Conference Agenda

Max Reger’s “Morgen,” op. 66/10 is a fascinating case study of the composer’s unique harmonic syntax. I examine the song from both neo-Riemannian and tonal-functional perspectives. I begin by considering the text. Mackay’s poem contrasts cyclical time and space—the turning of the Sun and Earth, the lapping of ocean waves, and lovers’ reciprocal gazes—with linear time and space—paths down and forward, and bliss “falling” upon lovers. The poem establishes “tomorrow” as both a promised goal that will restore two lovers’ felicity, while also establishing it as part of a transcendent Eternal: the lovers will reunite but on the “Sun-breathing Earth.” The lovers’ particular reunion is thus elevated to the perennial union of ocean to shore, and Sun to Earth. And the emphasis on “speechless silence” that “falls” further links love to death.

Reger evokes the contrasts by employing complex sequences and symmetrical chords to represent time’s circularity, and by employing clearer functional progressions to signify the emancipatory novelty of “tomorrow.” I begin by surveying the song’s large-scale tonal structure. It begins in E-flat Major— though it implies A Major as a fluctuating tonic, immediately establishing a contrast between “today” and “tomorrow”—progresses through F-sharp Major—a minor third above E-flat, evoking the Sun above—and C Major—a minor third below E-flat, evoking the ocean depths—before arriving in A Major in bar 14. While the piece establishes a linear trajectory from E-flat to A Major, there is an implied cyclical scheme, too, since all the key areas are related by minor third.

Building on harmonic contributions by Riemann, Erpf, and Harrison, I demonstrate the functional logic of the piece’s harmony and contrast it with harmonic motives that emphasize cyclicality: sequential progressions and inversional relationships that occur throughout the song. I conclude by considering the song’s overall harmonic-motivic structure, and by reflecting on the song’s different temporal and spatial dimensions and the role they play in defining Reger’s style and approach to tonality, more generally.

Helmut Lachenmann’s compositional process develops a dialectical approach to musical structure. With an idiom shaped by a radical approach to instrumental performance, a re-contextualization of conventional materials, and serialist formalisms, the composer engages individual and collective memory to inspire listeners to exceed the limitations of our cultural inheritance. His compositions stage further dialectical reconsiderations of their own material: structures are sketched, proposed, and ultimately negated, abandoned, or transformed, in a deconstructive process that challenges their original premises. The purpose of these dialectical encounters, according to the composer, is political and perceptual. By confronting our perception with dialectics in music, Lachenmann hopes to enable listeners to observe structures within us and in the world around us. Building on scholarship by Benjamin Downs, Seth Brodsky, Pietro Cavallotti, and Josefine Helen Horn, I will propose an argument about the place of formalism in Lachenmann’s music. Drawing on an examination of his sketch materials, this discussion will interrogate the relation between compositional process and perception.

The principal serial device used in Lachenmann’s mature works is the “structure net,” a rhythmic scheme whose primary function is to regulate the entrances of “families” of sounds. Reigen seliger Geister provides a striking example: it is the only piece in which Lachenmann included the structure net in the published score. The net manifests dialectics both internally, in that every stage of its generation is shaped by the mutual interaction of two rows, and externally, in that it is opposed by music not generated by serial procedures. Over the course of the work, gaps appear in the net, and then it disappears entirely. Further structural deconstructions are exemplified by Tanzsuite mit Deutschlandlied and Serynade.

I will conclude by considering the relation between Lachenmann’s approach to musical structure and the heightening of consciousness he seeks to achieve. Both the structures themselves and their highly indeterminate realization seem to deliberately undermine the possibility that listeners can distinguish rationally generated music from the music to which it is dialectically opposed. Given this, how can the music be interpreted as having the perceptual impact the composer intends?

Brian Ferneyhough—to some the “Last Modernist” composer (Clark 2011)—has a fascination with fragments. Although “fragment” remains foundational for many of Ferneyhough’s works to this day, the term, as applied to his music and that of his contemporaries remains, as yet, undefined. Insight into Ferneyhough’s writings and “fragment-forms” (Fitch 2014) would help listeners comprehend his works, but it also has implications for modernist musical practices at large; fragmentary forms are a main tenet of the aesthetics of New Music. In this paper, I work towards understanding Ferneyhough’s approach to the modernist fragment through short analytical vignettes. Despite my focus on Ferneyhough’s “fragment” in this talk, I argue that his music and compositional methods are an important stepping stone on the path toward an understanding of this phenomenon in modernist music at large.

After a cursory introduction, I open my talk with an overview of how the formal shrinking and fragmentation I see in all four works is present in the Four Miniatures for flute and piano (1965). Then, I move to the first of Ferneyhough’s true “fragment forms”: his Sonatas for String Quartet (1967). What Ferneyhough calls “fragments” take the form of 24 short pieces. Importantly, the Sonatas began as longer movements that followed twelve-tone logic. Later, Ferneyhough divided up these materials into smaller sections, and I show how he intentionally destabilized the integrity of the row. My third vignette describes Ferneyhough's opera Shadowtime (2004), which tells the story of critical theorist Walter Benjamin. Here, I provide philosophical and historical context, comparing Ferneyhough’s modernist musical fragments to literary ones by Benjamin and his colleague Theodor Adorno. My last analytical vignette is speculative: Like the Sonatas, the Sixth String Quartet is composed of fragments, but here, fragments are “superimposed.” Without an understanding of Ferneyhough’s early concept of a “fragment,” an analysis of said fragments—either 43 or 100+, says Ferneyhough—becomes nearly impossible.

These four short analytical fragments illustrate the importance of “fragment” to Ferneyhough’s work over decades, but his fascination with fragmentary forms is not unique and showcases an important but understudied trend of formal brevity in New Music.