Essays
Fractured Images
Maybe, as a performer and composer, I am biased, but the old adage that all art constantly aspires towards the condition of music seems to me to still offer a convincing argument. And within Walter Pater’s well-known statement lies the seed of difficulty in the negotiation between word and music. In its normal use as a system of communication, language occupies and serves the rational, denotational, syntactic medium required to fulfil its functional role. Its very suitability as a namer, a labeller of objects, its ability to describe accurately our surroundings, feelings, pasts, futures, ideas, places it in a different experiential arena to music. The fact that it is, in the words of Steiner, ‘handcuffed to the avarice of logic’ deprives it of the fluidity, the purely metaphoric state enjoyed by music. A clarification of this can be shown when we consider music’s capacity to have horizontal and vertical characteristics (melody and harmony), it’s capability to transcend its own structural and mathematical makeup (the ‘beauty’ of the fugue), to present numerous arguments, sometimes simultaneously contradictory, (counterpoint, inversions, bi- or polytonality or polyrhythmic structures). Subject language to any of these processes (was this a Joycian dream?) and you are left with gibberish. In its normal, functional state, language lacks the flexibility, the meta-constituents that music has.
However, there seems little doubt that the changes brought on in language when it is transformed into poetry and heightened prose somehow inject it with metaphor, and therefore greater fluidity. It is probably impossible to analyse the processes that take place in the creation of poetry, nonetheless they do seem to unlock the handcuffs and transform language into a richer, more fluid conduit for suggestion; not a system utilised to offer one distinct meaning, but one that literally frees the imagination to a ‘chorus’ of possibilities and interpretations. Every line of great poetry is a breaking free of the boundaries of rational admissibility. And so when we take Macdara Woods’ lines ‘….useless gasp of golden breath’ (Gods), we understand not only a description of a fish out of water, but we also intuit a sense of final breath, an awareness of our own ‘gasp’ at a realisation of finality, of wonder. Something of music’s potentialities to uphold simultaneously but mutually denying characteristics are inherent here with the negative, fatalistic ‘useless gasp’ counter-pointed with the redeeming and life-affirming ‘golden breath’. I could go on. Suffice to say that this language is something close to music.
Music and language, despite an impressive and historic intimacy, are strange bedfellows. This stems, I think, from the way human consciousness engages with each medium. Exalted poetry and prose bathe in metaphoric meanings; however, regardless of the wealth of metaphor contained, ultimately, these meta-messages offer themselves up to that part of human cognition that deals with the interpretation of denotational, verbal syntax. On the other hand, the liaison music makes with our consciousness takes place outside the arena of ‘labelling’ cognisance. Music isn’t injected with metaphor, it is metaphor, or in the words of Thomas Mann ‘…is ambiguity as a system’, and in this respect, it resonates deeper within consciousness.
I think this is one reason why a conflict exists whenever word and music conflate. Each seems to want to dominate. Words, set to music, seem obliged to loose their own rhythmic pulse and syllabic clarity (this, of course, is what singers spend years trying to preserve), while music’s autonomous nature is at risk when forced to ‘accompany’ the text. There is something of the punctuation, the chopped rhythmic pulse, the logical rationale of words which act in direct contravention to the timelessness, the sense of open space and endless nuance of timbre, the meaning‘less’ness (or meaning‘full’ness!) of music. It might very well be this essential conflict, this frisson of incompatibility which gives the lied, the choral work, the aria their unique place in art authorship.
This leads me to ask if a word or sentence can be reliably or accurately duplicated in music? To what extent does Wagner’s leitmotifs really ‘mean’ what they are intended to? In what significant and meaningful way does Schostakovich’s ‘signature’ DSCH (the notes D, E flat, C and B natural derived from the German transliteration of his name Dimitri SCHostakovich) really represent the man or his life? A scrutiny of the use of, say, the diminished chord, will show that Schubert may use it to highlight a deeply felt sentiment of love, whereas Schumann may use the same chord to sharpen the blade of rage or loss. My point here is that music will always be too metaphoric to ‘mean’ anything in the way we can tell ourselves verbally; music is by nature too beautifully ambiguous to ‘signify’ anything in the way a text does, no matter how much it ‘aspires towards the condition of music’. This conclusion presents, at least for me, important questions in relation to composing where the intention is to set words or respond to text.
The questions of conflict between language and music, ruminations of the exactitude of correlation between text and sonority have occupied me greatly. This probably explains why I have set little text (to date two poems by Derek Mahon, and some poems by Ted Hughes). But a swift perusal of my output will show that many of my instrumental works have been composed directly in response to the ‘word’- Omeros and Omeros II (after Walcott’s epic poem); Scenes from Crow (after Ted Hughes’ Crow series); Soneto del Amor Oscuro (after sonnets of the same title by Lorca). Even my Concerto for Percussion & Orchestra – Rajas,Sattva,Tamas, was strongly influenced by ancient Vedic philosophy and Sanskrit texts. In most cases (Scenes from Crow being an exception to a small extent), words have not been set. My responses to these varied texts have been nearly always ‘wordless’. I have, on the other hand, attempted to respond to the affect these texts have had on me.
And this is the case with these guitar pieces, entitled Apuntes sin títulos (the very title offers a clue to my approach here) which I have written in response to new poems by Macdara Woods – In The Ranelagh Gardens September 2002. I have not in any way, attempted to write music which purports to correlate to these beautiful texts; I have not attempted some type of sonic transliteration. I have tried only to respond to my own responses to the poetry; not the words themselves but to the aftermath created when they have been passed through. Here, I’m reminded of Crow’s (narrated) question – ‘….And what spoke that strange silence after his clamour of caws faded?’ (Crow’s Theology). In this respect, Apuntes sin títulos don’t claim any authority of meaning of the text.
There are four Apuntes sin títulos and each deals with memory as a basis for composition. The first is energetic and knotty, with a repeated single note figure running throughout the piece maintaining the vigour. The second apunte occupies the lower register of the instrument (the recess of memory?). A melodic figure returns (but each time differently shaped and subtly coloured). The idea here is of attempting to remember, everything is indistinct – melody, harmony, cadences are all presented more as something vaguely remembered rather than clearly presented. The third piece is built around a neurotically repeated fragment. Here, the idea is to represent a memory which won’t leave, which haunts and sickens. This is not music in the traditional developmental sense, but rather a series of snap shots. The fourth apunte returns again to calmer waters. In stealing two lines from the poems, it acts as a tiny elegy to the poetry itself. These apuntes represent a soniferous, ambiguous response to initial subjective responses to the poems. If they correlate to the text they do so only in the way the poems themselves offer ‘fractured images’ (Mythology), only in the way the words themselves ‘search for sense and shape’ (Judgement).