The step from Webern to the post-war period seems indeed to be but a small one. Let us first summarise the achievements of Webern.

The causality and gravitational pull of tonality became things of the past. The concept of ‘musical space’ was introduced by Debussy (le temps ritmisé), Stravinsky and Schönberg, and the former two in particular departed also from development form. But it was not until Webern that the new concepts of form discussed in the previous chapter (section 1) evolved.

Two processes were evident which may seem contradictory at first sight. In the first place there was a tendency towards differentiation. In the expressionist period this had been expressed primarily in strong chromaticism, motivic fragmentation and subtle playing techniques. Differentiation was later pursued more consciously and extended to other elements, even including tempo. But at the same time there was a tendency towards reduction. This stemmed from Webern's sense of balance and comprehensibility (Fasslichkeit), and perhaps from a mystical trait which came to the fore at a later stage, a trait not unfamiliar to figures such as Schönberg and Hauer.

In Webern's early work the principle of constant variation was still prevalent. In op. 21, however, he already employed literal repetition, and thereafter the symmetrical blocks discussed previously. Although subtle shifting may occur in such mirrored structures, contrast is reduced to a minimum by reason of the fact that the primary factor is ultimately pitch. All this still gave the composer a broad margin between repetition and contrast. The influence of reduction is also felt in the series, which is mirrored in itself, limited to just a few intervals, or divided into analogous cells.

Through the pursuit of differentiation, elements that had once been secondary became autonomous. However, in Webern these remained functional, continuing to lend structure to a form that is primarily a matter of pitch organisation. The so-called punctual music of a later period was to abandon this bond too, subjecting various musical elements to coequal, serial organisation.

The pursuit of reduction brought about an attitude towards the series that was immanently present but not yet clearly manifest. The series lost its last ‘thematic’ character and became a regulating factor, creating quantitative distinctions and measurable proportions.

How many attempts have been made to define the concept of melody? It is not our intention here to add another new and undoubtedly limited one to those already current. For we can assume that any definition of melody is related to our general musical attitude. How very different must the concept of melody be, or must have been, among peoples living beyond or before Western polyphony, in comparison for instance to the ideas of our nineteenth- century forefathers! Jean-Jacques Rousseau anticipated that century when he wrote: ‘Melody arises from harmony.’ And however much those same forefathers focused their expressive urge on the melodic, the indispensable basis for melody was nonetheless formed by harmony.

The disintegration of this harmonic system, however, brought one consequence: the melodic element began to collapse and was thus in need of revision. Classical period form, for example, was replaced immediately by melody moving more freely in relation to metrical nuclear points, harmonic cadences and symmetrical structures.

A far more important outcome was that the melodic element slowly but surely became primary, a development which was often misunderstood. This is not to say that musical expression became even more concentrated on the melodic than it had been before, but that the melodic, or more generally the melic element, began to play the same structural role as that previously assigned to harmony. For many composers it became a constructive factor of great significance.

Once more, it was the dodecaphonic world which applied this most thoroughly. The structural principle that emerged was exactly the opposite of its predecessor: the melic element – a succession of notes – came to determine much of the construction and sequence of the vertical sound.

But elsewhere too, the constructional role of the melic element came to the fore in many shapes. We must bear in mind, however, that the disintegration into elements that typified all developments of the past one hundred and fifty years also applied to the strictly melodic. Melodies became motifs, motifs in turn could be reduced to intervals (or incidentally even to single notes), and from these small units larger structures were determined.

A European goes to Japan to learn the art of archery. He desires to draw near to the spiritual world of the East and believes that this celebrated practice of archery is a good way to begin, since he is already somewhat skilled in handling pistols and weapons. However, the first thing demanded by his master is complete inadvertence. ‘The true art’, he exclaims, ‘is purposeless and inadvertent. The more persistently you try to consciously aim the arrow in the right direction, the less you will succeed in approaching the essence of this art. You are obstructed by a will that is much too purposeful. That which you (yourself ) do not do – or so you believe at least – does not happen either.’

This story, told by Ernesto Grassi, offers us a glimpse of a different world, strange and for some perhaps absurd. For if we ponder on the words of this Eastern master, do we not encroach upon the fundament of our individualism? ‘Come away from yourself, from your subjective moments, from your consciousness, from your ego, and return to the original being’, is the translation of his answer. ‘This self-oblivion conveys one to a condition from which mankind attains a new spiritual freedom, a state of originality and directness which stands – and now a more familiar sound – at the beginning of all creative labour.’

This book aims to avoid any semblance of philosophy. The story is merely an illustration of the chasm between two worlds, a chasm that no longer runs between East and West however, but across our own soil, cutting straight through our Western culture to cause fatal confusion. On the one hand are the offspring and advocates of (German) romantic subjectivism, for whom the subjective expression of the artist is in the foreground. His inner stride, his emotional tension, his moods and experiences make and determine the work of art. We see the type of composer who has his counterpart in the concert virtuoso: both are exponents of a personality cult carried to excess.

The nineteenth century was not only the age of romanticism but also the period of great scientific discoveries and the tremendous rise of industry. Science and industry brought unsuspected change to society: on the one hand they stimulated an élan and optimism, in the hope of a better world, while on the other hand industrial development in particular caused great upheaval and disquiet, expressed in increasing criticism of the society of the time. Both of these forces were active in the early years of the twentieth century. The triumphant march of discovery proceeded, but at the same time more and more nationalist tendencies and political tensions developed, leading in 1914, from central Europe, to World War I. This disaster brought Europe to ruin, and despite attempts at repair, political and economic crises have been rife ever since. Many lands introduced a form of controlled economy, and in some countries, dictatorial rule was established: Russia in 1917, Italy in 1922, Germany in 1933 and Spain in 1936. The democratic countries of the West were weak and divided. The world picture changed slowly but surely. America, Japan and other non-European countries developed considerably, partly through the destitution of Europe after World War I. Tension increased in Europe, and inner conflicts led to World War II some twenty years after World War I. Spengler's pessimistic prophecy of 1918, Untergang des Abendlandes, seemed to approach fulfillment. The decolonisation of almost all African and Asian countries was completed at a furious speed. Meanwhile America, Russia and China became world powers, and in between them the ‘Asian peninsula’ of Europe was threatened with suffocation. However, the opposite occurred: the first steps toward European unity were taken, and an unexpected upsurge was felt in all fields, bearing witness to the vitality of this ancient but torn part of the world.

Among the first to announce the new era in spectacular fashion were the futurists. The past was over and done: ‘destroy it, only then can a new world arise’, as Marinetti cried in 1909. With Milan as the focal point, artists of various backgrounds gathered around Marinetti, idealists dreaming of a new world. Their ideas were revolutionary in every field, but the movement did not advance beyond its visions, perhaps because time was not yet ripe for their many proclamations. Russolo was the key figure in the music world.

Ton de Leeuw basically wrote Music of the Twentieth Century in the period 1961 to 1962, a time of considerable change, both in contemporary music and in the author's own life. The strong post-1945 emphasis on concerted radical structural innovation of music had however largely passed. New music was opening up in many new ways to many worlds of music, both past and present.

In 1961, De Leeuw travelled to India with a commission from the Dutch Ministry of Education, Arts and Sciences to explore the possibilities of crosscultural artistic interaction. He shared a positive outlook on this type of interaction with other composers and ‘culture makers’ in a time of de-colonialisation. The trip to India reinforced De Leeuw's awareness of the polarity that had once been associated with ‘East’ and ‘West’. De Leeuw at that time considered this to be one of the major defining issues of contemporary Western art. On the one hand, he pointed to the exaggerated cult of personality, and on the other, to a way of life which he characterised as a liberation from subjective individualism, and as a ‘return to original being’. He illustrates this notion in chapter 6, in an account of Zen archery in Japan. Although he does not explicitly advocate either attitude in this book – which he does, for example, in many of his other texts – it is clear from his wording that his sympathy rests with the latter.

Parallel to this polarity, he also compares the musical practices which directly relate to romantic aesthetics, the central notion of which he describes as a ‘servitude to oneself ‘, with those that preceded and followed it. One of his motives for writing this book was to wean his readers away from romantic aesthetics, which had already lost much of its vitality and relevance, and toward the opening of their ears to unheard worlds of music, such as the work of Debussy and Webern, which is sometimes described as where ‘silence becomes audible’. De Leeuw focuses on both of these interrelated polarities. Musically, the polarities consist of, for example, harmonic tonality on the one hand, and melodic and rhythmic modality on the other, not only in relation to music structure, but also as an expression of general attitudes toward life.

Most innovations discussed in the preceding chapters stemmed from composers outside the Viennese School. The division thus arising in this book between (extended) tonal and atonal music is not a matter of principle. There are two reasons for discussing atonality separately. On the one hand, the movement presented a fairly closed entity, and its line of development in the first half of the twentieth century is clearer to follow than that of any other trend. On the other hand, and here lies the main reason, the innovations of atonality were not only more radical but also more comprehensive. In the light of more recent developments, the question even arises whether this development did not offer the greatest opportunity for a future synthesis of all innovations of the first half of the twentieth century. Whatever the case may be, this tendency was evident, and the fact that many composers consequently hovered on the edge of a (musical) abyss is a side effect that can only disturb those who are too cautious.

THE DEVELOPMENT TOWARDS FREE ATONALITY. The disintegration of the sense of tonality, and the corresponding dispersal into elements, brought the following aspects to the fore:

• 1. Musical elements that were once secondary, subordinated to tonal form categories of a higher order, became autonomous;

• 2. The lack of tonal coherence called for the pursuit of a unity that could bind the dissociated musical language in another manner;

• 3. New concepts of form arose, partly due to the replacement of diatonic principles of structure by chromatic ones.

• 1. Autonomy. The manner in which rhythm became autonomous has already been sufficiently discussed. Released from its metrical context, it developed into the floating rhythm and autonomous rhythmic structures of Stravinsky and Messiaen.

In the Viennese School, however, the emphasis lay on pitch structure. With regard to melody and harmony, the disintegration of the classical diatonic scale created a whole new range of problems. That Vienna formed the stage for this was largely thanks to expressionism, which viewed chromaticism in particular as a powerful means of expansion.

It is hardly sufficient to discuss the newest developments in music exclusively in terms of their manifestation in the music world at large. Much of what is happening today reaches the public concert circuit only occasionally, if at all. Naturally, the same applies to the media and the music press in so far as they, in turn, form a reflection of events in the concert world. I have therefore drawn on a second source in order to obtain a wider view of the contemporary scene. Every year since 1960 I have enjoyed the privilege of seeing tens and sometimes hundreds of new scores and, as a composition teacher, jury member and workshop director, coming into contact with similar numbers of young composers from all over the world. And although this again forms a limited and subjective picture, the combination of information from both sources has at any rate given rise to a different interpretation, to a hierarchy of values which does not always correspond with generally accepted opinion.

A first consequence of my view is that I prefer not to take the customary year 1968 as starting point for a discussion of the most recent period of contemporary music. If there is a turning point at all, I would place it somewhat earlier, in the course of the 1960s. For the innovations of the preceding period took place largely in the fifties, and the first signs of change became visible quickly afterwards. The newest period in music therefore spans some thirty years and reveals an exceptionally complex and multicoloured picture. I have attempted to distill five characteristics which I believe to be of importance to both the present situation and its further development.

The geographical distribution of musical activity

An increasing amount of contemporary music is written in other parts of the world. What began in Japan now extends to Korea, China, Taiwan, Indonesia, the Philippines and other Asiatic lands, as well as hitherto almost unknown African and South American countries. Any future musicologist making a study of the second half of the twentieth century will therefore have to take into account a broad and diffuse distribution of creative activity across the entire world, rather than the mere transfer of musical centres (previously mainly limited to Europe and the USA).

For some ten centuries the European tradition has been particularly distinguished from other music cultures by the phenomenon of simultaneity. The eighteenth century in particular saw the erection of a magnificent edifice in which harmony undisputedly ruled over all other musical elements. The great romantics wielded harmony as an expressive means of the very finest sort. Even theoreticians were content, for here lay an open field allowing systematic excavation. Music could now be ‘explained’, and functions and cadences, modulations and alterations obediently joined ranks in a well-ordered and logical whole. Ever since, generations of musicians have been and indeed continue to be trained in what we call ‘the theory of harmony’. While new discoveries in this field would hardly seem likely, the reverse side of the medal is twofold:

• 1. The theory of harmony as it is understood today covers only a few centuries of the entire development of ‘simultaneity’ in the broad sense of the word;

• 2. Even more fatal to unimpeded rhythmic and/or melodic development than this restriction is the fact that simultaneity plays such a primary role in our experience. Here, music reacts like any other living organism: one-sided development of a single aspect can work to the detriment of other ones.

Only now are we able to view these matters more clearly. A deeper study of some Eastern cultures has made us aware of our inferiority in terms of melody and rhythm. But these are indeed cultures in which simultaneity is of only secondary significance! While it cannot be ruled out that we Westerners have a natural disposition for harmony, it is at the same time true that thoughtful musical training can protect us from one-sidedness and atrophy.

Once there was a time when we took care with our dosage of dissonances, and now we do likewise with our consonances. However the case may be, as long as we remain oversensitive to such phenomena, simultaneity will continue to form one of the main problems of Western music.

What did the twentieth century achieve in this field? By now we realise that there is no simple answer to this question, having experienced every aspect ranging from uncompromising counterpoint (Hindemith in the 1920s), in which simultaneity was an entirely random result of horizontal textures, to the most cautious, subtle expressiveness of Webern's chromaticism.

At an early stage of this argument and exegesis I expressed dissatisfaction with Lawrence Kramer's idea of ‘songfulness’ (see p. 5), not because it is a bad idea, which would hardly be likely of such an imaginative and thoughtful critic, but because it is too complex. Kramer's ‘just singing’, as will have been inferred almost incidentally when examining Stripsody (see pp. 107–14), is an idealized, formulaic, reductionist comforter of a thought, not a serious proposition susceptible to extrapolation through an evidence-based study of actual songs. Kramer's desire to demystify vocality by restoring it out of the clutches of arcane, positivist scholarly dissection to the pure and simple experience of genius at work is as laudable now as its more authoritative version was more than two millennia ago, when Plato asked us to realize that we perceive through the eye of the mind, as he would have it, and not through the highways and byways of sophisticated verbal reasoning and rhetoric; perception, in its simplest form, is a matter of immediate recognition, not of forensic analysis. But signification does not come in convenient packets. What we hear in a performance of a song is also what we brought to that performance from our experience, what we remember of it, and what it will become. This is actually the most obvious single challenge to music analysis, and even more of a challenge to that very poor relation of analysis, music criticism: how do you know what you will say about a piece of music tomorrow? It does not mean that one must throw in the towel and give up entirely on having the confidence to say anything at all about music, but it does mean that one ought to have good reason and good evidence.

Schoenberg appears again now as bridge into the future, to vocal music of the later twentieth century, in order to keep alive a narrative thread from the preceding chapters, and to do so there will be one break in the ‘rule’ of the narrative. Self-evidently this book is concentrating on the song of the solo voice. Song is also, though, at least in my hearing of how Western music ticks, an entity that presents in many forms. One has only to think of the aesthetics of piano playing from Mozart to Chopin and beyond, where making the instrument ‘sing’ is the highest perceived good, and this serves as a reminder of our starting point at the ‘Song without Words’ and a consideration of some of the twists and turns in what that idea did and could mean. Song can certainly be for vocal ensemble, of which Schoenberg's Friede auf Erden is an astonishing representative, choral music at the cutting edge of its compositional time, and raising issues of analytical interpretation not wholly dissimilar from those raised by song in its purest form, solo song. Yet although the ‘solo’ is plain enough in Cathy Berberian's Stripsody, which we shall be visiting as the end-stop of this chapter, it in turn raises the rather more gritty question of what is and what is not ‘song’ in the vocal sense.

MUSIC WITHOUT WORDS

One of the most clearly descriptive generic titles of Western music of recent centuries is also one of the most intriguing: ‘Das Lied ohne Worte’, the Song without Words. Mendelssohn published six volumes of forty-eight such pieces in 1832–45, often charming, sometimes deeply moving, in some cases composed simply, very ‘playable’ and in ‘folk’ style, in other cases – rather less commonly – extremely skilful compositionally in ways that are easy to perceive (for example, in the A-flat ‘Duetto’, No. 18, which combines on one instrument the female and male ‘voice’, separately as well as ‘singing’ together, with full piano accompaniment). The very title ‘Song without Words’ triggers unusual questions. Why, for instance, would anyone want to write a wordless song? How do we know in the absence of words that a ‘song’ is what this kind of music is designed to be? And is music of this kind supposed to be instead of song, some kind of complement to the ‘real’ thing, or is it perhaps the best that can be done alone at the piano (assuming that the pianist lacks the ability to sing and play simultaneously to the same standard?), and is it thus a makeshift of some sort?

Julian Rushton is right, I believe, to point in his essay ‘Music and the Poetic’ to the aura of heightened expression and what will be called here a kind of ‘transvocality’ in this period, which makes the Song without Words seem a most natural genre in the wider context: