Mozart in the Underground, Schubert on YouTube

Franz, John, Johannes & .... Jelly Roll?!

At this point in the book, the doctor of the novel's title (Jim Parsons) has been whisked far into the crazy future of 2405, where his skills as a lifesaving physician are in fact deemed criminal. The following bit is tossed in to demonstrate just how topsy-turvy this far away future is:

Inside the house, in the living room, Amy sat at the harpsichord. At first the music did not seem familiar to Parsons, but after a time he became aware that she was playing Jelly Roll Morton tunes, but in some strange, inaccurate rhythm.

“I got to looking for something from your period,” she said, pausing. “You didn’t happen ever to see Morton, did you? We consider him on a par with Dowland and Schubert and Brahms.”

Parsons said, “He lived before my time.”

“Am I doing it wrong?” she said, noticing his expression. “I’ve always been fond of music of that period. In fact, I did a paper on it, in school.” -- Philip K. Dick, Dr. Futurity (1960)

Dieter Schnebel, "Schubert-Phantasie" (live)

Continued Notes From Wergo WER 60108:

Dieter Schnebel (1930)

Schubert-Phantasie for Orchester (1978), 29'15.

Sinfonieorchester des Sudwestfunks. Leitung: Zoltan Pesko. Aufnahnie des Sudwestfunks Baden-Baden, Juni 1983. (c) 1979 8. Schott's Sohne, Mainz

In the 1970s, I started work on two groups of works which complemented each other. The Arrangements cycle is concerned with enabling several historic works (by Bach, Beethoven, Webern, Wagner, Schubert) to receive a fresh hearing relevant to contemporary experience. The procedure in the Tradition series is the opposite: whereas in Arrangements material from the past acquires a contemporary thrust, new music here is viewed in the light of tradition. (1978)

Arrangements

Tradition is no longer truly alive in today's culture. In earlier days, it was itself part of the present as a constantly ongoing process of transmission. Our heritage has since become an object to be preserved as a cultural commodity and is exhibited in all kinds of showcases. These "values" are not so much handed down as dumped onto the market, regardless of actual demand. Instead of an encounter with traditional culture there is merely consumerism, which prevents the artworks from being actually perceived. Traditional music consumed in this manner moves only along well-worn circuits within the listener, thus becoming worn-out itself. The all-too-familiar sinks to the level of empty convention, devoid of content. The intent here of Arrangements is not only to knock off the crust of convention but also to open up the potential of the past, to carve out, as it were, its perhaps still undiscovered and current possibilities-in other words, to penetrate to levels which could not be truly experienced or even come to light before today.

In the case of Bach, that would mean listening to the spatial dimensions (e. g., in some Contrapunti from the Art of Fugue), and then distributing the performers throughout the hall in order to represent the scope of this music in real terms. This should also make clear symbolically how the language of its parts can span distances and create a new, living communication.

In the case of Beethoven (e. g., in a piano sonata), that would mean perceiving the closely interrelated - and at the same time, rational - motives in which, just as in molecular motion, one particle strikes another and transfers its energy in a specific direction. It was then a matter of clarifying this motion by means of instrumentation in order to convey a feeling for the driving nature of this music and, at the same time, to point out what revolutionary elements from the Enlightenment are at work in this music's motives.

'In the case of... but there is so much music, closer at hand and more remote, and many possibilities are suggested - and many a need for arrangement.

To Schubert

Older editions read: Phantasie, a title added posthumously to a sonata in strict form. Nonetheless, it does comprehend the nature of Schubert's work (Piano Sonata in G Major, D. 894), in which forms take on a vague shape, ramble off into the distance, approach again, dissolve into figuration, then suddenly condense into almost concentrated forms, thin out into wisps and immediately knot into almost crude clumps - only to relapse once more into bare perceptibility, dripping off into the void.

All this is created out of just a few elements which have anything of a formal nature. They are materials for the free play of imagination: a swelling sound, a rhythm of five, six impulses, a melody built on some scale tones. These meager materials themselves seem to be but emanations of one thing: the phenomenon of sound. An imaginary spectrum extends throughout the entire first movement of the G Major Sonata, given ever-new colors by discreetly alternating basic tones. These latter often are of long duration - sounding throughout the two outer movements, for example. At other times, however, they alternate in a lively fashion, as in the development section, which foreshadows Bruckner. Such a procedure turns Schubert's work into a Klangfarben composition.

The Schubert Fantasy, as homage to the revered master, seeks to unfold in orchestral colors the latent tone-shaping without sacrificing the character of the musical ideas. Solo winds and strings fancifully outline the play of colors in the melodies, tones and rhythms. The string tutti, on the other hand, articulates as its own layer - as an independent composition even - the imaginary sound which creates both the background as well as the enveloping and obscuring foreground of Schubertian textures. The tonecomposition has a somewhat indistinct quality inasmuch as the changes of spectrum are almost imperceptible, with sounds being continuously crossfaded. This tone-layer is therefore referred to as a "sound-screen." Since the latter represents, on one hand, the substratum of Schubert's composition - its "soundscape" - and, on the other hand, its realization as a perspective drawn into our own times, it should be played from the start as a kind of modern horizon onto which the Schubertian forms are projected.