72 Tempo 57 (226) 7290

2003 Cambridge University Press

DOI: 10.1017/S0040298203000378 Printed in the United Kingdom

Cinquante Ans de Modernit Musicale: De Darmstadt
IRCAM. Contribution historiographique une musicologie
critique by Clestin Delige. Sprimont: Mardaga,
Collection Musique/Musicologie, dir. Malou Haine.
E65.00.

Serialisms decline as a guiding principle of

modern music is the somewhat lugubrious
underlying theme of this impressively large and
useful survey covering more than 50 years of
sometimes intense speculation, theory, and
debate. For such a protracted collective effort at
elucidating the fundamental building blocks of
music to have achieved so little, is a matter for
earnest reflection. With analogous researches in
particle physics and the human genome promising not just to transform our understanding of
life and the universe, but also the possibility of
creating new forms of life and matter, one might
have hoped for more from a music predicated on
newly isolated first principles. That serialism has
lasted so long is, all the same, testimony of its
latent power and influence; that it led to the
establishment of a research centre such as
IRCAM is further proof of its enduring intellectual appeal.
As a compositional method, serialism is sure
to survive as long as figures of the stature of
Boulez and Stockhausen continue to compose.
Only recently, however, has it begun to emerge
from the shadows as a subject of historiographic
research, a good example being Morag Grants
concise and illuminating Serial Music, Serial
Aesthetics: Compositional Theory in Post-War Europe
(Cambridge: 2001), a study of die Reihe, which
makes the point that to understand modernism
one needs a sense of what life was actually like at
the time:
World War II ended in 1945: this much can be accepted
as fact; but the question of what happened next, of
how Europeans approached life in the aftermath, is
harder to answer. Dates, places, and events, at least
when separated from their consequences, are relatively
easy to quantify; aesthetic attitudes, emotional states
are, however, not only created of subjectivity but are
almost dependent on it for their interpretation.

The present volume asks to be considered in

precisely that spirit.

Clestin Delige will be familiar to Tempo

readers as the interviewer in Conversations with
Pierre Boulez (Eulenberg: 1977), and a contributor
to William Glocks Pierre Boulez: A symposium a
decade later (Eulenberg: 1986). Though a loyal
Adornist, he is only too conscious of the latters
failure to impose discipline and coherence on
modern music in general and serialism in particular. He is also dismayed at what he interprets as
a loss of faith among composers; late in the
book, with Adorno as his witness, he even attacks
the public for its lack of cultural awareness so
everyone, in the long run, is to blame. The
present volume is offered as a personal testament
in the hope that the message of serialism may be
preserved, and eventually understood.
The book is conceived as a documentary report of a
history that I feel is now critically at risk in an era of
post-modernism, and under attack by composers in
denial of theories they once explicitly defended. . . .
For us, the interest is in reliving history at the level of
actual discourse that constitutes the most vivid record
of the times.

As a study text the book (which is 1,024 pages

long) makes available a vast range of source materials, many unavailable in English, in one convenient and inexpensive package. An additional
attraction for researchers is the books undisguised personality and distinctively European
take on the period and its rivalries, expressed in a
French that is fluent and easy to read.
A young music student in 1946, Delige was
caught up in the turbulent upheavals in
European musical culture that followed the
193945 war, and his account from those early
days, through a long professional career as a
modern music specialist for Belgian RTB, and
subsequently as a teacher, is designed to be read
as material for discussion drawn from a lifetimes
personal file of reports on ideas and concepts
that composers have laboured for half a century
to put into words. There is also a message in the
authors time-frame, a moment of history
defined not by individuals but by institutions of
international co-operation: Darmstadt, founded
in 1946 by Everett Helm and Wolfgang
Steinecke, and IRCAM, a monument to
European culture and US software expertise.
Serialism appeared in the midst of the postwar

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uproar as the spontaneous manifestation of a

Geist: evoked in the image of Cage, Boulez, and
Babbitt plongs, leur insu, de part et dautre de
lAtlantique, dans un type de recherche proche,
et qui pourtant ne se rejoindrent jamais. The
notion of a serial spirit manifesting itself in
human actions is central to the authors thesis
and a token of his attachment to the critical tradition of Theodor Adorno.
The defenders of tonality were always able to
claim that their theory was coherent and easily
verifiable, derived as it was from actual music.
For serialism, an artificial theory, to have
emerged seemingly from nowhere to dominate
Western musical thought for so long without
reference to a coherent body of literature given
that the Webern Concerto and Variations,
Messiaens Mode de valeurs, Boulezs Structures I
and Le Marteau sans matre, and the Gesang der
Jnglinge and Gruppen of mid-1950s Stockhausen
hardly constitute a repertoire and are more
remarkable for their theoretical differences than
for their similarities seems paradoxical in the
extreme, and yet the sheer weight of evidence
presented here, nearly all of it from composers,
speaks of a purpose that, however ill-defined in
practice, was palpably real and motivated.Only
after 1945, Schoenberg excepted, do musicians
begin to define themselves in relation to the
evolution of music.
Part of the books fascination lies in a marked
inconsistency and unevenness of tone and
language that, in defiance of scholarly tradition,
speak to its readers as real people. Patient and
sympathetic discussions of the theories of
Leibowitz and Schaeffer, Pousseur and Kagel,
through the anti-theories of a younger generation of Lachenmann and Ferneyhough, to the
terminal banality of Hugues Dufourts il ny a
pas de composition sans organisation ni structure are offset, sometimes incongruously, by
sudden bons mots of distinctly Boulezian concentration and flair. Of Ren Leibowitz, that after a
few lessons at his Quai Voltaire address, a reasonably gifted musician had learned all there was to
know of Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern, no
less! Of Barraqu, the charming if backhanded
compliment that he wrote nothing to be
ashamed of . Or this, about 433, Cages tribute
to degr zro: His saving grace is in having
contained a time in which anything can happen
within a chronologically measured duration.
Kagel is quoted: Je compose rigoureusement
avec de la merde a quip worthy of Pre Ubu
and Lutoslawski excoriated: In Poland, what
passes for radical literature, in France is seen as
poetry du divertissement noir, a dismissive allusion

to Lutoslawskis low art appropriation (for Trois

Pomes) of Henri Michaux, a poet Boulez had
reserved for his own use in Posie pour pouvoir.
Earle Browns claimed US influence on European
serialism (via Gertrude Stein), and mobile form
(via Available Forms) is unhelpfully chauvinistic
and ignores the pervasive influence of Mallarm
on European culture. As one might expect,
Boulezs published writings and pronouncements are discussed at length. To read them in
isolation and in English is one thing, but there is
a special poignancy to see them located here in
the context of his ambitions. It is sobering, even
tragic, to see the energy and daring of his early
years wearing away to a point where, apparently
without irony, Boulez can refer to his own apocalyptic rejection of history as a necessary historical denial.
There are huge gaps as well: no Hindemith,
whose theory of harmony was at least grounded
in Helmholtz; no Harry Partch (ditto), no
Gerhard, no Krenek, no writings of Scherchen,
nothing of consequence from Scherchens
Gravesano Review, a publication arguably as
consequential as die Reihe and certainly more
grounded technically. No late Stravinsky, a scandalous omission. And no discography. Such
absences, it has to be said, are part of the authors
message: they reflect a narrowness of focus
implicit in serialist doctrine, not to mention
lingering aesthetic and philosophical priorities of
an essentially bourgeois European mindset.
What does emerge very clearly is serialisms
involvement with a number of competing
strands of language theory: the dominant literalism of a value system based on lcriture, versus
the pragmatism of the Abb Rousselots motor
phonetics, based on the recorded sounds of
speech. In locking out the tradition of
Schoenberg and Stravinsky, the postwar generation also threw away the key to serialism and its
future; in embracing Adorno, the culture found
itself unable to respond to a vibrant intellectual
heritage that was briefly to surface in Bonn and
Gravesano, and in the Meyer-Eppler inspired
theories and music of Stockhausen, but that
never really took hold among the laity. The
evidence of that heritage is scattered throughout
Deliges vast apologia, not just in a uniquely
20th-century preoccupation with the idea of
music as a language, but in a flotsam of vague
and apologetic allusions: to Shannon and
Weavers communication theory, Heisenbergs
uncertainty theory, the structural anthropology
of Lvi-Strauss, the syllabic matrices of Roman
Jakobson, and the set theory of Babbitt and Allen
Forte, to name just a few. Every obstacle in the

74

way of a comprehensive serial theory: chance,

indeterminacy, graphics, mobile form, group
theory, formant theory, noise, even the authoritarian presence of Adorno himself, is anticipated
in the teachings of Ferdinand de Saussure.
It is the defining characteristic of linguistic
philosophy to elevate language as a social system
over the individual speech act or item of literature. In an essentially bourgeois reversal of
history and classical values, la langue, expressing
the collective will, is invested with the authority
to validate an act of self-expression, defined as la
parole. Language exists in the form of a sum of
impressions deposited almost like a dictionary in
the brain of each member of a community
Language is purely social and independent of the
individual; speaking is not a collective instrument, its manifestations are individual and
momentary. The same logic underpins
Durkheim and Hegel, and licenses Adorno and
others like him to embrace the contradiction of a
theory of musical values independent of any
evidence of creative sensibility and administered
by a mandarin autocracy. There are other, more
practical value implications. In elevating lcriture
above speech, linguistics discards, as invincibly
subjective, the implications for meaning of how
words and music actually sound. And since music
is an art of sounds, the implications of a
linguistic model of serialism are that considerations of acoustic quality and aesthetic nuance no
longer mean anything.
For many composers, however, issues of
musical significance are embodied in literature:
Mallarm, Joyce, Beckett, e e cummings. The
book is very good on Pousseur and Butor, and
the controversy attending Votre Faust, an opera
with more than one ending, a conceptual novelty
that along with Mallarms hypothetical Livre
has since become commonplace as todays
website and computer game. Of particular value
is the account of Berios 1956 essay Aspetti di
artigianato formale, an acutely insightful piece
on the relation of music and text that includes
the wonderfully apt citation from Mallarm that
could almost stand as an epigraph for this entire
music and its imaginative goal: le vers qui, de
plusieurs vocables, refait un mot total, neuf,
tranger la langue. That image of a new
language forming spontaneously out of a cloud
of letters is a powerful antidote to The Bomb; a
sudden reminder, too, that Stockhausens
Kreuzspiel, Kontra-Punkte, and Gesang are themselves images of convergence and condensation
of meaning from initially scattered fragments.
Robin Maconie

Vaughan Williams and the Symphony by Lionel Pike.

Toccata Press, 45.00.
Vaughan Williams Essays edited by Byron Adams &
Robin Wells. Ashgate, 49.50.

The arrival of two serious studies of Vaughan

Williams one British, the other American is
good news for all those who not only love this
composers music, but feel that its technical ingenuity and originality is not taken seriously
enough. It is also good news for those who
deplore the still-fashionable equation of originality with novelty. Vaughan Williams was
rarely novel, at least not when it came to superficial features of style. But his solution to the
problem of writing convincing tonal symphonies
in a harmonically agnostic age may come to be
widely seen as one of the most original in the
20th-century. So one of the things one hopes for
in a book like Vaughan Williams and the Symphony
is a thorough investigation and in the process,
vindication of that originality. And if the
language is occasionally combative, so much the
better.
First signs are encouraging. Lionel Pike is not
afraid to declare his belief in sonata form as one
of the greatest inventions of the human mind
no timid cultural relativism there. At the same
time he acknowledges a significant tension in
Vaughan Williamss symphonic thinking. This
was a composer who balanced, or tried to
balance uneasy respect (at times veering towards
downright hostility) for Beethoven, master of
sonata dialectic, with an unqualified love of
Bach, in whose fugues Vaughan Williams intriguingly saw a potential formal model for
programme music. Apparently the working out
of a fugue subject and the drawing out of a
programmatic mood ran parallel in VWs mind.
(The notion seems less bizarre when one begins
to look closely at the first movement of the
Pastoral Symphony.)
But Pikes devotion to sonata form, and particularly to traditional means of understanding and
describing it ie mostly in terms of classical
motivic-tonal argument is like an imaginative
ball-and-chain dragging through page after page
of this book. There is a great deal of dense verbal
harmonic analysis, of the kind that can usually be
effectively and concisely expressed in diagrams. I
imagine a great deal of this would only be
convincing if the listener were more than half
convinced of Pikes theses in advance. Take his
analysis of the processes allegedly at work in the
Andante sostenuto second movement of Vaughan

 75

Williamss Ninth Symphony. My own reaction to

the final C major chord is that there is something
magical but rather enigmatic about it, an
impression enhanced by the ethereal scoring
(high strings and harp harmonic) which has the
effect of seperating it from the sound-world of
the rest of the movement, as though VW had set
it in quotation marks. When I heard the
symphony for the first time I remember more
than half expecting this C to resolve plagally onto
G (major perhaps, or preferably minor). And after
listening to the movement again, probing the
score and reading through it at the piano, I still
cant follow how, according to Pike, the movement has progressed logically from the dominant (G) to the C tonic. To me this C major
sounds more like modal final than a conventional tonic. But Dr Pike has his axe to grind:
Vaughan Williams is a modern master of classical
sonata thinking; so that possibility is not even
considered.
By this late stage in the book, however, the
reader should have become accustomed to the
sound of grinding axes. One suspects that as so
often with traditional-style analysts the concept
of structural ambiguity is one that simply cannot
be tolerated. There has to be one true formal
background which ultimately explains everything. It isnt enough to identify elements of variation form in the first movement of the Sinfonia
Antartica; the whole movement must be rationalized and safely pigeon-holed as a set of variations. Something similar happens in Pikes
analysis of the first movement of the Sixth
Symphony. This time the organizing principle is
emphatically not one of variation. The critic
Frank Howess suggestion that the development
section does not occur in the middle of the
movement but between the first and second
subjects in the exposition is likewise dismissed as
misleading. The simple fact that a commentator
who knew Vaughan Williamss music as well as
Howes could find something so non-classical
one might even say anti-classical at work in this
movement must surely have something to tell us
about its processes. But Pike clearly doesnt think
so. He follows the movement through, bar by
bar, categorically identifying first and second
subjects, development and recapitulation. But in
doing so he has to introduce so many caveats and
let-out clauses that I find myself becoming less
and less convinced. Doesnt Vaughan Williamss
remark that he included enough recapitulation
just to show that this is a symphony, not a
symphonic poem indicate that he too realized
that there was something subtler, more multilayered, simply more original going on here?

Granted, there are flashes of insight, not least

Pikes comments on the influence of Bachian
fugal writing on the first movement of the
Pastoral Symphony mentioned above though I
would have welcomed a more penetrating, less
discursive investigation of how it operates, and
how it interacts with those all-important sonata
principles. But when it comes to the originality of
VWs long-term thought-processes theres
nothing in Vaughan Williams and the Symphony
that is as far-reaching and thought-provoking as
Murray Dineens chapter The Fifth Symphony:
Ideology and Aural Tradition in Vaughan
Williams Essays. Dineen shows in wellpresented table-form how Vaughan Williams
doesnt so much develop his themes (classically
speaking) in the first movement of the Fifth
Symphony, but rather composes variants of
them. This is preceded by a paragraph which is
worth quoting in full:
One of Vaughan Williamss constant inspirations was
the folk-song; hence it seems natural that his treatment
of theme in the Fifth Symphonys first and second
movements should recall the instability the flux and
change that he took to be characteristic of folk traditions where songs pass aurally from singer to singer. In
these aural traditions, without written records, the
original version of a song is lost in antiquity, along
with any record of its development or evolution. In
similar terms, Vaughan Williams presents various
passages that share common motivic content, seemingly the offspring of some original theme antedating
the symphony proper (and indeed its sketches), a
theme never presented definitively.

For me, that one insight is worth all the argument of Vaughan Williams and the Symphony.
Then in Julian Onderdonks chapter Hymn
Tunes from Folk-songs: Vaughan Williams and
English Hymnody, there is a detailed and fascinating examination of how that same folkderived originality of thinking is reflected in
Vaughan Williamss adaptations of traditional
tunes for The English Hymnal. In doing so,
Onderdonk helps us understand how Vaughan
Williams could have concluded that there is no
difference in kind but only in degree between
Beethoven and the humblest singer of folk-song.
Granted, not all the chapters in Vaughan
Williams Essays are as stimulating as these two. I
would have liked more detailed probing into how
Vaughan Williamss film music works with cinematic images (Music Film and Vaughan
Williams), but Daniel Goldmarks central thrust
that the film music is worth taking at least as seriously as the concert works that grew from it is
well made. Walter Aaron Clarks examination of
the clash and cross-fertilization of modes espe-

76

cially the octatonic mode in the still-undervalued

Riders to the Sea also sheds light, if sporadically.
Octatonic is not a word youll find Lionel Pike
using, by the way. In Vaughan Williams and the
Symphony modes are almost invariably pigeonholed according to the old church nomenclature.
The second subject of the Fourth Symphonys
Finale for example is identified simply as B flat
Lydian, despite the persistence of the flattened
seventh in the accompaniment, and its appearance
in the melody itself (fourth bar) which helps
explain the subsequent tendency of the music to
move, in Pikes words, gradually flatter. Up to a
point this kind of labelling is a convenience, but in
the end it narrows the field of argument instead of
broadening it as Clark does, however hard you
may have to work to follow him. Vaughan Williams
Essays may not exactly follow the VW-Whitman
injunction to steer for the deep waters only, but
at least it provides a few pointers in that direction,
rather than sentencing the reader to a long dull
canal-cruise.
Stephen Johnson

Rhythmic and Contrapuntal Structures in the Music of

Arthur Honegger by Keith Waters. Ashgate, 40.00.
HONEGGER: Nicolas de Flue. Oers Kisfaludy (Nicolas
de Flue), Jean Bruno (narrator), College de Cuivres de
Suisse Romande, Choeur Pro Arte de Lausanne Choir
de Chambre Romand, Voix de femmes du Choeur de
Chambre de lUniversite de Fribourg, Choeur denfants
Les Copains dabord c. Andre Charlet. Cascavelle VEL
1021.

Arthur Honeggers relatively unknown Festspiel,

Nicolas de Flue, was commissioned by the Canton
of Neuchtel for the 1939 Swiss National
Exhibition in Zurich. Denis de Rougemount
agreed to write the libretto, based on the life of
the Swiss national saint and set in the 15thcentury, on the condition that Honegger compose
the music. Honegger finished orchestrating the
three-act, 30-number score for large wind and
brass ensemble on 4 May 1939 (this recording,
though, is of but does not explain the rationale
for a new more conventional orchestration by
Andr Besanon which seems to tame Honegger
somewhat). Like the Symphonie pour Cordes a year
or so later, it was performed only after delays
consequent upon the general call up, first in
concert on 26 October 1940, and finally staged on
31 May 1941. Honegger himself could not attend
either performance, having chosen to remain in
Paris, his musical home, and unable to leave.

The Parisian premire of Nicolas de Flue took

place much later in 1952, and the work received a
lukewarm welcome. This is hardly surprising,
considering what must have seemed to the
Parisian audience to be the overwhelming
parochialism of the story, or at least its anchoring
in a particular locale of Swiss history, and, more
forcefully, considering what had gone on in Paris
in the decade or so since it was conceived. It is
relatively diatonic throughout its 75 minutes, and
its two choruses (mixed and children), whose
parts were originally intended for amateurs, sing
almost constantly in a series of short numbers
and Handelian choruses which are only interrupted by a narrator who propels the drama
along crisply and efficiently.
Nicolas de Flue has not really entered the repertory and is rarely performed. It is overpowered
by, on the one hand, more moving works like Le
Roi David and Jeanne dArc, and, on the other
hand, by more aggressively post-tonal works like
Antigone, Horace Victorieux, and the Symphonie
pour Cordes all three of which Boulez praised
[sic] in his obituary for Honegger (quoted pp. 1,
184) and of course by the infamous Pacific 231.
Rhythmic and Contrapuntal Structures in the
Music of Arthur Honegger is centred on two works
which have managed to attain more success than
Nicolas de Flue in performance and reception:
Mouvement Symphonique (Rugby) (the sequel to
Pacific 231), premired by Ernest Ansermet and
the Orchestre Symphonique de Paris at the
Thtre des Champs-Elyses 19 October 1928;
and the Symphonie pour Cordes, premired in
Zurich on 18 May 1942 by the Collegium
Musicum and their director Paul Sacher, the
works dedicatee and one of the composers
staunch supporters. The book doesnt offer a
unified field theory of Honeggers music (if
indeed one were possible, let alone desirable),
despite its plentiful and welcome supply of
examples, but instead a selection of the ways
in which Honeggers music is structured by the
relations between the rhythmic content of its
gestures and the nominally underlying metrical
framework.
Chapter 1 contains a brief catalogue of the
influences on Honeggers compositional style,
each one a virus infecting and absorbed by the
composer (p. 3). Bartk makes only a suggestive
appearance (pp. 89), despite Honeggers admiration for his music, though he does reappear
subliminally in the interval cycles used later on to
elucidate the surface articulations of the music.
Stravinsky gets a one-sentence paragraph
regarding his influence on Honegger (p. 8) and a
fleeting mention with regard to the juxtaposition

 77

and interruption of short compositional ideas in

Rugby (p. 97). Perhaps this is inevitable, given the
relative dearth of writings on Honegger in
English other than Halbreichs and Spratts: many
of Waterss descriptions present themselves as
forging new and individual territory for
Honegger Studies. All the same, on more than
one occasion I found myself expecting to come
across an invocation of octatonicism, especially
during discussions of ic-3 cycles, but it only
makes an explicit appearance quite late on in the
book (p. 156); it would certainly have been appropriate to invoke it in the chapter on the Symphonie
pour Cordes, since that works harmonic texture
(and hence the pitch symmetries and directed
motions which Waters discusses) contains
numerous octatonic segments, especially in the
introduction and in the chordal material first
heard at [6]. Chapter 1 also provides a short exposition of Honegger as Author (pp. 2731) which
contains some interesting quotations from the
composers extensive writings.
One of the interesting finds of chapter 2,
Rhythmic Structures, is a discussion of
Honeggers sketch materials for Pacific 231
(housed in Basle, along with the rest of the 20thcentury), which include sketches for rhythmic
profile without pitch content (pp. 3544); indeed,
the implication of Waterss description seems to
be that such a distinction between the profile
and content of a gesture could well be abandoned. Certainly, his discussion of this point (p.
42) recalls Van den Toorns classic discussion of
Stravinskys double innovation in rhythmic and
metric accentuation. At one point I felt that
Waters was going to go the extra mile and
suggest that the contrapuntal voices in Pacific 231
were truly independent (truly independent, that
is, of their pitch relations), but he stopped just
short. Perhaps this suggests a residual reluctance
to analyse entirely without reference to pitch; or
perhaps this issue, concerning the interrelationships between agogic accents, would have
become an issue more for the orchestral players
than for analysts.
The central thesis of the book regarding
rhythmic structure is stated formally about
halfway through chapter 2:
The relationship of subtactus layer to metric layer may
be described as rhythmic / metric consonance in the
case of a pure duple or triple identity. This may be
defined formally: for any rhythmic / metric pair (a)(b),
rhythmic / metric consonance exists when, for all a
and b, ax = b or bx = a, and x is an integer. Rhythmic /
metric consonance therefore requires the same identity here either duple or triple both at the level of
tactus subdivision and at the level of metric organisa-

tion. Rhythmic / metric consonance quarantines

subdivisional and metric layers that are in an exponential relationship away from those that are not,
preserving an uncontaminated duple or triple environment. (p. 51).

This leads Waters to the concept of a consonance

quotient, (p. 58), a statistical measure of the relative stability of the passage in question.
Aside from the slightly disconcerting rhetoric of
purity, this formulation is important to Waterss
presentation of the linear structures in Honeggers
music. I began a little sceptically, but I have to
admit that evidence for not just the structural but
the (pre-)compositional importance of certain
kinds of rhythmic and metric structuring in
Honeggers music does gradually pile up. Part of
my initial doubt, I think, arose from nothing more
than the language used to describe the rhythmic
and metric structures. The notion, for example,
that dissonant rhythmic textures resolve (p. 45)
to (more) consonant textures does not seem to
transfer particularly smoothly from the domain of
pitch to those of rhythm and meter, largely
because of the baggage associated with the terms.
One might make a similar observation about
Waterss use of terms like composing out (p. 51)
and symmetry (p. 70), which seem to construct a
scenario somewhat too static to model the mobile
and fluid emergence of rhythmic and metric
processes. When he describes a succession of
interval cycles in the middle of Rugby, for example,
by saying that one is replaced by the next (p. 114),
what he really seems to mean is that the first is
shortened to the second. Waters has much to say,
for example, about the projection (p. 113),
transfer (p. 114), statement (p. 113), and / or (?!)
straddling (p. 164) of metric conflicts over several
levels / layers, but it remains unclear whether this
is how rhythmic / metric processes emerge.
Maybe this is simply a matter of vocabulary, for
apart from Christopher Hastys work, there isnt
really a codified vocabulary yet for describing the
temporality of musical processes, particularly in
the complex world of this music.
This cuts both ways, of course, and occasionally I pined for an unreconstructed description of,
say, certain contextually inflected ic-1s as
leading notes (e.g. p. 147). Either way, though,
Waters formulates the relation between the horizontal and vertical dimensions by saying that
Honeggers counterpoint operates beneath (p.
61) and / or cuts across (p. 93) the eclectic pitch
organization (which, just occasionally, Waters
seems a touch apologetic about [cf. pp. 13, 33]);
for my money, the second of these better formulates the relation between counterpoint and pitch
organization, largely because it sits snugly along-

78

side Waterss focus on mid- and local-level

melodic relationships (p. 155), surface design (p.
181), and surface voice relationships (p. 66).
At 42 pages, chapter 5, on the Symphonie pour
Cordes, is the longest in the book, and again
makes good use of the sketch materials to elucidate part of the compositional process;
Honeggers own description of the compositional process (quoted pp. 1323) echoes a similar
remark in Stravinskys Poetics about hunting for
truffles. Its only a shame that Waters didnt go
for broke and discuss the third movement as well
as the first two, and that the examples from this
work discussed in other chapters werent
included in this chapter instead, in order to
increase the intensity of focus on the work. After
all, given the entry of a solo trumpet (specified as
ad libitum in the score, though usually included in
performances) in the last movement, towards the
second half of the final presto, with a typically
Honeggerian chorale melody (possibly derived,
Halbreich has suggested, from the third of
Honeggers Three Psalms of 1941), it is hard not to
respond with a narratological reading of the
entire three-movement structure, a reading
which, alongside the obvious wartime associations which suggest themselves (Waters cites a
couple of writers who have interpreted the work
as a message symphony [pp. 1289]), might
well have played into Waterss rhythmic and
metric hands and extended the density and reach
of his remarks on the first two movements.
There are several rhythmic structures metric
consonances and dissonances in the third movement which would surely have attracted his
attention. In the episode beginning at [5], for
example, the lower three strings have a regular
chordal ostinato five quavers long which cuts
across the 6/8 metre, while the second violins
have a ten-quaver melodic ostinato, and at the
top of the texture, in unwitting anticipation of
the trumpet, the first violins have a slower
melody which emphasizes the duple subdivision
of the metre; and this whole rhythmic complex
returns in a more developed form at [14], with an
extra rhythmic stratum repeating every fifth
quaver with two chords rather than one.
Waterss discussion of the maximum saturation of duple subdivisions (p. 58) in a passage in
the first movement of the Symphonie could do
with a supplementary in fact, explanatory
remark on the musical texture at that point, since
one might argue that the very motoric regularity
of this texture seems to balance out the dissonance quotient, and that the increase in the value
of the quotient presented in Table 2.2 could be
understood more simply as a climactic stretto,

especially as this particular passage follows and is

itself followed by texturally quite different
passages. In fact, cases like this and Waterss
analysis of the opening seven-bar introduction to
Rugby (pp. 989) might have been more literally
remark-able if they had been couched in simpler
language. The references, for example, to the
frequency of triplet groupings (p. 52) are surely
red herrings: not so much mis-guided as overformalized. Similarly, when Waters writes that in
this composition this intervalic shift coincides [sic]
and underlines the shift in texture, and the
harmonic climate now becomes diatonic (pp.
1367), isnt this just another way of saying that
the music is sectional and mosaic-like, and not
particularly organic in construction? Perhaps all
this is the necessary consequence of the strawman set up at the beginning of chapter two, the
problem of rhythm (pp. 33, 59), which is then
promptly and consistently knocked down thereafter. That said, Waterss consideration of how
rhythmic and contrapuntal structures are actually
heard (p. 36) is sensible and pragmatic. Agogic
rhythm, being both highly subjective and having
serious implications for performance practice, he
treats carefully (p. 106), allowing space for alternative interpretations to breathe. And when he
comes to discuss the textural embodiment of
such rhythmic and metric structures, some interesting questions of texture arise, particularly in
his discussion of contour under the headings of
contrary-motion and outer-voice relationships
(p. 64). These headings arise out of some of
Honeggers own statements (quoted p. 131), and
under them Waters presents a number of interesting observations (e.g. pp. 66 n10, 109 n13).
Theres no real conclusion to Rhythmic and
Contrapuntal Structures in the style of Halbreichs
assessment of Honegger in the Twentieth
Century. Indeed, the last chapter feels like an
odd one out, dealing as it does with Problems of
Pitch Analysis: Centricity and Tonality and
making numerous cross-references to the musics
of other composers and their associated analytical methods (in this respect, quite unlike the bulk
of the book). I found myself wondering whether
it would have been better placed between after
chapter 1 as a kind of catalyst for the main body
of the book, which is, after all, about other ways
of considering musical structure and process.
All in all, though, I think that, taking due
account of the harmonic dimension of
Honeggers music, this book provides a solid
basis for defending Honegger against the charge
of what, with reference to Hindemith and
Stravinsky, Willi Apel termed reckless counterpoint (quoted p. 64 n 9), and which at first glance

 79

seemed to be a potential trajectory which this

book could easily have taken, either explicitly or
despite itself. Such a Honegger may indeed have
vanished, as Boulez put it, but that is not the
Honegger who emerges from this book.
Anthony Gritten

Ernst von Dohnnyi. A Song of Life by Ilona von

Dohnnyi, edited by James A. Grymes. Bloomington,
Indiana University Press, 2002. $34.95.

Ilona von Dohnnyi was the third wife of Ernst

von Dohnnyi. Drawing on letters, documents
smuggled out of Hungary, personal experiences,
and numerous conversations, she wrote the biography of her celebrated husband. In 1960, shortly
after his death, she deposited the first draft of the
book at the Archives of the Florida State
University, in Tallahassee. Forty years later, James
A. Grymes, founder of the Ernst von Dohnnyi
Collection at the same university, edited and
prepared the manuscript for publication.
A great merit of this biography, the first in
English, is that it sets things straight by invalidating the unfounded allegations and scurrilous
gossip that widely circulated (and still circulates)
about one of the most versatile musicians of the
20th-century. It comes out at an appropriate
moment. Today we witness a growing interest in
Dohnnyis music, as well as in his artistic convictions and educational achievements. The time
has come to break through the damage caused by
false claims and recognize the artists true intentions and deeds.
The most harmful charges were levelled against
Dohnnyi right after the end of the Second World
War. He was accused of collaborating with the
Nazis and harbouring anti-Semitic feelings. He
was labelled a war criminal by the new regime in
Hungary. In the eyes of his enemies, his escape
from his native land was eloquent proof of his
guilt: if he was innocent, why did he, the greatest
authority in musical matters, have to leave?
His foes used vagueness, never precision in
their allegations. During the chaotic years after
the war, when feelings of hatred and revenge
tended, in some circles, to stifle justice, hints and
rumours could cause someone just as much
harm, if not more, as could unambiguously
spelled-out charges. How unclear and unsubstantiated the evil reports were came to fore when, in
Salzburg, Dohnnyi encountered Otto Pasetti,
the appointed Music Officer for the American
Zone of Austria. Pasetti was a powerful man.

Without his approval no public musical performance could take place. He did not allow
Dohnnyi to perform at the Salzburg Festival
because of the artists war criminal activities.
Following Dohnnyis energetic request for
proof, the cornered bureaucrat declined to
specify the accusations. Neither he nor anyone
else could produce any evidence: the truth was
that Dohnnyi, not wanting to enforce antiJewish regulations, resigned from his position of
President of the Academy of Music and
disbanded the Budapest Philharmonic Orchestra.
He also signed many petitions and applications
that helped people leave Hungary and escape
from deportation or persecution.
He saved hundreds of people whose names he never
even cared to know. To act in this way required not
only generosity but also immense courage and even
audacity. To express any contrary opinion could easily
cost someones life. Dohnnyis principle, however,
was to never be afraid: the greater the danger, the less
one should withdraw from it. Dohnnyi loved
standing up to people and telling them his opinion
frankly and openly (p. 124).

Being apolitical, he also stood up for those who

later could have been considered as enemies of
the state by the Russian-Hungarian authorities.
The help he offered could have made him look
like an accomplice of the previous government.
He knew it; but he also knew that, with the eventual Russian occupation of Hungary, his consistent anti-Communist and patriotic attitude
would be judged as a crime.
Dohnnyi, Ilona, and her two children left
Hungary in November 1944. The account of the
journey from Hungary to Austria is perhaps the
most captivating chapter of the book. The family
found a temporary home in an enchanting
village, Neukirchen-am-Walde, where Dohnnyi
composed, played the organ in the church, and
organized a choir. But the daily living was far
from easy. Ilona had to beg from the greedy town
folk and exchange pieces of clothing for food.
Dohnnyis reaction to the peasants selfishness
says much about his humanity in his approach to
people. He understood and even defended the
peasants who, hardened by the loss of sons and
husbands, became rough and unkind. It is there
that he learned of his beloved son Matthews
death in a prison camp. He sought solace for his
acute grief by withdrawing into solitude and
composing one of his most beautiful and sombre
pieces for piano, the Cloches.
Unable to return to Hungary, Dohnnyi
wanted to start a new life outside Europe. The
family settled first in Argentina and, a year later,

80

in Tallahassee, Florida. He taught at the Florida

State University for eleven years. Although his
workload was strenuous, Dohnnyi, already in
his seventies, attacked this task with enthusiasm
and unflagging dedication. He also performed in
several major American cities. But his concert
appearances were, once again, delayed by the
relentless, often anonymous, tide of accusations.
The challenge did not surprise him. He learned
quite early that life is a struggle and obstacles are
necessities, especially for the creative artist.
For the reader wanting to know about the root
of Dohnnyis serene outlook on life the book
provides an answer. To be sure, Dohnnyi
tackled many difficulties with optimism by
virtue of his faith in the rightness of his principles. He stubbornly stood by them and sometimes acted with sternness. But he was also able
to keep his strong passions in check with remarkable self-control. More importantly perhaps, his
strength came from his basic attitude that can be
adequately characterized by the expressions of
spontaneity, free fancy, and youthfulness.
Dohnnyi was a homo ludens, a playful man, in
the Schillerian sense of the word. He was a man
with a congenital gaiety and gracefulness who
lived in sympathetic and trustful contact with his
surroundings, his past and his future. While
being truly aware of the tragic aspects of life, the
tension between its seriousness and jollity, he was
able to see everything in its true perspective, with
a relaxed manner and a gentle sense of humour.
He was liberated from all exclusive attachments
and purely utilitarian concerns. His grave-merry
disposition entailed an all-absorbing interest in
both artistic and natural beauties.
Someone once asked Dohnnyi if he had been in love
when he wrote one of his early compositions. He
answered with his customary smile, I was, and I
always am, in love. With these words he did not mean
an attraction for woman only. He meant his love for
art, nature, beauty, and all humanity (p. 14).

The very same emotion attracted him to certain

writers and composers.
I like Dickens, he would say, because his humor is pure
and filled with goodwill, without malice or irony. This
type of humor is also what I value in Haydns music.
Unfortunately, very few people understand it, and
therefore few can perform his works well (p. 117).

Beyond the expression of aesthetic preference,

we also find here, in half a sentence, an intimation about Dohnnyis own hardship. People failed
to understand his light-hearted, generous, and
intensely positive temperament. A group of musi-

cians treated him with malicious envy and hatred.

Surely they felt slighted and overlooked by him.
They decided to launch an attack and destroy him.
The most compelling reason, perhaps, to read
this accurate and heartfelt portrait is to learn
about a personal struggle and triumph when
faced with the darker side of human nature. We
can conclude that the insidious and purposeful
attacks were prompted by what psychologists
call pre-emptive contempt. It consists of tearing
down a great person to fend off the inevitable
appraisal of lack of talent. The attackers could
not see the tragic blows that fate reserved for
Dohnnyi. What mattered more to them was
that he seemed joyful, full of vitality and
creativity. Dohnnyi understood how such a
resentful pride is born. When Ilona complained
about some compatriots lack of gratefulness, he
replied with wisdom: You seem to forget one
fact: usually those who are bound to be grateful
feel somehow humiliated by this gratitude. It is
no wonder that they now feel almost triumphant
to get rid of it (p. 144). One of the salutary
lessons of this biography is that before giving
credit to hazy allegations, it is worthwhile to
focus first on the emotional state of the accusers
and find out to what extent their self-esteem had
been wounded.
The Appendices comprise letters and two
insightful lectures by Dohnnyi (on SightReading and Romanticism in Beethoven
Sonatas), newspaper articles, letters in support of
Dohnnyi, and an extensive catalogue of compositions, compiled by James A. Grymes.
Gabor Csepregi

The Best Years of British Film Music, 19361958 by Jan G.

Swynnoe, The Boydell Press, 40.00.

I am writing the present review against medical

advice and with a blood-pressure monitor readily
to hand: there is a real chance that this book will
be responsible for my premature demise. Of
course, experience teaches one to expect that a
book about film music will be a severe disappointment; but it has been quite a few summers
since I have read one that has fallen so desperately, so infuriatingly short of standards which it
had seemed could safely be taken for granted.
Not that there are many of those: the trouble
with film music, after all, is that its a subject
which encourages the wrong people to write
about it in the wrong way. Thus it is that time
and time again one has found oneself wrestling
with writers who are barking up the wrong tree

 81

or just as often, perhaps, are simply barking. And

thus it is, too, that the literature on the topic has
mostly veered between emptily agreeable anecdote, tedious exercises in what might be called
Herrmann-eutics, and in recent years a
generally hostile ideology criticism.
Film music deserves better than all that; i.e.
something more musicianly and, for a moment
at least, it appeared that it might finally have got
it: Jan G. Swynnoe is described on the dust-jacket
as a pianist, percussionist and composer. And
from a distance this book with its imposing
black cover, nicely printed music examples, pages
of bibliography and filmography, and a hefty,
academic price-tag on top of it all certainly
looks like a serious and capable study.
Sad to say, the impression does not last long.
The Introductions very opening paragraph, in
fact, provides two unsettling indications of the
quality of its authors thought. The first comes
when we see the arrival of the Hungarian
Alexander Korda in Britain described as an
unpromising union between two nations [!] of
little temperamental affinity; the second with
the gleeful exposure of an act of nepotism
which one is desperately hard put to regard as
anything of the sort (p.xi). A few pages later we
have discovered that this Introduction, as far as
its content and function are concerned, simply
isnt. And then it gradually dawns on one that the
book is also misleadingly titled: it isnt really
about the years in question at all. If it were, we
would be reading a far more complete account of
just what happened in those decades not least
the (approximately) 60 Alwyn, 62 Arnold, 6 Bliss,
52 Frankel, 9 Rawsthorne, 6 Vaughan Williams
and 5 Walton film scores dating from this period
which the book altogether neglects to mention.
We would also see Brittens only feature film
score for the 1937 Love From a Stranger receive
more than a single, passing reference (by telling
you that the music seems to register the impact
of Mahlers Fifth Symphony I am revealing more
about it than this book does). And, switching to a
musically less elevated but sociologically more
informative level, we would also learn something
about the 52 contemporaneous scores by Clifton
Parker (19051989), whose name does not even
feature in the text save in a quote from another
writer (p.174; reference not indexed).
What this book actually does is attempt to
explain as well as exemplify some distinctive
aspects of British film-musical practice over a
period in which virtually every one of the
nations outstanding composers had some kind
of involvement with the industry (one wonders
where Edmund Rubbra was hiding though not,

perhaps, why). In this regard, of course, the situation in Britain differed greatly from that in the
States, where film composition was far more a
semi-industrial specialism in which concert
composers did not dabble; and it is indeed by
means of comparison with Hollywood that the
book proceeds. At its heart, however, are four
chapters concerned with more or less detailed
discussion of a number of British films and their
scores and the fact that several of these titles
are so far from any mainstream recognition or
prominence that they appear not to have been
examined before is a highly important feature of
the book and one for which it deserves some
credit, whatever else one has to say about it.
By which, of course, I mean that while this
study is obviously a labour of love (or, at any
rate, ambivalence: Swynnoe is the kind of writer
who cannot praise Caesar unless simultaneously
burying him), its inadequacies are so manifold
that from its very opening discussions of the
differences between British and American films;
of formulae in the classical Hollywood score;
and of how American and British composers
compare in their approach to film scoring the
book undermines itself in every conceivable way.
The most immediately apparent of these inadequacies is the presence of the old genetic
fallacy in a version with which every A-level
examiner will be depressingly familiar: the belief
that in order to properly understand what something is and isnt, we first need to hear all about
where it came from and how it might have come
about. Thus we at once encounter a deal of
historical perspective whose sheer irrelevance
means that it contributes more to the studys
length than to its depth. Secondly, it turns out
that the discussion itself not only rests upon
historical, sociological and social-psychological
musings of a distinctly homespun kind, but also
employs some worryingly stereotypical and
monolithic ideas of national character and
culture. In short order, for example, we read that
Passionate conviction was a quality which Korda
had probably found sadly lacking in the British
character (p.xii); of qualities that are unique to
the British people (p.xiii); and of the way Our
[sic] culture, including our native literature, our
very way of viewing ourselves, is deeply influenced by the unconscious recognition that we
inhabit a very compact and relatively unthreatening terrain (this in contrast to something
called the American psychological inheritance,
which apparently results from the background
of continuous battling with the unimaginably
vast and hostile landscape that is the lot of many
Americans [p.xiv]). We also learn about The

82

notorious British reserve (p.2); about how it was

in the nature of the American people to
embrace a new art form with an open acceptance
and an optimism for its fresh possibilities (p.4);
about something called the American temperament (p.5); and of the way The inwardly
directed impulse of the British contrasts with
the outwardly directed American to the
extent, apparently, that The basic instinct of the
British is to stay at home (p.18). We even hear
if I may jump ahead somewhat of the way the
rousing of nationalist feeling by the use of
martial music is something so beloved of the
Germans (p.144). Whether one finds such
wafflings repellent or merely risible, they illumine
the topic far less than the author seems to think.
Thirdly, underlying all this is what can only be
described as an astonishing degree of disorganization in the text itself. Perhaps some incoherence on the widest level of argument was to be
expected, given that one of Swynnoes central
notions (the idea of a unique product the
British film score [p.19]) is ultimately nonsensical and certainly inartistic. But on top of that
the author frequently appears to be unable to
structure a coherent paragraph (for a characteristically dispiriting example see the opening of
Chapter 6, which has evidently been written
either with the help of free association technique or by putting sentences on to darts and
then throwing them at a piece of paper).
Moreover, it often seems that the closest
Swynnoe can come to the meaningful development of a point is to type it out all over again with
a few words altered. Concerning melodrama, for
example, we encounter on p.5 the idea that Its
sweeping gestures and simplification of character made it easier to understand for a population with an increasing proportion of
immigrants limited in understanding of the
language. And then, on p.7: The lack of
linguistic complexity also made melodrama an
ideal vehicle for cinema in a country that was
increasingly made up of immigrants unfamiliar
with English. In similar vein, we find (p.136) that
The Second World War had a far greater direct
impact on the lives of British people than had the
First World War and then, just three sentences
later, that The Second World War touched the
lives of every British person in a way that the
Great War had not.
Fourthly, one continually forms the impression that even in its own chosen terms the argument is not making satisfactory sense. We read,
for example, that Certain aspects of the British
character are directly challenged by the intimacy
of the camera an intimacy which arouses an

uneasiness, a mistrust born of inherent reticence,

of the horror of emotional display (p.2); all this
by way of explaining the under-achievement of
British film-makers compared to American. Yet
only a few hundred words later we read of how
easily British audiences developed a taste for
American films and became in thrall to
American culture (p.3) inevitably prompting
one to ask just how deep or widespread all that
uneasiness, mistrust and horror could possibly
have been. Examples of such maddeningly deficient argumentation could be multiplied
endlessly (and possibly fatally): I confess myself
in awe of anyone who can see as Stephen
Banfield apparently can a well organised and
extremely tightly argued contribution (Musical
Times, Winter 2002, p.68).
And, fifthly but by no means finally, the book
frequently falls victim to that particular kind of
selective blindness which occurs when a writers
personal bugaboos are continually employed as
the foil for whatever is to be upheld as virtuous
and admirable. Like all such demons, the
despised and rejected (here Hollywoods blatant
stating of the obvious, its stereotypical treatment of music, its obsession with the technique
of the leitmotif , its aiming to induce a state of
narcosis, its world of pseudo emotions, and
more besides) cannot must not be brought
into the light of day and examined closely or realistically. As for the consequences this entails in
practice, a single crushing instance will
suffice. For in search of a knock-down example
showing the illustrative Hollywood score at its
most self-evidently absurd, Swynnoe refers in
two places to Maurice Jauberts famous condemnation of the roguish little arpeggio which in
Max Steiners score for The Informer (1935)
supposedly illustrates the trickling of a glass of
beer down a drinkers throat (see pp.30 and 73).
The trouble is that this example has long been
exposed as an utter fiction: no such arpeggio,
roguish or otherwise, is present on the soundtrack at that point (for more on this see Michel
Chions discussion of the juncture in AudioVision1).
Serious as these inadequacies are, many of
them could undoubtedly have been diagnosed
and perhaps even rectified by a good copy editor
or publishers reader. One wonders, therefore,
why so well-established a publishing house can
have seen fit to employ neither. For it is clear that
no such persons ever came near a book which can
even insist and here I am leafing at random
1

Paris, 1990; English translation by Claudia Gorbman

(Columbia, 1994).

Exploring TwentiethCentury Music

Tradition and Innovation
Arnold Whittall
Explores the music of twentiethcentury composers demonstrating
the continuum between the
progressive and the conservative.
47.50 | HB | 0 521 81642 4 | 250pp
16.95 | PB | 0 521 01668 1

Music and Ideology in Cold War Europe

Mark Carroll

Places the radicalisation of art music in early post-war

France in its broader socio-cultural and political context
Music in the Twentieth Century, 18
45.00 | HB | 0 521 82072 3 | 256pp

Quotation and Cultural Meaning in

Twentieth-Century Music
David Metzer

Examines the way the use of quotation in music both

creates and transforms cultural associations.
New Perspectives in Music History and Criticism, 12
47.50 | HB | 0 521 82509 1 | 238pp

www.cambridge.org

84

that Diatonic stepwise melodies were the fingerprint of a Steiner melody [sic] (p.92) or that The
electronic score for Escapement (1958), a sciencefiction thriller, is another rare fugitive from the
orchestral score [sic] (p.190). Or in which we find
at least three references to a film-maker supposedly named D. W. Griffiths (see after sedation
pp.231 and 232). Or, indeed, in which William
Waltons score for a film erroneously said to be
called The [sic] Battle of Britain (pp.186, 213, 231,
238) is incorrectly described as lost (p.213), and
its single retained cue wrongly referred to as the
Battle of [recte: in] the Air (p.231).
One might, however, have found it possible to
forgive or, at any rate, to overlook some of the
above-described failings had the books technical
and analytical investigations reached a significantly higher level. Unfortunately (and greatly as
I wish I could say this were not so) too much of
the musical discussion and analysis is either
misguided, superficial, or flawed far too much,
when one considers that this book will be considered a reference work for students and others
who are unlikely to have access to obscure and
unobtainable titles like The Halfway House (Lord
Berners, 1944) and Blue Scar (Grace Williams,
1949). To be frank, however, the discovery of
analytical inadequacy hardly comes as news:
ones sheerly musical faith in the author has been
eroded long before the central chapters are
reached. For one thing, there have been simply
too many pronouncements that seemed determined to present one-and-a-half musical
untruths in the smallest possible space (In the
final analysis, Strausss orchestration could never
realistically be described as sweet, any more
than Wagners music could be called tuneful
[p.24]; The overall sound of a Hollywood score
approximates more to something like a cross
between Tchaikovsky and early Schoenberg [p.24;
incredulity added]). For another, the authors
musicianly sensibility seems to have enjoyed a
restful slumber during the selection of many a
would-be supportive or illustrative quotation. In
need of a statement about Wagners conception
of the aesthetic possibilities of the leitmotif , for
example, she turns neither to Wagners writings
nor to anything in his actual music but instead
quotes three sentences from (of all slanted
things!) Adorno-Eisler (p.27). And requiring a
description of what was considered the appropriate approach to the composition of music for
main titles in Hollywood, she looks no further
(or deeper) than a discussion by Kathryn Kalinak
in which Korngolds non-modulating, secondsubject-less, development-free curtain-raiser to
Captain Blood is actually said to be a variation of

the sonata-allegro which encapsulates exposition, development, and recapitulation

(pp.4748).
In fairness I should stress that the books
analytical commentaries are by no means wholly
worthless. Any discussion is welcome which
encourages the reader to seek out The Winslow
Boy (William Alwyn, 1948), Once a Jolly Swagman
(Bernard Stevens, 1948), or The Sound Barrier
(Malcolm Arnold, 1952) all of them of interest
musically, and none of them likely to be fortuitously encountered on TV by any music-lover
who is not also a career insomniac or singularly
under-occupied in the hours before lunch. In
addition, the commentary generates a vivid
impression both of the constraints within which
even the finest composers had to produce and of
the blatant contempt with which their productions could then be treated. Of Alwyns main
titles for The Winslow Boy, for example, one is
aghast to read that the composer had written
this to the original timing of 145, but the titles
in the film finally ran for only 125, and the last
seven bars were simply cut (p.43). Even more
shockingly, in the case of Arnold Baxs highly
impressive music for the David Lean Oliver Twist
(1948) we find that
Eleven of his music cues were omitted altogether from
the soundtrack. Six were cut, one of them substantially, and others were substituted for different cues,
or repeated in different contexts. One cue was
extended by repetition to synchronize with the picture
(p.69).

So disrespectful an attitude to the musical

thought of a substantial composer so literally
idiotic a disregard for sense and expression at the
local level as well as for the development and
deepening of meaning across larger structural
spans is a long-standing feature of the film
world that is still not as widely known (or
condemned) as it ought to be: every example that
is brought to public attention takes us closer to
the day when the world of the DVD will
provide a home not just for the Special Edition
and Directors Cut but for the Composers
Cut as well.
It should also be acknowledged that Swynnoes
discussion of Oliver Twist 25 pages long, with no
fewer than 23 music examples is probably the
most detailed examination of the music yet
published, and contains a number of worthwhile
observations. And yet, sad to say, the investigation
as a whole has too much wrong with it to achieve
other than stopgap status. Too ramshackle in
structure to fully succeed in circumstances which
demandingly require that an appreciation of what

 85

the composer originally did be continually

juggled with an account of what was ultimately
done with and to it, the text is simultaneously
diluted with inessential reflections where it
wanders from the point (we do not even escape
hearing about Natures method of maintaining
the birth-rate in times of war [p.66]) and sometimes bizarrely over-subtle where it sticks to it:
At this stage in the narrative, the locket is merely a
static representation of Olivers origins. There is no
prospect or suggestion that the secret is to be
unlocked, therefore the music represents the locket in
its purely symbolic state [p.72].

Also to be regretted is the chapters neglect of

much of the sizeable quantity of music (perhaps
20 minutes in all) which ultimately was not used
in the film and also of occasional questions of
origin. For example, the flutes presentation of a
desolate 2-bar thematic fragment, to which
Oliver begins his work as a funeral mute, is
discussed without any mention of the possibility
that it was someone other than Bax who put it in
that place and in that key. Swynnoe may note
that the music appears to have been added
hastily to the score following a change to the
sequence of cues (p.75); but she fails to remind
us that this cue is not written in Baxs hand 2, and
neglects to consider that it might thus have been
derived by someone else from the same materials appearance a fifth higher at the start of a
later cue. And as for the reason (if any) for this or
any other ideas appearing in the key it does, we
are not enlightened: the books persistent neglect
of issues of tonal organization is not the least of
its inadequacies.
Nor can it be pretended that everything which is
asserted deserves ones complete trust. For
example, it is said to be known (p.62) that Bax
failed to appreciate the fact that film footage would
not be altered to fit his music; yet this information
derives solely from a 1996 television interview in
which the films producer, Ronald Neame (b.1911),
then went on to retail an anecdote which, as it
stands, simply cannot be literally true thereby
causing one to wonder, with very great respect,
whether after 48 years this veteran film-makers
memory might have been less than wholly reliable.
Somewhat distressingly, too, one notes that
quite straightforward features of the diagesis to
use a trendy synonym for narrative much
beloved by Swynnoe but never at any point
defined or explained are sometimes misrepresented. Olivers floor-scrubbing, for example, is
2

See Graham Parlett, A Catalogue of the Works of Sir Arnold Bax

(Oxford, 1999), pp.259260.

not interrupted by the arrival of the Beadle

(p.75; also p.77): it is actually Mrs Corney the
workhouse Matron who, arriving with the
Beadle, interrupts both the boy and his music by
shouting his name. This is no trivial matter. At a
later stage (and as Swynnoe correctly observes)
the same thematic variant accompanies without
interruption the moment when Oliver throws
himself into the arms of Mr Brownlows kindly
housekeeper, Mrs Bedwin. Of this juncture
Swynnoe says that Bax successfully shows how
Olivers experience of his life as a cruel and
lonely existence had been transformed by his
first exposure to love (p.77) an observation
which is fine as far as it goes, but inevitably
misses a large part of the point. For the technique of using identical material to meaningfully
associate moments of precisely opposing emotional
and psychological significance has an honourable
history (think of the ardent Siegmunds superficially mysterious appropriation of the
Renunciation of Love motif ); and since the
moments here associated are actually Olivers
interactions with Mrs Corney on the one hand
and Mrs Bedwin on the other, the two women
are instantly and effortlessly defined as different
sides of the same psycho-dynamic coin as
embodiments of utterly opposing, mutually exclusive
aspects of the split mother-image 3.
Interested readers will no doubt wish to carry
out their own investigation of Swynnoes evaluation-laden analysis in tandem with a few viewings of the film; and in any case a full,
point-by-point discussion of it cannot be
attempted here. But I must draw attention to one
further detail which is as regrettable as it is symptomatic. For when it comes to the faintly
Elgarian tune that heralds the dawning of the day
on which the denouement is set (a tune which
appears again in the films final cue as we see
Oliver finally and happily restored to his rightful
existence), we read that
By now Bax was running short of time, and he
resorted to a time-honoured trick of film composers
working under pressure. He lifted the melody from his
orchestral work In Memoriam dating back to 1916
(p.86).

Indeed he did (I am ignoring the erratic syntax);

and Swynnoe rightly credits Graham Parlett as the
source of the information. But what she does not
3

Those of a psycho-analytic bent will note the fact that Dickens,

with due if unconscious Oedipal insight, has seen to it that the
embodiment of the loving, nurturing, physically and emotionally receptive aspect of the mother here goes by the name of
Bed-win.

86

provide is any support whatsoever for the inference which doesnt derive from Parlett that the
decades-old tune was used merely because Bax
was running short of time. He may have been, of
course; or he may not (one gathers that the score
as written is around 60 minutes in length, thus
constituting Baxs longest orchestral work; on the
other hand he did have ten weeks to do it in, and
not all of it is densely written). What is more, we
have no reason to assume that Bax scored the first
scenes first and the last scenes last and if we are
expected to believe that he did, Swynnoe really
ought to have informed the virginal reader that
some of the films earliest music was also derived
from a pre-existing score. In short, the text ought
at the very least to have presented the equally plausible possibility that for the Dawn music Bax
utilized an existing tune because he thought it worked
well there (Swynnoes worry about questions of
stylistic consistency [p.86] is not the only manifestation in the book of that noisome aesthetic redherring) and unless the author can produce some
actual evidence that was not presented in the book,
her assertion must be viewed as an example of just
the sort of unsupported storying that gives musicology a worse name.
But then, there seems to be something in the
very nature of the topic that causes people to see
things as they are not. And as proof I can do no
better than cite Colin Matthews whose review of
this book (actually less a review than a condensed
recapitulation) develops part of its argument with
the help of a rather despairing quotation from Bax
which apropos the tension between music and
dialogue reads: It is impossible to pay attention
to two things at the same time if they appeal to
different parts of the intelligence (TLS, 16 August
2002). My regard for one of Britains foremost
living composers must not prevent me revealing
that he has thereby misrepresented the thought of
one of its foremost dead ones by precisely
reversing the meaning of a statement which actually proceeds via the significantly more optimistic
it is possible to pay attention .4
No, I dont know why this sort of thing
happens; but since it plainly does and since the
study of film music is unlikely to come of age
until everyone takes the trouble to ensure that it
doesnt happen any more I propose to examine
another of Swynnoes analyses: her 8-page
discussion5 of Vaughan Williamss contribution
to Michael Powells 49th Parallel (1941).
4

See Roger Manvell and John Huntley, The Technique of Film

Music (rev. 2nd ed., London, 1975), p.219. Swynnoes (accurate)
quotation of the passage is found on p.62.
Actually 10 pages: further material pops up unexpectedly
around 50 pages later.

Now, to me this loveable film is a treasure

which more than deserved its Academy Award
for Best Writing, Original Story (and how could
such writing not win: *Biff !! Thats for Thomas
Mann! *Pow!! Thats for Matisse! *Sock!! Thats
for Picasso! ?). Swynnoe, however, performs
the familiar contortions indicative of a need to
keep the simultaneous love and hate safely apart
(on p.91 the film, while not a cinematic masterpiece, is powerful and unusual; by p.93 it has
become a heavy piece of anti-Nazi propaganda
disguised as a feature film). Greater problems,
though, result from the evident compulsion to
submit criticism in the guise of analysis and to
practice evaluation in advance of understanding
a tendency which appears to run all the freer in
this discussion of a composers first attempt at
feature-film scoring. On top of all this, the terms
of the debate seem again to be dictated by a seriously misguided aesthetics:
the real ide fixe [of the film] is that the people of a
country like Canada could never be seduced by the
Nazi dream of racial supremacy. This is particularly
hard to illuminate in musical terms. It is almost [!]
impossible to write a theme that adequately suggests
the resistance of a free democracy to the fanatical
delusions of Nazism (p.91).

What Vaughan Williams elected to do, of

course, was produce for his main title a
sustained and unbroken melody, inspired and
inspiring, whose warmly enfolding nobility can
be felt, on the one hand, to underline the united
purpose of those who (as is immediately
proclaimed) came from all parts of the world to
participate in the films making and, on the
other, to highlight the positive human qualities
embodied in (and properly elicited by) the films
presentation of a liberal, hospitable, racially and
culturally diverse Canada about to be menaced
by the regressive Nazi threat. To Swynnoe,
though, all that happened was that Vaughan
Williams retreated [!] into the adoption of a
broad extended melody that could have been
used to cover any number of eventualities (p.91).
A little later she does concede that this theme
could be said to suggest the expansiveness of the
landscape and people [sic] of Canada (p.92) but
then immediately goes wrong again: Because
the theme itself is so expansive, it would be
extremely difficult to use motivically. This is
nonsense as VW himself shows at once by his
effortless use of a clarinet presentation of the
themes arpeggiated triplet motif to characterize as
peaceable and Canadian the gently swelling seascape into which the conning tower of the
surfacing U-boat then irrupts.

 87

In search of something significant to say about

the first music to be heard in the body of the film,
Swynnoe calls it Vaughan Williamss first
attempt at musically interpreting a screen image
(p.93). Such a description would only be acceptable had we (once again) any reason to assume
that the scenes were scored in running order
and even the remotest justification for believing
that a composer who habitually began to sketch a
film score as soon as he received the script was even
working with a screen image in mind.
Concerning the fortissimo brass entry which is
heard as the U-boat surfaces, we are told that the
composer used Luthers Ein feste Burg ist unser
Gott to represent the German characters in the
film. (p.93). It would be fairer on all concerned,
however, to say that he accompanies the emergence of the Nazi threat with a minatory, twisted
version of Ein feste Burg thereby characterizing
that threat not merely as something German
but as something which actually constitutes a
perversion of German culture. Moreover, such
(ab)use of a melody with sacred, Christian associations has the effect of subtly signposting a
route by which those drawn into the barbaric
Nazi myth might find their way back to a civilized humanity as one of the submarines crew,
of course, ultimately does.

Unsurprisingly for a writer who evidently is

apt to confuse and conflate nation, race and individual, leitmotivic references to this material
tend to cause problems:
To indicate the rapid spread of the news of the attack,
a montage of Morse code signalling, operation rooms,
telegrams and maps is shown, accompanied by urgent
music . In the middle of this cue, the Nazi motif is
played fortissimo on trumpets, indicating that it is the
might of Germany which has caused all the agitated bustle
(p.94, emphasis added).

Au contraire. That motif has previously been

heard only as accompaniment to the surfacing
submarine: when next played, a few moments
later, it cannot be anything other than a musical
embodiment of the obvious fact that all the
agitated bustle we see has been caused by the
submarine. Such distant abstractions as the might
of Germany are utterly beside the point.
But this is not the end of the matter. Much
later on, the two remaining Nazis flee into the
mountains. At that moment, another choralederived four-note motif
is played fortissimo on strings, woodwind and brass as
the men fall exhausted to the ground. This is the only
time the motif has been played by these three sections
of the orchestra together, symbolizing the might of
Germany brought under the most intense pressure (p.95,
emphasis added).

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88

Once again, one has to insist that the might of

Germany, being neither directly represented nor
indirectly implied, doesnt enter into it and, by
the way, only one man is actually seen to fall
exhausted to the ground: the dramatic need to
preserve and indeed refine characterization is
respected as the other man the fanatical but
nowise weak or unresourceful Hirth strides on
ahead, oblivious and uncaring.
Equally depressing is to observe that when we
at last witness unambiguous evidence of the
aforementioned Christian feeling, Swynnoe
fumbles another catch. At the point where Vogel
crosses himself as he looks down at the body of
the dead Kuhnecke,
An innocuous horn melody suggesting the regret of
[sic] the comrades loss is interrupted by a strident
rendering of the [Nazi] motif on trombones as Hirth
stares at Vogel. The use of the motif communicates
the suspicion aroused in Hirth that Vogel is not a true
Nazi, and without its use, the audience would not have
been made aware of the significance of Vogels instinctive response (p.94).

This will not do at all. The innocuous horn

melody heard as Vogel crosses himself is and
how can the author possibly have missed this?
nothing other than the incipit of the Credo. Thus
the music, far from dealing in such footling quantities as regret and suspicion, is itself made to
enact the clash of utterly irreconcilable world-views:
Vogels renascent Christian piety and the wordless rebuke of the true believing Nazi officer are
both given the clearest musical definition in the
shortest imaginable time.
Discussion of one more wholesale missing-ofthe-point will bring this (non-exhaustive) critical
survey to a close. The example concerns the
scene in which
The [Factor] of the Hudson Bay trading station,
returning in his canoe, notices that a visiting trapper
has arrived in his absence. As he walks up the jetty to
his cabin to discover who it is, Vaughan Williams very
kindly gives the audience a clue to the trappers identity in the music cue (p.96).

The cue in question is partly an arrangement of

the tune Allouette thus suggesting to us that the
trapper happens to be a French-Canadian (how
characteristic of the author that this is said to be
his identity!). Swynnoe considers that the use of
this traditional song probably results from the fact
that it is used later as a diegetic music cue (p.96)
and it is indeed true that a traditional song which
the trapper himself sings on his first appearance
could hardly be led up to by some other tune.
Clearly, however, she is less than impressed: not

only is the tunes orchestral presentation described

as a most basic labelling device, but we are also
informed that it seems unnecessary to prime the
audience in this way (p.96).
The truth is, of course, that the use of the
tune serves several important functions. First,
since we do not immediately see or hear trapper
Johnnie (not Johnny [p.96]: is it just too much
trouble to check a films credits?6), it makes good
dramatic sense to clearly establish the communitys happily multi-racial profile by musically
representing a French-Canadian presence as soon
as possible after we have seen Eskimo villagers
and a Caucasian Scot. Secondly, there is a visual
joke (and a dramatically astute delay) being set
up: in a moment we and the Factor will enter the
hut expecting to see who has arrived and be
brought face to face with another Eskimo. And,
thirdly, the part of Johnnie is actually being
played by an immensely famous Englishman
(Laurence Olivier) who will thus benefit from
whatever means can be found to establish his
characters Frenchness prior to the unveiling of
his accent.
Space forbids a similarly corrective examination of other passages (such as that concerning
the use of the piano music published as The Lake
in the Mountains) whose suffocating insensitivity
leaves one gasping; nor can I possibly do critical
justice to the books remaining chapters (though
at least one of these can be fairly summed up in
the slogan no more foreign composers [p.157]).
And it would take me around a thousand words
to deal with the books uncomprehending and
misleading engagement with some of Hans
Kellers incunabular but important writing on
film music (for the present it must suffice to say
that Keller did not have the straightforwardly
hostile attitude to leitmotivic technique imputed
to him on p.178). Nor may I count the ways in
which some of the books oft-repeated allegations (e.g. the one about establishment prejudice blighting the careers of serious composers
who involved themselves in film) are not worth
the paper they are drivelled on.
But there is space and good reason to
examine the Appendices. For concluding the
book are interviews with two elderly former
practitioners of the film composers art: one,
from 1993, with Roy Douglas (b.1907); the other,
from 1997, with Doreen Carwithen (19222003).
Douglas, of course, is a figure who has done
much and seen more, and has a correspondingly
vast supply of stories to tell. Its fun to find him
6

We also find that the characters Vogel and Lohrmann are miscalled Fogel and Lohrman (p.146).

 89

identifying himself (p.195) as the player of both

the piano in Things to Come (1936) and the harpsichord in Henry V (1945) and salutory to be
reminded of just how little familiarity with a film
was oftentimes held to suffice for production of
appropriate music: I saw the film through once,
then they sent me the list of timings (p.194). Its
also good to have confirmation that Vaughan
Williams was among those who did their scores
entirely themselves (p.193) while everyone who
has ever struggled with an example of VWs
cacography will be amused to read the
following: He wrote me a card, and all I could
read was: The White Gates, Dorking, and the
telephone number, so I rang up and asked him
what the card was about (p.196).
In spite of all this, I cant help but consider the
interview (accompanied by Douglass The true
story of The Warsaw Concerto, a not particularly
necessary re-print from what isnt clearly identified as the International Classical Record Collector)
to be a regrettable inclusion for the simple
reason that I respected Douglas a whole lot more
before Id seen it. Large sections of it, in fact, can
only be described as an unattractive mixture of
the unsupported and the insupportable with an
occasional but definite hint of homophobia,
whether in the form of a dismissive over-familiarity (I never came across Benjy [sic] Britten
[p.212]7), or posing as factual information
(Addinsell was staying in Iffley with one of his
boy friends [p.215]8), or discernible in a succession of gratuitous attacks on Christopher
Palmer.
The Carwithen interview, like the Douglas,
contains some informative snippets
Muir [Mathieson] and John Hollingsworth would
discuss [the dramatic situation] with you in great detail
[Y]oud have a much more lengthy session, reel by
reel, discussing where wed put music where wed
start, where wed stop, what the ideas should be, and
that bit should tie up with later on when they climb a
mountain or something (p.221);

and, likewise, there are reminiscences which

bring the era to life in other ways for example,
the one where Carwithen draws a film-musical
employers attention to the fact that Malcolm
Arnold is being paid 90 pounds and she 70.
Comes the reply: Dont you think youre doing
very well for a woman? (p.2278).

7
8

I dont believe anyone besides Auden knew the mature Britten

as Benjy.
A heterosexual like Walton, by contrast, can be merely living
with Lady Wimborne (p.196).

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90

Likewise, too, there is a delightful VW story

(We had tea, he cut the cake I always cut the
first piece for my cat, he said [p.225]); and likewise one encounters things which one sincerely
wishes one had not had to see: I think Benny [sic]
Frankel wrote some good scores you know,
Benny Honkle! (p.224). As it happens, I cant
claim to know precisely what is meant by that
but Im prepared to bet that it isnt anything nice.
Needless to say, the authors handling of these
interviews together with her transcription and
editing of them manifests the same failings
seen in the rest of the book. Her need to
combine praise and complaint results more than
once in the suppression of sheerly factual information: while we get to hear what all parties
think about the Ken Russell Lady Chatterley
(1992), for example, at no point can anyone be
bothered to tell us who it was that actually
composed such nice music (p.206; if memory
serves, the composer was Jean-Claude Petit). I
can think of no reason why Douglass worries
about what musical mischief Christopher Palmer
might get up to in future (p.214) should have
been presented without an editorial reminder
that Palmer has been dead since 1995. There is
surely no excuse for so prominent a scholar as

Stewart Craggs having his name mis-spelled on

four occasions. And it beggars belief that
Douglass emissions concerning Kubricks 2001
(p.211) should have been reproduced without any
hint of either the scepticism or the drastic factual
correction which they variously call for. Finally,
when I contemplate Swynnoes declaration
concerning the amount of music in Gone With the
Wind (3 hours and 20 minutes is the inflammatory figure quoted [p.206]), I must simply declare
that words together with a couple of minor
arteries fail me. For that figure is a gross
indeed, given its rhetorical purpose, even a vile
exaggeration: my own stopwatch puts the total at
not much over 2 1/2 hours a full 45 minutes less.
Why dont you work more in the publishing
industry?, asked a friend of mine on inspecting
the annotations in my review copy: You could
help to stop things like this happening. Which,
of course, would be splendid. As it is, however,
an imprint of Boydell and Brewer has delivered
unto the world a book whose relentless ineptitude makes it a cultural and academic pain in the
neck: an overwhelming proportion of what it
thinks it has done will now have to be re-done
properly by other people.
Mark Doran

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