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ON THE HORIZONTAL AND VERTICAL PRESENTATION OF MUSICAL IDEAS and on Musical Space (I)

Regina Busch

'HIS OWN ATTEMPTS AT EXPLANATION,just like his compositional work, lend themselves to misunderstanding'. This opinion dominates Webern literature now as in the past, though naturally not always in this formulation of Dohl's.' Sometimes we read of contradictions, of imprecisions; errors of fact or of mental processes can be 'demonstrated'; and, depending on the particular author's field of interest and study, these are treated with indulgence or gentle annoyance, with indignation or knowing dismissal. Who could expect of a composer-a composer, moreover, like Webern: naive, at times culpably naive, withdrawn from reality; with a music so 'abstract', so in need of help or redemption by means of interpretation-who could expect of such a composer pertinent and consistent, or at least apt, music-theoretical concepts or utterances? Hardly anyone, in fact, seems to have dared to expect this kind of thing of Webern so far. That this might indeed involve some daring can be recognized from the conditions, the fuss, and circumstance with which Webern is approached. Whether they have sprung from the soil of serial music or not, all the systematic investigations, the numbering of note-rows, classifying of pitches, durations and so on, considerations of 'structure' (many investigations, too, of 'form', of symmetries)-they all seem like precautions against the music. Since the music is not trusted, the traditional music-theoretical concepts presented by Webern (and Schoenberg, too) are also regarded as unsuited for coping with the music. Instead, attempts are made using, for instance, the idea of a cell (usually a three-note basic cell) and its metamorphoses-an idea which is at least as anachronistic as the traditional ones, is scarcely strong enough to bear the burden of explication, and is exactly as vulnerable to criticism on scientific and ideological grounds as a serious preoccupation with Weber's own statements is alleged to be.

It may be that everything about Webern invites misunderstanding; it may be that the music and the attempts at explanation get in each other's ways. The music evidently seems 1Friedhelm D6hl, 'Zum Formbegriff Weberns. Weberns Analyse des Streichquartetts op.28 nebst einigen Bemerkungen zu Weberns Analyse eigener Werke' (On Webern's Concept of Form. Webern's Analysis of the String Quartet op.28, together with some observations on Webern's analysis of his own works), in Osterreichische Musikzeitschrift 27 (1972), pp.131-148, especially p.137. Cf.also D6hl's 'Weberns Beitrag zur Stilwende der neuen Musik' (Webern's contribution to the change in style of the New Music) in Berliner musikwissenschaftliche Arbeiten Vol.12 (Munich-Salzburg 1976), p.337ff.

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HORIZONTAL AND VERTICAL

to frighten people; at all events it does not make things easy for them. It has not become familiar, or at least not self-evident, even to experienced interpreters.

Above all, it is hardly loved-and the blame for this cannot lie only with the fact that it is mostly performed badly and without understanding. It seems only to give genuine pleasure to a very few, and often not even then as music but more as an elitist occasion. Access to this music is therefore certainly not easy. But provided that one does not propose simply to forget, displace, ignore or proscribe it, but regards it as interesting and full of promise (not merely significant), one will nonetheless have to involve oneself and actively come to terms with it. Webern's own statements could facilitate this access and provide helpful commentaries, especially if one does not get on too well with the scores, but only as long as they are not robbed of their possible causes of misunderstanding and their contradictions. Holding fast to the inconsistencies could turn out to be more revealing, as far as the understanding of his music and its general evaluation are concerned, than the application to it of decisive interpretation models in which problems and difficulties are degraded into errors and aesthetic flaws. For it cannot surely be a matter of ascribing a place in (musical) history to Webern and then consigning him to the historical records?

Webern's 'attempts at explanation' have in general suffered the same fate as his music: they have been kept at a safe distance, or repelled altogether. The vocabulary mainly used in talking and writing about the music is peculiarly neutral, cautious-one might almost say timid. The concepts have a sterilizing effect upon the way the music is heard, blunting the effect of the sounds, blurring the music. At any rate-and this can even be heard in the most obscure interpretation-they are remote from the music and inadequate to it. They only mirror the perplexity that Webern's music caused and causes; they do not remove it. The conviction (which is widely disseminated) that one cannot, on the other hand, get on well with or close to the music with 'traditional' music-theoretical concepts or ways of describing music-and these after all include Webern's previously-mentioned attempts at explanation; attempts which may not even be intended to explain!-is in no way based on the actual experience of the music. One may even ask whether it really was this music-or, more generally, non-tonal music-that provoked the re-examination, modification, or even the throwing overboard of the concepts.

It is nonsensical or falsifying-so it has been argued, for example, in connexion with Webern-to apply the traditional concept of a period (a concept directed above all at regularity) to him; it is similarly held inappropriate to speak of sonata form, unless one means an ABA form in the most general sense-that is, once again in that neutral, and perhaps also neutralizing, sense. This kind of argument can be applied concerning virtually every music-theoretical concept to almost every music: a consequence of the naturally and inevitably complex relationship of theory to that of which it is a theory. Whether, over and above this, the relationship between musical circumstances and 'traditional' concepts is especially problematic in the case of Webern, and why and to what extent, would first need to be found out. Be that as it may, Weber, Schoenberg, Berg (and some of their pupils) have spoken and written about their own music with the help of these concepts, to which they, too, have linked concrete musical experiences concerning 'traditional' music. To renounce the use of this terminology before testing it-and this would, after all, also mean giving up certain ways of thinking and hearing-would be a luxury, or a sacrifice that would only be worth while if one then understood the music and enjoyed it better. And that is by no means certain: up to now, at any rate, we have not got any further than intellectual satisfaction. To expect no more from a musicological engagement with Webern, however, is surely also an example of'stupidity in music', in the sense of Eisler's category as described by Karoly Csipak.2

2German 'Dummheit'-see Karoly Csipak, 'Probleme der Volkstiimlichkeit bei Hanns Eisler' (Hanns Eisler and the problem of popularity) in Berliner musikwissenschaftliche Arbeiten Vol. 11 (Munich 1975); Karoly Csipak, 'Was heisst "Dummheit in der Musik"? Uberlegungen zu Hanns Eislers Musikdenken' (What does 'stupidity in music' mean? Reflections on Hanns Eisler's musical thinking), in Notizbuch 5/6: Musik, edited by Reinhard Kapp (Berlin- Vienna, 1982), pp.175-202.

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It is also part of the characteristic way of dealing with the terminology of Schoenberg's Viennese school to proceed, as it were, globally (another method of preserving one's distance), especially in the case of concepts which had not up till then been established as music-theoretical ones in the narrower sense: musical space, musical idea, comprehen- sibility, coherence, emancipation of dissonance, timbre, musical logic, for example. The fact that such concepts occur in the work of different authors-Schoenberg, Webem, Berg, Ratz, Spinner, Stein, Rufer, and out to the most remote circles-is related to the formation of this school, but it also says something about their status as terms. On the other hand, the varying uses and to some extent variable meanings of the concepts stand in the way of precise definitions, and are a temptation to regard them in each case as no more and no less than a private terminology: one, however, which-especially in the case of Schoenberg-is not denied a claim to theoretical significance and far-reaching effect.3

Proceeding globally: that means that virtually nothing is known about the evolution of even a single one of these concepts in the musical thinking of a composer-neither of the 'history' of the concept itself nor of its gradual development in connexion and reciprocal interaction with his composing. That is astonishing, when one considers that it was a characteristic, indeed a defining characteristic, of Schoenberg's Viennese school that composing and theorizing went hand in hand with and influenced each other. Global also means-on the one hand-that these concepts are (more or less) expected by and large to mean the same regardless of where they appear; that is, to be freely available. Since contradictions arise out of this, they are, on the other, credited as concepts with nothing or everything: ambiguous, imprecise, capable of being arbitrarily combined, subject to 'musicological' interpretation-thus could their status in today's thinking about music be described. Yet things look better in Schoenberg's case than in Webern's; a few scattered pieces of preliminary work exist.4 But the general state of knowledge, even with reference to Schoenberg, is such that it is impossible to determine whether the inconsistencies lie in the concepts themselves or in Schoenberg's thinking, or whether they originate from the fact that in each case the verbal expressions have not been examined where they occur, but have been torn from their context, historical, musical, and of subject-matter.

In any examination of Webern's theoretical utterances, the role that might be played by the medium of communication must be taken into consideration-in contrast to Schoenberg's writings, published or intended for publication, and his public lectures, or the published essays and books of Rufer, Ratz, or Spinner. Webern's statements maybe binding to a different degree, or in a different kind of way. A large proportion of his statements concerning his own music is to be found in his letters, a few in his diary entries. The notes of two series of lectures given by Webern in 1932 and 1933 in a private house in Vienna, to an audience of musicians and musical laymen, are of central significance. These notes were taken by a friend of Webern's, the lawyer Ploderer, who contributed to the musical periodical 23-as did Willi Reich, who reported on these lectures in 23 and in Musik, and who published them in 1960 under the title Der Weg zur neuen Musik.5 The printing of the lectures in 23 was planned at the time but proved impossible; in any event Webern will have known about this plan. No doubts have therefore been raised about their subjectively binding nature: that Webern expressed himself in an entirely consistent manner, especially in matters of 'terminology', in his letters to Schoenberg, Berg, Reich, Humplik and Jone, Kolisch, and Stein (to mention only a few of the most pertinent among those that have been published) is firmly established. Only occasionally does the fact that those whom Webern

3Cf. for example Carl Dahlaus, 'Schonbergs musikalischePoetik', inArchivfurMusikwissenschaft 33(1976), pp.81-88. 4For instance, Rudolf Stephan, 'Der musikalische Gedanke bei Schonberg'(The musical idea in Schoenberg), in RudolfStephan, lom musikalischen Denken. Gesammelte Vortrdge, edited by Rainer Damm and Andreas Traub (Mainz, 1985), pp.129-137; also Rudolf Stephan, 'Zum Terminus "Grundgestalt"'(On the term 'Basic Shape'), ibid., pp.138-145.

SAnton Webern, Der Weg zur neuen Musik, edited by Willi Reich (Vienna, 1960); English Version The Path to the New Music (Bryn Mawr and London, 1963), translated by Leo Black. (The passages appearing in this article have been translated by Michael Graubart.)

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addressed included musical laymen serve the musicological authors-when they permit (as they think) Webern, but in reality themselves, a few liberties in matters of thought. For Webern, however, who throughout his life felt himself indebted to the ideas of Karl Kraus, the binding nature of his utterances, musical as well as verbal, was independent of whom they were addressed to: 'In the end the words after all make the thought'he once wrote to Hildegard Jone.

The title of this essay promised that it would deal with the horizontal and the vertical presentation of musical ideas. These are central concepts in Webern's thinking about music insofar as they are for him the conceptual starting points from which the principal developments of music-history, including that of his own time, can be properly understood and described. A similar role is played for Halm by the two 'cultures', fugue and sonata;6 analogous ideas underlie Kurth's books on Bach, Romantic harmony, and Bruckner. It is the relationship between homophony and polyphony, between harmony and counterpoint (and the theory of harmony and the theory of counterpoint), that has always determined, though in continually different ways, the history of music and has always been the subject-matter of music-history and musicology. They are central to Webern's thinking also because the remaining concepts, 'traditional' ones and others, group themselves around them and are brought into relationship with them. They are of central significance, finally, because a peculiarity of the conceptualization of musical space that has developed mainly within the Schoenberg school can be attached to them. This special meaning of horizontal and vertical presentation may perhaps have been observed-I do not know-but in any case ignored. On the other hand, these expressions are in common use everywhere. The incalculable consequences of this ignoring of their special meaning within the Schoenberg circle include extraordinary, diffuse, inaccurate, and in all manner of ways wrong ideas about what Webern might have meant by the synthesis of horizontal and vertical presentation. There is talk of the identity of the horizontal and the vertical, of the interpenetration of the horizontal and the vertical or of their annulment; some authors obviously even manage to imagine something like a diagonal. The present state of research into musical space, which can only be sketched here, must at any rate be assessed as not yet scientific. And this not because 'musical space'-whether this is a philosophic or aesthetic concept or a physical one-is so difficult to treat, but because in Webern's and Schoenberg's case the pieces of information that exist have not yet been taken into consideration at all; or, to put it even more polemically: because the texts have till now not been read correctly or have only been read incompletely.

Space 'THE TWO-OR-MORE-DIMENSIONAL SPACE IN WHICH MUSICAL IDEAS ARE PRESENTED IS A UNIT.' This formulation of the 'law' that is of such importance for twelve-note music, as Schoenberg said, is to be found in the essay 'Composition with Twelve Tones'.7 The text is based on extensive drafts, dating from January 1934, for a lecture in Princeton.8 There, the talk is of'the law9 concerning the unity of musical space' and 'the law9 of the absolute view10 of musical space'; in the version of 1941/50, the statement that corresponds to this is: 'the unity of musical space demands an absolute and unitary perception' (p.223). The relationship of Schoenberg's thinking in 1934 to that of 1941 or 1950 cannot be investigated here. Among other aspects, this discussion would have to concern itself with the tendency towards 6Cf. for example August Halm, Von zwei Kulturen der Musik (Of two cultures of music) (Munich, 1913, reprinted Stuttgart, 1947); see also Regina Busch, 'August Halm Uiber die Konzertform'(August Halm on concerto form), in Notizbuch 5/6: Musik (Berlin-Vienna 1982), pp.107-153. 71941; first published 1950 in Style andIdea (New York), ed. Dika Newlin; the above quotation, and those following, are taken from the new edition of Style and Idea (London, 1975), ed. Leonard Stein, where the essay appears as 'Composition with Twelve Tones (1)'. (Claudio Spies, in his introduction to the 1934 lecture-notes-see next note-states that the 1941 essay was originally given at UCLA in March 1941 and repeated at the University of Chicago in May 1946.-M.G.) 8Published in Perspectives of New Music, Fall-Winter 1974, Vol.13 No.1.

9'Gesetz'. Spies's translation, 'notion' (loc.cit) misses the binding force of Schoenberg's expression.--M.G. io'Anschauung' ('way of regarding'); Spies's 'conception' does not convey the implication.-M.G.

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general validity that inheres in 'two-or-more-dimensional' or 'absolute and unitary'. In the present context, we need only hold on to the fact that two components of this conceptualization of space, namely 'absolute' and 'unitary', were retained. It is not yet known, unfortunately, how Schoenberg arrived at this law, and when its formulation as a 'law' was definitely established. In the 'Diskussion im Berliner Rundfunk' ('Discussion broadcast on the Berlin Radio') of March 1931,11 Schoenberg refers literally to the law 'established by himself'. It can therefore be assumed that Webern knew of it at the latest by this time, and had thought about it. And surely he must not only have known this law, but must have been familiar with Schoenberg's theoretical investigations and plans connected with it; to what extent, is still to be discovered. At any rate, the concepts 'musical idea', 'comprehensibility', 'coherence', '(musical) logic', 'presentation' entered into his musical and theoretical thinking (and that of the Schoenberg school in general) and were used as his own. The majority of these concepts correspond to the working titles of Schoenberg's theoretical reflections, which centred primarily round the 'musical idea'. The 'law of the unity of musical space', however, assumed quite exceptional significance for Weber's musical thought; his thinking orientated itself around this law even after Schoenberg had already emigrated and postal contact between them had loosened. This was especially the case when he spoke or wrote about his own music and drew theoretical consequences towards which Schoenberg had not pointed the way.

The very first series of lectures that Webern gave, The Path to Composition in Twelve Notes, January to March 1932, goes back to an outline which Webern wrote for a course in Mondsee in 1931. He had already occupied himself with this and reported details of his plans to Schoenberg as far back as 1929. Webern's course was planned as an introduction to some of Schoenberg's lectures and the idea of discussing it with Schoenberg was an obvious one.12 It was Schoenberg's suggestion that 'only I would recommend your arranging the analyses possibly in such a way (by the choice of works) as to show the logical development towards twelve-tone composition'; the title, too, originated with Schoenberg, yet with a variant: 'Composition with 12 Notes'. In his 1932 lectures, Webern continued to speak of composition in 12 notes. This enabled him to create in his listeners' minds the connexion with a conception of music into which the new methods of composing could also be seamlessly incorporated. Thus the 'way' can also be followed thus: Then I did write a quartet again that was in C major-but only in passing...Schoenberg's songs, op.14:...Here, too, we still find a tonality-but no cadence. (Lecture IV)

Schoenberg's op.1t...No.1: the close is Eb,-it does not close in any key;...In this musical material, new laws have asserted themselves which have made it impossible to describe a piece as being in this key or that. (Lecture V) 'atonal music' can be more appropriately described as 'music that is not in a particular key' (Lecture I)

finally, too: The chromatic path has begun, i.e. the path that entails striding forth in semitones. (Lecture II, with reference to Brahms's Gesang der Parzen).13 It is not only important that the formulation 'Composition in Twelve Notes'can be readily joined onto the above formulations and functions in a suggestive way; it is above all important that the conception which Webern arouses or addresses by means of these formulations is a spatial conception. One might say even one with some degree of concreteness, insofar as this spatial conception enables the 'concrete' musical experience of music that 'is in C major' to be communicated by analogy. This becomes plain if one reads the lectures through for the formulations tied to spatial conceptions. It is, of course, true that our vocabulary, at least as soon as thinking is concerned, is in any case tied to spatial conceptions; and perhaps music, which is known to have 'a close relationship with time', is especially affected by the fact that temporal and spatial relationships can only be conceived and described in dependence (including linguistic dependence) on each other. Weber's

"In Arnold Schoenberg, Gesammelte Schriften, edited by Ivan Voytech (Frankfurt, 1976), pp.272-282. 12Cf. Hans and Rosaleen Moldenhauer, Anton von Webern. A Chronicle of his Life and Work, (New York, 1979), pp.373f. Schoenberg's suggestion in the following sentence is quoted from p.374.

"My translations.-M.G.

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mode of speech, however, makes use of the dependence on (or relationship to) space in that it raises into consciousness the musical and spatial experiences enshrined in concepts like 'foundation14 note', 'returning to the foundation14 key' or 'relationship becoming ever looser' as experiences (and not as facts of nature). As a result of this, 'suspended15 tonality' acquires a positively sensuous quality: Everything, however, still had a relationship to a key, above all at the end...[about his quartet, that 'in passing'was still 'in C major']. The foundation note itself, however, was not there-it was suspended15 in space, invisible, no longer necessary. On the contrary; it would already have been disturbing if one had really referred one's experience to the foundation note.13

And the idea that the note-row should take over certain of the functions of the foundation note is sounded in formulations like: 'The twelve notes in a quite specific sequence form the foundation for the whole composition' (Lecture VI), and: composing or inventing is 'founded on the row' (Lecture VII).13

'Suspended15 in space': that is already a different space or spatial domain than the one in which a piece is situated if it is 'in a key'. Whether it is tonality in general or a particular key that yields the space in a given case cannot be clarified here. But the space in which the foundation note referred to is floating15 seems to be an altogether different kind of space (the meaning is not merely that of 'extended' tonality), a space not formed out of tonalities. The way in which the twelve notes, which now have 'equal rights' and 'have entered into their dominion' (Lectures III, V), relate to this space or are located in this space is again only metaphorically explained by Webern: 'The row in its original form and at its original pitch gains an analogous role to that of the "principal key" of earlier music; the "reprise" will naturally return to it. We close "in the same key"!'16 (-a quotation from The Mastersingers, in which the formulations 'in' a key, 'in' twelve notes resonate once more. Schoenberg, incidentally, had also quoted the same place in similar contexts: in the chapter on closes and cadences in the Harmonielehre, and at the beginning of the essay 'Probleme der Harmonie' (Problems of Harmony); Erwin Stein, in 'Neue Formprinzipien', had also alluded to it with 'You set the rule yourself and then obey it'.17) At the end of his second lecture-series, in April 1933, Webern once more took up the earlier conception: 'As earlier one wrote in C major, so we write in these 48 forms'. Otherwise he generally employed Schoenberg's 'composition with twelve notes'. Whether it was Schoenberg's lecture in Vienna at the beginning of 1933 that caused him to change his formulation, or he had chosen the version with 'in' for didactic or similar reasons in the first lecture-series only, cannot be determined at present. Spinner and Reich have assured me in letters that there was no difference between 'in' and 'with', or that the difference was negligible. In our context, however, in which we are concerned (amongst other things) with changes in spatial conceptions, it is perhaps useful to remember that at one time both formulations were in use.

Webern's example of the ash-tray which, from whatever side it is viewed, remains 'the same' (Lecture VII, 1932) is also of significance for the conception of space. In the essay 'Neue Formprinzipien', Stein reports that Schoenberg once picked up a hat during a lecture and turned it 'in all directions': 'Do you see-this is a hat, whether I look at it from above, from below, from in front, from behind, from the left, from the right; it is and remains a hat, even if it looks different from above than from below'. Schoenberg always held firmly to this example with precisely this description: in 'Composition with Twelve Tones (1)' (1941/50) we have knife, bottle, watch; in the draft for this (1934) watch, bottle, flower.

14German 'Grundton', 'Grundtonart'. I have chosen 'foundation' in preference to the usual 'fundamental'because the latter word has (at least in common usage) lost the literal connotations 'ground', 'earth'(underfoot) and the derived connotations 'cause', 'reason (for)' of the German 'Grund'-M.G. 15'Suspended tonality' is Schoenberg's English phrase for 'schwebende Tonalitat'. 'Hovering' or 'floating'is more exact: '...floating in space...'.-M.G. 16'Wir schliessen im gleichem Ton'.

"7Erwin Stein, 'Neue Formprinzipien' (New Principles of Form) in Musikbldtter des Anbruch 6. Sonderheft: Arnold Sch'nberg zum 50. Geburtstage, 13. September 1924, pp.286-303, quotations from pp.291 and 295.

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That the idea was important for him is shown by his 'stage-direction'18 which he notates in his script: '(show)'.19 It is his attempt to symbolize the 'law of the absolute view of musical space', in which-in the 1934 formulation-'there is no absolute upwards, downwards, forwards or backwards, since every direction becomes a different one from a different point of that space'.

'From a different point of that space': that means that fundamentally every point in this space is capable of becoming the ideal vantage point of the observer, the vantage point for the 'view'; there is no single, predetermined or fixed point from which the directions could be determined in a particular case or to which they could be referred. That which is right, left, etc., changes with the point occupied in space. 'Absolute', therefore, in the sense of independent, unrestricted, released from every tie (certainly from the tie to a fixed reference point in space): specifically, not relative. This conception was already familiar to the Schoenberg school in the 1920's as is shown by the example of Stein, or, too, that of Greissle (essay on Schoenberg's wind quintet).20 It can be conjectured that the 'absolute' conception of space was seen as a contrast to one referred to a foundation note; the foundation note would then be a predetermined reference point that would remain in force throughout the piece.

What such a kind of space would look like, and how the objects within this space could be recognized and modified-about this, nothing is known. The only thing that is firmly established is that in the Schoenbergian and Weberian space, in place of relationship to a foundation note, the interrelationships between the notes (the twelve notes related only to each other, and, further, all the notes that occur) prevail, and 'only the note-relationships are perceived and compositionally worked out21 absolutely'.19 'Absolutely' therefore in particular means the independent existence (independent of the foundation note) of note- relationships, 'absolutely' taken as a quality turned to some extent into something positive which belonged, in music referred to a foundation note, only to the foundation note or the 'tonic': hence no absolute upwards, downwards, etc., but absolute note-relationships. The space in which music referred to a foundation note-or a piece referred to a foundation note-is played out is not simply a special case of the Schoenbergian space (with a vantage point fixed for a particular piece); the spaces are different in kind. Inversions, retrogrades, etc., also occur in tonal music, and in this too an identity-relation is contained in their relationship to what they invert or revert, and the difficulty becomes plainer still in the case of variation or reprise: in this music, too, the factors upon which identification or identity depend, or by which they are influenced, are determined by very varied conditions. It is obvious that the concepts of identity and variation must be considered anew for musical events occurring in twelve-note music. Variation in the 'traditional' sense-about which, indeed, agreement ought also still to be sought-is too close to elementary twelve-note procedures; in the twelve-note context what it could encompass is too trivial-something which at least everyone who has tried to understand Webern's piano variations has experienced. Guided by the circumstances in twelve-note music, we shall have to modify the concept; but only modify it, not abolish it.

A further aspect of the 'absoluteness' of Schoenbergian space must also be discussed. The description of the 'absolute' in the essay of 1941/50 reads: 'In this space, as in Swedenborg's heaven (described in Balzac's Seraphita) there is no absolute down, no right or left, forward or backward. 22 Compared with the version of 1934 (or, too, that of Stein, 1924), this, therefore, speaks only of 'absolute down', no longer of 'up and down' or 'upwards and downwards'. We are dealing here not with a quotation from Balzac or

"'Vortrags-Anweisung': Regina Busch's pun is untranslateable. The phrase means 'mark of interpretation' in the musical sense (dynamics, tempo, etc) but 'Vortrag' also means 'lecture'.-M.G. 19Perspectives, Fall-Winter 1974, pp.84-85. 20Felix Greissle, 'Die formalen Grundlagen des Blaserquintetts von Arnold Schbnberg' (The formal foundations of the Wind Quintet of Arnold Schoenberg), in Musikblatter des Anbruch 7 (1925), pp.63-68; especially pp.65-66. 21 German 'auskomponiert'-M.G. 22Style and Idea (1975),p.223.

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MUSICAL SPACE

Swedenborg, but with Schoenberg's synopsis of what Balzac's Seraphita relates of Swedenborg's teaching in the chapter 'The Clouds in the Holy Place'and the description of the 'ascension' of Seraphita who had by then become the 'soul'. To what extent Schoenberg derives his bearings from Balzac/Swedenborg and to what extent more generally from a 'centre-point theory' with antique or Goethean roots23 cannot be investigated here. If it should really be the case that we are dealing with such a theory, then at any rate it conflicts with the conception, taken-and aptly taken-by Schoenberg from Swedenborg/Balzac, of an ascent from centre to centre or from circle to circle into the actual centre. For in this 'heaven' there is indeed no absolute down, but evidently an absolute up. It can hardly be denied that this conflict must have implications for the conception of musical space, for the presentation of ideas within that space, and also for the possible presence of a musical 'centre'.

This problem remains unclarified as much in the case of Webern as in that of Schoenberg. It will be possible to take as a starting-point the fact that Schoenberg concerned himself with both (conflicting) conceptions at the outset, i.e. undoubtedly already at the time he was working on Die Jakobsleiter-to which, as we know, he was stimulated by amongst other things Balzac's Seraphita and Strindberg'sJacob Wrestles. In Strindberg's fragment, too, he was able to encounter the experience, pertinent here, of the loss of the familiar sensations of space and time: the appearance of the Swedenborgian 'unknown one' causes the normal space-time relationships to be put out of action: '...that the church seems to be so distant. It has receded by at least a kilometre...Have I lost my sense of distance-measurement?...I take half an hour to walk along this bit of the Rue Bonaparte, which otherwise only takes five minutes...I accelerate my steps, I run, but the unknown one pursues his path with so exactly corresponding speed that I do not succeed in shortening the distance that separates us.24 Schoenberg's Totentanz der Prinzipien (Death-Dance of the Principles) (written, like the text of Jacob's Ladder, in the middle of January 1915) begins similarly: a peal of bells that does not stop striking after the twelfth stroke; a sequence of associations: midnight-the blackest-darkest-eternally infinite-unimaginable-'one sound! Without any differentiation'. After differences are perceived, first by the senses of seeing and hearing, then by the other senses, a stage is reached in which the senses differentiate too much. Finally the stage of 'recognition'25: We recognize25 that it lives; by its pallor and insipidity; by its wealth of indistinctnesses;...By the fact that its pallor and insipidity now resolve themselves into colours and shapes; that is called binding oneself together...it disintegrates more and more and is in motion...So much and every individual thing seems important...Now it sings; each one sings something different, thinks that he sings the same, and really in one direction it sounds in unison26; (in amazement) in another polyphonic. In a third and fourth it sounds different again; but that cannot be expressed. Altogether, it has countless directions, and every single one can be perceived. (Heightening) And all of them are lost towards somewhere where one could find them. It would be easy to follow them, for now one has the way of viewing.27

This degree of recognition25 is not exceeded further in the Totentanz, in contrast therefore withJakobsleiter or Balzac's/Swedenborg's ascension. Then in the last part of the text almost 'normal' conditions are attained again:

23See, for instance, Angelika Abel, Die Zwolftontechnik Weberns und Goethes Methodik der Farbenlehre. Zur Kompositionstheorie und Xisthetik der Neuen Wiener Schule (Webern 's twelve-note technique and Goethe's methodology of colour-theory. On the compositional theory and aesthetics of the new Viennese school) (Wiesbaden, 1982). 24Translated by the present translator from the German translation by E. Schering, Inferno. Legenden (Munich, 1920)-M.G. 25German 'Erkenntnis; erkennen': recognition, recognize; cognition, cognize; apprehension, apprehend; knowledge, know-M.G.

26The German 'einstimmig' (lit. 'one-voiced') means 'monophonic' (or even 'for one voice') in the musical sense, but also carries implications of 'joining in together', 'being of one voice (unanimous)', etc.-M.G.

27Texte (Vienna, 1926) p.25 (shortened)-M.G. translation.

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TEMPO

(It strikes thirteen.) Thirteen.-Not, indeed, twelve, but at least a boundary in this emptiness!

As late as 1932, Schoenberg pointed out similar circumstances in his second orchestral song from op.22, composed at almost exactly the same time (30 November 1914-8 January 1915): ...or, however, one has, as in an aphorism or, too, in the lyric, to invest every smallest component with such a great richness of relationships to all the other components that the minutest change of position allows as many new shapes28 to be seen as in other contexts does the richest working-out and development. The shapes are then situated as in a cabinet of mirrors and can continually be seen simultaneously from all sides and display relationships in all directions.29

The difference from the ideas of Balzac/Swedenborg is not only a matter of the conflict, mentioned above, between a centre-point conception and one of ascending degrees. Schoenberg's space is not one in which terrestrial conditions are put out of action or at least have become irrelevant; it is not described negatively ('no up, no down', etc.), but is a space with other (than the usual) properties, but quite 'concrete' ones: in one direction it sounds single-voiced, in another polyphonic-but the directions can evidently be distinguished from one another. 'Altogether, it has countless directions, and every single one can be perceived.' Countless: that is not anything uncertain, unlcear, unfocussed-just'countless'. That for Schoenberg unusual spatial conceptions could be based on, as it were, real experiences, is shown by his description of Loos's architecture:30

His houses are conceived of in three dimensions from the beginning, instead of being thought of in terms of a series of planes fronted by a facade. They are so constructed that, with the use of only a few occasional steps, one can

proceed from the first floor to the second without being conscious of the change. Uncle Arnold compares them to

sculptures made of glass, in which one can see all the angles at once.

Really conceived three-dimensionally, a glass space in which one can see all the angles at once, or, as in Totentanz, in which it sounds single-voiced in one direction, polyphonic in another, in which everybody sings something different but believes himself to be singing the same: these conceptions paraphrase one of the principal properties of Schoenberg's and Webern's musical space, the one which finally also makes possible the synthesis of the horizontal and vertical presentations of a musical idea. Schoenberg laid this down in the law of the unity of musical space; he was conscious of the fact that 'absoluteness'and 'unity'are closely related.

(To be continued)

28'Gestalten'.

29My translation-M.G.; see also leaflet in record-set The Music of Arnold Schoenberg, Vol.III (CBS): notes by Claudio Spies.

30In Dika Newlin, Schoenberg Remembered. Diaries and Recollections 1938-1976 (New York, 1980), p.133 (diary entry of 3 November 1939).

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