Kopie von: Kopie von: McLAREN

Datum: 04.09.96 09:15

So far, I have sat quietly beside my terminal and largely enjoyed the
contents of the tuning digest while tolerating the interruptions by Mr
McLaren�s wordprocessing. Now, as a diploma-carrying PhD and therefore,
target, of the latest broadside, I feel it opportune to respond.

The regurgitation of PNM articles from thirty or more years ago reflect
neither an understanding of the situation then nor the situation now. To
make E. Krenek an arbitrator of musical sense is rather far-fetched.
Neither he, his music, nor his theories gained a significant following -
with an audience or with academics - during his lifetime, and it is
reasonable to assume that this will not change in the future.

McLaren fails to discriminate between very different conceptual foundations
of serial music, differences that his quoted source evidence clearly. The
confusion of American (e.g. Babbit) and European (Nono, Stockhausen,
Boulez) serialisms is simply an error: two entirely different projects were
at work. In the US, Babbitt, following late (American - and at the time
unknown in Europe) Schoenberg practices, attempted to make a music where a
certain structure was replicated throughout a work, and used non-pitch
"parameters" to attempt to "project" this structure to the material as
clearly as possible. Babbitt has constantly revised his projection
techniques in a reasonable search for clearer solutions to a deep
perceptual problem. (Though I am by no means a "serialist", I find it very
easy to follow the most basic structural details in Babbitt�s music,
particularly aggregate formation - somewhat like harmonic rhythm in tonal
music, and hexachord content - which strikes my ears as something like the
Major-minor distinction in tonal music). If Mr McLaren had made a close
reading of the Backus review, he would surely have realized that Backus had
intended to write a polemic in support of PNM-style positivism and against
the "mystical" tendancies of Die Reihe.

On the other hand, the Europeans never had a single project identifiable as
"Darmstadt" (although I have used the term myself): the later works of
Stockhausen, Boulez, Nono have made the distinctions among the earlier
works much clearer. Stockhausen rapidly turned to more "informal"
arrangements, Boulez to performance practice, and Nono to politics,
concrete sounds, and late in his life, traditional tonal materials. (It is
worth noting that both Stockhausen and Nono made "microtonal" works,
Stockhausen quite formally, and Nono - quartertones - as a way of breaking
the musical surface). Further, the Darmstadt of 1964 that Milton Babbitt
attended was dominated by such "texturalists" as Kagel and Ligeti. The
European serialisms were never interested in Babbitonian details of set
structure and were always more concerned with overt - traditional - musical
effects. Europeans had faced the problem of a complete break in their
musical history due to the war, and the use of "negation" of traditional
musical sensibilities and appeal to "scientific" language were attempts to
regain some of the dignity that was lost during the war. Further, to
identify Cage, who visited once in the 1950�s and then was essentially
banned until 1990, with Darmstadt, is to make an historical error of
massive proportions.

If I am able to find any point of commonality among these very different
musicians, it is this, they have all demonstrated the ability to use
creative self-criticism to create new works, a kind of self-criticism
lacking in Mr McLaren�s writings. I hope that Mr McLaren will eventually
develop a degree of tolerence for the musics and theories not of his own
culture or makings at least equivalent to the degree of tolerance he
expects from those paying to download his lengthly wordprocessings. This
tolerence might then precede any attempt on his part to criticize things he
does not yet fully understand.

Please accept that this message come from a patient reader, who, in the
past has tolerated a great deal of nonsense in the service of better
musical intonation (and even a lengthy period of proselytizing among the
non-12 community by a member of a notorious sect - there�s a real scam for
you), but I do have my limits, and they have been reached: this reader will
stop reading McLaren.

Daniel Wolf (PhD), Frankfurt

PS Allow me to add the fact that I�ve tolerated an awful lot of
improvisation under the guise of "premeditated" performances, to come to
understand that an essential feature of composition is erasure, something
not possible in improvisation, no matter how "premediated". I have no
problem with the idea of a midi file as notation, but I reserve the right
to criticize the contents of said file on compositional grounds,
particularly the lack of editing: life is too short to fill with such
unfinished work.

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