Department for Music Analysis, Theory and History

This study deals with the relationship between Claude Debussy and the Viennese school (Arnold Schönberg, Alban Berg and Anton von Webern). As a first point, biographical aspects of this relationship are discussed: Due to aesthetical, but also jingoistic motivations, Debussy seems not to have been interested in Schönberg’s music. On the part of Schönberg, similar motives were relevant, but at the same time the situation was more complex: Schönberg often mentioned Debussy as an important pioneer of modern music (»Wegbereiter der Neuen Musik«), and Debussy’s works were frequently performed in the »Verein für musikalische Privataufführungen« (1919–21). In order to get one’s bearings in this confusing situation, the music of Debussy and Schönberg is compared analytically in the second part of this study. Aspects of melody, harmony and timbre are considered. The original and Benno Sachs’ version of Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune which was written for the Verein are discussed in detail.

Ernst Kurth's music theory is grounded on the proposition, most prominently developed in his study Die Romantische Harmonik und ihre Krise in Wagners »Tristan« [1920], that sound is a reverberation of powerful forces that circulate in the inaudible. According to Kurth, music is a living entity which must be conceived of as hierarchically superior to single tones. Many of his contemporaries were fascinated by these ideas, and although Kurth's concepts were not discussed on a large scale after 1945, his theoretical framework arguably can provide today appropriate means to describe transitions and relations of sound in post-tonal music. In this article, repercussions of Kurth's ideas are uncovered in the theoretical writings of Theodor W. Adorno, especially where they allude to Arnold Schönberg's idea of a »drive force of sounds« [Triebleben der Klänge], and in new French music after 1970 (mainly in aesthetics and works of Gérard Grisey), where the metaphorical idea of »forces« within sound and the intention to »make the inaudible audible« result in gestalt-derived musical structures with clear affinites to Kurth's energetics. Although Kurth's objective to discern »invariants« of musical listening has met with legitimate scepticism, a closer re-reading of his texts might provide fresh impulses to tackle the key problem of the relationship between history, perception and structure in twentieth-century music and music theory.

»Debussy, c’est l’enigme!« Analytical Perspectives in »La terrasse des audiences du clair de lune« – In the title of this essay, the difficulty to analyze Debussy’s works is pointed out. One way to encounter this problem is to analyze his music by using different analytical methods and perspectives. However, in the history of music analysis, attempts to interpret Debussy’s works as closed organisms often lead to misunderstandings. Therefore, it is necessary to consider the relevance of often underestimated analytical aspects: register, space, contour/
Gestalt, meter/tempo, sound and voice leading. By keeping this in mind, three different ways of listening to Debussy’s Piano Prélude La terrasse des audiences du clair de lune are presented which are equally relevant. This leads to some final remarks about analysis and perception and to a re-evaluation of the term ›impressionism‹.

Quite frequently, the composer Gérard Grisey is mentioned as one of the founders of the so called "spectral" movement. The term "spectral music", coined by composer Hugues Dufourt in 1979 and now in wide use (despite ongoing disputes over its appropriateness), represents a music derived from the analysis of the structure of sound itself, and explores exciting new forms, timbres, temporalities and modes of expression. It first emerged in France in the 1970s, but its roots extend back possibly as far as Rameau, and certainly to such key figures of the twentieth century as Debussy, Messiaen, Stockhausen, Ligeti, Xenakis, Partch, and still today La Monte Young. Grisey, Murail, Dufourt and Levinas were early pioneers of this aesthetic.
In this book - the first extended study about Grisey in German language - his music is analysed by reference to the sketches (Paul Sacher Stiftung Basel), and interpreted from the perspective of structuralist and poststructuralist philosophy and aesthetics. Thereby, the analytical interpretation focusses on the multiperspectivity of Grisey's music between audibility and inaudibility.

Jene vielfältigen Zeitkonzepte, die Haydns Oeuvre prägen, können vor der Folie eines grundlegenden Wandels des Zeitbewusstseins erörtert werden. In diesem Beitrag wird dies an Hand einiger analytischer Bemerkungen zu Haydns Symphonie Nr. 64 konkretisiert.

‘A hidden commentary’: Zaïde – Adama von Chaya Czernowin, in: Wolfgang Gratzer (Hg.), Herausforderung Mozart. Komponieren im Schatten kanonischer Musik (= Schriften zur musikalischen Rezeptions- und Interpretationsgeschichte, Bd. 2), Freiburg i.Br./Berlin/Wien 2008, S. 171–186.

Zur 'Liminalität' der Musik Debussys und Griseys, in: Michael Kunkel (Hg.), Les espaces sonores. Stimmungen - Klanganalysen - spektrale Musiken, Saarbrücken: Pfau 2016, S. 99-112.

Der Begriff »Liminalität« (lat. limen = Grenze, Schwelle) wurde in den letzten Jahrzehnten in so unterschiedlichen Fachbereichen wie der Ethnologie oder der Literatur-und Medienwissenschaft diskutiert. Auch im Zusammenhang mit Neuer, insbesondere mikrotonaler Musik ist dieser Terminus relevant, geht das mikrotonale Komponieren doch häufig mit Grenz-und Schwellenphänomenen einher.

In many of his texts and interviews Gérard Grisey emphasized that spectral music draws its properties out of the nature of sound itself. This implies a tendency towards purism and a rigorous criticism of any reference to levels of signification and meaning. A closer scrutiny of Grisey’s music shows, however, that this apparent opposition can be questioned in several ways. Grisey’s musical thinking can be localized on the threshold between sound and meaning – it is a »liminal« music (musique liminale). Analytical comments on Grisey’s L’icône paradoxale for two female voices and orchestra (1992–94) exemplify this.

The premises of early spectral music can be differentiated from integral serialism through its inherent characteristics. Composers such as Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Luigi Nono operated with discrete elements which they integrated into structural forms. In contrast, the sound continua of Gérard Grisey, in works such as Espaces Acoustiques, were inspired by theoretical and artistic approaches, such as Henri Bergson’s philosophy of duration and Jean-Claude Risset’s exploration of timbre. In this essay, Hugues Dufourt asserts that the paradigm of sound continua should not be conceived as an inevitable accomplishment of the dialectic movement of music history, but as a new approach informed by computer science. As a result, he identifies Grisey as one of the great innovators of musical time.