Author: ichao

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“The Moral Qualities Inherent in Time”: Luigi Nono’s Al gran sole carico d’amore (1972-4)

What does “passed” mean for a person when for each of us the past is the bearer of all that is constant in the reality of the present, of each current moment?

Andrei Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time

Luigi Nono (1924-1990), one of the foremost pioneers of avant-garde music in post-war Europe, is also recognized for his fervent, left-wing political engagement. Following the stage works Intolleranza 1960 (1961) and A floresta é jovem e cheja de vida (1966), his electronic composition and explicitly political statement Musica-Manifesto n. 1 (1969), and Como una ola de fuerza y luz (1972) for soprano, piano and orchestra, his political activism culminated in Al gran sole carico d’amore (1972-4), an ‘azione scenica’ (scenic action) which was premiered at La Scala on 4 April 1975.

Nono expressly reminded Ricordi, his publisher, to avoid the traditional classification of a staged musical work as an opera. Certainly the eluded genre has been long bound with bourgeois connotations; the opera, besides the ample potential for commercial success and the institutionalization of vocal training, is also bound with a specifically linear style of storytelling. This convention had not been broken for almost 200 years since the solidification of the opera culture during the eighteenth century. Nono’s Al gran sole carico d’amore, however, does not unfold in accordance to the linear convention. Hybrid historical events and social incentives intertwined, their coherent interrelationship to each other very much effectively accomplished at the first place by an equally hybrid literary input. Nono adapted an anti-symbolism, affective and highly logical method to present collective will; since communist writers are a conduit through which the people illustrate their wills and utopian images, there lies a moral obligation to obliterate the boundary between the individual activist and a group of activists. Therefore, what originally is represented by a singular character in the literary source may be assigned for multiple voices or dispersed choruses in Nono’s work – a collective search for truth and communist utopia. The ordering of historical events, poetry references, and dramatizations is not confined to a temporal way of thinking, but is choreographed upon a plane of historicity which seamlessly morphs from one stage to another, from the present to the past. Time is will; the dolcissimo singing is the gravity which creates tremendous character in the human agents.

Another major characteristic of Al gran sole carico d’amore, and indeed many of his politically engaged compositions, is the utilization of protest songs and communist anthems, which, in spite of the fact that these songs all conform to tonal practices, still maintains a prospective, forward-looking character. In the liner notes of Lothar Zagrosek and Staatsorchester Stuttgart’s 1999 recording of the opera, Klaus Zehelein writes that “a crucial element of [Al gran sole carico d’amore] is that meaning is created, and that it is not, as in neo-Romanticism, a case of using expressivity as something which already exists. Rather, it is a matter of redefining it through syntax (trans. Alfred Clayton).” Indeed, quotations of tonal melodies, in an ‘atonal’ and teleological context, are often intended to invoke some kind of nostalgia or distance, usually characterized by inertia and the stark contrast with dissonant, actively fantastical and expositional passages; examples include the Alban Berg’s Violin Concerto, who contextualized a Carinthian folk song as the revelation of origin behind the cradle-grave analogy, and George Crumb’s Black Angels, who included the theme of Schubert’s Death and the Maiden and utilized it as an interlocutor of micro-density realms. On the contrary, Nono directly intruded into the interval content of the songs in a way that the songs cease to operate in a tonal logic; intervals, liberated from tonal contracts, enter the terrain of spatial considerations and negotiations. Jonathan Impett notes that, in Nono’s 1969 work Per Bastiana – Tai-Yang Cheng, “having analysed the limited interval content of The East is Red, Nono puts it at the centre of a wider pan-chromatic, all-interval interval matrix. The fragments thus produced explore the expanded pitch space step by step, until the pitches and intervals of the melody itself gradually emerge from their chromatic negative through the eight passages of the third section. (278)” Intervals denote space; the reality of expression lies in the peculiarity of individual spatial components and the composer’s ‘hegemonic’ organization. The shades of tonality are, once and for all, extirpated along with the relics of nineteenth-century romanticism which characterized the European bourgeois. Allying himself with Gramsci’s analysis of political hegemony, one of the main tenets of communism, Nono erased the difference between space, progress and history; intervals are like the resonating body of vociferous persons, articulating their demands and inviting adversaries – other intervals – to enter a socialist dialect, an perpetual process of compromise. His radical inventions were also a means to denounce a then-prevailing antithesis of his approach: that the use of revolutionary songs without a radical reworking on their musical profiles is, in other words the lack of radical participation in the musical/teleological prospects, is lethargic and, ultimately, bourgeois and authoritarian.

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But in what ways does Nono’s scrupulously radical process of intervallic recontexualization reprimand a chronological time? In what ways does Nono’s compositional method correspond to the moral objective of azione scenica, the “expression of history (Zehelein)”? And how are deviations from this practice rendered ‘immoral’ or ‘irresponsible’? Perhaps we can take a departure to appraise neo-romanticism to clarify this issue.

Intending to revive conventional idioms and musical (especially tonal) practices, neo-romanticism is, needless to say, a polar opposite of Nono’s Gramscian approach of music; it is music “using expressivity as something which already exists.” In the remainder of this post I intend to argue how time and material are essentially the same, and how the mediocrity of material selection and utilization of neo-romantic music would imply not only a false representation of time but also, at worst, moral defects.

In 2017, Mason Bates’s opera, The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs, received its premiere. Although it has won a positive public appeal, critics have expressed discontent about the incoherence of musical ideas – largely due to Bate’s heavy dependence upon ‘pastiche’ – and have found it one of the detriments that made the opera unconvincing, along with the opera’s ‘moral vacuity’ and its ‘clichéd, fraudulent narrative arc.’ Having assessed Nono’s azione scenica, I would add that the fourth detriment to this opera is the banal understanding of time typical to neo-romantic composers. Andrei Tarkovsky, arguably one of the greatest film directors of all time, considered morality and human conscience contingent with time, which “in its moral implication is in fact turned back. (Sculpting in Time, 58)” Why does the adherence to morality require a different understanding of time? How does Bates’s opera subscribe to the ostensibly factual conception of an ‘irreversible time,’ despite the seemingly unconventional, non-chronological plot of Jobs’ life? How does Bates’s toying around with pastiche relate to this issue at all?

Unfolding the argument from the last question:

“[…] the first essential in any plastic composition, its necessary and final criterion, is whether it is true to life, specific and factual; that is what makes it unique. By contrast, symbols are born, and readily pass into general use to become clichés, when an author hits upon a particular plastic composition, ties it in with some mysterious turn of thought of his composition, loads it with extraneous meaning.”

Andrei Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time

The lack of specificity and factuality is manifest in the ubiquitous troping of pastiche in the opera; religious themes are represented by ‘orientalist clichés: breathy pentatonic flute, gongs, and prayer bowls,’ the musical-mathematical analogy by a literal quotation of J. S. Bach’s music, calamity by ‘self-consciously “modernist” idioms,’ etc. The maker of a polyscreen film is forced to “[reduce] simultaneity to sequence, in other words of thinking up for each instance an elaborate system of conventions (Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time, 71).” Bates’s approach to semantic articulation also necessitates a similar solution: to reconcile irreconcilable musical/referential material by means of sequence and clichés. As a result the opera is neither specific nor factual; but how does this lack cause the opera to succumb to linear time?

The concept of linear time, according to Tarkovsky, stems from a semantic reading of cause and effect – it itself not more than a failure to see the “mutual dependence” of cause and effect of “inexorably ordained necessity”; “The link of cause and effect, in other words the transition from one state to another, is also the form in which time exists, the means whereby it is materialised, in day to day practice. (58)” A progressive reading of cause and effect would reveal the reversibility of causality and its primary agent – conscience – and it is the same progressive spirit that makes a plastic composition ‘specific and factual.’ In short, a materialised means automatically leaves the expressive terrain and is bound with troping, therefore is utilized in the same semantic realm where materialised, linear ‘time’ belongs to; by contrast, an idea or a statement charged with specificity and factuality is able to register itself unto the dialectic of truth and the conscience “inherent in time itself.”

Therefore, the use of techno signifiers and many other instances of pastiche in Bates’s opera in fact signifies an absence of moral bearings. The opera, by assorting and situating these symbols in their representational, ‘literal’ forms, countermands the provocative responsibility of an artwork and becomes a temple of archaic semantics; it is therefore devoid of truth, of individuality, and of expressive potential.

Gramsci considers the popular song as a prism of intentions and empirical dimensions: “What distinguishes the popular song of a nation or a culture is not its artistic origin or historical origins, but its way of conceiving of the world and life, in contrast with official society (Gramsci, Letteratura e vita nazionale, 1950),” Nono’s Al gran sole carico d’amore extended – perhaps extrapolated – Gramsci’s thesis into the exigent circumstances of post-war Europe and demonstrated the means of social unity through an unrelenting procedure of demarcating and demolishing dialogical spaces which finds momentary utopia within both internal and external manifestations of the world. As a composer, he internalized this historicity as well; the labyrinth of communist activities has formulated a self-sufficient dialectical terrain which, along with his impeccable erudition, caused him to gradually consider historicity in a different way. May I conclude this blogpost with Nono’s illuminating contemplation of himself:

I don’t aim to liberate myself from the shadows of the past.
I don’t repudiate my work, thought and acts of the past.
I have neither need nor motive to liberate myself from them.
I am just seeking to broaden and deepen my thought in my work, in my life.
I am also seeking to understand various dismemberments that have taken place within me (lacerations of various types leading to other discoveries of diverse quality and with various consequences) […]
I am simply discovering other possibilities […]
What I am studying literally upsets me because it opens me up to other thoughts, it doesn’t just make me question myself but makes me surpass the limits of the preceding thoughts and sentiments (why repudiate them if I come from here, why refute them if they are continuing in other ways in me?????) and at times in the joy of such intra-listening [intraascolto] I find myself alone.

Nono, letter to Pestalozza, September/October 1981

– I-Hsiang Chao

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Spatialization in the Renaissance Polyphony: A Short History of its Aesthetics and Application

Music, besides a purely sensual, and often surreal, kind of enjoyment, has a million facets and presents a wide array of different challenges for different mentalities: for performers, music is a fluid oscillation between obtaining eloquent delivery of tones and phrases, and reimagining the philosophical pillars with which the piece in question was derived; for composers, and usually scholars as well, music yields a metaphysical reality, by pursuing which our concerns about material, and sometimes even practical, realities shrivel; for the general audience (assuming one that is familiar with the context of the piece they listen or recollect), music tends to be interpreted as a manifestation of an all-encompassing, higher being, in which the listener is dissolved, elevated to a vantage point, and able to re-deliver the comprehensivity of the music.

Discussions of the psychological impact of music are often imbued with that praising its extraordinary illusionary capabilities. This observation, however, pertains directly to an integral part in musical imagination: space. Composers use techniques of distance and spatiality to create a premise for intricate structural progressions and volatile ideas; sometimes it becomes so compelling that the listener’s awareness of the surrounding is completely subsumed into it. In such cases an ‘environment’ is created. In relation to more traditional aesthetics, the sole agenda of creating space is to create an alternative path towards metaphysical reality, apart from teachings of reasoning. Space instills fertility of thought in us. When we listen to music attentively enough, the boundary between the listener, who perceives sonic information, and the music, which configures and ‘emanates’ the information, is obscured; therefore it is not hard to imagine the multiplicity and simultaneity of perceptual conduits and the listener’s self-awareness achieved by spatialization, through which the attentive locating of sound — sometimes the listener’s subconscious, self-seeking appreciation of such attentiveness as well — is transposed to a kind of panoramic ‘vision’ when the listener recognizes another sound source. The experience is then translated into, to a certain extent, an experience of anonymity and metaphysical clarity beyond the subjectively imposed characterization of external sonic objects. Ultimately, a virtual environment is created, and the listener is rendered receptive of it; the processes of signification is diluted within a complex procedure of transitioning between being and non-being. The listener’s ideas are therefore, ideally, equally represented and given ‘amorphous’ shapes according to how the composite matters are delimited and when the ideas ‘intersect’ the music during the listening experience. When we internalize spatiality, polyphony begins.

The spatialization technology has nowadays been primarily associated with electronic settings thanks to the proliferation of electronic music and development of electronic equipments. Its root, however, can be traced far back to the antiphonal singing of chants in the medieval era. The antiphonal style, that is, the call-and-response setting between segregated choruses, has been implemented in chants more than the responsorial (solo-chorus) style and the direct (unison choir) style. Besides exploring the poetic images behind the antiphons, the Renaissance era inherited the performance practices and further intensified implicit soundscapes in significantly elaborate polyphony. One can relate this movement to concurrent scientific discoveries (or, perhaps more accurately, the acknowledgment of their validity from the Church) regarding the motional and spatial relativity between Earth and other celestial objects, which helped replacing the Earth-centric view of the universe with a spatially much greater one. The explosive expansion of the hypothetical universe led to a new way of looking at space; the spherical representation of the universe and the sphere as a theological representation of perfection both emerged during this period, and the octave, considered the most ‘spherical’ of all intervals, was employed in ways of enhancing, regulating and reorganizing the tonal space — the handling of tonal implications and motional relativity had been increasingly reified and conceptualized such that it virtually became a ‘spatial’ parameter — which correlates to a revised end-goal of contrapuntal writing. Counterpoint had been treated as, obviously enough, a rigorously linear, ‘contrapuntal’ context in the previous century. This can be seen in Johannes Tinctoris’ formulation in his 1477 thesis Liber de arte contrapuncti:

Counterpoint is a regulated and rational concentus [literally, “singing together”] realized by setting one voice against another. Its name counterpoint derives from counter and point, because one note is set against another as if it were constituted by one point against another.

Tinctoris , Liber de arte contrapuncti, 1477

However, new ideas emerged unhindered, and we see the recognition of the totality of polyphony as a ‘body,’ an organic whole. Counterpoint had since therefore been endowed a mystical quality. Here is one example of numerous expressions of the then-revolutionary theory, quoted from Franchinus Gaffurius’ Angelicum ac divinum opus musice, written in 1518:

The concento or many-voiced work is a certain organism that contains different parts adapted for singing and disposed between voices distanced in commensurable intervals. This is what the singers call counterpoint.

Gaffurius, Angelicum ac divinum opus musice, 1518

The latter one, notably favored by theorist Gioseffo Zarlino who appropriated the quote nearly verbatim in his seminal treatise Istitutioni harmoniche, combined the perception of external spatiality and that of the internal analogue into a single, transcendent unit. If external spatial distribution was to be viewed as insufficient to fulfill our perceptual intuitions, Gaffurius’ conception of the organic composition may well serve to alleviate the apparent mediocrity of the seemingly signal-like, ‘unmusical’ tactics. In other words, spatialization had again been able to yield its perceptual potency thanks to the intensification of tonal organization. Further discussion of its aesthetic history can be found in this beautifully written paper.

The revitalized interest in spatial arrangement was evident in the architectural plans of Catholic churches. Many of the them have places specially designed for antiphonal choirs; in this article, the author specifically examines the floor plan of St Mark’s Basilica in Venice.

The symmetrical layout is typical for Catholic architectures; note the cruciform design.

The liturgical significance of antiphonal settings is evident here; while the organ is introduced into architectures, spaces are retained for antiphonal choirs.

Unsurprisingly, antiphonal writing is enormously difficult because, by the time polyphony came into fruition during the mid- and late-Renaissance era, segregated choirs were treated not only as purely antiphonal but also as a composite choir. Besides maintaining independence of melodic lines, the composer has to manage the composite choir — typically an eight-part force divided into two four-part choirs with equal forces — in a way that the independence of individual choirs can be recognized while the unity of the eight-part body is preserved. In Istitutioni harmoniche Zarlino wrote about the principles of writing of this kind:

Because the choirs are located at some distance from one another, the composer must see to it that each chorus has music that is consonant, that is without dissonance among its parts, and that each has a self-sufficient four-part harmony. Yet when the choirs sound together, their parts must make good harmony without dissonances. Thus composed, each choir has independent music which could be sung separately without offending the ear.

Zarlino, Istitutioni harmoniche, 1558

One example of eight-voice setting is the Ave Maria (1572) by Tomás Luis de Victoria, included in the supreme compilation of his musical art Missae, Magnificat, Motecta, Psalmi, published in 1600. This motet incredibly encapsulates different kinds of choral writing, all fused in a compelling dramatic trajectory. In addition to eloquent shifting between kind to kind, Victoria exploited the organizational possibilities within the expanded setting, usually when the texture is diminished into four parts. The curtailed choir, however, may be drawn from both sides of the entire force as opposed to one; the strict, ‘primitive’ distinction of sides which once defined antiphony became a form of interlacing, its original functional implications — to elicit call-and-response reciprocations — giving way to intricate transitioning between different pairs of different distances. To carefully calculate the relative amplitude of each side is to manipulate the ‘movement’ of a sound (not to be confused with that of a pitch, which is contour) — an implicit, heavily context-dependent, yet immensely affective parameter.

  • Victoria, Ave Maria, mm. 8 – 14. Antiphonal exchange transitions into florent, eight-voice polyphony. Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel, 1902.
  • Victoria, Ave Maria, mm. 22 – 28. Non-segregational groupings of four voices, occasionally coalescing into five- or six-voice sonorities. Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel, 1902.
  • Victoria, Ave Maria, mm. 65 – 71. Choir sings in rhythmic unison, reminiscent to the ‘direct’ style of medieval chants. Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel, 1902.
  • Victoria, Ave Maria, mm. 86 – 93. Florent, eight-voice polyphony in the concluding measures. Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel, 1902.

For further investigation of the performative considerations of an eight-voice setting, this article offers a detailed discussion of Victoria’s Victimae paschali laudes, a sequence also included in the 1600 collection Missae, Magnificat, Motecta, Psalmi.

The spatial component saw a second rise in significance in the nineteenth century and a full fruition in subsequent centuries. In the third movement of Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique, an oboist is instructed to remain offstage while playing the remote echoes of the shepherd’s melody, which is in turn played by the english horn; the schalldeckel in Richard Wagner’s revolutionary Bayreuth Festspielhaus reflects the lush orchestral sound from the pit back to the auditorium in a way that at any given point the sound seems to be completely immersive and all-directional; Luigi Nono credited the Venetian masters in the Renaissance era as of primary importance in his music because spatialization directly pertains to contemporary theatrical philosophy. Such is the relevance of our instinctive awareness of surroundings to metaphysical and spiritual truthfulness. However, spatialization through purely contrapuntal means is no less complex than the handling of the electronic facilities. Perhaps, evocation of a primal revelation and reverence — although it may appear more akin to an ‘unlearning’ process — could only be plausible through our rigorously regulating, reinventing and augmenting the conduit for an authentic yet universal experience.

— I-Hsiang Chao