Adorno und Stockhausen

LISTEN via monologue intérieur · Adorno und Stockhausen · 1960

Stravinsky Books

Online books by and about Stravinsky, Copland, Debussy, Schoenberg, Busoni, Webern [archive.org]:
— Igor Stravinsky, Poetics Of Music In The From Of Six Lessons, Harvard University Press [1947]
— Igor Stravinsky, Stravinsky An Autobiography, Simon And Schuster [1936]
— Pieter C. van den Toorn, Stravinsky and The Rite of Spring. University of California Press [1987]
— Heinrich Strobel, Stravinsky Classic Humanist. Merlin Press [1955]
— Eric Walter White, Stravinsky A Critical Survey, Philosophical Library [1948]
— Conversations with Igor Stravinsky, Igor Stravinsky and Robert Craft, New York (1959)
— ROBERT CRAFT, DIALOGUES AND A DIARY, DOUBLEDAY & COMPANY, INC. [1963]. Jonathan Cross, The Stravinsky Legacy
— Willi Reich, Anton Webern: The Path To The New Music (1963)
— Dika Newlin, Bruckner Mahler Schoenberg (1947)
— Walter Frisch, The Early Works of Arnold Schoenberg, 1893–1908. University of California Press [1997]
— Juliane Brand, Constructive dissonance: Arnold Schoenberg and the transformations of twentieth-century culture. University of California Press [1997]
— Ferruccio Busoni, Sketch Of A New Esthetic Of Music (1911)
— Aaron Copland, Copland On Music (1960)
— Aaron Copland, MUSIC AND IMAGINATION (1952)
— Rollo H. Myers, Debussy, A.A. Wyn, Inc.
— Victor I. Seroff, Debussy: Musician Of France, G.P. Putnam's Sons (1956)
— LEON VALLAS, CLAUDE DEBUSSY HIS LIFE AND WORKS, OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS (1933)

Link: time4time: Stravinsky - Masterworks

Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory

“Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory is currently the object of considerable interest in this country [USA]. This is a good thing, but puzzling as well. And it is this puzzle that I want to address. The book is more distant from us than might be indicated by the immediate response its new translation has engendered. It, along with Adorno’s philosophy as a whole, involves a way of making distinctions, types of distinctions, and experiences that are inimical to us; in our heart of hearts, down home, they rub us the wrong way. If Adorno’s pronouncements on jazz have notoriously aggravated many, by the power of hearsay alone, without almost anyone having read the relevant essays or wondered what exactly he was criticizing, this is only the barest indication of his capacity to bother us. Of the musical compositions that might spontaneously occur to the inner ear of the overwhelming majority of the American readers of this essay – themselves an educated elite – there might not be a single song that would not have resounded in Adorno’s own ear as 'trash' and so stereotypical in its construction that the puzzle for him would have been how anyone could parse one such tune from another. To our minds, this must represent some special grudge Adorno held against all things popular.

Yet this was not at all the case. For neither did Adorno like Dvorak, Hindemith, Elgar, Debussy, Stravinsky, or Sibelius, among many, many others. And there was much he found wanting in Schoenberg as well. Adorno may have been as dissatisfied with each and every composition – of whatever art form – as anyone has ever been. This dissatisfaction has an implication that is so remote from us that it is hardly to be intuited this side of the Atlantic: For if Adorno was dissatisfied with all existing art, it was because he was intent on finding the one right artwork, the one that would be the artwork. In other words – and this is the thought that more than any other in all of aesthetics has the ability to grasp the mind of our commercial tribe between thumb and forefinger and squeeze – Adorno thought not just that one artwork may be liked better than another but that this one work would be, in itself, better than another. This was not momentary bad manners that slipped into an otherwise distinguished philosophy, any more than St. Augustine absentmindedly lost track of the main point of his theology when he admonishes us that one can love the wrong thing. Adorno’s philosophy conceived as a whole seeks the primacy of the object. His critique of the judgment of taste is inextricable from this central philosophical intention, not as a part that had to conform to an overriding thesis but as the originating impulse of that thesis. His philosophy of the primacy of the object has its source in the experience of one artwork as superior to another. It could not be otherwise. There is no other basis, this side of the moon, on which to understand or sympathize with the intensity of his thought. And without an ear for emphatic music, for music that means to be the music, every line Adorno wrote echoes hollowly convoluted or blindly exaggerated. The philosophy of the primacy of the object itself derives from the audibly urgent primacy of one artwork over another in a mind that is prepared to hear it. [...]”

— Right Listening and a New Type of Human Being. By Robert Hullot-Kentor :: The Cambridge Companion to Adorno

Adorno: Frankfurter Opern- und Konzertkritiken

"Dezember 1925 - Strawinsky-Fest. Zwei Abende versammelte man sich, um zu erfahren, ob die Musik einen neuen Mythos, einen neuen Pergolesi, einen neuen Offenbach oder endlich ihren Picasso gefunden habe; zwei Abende liess man sich fassen von der Hand des arriviertesten Komponiervirtuosen, der heute, um die Stunde des Verfalles reproduktiver Freiheit, deren Spielgewalt an sich riss; zwei Abende wartete man heiter und ohne viel Hoffnung einer Musik, die Existenz bezeugte.

Zwar fehlt es nicht am Lyrischen, und das Entsetzen wohlmeinender Innerlichkeit über die mechanische Klassizität sollte angesichts der Gesänge füglich paralysiert werden vom Entsetzen formvertrauender Gesundheit, die leicht genug Impressionismus hier mit Dekadenz, treu der Gewöhnung, vermengt. Die »Trois Poésies de la lyrique Japonaise« haben die gebrochene Leuchtkraft des reifen Debussy, gesteigert um die gänzliche Lockerheit in der Wahl der Mittel, über die einer verfügt, dem nicht drei Jahrhunderte an Tradition schwer auf der Hand liegen: obwohl doch wieder nur Tradition solche Lockerheit legitimierte. Auch die Einfalten, zu deren Zellen die Lokerheit niedlich sich dissoziiert, meistert Strawinsky durchaus; in den Berceuses du chat, reizender noch in den Pribautki-Liedchen, wird der Geist jener Spielzeugschachtel diskret mit Erdgeruch parfümiert. Den Strawinsky des eigentlichen Aufruhrs, den beinahe bedrohlichen, beinahe wirklichen, sparte man gefällig aus, liess den Soldaten und das Concertino daheim in der Irre und freute sich des sozusagen festen Bodens. Die Noces villageuises, die in den Konzertsaal verlegt wurden, auf dem dröhnenden Unterbau von vier Klavieren und Schlagzeug, erstaunlich mit ihrer eisernen Ökonomie, taten ihre stampfende Wirkung und fungierten programmgemäss mythisch. Auch Pergolesi war nicht weit. Er selbst zunächst im kubistischen Rokoko der Pulcinella-Suite mit ihren melancholischen, kecken und stimmigen Verzeichnungen, den Reifröcken aus Papier und den hohlplastischen Gesichtern der Themen, die von zauberischer Geometrie überlistet wurden. Strawinsky spielte, mit Alma Moodie zusammen, eine Reduktion der Orchestersätze für Geige und Klavier, die für sich genommen der höchst instrumental gehörten Originalsuite nicht gleichwertig ist, aber in der vollkommenen Interpretation jubelnden Beifall gewann. Anders hat es die- ebenfalls konzertmässig aufgeführte - Buffo-Oper »Mavra« mit Pergolesi zu tun. Die Themen sind von Strawinsky, aber die Art weist nach Neapel, parodistisch ohne Glauben ans eigene Sein und, wenn man will, ein Offenbach, der den Operettengehalt seiner selbst wiederum zum epischen Stoff macht, den er auflöst. »Mavra« dürfte »La finta cuoca« heissen, als Seitenstück zur Serva padrona; ein Husar verkleidet sich als Köchin, um zur Geliebten zu gelangen und hat Pech dabei wie Charlie Chaplin. Man ist bei Strawinsky, die Arietten des Intermediums führen ihre tückischen Trompeten mit sich. Gleichwohl langweilte man sich ein wenig und nicht stilgerecht, weder im Sinne der Opera buffa noch dem Chaplins. Es fehlte die Szene.

Bleibt der neue Strawinsky, der ernsthaft auf die musikeigene und ausdruckslose Objektivität der Spielmusik des dix-huitieme sich beruft, mit der er es als Clown seiner Subiektivität vor dem Spiel nur trieb. Es wäre billig, wollte man wegen der Unmöglichkeit, in solcher Objektivität heute zu reden, Strawinskys Versuch umstandslos verwerfen. Jene Unmöglichkeit ist seinem Versuche bereits einkalkuliert, und in Wahrheit redet bloss er und allein. Nicht umfängt ihn die Tektonik der Spielmusik; er hat ihren Umriss in einem Schleiergewebe von hoher Künstlichkeit ornamental nachgebildet und verhüllt seine Stimme damit, zugleich seine Einsamkeit verhüllend. Was er sich vornimmt, gelingt ihm: das Klavierkonzert als Klang und Dynamik, die Klaviersonate als Formkonstruktion, die uraufgeführte Klavierserenade, wohl das stärkste der neuen Stücke, als ganz freies Zeugnis des jüngsten Tones in geformter und trügender Festigkeit, all dies steht sicher im Rahmen der Intention. Frage nur, ob die Intention selbst legitim sei. Man scheut sich, ohne genaue Kenntnis der Werke abschliessend zu urteilen. Soviel aber scheint gewiss: indem Strawinsky verzichtet, unmittelbar sich auszusprechen, ohne dass die Formen, die er setzt, Bestand hätten, betritt er die Sphäre des Kunstgewerbes. Denn die Ironie, der er die Formen unterwirft, geht nicht in ihre materielle Konstitution über. Niche anders manifestiert sie sich als darin, dass die gewählten Formen so schmerzlich verzeichnet, die deutlichen Elemente des Aufbaues so trüb diffundiert wurden.

Die Verzweiflung an den Formen begrenzt sich an der Unterhaltung des Publikums. Diese durchherrscht die Sphäre und mindert, was an material-musikalischen Leistungen glückte, ehe die Musik nur anhebt. Freilich die Wendung zum Kunstgewerbe ist symbolisch genug und keinem geriet sie anmutiger und exakter als Strawinsky. Fast wäre zu glauben, dass um so vollständiger die entschwundenen Gehalte im Negativ der Karikatur gebannt werden, je tiefer er in die odiose Sphäre sich hinabtreiben läht. Eine Instrumentation der bekannten Vier leichten Klavierstücke, Marsch, Valse, Polka, Galopp, hat die Schlagkraft Offenbachs in der Tat und die Verlassenheit des Orgelmanns an der belebtesten Ecke. Die lustige Suite zeigt die Transparenz vollkommenen Scheins - jene Transparenz, die im Medium psychologischer Ausdrucksmusik bei den besten Stellen von Strauss sich findet: Strauss, dessen moderner Nachfolger Strawinsky vielleicht ist. Solche Nachfolge kann geschehen einzig im Vakuum heute; personale Gehalte sind ihr nicht vergönnt, über ihre Echtbürtigkeit entscheidet bloss die Modernität."

Theodor W. Adorno, Band 19: Musikalische Schriften VI, Frankfurter Opern- und Konzertkritiken

Links:
brockendossiers: Adorno, Theodor W.
brockendossiers: Adorno-Bashing
brockendossiers: Jasager der Musik (Stravinsky)
brockendossiers: Polarisierung (Adorno)
time4time: Stravinsky - Masterworks

Igor Stravinsky

"I heard him conduct only once, during a program in his honor in 1959 at New York City's Town Hall. What an event that was! Stravinsky led a performance of Les Noces, a vocal/theater work accompanied by four pianos — played by Samuel Barber, Aaron Copland, Lukas Foss and Roger Sessions. Each brought his own charisma to the event, but all seemed to be in awe of Stravinsky — as if he appeared before them with one foot on earth and the other planted firmly on Olympus. He was electrifying for me too. He conducted with an energy and vividness that completely conveyed his every musical intention. Seeing him at that moment, embodying his work in demeanor and gestures, is one of my most treasured musical memories. Here was Stravinsky, a musical revolutionary whose own evolution never stopped. There is not a composer who lived during his time or is alive today who was not touched, and sometimes transformed, by his work." — Philip Glass

"Consonance, says the dictionary, is the combination of several tones into a harmonic unit. Dissonance results from the deranging of this harmony by the addition of tones foreign to it. One must admit that all this is not clear. Ever since it appeared in our vocabulary, the word 'dissonance' has carried with it a certain odor of sinfulness. Let us light our lantern: in textbook language, dissonance is an element of transition, a complex or interval of tones that is not complete in itself and that must be resolved to the ear's satisfaction into a perfect consonance." — Igor Stravinsky

LISTEN:
Leonidas Kavakos & Peter Nagy: Stravinsky: Suite Italienne, for Violin & Piano - VI. Minuetto - Finale (composed 1933, recorded 2002), from the Stravinsky/Bach LP (ECM New Series, 2005)
Leonidas Kavakos & Peter Nagy: Stravinsky - Suite Italienne, for violin & piano - III. Tarantella (composed 1933, recorded 2002), from the Stravinsky/Bach LP (ECM New Series, 2005)
Vladimir Ashkenazy & Andrei Gavrilov: Stravinsky - Concerto for Two Pianos - I. Con moto (composed 1935, recorded 1991), from the Stravinsky: Scherzo à la russe, Concerto for 2 pianos, Sonata for 2 pianos, Le sacre du printemps LP (Decca, 1992)
onpointradio.org :: The Life and Music of Igor Stravinsky [48:37 min]

LINKS:
lichtensteiger.de: Sacre, Igor Stravinsky
time4time: Stravinsky on Schoenberg
archive.org: Nicolas Slonimsky at 76 (February 27, 1971)
archive.org: CONVERSATIONS WITH IGOR STRAVINSKY (1959) — ROBERT CRAFT
archive.org: Poetics Of Music In The From Of Six Lessons (1947) — Igor Stravinsky
archive.org: Stravinsky In Rehearsal

Thoughts on ART

... Thoughts on ART* :: No need for art. The world is a huge gallery.

"A fine art museum is a tomb, not an amusement center, and any disturbances of its soundlessness, timelessness, airlessness, and lifelessness is a disrespect and is, in many places, punishable." [Ad Reinhardt]

The beauty of imperfections. Listen to the sounds of the street [The basis of music is the qualities of the air and the vibrations of sonorous bodies]. Perfect resources: street noise, dirt, decay, mud, decrement, sputum, emission, remains, the dispensable, the fragmented, the sky, purity, black, white, emptiness [having no meaning or likelihood of fulfillment], waste. Inhale the odor of garbage. Open your eyes, absorb the colors of everyday life. No need for genius. Everyday life is the ultimate creation. No need for a flash of genius. The "common man opposed to artist/genius mythology and separation" is inoperative, invalid and ugly.

No need for artists. No need for super-arists. No need for studios. No need for lofts. No need for paintings. No need for exhibitions. No need for a documenta. No need for art schools. No need for curators. No need for collections. No need for objects of self-expression of the individual artist. Everyday life = the various branches of creative activity. No need for art-missionaries. No need for the art market. No need for public art [the city itself is a piece of art, a sculpture, ready-made, assemblage, montage. The street itself is a rich stream of sounds, images, signs, representations.] Networks in place of exclusiveness.

Absolute artifact = the web, the city, the brain, the body. "All art originates in the human mind, in our reactions to the world rather than in the visible world itself, and it is precisely because all art is 'conceptual' that all representations are recognizable by their style." [Ernst H. Gombrich]

The sacred and the profane = the profane is the sacred, the sacred is the profane. Ad Reinhardt's artistic apex reached when he concentrated on his black abstractions during the early 60’s until his death, he describes his work as "a free, unmanipulated, unmanipulatable, useless, unmarketable, irreducible, unphotographable, unreproducible, inexplicable icon" of human art. Authority in art [institutions] is useless.

"Art is too serious to be taken seriously." [Ad Reinhardt]

"Poor art is hard, clean (Shaker furniture). Rich art is easy as pie, rich filling, goodies, sweets." [Ad Reinhardt]

"Purity is the measure of greatness." [Ad Reinhardt]

"The artist as businessman is uglier than the businessman as artist. The image of the artist as a patronized idiot, as an innocent, as a company man, as a collector's item, a successful schnook, is ugly." [Ad Reinhardt]

"An artist who makes a living from his art should be registered as a 'lumpen artist,' issued an identity card, and dismissed with a suspended sentence." [Ad Reinhardt]

"By art I [Fernando Pessoa] mean everything that delights us without being ours - the trail left by what passed, a smile given to someone else, a sunset, a poem, the objective universe. To possess is to lose. To feel without possessing is to preserve and keep, for it is to extract from things their essence." [Fernando Pessoa]

* As the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) wrote in his diary: "In art it is difficult to say something which is just as good as saying nothing at all." This "saying nothing at all" signals the true essence of todays dilemma of art, and culture in general. Today the "question of art" is obsolete. Art is replaced [displaced, suppressed] by technology, telecommunication, the extensions of the web, and the world of mass media. The artefact is the medium of the pre-digital world. The artefact represents the immobile, the immoveable, the static. Today's flow of information determinates a complexity which eliminates the dated and signed "work of art." The new creativity is a "work in progress", a data stream within a hypertext architecture.