Music as a Realistic Art

Author(s): Michel Butor and Donald Schier

Source: Perspectives of New Music , Autumn, 1981 - Summer, 1982, Vol. 20, No. 1/2
(Autumn, 1981 - Summer, 1982), pp. 448-463
Published by: Perspectives of New Music

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.com/stable/942423

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms

Perspectives of New Music is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access
to Perspectives of New Music

This content downloaded from

186.217.101.95 on Wed, 01 Jul 2020 13:41:56 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Music as a Realistic Art
Michel Butor

Translated by Donald Schier

1. Entrance

"Surely you're not going to try to defend program music

to us!" someone cried.
It is a fact that there exists today, even among sensitive
persons, a terribly deep-rooted prejudice, which however con-
cerns not only music but also the plastic arts and literature (you
know it: art for art's sake and all the critical balderdash that
goes with it), and which is perhaps particularly annoying in
connection with music because some people have the impression
that there, at least, they will not be bothered by political,
philosophical or ethical implications etc., whereas in other
domains it is firmly established, except for a few who are blind
or hypocritical, that there is no meaningless painting or poetry,
or art without a precise historical situation.
This failure to recognize the representational capabilities
of music, to which French musical criticism owes much of its
confusion, its obscurity, and the capricious flimsiness of its
judgments which must constantly be corrected from one year to
the next, almost from one month to the next (recall, for example,
what was said just recently about the last works of Igor
Stravinsky, remember the stupid condemnations of Bela Bart6k)
-this failure is closely related to a certain conception of reality
whose insufficiency has been constantly pointed out by modern
thought in all its forms for more than a century, and it is also
related to that falsely scientific and materialistic petrification
which has been shown by Marxist criticism to correspond to a
particular moment in the triumph of the bourgeoisie.
This conception which makes music literally inexplicable,
and therefore the last bastion for the believers in art for art's
sake, is based upon the absolute identification of the real with
the visible, as if we had no other senses.

This content downloaded from

186.217.101.95 on Wed, 01 Jul 2020 13:41:56 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 449

Since sound is in its origin a warning, a sign, any

conception of reality which includes it necessarily abolishes the
absolute distinction between nature and language and hence
between matter and thought; thus everything is susceptible and
capable of interpretation, nothing is sheltered from daylight or
from the intelligence.
That is why I declare music is a realistic art, and assert
that it teaches us, even in its highest and apparently most
detached forms, something about the world; that is why I claim
musical grammar is a grammar of reality, that melodies transform
life.
First let us clear away some underbrush.
Igor Stravinsky, in a moment of distraction, ventured to
declare that "music, by its nature, was incapable of expressing
anything," a remark that the whole body of his works contradicts
completely, but which is perfectly explicable if we know how to
situate it in his musical development. It is not too much to say
that people have jumped on that remark! How they have profited
from it! Particularly is that true of those who professed the
greatest scorn for, and showed the deepest incomprehension of,
this composer's works. What a weapon he provided against
himself; how thoroughly people felt themselves authorized by
that statement to make no further effort to understand!
In the case of musical compositions remote from us in
time and especially from widely differing civilizations it is often
hard to determine whether they are happy or sad; yet they move
us anyway. All music includes a considerable part of convention,
and consequently the inexperienced listener, faced with some
exotic melody, Gregorian perhaps, if he is not familiar with it, or
Japanese, understands only a fraction of it; it is as though he
were looking at a black-and-white reproduction of a painting.
The fact that he admires it does not mean that the colors are not
essential to the original; the fact that he is incapable of recog-
nizing the light-heartedness of a Japanese melody in no way
denies the expressiveness of that melody for those who are
accustomed to its musical language. Even a man who knows
nothing about classical Arabic can be enchanted by a sample of
its calligraphy, but he is like the visitor to a museum who is able
to contemplate only the shadows of the statues.

This content downloaded from

186.217.101.95 on Wed, 01 Jul 2020 13:41:56 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 450

2. Quotation

In Gambara, Balzac establishes this parallel:

In most composers, wild and loosely-planned orchestral
parts are interwoven only to produce a momentary effect;
they do not always contribute to the composition as a
whole by the regularity of their develoment. In the case
of Beethoven, the effects are, as it were, allocated in
advance. Like different regiments which contribute by
regular maneuvers to the winning of the battle, the
different sections of the orchestra in Beethoven's sym-
phonies follow the orders given in the general interest
and are subordinated to admirably conceived plans. There
is a parity in this respect with genius in another art. In
the magnificent historical compositions of Walter Scott,
the character furthest from the action turns out to be
attached to the denouement by threads woven into the
very fabric of the plot.
In Massimila Doni he minutely analyzed Rossini's Mose
which ought to be revived if only so that the commentary can be
judged in detail.1
In that opera a French physician plays the role of the
stupid fop, well-bred but insensitive, terrified at the idea that
music might lead him to jump his intellectual tracks, and who
prefers to avoid any interpretation of it, even a private one,
considering musical art a simple and pointless game, a hodge-
podge of sonorities tickling the ear as a ragout pleases the tongue
but which is not spoken of afterwards; this is a kind of voluntary
blindness which Balzac connects with a reduced and superficial
interpretation of the great philosophical expressions of the rise
of the bourgeoisie, the Encyclopedie in France and British
empiricism:
"Madame," said he, "in explaining the masterpiece which,
thanks to you, I shall return to hear again tomorrow, in
interpreting both its means and its effects, you have often
spoken of the color of the music and of what it painted;
but as a man of science and a materialist, I confess that I
am always disgusted by the claim of certain enthusiasts
that music paints with sound. Would it not be the same

This content downloaded from

186.217.101.95 on Wed, 01 Jul 2020 13:41:56 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 451

thing if the admirers of Raphael claimed that he sang

with his colors?"
We are only too used to a kind of artistic criticism which,
instead of studying its subjects, is content with lyrical exclama-
tions and vaguely musical metaphors.
"In the language of music," the duchess replied, "painting
means to awaken certain memories in our hearts by
means of sound or to call up certain images to our minds,
and these memories, these images, have their colors, they
are sad or happy. You are quibbling about words, that's
all. According to Capraja2
(a theoretician and defender of the "roulade," of pure
tone)
each instrument has its purpose and speaks to certain
ideas, as each color corresponds in us to a certain feeling.
When you look at golden arabesques on a blue back-
ground, do you have the same thoughts as would be
suggested to you by red arabesques on a black or green
background? In neither case are there faces, nor are there
any feelings expressed
(faces here means human faces and "feelings expressed"
means those which are "painted" on the face or con-
veyed by poses),
it is done through pure art
(i.e., through the simple relationships of forms and
colors, all immediate representation being excluded;
implication: that the artist succeeds in touching us, in
informing us about a certain area of reality),
and yet no soul will remain unmoved upon looking at
them. Has not the oboe the power to awaken in all minds
countrified images, as do most of the wind instruments?
Have not the brasses a mysterious warlike quality, do
they not call up in us lively and even furious sensations?
The strings, whose substance is taken from living cre-
ation, do they not affect the most delicate fibers of our
being? Do they not go straight to the depths of the
heart? When I spoke to you of the somber colors, of the
coldness of the notes used in the introduction to Mose,
was I not at least as right as critics who talk to us about

This content downloaded from

186.217.101.95 on Wed, 01 Jul 2020 13:41:56 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 452

the coloring of such and such a writer? Do you not

recognize the nervous style, the pale style, the lively
style, the colorful style? Art paints with words, with
sounds, with colors, with lines, with forms; though the
means are various the effects are the same. An Italian
architect will give you the same sensation as that excited
in us by the introduction to Mose by taking us along dark
paths, their walls high, overgrown and humid, and then
making us come suddenly upon a valley filled with water,
flowers, buildings, and flooded with sunlight."
In speaking of the correspondence of music with architec-
ture, need I recall the basilica of San Marco; and to move
outdoors, I remember once when I was traveling in Holland, the
wonder I felt on a Sunday morning, in the little town of
Zutphen, famous for its ancient bells: each bell-tower had its
own quality and a melodic formula which was endlessly repeated;
yet all were in tune, all merged somewhat and still were dis-
tinguishable from each other; their dynamic relationships changed
and were inverted depending upon where I was, in such a way
that a stroll in the streets created inventions and variations and
the whole town was turned into a prodigious instrument upon
which the walker improvised as he moved along.
Massimila Doni continues:
"Since in its utterance any instrument makes use of
duration, breath, or the human hand, it is superior in
expressiveness to color, which is fixed, and to words,
which have limits. Musical language is indefinite, it
contains everything, it can express everything."

3. Grammar

It is, I think, obvious to everybody that music is a

language, but one of the principal reasons for the obscurity and
impotence of current musical criticism, the root of the prejudice
which tends to make of music an absolutely isolated and therefore
uninterpretable language, results from the fact that music is
considered as being on the same plane as articulate speech, as
though there were English, German, French, Music, etc. The

This content downloaded from

186.217.101.95 on Wed, 01 Jul 2020 13:41:56 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 453

mere statement of this thesis in its crudest form is enough to

demonstrate its absurdity. The text of a German or English song
may be translated into French, and it can be sung to the same
notes, even though they suit the new text less well; these
various languages form a group which have a certain kind of
translatable relationship, quite aside from music.
But the idea of the absolute isolation of the musical
language is opposed by an even more obvious objection: which
is the possibilities it has for literal imitation, for transcription,
possibilities far richer than the onomatopoeia to which articulate
speech is limited.
Such transcriptions, of which we have many examples-
that of voice production in Monteverdi (or of the echo)-have
acquired an enormous range with the greater flexibility of recent
musical discourse (machine noises in Varese, bird songs in
Messiaen).
Transcription is used in a very classic way to "illustrate"
certain words in a sung text, the musical form then appearing as
an indubitable translation of the words (the curve accompanying
the word Regenbogen (rainbow) in the Passion According to St.
John of Johann Sebastian Bach, or the noises commenting on the
passage "the veil of the temple was rent in twain, from the top
to the bottom, the earth did quake and the rocks rent", or again
the twelve strokes of the bell suggested by the word Mitternacht
(midnight) in the second cantata of Weber).
Certainly this word for word translation which occasion-
ally occurs is only a special case in a much more general figurative
relationship: it can be done phrase for phrase, episode for episode,
text for text, with all the amplifications or reductions desired,
but as long as we limit ourselves to this conception of two
parallel forms of discourse, resembling the interlinear translations
which we needed so badly when we were parsing our Latin, we
shall miss the real originality of musical language, and hence we
shall often find ourselves up against a wall; we shall be unable to
understand the necessary relationship which exists between
these special cases of word for word translation and the deeper
connection between music and words.
Balzac gives a very valuable hint when he suggests that
this connection may be likened to that between container and

This content downloaded from

186.217.101.95 on Wed, 01 Jul 2020 13:41:56 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 454

thing contained. It is obvious that we can appreciate a song, a

cantata, an opera, sung in a language which we do not know,
even though the text, which is unknown to us, is the veritable
origin of the music, and that historically it is with the text that
the composer began, for his inspiration was based upon it; and
that whatever knowledge we may get of it will clarify the music
for us and, far from leading us away from it, will add a great deal
to the music.
If I listen to a Schubert song without knowing German I
may find the music marvelous, yet as a general rule I shall be
entirely unable to give even an approximate summary of the
poem upon which it is based; but when I have grasped the
meaning of the poem I shall understand the music much better, I
shall be able to see how it fits the words, and how that
congruence is inherent in the structure of the song, which I
shall then realize I had "heard" only in part.
Important for our discussion is the well known fact that
the words, whose exact understanding is so useful for our
appreciation of the music, may turn out to be, in themselves,
very mediocre in literary quality. It is certainly better that the
text should be remarkable in itself, but if it is not, it can become
so through the musical treatment. The "ordinary" words take
on a new meaning as a result of their situation in the total sound
language.
Old Boileau himself
... of a well-placed word could teach the force.3
That "word," so sublime in Racine or Baudelaire, is the
same one we use every day, but in their writings it takes on
splendor owing to the "spot" in which it is placed.
It is easy to see how the grammatical relationships which
link such a word to a preceding one, or to a following one, or
which connect one clause with another, can be "included" in
the relationships of musical discourse. The fixed poetic forms of
our older prosody provide an obvious intermediary: the grammar
of a sonnet is understood by us only against a background of
rhythmic relationships; the words summon each other up or are
bound together by their sonorities, thanks to that structural
principle which was rhyme, and which in music is more gener-
alized as repetition, variation and development.

This content downloaded from

186.217.101.95 on Wed, 01 Jul 2020 13:41:56 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 455

Thus in a melody, whether accompanied or not, the

grammatical relationships in the strict sense of the term are only
one aspect, a particular case, a definition on a given plane, of
much richer syntactical relationships. We come to see what the
instruments play, how the notes which they produce change the
functions of those which are sung, how they alter the space in
which the word is pronounced and so change its properties.
Phenomenologically, music is anterior to spoken language,
was a vehicle for meaning before speech and still is, a fact which
makes speech possible, even if we have a tendency to forget its
origin. There can be no pronunciation of a word unless there is
first awareness and mastery of a pitch, of a certain rhythm, and
the establishment and control of both continuity and distinctness
of tone quality. Thus from the very beginning spoken language
appears as a special case of musical structure. Music digs out a
bed for the text; it prepares and forms that space in which the
text itself can be presented and more and more precisely defined.
The structural patterns which instruments, together
with melodic and rhythmic figures, must impose on the time-
span of the piece also permit the voice to be heard, and allow the
various tone-colors, melismas and neumes to take on a precise
meaning, which, in musical illustration, i.e., onomatopoeia, is
directly imposed, whereas in ordinary language this occurs
through the intermediary of an educational tradition, and there-
fore operates across an enormous historical time-span which is,
for the most part, obscure to us.
The fact that even the most prosaic spoken language is
always founded upon a musical structure, and one which is
always much less simple than it first appears (French, for
example, which might seem to an inattentive listener to have as
its melodic pattern only an oscillation around a certain pitch
which is peculiar to each speaker, in fact possesses a whole
system of intonations which organize the words into sentences,
the acquisition of which is one of the principal difficulties which
our language has for a foreigner) permits it to intervene just as it
is at certain moments in even highly elaborated musical works,
The Magic Flute, for example, and also permits the elaboration
of a whole series of intermediaries between itself and the
structures usually uttered by instruments, the Sprachgesang of

This content downloaded from

186.217.101.95 on Wed, 01 Jul 2020 13:41:56 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 456

Schonberg and all the examples of recitative whether in Mozart,

Monteverdi, or Debussy.
Since the voice can be treated like an instrument, words
and sentences materialize in the course of that treatment. We
thus witness the birth of articulate speech, we grasp the process
of its symbiosis with music. The Quartet with Soprano of Schon-
berg and the Gesang der Junglinge of Stockhausen give us this
very valuable instance: without any break understandable words
flow from the instrumental discourse (in the one case electronic,
in the other, strings) and seem to the listener like its necessary
embodiment.
The structural pattern of musical space in which the
words are to be embedded may take a much longer time than in
speech itself; a given melody may require a long prelude; but
even so this well-prepared ground may not "reveal" the text
which it was supposed to enrich. If I hold that singing tells us
more about the nature of music than instrumental performance,
it is not that I consider the latter chronologically posterior or
inferior; I am only saying that it is easier to understand music if
we do not forget that it might be a setting for a text, that such
indeed is its aim, that instrumental music awaits the still non-
existent word which it makes possible.
Since music is its "precondition," is it not inevitable that
certain complex structures can appear in spoken language only
after musical language has to a certain extent made them familiar?
If the novel is the laboratory of narrative, is not music the cavern
in which may be forged the weapons and instruments of a new
literature, the plowing of the ground where that harvest can
mature?
The example of opera renders obvious the fact that it is
music which permits words to be heard, and hence to be
intelligible. Because Mozart's musical technique allows him to
superimpose upon each other, without confusion, two or three
voices or more, these voices can simultaneously pronounce words
we distinctly hear; otherwise we would perceive only a confused
murmur in which all the words would cancel each other out.
Where the ear is concerned, verbal polyphony necessarily presup-
poses musical polyphony.

This content downloaded from

186.217.101.95 on Wed, 01 Jul 2020 13:41:56 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 457

4. Colors

Between these two extremes of musical meaningfulness,

i.e., the relationship between words and music, on the one hand
"illustration" or onomatopoeia, that is to say the reproduction
and integration of natural (or artificial) sound, of a sound
immediately recognizable, so that the musical formula is itself
word or more than a word, a "natural" word (the sound of
thunder, bird song, the barrel organ in Petrouchka) and on th
other hand, the framing, the syntactical situation, the establish
ment of an area of sound having certain properties in whic
words will have their place and hence a special meaning; between
these extremes there exists a whole series of intermediaries in
the discussion of which historical consideration cannot fail to b
increasingly important.
The prepared space cannot remain indifferent to the
meaning of the words which will appear in it; in certain cases
one of its regions may exceed the word itself in evocative power
but most often the music will adapt to the words by means of
certain "color," to return to Balzac's term, which has the
advantage of being habitually used in the severest musical
techniques.
If spoken language is a very specialized case of certain
regions of the musical domain, how did it happen that the
domain as a whole did not undergo a similar evolution? If words
gradually take on a whole superstructure of meanings, why
should the same thing not be true, to a lesser degree, of other
sounds?

a) Psychological Colors
It is well known that different sounds have different
effects on the organism: the middle range of audible frequencies
is immediately agreeable; the top and bottom of the range
produce painful sensations until one has learned to connect
them to other sounds in a form whose intensity allows us to
replace that pain by a higher pleasure; that certain regular
rhythms uplift and stimulate, that an irregular rhythm de-
presses...

This content downloaded from

186.217.101.95 on Wed, 01 Jul 2020 13:41:56 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 458

It may be supposed for the sake of argument that the

psychological effect of sounds is the same for all men, and
consequently that certain kinds of music are suited to certain
texts and not to others.

b) Functional Colors
But at once we must recognize that different men hear
the same musical sounds with different ears, that these sounds
take on different colors for them, that they produce a different
effect.
In the various societies musical instruments have usually
had a very specialized use, some being reserved for religious
ceremonies, others for war, others for the dance. Their tone-
colors are thus associated with different circumstances or areas
of life, which are not necessarily the same for two different
societies.
Rhythms also, melodic formulas, etc., all the elements of
musical discourse are necessarily colored by the uses made of
them; only by learning these habitual uses can we come to
perceive the way an exotic music fits the words, or hear it as
they do for whom it was composed.

c) Modal Colors
That specialization is very considerably developed in
sophisticated compositions. The different modes undoubtedly
have slightly different physiological properties, but they acquire
an extremely varied coloration according to the use which is
made of them in this or that circumstance, and depending on the
well-known, the familiar tunes, which are based upon them.
Here again true appreciation of works produced in a given
context can exist only in so far as we are capable of appreciating
these subtleties. We all know how highly the theory of modal
colors was developed in ancient music, in Gregorian chant, and
in certain oriental musical theories.
Passage from one mode to another sets up a contrast
between their colors; this is traditionally called chromaticism.

This content downloaded from

186.217.101.95 on Wed, 01 Jul 2020 13:41:56 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 459

d) Tonal Colors
In order to understand what classical writers call tonal
colors, it is indispensable to go back to the origin of the idea of
tonality, that is to say, before what is called equal temperament.
There is no great difference between a piece played on the piano
in C major and its transposition into C-sharp major. For anyone
not having absolute pitch or whose ear is not specially trained,
both will produce exactly the same effect. For the performer, on
the other hand, the two pieces will have an entirely different
color, because the tonality of C major is the basis of all the
others, the first one learned on the piano, whereas C-sharp
major is filled with sharps, with black keys, is a difficult and
distant key, and especially because it is the equivalent for the
piano of another key, D-flat major, which, however, for the
violin or for the voice is entirely distinct, the difference being
perfectly audible on each note, etc.
To the classical notions of the distances between pitch,
tone-color, duration, etc. must be added the idea of tonal
distance, i.e., the greater or lesser degree of facility there may be
in passing from one tonality to another, in modulating, in the
number of sharps or flats which define these tonalities, the
greater or lesser influence of equal temperament.

e) Geographical Colors
Since the evolution of musical language did not occur in
the same way in different civilizations or even in different
countries-in a given country such and such a scale became
fixed, such and such a system of modes, such and such a
vocabulary of rhythmical and melodical formulas, accents, etc.,
all differing from our own-it is possible to imitate the musical
color of a people, to play with it, at first by the simple technique
of contrast (Polish coloring in the First Brandenburg Concerto,
or Russian coloring in Beethoven's Seventh Quartet) then later
by settling into it and exploring it (Polish coloring in Chopin,
Hungarian in Liszt, Spanish in Chabrier, Debussy, Ravel, De
Falla, etc.).
This use of geographical coloring requires first the in-
tegration into the tonal systems of formulas which are foreign to

This content downloaded from

186.217.101.95 on Wed, 01 Jul 2020 13:41:56 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 460

it, but little by little the coherence natural to these other

systems resists this integration, with the result that tonality
loses its dominance and this leads to works of increasingly
complex structure in which tonal relationships are occasionally
suspended in favor of purely modal organizing principles, har-
mony meanwhile systematically developing at a certain distance
from where it would be in a classical tonality.
Bart6k, for example, deliberately swathing his music in
Hungarian (or Rumanian) coloring did his best not to let it be
absorbed by Western music, but to take it to a point of system-
atization and elaboration such that it could be put on the same
level, instituting in that "color" a veritable harmony, thus
achieving within classical tonality works of a comparable richness
and harmonic complexity, and showing the West that its classical
system of music had to be taken simply as a special case among
many other organizing principles capable of being used for the
same ends.

f) Historical Colors
The counter-shock of this utilization of geographical
colorings by which it was revealed that classical Western music
was simply one musical domain among others had for Igor
Stravinsky consequences whose importance we are still far from
having realized. At the beginning of his career he appeared in
the West as a marvelous specialist in "Russian color," which
became Russian folk color with Petrouchka, and primitive Rus-
sian with The Rite of Spring.
During his stay in Switzerland he tried his hand at
Western folk coloring, that of the Canton of Vaud, whose
characteristics he succeeded in using admirably.
Critical misunderstanding began with Mavra, a work in
which he treated the comic opera of the last century exactly as
he had treated Russian folklore in The Fire-Bird, and at the time
this was felt to be a deep insult.
From then on he tried systematically to adapt for his own
purposes the colors of certain composers, to write Bach or
Tschaikowsky as Debussy wrote Spanish or Italian or English.
Just as a given classical sonata is in C major, or a given
rondo of Haydn in "Hungarian," so a given work of Stravinsky is

This content downloaded from

186.217.101.95 on Wed, 01 Jul 2020 13:41:56 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 461

"Beethovenian." But also, as in classical sonatas the tonality

changes, so it is possible to modulate from one exotic color to
another, or from one historical color to another.
When Beethoven wrote the third movement of the Fif-
teenth Quartet, "Holy Song of Thanksgiving of a Convalescent
to the Deity in the Lydian Mode," he adopted a specifically
religious and archaic coloration which changes, returns, fades
away, to the point that we are afloat on a history of music.
Similarly Mozart deliberately made use of reminiscences of
Handel or quoted himself in Don Giovanni.
So in Stravinsky pastiche and quotation play a funda-
mental part; in his work a "Beethovenian" phrase suddenly
reveals possibilities of transposition to the style of Debussy. By
the systematic use of historical coloring he has endowed con-
temporary music with a new representational dimension. His
most characteristic work in this respect is The Rake's Progress
where, within a generalized Mozartian coloring, ironic modula-
tions bring up suggestions of Verdi, Gluck, Gounod, etc.
But in The Rake's Progress the controlling form, the
general system within which these modulations come into play,
was situated in the past, and could not absorb, except ironically,
more modern musical colorings. Stravinsky thus found himself
faced with the absolute necessity of inventing a higher kind of
organization within which he might make use of all the historical
and geographical colors he had so patiently learned to manipu-
late. Stravinsky's adoption of the twelve-tone system after The
Rake's Progress is thus entirely understandable; he found there,
at least in outline, that "generalization" of musical ideas which
was indispensable to him. It is also understandable that he was
able to absorb the teaching of Schonberg only after he had made
a successful demonstration of the use of historical and local
colorings and also when he was able to hear twelve-tone works
whose individual clarity was equivalent to that of classical
works, the Quartet op. 22 of Webern in particular, or Webern's
cantatas.

Sch6nberg's considerable output is always organized

independently of tonality, but by a constant refusal of it; ton
continually solicits him and returns to haunt him, and it
this that his work owes a great part of its pathetic quality, fo

This content downloaded from

186.217.101.95 on Wed, 01 Jul 2020 13:41:56 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 462

his phrases constantly suggest others of which they are merely

shadows and from which they turn aside at the last moment.
They are sketches which are continually reworked.
This use of the tone row to avoid tonality did not permit
the methodical establishment of its tonal formulas among existing
ones. So the twelve-tone system seemed to Stravinsky merely
another historical color among many and not a means of recon-
ciling them. It is Webern's interpretation of the twelve-tone
system as a generalization of the concept of tonality, which
implies the inevitable consequence that the twelve-tone row is
itself only one of the types of possible rows, that it is only the C
major of serial coloring, which led the composer of Agon to
adopt it.

5. Envoi

Thus contemporary music has ready to hand devi

possessing an unheard-of power to convey meaning; slowly t
possibilities are being explored; up to this moment, contrar
what is usually said, contemporary composers have been ra
timorous about it, and that certainly not through exces
theory, but through a certain lack of boldness in theory w
for some time prevented the very best minds from understandi
great contemporary composers. That day is past; it can be
that today new music is bursting out, forcing open the door
absorb the forms of popular music. I see by the program of
"Domaine musical" that jazz musicians took part in a con
Nobody can deny the immediate appeal of Threni or of Grup
I catch myself silently humming Stockhausen and others; so
shall hear the humming too.
Poetry is not a luxury, painting is not a luxury. N
music is certainly not the pastime of the idle, of "amateurs,"
that out of your head. Music is indispensable to our life
everybody's life, and we have never needed it so badly.

This content downloaded from

186.217.101.95 on Wed, 01 Jul 2020 13:41:56 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 NOTES

1. Gambara and Massimila Doni are relatively short fictional

Balzac's La Comedie humaine. Paolo Gambara is a talented theorist of
music who lacks creative discipline. Reduced to singing for pennie
in the street, he is befriended by the Prince de Varese and his wife,
the former Massimila Doni.

2. Capraja, also a character in La Comedie humaine, (Massimila Doni) is

fanatical music lover.

3. Butor here cites a tag from Boileau's Art poe'tique of 1674 (Chant I,
line 133). I have quoted the Soame-Dryden translation.

This content downloaded from

186.217.101.95 on Wed, 01 Jul 2020 13:41:56 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms