recent exhibition catalogues that contain reproductions and discussions of his work include Adaptation and Negation of Socialist Realism: Contemporary Soviet Art (Ridgefield, CT, 1990); The Purloined Image, ed. Christopher R. Young (Flint, MI, 1993); and Igor Kopystiansky, The Museum (Dfisseldorf, 1994).

2 Jean Baudrillard, Simulations, trans. Paul Foss, Paul Patton and Philip Beitchman (NewYork, 1983); Hillel Schwartz, The Culture of the Copy: Striking Likeness, Unreasonable Facsimiles (New York, 1996).

3 Important precedents of this type of copying include works by Marcel DuChamp, John Clem Clarke, Andy Warhol and Larry Rivers. For a discussion of other artists working in this vein, see The Purloined Image, ed. Young, and Art about Art, ed. Jean Lipman and Richard Marshall (New York, 1978).

4 Thomas McEvilley, The Exile's Return: Toward a Redefinition of Painting for the Post-Modern Era (Cambridge, 1993), 167-70.

Page 3: Musical Decay

94 DAVID METZER

Figure 1. Igor Kopystiansky, Restored Painting, 1992. Oil on canvas, 783/4" X 59". Col- lection of the artist. Reproduced by permission of the artist.

political perspective and focused on the place of artworks in the stream of time. As will be discussed, Kopystiansky along with Mike and Doug Starn have etched into their copies rich patterns of decay that reveal the ever-increasing fragility of past works in the present.

This fascination with decay and the past has appeared in another art

Page 4: Musical Decay

MUSICAL DECAY 95

movement that gained steam during the 1980s: restoration. Since roughly that decade, restoration has become big business, as seen in such publicized projects as the cleaning of the Sistine Chapel. These endeavours and the above borrowing practices are not so far apart as they may initially appear. Both look toward the past, although with different perspectives. Despite awareness that the past can never fully reappear in the present, restoration still seeks to bridge the divide between the two by offering partial and brief glimpses of original colours and shapes. Borrowing, on the other hand, reaches back over that divide and artificially transplants earlier works into the present, restaging them with new colours and shapes.5

Restoration and reproduction may at first glance appear out of place in a discussion of music, but it would not take long to see how the two have figured just as prominently in the world of concert music during recent years. Art restoration obviously finds a parallel in the 'authen- tic' performance movement, which seeks to recapture original sounds and styles. Reproduction can be seen as encompassing both the appro- priation of earlier paintings and various musical borrowing practices, including quotation, collage and sampling. As Robert Morgan has argued, quotation, specifically in works from the 1960s to the present, and historical performance culturally dovetail, both emerging from the same preoccupation with the past that fuels restoration and reproduc- tion in the visual arts.6

So strong has the fascination been that many musical works have focused on these two approaches, taking them as their subject, as it were. Recent compositions in this vein include Luciano Berio's Rendering (1989) andJohn Cage's Europera 5 (1991), both of which, like the art- works mentioned above, draw extensively, if not entirely, upon past materials. In the former Berio has 'restored' (his word) the drafts for a Tenth Symphony that Schubert began during the last months of his life. Rather than completing the incipient work, he preserves, even enhances, the incompleteness of the sketch and adds his own stylistically contrasting material to fill in or to connect passages. Cage's work sorts through memories of opera, presenting operatic fragments in both live performance and reproduction. Regarding the latter, the composer brings together various media, ranging from the Victrola to television, to expose the perilous fate of opera in a world of reproduction.

Through restoration and reproduction, Rendering and Europera 5 open windows onto the past. The repertories they find there may differ, but the chronological landscapes they survey are almost identical. The two works offer similar representations of the past and present. The former appears as a state of fragmentation and decay, always crumbling away and on the verge of disappearing forever. The present has almost disappeared itself, resembling at best a shadow.

5 A discussion of the proximity of the two approaches can be found in Andrew Solomon, 'Something Borrowed, Something Bloom', Artforum, 26/ix (May 1988), 122-6.

6 Robert P. Morgan, 'Tradition, Anxiety, and the Current Musical Scene', Authenticity andEarly Music, ed. Nicholas Kenyon (Oxford and New York, 1988), 57-82.

Page 5: Musical Decay

96 DAVID METZER

RENDERING

The symphonic sketches that Schubert began around October 1828 have fascinated scholars with the promise of revealing what directions the young composer was scouting before his death, especially how he would follow up the seemingly unsurpassable 'Great' C major Sym- phony. The drafts are ample enough to give more than a hint of this new symphonic vision. They consist of three movements written in piano score with some indications of orchestration. The movements are not complete, presenting only individual sections of larger formal designs, the outlines and dimensions of which remain unclear. In ad- dition, preliminary and exploratory versions of these sections fill many pages. As may be seen in the reconstructions that have been attempted, this jumble of materials and vague formal tracings has not deterred efforts to complete the symphony.7

That these sketches attracted Berio is not surprising. His involvement with them extends areas of interest that have appeared throughout his oeuvre. One of these is the arrangement and orchestration of other composers' works, including a recent version of Brahms's Sonata for Viola/Clarinet and Piano, op. 120 no. 1, scored for viola or clarinet soloist and orchestra (1986). Berio's arrangements overlap with his use of 'commentary techniques', which involve infusing pre-existent works, his own and those by other composers, with new materials that elabor- ate upon the original.8 His Chemins, for instance, orchestrally expand solo instrumental Sequenza works, whereas the third movement of Sin- fonia (1968) probes the Scherzo of Mahler's Second Symphony. The latter offered Berio an opportunity 'to explore from the inside a piece of music from the past'.9 The collage mixture of Mahler, dense quo- tations and new styles also reveals the composer's fascination with blending past and present.

These three interests - orchestration, commentary and chronologi- cal synthesis - converge in Rendering, a work that is not so much a com- pletion of Schubert's Tenth Symphony as a discourse on the musical potential of the sketches and their place in both the early nineteenth century and the present.10 For his part, Berio dismisses any suggestion of a reconstruction, that is, of him working behind the scenes to present the symphony that Schubert had imagined.11 He instead places

7 These include realizations by Brian Newbould (London, 1995) and Peter Giilke (Leipzig, 1982). In 1982 the Swiss composer Roland Moser completed a 'fragmentarisches Klangbild' of the second movement.

8 David Osmond-Smith, 'Berio and the Art of Commentary', Musical Times, 116 (1975), 871-2, and idem, Berio (Oxford and New York, 1991), 42-55.

9 Luciano Berio, Two Interviews, trans. David Osmond-Smith (New York and London, 1985), 107. 10 Another recent work focusing on Schubert's death and unfinished works is John Harbison's

November 19, 1828. This work incorporates a Rondo fragment from 1816 and concludes with a fugue based on a subject derived from the composer's name, part of an assignment given by Simon Sechter to Schubert shortly before his death.

11 In a recent interview, Berio asserted: 'I have an especial dislike for musicologists who decide to complete an unfinished work. It has been done with Schubert piano sonatas for instance, where people tried to squeeze an artificial form out of the sketches, basing them on the sonata form. But things didn't work that way for Schubert.' Theo Muller, "'Music is not a solitary act": Conversation with Luciano Berio', Tempo, 199 (January 1997), 19.

Page 6: Musical Decay

MUSICAL DECAY 97

his name up front, citing dual authorship, and compares his role to that of an art restorer:

Rendering with its dual authorship is intended as a restoration of these sketches, it is not a completion nor a reconstruction. This restoration is made along the lines of the modern restoration of frescoes that aims at reviving the old colours without however trying to disguise the damage that time has caused, often leaving inevitable empty patches in the composition (for instance as in the case of Giotto in Assisi).12

In the case of Schubert in Vienna, restoration comes across as a curious approach to take. After all, the symphony, unlike the frescoes, has never existed, or been complete, meaning that there is nothing to restore. However, Berio's analogy leans toward the evocative and ironic. Restoration, for instance, calls to mind collapsed buildings and chipped sculptures, images that reinforce the fragmentary state of the sketches. It is this element of disintegration that appeals to the com- poser. His remarks dwell not on the promise of recovery but on 'damage' and 'empty patches', features he finds to be 'very expressive' and intrinsic to the frescoes, rather than elements that need to be erased.13

It is not surprising that Berio has focused on an incomplete and scat- tered piece. What is surprising, however, is that he breaks apart that work even more. This fragmentation, old and new, creates two differ- ent visions of Schubert's symphony. On one hand, the thematic splin- ters remind us that the work is only a sketch. On the other hand, the fractures also suggest deterioration, a work from the past crumbling into pieces. This latter impression especially comes across in the more complete sections, which, cracked and dissolved by Berio, suggest the disintegration and 'empty patches' of the aging frescoes. In Rendering, Schubert's symphony exists simultaneously in states of incipience and decay.

This doubleness is part of Berio's 'rendering', a teasing choice of title that suggests, among other things, his interpretation of the drafts. That interpretation can be better appreciated by discussing the materials with which he works. Schubert's sketches provide a foundation, con- stituting nearly two thirds of the composition.14 Berio orchestrates the drafts and has them proceed unaltered for extended stretches of time, a continuity creating the momentary impression of experiencing a

12 Franz Schubert-Luciano Berio, Rendering (Vienna, 1989), preface. In the interview with Theo Muller cited above, Berio offered a more offhand description of the piece: 'Renderingis both orchestration and a restoration, like the reparation of a painting damaged by time. When you go to Assisi, you will find beautiful Giotto paintings, some of which are damaged. Now instead of having them repaired by some stupid painter who pretends to be Giotto and fills in what is missing, they decided to leave the white, the concrete as it was, which is very expressive too. I did the same thing with Schubert. I orchestrated, completed some parts, but where the sketches stop I created a kind of musical concrete, a plaster made of many different things, with a totally different sound. Then you go back to the next Schubert sketch.' Muller, "'Music is not a solitary act"', 19.

13 Ibid. 14 In the recording by Christoph Eschenbach and the Houston Symphony (Koch 3-7382-2 H1),

Berio's interpolations make up around 11 minutes of the total 35' 7" performance time.

Page 7: Musical Decay

98 DAVID METZER

Schubert symphony.15 The sketches, however, are obviously not com- plete, and the symphony falters where gaps emerge. Berio neither erases those spaces nor plugs them in with stylistically appropriate filler, as may be done in a completion, but instead leaves them intact and adds his own material. Alluding once again to the frescoes, he has referred to these interpolations as 'cement work'.16 'Cement' captures the neutral quality of his contribution, which comes across as grey and lifeless next to the revived Schubert, an effect achieved by this music, often consisting of thin static sonorities, being played without expres- sion, quasi senza suono, lontano and, in terms of dynamics, ranging from p to ppp.17

Instead of filling in the manuscript gaps, these hollow-sounding pas- sages call attention to the emptiness of those spaces. A few melodies, though, emerge in that vacuum, as quotations of both late Schubert works and just-heard symphonic themes murmur throughout the inter- polations.18 These shadowy reminiscences, however, only add to the sense of emptiness and decay, suggesting some sort of void full of shards of the past. This suggestion is enhanced by the prominent use of the celesta, an instrument with strong associations of the mysterious and other-worldly. Perhaps this is the realm from which the sketches have been recovered and, as heard in the distorted quotations, where they, along with the other Schubert works, will eventually return. In that space, the two - the completed and uncompleted, the heard and never heard - have equally deteriorated into fragments, the crumbling bits of larger works.

The evocation of a void is one way, and a rather fanciful way, in which Berio's interpolations comment upon Schubert's drafts. That com- mentary elaborates on a sense of loss, that is, of unrealized musical wealth.19 Rendering presents a symphony on the threshold of existence, never able to take final form, continually breaking apart and always remaining in fragments. Through that disintegration the work repeat- edly draws the listener's attention to what has been lost with the incom- pleteness of the sketches and the passage of time.20

15 Berio's restoration involves not only orchestration but often filling in the drafts harmoni- cally and contrapuntally. 16 Schubert-Berio, Rendering, preface.

17 Ibid. 18 These quotations are most dense in the first movement and gradually thin out in the

following two. Most of the quotations are drawn from the B6 Piano Sonata (D. 960), the B6 Piano Trio (D. 898) and Winterreise (Gute Nacht, Gefrorne Trdnen, Wasserflut, Einsamkeit, Die Post and Der Leiermann). For discussions of the quotations, see Wilfried Gruhn, 'Schubert spielen Berios sinfonische Erginzungen zu Schuberts Sinfonie-Fragment D 936A', Musica, 44 (1990), 290-6 (pp. 292-3), and Thomas Gartmann, '... dafi nichts an sich jemals vollendet ist' Untersuchungen zum Instrumentalschaffen von Luciano Berio (Berne, 1995), 133-5.

19 Wilfried Gruhn also discusses the sense of loss in Rendering ('Schubert spielen Berios sinfoni- sche Ergfinzungen', 294). David Osmond-Smith has described how the work creates a sense of distance between the present day and Schubert's time ('La mesure de la distance: Rendering de Berio', Inharmoniques, 7 (1991), 147-52).

20 A similar fascination with loss and incompleteness emerges in Alfred Schnittke's Concerto Grosso No. 4-Symphony No. 5, the second movement of which draws upon a piano quartet left unfin- ished by the young 16-year-old Mahler (as opposed to the dying 31-year-old Schubert). Schnittke ends the movement with four musicians from the orchestra playing the original and leaving off where Mahler did.

Page 8: Musical Decay

MUSICAL DECAY 99

TABLE 1

RECONSTRUCTION OF SCHUBERT, SYMPHONY NO. 10, THIRD MOVEMENT

refrain D major episode B6 major chorale-like theme refrain D major rondo theme with counterpoint inverted

D minor Hungarian dance episode F major

A minor fugato refrain D major coda D major Adapted from Brian Newbould, Schubert and the Symphony: A New Perspective (London, 1992), 270.

Those losses appear especially great in the drafts for the third move- ment, which are full of contrapuntal intricacies and possibilities largely unbroached in previous works. So committed was Schubert to that new path that he arranged to take lessons from the Viennese fugue master Simon Sechter, completing only one, however, before his death. The contrapuntal emphasis appears out of character with Schubert's desig- nation of the movement as a Scherzo, being instead more appropriate for a Finale. Indeed, confusion arises over whether the movement is a Finale or a Scherzo, or possibly some new conflation of the two.21 The duple metre and loose rondo design suggest the former, whereas the character of the spirited opening theme accords with a Scherzo. These ambiguities extend to the form of the movement. Although a recurring refrain points to a rondo design, the exact structure remains unclear owing to the clutter of revisions and fragments in the sketch. Never- theless, an approximation of the intended form can be made, as shown in Table 1, which presents Brian Newbould's realization.

Berio, however, does not care so much about the form that may have been as the form that exists, that of the sketches themselves. His presen- tation works within that design, not the conjectured one of a recon- struction. To summarize briefly, the drafts for this movement consist of six pages.22 The first two are worksheets made up of scattered ideas, including the initial conception of prominent themes, reworkings of those themes, and material that was later discarded. The remaining four pages present the more polished version of the movement. However, even this section lacks continuity, and realizing Newbould's interpre- tation requires cross-stitching together sections from separate pages.

Rendering incorporates both the more complete final pages and the 21 For a discussion of the formal problems surrounding this movement, see Newbould, Schubert

and the Symphony: A New Perspective (London, 1992), 269-75, and Schubert, Symphony no. 10, real- ization by Newbould, iii-iv. In his preface to Rendering, Berio states: 'These sketches alternatively present the character of a Scherzo and a Finale. This ambiguity (which Schubert would have solved or exasperated in some new way) was of particular interest ...'.

22 Brian Newbould, 'A Working Sketch by Schubert (D. 936a)', Current Musicology, 43 (1987), 26-32.

Page 9: Musical Decay

100 DAVID METZER

TABLE 2

RENDERING, THIRD MOVEMENT

'fanfare' introduction (Berio) page 1 of sketch (worksheet) interpolation pages 5-6 of sketch (later version) interpolation page 2 of sketch (worksheet) interpolation page 4 of sketch (later version) with brief interpolations at the end

preliminary worksheets. The basic plan of the movement is to juxta- pose the two, so as to contrast earlier and later versions of the same material.23 Berio separates these two sections with an interpolation. As shown in Table 2, there are two large units in this movement, each built around the pairing of early and later drafts. The initial unit contrasts ideas from the first page with their revision, and the following block similarly places material from the second worksheet side by side with its reworking.

A discussion of the first block will illustrate how these different com- ponents interact. After a brief fanfare-like introduction played in the style of an interpolation, the movement begins with material from the first page of the draft, which consists of a series of brief, discrete exer- cises: an early form of the refrain in the D major tonic, a later discarded episode theme in B6 major and a D minor statement of the refrain melody in rhythmic augmentation with two contrapuntal lines, one of which is discontinued.24 Although not intended for performance or to be linked together, these modules are presented in the order in which they occur in the draft, with little or no transition between them. This succession of fragments conveys to the listener that this is not a well- structured symphonic movement but rather a patchwork of ideas.

The following interpolation enhances this sense of fragmentation. As Berio describes, these passages bridge 'the gaps that exist between one sketch and another', which, in this case, is the space separating the early and later drafts.25 That gap, however, is not a blank spot on the page where Schubert left off but rather a space created by Berio shuf- fling around fragments, placing side by side materials on the first and fifth pages. Beginning on the latter page, Berio presents an extensive stretch of the revised section that more or less parallels Newbould's rondo formulation from the opening refrain to the Hungarian dance passage (Table 1). That incipient rondo design, however, is subsumed into Berio's larger two-part formal pattern based on the pairing of early and later drafts. The progression from one to the other underscores

23 A similar idea is used in the first movement. Berio contrasts Schubert's two different sketches of the exposition, separating them with an interpolation.

24 Newbould, 'A Working Sketch', 26-31. 25 Schubert-Berio, Rendering, preface.

Page 10: Musical Decay

MUSICAL DECAY 101

TABLE 3

SCHUBERT, SKETCH FOR SYMPHONY NO. 10, SECOND MOVEMENT

A a b theme 1 theme 2 theme 1 theme 3 theme 2 B minor F# minor F# major F# minor

A' coda a' b' theme 1 theme 2 theme 1 theme 2 B minor E minor B minor B minor

the sense of incompleteness surrounding the sketches by suggesting at least two further steps:

early draft -> later draft -> restoration -> Schubert's Tenth Symphony

The last step, of course, is unattainable, but the emphasis on completion raised by Berio's sequence of materials places that goal more tantaliz-

ingly in sight. Any attempt to claim it, however, will get only as far as an

intermediary stage, be it a Berio-like restoration or a reconstruction. Yet both reveal how close the symphony is to coming to life. Rendering, however, differs from a reconstruction by pointing out that the sketches will never rise from their archival slumber. The work repeatedly calls attention to the draft status of the desired symphony, even going so far as to manipulate the sketches - the forced pairings and imposed inter-

polations - to emphasize the unavoidable breaks and holes. But what if there were no discontinuities, if Schubert's drafts were

more or less intact? Such is the case with the second movement, which, except for one slight break, is continuous. This movement spins out a B minor Andante that recaptures the searching melancholy of the 'Unfinished' Symphony. For Berio, the 'stunning' 'expressive climate' also looks forward, at times 'inhabited by Mahler's spirit'.26 Whether or not the draft presents the final form that the Andante would have taken remains unclear. The structure of the movement is ambiguous, suggesting double variation, modified strophic and sonata-allegro designs.27 Taking it on its own terms, the movement breaks down into two sections: the opening A and its varied repetition (see Table 3).

26 Ibid. 27 In his realization of the symphony, Peter Giilke describes the movement as blending

elements of double variation and song forms. The movement does suggest both formal types. The repetition of two themes in recurring units hints at a double variation, although the surprise appearance of a new theme and the absence of conventional variation procedures are atypical of that structure. On the other hand, the subtle changes between the different units, not to mention the lyrical quality of the themes, suggest a modified strophic design. Newbould, on the other hand, views the movement as a sonata-allegro form. This description is less convincing. The tonal structure and repetition of two theme units (the back-to-back pairing of themes 1 and 2) argue against such an interpretation. In addition, the movement lacks a development section, although Newbould unpersuasively claims that the brief transition between the two A blocks serves as an abbreviated development. Drei Sinfonie-Fragmente, ed. Peter Gillke (Leipzig, 1982), 97; Newbould, Schubert and the Symphony, 266-7.

Page 11: Musical Decay

102 DAVID METZER

TABLE 4

RENDERING, SECOND MOVEMENT

Introduction A a Interpolation b Interpolation theme 1+ 2 theme 1 theme 3 B minor F# minor F# major

A' a' b' Interpolation/Close theme 1+ 2 theme 1 B minor E minor

Each further divides into a and b units, both of which contain themes 1 and 2. In the first b section, Schubert introduces a new theme (theme 3), which appears only once. He conceived of this melody after draft- ing the Andante and wrote it down in the sketch of the third move- ment, directing that it be moved 'zum Andante'. This later insertion produces the one gap in the sketch.

In his 'rendering', Berio frames the movement with his own sections and then internally interrupts it twice (see Table 4). These four inter- polations are the same number as in the third movement, a surprise given that this is the most continuous section of the draft. That conti- nuity, however, is never attained. The music strives to wind its way through the unusual form, but it cannot make it, falling apart on three different occasions. With one exception, these breaks are not the result of gaps in the manuscript; rather, they appear to be the result of decay. The Andante, embryonic yet almost 200 years old, collapses with age, pieces of its lyrical lines falling into the void along with fragments of other aging works by the composer.

Decay sets in early. The initial break occurs during the brief tran- sition section between the first a and b sections. Nothing at this junc- ture suggests an interstice - no blank spaces, no juxtaposition of different sketches. Berio instead pushes aside Schubert's linking passage to make room for his own material, which, however, does not completely cut off the musical flow. Presenting amorphous premoni- tions of a semiquaver accompanimental figure used in the b section, the interpolation serves as a shadowy transition, thus commenting on the passage it supplants.

In contrast to this disruption, the second internal break does result from a gap, the one made by the insertion of theme 3. Schubert's music, however, gives no impression of a hole, so seamlessly did the composer later weave in that melody. In that spirit, Berio gradually works in his own material, slowly overlaying the interpolation onto the sketches to produce a stylistic suspension in which Schubert's melodies dissolve. Anxious again to check continuity, the interpolation does not even wait for the new theme to finish before overtaking it. After that

Page 12: Musical Decay

MUSICAL DECAY 103

melody has dwindled down to a solo flute line amid the harmonic void, Berio's passage severs the rest of the b section, not even allowing the concluding theme 2 to sound.

Besides breaking up the sketch, Berio frames the movement with his own sections. This phantom periphery further enhances the percep- tion of the interpolations as a void, suggesting a space from which the Andante has emerged and to which it will return. Among the sounds encountered there are Schubert's marginalia, a brief two-voice coun- terpoint exercise that Berio incorporates into his opening section. This music that never existed, or never was meant to be performed, is just one of the melodic shades walking around the void. In that realm it sounds no different from the scraps of the sketches or completed com- positions, declaring that all melodies, including those of jottings and masterpieces, are 'rendered' equally lifeless and disjointed in this netherworld.

Having momentarily lifted the Andante from that void by restoring it, Berio then forces it back into that space. The last interpolation abruptly cuts off the movement before it reaches the coda. Again, no perceptible gap prompts this disruption; rather it apparently results from the desire to obstruct the musical flow.28 Nowhere in Rendering is that obstruction more invasive than here. Instead of the overlay used previously, this interpolation swiftly blocks the sketches. Moreover, it not only arrests the movement at an especially expressive moment but also prevents it from returning to the tonic, forcing it to end in the sub- sidiary key of E minor. Left tonally bereft, the Andante immediately disintegrates into the temporal void - all that can be heard in Berio's closing passage are diffused fragments.

A conventional restoration would obviously vanquish that void rather than have it reclaim a past work. Moreover, it would never break that work apart. However, Berio, unlike the art restorers he admires, has used restoration not as a means of attaining historical fidelity but rather as a creative act, one that evokes loss and disintegration. Once orches- trated, the drafts are manipulated and splintered even more so as to bring out the incompleteness and decay of the symphony. In this way, the sketches have been restored - restored to the fragmentary state of the past, not the artificial reconstructions of the present.

EUROPERA 5 Whereas Rendering conveys the loss of symphony that could have been, Cage's Europera 5 traces the loss of a genre that has thrived: opera. The work is the last instalment in a series of that title. Paired together, the first two operas, Europeras 1 & 2, were premiered in 1987, and the following duo in 1990. Although Cage claimed the series follows no

28 The interpolation might suggest the absence of theme 3 in the second half of the movement, which Schubert perhaps intended but never directed to be placed in an analogous position of that section. It could also respond to Schubert's scratching out of the coda, which, however, does not begin until several bars later.

Page 13: Musical Decay

104 DAVID METZER

'single direction', a gradual diminution of size and scope emerges, a course owing just as much to performance exigencies as to Cage's changing conception of the works.29 Written for the Frankfurt Opera, Europeras 1 & 2 aspire to grand opera, utilizing the full stage resources of the house, a large orchestra and 19 singers. They strew elements of European opera (from Gluck to Puccini) into a large-scale collage. For instance, fragments of arias, orchestral music, costumes, sets, lighting and other operatic and non-operatic materials occupy the stage inde- pendently of each other, their comings and goings determined by a computer simulation of the I Ching.30 That same microchip oracle watches over the remaining Europeras, which preserve the collage ideal but forgo the grand opera trappings. Numbers 3 and 4 discard the sets, costumes and orchestra, settling instead for fewer singers, a piano and phonographs.

Commissioned by the pianist Yvar Mikhashoff as a chamber work that could easily be taken on the road, Europera 5 simplifies the musical and theatrical means even more. The work is scored for two singers, who select five arias of their choice (again from Gluck to Puccini), and one pianist, who performs six opera transcriptions, such as the Liszt fan- tasies mentioned by Cage. Various reproduction media also appear, including a Victrola that plays six 'antique' recordings of opera arias, a television, set on a random channel but always with the volume off, and an off-stage radio, which Cage recommends be tuned to ajazz station.31 Also heard but not seen is Truckera, Cage's name for a tape consisting of 101 bits of European opera compressed together, so named because when panned from speaker to speaker the bulky, decidedly non- operatic sound suggests 'a huge truck' passing by, although as from a distance - the directions stating that the tape should be 'often no more than barely audible'.32 Also on the verge of audibility are the many patches of silence that emerge during those moments when none of the parts is active. Cage supplants the conductor with the Europera- clock, a videotape that counts down the one-hour duration of the work and gives timings to the performers. As in the earlier Europeras, the entrances and durations of the different elements have been deter- mined by computer, which also fixes the lighting and stage positions, set by segmenting the performance space into 64 small grids.

This brief introduction exposes two tensions underlying Europera 5. During the course of the piece, live performance and sonic-visual repro- ductions vie with each other. The voice and piano insist on the spon- taneity of opera performance, whereas the Victrola asserts the

29 Musicage: Cage Muses on Words, Art, and Music, ed. Joan Retallack (Hanover, NH, 1996), 226. 30 On Europeras 1 & 2, see Laura D. Kuhn, 'Synergetic Dynamics in John Cage's Europeras 1 &

2', Musical Quarterly, 78 (1994), 131-48, and Herbert Lindenberger, Opera in History: From Monteverdi to Cage (Stanford, 1998), 240-64. A discussion of all the Europeras can be found in William Fetterman, John Cage's Theatre Pieces (London, 1996), 167-87.

31 The directions for the work list 'one antique mechanical horn phonograph (His Master's Voice Victrola)'. They also state that a jazz station is 'preferable'. Sections of the score can be found in Musicage, 333-9.

32 Musicage, 300, 335.

Page 14: Musical Decay

MUSICAL DECAY 105

mechanical ability to contain and reproduce it. In contrast, other media - the radio and television - ignore opera altogether. This snub points to another conflict, which Cage calls 'the opposition of the centuries', specifically the nineteenth and twentieth.33 As made clear by his chrono- logical restrictions on the singer's choice of arias, opera belongs largely to the former, as well as to the unacknowledged eighteenth century. Cage also upholds the Victrola as representative of the nineteenth century, although operatic recordings did not take off until the early 1900s. The radio, television and Truckera (all belonging to the era of the truck), however, form a unified front of contemporary technology, declaring that opera is now either absent or, as with Truckera, muti- lated. Facing that wall of technological indifference, opera trembles, never taking full form and coming close to disappearing altogether.

The vulnerability of opera especially comes across in the presentation of the voice. The singer stands alone, offering only the vocal line from a treasured aria without any accompaniment. This melodic remnant, full of silences and lacking a foundation, suggests the fabric of opera being eaten away bit by bit. Within that shrinking musical world, the performer could perhaps find companionship with the other singer, but he or she is also isolated, presenting the vocal line of a different aria. The two do sing simultaneously; however, the ensuing vocal clash only repels them further from each other. In the desire for some clarity, and perhaps as part of an effort to alienate the two performers even more, Cage directs that one face the audience, while the other step aside, either facing the opposite direction or leaving the stage so as to sing from behind it.

Unlike the melodic slivers offered by the two singers, the pianist pre- sents complete works: the piano transcriptions. Yet even these virtuoso pieces evanesce. Cage directs that the pianist 'shadow-play' three of the six fantasies, that is, that he or she skim the keys, rather than hit them.34 As the composer anticipated, individual pitches randomly pop out here and there when the pianist's fingers accidentally press too hard, blips that serve to underscore the gradual dematerialization of opera. 'Shadow-playing' can be considered the doppelgiinger of the player- piano - a live performer producing no sounds at the keyboard. Perhaps out of a desire to avoid any doublings, even ghostly ones, Cage decided against his original conception of including a player-piano in the collage. An early draft includes a separate part for that instrument, which was to play a series of rolls entitled 'Echoes of the Metropolitan', an apt choice given the echoes, albeit distorted ones, of a bygone operatic past in Europera 5.35

The player-piano would have called further attention to the gradual disappearance of the live performers from the work, that is, the

33 Ibid., 226. 34 'Shadow playing' also serves as another means of reducing the obstruction produced by the

three live musicians performing simultaneously. 35 Europera 5, Durational Chart and List, The John Cage Collection, Research Library for the

Performing Arts at Lincoln Center, New York Public Library, New York.

Page 15: Musical Decay

106 DAVID METZER

effacement of their musical and corporeal presence. The pianist, for instance, has been reduced to a shadow, merely going through the motions. The singer, on the other hand, is reduced to a pawn. The com- puter program directs where he or she should stand, moving him or her from one randomly chosen grid to another. The impression created is that of a singer not commanding the stage but being com- manded on it.36

Even more threatening than losing control of the stage is the possi- bility of completely vanishing from the space. That possibility is raised by the juxtaposition of the singer and Victrola recordings. In the recorded voice, the singer confronts his or her shadow, the sonic residue left after his or her disappearance.37 This second form of 'shadow-playing' suggests that opera, as live performance, is slowly fading away into a realm of reproductions. The silent pianist may already be there. His or her presence not only evokes the player-piano but also adds to the muted images seen on the television. More than that, he or she plays reproductions, namely the fantasies, which, despite the interpretative excesses of Liszt and others, are instrumental imi- tations of operatic moments.

Considered as such, the fantasies initiate a broad historical timeline of simulations that stretches throughout Europera 5. This line extends from the nineteenth-century arrangements through the Victrola to the electronic media of radio and television. It is useful to consider these various components in terms of Jean Baudrillard's well-known 'three orders' of simulacra.38 The piano fantasies loosely accord with the first of these: the counterfeit. Both are products of non-mechanical tech- nologies. Moreover, as in Baudrillard's example of the proliferation of valued images by stucco replications, the keyboard works democratized opera by removing it from its 6lite moorings and making it available in concert and domestic environments. However, in that transplantation, as in all reproductions, key elements are lost, including the voice and theatricality, already endangered species in Europera 5.

The erosion of opera deepens with the use of the Victrola, an appar- atus typifying mechanical reproduction, Baudrillard's second order. As Walter Benjamin described, such reproductions diminish the 'aura' of uniqueness and tradition that surrounds an artwork.39 Cage calls atten- tion to the depletion. Indeed, he flaunts it. Europera 5 stages a paradox by inviting listeners to the concert hall to hear recordings. The scratchy discs played there offer desiccated opera, arias that sound not only age- worn but also hollow and anonymous. However, these recordings -

36 Cage's droll direction that each of the vocalists at one non-singing moment in the work wear 'a head and shoulders animal mask' also effaces the performer's presence, besides adding some levity to the work.

37 Before Europera 5, Cage had discussed the idea of replacing singers with phonographs. David Revill, The Roaring Silence: John Cage, A Life (London, 1992), 293.

38 Baudrillard, Simulations, 83-159. 39 Walter Benjamin, 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction', Illuminations,

trans. Harry Zohn (New York, 1968), 220-2.

Page 16: Musical Decay

MUSICAL DECAY 107

uninterrupted, un-'shadowed' and featuring full orchestral accompa- niments - are the most complete operatic experiences in the work. If opera is to be found in the shadow-world of Europera 5, then it is to be found in recordings.

Opera is altogether absent from the radio and television in the work, two media that belong to Baudrillard's third order: the hyperreal.40 It is not just that the two ignore the genre but that, according to Baud- rillard, they have freed themselves from it and all originals, attaining a state of pure simulation based on abstract codes and models. Along these lines it is important to remember that watching over Europera 5, determining the timing and placement of the individual parts, is a com- puter simulation of the I Ching, a program that replaces the tossing of coins with various commands and sub-commands. Television, as Baud- rillard has discussed, similarly creates its own reality, transmuting orig- inals - sports, cooking, arts - into new media-based forms.41 For those who find the hyperreal to be theoretical hyperbole, the matter can be approached from a different perspective by simply considering what makes the unreality and emptiness of television more clear than watch- ing it in a theatrical context, especially with the volume off.42

With each link of Cage's historical chain, there is less opera: the loss of voice and theatricality in the piano fantasies, the elimination of the body and dimming of the aura by the Victrola, and the disappearance of the genre with the television and radio. One other simulation, though, needs to be mentioned: Europera 5 itself. Consisting of oper- atic scraps and reproductions, as well as indifferent media, the work is nothing more than a simulation. But of what kind? With all the oper- atic flotsam, it never achieves the autonomy of the television or radio. Neither are there many similarities with the mechanical reproduction of the Victrola. Europera 5, notwithstanding its standardized title, does not roll down an assembly line; rather, each production of the aleatoric work is unique, thus playfully adding to its aura a layer of uniqueness unforeseen by Benjamin. Ironically, recordings prove more than usually inadequate in capturing the work, being unable to accommo- date not only the infinite versions of the piece but also all the simu- lations involved, namely the silent television and the barely audible Truckera.43 Perhaps even more ironically, Europera 5, despite its technological verve, most resembles the nineteenth-century piano fan- tasies. The work is essentially an individually conceived reproduction of opera dependent on live performers, although a virtuoso may not be necessary to turn the television on and off. Both indulge in oper- atic moments: Liszt's works embellishing them in pianistic filigree, Cage's piece casting them in shadows.

40 Baudrillard, Simulations, 103-52. 41 Jean Baudrillard, Seduction, trans. Brian Singer (Montreal, 1990), 159-63. 42 A different sort of simulacrum autonomy is attained by Truckera, which remains beholden

to opera but transforms the fragments of the genre into its own distinct sound, a noise unknown on the opera stage.

43 Although well produced, the CD on the Mode label (Mode 36) testifies to the inadequacies of recordings in capturing the piece.

Page 17: Musical Decay

108 DAVID METZER

Liszt also referred to his fantasies as reminiscences, a title befitting Europera 5 as well. The two leaf through operatic memories; however, Cage's work tinges those musings with a nostalgia absent from the Liszt pieces, which recalled operas from past seasons rather than a dis- appearing genre.44 This nostalgia emerges not only in the faded arias but also in the stage design. The composer turns the stage into an antique shop, containing five 'old chairs', three 'old tables' and three 'old lamps'.45 The Victrola adds to the bric-t-brac. Cage prominently displays the antique apparatus and cultivates its sonic patina, the scratchy, 'beautiful sound' produced by needles on the old discs.46 This parlour of yesteryear captures both the pastness of opera and its dis- appearance, as only remnants of what was once an adorned room appear on the sparse stage.

Such nostalgia seems uncharacteristic of the iconoclast and tech- nology maven Cage. It also belies his view of past works and genres as 'material rather than art'.47 Europera 5 presents opera very much as an art, a rich tradition that the work devotes itself to displaying and remembering. Moreover, as is made clear by the sentimental trappings, the piece is not indifferent to the disappearance of the genre. Its cul- tivated nostalgia mediates the sense of loss by creating the illusion that the operatic past is just within reach: all one has to do is step into the parlour, sit in a comfortable 'old chair' and listen to the 'antique' recordings. The flickering television screen, distant radio and passing- by Truckera, however, interrupt that wistful fantasy, making it clear that opera belongs not to the present but to an irrecoverable past.

DECAY

Despite using different approaches of reproduction and restoration, Europera 5 and Rendering present similar views of both the past and the present. In the two compositions, the former period emerges as a state of decay and loss, a realm that either exists in scraps or is on the brink of vanishing, if it has not already done so. Berio offers an incomplete work from the past, thus making that period synonymous with frag- mentation, and then splinters it further, yielding a tattered symphony that is less likely than before to be realized. Cage, on the other hand, draws upon finished works, but similarly fragments them by either excising individual parts, as in the arias, or smothering them in shadows, as with the piano fantasies. The various reproductions used by the composer do not break apart operatic originals but instead efface them, having them disappear in a historical chain of simulations, a sort of technological decay.

44 Fetterman also discusses the feelings of nostalgia and wistfulness evoked by the work. John Cage's Theatre Pieces, 186-7.

45 Musicage, 333. 46 Revill, The Roaring Silence, 293. 47 Quoted in Fetterman, John Cage's Theatre Pieces, 169.

Page 18: Musical Decay

MUSICAL DECAY 109

Fragmentary or evanescent, the past still dominates Rendering and Europera 5, whereas the present has receded. In the former work, there are only traces of the present, specifically the interpolations, which were composed in the late 1980s and incorporate modern idioms. These passages, however, seem more like atemporal voids than con- temporary voices, suggesting that the present, like all the years after Schubert's death, is an emptiness from which the sketches have been unable to free themselves. That emptiness waits at the edges of the drafts, a surrounding space that catches the collapsing pieces of the would-be symphony. This border between past and present contrasts with the superimposition of the two periods in Sinfonia, which has vibrant contemporary idioms jostle past styles in collage textures. Eur- opera 5 also creates a collage from various elements, but it offers an austere mix in which past and present remain just as detached. The few twentieth-century components stand indifferent amid the operatic reminiscences, being either silent or off-stage. Even Truckera pulling into the work fails to foreground the present. The tape offers a cacoph- ony of operatic debris that verges on 'bare audibility'. Moreover, it too occupies a peripheral position, sounding as if it was 'passing just outside or under the [performance] space'.48 As in Berio's voids, rem- nants of the past sound from a distant realm.

In Rendering and Europera 5, the similar realizations of past and present evoke extensive fragmentation and decay, that is, the crum- bling of entire works or genres. This fascination with large-scale disin- tegration can also be seen in contemporary visual artworks, many of which use gestures analogous to those in the two musical pieces. Kopy- stiansky's Restored Paintings, to return to our opening scene of decay, take classical images to the brink of decomposition. A 1992 work from that series presents a ripped, pockmarked version of Ingres's La Princesse de Broglie (1853), seemingly salvaged by stretching out the frail canvas and piecing together torn parts (Figure 1). The painterly act involves not so much the faithful copying of the original but the fabri- cation of a patina, the flakes and gashes. With that veneer, Ingres's bur- nished blues and gold dim into sooty lavenders and bronze. Moreover, his detailed muted background fades away, leaving behind only the figure and chair, the most memorable features of the painting.

What elevates Kopystiansky's painting above the distressed-look items at Conran's is the embroidery of his scratches and the ironic twist of the title. Moreover, Restored Paintingis perhaps too gloomy for the retail shelf. It evokes not only decay but also nothingness. The ravaged Ingres is mounted upon a larger black canvas which provides ample borders and a background, a vacuous one to replace Ingres's d6cor. The new canvas is more than mere matting, as elements of the original, colour streaks emanating from the dress and chair, pour into the empty

48 Musicage, 339. Accounts of the 1992 performances at the Museum of Modern Art in NewYork City, however, make clear that Truckera went well beyond 'bare audibility'. Fetterman, John Cage's Theatre Pieces, 186.

Page 19: Musical Decay

110 DAVID METZER

m ?e on" "

Figure 2. Mike and Doug Starn, Crucifixion, 1985-8. Toned silver print, wire, ribbon, wood, tape, 120" X 120". Courtesy Leo Castelli, PaceWildensteinMacGill, and the artists.

bottom space of that canvas, making it part of the painting.49 Once again, flecks of a past work settle in a blank periphery. As with Schu- bert's themes in Berio's interpolations, Ingres's image disappears into nothingness, unable to exist beyond the original, itself dwindling away. The fragility of the Ingres may explain the efforts to extend the paint- ing, to have more of it and to stave off decay. Kopystiansky, however, exposes the error and futility of such attempts. The extension mis- shapes the original by making the Ingres bottom-heavy, and it ulti- mately adds to the deterioration, coming across as nothing more than a faded patch of colour.

Evocations of extensive decay also appear in the works of Mike and Doug Starn, known as the Starn twins. Many of their pieces from the 1980s feature photographic reproductions of past paintings.50 The Christ Series, for instance, draws upon Philippe de Champaigne's Le Christ mort couche sur son linceul (c.1654). A major piece in that collec- tion is the wall installation Crucifixion (1985-8), which presents ragged, fragmented photographs of five hanging figures (see Figure 2). The bib- lical scene is enhanced by the use of studio materials: heavy nails holding up the photographic slabs and wire coil suggesting the crown of thorns in the original, notably absent from the Starns' prints. As evident in the use of outside materials, Crucifixion, unlike Kopystiansky's canvas, does not faithfully replicate an original; rather it draws upon a

49 A similar gesture occurs in the Restored Painting, No. 5. A reproduction of that work can be found in Art News, 88 (March 1989), 143.

50 In their recent work, the Starns have focused on images of the sun, often incorporating digital shots taken by a NASA satellite. These works have appeared in a variety of media, including video.

Page 20: Musical Decay

MUSICAL DECAY 111

pre-existent work to create a new but related image.51 The Starns' piece props up Champaigne's recumbent Christ into a suspended figure, or five nearly identical ones. Instead of any sort of violation, such liberties suggest the inevitable melding of images and motifs created by the accumulation of Christ representations over centuries.

Whereas Crucifixion does not exactly copy a specific work, it none the less comes across as a reconstruction of an earlier original, albeit an unknown one. In particular, the installation calls to mind reassembled wreckage. Like a shell constructed from debris, fragments of some sort of Christ image have been pieced together, each placed in what appears to have been its original location and separated by the blank stretches of missing remnants. Viewing the work this way reveals the ironic game of Rendering and the Restored Paintings being played out once again. Like them, Crucifixion crumbles the past while pretending to shore it up, a twist that underscores the frailty of that period. Again as in the other two works, that point is reinforced through the use of empty space, which is filled not with bits of the original but scraps of wood, wire, ribbon and tape. Those materials conventionally appear behind the scenes, being used in the construction and hanging of artworks. Placed up front, they call attention to the absence of a complete finished work to cover the stretches of white wall and, instead of supporting a paint- ing, they become part of the work itself, not only adding to the wreck- age but also often limning the outline of the missing Christ figure.

As with Kopystiansky, the Starns evoke the past through a mixture of restoration and reproduction. The two initially attracted attention with their photographic innovations, including the developing of prints on sheets of non-photographic paper which are taped or glued together to form a larger image. Many of these signature touches evoke decay. The twins, for instance, often dye the paper sepia tones of yellow (used in Crucifixion), blue and orange that recall faded photographs. Like age-worn snapshots, the sheets are often crumpled and ripped. Finally, much to the anxiety of collectors, the materials themselves, especially the paper and tape, are fragile and will not endure. Fascinated by age and decay, the Starns have woven those elements into their art: 'our work is conceived to change and age.... Art cannot be excused from time.'52

Photography and other reproduction technologies, though, are sup- posed to give art a partial reprieve from time, at least allowing a second- ary version of a work to survive. However, as in Europera 5, reproduction serves as the agent of decay rather than of preservation. The photo- graphs disintegrate Champaigne's image just as the historical chain of simulations effaces opera. Moreover, the promise of infinite repro- ducibility, the means by which reproductions stay one step ahead of decay, is not fulfilled. Five Christ figures appear, no two looking the same, none of them complete.

51 If the Starn twins had wanted to incorporate a true crucifixion image, they could have used Champaigne's own painting of that scene.

52 Quoted in Andy Grunberg, Mike and Doug Starn (New York, 1990), 38.

Page 21: Musical Decay

112 DAVID METZER

The Starns' yellowed Christs and the three other works discussed above extend a tradition of aestheticizing decay. Predecessors in that tradition include eighteenth- and nineteenth-century paintings of the Roman Forum and Chateaubriand's musings upon the 'poetics of the dead' overheard in sacred ruins.53 Such evocations often peer back at a distant and faint past, like the Roman and Gothic ruins which speak of their time in mysteries and fragments. The late twentieth-century progeny of that tradition, on the other hand, usually draw on a voluble past - operas that still ring in halls and paintings that hang in museums. They treat these familiar pieces with a high degree of artificiality and irony, hallmarks of so much recent art. In that vein, the above four works do not depict actual dilapidated objects but appropriate intact works (or, with the Schubert sketches, an intact incomplete symphony) and subject those secondary versions to decay.

If the decay is artificial, so is the means of borrowing. Each of the four works draws upon past originals under the claim of restoration and reproduction. That conceit facilitates the wholesale borrowing of earlier pieces. In their respective modes of presentation those two approaches focus on entire works and aim to minimize any alterations to them. Appropriating those practices, the four works, especially Rendering and Restored Painting, can draw upon complete originals and downplay trans- formation to achieve a close likeness to the originals, while all the time making room for differences, specifically the signs of decay and frag- mentation. The presentation of a whole original deepens the illusion of disintegration. We see or hear what seems to be an entire, possibly even familiar, work having succumbed to age, its expansive surface scarred and faded, its bulk breaking apart into shards.

That illusion is part of the chronological outlook of dissolution shared by these four works. In this view of time, nothing lasts. The past, be it Ingres, Champaigne, opera, or even an incipient symphony, fades away into nothingness. The process of disintegration is irreversible. Attempts at restoration and reproduction, the four works make clear, only exacer- bate it. The present is also a site of loss. In Europera 5 and Rendering, that period emerges as either a void depleted of the creative wealth sought in earlier centuries or a technological realm oblivious to those riches. Both pieces draw on works and traditions that are disappearing, if not entirely lost, and do not offer any new styles to replace them. The two instead lead into emptiness, the blank stretches that abound in each, like the voids opened up in the symphonic sketches or the extended silences and media ethereality of Europera 5. The artworks follow similar paths, this time leading to white walls and black canvases.

This bleak view appears to portend an aesthetic crisis or, as one critic recently said of postmodern musical styles in general, a descent into 'the black hole of nihilism'.54 Before sliding into that hole, it is important to remember that twentieth-century arts, including postmodern styles,

53 FranCois Auguste-Rene de Chateaubriand, Le ginie du christianisme (Paris, 1904), 426. 54 Robin Hartwell, 'Postmodernism and Art Music', The Last Post: Music after Modernism, ed.

Simon Miller (Manchester and New York, 1993), 27-51 (p. 50).

Page 22: Musical Decay

MUSICAL DECAY 113

have offered myriad ways of viewing the past - some bleak, some not.55 Two other works by Berio, for instance, see the past and the present quite differently from Rendering. In Recital I (for Cathy) the past similarly exists in fragments; however, instead of dwindling away, those pieces are piling up and threatening to overrun the present. Starring in this chronological drama is a recital singer who is being buried under three centuries of repertoire. She finishes her concert not with an encore but with a prayer, a prayer for liberation from the past. Like Rendering, the third movement of Sinfonia features an entire work from the past, this time the Scherzo from Mahler's Second Symphony. The Scherzo takes us on a voyage through bits of spoken texts (Beckett, Valery, student protests, among other things) as well as the musical past and present, passing through a Beethoven symphony one moment and a Boulez work the next. That journey, though, is in constant peril, as the Scherzo, like Schubert's symphony, is always breaking apart.56 The Mahler move- ment, however, does reach the end of the trip, ending intact in its final bars. With it, we have come to the end of a journey through (to use a phrase from the verbal text) the 'unexpected', a voyage at times exhil- arating, frightening and comical. Unexpected too is the experience of the past not as dead or decaying but as a living period from which we can survey both other vibrant pasts and an equally active present.57

Rendering and Europera 5, on the other hand, lead us into nothing- ness. What this disintegration of past and present says about the late twentieth century can only be conjectured. Such scenes of decay may spring from a mingled unease and fascination with the fragility of the past or from a scepticism over what new styles can be created to stand beside those of previous centuries. Whatever the impetus, the two musical works represent the present as a period in which decay eclipses creation. Yet, in both, decay itself becomes a means of creation, that is, the past can be made new, experienced again and differently, by making it old. The touches of disintegration and emptiness lend the replications of earlier works that 'expressive' quality that Berio found so inspiring in the bald walls of the Giotto frescoes. This scratching of new expressive wrinkles into earlier works suggests that even these pes- simistic pieces want to keep the past alive, to find something new in its familiar sounds. Rendering and Europera 5, however, make clear how ephemeral these revivals are, as they keep a nascent symphony and ven- erable operas caught in the slow ebb of the past.

University of British Columbia

55 For different approaches to the relationships between past and present in recent works, see Robin Holloway, 'Modernism and After in Music', The Cambridge Review, 110 (1989), 60-6; Jann Pasler, 'Postmodernism, Narrativity, and the Art of Memory', Contemporary Music Review, 7 (1993), 3-32; and David Nicholls, 'Avant-Garde and Experimental Music', The Cambridge History of American Music, ed. David Nicholls (Cambridge, 1998), 522-34.

56 On the handling of the Mahler Scherzo in Sinfonia, see David Osmond-Smith, Playing on Words: A Guide to Luciano Berio's Sinfonia (London, 1985), 43-53.

57 These two works are further discussed in my in-progress study of quotation in twentieth- century music.

Page 23: Musical Decay

114 DAVID METZER

ABSTRACT

Restoration and reproduction have served as two of the primary means by which the present has approached the past. These practices are the focus of Luciano Berio's Rendering and John Cage's Europera 5, two recent works that draw upon earlier compositions. In Rendering, Berio 'restores' the drafts for what would have been Schubert's Tenth Symphony. Contrary to conventional restorations, Berio not only builds up the sketch materials but also fragments them, having Schubert's themes disappear into musical voids. Europera 5 looks back at eighteenth- and nineteenth-century opera, which is presented in a collage of live performance and reproductions. During the course of the work, opera gradually disappears into a world of reproductions, losing its vocality and presence. In both compositions, restoration and reproduction ultimately make the past more distant and inaccessible. A similar use of these two prac- tices occurs in recent visual artworks by Igor Kopystiansky and Mike and Doug Starn. Both the musical and visual artworks create scenes of decay, in which the past appears as crumbling and the present as an emptiness.