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SOME THOUGHTS ON THE NEW COMPLEXITY

ERIK ULMAN

I AM AMBIVALENT about what seems to have been labelled the "New Complexity." One reason for this is that many "new complexities" are grouped under this heading, and are not only variably interesting but potentially contradictory. Casually to subsume these in a "school" is to obscure this variety and to deflect attention to relatively trivial surface similarities among composers, such as a taste for elaborate rhythmic notation, or the fact of performative difficulty. Certainly, one could hardly confuse, even on the most desultory acquaintance, the sonic and philo- sophical worlds of, for example, Brian Ferneyhough, Michael Finnissy, Chris Dench, and Richard Barrett: compare, for instance, the radiant "generosity of spirit" which Dench identifies in the creative actl and finds manifest in Sulle Scale della Fenice as "a kind of endless, eternal dance"2 with the pessimism of Barrett's music, whose principal imagery (evoked



Some Thoughts on the New Complexity

both in sound and by the quotations, often from Beckett, which abound in his scores) is imprisonment, desperation, and fatigue. The intention and, indeed, the experience of these musics are largely opposed; but the application of the label "New Complexity" to both blurs essential distinc- tions between them. Even the "shared characteristics" listed above func- tion quite differently from composer to composer: to judge from his recording of English Country Tunes,3 Finnissy's notation encourages vir- tuosic display and improvisatory expansiveness in a manner similar to rubato in Chopin and Liszt, whereas Ferneyhough's notation, through the articulation of structure by bar-lines and the proliferation of nested rhythms (which Finnissy uses rarely), stimulates a very different kind of performative energy.

My problem with the term "New Complexity" does not stop with the relatively petty issue of whether it defines a school. After all, what label does not conceal the phenomenon to which it is attached? Certainly, the "New York School" of Cage, Feldman, Wolff, and Brown produced work of widely dissimilar intents, surfaces, and quality; as did "Impressionism," "Abstract Expressionism," the "Nouveau Roman," and so on. However, the use of the word "complexity" obscures critical (in both senses of the word) issues.

Taken in a broad sense, "complexity" is, I think, an attribute of any interesting music. Taken still more broadly, it invests all music, given the intricacies of the physical nature of sound, the social contexts of musical production, and so on; but I distinguish here between musics that seek to explore and amplify their own complex nature and those that subdue that multiplicity in the interest of, for example, "communicative immedi- acy" or unambiguous formal perceptibility. I don't find these latter to be very useful goals: the Pavlovian "expressivity" against which Ferney- hough argues so persuasively in his "Form, Figure, Style" and the recourse to generic formal strategies are, as far as I'm concerned, not only politically suspect capitulations to escapism, but are simply boring.4 Good art is, as Morton Feldman writes, "a crucial, dangerous operation we perform on ourselves,"5 both for creator and audience. It defies immediate categorization (and assimilation), and from its often bewilder- ing fertility unfold continually new experiences that reveal our capacities to us by testing and, perhaps, dissolving our limits. This is what I mean by "complexity": a music that privileges ambiguity and subtlety, nourish- ing many paths of perception and interpretation. By this definition, not only is the music of Ferneyhough complex, but also the webs of nuance in Feldman, the interplay of variously distinct materials in late Cage, the recontextualization of strata in Bussotti, the contradictions between his- torical objects in Kagel, even the simplicity of La Monte Young, in whose

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JUANJOSE LLOPICO

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work the experience of complexity may shift from formal structure to the acoustical richness of a single chord.

All of these musics, if they sustain critical attention and different paths of interpretation, are valuable and "complex": their collective motto may have been written by Cage in a letter to Boulez, in which he describes his artistic task as "[understanding] thoroughly all the quantities that act to produce multiplicity."6 Why, then, should a movement be labelled with the term "complexity" on the mere basis of, say, notational specificity? This narrow understanding of the word is objectionable. I certainly have no problem calling such works as Barrett's Coigitum or Ferneyhough's Carceri d'invenzione cycle complex: here, intricacy is not merely on the surface but constitutes the "being" of the music, whether in terms of notation, relations among parts, cultural subtexts, and so forth. How- ever, some "complex" music is not complex according to my criteria: its elaborateness of notation and difficulty of performance do not foster multiplicity and subtle distinction, but strain after obvious effect. In Xenakis's less successful works, for instance, the apparent complexity of surface detail reveals itself to the ear as producing exceedingly simple contrasts of texture which, however immediately striking, reveal fewer and fewer dimensions with time. (I hasten to add that there is much Xenakis of which I am very fond, and that I, among others,7 am interested in its exploration of the realm between complex and simple phenomena; at times, however, this dialectic fails to emerge.) This problem is certainly not unique to Xenakis, but is evident in various pieces by younger composers. Several times I have examined a score and been excited by its apparent vitality, only to hear what had looked so powerful in the notation shrivel to banality.

I do not dispute the claim advanced by composers as different as Ferneyhough and Feldman that the score is a powerful object which inflects performance in many ways that are difficult to verbalize. Some interesting music has been specifically concerned with the potential dis- crepancies between music as "text" and music as sound: Bussotti's early work in particular reveals the score not as a stable unity but as a palimp- sest in which description, prescription, and compositional residue may interact unpredictably. These explorations are not too distant from Ferneyhough's, in whose scores the wealth of notational detail is the necessary product of a "polyphonicization" of all the parameters of com- position, thus not only prescribing performance, but also indicating the turbulent play of forces from which the music arises.8 However, if notation can signify richness and multivalency, may it not also conceal their absence? Sometimes the "complex" score becomes an intimidation mechanism, staving off critical scrutiny by cultivating incomprehension,

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substituting colorful notational and verbal detail for musical detail, and depending on an inevitable inaccuracy of interpretation for either a genu- inely improvisatory performative power or a final excuse for the failure of the material to present itself audibly. In these cases, the aura of the "New Complexity" erodes critical attention and approaches the condition of a publicity strategy.

These are harsh words, and I do not mean to dismiss the validity of much "newly complex" music, nor do I wish to launch into diatribes against work that has not convinced me. I am also aware of the subjectiv- ism of my stance: I don't have a clear means of distinguishing the genu- ine from the ersatz score except by hearing which pieces engage me, and which don't. However, some composers' cavalier attitude to accuracy of performance reinforces my skepticism regarding their notational practice. I remember talking to a performer who had worked very closely with the composer of a very beautiful piece. Although I had enjoyed her performance, I was curious why she had played a certain gesture, which had been notated as rhythmically regular, as irregularly as what surrounded it. She responded, I'm sure with the sanction of the composer, that since the rhythmic notation was generally a written rubato, she felt justified in applying rubato everywhere. I felt, to the contrary, that the irregularity of the context made the accurate interpretation of the regular figure imper- ative, so as to realize the notated contrast.

This disagreement did not diminish my enthusiasm for the piece, nor for the performer; but, in light of the composer's apparent approval of what seriously distorted his notation, I was unconvinced that the score's extreme rigor was necessary. This experience, coupled with my disap- pointment at hearing pieces whose scores had fascinated me, made me suspicious of some of my own recent work, whose "complexity" had been increasing: I was no longer certain whether my notation was com- mensurate with density of ideas, or camouflaged their insufficiency. I have not resolved this issue, not having a chance to hear that recent work, but have proceeded more cautiously.

At its best, the "New Complexity" represents a range of options that are a welcome antidote to the sterility of "academic serialism" in this country, and even more to the aggressive vapidity of "the mock-astral plane of musical yuppiedom"9 represented by most "new simplicity," "new romanticism," "new vernacular," and so on. At its worst, it permits composers to evade compositional accountability by substituting the trappings of complexity-we may call them "complications"-for complexity itself. I think it important that the worthy task of creating complex music not degenerate into the manufacture of mere simulacra.

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NOTES

1. Chris Dench, "Sulle Scale della Fenice: Postscript," Perspectives of New Music 29, no. 2 (Summer 1991): 101.

2. Richard Toop, "Sulle Scale della Fenice," Perspectives of New Music 29, no. 2 (Summer 1991): 90.

3. Michael Finnissy, English Country Tunes, Etcetera compact disc KTC 1091 (1990).

4. See Brian Ferneyhough, "Form, Figure, Style-An Intermediate Assessment," Perspectives of New Music 31, no. 1 (Winter 1993): 33- 34.

5. Morton Feldman, "Boola Boola," in Essays (Cologne: Beginner Press, 1985), 52.

6. Pierre Boulez and John Cage, Correspondance et documents, ed. Jean- Jacques Nattiez (Winterthur: Amadeus Verlag/Paul Sacher Stiftung, 1990), 179.

7. James Boros, "Why Complexity? (Part Two)," in this issue of Perspec- tives of New Music.

8. Brian Ferneyhough and James Boros, "Shattering the Vessels of Received Wisdom," Perspectives of New Music 28, no. 2 (Summer 1990): 11, 16.

9. James Boros, "Why Complexity? (Part One)," Perspectives of New Music 31, no. 1 (Winter 1993): 7.

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