Im Digitalisierungsprojekt „Ernst Krenek lectures online: die musiktheoretischen Vorträge eines Exil-Österreichers“ wurden die im Archiv der Ernst-Krenek-Institut-Privatstiftung aufbewahrten Manuskripte und Typoskripte zu Kreneks Lehrveranstaltungen, Vorträgen und Radiosendungen in einer kuratierten Auswahl online verfügbar und durchsuchbar gemacht, sowie mit begleitenden historischen und biographischen Informationen kontextualisiert.
Digitalisiert wurden rund 90 Schriftgutobjekte mit einem Gesamtseitenumfang von rund 800 Seiten. 75% dieser Objekte sind Manuskripte, die restlichen 25% sind Typoskripte, wobei die Hälfte der Dokumente in deutscher, die andere Hälfte in englischer Sprache verfasst sind. Diese Dokumente stammen aus dem Nachlass Ernst Kreneks und stehen im Zusammenhang mit seiner Lehr- und Vortragstätigkeit sowohl in akademischen Institutionen als auch in Rundfunksendungen.
Textfehler und Schreibfehler wurden übernommen.
Fehlende i-Punkte, Umlautzeichen etc. werden stillschweigend ergänzt. Geminationsstriche werden aufgelöst. Leerzeichen und Abteilungszeichen werden standardisiert.
Fehlende Interpunktion wird nicht ergänzt. In Zweifelsfällen wird das den Rechtschreibregeln entsprechende Interpunktionszeichen erfasst. Striche werden immer als Bindestriche erfasst.
Es werden ausschließlich englisch Anführungszeichen verwendet. Es wird vorlagegemäß zwischen einfachen und doppelten Anführungszeichen unterschieden.
Die Silbentrennung wird vorlagegemäß übernommen.
Der Text wird in Seiten, Textfelder (Paragraphen, Überschriften, Seitenzahlen, Notizen) und Zeilen segmentiert.
Am Shakespearean Festival in Stratford (Ontario, Canada) präsentierte 1960 Ernst Krenek eine theoretische Auseinandersetzung mit Fragen zu Inspiration und zu Unvorhersehbarkeit musikalischer Ereignisse in Bezug auf die Neueste Musik. Seine kursorische Darstellung einer historischen Entwicklung bis zu den jüngsten kompositorischen Konzepten wie Serialismus, Aleatorik und Elektronische Musik führt er entlang von Überlegungen zur musikalischen Zeit, zu den Relationen von Intervallen und metrischen Einheiten.
Two years ago I caused some raised eyebrows when, in a lecture, I stated
that in turning to serialism the composer has liberated himself from the dictator-
ship of inspiration. People who almost religiously believe inspiration to be the
only legitimate source of artistic creation did not like to hear it. What I meant
to say was that in serial music the progress of the work does not depend so much
on what comes into the composer's mind at any given moment, but on what is demanded
by precise advance planning. Of course, the traditional composer too worked
according to some plans, but while the purpose of such plans was the development of
structures that were praised for being musically logical, the present planning aims
at a structural organization whose coherence derives from the relationships
established in a basic order of magnitudes, which order is known as "the series".
The difference may be focussed even more sharply. What in traditional music
is described as its inherent logics is its analogy to language and the manifestations
of the principle of causality governing speech. Similar to language, this music
formulates ideas, that is, themes that become subjects of progressive variation and
development, just as the linguistic statements are exposed to varying interpretation
in the course of discussion, until a final state of affairs is reached that in some
way or other is felt to be the necessary result of the preceding processes. In this
respect older music is identified with the concept of non-reversibility, which
usually is regarded to be an essential property of time.
Traditional music runs in the same direction as time does, but it also sets
itself off from time by creating its own metric configurations that seem to float
on the stream of real time. The manifestation of this peculiar musical time is
the tempo of music. The tempo is defined by how much or how little real time
elapses between the pulses of music, that is, between its accented beats. In this
way music creates the illusion that it might be able to influence the course of
time by accelerating or retarding it. This concept of tempo, materialized in more
or less regular alternation of accented and unaccented beats, has become so
integrate ingrained with us that music in which this concept recedes in the back-
ground or is totally absent appears to resist our perception. To a great extent
this is the case with mediaeval religious music. If we are to believe the monks
of
principle, of equal length, this condition alone certainly does not promote the
emergence of the modern concept of tempo. But even when with the ascent of poly-
phony the acceptance of the rhythmic modi of poetry established a discriminatory
measurement of long and short elements, the tempe of the music seems to have been
regarded as an immutable constant. Deviations from the standard speed were
expressed in terms of proportions, that is, prescriptions stating how many notes
of a certain category under the new speed would take up the time needed for a
different number of notes of the same category under the old speed. It is well
known that this manner of thinking led to hair-raising complications, which are by
no means less alarming than some of the exploits of present serialism. In fact, it
is not difficult to show that some of these modern complexities may well be traced
to similar psychological sources, that is, to a propensity for conceiving processes
simultaneously moving on at different speeds.
The notion that music has one direction is expressed in the tenets of the
system of fuctional harmony. We remember how our harmony exercises were scrutinized
by the schoolmasters for "wrong progressions." The term progression" as such
indicates the concept of music's moving in one direction, from point to point, from
beginning to end. Correct progressions were "logical", wrong progressions produced
nonsense, just as in speech. When atonality replaced functional harmony by the
much less definite, much more flexible principle of controlling the degrees of
tension existing between simultaneously sounding tones, the one-way progress of
music became less convincing. The twelve-tone technique has re-introduced to
musical thinking the notion of the retrograde form, with implications at first
perhaps not fully appreciated, - a notion that had been practicaaly dormant since
the late Gothic polyphony. Even then Schoenberg used the retrograde forms of the
row mainly as a welcome addition to, and variation of, the roster of basic sets.
Only Webern began to create truly reversible models that may be, and are being,
played in either direction.
Some years ago an atrocity story was passed around to the effect that some-
where a nasty person had taken the trouble of recording some atonal composition
backwards, and how he put the experts to shame when he played the record for them
and they did not notice the trick, but praised the wonderful new piece. The villain
of course wanted to prove that this music did not make any sense even if played in
the direction planned by the composer, if one could turn it around without noting
any difference. In the light of recent developments the experts would not have to
blush. Just as it is obviously possible to appreciate an abstract painting from
whichever angle one looks at it because the notions "right", "left, "top" and
"bottom" are not
which the notions "earlier", "later, "forward" and "backward" have become similar-
ly relative and irrelevant.
Consciousness of the direction of music is further corroded by the atomization
of time that is a consequence of subjecting the element of time to measurements
derived from the basic order of magnitudes, that is, to serial organization. If
the durations of tones and sounds are determined by serial definition instead of
resulting from the impulses of inspiration conditioned by psychological or
traditional factors, by association, description, illustration, symbolism and such,
the measurements thus arrived at will not only be so-to-speak abstract, but also of
high complexity. Consequently the notion of tempo as a perceptible measure of pace
will not be applicable to this type of music. Here again the demand for new modes
of perception arises from the very nature of serial music.
A great variety of operations is available for the predetermination of time
values. So far the basic order of magnitudes, that is, the series to be regarded
as the fountainhead of the entire construction, has been usually derived from
certain measurable aspects of the tone row, such tone row usually containing twelve
tones, as long as the music under consideration is meant to be performed on
traditional instruments, or any chosen number of pitches, whenever electronic sound
production is contemplated. Deriving the necessary sets of magnitudes from
certain aspects of tone rows is desirable as long as one accepts as the primeval
and indispensable motivation of serialism - so to speak, its ethics - the idea
that all phenomena of the work ought to be traceable to one unique perceivable source.
This, however, is not a necessary assumption. It is possible to visualize a totally
abstract numerical series which will not only determine all other aspects of the
music, but also the selection of pitches, or the tone row to be used.
If we start with the tone row, as has usually been done so far, its most
obvious measurable quantities are the intervals formed by the successive pitches.
Two methods of measuring them are available, as is well known: the sizes of the
intervals may be expressed in terms of fractions that represent the ratios of the
cycles, or they may be expressed in terms of some linear unit, such as half-tones,
sixth-tones, thirteenth-tones, cents, or any other such unit of measurement. It
seems to me either necessary to investigate which of the two methods sticks closer
to the nature of the musical material, nor convincing to claim that one of them
does, as has been maintained by a few serial composers. I have always felt that,
whatever the so-called natural sources of music may have been, it has traveled a
long way to reach a status in which the bahavior of its particles can not any longer
be referred to alleged primordial conditions.
To some of the serialists who are inclined to believe that their inventions
are so startling as to usher in a new era without precedent it may come as a surprise
that the idea of using ratios of intervals for determining time relationships is
clearly expressed by Proportionale Musices about
may be seen in the excellent new translation by Journal of Music
Theory. Discussing the proportions dupla, sesquialtera, sesquitertia, and sesqui-
octava, which involve time relationships of 2 : 1, 3 : 2, 4 : 3 and 9 : 8 respective-
ly,
weights were analogously proportionate produced the corresponding intervals of
octave, fifth, fourth and whole-tone. It is amusing to speculate what might have
happened if somebody had constructed hammers of weights corresponding to the more
outlandish time proportions of
have been some very peculiar intervals, and music might well have skipped a few
centuries, for better or worse.
Be that as it may, the application of interval ratios to time relations is
an arbitrary process. It is true that vibration ratios are a al
because the intervals between pitches are caused by the differences of the speeds
of vibration. However, when the fractions so obtained are used to determine
relationships of time spans, their original character is lost, and the resulting
measurements are not closer to the true nature of the sounding material as if one
had derived them from any other series of magnitudes. As a matter of fact, the
serial way of thinking demands by definition a permanent transfer of orderings
from the sector wherein they originated to other sectors in which they are not at
home. Visualizing this principle from a different angle, I discussed it many
times under the heading "rotation", because it involves a serially determined
continuous switching of the terms of the series within the compass of the series
itself. The process is necessary in order to protect the music from getting
petrified in its own tracks because of interminable recurrence of identical
situations.
Inasmuch as the numerical values established in the basic series detach
themselves from the objects whose magnitudes they originally measured, as for
instance the magnitudes of intervals, they become abstract operators. And inas-
much as they impose the ordering of one set of elements onto differently ordered
sets, they introduce the factor of randomness into the area of serial operation.
For the results of such procedures are by definition random results. For instance,
if we would take a list of persons alphabetically ordered according to the initials
of their names and reshuffle it according to the alphabetical order of the names
of the streets on which these people live, the new sequence of names would have to
be called a random result, since it is in no ways deducible from the original
sequence, although the basic series is the same in both cases, namely the alphabet.
On the basis of this consideration we can now evaluate the function that is
assigned in serial music to the elements of predictability, surprise and chance.
The concept of surprise, which is supposed to be an indispensable ingredient of
artistic creation, is obviously predicted upon the existence of standards, an
unexpected deviation from which will be experienced as a shock. In traditional
music the surprise is engineered by the composer who knows the standards and decides
where he wishes to deviate from them. Consequently he can predict what is going
to happen at any given point of his composition because he makes it happen.
The results of serial operations are technically predictable since the
variables and constants that cause them to happen are known. The results are
practically unpredictable because the processes set in motion by the serial mechanism
are far too complex to be visualized in advance. Thus the surprise element is
built in. The unexpected happens by necessity. An operation the result of which
can not be predicted is called a chance operation.
When in traditional music the composer seems to be in full control of what
goes on in his music, it is understood that he makes the decisions through which he
exercises this control by inspiration. Obviously this notion includes a very sub-
stantial element of chance since inspiration is defined as the mysterious source
that spontaneously produces ideas without the aid of conscious intellectual effort.
It is clear, however, that this source does not spring from an absolute vacuum.
It is conditioned by the total mental make-up of the individual concerned, his
inheritance, environment, habits, training and
Consequently this inspirational source can not furnish anything that the artist
is not able to see with his mind's eye. It is quite understandable and appears
entirely legitimate that he might be tempted to operate in areas beyond his own
imagination. Ever since this explanation dawned on me, I understood why I had
become increasingly tired of the question fired at the creator of unfamiliar music
by indignant critics: "But have you really heard all the stuff you have written?"
as if an answer in the affirmative would produce a sort of extenuating circumstance.
The answer should of course be: "WWat does it matter whether I have heard what I
have written before it was written? You have heard it after it was written, and
that should be enough for you to ponder."
Whether the contemporary music that has allowed the element of chance to
manifest itself to the extent of letting the nervous reactions of the interpreter
influence the ultimate appearance of the composition beyond what these reactions
are doing to the music anyway may still be called serial music in a question I do
not feel competent to answer. It certainly is difficult to see how music which is
described as indeterminate in its performance can at the same time be determined by
serial construction. Perhaps it is not. Its creators are fairly non-committal on
the subject, except that I got it two years ago in Darmstadt straight from the
horses mouth that the era of serialism was over. The same horse had explained to
me a few years earlier that the era of the twelve-tone technique was over, that in
fact such a thing as the
of cool analysis the transition from serial music to chance music could be
rationalized by assuming that an originator of musical manifestations who is
particularly aware of the presence of randomness in serial music - which I have
discussed before - would come to the conclusion that the actual results of serial
procedure are not much different from those of chance operation, so that one may
save oneself the considerable labor boing into the former. Personally I do not
share this view. Not only can one tell the difference, but I also find it more
interesting to work with the complexities of a serial scheme than to roll dice or
toss coins. But this might be dismissed as a subjective attitude, and we who have
done so much to subvert traditional standards should be the last to cast the first
stone against anybody by calling his way of doing things an aberration.
From the fact that the latter-day serialists, or post-serialists, devote an
extraordinary amount of inventive power to the discovery and unusual application of
novel sound qualities one might infer that they are slightly doubtful about the
validity of the musical substance of their creations. On the other hand, the quest
for new sounds, in this case undoubtedly stimulated by the experience of electronic
sound production, leads to many exciting and welcome innovations. Summing up my
discourse, I might say that serialism, in order to be practised and understood,
demands new attitudes in nearly every sector of musical consciousness. To acquire
these one may just as well begin by getting rid of the old ones.