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Music and/as Process
Music and/as Process
Edited by

Lauren Redhead and Vanessa Hawes


Music and/as Process

Edited by Lauren Redhead and Vanessa Hawes

This book first published 2016

Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data


A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Copyright © 2016 by Lauren Redhead, Vanessa Hawes and contributors

All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without
the prior permission of the copyright owner.

ISBN (10): 1-4438-9491-5


ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-9491-3
TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Illustrations and Tables .................................................................. vii

Introduction ................................................................................................. 1

Part I: Analysis as/of Process

Chapter One ............................................................................................... 10


Introversive and Extroversive Processes: Rethinking Stravinsky’s Music
as Dialogue between Formalist and Expressive Paradigms
NICHOLAS MCKAY

Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 34


On the Nature of Subjectivity in Music Analysis: Some Observations
on Analysing an Early Score by Philip Glass
SUZIE WILKINS, KEITH POTTER AND GERAINT A. WIGGINS

Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 56


Perception of Structure as a Learning Process in a Schoenberg Song
VANESSA HAWES

Part II: Performing Processes; Performance Processes

Chapter Four .............................................................................................. 80


Performing Transformations (a Risky Approach)
ELLEN HOOPER

Chapter Five .............................................................................................. 97


Risky Business: Negotiating Virtuosity in the Collaborative Creation
of Orfordness for Solo Piano
DAVID GORTON AND ZUBIN KANGA

Chapter Six .............................................................................................. 116


Notation as Process: Interpretation of Open Scores and the ‘Journey Form’
LAUREN REDHEAD
vi Table of Contents

Part III: Composition of/with Processes

Chapter Seven.......................................................................................... 136


Temporality, Structure, Symbols, and the Social: Graphic Notation
as Process
CHARLES CÉLESTE HUTCHINS

Chapter Eight ........................................................................................... 156


Navigating the Uncertain: Performers in Devising Processes
MICHAEL PICKNETT

Chapter Nine............................................................................................ 173


Translation as Paradigm and Process for Pre-Composition in Leiden
Translations Installation and Film
ALISTAIR ZALDUA

Chapter Ten ............................................................................................. 194


Subjectifying the Objective: Mathematical Processes and the Search
for Balance
STEVE GISBY

Chapter Eleven ........................................................................................ 210


‘I am just Practising’: A Personal Conversation among the Boundaries
and Subjectivities of Current Musicologies
CHARLOTTE PURKIS

Bibliography ............................................................................................ 230

Contributors ............................................................................................. 243

Index ........................................................................................................ 248


LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS AND TABLES

1.1a: Stravinsky, The Rite of Spring, opening bassoon melody from


the introduction to the ‘Adoration of the Earth’ with melodic cell
labels referring to Nattiez’s distributional analysis in Fondements
d’une sémiologie de la musique. ......................................................... 16
1.1b: Representation of Nattiez’s distributional analysis of the opening
of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, as shown in Figure 1.1a. .............. 16
1.2: Stravinsky, Oedipus Rex, Act 2, Shepherd’s aria. .............................. 20
1.3: Stravinsky, Piano Sonata, First Movement, bb.12-31, paradigmatic
analysis. ............................................................................................... 23
1.4: Stravinsky, Piano Sonata, First Movement, bb.12-31 refracted
through Rosch’s tripartite model of basic level prototype effects........ 25
1.5: Stravinsky, Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments, First
Movement, Figures 11-13. ................................................................... 30
2.1: Glass, Gradus, bb.1-2. ........................................................................ 38
2.2: Glass, Gradus, bb.8-9. ........................................................................ 39
2.3: Glass, Gradus, bb.20-21. .................................................................... 40
2.4: Glass, Gradus, b.28. ........................................................................... 40
2.5: Glass, Gradus, b.42. ........................................................................... 41
2.6: Glass, Gradus, b.60. ........................................................................... 41
2.7: Glass, Gradus, b.66. ........................................................................... 42
2.8: Glass, Gradus, b.70. ........................................................................... 43
2.9: Glass, Gradus, bb.82-83. .................................................................... 43
2.10: Glass, Gradus, b.87. ......................................................................... 44
2.11: Glass, Gradus, b.94. ......................................................................... 44
2.12: Glass, Gradus, b.6. ........................................................................... 45
2.13: Glass, Gradus, bb.8-10. .................................................................... 46
2.14: Glass, Gradus, bb.17-18. .................................................................. 47
2.15: Glass, Gradus, bb.18-23. .................................................................. 48
2.16: Glass, Gradus, b.35. ......................................................................... 49
2.17: Glass, Gradus, b.57. ......................................................................... 49
2.18: Glass, Gradus, b.71 .......................................................................... 50
3.1: Self-reported structure of Schoenberg, Das Buch der hängenden
Gärten, Song IV. .................................................................................. 65
3.2: Schoenberg, Das Buch der hängenden Gärten, Song IV, b.18. ......... 67
3.3: Schoenberg, Das Buch der hängenden Gärten, Song IV, b.21. ......... 68
viii List of Illustrations and Tables

3.4a: Comparing b.18 to b.21 in Schoenberg, Das Buch der hängenden


Gärten, Song IV. .................................................................................. 70
3.4b: Comparing bb.18-20 to bb.15-17in Schoenberg, Das Buch
der hängenden Gärten, Song IV. ......................................................... 71
3.4c: Comparing bb.21-22 to bb.18-20 of Schoenberg, Das Buch
der hängenden Gärten, Song IV. ......................................................... 72
3.5: Comparing some attributes of b.18, b.21, and the opening material
of Schoenberg, Das Buch der hängenden Gärten, Song IV. ............... 74
4.1: de Falla, ‘Polo’ from 7 Canciones populares Españolas, bb.5-12. .... 90
4.2: de Falla, ‘Polo’ from 7 Canciones populares Españolas, bb.29-36. .. 92
4.3: de Falla, ‘Polo’ from 7 Canciones populares Españolas, bb.37-44. .. 93
4.4: de Falla, ‘Polo’ from 7 Canciones populares Españolas, bb.86-89. .. 94
5.1: The opening of Gorton, ‘Evacuation of the Civil Population
from Shingle Street, Suffolk’ from Orfordness. ................................ 102
5.2: Damping an e-bow note with a dulcimer hammer. ........................... 105
5.3: Gorton, ‘Cobra Mist’ from Orfordness, extract. ............................... 107
5.4: Gorton, ‘You Can’t Tell the People’ from Orfordness, extract. ....... 108
5.5: Gorton, ‘Blue Danube’ from Orfordness, extract. ............................ 110
5.6: Orford Ness as it is today. ................................................................ 111
5.7: Gorton, ‘The Island’ from Orfordness, extract. ................................ 113
6.1: Mc Laughlin, Music in Two Dimensions: No. 2a. ............................ 122
6.2: Fergler, Image, Music, Text, p.12. .................................................... 127
6.3: Lucas, [Unnamed Maps Series], notation extract............................. 129
7.1: Cardew, Treatise, p.2. ....................................................................... 137
7.2: Applebaum, Medium, p.3. ................................................................ 139
7.3: Braxton, Falling River Music (Piece #365b). ................................... 141
7.4: Braxton, the title of Piece #69Q. ...................................................... 142
7.5: Redhead, Concerto, parts 3 and 4 on p.4. ......................................... 146
7.6: Hutchins, Imramma panel................................................................. 150
7.7: Hutchins, Imramma panel (2). .......................................................... 151
7.8: Hutchins, Imramma panel (3). .......................................................... 153
9.1: Zaldua, Leiden Translations, notation of recipe number 51
for contrabass: Gilding of Silver. ....................................................... 179
9.2: Zaldua, Leiden Translations, sigil formula for Leiden Papyrus
X recipe number 20............................................................................ 180
9.3: Zaldua, Leiden Translations, pre-compositional sketch showing data
derived from the sigils created from recipe number 20...................... 181
9.4: Zaldua, Leiden Translations, notation of recipe number 20,
‘Another Formula’ for solo contrabass. ............................................. 182
9.5: Zaldua, Leiden Translations, still of installation showing contrabass
(Adam Linson) coupled with a blank (dark) screen. .......................... 189
Music and/as Process ix

9.6: Zaldua, Leiden Translations, still of installation showing writing


(Alistair Zaldua) coupled with BSL interpretation (Lauren Redhead).. 190
9.7: Zaldua, Leiden Translations, the author writing the sigil formulae.. 192
10.1: Gisby, Coming Home, the first sixteen patterns. ............................ 199
10.2: Gisby, Symmetry | Reflection, the seven basic structures. .............. 201
10.3: Gisby, Symmetry | Reflection, the additive process. ....................... 201
10.4: Gisby, Point To Line, the process over one octave. ........................ 203
10.5: Gisby, Fragmented Melodies, basic scale material. ....................... 204
10.6: Gisby, Fragmented Melodies, opening eight patterns. ................... 204
10.7: Gisby, Iterative Music, segmentation of audio material. ................ 205
10.8: Gisby, Iterative Music, the first pattern. ......................................... 205
10.9: Gisby, Iterative Music, first displacement and addition. ................ 205
10.10: Gisby, Iterative Music, end point. ................................................ 205
10.11: Gisby, Iterative Music, process of subtraction. ............................ 206
INTRODUCTION

VANESSA HAWES AND LAUREN REDHEAD

‘Process’ links many different threads of contemporary musical


research. The most well-established use of the term in music is in relation
to process music, given focus and definition in Steve Reich’s essay,
‘Music as a Gradual Process’. Reich wrote, ‘the distinctive thing about
musical processes is that they determine the note-to-note (sound-to-sound)
details and the overall form simultaneously.’1 Of course, this description is
not limited to music of the style of Reich’s early minimalist works: music
to which the definition can be applied includes much contemporary music,
experimental music, improvisation and improvisatory practices, devising
practices, and practice-led approaches to (the understanding of) music, all
of which are represented in this volume. 2 The term ‘process’ has been
understood broadly in order to incorporate a range of perspectives.
However, rather than simply processes of interpretation, performance,
composition, or analysis, these and other processes can be found in the
music discussed in each chapter. Inspired by Reich’s definition, the
processes discussed here are audible or perceptible in the music
concerned. This includes occasions when musical processes are made
perceptible through the experience of iterative processes, or of traces from
rehearsal or the creative process. The acknowledgement of a musical piece
being and also having a process, and that these two concepts may be
linked or even ostensibly the same thing, necessarily requires an
understanding of the notion of a musical ‘work’ that goes beyond seeing
that ‘work’ as an object to be studied from without, but, rather, recognizes
it as a process to be experienced from within.

1
Steve Reich, ‘Music as a Gradual Process’, in Writings About Music, ed. by Paul
Hillier (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975), pp.9-11 (p.9).
2
Further areas of interest—including early music and non-western music—can be
identified. These, and other, areas could be considered as areas for development for
future publications in this field.
2 Introduction

This volume draws on practice-led research, with core areas of interest


in compositional issues, performance practice, and the musicology of
process in music, including its analysis. By its nature, research in this area
is cross-disciplinary, taking in approaches from other creative arts and
social science practices. In recent years, practice-led research has
represented a challenge to musicology, in that the frameworks of
contemporary musicology—with a long history of the study of music as an
object—cannot always present, support and assimilate practice-led work.
The musicology of musical processes provides one model of how practice-
led and ‘traditional’ musicology might support and complement each
other, and may contribute to thinking about how practice-led research is
disseminated and evaluated for exercises such as the UK’s Research
Excellence Framework.
In the late twentieth century musicology began to challenge the terms of
its own discourse through the consideration of subjectivity and the social
dimension of music, particularly through the ‘New Musicology’ movement,
and the increasing influence of cultural studies, ethnomusicology, popular
music studies and music psychology. The nature of the ‘work’ of music
has been addressed and problematized by scholars such as Lydia Goehr,3
and the nature of the score and its information has been questioned and re-
addressed in both the experimental music and historically-informed
performance movements. But it is no longer enough only to problematize
the ‘work’, and address the work concept, in terms of ontology—although
there is undoubtedly still work to be done in addressing the ontology of the
musical work—and contemporary scholars are beginning to interrogate
and embody what Foucault describes as the ‘space left empty by the
author’s disappearance’. 4 This empty space, and the question of what
might fill it, invites the exploration of the experience of the practitioner,
and processes of collaboration, communication, creativity, and sociability.
An example of this is in the interpretation of graphic notation, a subjective
and personal experience of the process of transforming one kind of
musical information into another; here control and responsibility are
distributed among practitioners and processes. The challenge of graphic
notation provides further context to the debate on authorship and ontology
from the empirical experience of the practitioner.

3
Lydia Goehr, The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1992).
4
Michel Foucault, ‘What is an Author?’, in The Foucault Reader, ed. by Paul
Rabinow (London: Pantheon, 1985), pp.101-120 (p.105).
Music and/as Process 3

The composer-author and performer-interpreter are not the only


practitioners whose role is under construction in the post-New Musicology
frameworks of music study, and the space left empty by the analyst’s
disappearance in the aftermath of the problematization of analysis as an
objective discipline is also one which provides opportunities for exploration.
Joseph Kerman, 5 Kofi Agawu 6 and Jean-Jacques Nattiez 7 have all
addressed this issue within the fields of hermeneutics and semiotics. Just
as processes of interpretation and construction can be interrogated through
a consideration of graphic notation, more traditional forms of notation can
also be considered from new perspectives in the tradition of these ‘new
analysts’. Examples of this are the social and/or personal dimension of
music addressed within the musical discourse itself and the processes
through which this discourse is experienced. Experience and structure are
entwined, and the analyst becomes an acknowledged active agent in the
process of generating musicological work.
The re-framing of the traditional roles of objects and practitioners in the
work of music, and in the work of musicology, invites a perspective with
its origin as the active interaction between objects and practitioners:
practice-led research, including the work of composers as composers and
performers as performers and not just as musicologists writing about
composition and performance. As such, the notion of music and/as process
addresses some of the themes of one of the most important and
comprehensive edited volumes about the study of music in the past,
Rethinking Music, 8 and those of Nicholas Cook’s more recent book,
Beyond the Score. 9 Cook outlines a scholarship for music in which
meaning is generated in real time through the process of performance.
There is also an expanding literature in the area of practice-led research
and its methodological critique. Edited books by Hazel Smith and Roger

5
Joseph Kerman, ‘How We Got into Analysis, and How to Get Out’, in Write All
These Down: Essays on Music (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994);
reprinted from Critical Inquiry, vol.7 (1980), 311-331.
6
Kofi Agawu, ‘How We Got Out of Analysis, and How to Get Back In Again’,
Music Analysis, vol.23, no.2/3 (2004), 267-286.
7
Jean-Jacques Nattiez, Music and Discourse: Towards a Semiology of Music, trans.
by Carolyn Abbate (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990).
8
Rethinking Music, ed. by Nicholas Cook and Mark Everist (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1999).
9
Nicholas Cook, Beyond the Score: Music as Performance (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2013).
4 Introduction

Dean,10 Estelle Barrett and Barbara Bolt,11 and reflections such as those by
Patricia Leavy,12 have all begun to address aspects of the processes and
practices of practice-led research, although with very little focus on music.
This book emphasizes the foregrounding of the active agent in musical
activity, auto-ethnography as a method of empirical study, and self-
reflexive practices—which may include writing—as a method for
research.
Although the diverse topics in this volume can be roughly categorized
into sections written from the point of view of the analyst, performer and
composer, each of these is much more than that categorization implies.
Composers are also performers, performers compose: all are analysts. The
analysis presented concentrates on the active in music making, and on the
non-traditional and interdisciplinary in analysis. Investigating process
rehumanizes analysis and so-called mathematical approaches to
composition; performance and composition are employed in investigations
of musical meaning as well as of individual creativity. The three sections
of the book represent the familiar categories of analysis, performance and
composition, but this is just one way of grouping the authors’ work here.
Themes and threads generated by an interrogation of the notion of music
and/as process are many and varied, and readers will find fruitful
connections between chapters across and between the three sections.
This book will be of interest to those working in process music, new
music, composition, interdisciplinary issues, performance studies,
aesthetics and the philosophy of music, music analysis, multimedia and
creative arts research and those interested in the evolution of the idea of
music as a subject of research: the accelerating transformation of its
consideration from object to process, and the challenges this presents both
in terms of disciplinary development and wider academic frameworks. In
addition, the approach to music analysis, performance, composition, and
practice-led research taken by the authors should be of interest to those
involved in the practice of music both as professional performers and
composers within and outside of the academic profession.

10
Practice-led Research, Research-led Practice in the Creative Arts, ed. by Hazel
Smith and Roger T. Dean (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009).
11
Practice as Research: Approaches to Creative Arts Enquiry, ed. by Estelle Barrett
and Barbara Bolt (London: I.B. Taurus, 2007).
12
Patricia Leavy, Method Meets Art: Arts-Based Research Practice (New York: The
Guilford Press, 2009).
Music and/as Process 5

Many of the authors included are practitioners themselves. The volume,


then, is very personal to those authors presenting individual and
developing approaches to the problem of doing music in contemporary
academia. The perspective is from the inside, the reflections are based on
experience and the possibilities are exciting. The range and breadth of
perspectives presented also give rise to surprising connections, often at the
philosophical level.

Analysis as/of Process


The first section of the book deals with the analysis of performance and
the performance of analysis. The historical nature of music and the
recognition of pieces—by Igor Stravinsky, Philip Glass and Arnold
Schoenberg—as musical ‘works’ in the traditional sense, is questioned by
the authors, and is a factor in the analyses which address processes in
composing, performing, and listening, and the links and overlaps between
these, in three very different but interconnected ways. These three
approaches posit new directions and territory for musical analysis.
Nicholas McKay directly addresses the process of analysis and the
nuanced way in which it can understand process. The notion of
introversive and extroversive processes is used as a tool to understand
Stravinsky’s compositional approach and to address the ability of score-
based semiotic analysis to interrogate processual elements of music.
McKay’s method has implications for the understanding of Stravinsky, of
process, and of semiotics: it is a subtle approach to explaining how the
focus on process in analysis might recontextualize some of its existing
methodological tools, and demonstrate that the social dimension of music
can be addressed within its musical discourse, and that such an approach
might considerably contribute to the understanding of musical processes
even in works as well known as The Rite of Spring.
This exploration of the poietics of a work is contrasted with the
consideration of esthesic information within a computational analysis in
the chapter by Suzie Wilkins, Keith Potter, and Geraint Wiggins. These
authors bring the examination of experience and self-reporting into the
sphere of analysis when considering the actual experience of the listener in
the case of process music. Wilkins, Potter, and Wiggins address a strategy
for the analysis of process music, with reference to Gradus by Philip
Glass. They focus on the experience of the listener’s real-time encounter
with the piece: the idea of a ‘surprise’ is conceptualized as a key moment
for the listener and a structural understanding of the piece is drawn from
an analysis of these surprises.
6 Introduction

Vanessa Hawes furthers this model of engagement with the piece as a


method of analysis by following the developing understanding of structure
in a single participant’s engagement with a Schoenberg song from Das
Buch der hängenden Gärten. Examining the relationship between
performer and score, her analysis considers structure as a process and
investigates how meaning in the music and its performance might be
developed in and of this process of interaction and learning, while
suggesting how an ecological approach to perception may be
recontextualized for this kind of analysis, inspired by approaches to
process music.

Performing Processes; Performance Processes


The second section builds on—and overlaps with—the first, framing
performance and/as process from the individual perspectives of the authors
and their experiences as practitioners. Music by Berio, de Falla, music by
the authors and their collaborators, and music composed for the authors, is
explored through looking at processes of interpretation and risk; processes
which further undermine the ontology of the musical ‘work’ as
traditionally understood, and bring the practitioner as active agent to the
foreground of an examination of musical discourse.
Ellen Hooper examines the performance of, and link between, register
and timbre in music by Berio and de Falla. She addresses risk in
performance as an expressive and transformative technique, offering new
perspectives on sung performances of the work from a performance-
analysis perspective. The emphasis is on understanding performance as a
personal interpretation of experience rather than a realization of elements
within the score.
David Gorton and Zubin Kanga examine their own collaboration in the
preparation of the extremely virtuosic solo piano piece Orfordness. They
examine the concept of risk and its implications for collaboration in the
development and performance of the work, and express the collaboration
as a process of mitigating and re-introducing risk into the music.
Lauren Redhead’s chapter is a reflection both on her own performance
for organ and electronics of works of graphic notation, and on the
relationship between the consideration of graphic notation and the
ontology of the ‘work’ of music. Through looking at examples by Lucas,
Fergler, and Mc Laughlin, she considers how these issues reflect a
perceived hierarchy of composition and performance in the work concept,
and how a strategy which considers works as a multiplicity might shed
light on the process of the work.
Music and/as Process 7

Composition of/with Processes


The third section encounters and questions the musical ‘work’ at its
inception, exploring composition and/as process through its encounters
with performance, analysis, collaboration, improvisation, translation,
experimentation and cross-disciplinarity. Through explorations of a
number of new ‘works’ the way in which practitioners relate to music, to
musical processes, and, finally, the processes of talking about those
relations, frames a personal and reflective account of the creative process,
finally looking beyond music to musicology.
Charles Céleste Hutchins addresses graphic notation as a tool for
composition, situating his own practice in the context of a collaborative
approach to performance by the group, Vocal Constructivists. He examines
the interpretation of graphic scores beyond musical considerations: drawing
inspiration from media studies literature on comics and graphic novels in
his analysis of works by Cardew, Applebaum, Braxton, Schaeffer and
Redhead. The process of developing a taxonomy of notation through
engagement and multiple performances reveals the deep and rich
interaction between performer and graphic score.
Michael Picknett addresses performance as composition, reflecting on
approaches to devising in music and their compositional outcomes. The
processes of research, creation, rehearsal and performance in theatrical
devising are discussed in a musical context, providing a framework for
examining collaboration, improvisation and experimentation in a musical
process, and a completely new paradigm for relating to music.
Alistair Zaldua’s chapter describes how the notion of translation can be
applied to an understanding of pre-compositional processes in the
collaborative composition of an audio-visual installation work. Drawing
on post-structuralist translation theory, he outlines how ‘translation’ might
be employed as a process for the creation of musical meaning, and how
these meanings might be analysed or approached in an open-ended and
multi-modal work such as his installation, Leiden Translations.
Steve Gisby addresses the composition of processes in five of his own
works for various forces, with reflection on their relationship with other
process compositions; particularly those by Tom Johnson. With
mathematical processes at the heart of Gisby’s compositional approach, he
interrogates the interaction of the personal and impersonal, the subjective
and the objective, problematizing the notion of the composer’s role in
relation to his own and Johnson’s work.
Charlotte Purkis’s chapter completes the focus on auto-ethnography and
self-reporting found throughout the volume, through a feminist exploration
8 Introduction

of her experience and compositional practice. This chapter presents


writing about process and practice as its own process. Purkis extends the
connecting thread of process and subjectivity through an engagement with
both its subject matter and with the process of musicology itself, posing
further-reaching questions about the re-thinking of musicology and its
processes.
PART I:

ANALYSIS AS/OF PROCESS


CHAPTER ONE

INTROVERSIVE AND EXTROVERSIVE


PROCESSES:
RETHINKING STRAVINSKY’S MUSIC
AS DIALOGUE BETWEEN FORMALIST
AND EXPRESSIVE PARADIGMS

NICHOLAS MCKAY

This chapter is drawn from a keynote that comprised a series of


examples, many of which I have previously published in other contexts,
that together offer a miniature compendium of introversive and
extroversive processes at play in Stravinsky’s music. As I have formerly
observed, 1 many commentators 2 have identified compositional and
aesthetic processes of defamiliarization (or alienation) as the default
rhetorical gambit of Stravinsky’s musical language. In so doing, they have
trained their analytical eyes on predominantly introversive syntactic
moments of ungrammaticality operating through a variety of techniques.

1
Nicholas McKay, ‘Dialogising Stravinsky: A Topic Theory and Gestural
Interpretation’, in Igor Stravinsky: Sounds and Gestures of Modernism, ed. by
Massimiano Locanto (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014), pp.175-85, excerpts from which
appear throughout this chapter.
2
Cf. Theodor Adorno, Philosophy of Modern Music (London: Sheed and Ward,
1973); Daniel Albright, Stravinsky: The Music Box and the Nightingale (New York:
Gordon and Breach, 1989); Leonard Bernstein, The Unanswered Question: Six Talks
at Harvard (Cambridge, Mass. and London: Harvard University Press, 1976);
Stephen Walsh, Stravinsky: Oedipus Rex (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1993); Glenn Watkins, Pyramids at the Louvre: Music, Culture, and Collage from
Stravinsky to the Postmodernists (Harvard: The Belknap Press of Harvard University
Press, 1994).
Introversive and Extroversive Processes 11

These have included polyrhythm and polychords,3 so-called ‘wrong-note’


neoclassic harmony, 4 iterative algorithmic cell sequences, paratactic
juxtaposition structures and stratified textures 5 and dialogized genres
evident in symphony and sonata forms that question the very formal
conventions they simultaneously evoke.6
Discussion of Stravinsky’s extroversive processes—the referential signs
of stylistic topical references, allusive gestures and quotations—by
contrast have remained relatively neglected, under-interpreted7 or misread
as personal stylistic idiolects 8 more than the commonalities of style
required of musical topoi. 9 This marginalization and misreading of
referential processes in Stravinsky scholarship is perhaps to be expected in
light of the composer’s well-documented anti-expressive aesthetics; 10
however dubious, ghostwritten and problematic they may be. Music that is
‘sufficient in itself’ 11 and ‘essentially powerless to express anything at
all’ 12 does little to prompt one to even begin to look for referential
processes.

3
Bernstein; Pierre Boulez, Stocktakings from an Apprenticeship, trans. by Stephen
Walsh (Oxford: Clarendon, 1991).
4
Louis Andriessen and Elmer Schönberger, The Apollonian Clockwork on Stravinsky
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989); Bernstein.
5
Edward T. Cone, ‘Stravinsky: The Progress of a Method’, in Perspectives on
Schoenberg and Stravinsky, ed. by Benjamin Boretz and Edward T. Cone (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1968), pp.156-164.
6
Jonathan Cross, The Stravinsky Legacy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1998); Martha Hyde, ‘Stravinsky’s Neoclassicism’, in The Cambridge Companion to
Stravinsky, ed. by Jonathan Cross (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003),
pp.98-136; Joseph N. Straus, ‘Sonata Form in Stravinsky’, in Stravinsky
Retrospectives, ed. by Ethan Haimo and Paul Johnson (Lincoln and London:
University of Nebraska Press, 1987), pp.141-61.
7
Angelo Cantoni, ‘Verdi E Stravinskij’, Studi Verdiani, vol.10 (1994), 127-154.
8
Joseph N. Straus, Stravinsky’s Late Music (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2001), pp.183-248.
9
Nicholas McKay, ‘On Topics Today’, Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für Musiktheorie,
vol.4, no.1 (2007), pp.159-83 (pp.160-161).
10
Igor Stravinsky, Poetics of Music in the Form of Six Lessons (Harvard: Harvard
University Press, 1994).
11
Igor Stravinsky, ‘Some Ideas About My Octuor’, The Arts (1924), 4-6.
12
Igor Stravinsky, An Autobiography (1903-1934) (London: Marion Boyars
Publishers Ltd, 1990), p.53.
12 Chapter One

Despite these claims—but also as a strategy towards encoding them—


Stravinsky’s music in fact relies on rhetorical processes of stylistic
defamiliarization just as much as it does syntactic. Prototypically these
extroversive processes are subjected to three notable forms of alienation
analogous to the inherent ungrammaticality found in the composer’s
introversive syntax. These result from deploying referential signs in states
that could be summarized as: deracinated (displaced from their geographic
and/or temporal associations), dysphoric (in a depressed, anxious or
agitated state; contrary to the natural euphoric tendency of most musical
topoi) and dialogized (contested with another—typically opposed—topic
or allusive gesture). 13 Recognizing and interpreting these extroversive
processes of defamiliarization on a par with the more commonly cited
introversive ones prevalent in much Stravinsky scholarship prompts a
reassessment of Stravinsky’s music in more expressive terms. It offers a
potential and vital means of re-humanizing Stravinsky’s music in the wake
of its objectified, machine-like, dehumanizing legacy 14 and modern-
postmodern bind.15 This chapter thus offers a rethinking of Stravinsky’s
music through a dialogical exchange between its introversive and
extroversive processes; the two nodes around which much music
semiotics—topic theory in particular—gravitates with its conceptual
framework of ‘pure’ (syntactic) and ‘referential’ (stylistic) signs.16
The privileging of introversive, and marginalization of extroversive,
processes in Stravinsky’s music is in large part a consequence of the
contested identity of The Rite of Spring. Stravinsky’s claim in 1920 that he

13
Cf. for a further discussion of these three terms Nicholas McKay, ‘Deracinated,
Dysphoric and Dialogised: the Wild and Beguiled Semiotics of Stravinsky’s
Topical Signifiers’, in Proceedings of the International Conference on Music
Semiotics in Memory of Raymond Monelle, ed. by Nearchos Panos, Vangelis
Lympouridis, George Athanasopoulos and Peter Nelson N., (Edinburgh:
University of Edinburgh Press, (2012) 2013) pp.193-201; Edinburgh: International
Project on Music and Dance Semiotics.
14
Richard Taruskin, Defining Russia Musically: Historical and Hermeneutical
Essays (Princeton; Chichester: Princeton University Press, 1997), pp.360-88.
15
Pieter C. van den Toorn, ‘“Will Stravinsky Survive Postmodernism?” Review of
Richard Taruskin, Stravinsky and the Russian Traditions: A Biography of the Works
through Mavra (1996) and Defining Russia Musically: Historical and Hermeneutical
Essays (1997)’, Music Theory Spectrum, 22 (2000), 104-21.
16
Kofi Agawu, Playing with Signs: A Semiotic Interpretation of Classical Music
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991); McKay, ‘On Topics Today’, p.163.
Introversive and Extroversive Processes 13

had written ‘an architectonic, and not an anecdotic, work’ 17 pointedly


denied the composer’s originally claimed extroversive inspiration for the
work (the vision of a virgin dancing herself to death in a sacrificial rite) in
favour of a seemingly new-found introversive point of departure (a purely
syntactic musical construct). Whether to better align the work to his new-
found formalist aesthetic ideology or to distance the work from its
infamous premiere or both, Stravinsky’s volte-face bifurcated the ontology
of the work. Today, The Rite’s identity resides as much, if not more, in the
introversive media of a score or concert-hall/audio-recording performance
than it does in the more extroversive medium of a danced theatrical ballet
(built upon ethnographic, primitive, folk fragments). It is more often seen
as a forward-looking radical marker of European twentieth-century
modernism than it is the product of its nineteenth-century Russian
compositional heritage.18
The Rite has thus established a polemical dialogue between formalism
and contextualism like almost no other work; a dialogue played out
between its conflicting compositional, performance-practice, reception-
theory and academic identities, ideologies and interpretations.19 Today The
Rite has become a work foregrounding the dialogism of its introversive-
syntactic, and extroversive-semantic, processes—even if historically ‘it’,
and branches of formalist musicology, were complicit in privileging the
former and marginalizing the latter. The work itself thus embodies what
literary theorists term a ‘double-voiced discourse’20 in its very ontology. In
particular, it epitomizes Bakhtin’s concept of a ‘vari-directional discourse’:
one that pulls in different directions; a concept Korsyn 21 finds in his
application of Bakhtin’s theory to Brahms’ music to account for its

17
Stravinsky’s claim that he had written ‘une oeuvre architectonique et non
anecdotique’ (my translation in text) first appeared in a 1920 interview in Michel
Georges-Michel, ‘Les deux Sacres du Printemps’, Comoedia, 11 December 1920,
quoted in Taruskin, Defining Russia Musically, p.370.
18
Richard Taruskin, Stravinsky and the Russian Traditions: A Biography of the
Works through Mavra (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).
19
Taruskin, Defining Russia Musically, pp.360-388.
20
Mikhailovich Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, trans. by Caryl Emerson
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984); Mikhailovich Bakhtin, The
Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, ed. by Michael Holquist, trans. by Caryl
Emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981).
21
Kevin Korsyn, ‘Beyond Privileged Contexts: Intertextuality, Influence and
Dialogue’, in Rethinking Music, ed. by Nicholas Cook and Mark Everist (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1999), pp.55-72 (p.62).
14 Chapter One

simultaneous pull towards, and annihilation of, Beethoven’s influence. The


Rite, in short, is une oeuvre at odds with itself; une oeuvre in constant
hermeneutic dialogue with itself; une oeuvre replete with both introversive
and extroversive processes writ large by their inherent syntactic, stylist
and strategic ungrammaticality and alienation.

Music Semiotics and Topic Theory’s


Architectonic-Anecdotic Dialogue
The Rite’s architectonic-anecdotic split personality draws a striking
parallel with the theoretical underpinnings of music semiotics; one of the
last, major music analysis methodologies to emerge (somewhat belatedly)
in the twentieth century. Unlike The Rite, music semiotics originated in
architectonic structuralism—epitomized in the 1970s and 80s work of
distributional analysis22 and paradigmatic charts23—before undergoing its
hermeneutic-semantic drift towards anecdotic topic theory. 24 Agawu 25
draws this distinction, contrasting hermeneutics and analysis as a
manifestation of music’s ‘ultimately false’, ‘extrinsic–intrinsic dichotomy’;
further listing ‘rough equivalents’ of these poles: ‘semantic–syntactic’,
‘subjective–objective’, ‘extra-musical–musical’, ‘extra-generic–congeneric’,26
‘exosemantic–endosemantic’, 27 and, of course, ‘extroversive semiosis–

22
Nicolas Ruwet, ‘Methods of Analysis in Musicology’, Music Analysis, 6 (1987), 3-
36.
23
Jean-Jacques Nattiez, Fondements d’une sémiologie de la musique (Paris: Union
Générale d’Editions, 1975).
24
Cf. for example: Agawu, Playing with Signs; Robert Hatten, Musical Meaning in
Beethoven: Markedness, Correlation, and Interpretation (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana
University Press, 2004); Wye Jamison Allanbrook, Rhythmic Gesture in Mozart: Le
Nozze Di Figaro and Don Giovanni (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1983);
Raymond Monelle, The Sense of Music: Semiotic Essays (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 2000); Leonard G. Ratner, Classic Music: Expression, Form and
Style (New York: Schirmer Books, 1980); a summary of which is presented in
McKay, ‘On Topics Today’.
25
Kofi Agawu, ‘The Challenge of Semiotics’, in Rethinking Music, ed. by Nicholas
Cook and Mark Everist (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp.138-60 (p.145).
26
Wilson Coker, Music and Meaning: A Theoretical Introduction to Musical
Aesthetics (New York: The Free Press, 1972), pp.60-88; 147-170.
27
Carl Dahlhaus, ‘Fragments of a Musical Hermeneutics’, Current musicology, 50
(1991), 5-20.
Introversive and Extroversive Processes 15

introversive semiosis’.28 They are in essence all manifestations of Stravinsky’s


anecdotic–architectonic dichotomy articulated over The Rite. They all
prompt the kind of dialogue between formalism and ‘expressive discourse’
that Whittall 29 finds in Hatten’s approach to topic theory and that is
advocated here as the key to re-humanizing Stravinsky’s musical discourse
and reception.

Pastoral Processes 1: The Rite, Part I,


‘Adoration of the Earth’ Introduction
An example of such an interpretative dialogue between these meta-
ideological discourses surrounding The Rite is found at the very beginning
of the work itself. The famous opening bassoon melody offers a primitive
version of the pastoral,30 heard in the mock Ukrainian dudki (peasant horns
and pipes of wood and bone). This anecdotic, meandering evocation of
primitive pastoralism, however, is immediately at dialogical odds with the
architectonic, iterative, additive machinations of its concealed paradigmatic-
chart-like construction. Anathema to the natural quasi-improvisatory ideals
of pastoralism, this introversive precision-engineered syntax is highlighted
in two landmark analyses: Boulez’s 31 detailed, cell-structure, rhythmic
analysis and Nattiez’s 32 subsequent, Ruwet-inspired, paradigmatic

28
Roman Jakobson, ‘Closing Statement: Linguistics and Poetics’, in Semiotics: An
Introductory Anthology, ed. by Robert E. Innis (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1985), pp.147-175.
29
Whittall, Arnold, ‘Review of Musical Meaning in Beethoven: Markedness,
Correlation, and Interpretation by Robert S. Hatten’, Journal of the Royal Musical
Association, 121 (1996), 116-124 (p.116).
30
Discussions of Stravinsky’s use of the pastoral topic are not uncommon (Geoffrey
Chew, ‘Pastoral and Neoclassicism: A Reinterpretation of Auden’s and Stravinsky’s
Rake’s Progress’, Cambridge Opera Journal, 5 (1993), 239-263; Edward T. Cone,
‘Stravinsky’s Version of Pastoral’, in Hearing and Knowing Music: The Unpublished
Essays of Edward T. Cone, ed. by Robert P. Morgan (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 2009), pp.181-189; Straus, Stravinsky’s Late Music). See McKay, ‘Dysphoric
States: Stravinsky’s Topics—Huntsmen, Soldiers and Shepherds’, in Music
Semiotics: A Network of Significations—In Honour of Raymond Monelle, ed. by Esti
Sheinberg (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), pp.249-261 (pp.258-259), for a summary and
critique of their scope and limitations. McKay, ‘Dysphoric States’, excerpted by
permission of the Publishers, Copyright © 2012.
31
Boulez, pp.60-62.
32
Nattiez, pp.281-285.
16 Chapter One

distributional chart analysis of Boulez’s cell sequences (resummarized in


Figures 1.1a and 1.1b).

Figure 1.1a: Opening bassoon melody from Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring:
Introduction to the ‘Adoration of the Earth’. All melodic cell labels refer to
Nattiez’s distributional analysis, presented in Jean-Jacques Nattiez, Fondements
d’une sémiologie de la musique (Paris: Union Générale d’Editions, 1975), pp.282-
3.
Introversive and Extroversive Processes 17

Figure 1.1b: Representation of Nattiez’s distributional analysis of the opening of


The Rite of Spring, as shown in Figure 1.1a.

The extent of Stravinsky’s introversive precision tooling is evident in


Boulez’s analysis of what he terms ‘fragment I’—the first four cells (a1,
a2, a3 and a4). Boulez’s descriptions add a further layer of methodological
dialogism, conflating Stravinsky’s native Russian compositional technique
of additive, asymmetrical sequential processes with more Darmstadt-
inspired serialist terminology and ideology. Note, for example, his
observation that:

a4 is symmetrically a retrograde—in sound-time, that is—of cell a1, with


however a rhythmic acceleration in a4 which distinguishes them, as does
the number of units. On the other hand cells a2 and a3 are related by
inversion in sound-time and by symmetry in sound-space.

He further observes a process in which there is an ‘increasing number


of unit values which supports these structural symmetries and
parallelisms’ (a hallmark Stravinskian additive process) and that ‘no value
or subdivision in any one cell is repeated in any other’: 33 another
Stravinskian hallmark process of juxtaposing cells with maximized
variability and unpredictability.
Nattiez’s paradigmatic alignment of Boulez’s analysis better discloses
the iterative, additive, permutational processes at play in the bassoon
melody: a kind of lyrical monody version of the abrupt block juxtaposition
textural and structural principles of construction essayed in the first

33
Boulez, pp.61-62.
18 Chapter One

tableau of the earlier Petrushka (1911). The processes of altered repetition


in Stravinsky’s mock dudki pipes draw obvious parallels with those
Nattiez also found in Debussy’s Syrinx (1913). 34 Stravinsky’s micro-
managed altered repetition, however, is less that of Debussy’s quasi-
improvisational feel—befitting its pastoral topic—and more the
dialogized, introversive, constructivist precision engineering articulated by
Boulez and Nattiez’s analyses.
This is not the only important difference between Debussy and
Stravinsky’s pastoralism, however. Even within the domain of the
extroversive referential sign alone, whereas Debussy ‘correctly’ evokes the
imagined idealism of the pastoral topic prototype (the misappropriated
soft, caressing flute—a surrogate for the ancient panpipe syrinx),
Stravinsky’s mock dudki ‘incorrectly’ depicts something approximating
the actual shepherd’s instrument (the aulós or tibia; closer to an oboe or
shawm; a double reed instrument of great power, usually played in pairs
and very hard to blow). The Rite’s mock dudki pipes thus depict, rather
than evoke, nature’s primordial awakening of spring. As such, as I have
previously argued, 35 they breach topic theory convention by rooting
themselves more in social ethnography than idealized cultural imagination.
This moment of extroversive ungrammaticality fails to adhere to the all-
important topic-theory separation of signifieds from signifiers: 36 though
more practical in shepherding, powerful reed instruments seldom figure in
the pastoral topic.
The topical reference is therefore dysphoric, its uncomfortably high
asthmatic bassoon register an extension of Stravinsky’s native stikhíya
dialect. Taruskin37 attributes this term to Stravinsky’s rougher, ethnographic,
folk-inspired, discontinuous, juxtaposing, paratactic language style,
epitomized in works like The Rite and Les noces and defined in polemic
with kul’túra, a language style built on the western, Germanic hallmarks
of high eighteenth-century classicism. The usual kul’túra: signifiers of
musical pastoralism (perfect fifth musette drones, 6/8 dotted Siciliana
rhythms and simple scalic melodies moving in step) are notably absent;
replaced here with an obsessively fixed, repeated sustained C falling to A

34
Nattiez, pp.330-54.
35
McKay, ‘Dysphoric States: Stravinsky’s Topics—Huntsmen, Soldiers and
Shepherds’.
36
Raymond Monelle, The Musical Topic: Hunt, Military and Pastoral
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006), pp.207-208.
37
Taruskin, Stravinsky and the Russian Traditions, pp.951-966.
Introversive and Extroversive Processes 19

(a linear substitute for a vertical bass drone, set on a minor third in place of
the musette’s fifth). This displacement of more commonplace euphoric
topical conventions with a stikhíya dialect grounded in social ethnography
comes as little surprise given The Rite’s anecdotic origins as an
ethnological ballet under the guidance of Roerich. Nonetheless this
classical ungrammaticality in Stravinsky’s use of a rhetorical topic
constitutes a stylistic analogue of the syntactic ‘dissonance’ of his
polychordal, polyrhythmic, dialogized language.
Stravinsky’s turn to social reality in The Rite’s dysphoric topical
opening may well have been inspired as much by earlier Russian stage
music pastoral takes as it was by the composer’s own attempts at
ethnographic, folkloric echoes. Taruskin cites the near identical ‘leit-
timbres’ of the woodwind colours in Rimsky-Korsakov’s Mlada and
Snegurochka (‘springtime fable’) as a certain influence, noting that
Rimsky ‘even prefaced his latter opera with an Introduction that depicts
the awakening of spring’. 38 Either way, the sophisticated, introversive,
architectonic, mathematical, calculated, engineered processes of the
bassoon’s opening cell structures remain dysphoric and therefore
dialogized against the conventional quasi-improvised naturalism of the
extroversive processes of the anecdotic, dudki pipe’s primitive
pastoralism. Rather like siding with one particular meter over another in a
polyrhythmic texture such as the ‘Procession of the Sage’, to hear one
without the other of these irreconcilable sound worlds is to misapprehend
the music; to misread The Rite; to glimpse only a partial picture of The
Rite’s processes, a failure to inter-animate the play of introversive and
extroversive processes. The Rite is neither an architectonic nor an
anecdotic work but an allotrope of the two in constant dialogical
interchange witnessed through the interchange and exchange of
introversive and extroversive semiotic processes. The challenge it poses
for hermeneutic readings is to simultaneously grasp and grapple with its
pure and referential sign processes, moving beyond attempts to privilege
one over the other to better comprehend the primitive sophistication of its
anecdotic-architectonic dialogues.

38
Ibid., p.934.
20 Chapter One

Pastoral Processes 2: Oedipus Rex, Act 2, Shepherd’s Aria


Stravinsky’s turn to social reality in place of topical pastoral evocation
is by no means unique to The Rite in Stravinsky’s output. Act 2 of Oedipus
Rex employs a pastoral aria,39 shown here in Figure 1.2. The bass drone
signifier is not that of a prototype zampogna (the Sicilian peasant
shepherd’s instrument) or musette (the refined, delicate, pastoral-imitating
instrument of the French nobility), but a curious ranz des vaches: the
traditional alpine horn music of Swiss herdsmen. 40 As with The Rite’s
mock dudki pipes, the shepherd’s pipes again highlight Stravinsky’s predilection

39
This reading of the Shepherd’s aria from Oedipus Rex is previously published in,
and excerpted by permission of the publishers from, Nicholas McKay, ‘Dysphoric
States: Stravinsky’s Topics—Huntsmen, Soldiers and Shepherds’, in Music
Semiotics: A Network of Significations—In Honour of Raymond Monelle, ed. by
Esti Sheinberg (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), pp.249-261, Copyright © 2012 and
‘Dialogising Stravinsky: A Topic Theory and Gestural Interpretation’, in Igor
Stravinsky: Sounds and Gestures of Modernism, ed. by Massimiano Locanto
(Turnhout: Brepols, 2014), pp.175-85.
40
Walsh, p.53.
Introversive and Extroversive Processes 21

Figure 1.2: Stravinsky, Oedipus Rex, Act 2, Shepherd’s aria.

for substituting conventional topical evocation with social reality: an off-


the-peg pastoral signifier geographically and temporally deracinated (i.e.
displaced from its native home or culture) from the twentieth-century
Swiss Alps (where Stravinsky resided in exile) to the Ancient Greece of
Oedipus Rex’s diegesis. The deep percolating double reeds of the bassoons
in the Shepherd’s aria—a marked contrast in register to the high bassoon
22 Chapter One

of The Rite’s ‘Adoration of the Earth’—function as ‘surrogate stimuli’41


for the more imagined cultural ideal of pastorally figurative flutes. They
may better reflect the shepherd’s aulós pipes of Sophocles’ time but, as
noted above, historical accuracy is a game seldom played by topical
references: signifiers and signifieds tend to separate in the world of topic
theory.42
Stravinsky’s turn to a more dysphoric, concrete, distorted sense of
social reality here—against the precepts of topic theory’s imagined,
idealized evocation—attests to the ungrammatical processes to which he
subjects his extroversive stylistic rhetorical topics. The same
compositional processes of alienation and distortion seem to control the
extroversive elements of Stravinsky’s musical style as they do the
introversive icons of his musical syntax.
The dysphoric state of Stravinsky’s Shepherd’s pastoral topic is further
compounded in two compelling rhetorical processes borrowed from
Robert Hatten: 43 the ‘troping of topics’ and the ‘strategically marked’
absence (in this case) of stylistic irony. Here pastoralism is ‘troped’
(suffused or dialogized) with the lament of the weeping pianto topic (the
sighing, leaning, falling appoggiatura), amplified by its ‘infinity of
laments’ figure,44 the passus duriusculus: descending minor seconds over
the interval of a fourth. The aria is therefore ‘strategically marked’ in the
context of this opera-oratorio’s discourse by its almost unique absence of
the stylistic irony characterizing all other numbers. In an opera-oratorio
Stravinsky described as a ‘Merzbild’ 45 of mismatched, incongruous
stylistic components,46 this dialogized, deracinated and dysphoric trope of
the pastoral-lament—the product of carefully engineered and interpreted

41
Umberto Eco, Kant and the Platypus (London: Vintage, 2000), pp.353-357,
defines a surrogate stimulus as a phenomenon that ‘acts on the eye [or ear] of the
observer in a way “similar” to the real scene’: it functions as an equivalent stimulus
relying on ‘a calculated distance’ to ‘obtain its iconic effect’.
42
Monelle, The Musical Topic, p.35; pp.207-208.
43
Robert S. Hatten, Interpreting Musical Gestures, Topics, and Tropes: Mozart,
Beethoven, Schubert (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 2004), p.15;
pp.68-69.
44
Monelle, The Sense of Music, pp.66-76.
45
Igor Stravinsky and Robert Craft, Dialogues and a Diary (London: Faber, 1968),
p.27.
46
See, for example, Bernstein’s description of Jocasta, the royal queen, admonishing
her princes in a ‘hoochy-coochy dance’ or ‘one of Carmen’s sexier moments’!,
pp.391-405.
Introversive and Extroversive Processes 23

extroversive processes—is thus curiously apt for its character and moment
in a manner unlike almost any other found in Oedipus Rex. (Even its
deracinated ranz des vaches befits a shepherd, albeit a geographically and
temporally displaced one.)
Taruskin reads Oedipus’s stylistic ‘salad of clichés’ as the macabre
product of the ‘musical Mussolini’s’ neoclassic return to order—an
attempt to ‘undo the Renaissance’, eradicating secular humanism from his
scores.47 The pastoral-lament of the Shepherd, however, is its rehumanizing
moment; transcending its subtle extension of introversive processes of
defamiliarization to the extroversive domain of his music.

Processing Linguistic Syntax and Language Style


in the Piano Sonata
These extroversive processes of alienation are by no means confined to
Stravinsky’s theatre music; the explicit narratives of which offer ready-
made hermeneutic windows through which topical references are usually
all the more easy to read. Figure 1.3 presents bb.12-31 of the first
movement of Stravinsky’s Piano Sonata as a simple Nattiez/Ruwet-styled
distributional chart in four paradigms: an inverted mordent feature; a
melodic antecedent in parallel thirds rising over a perfect fifth; a
consequent answer filling the gap back down the perfect fifth; and a
mechanical cadence feature. The three syntagms are labelled ‘a’, ‘b’, and
‘c’—where ‘c’ is shown in two alternative paradigmatic subdivisions,
labelled ‘d’ and ‘e’.48
There is an evident dialogism between the faux-classical hypotactic
appearance of proportion and even phrase structure versus the juxtaposing
parataxis of iterative repetition (not at all dissimilar to the dialogism
between the natural pastoral lyricism of The Rite’s opening and the
precision-engineered paradigmatic processes of altered repetition
discussed above). Stravinsky’s stikhíya processes of defamiliarization and

47
Richard Taruskin, ‘Un Cadeau Très Macabre’, University of Toronto Quarterly, 72
(2003), 801-816.
48
This reading of the Piano Sonata is previously published in Nicholas McKay,
‘Ethnic Cleansing, Anxious Influence and Secret Codes: A Semiotician’s Guide to
Stravinsky’s Musicological Afterlife and Its Archaeological Contra-Factum’, in
Before and After Music: Acta Semiotica Fennica, ed. by Eero Tarasti (Helsinki: The
International Semiotics Institute, 2009), pp.565-74 and ‘Dialogising Stravinsky: A
Topic Theory and Gestural Interpretation’.
24 Chapter One

ungrammaticality, moreover, are bubbling away beneath the façade of this


seemingly kul’túra-styled innocent music; an innocence itself dialogized
by the historical-political contextual knowledge that the work was
dedicated to, and premiered for, Mussolini at a time when Stravinsky was
openly pronouncing himself something of a ‘musical Mussolini’.49

Figure 1.3: Stravinsky, Piano Sonata, First Movement, bb.12-31, paradigmatic


analysis.

Figure 1.4 summarizes how these subtle alienation processes can be


read as an opposition between linguistic syntax and language style
distributed across three levels of music. These levels are derived from

49
Taruskin, Defining Russia Musically, p.452; ‘Un Cadeau Très Macabre’, p.804.
Introversive and Extroversive Processes 25

Eleanor Rosch’s linguistic theory of prototype effects.50 Rosch demonstrates


that prototype effects (the ease of identifying typical features) are most
prevalent in categories at the basic level of syntax (e.g. ‘dog’) and less
evident at the superordinate (‘animal’) or subordinate (‘Labrador’) levels.
On the matrix level of the linguistic syntax all appears allusive of
Classical/Baroque contrapuntal brisé figuration. The constituent
parameters of melody-accompaniment and harmony-counterpoint appear
as they ‘should’. They strike the right pose and ape the correct
mannerisms: a right-hand melody is balanced by a texturally ‘correct’
accompaniment pattern in the left hand and the bass triplet figures of that
left hand serve ‘rightly’ to arpeggiate harmonic chords as a means of
prolonging them through linear musical time; all is correctly synchronized.
On the model level, however, all is distorted and far from prototypical.
Although the parameters of accompaniment and melody are correctly
superimposed, their harmony is cross-matched in a false counterpoint:
‘dominant’ chords are maliciously aligned with tonic chords and vice
versa in cubist bichordal composite harmonies. This distortion is
compounded further on the minutia level with leading-note chords acting
as ‘surrogate stimuli’ for under-coded dominant sevenths. From a distance
all appears allusive: a sublime classical evocation with tonic-dominant
brisé harmony. Move closer and the illusion is revealed: all is chaotic
disorder and cubist refraction built from surrogate stimuli with cross-
matched harmony and melody. This is classical counterpoint only by
virtue of our misperception.

50
Eleanor C. Rosch, Carol Simpson, and R. Scott Miller, ‘Structural Bases of
Typicality Effects’, Journal of Experimental Psychology, 2 (1976), 491-502; cited in
George Lakoff, Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal About
the Mind (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1990), pp.39-57.
26 Chapter One

Level of Music Linguistic Syntax Language Style


MATRIX appears like
Double-voiced language types
Superordinate Synchronized Parameters
Stikhíya Kul’túra
melody accompaniment
Inorganic Organic
counterpoint harmony
Turanian Baroque/Classical

Double-voiced language styles


MODEL prototype deviation
Personified
Basic Harmonic cross-matching:
tropes of prosopopoeia
Stravinsky’s voice
Bach’s voice
Petrushka
Two-part inventions
tonics ‘dominants’ Symphonies of
Winds
‘Quonium’
The Rite

Characteristic
tropes of ethopoeia

pastoral moto perpetuo


aria style pedagogic etude
Introversive and Extroversive Processes 27

MINUTIA Surrogate stimuli:


Double-voiced stylistic traits
Subordinate ‘wrong note’ chords
paradigms linear sequences
additive blocks Stile Brisé
vii ‘V’ disruption continuity
interpolations parallel thirds
harmonic stasis teleology

Figure 1.4: Stravinsky, Piano Sonata, First Movement, bb.12-31 refracted through Rosch’s tripartite model of basic level prototype
effects.
28 Chapter One

A number of semiotic processes are at play in these carefully engineered


moments of musical ungrammaticality; most of which are lost in the sonic
equivalent of blind spots. On the matrix level, Stravinsky has lulled the
listener into what Monelle terms an act of apodeitic complicity,1 moving
from the peculiar particularity of the sonata to the familiar generality of
classical brisé figuration. Passively accepting the allusive matrix-level
mannerisms of melody and accompaniment at face value as a truthful
assertion of classical style overlooks the prototype deviation and surrogate
stimuli concealed on the model and minutia levels. In semiotic parlance,
Stravinsky evokes the classical style as an icon, not as an index2 and the
Sonata is read with ‘encyclopaedic’ (perceptual, stylistic, referential), not
with ‘dictionary’ (categorical, syntactic, pure), knowledge. 3 Stravinsky
neatly dialogizes perceptual and categorical understanding of the processes
at play.
A similar dialogism to that found in the introversive sign processes of
the linguistic syntax, occurs in the extroversive processes of the language
styles evoked in the Sonata. On the matrix level, the Sonata appears like
‘kul’túra’: the ethnic Russian term for hypotactic organicism (typified by
the Austro-German first Viennese school) in contradistinction to the
characteristic discontinuity of parataxis, or ‘stikhíya’ found in The Rite’s
musical discourse.4 There is an inbuilt parataxis to the Sonata’s discourse,
however, that dialogizes against the linear flow of classical phrase
structure. That parataxis is evident in the juxtaposition antics (the cut-and-
paste structure, the interpolated phrase disruption, the additive iteration)
highlighted in the distributional analysis. The juxtaposing is so disruptive,
that one single interpolated meter (b.28) throws the final phrase before the
cadence to E minor (b.31) into paradigmatic chaos with three competing
syntagmatic readings (labelled c, d, and e).
At this matrix level, then, the Sonata dialogizes the meta-language
styles of stikhíya and kul’túra. Its stikhíya dialect (the cubistic dissection
of syntactic-linguistic components) appears as if it were classical, thus
dialogizing itself with a kul’túra-inspired illusory hypotaxis. The Sonata
thus conceals the same parataxis overtly displayed in earlier Russian-
Turanian works such as the Symphony of Winds or Rite of Spring. Its

1
Monelle, The Sense of Music, p.134.
2
Charles Sanders Peirce, The Philosophy of Peirce, Selected Writings (London:
Kegan Paul, 1940).
3
Eco, pp.224-229.
4
Taruskin, Stravinsky and the Russian Traditions, pp.1678-1679.
Introversive and Extroversive Processes 29

melodic cells are no longer tiny folk fragments, but chunks of classicism;
the four paradigmatic abstract, geometric, Apollonian nuts and bolts of a
classical sonata theme engineered to the simultaneous points of perfection
and banality.
This Bakhtinian double-voicing of hypo- and para-taxis is yet another
form of ‘ungrammaticality’, a process embedded as much in the music’s
extroversive language style(s) as it is in the music’s introversive linguistic
syntax. It is a sign of disunity but not one that can be resolved dialectically
from a hermeneutic position privileging unity. The disunified dialect of
stikhíya is Stravinsky’s native, authorial voice; kul’túra is merely the
‘reflected discourse’5 through which Stravinsky refracts it. To marginalize
one against the other is to miss the point of dialogics. Expressive meaning
arises from the interanimation of both discrepant, referential, language
styles. Making block juxtaposition behave as if it were classical teleology
and vice versa is a classic double voicing strategy of Stravinsky’s
neoclassicism played out across the three language-linguistic levels. The
matrix level dialogizes familiar meta-language dichotomies: parataxis–
hypotaxis; stikhíya–kul’túra; inorganic–organic; Turanian–Baroque/Classical.
The model level double-voices the discourse in two ways: one, through
personified double-voicing (tropes of prosopopoeia) between language
styles and ideologies belonging to Stravinsky and Bach, the other through
characteristic double-voicing (tropes of ethopoeia) in which conventional
language styles (generic topics, genres, gestures) are conflated—as seen in
the ethopoeitic inter-animation of mechanical formulae (the automata-like
‘moto perpetuo’ and incremental mechanical modulations of a ‘technical
etude’) and expressive evocations of lyrical nature (the cantabile rising and
falling melody of ‘aria style’ and the implicit 6/8 lilt, open octaves and
simplicity of pastoral style). The constituent components of these model
language styles similarly double-voice the minutia level: Bachian linear
sequences and stile brisé construction refracted through Stravinskian
harmonic stasis, and paradigmatic and additive juxtapositional
construction.

5
Bakhtin, pp.205-207
30 Chapter One

Processing Bach’s Voice in the Concerto for Piano


and Wind Instruments
A similar example to the Piano Sonata is found in the Concerto for
Piano and Wind Instruments (1923-24).6 A paradigm neoclassic work, its
extroversive processes can be read as epitomizing a sense of playing with
the past through Bakhtin’s concept of the ‘sideward glance’ at the
‘reflected discourse’ of an ‘absent interlocutor’; a style defined by ‘the
intense anticipation of another’s words’.7 Here Bach’s voice is felt in the
effect it has on Stravinsky’s voice despite its literal absence from the
scene. It functions as an absent signifier. Composed in 1923-24, the Piano
Concerto, like the Sonata, is a work in which Stravinsky’s discourse is
determined by the reflected discourse of Bach—not the real or historical
Bach but Bach as a personification of the architectonic; a Bach constructed
in Stravinsky’s own, idealized image.8
In this regard at least (unlike his above-discussed social reality
treatment of musical topics), Stravinsky’s extroversive processes of
allusions to Bach really do separate their signifiers from their signified!
Stravinsky’s Bach, inspired by Wanda Landowska’s harpsichord
performances, anachronistically presents an image of ‘Bach the geometrist’
through a ‘sewing machine style’ performance practice bearing little
resemblance to Baroque performance tradition but aligning strongly with
Stravinsky’s contemporaneous neoclassic predilection for monometric
rhythm and performance-as-execution. 9 Stravinsky’s sideward glance at

6
For a discussion of the semiotics processes at play in Stravinsky’s Concerto for
Piano and Wind Instruments, see Nicholas McKay, ‘Stravinsky’s Sideward Glance:
Neoclassicism, Dialogised Structures and the Reflected Discourse of Bach’, The
Journal of Music and Meaning, vol.12 (2013), 1-43.
7
Ibid., pp.205-206.
8
Richard Taruskin, ‘“Back to Whom? Neoclassicism as Ideology”, Review of Scott
Messing, Neoclassicism in Music (1988), Stephen Hinton, The Idea of
Gebrauchmusik (1989) and Wolfgang Osthoff and Reinhard Wiesend (eds.)
Colloquium Klassizität, Klassik in der Musik 1920-1950 (1985)’, Nineteenth Century
Music, 16 (1993), 286-302. A more extensive version of this reading of the Concerto
for Piano and Wind Instruments is found in Nicholas McKay, ‘Stravinsky’s Sideward
Glance: Neoclassicism, Dialogised Structures and the Reflected Discourse of Bach’,
The Journal of Music and Meaning, 12 (2013), 1-43.
9
Richard Taruskin, Text and Act: Essays on Music and Performance (New York
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp.91-152.
Introversive and Extroversive Processes 31

Bach manifests itself here in an over-wound, machine-like contrapuntal


discourse that, as shown in Figure 1.5, has all but consumed what would
otherwise constitute a pianto appoggiatura motif into a three-part
mechanical gesture akin to three intermeshed cogs whirring at highly-
calibrated, differentiated speeds.

Figure 1.5: Stravinsky, Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments, First Movement,
Figures 11-13.

This illustrative moment from the first movement is again best


comprehended as a paradigmatic chart; this time highlighting a three-part
contrapuntal texture unfolding over four syntagmatic rows. The reflected
voice of Bach determines the style, tone and manner of Stravinsky’s
32 Chapter One

thinking and experiencing through a linear counterpoint and phrase


structure that presents as a mere architectonic system of sounds. As with
the Sonata, the material distributes across four archetypal gestural and
structural paradigms: repeated note ‘pedal motif’, scalic ‘cadence’,
‘transition’ (a syncopated, additive variant of the pedal motive) and ‘tonic
resolution’. Again it is apodeitic complicity—our readiness to accept the
perception of a textural counterpoint (a form of impersonal, characteristic
heteroglossia [lit. other-voicedness] cueing the musical topic of learned
style) over the categorical reality of actual harmonic syntax (which might
more accurately cue unlearned style)—that draws one into a perceived
sideward glance to the reflected discourse of Bach (a form of personified
heteroglossia). This is Bach, the listener senses, even though—as Walsh
keenly observes of the Octet—those Bachian ‘conventions are being
manoeuvred into shapes and continuities which, if he were to stop and
think about them consistently violate his sense of their innate logic’. 10
Stravinsky thus orients his discourse and consciousness towards the
discourse and consciousness of another; another cast in his own image.
For Bakhtin, the sideward glance at a reflected discourse is a two-way
process.11 As with the Sonata, Stravinsky’s neoclassic music seems to be
embroiled in a similar reflected discourse: his ‘natural’ post-tonal,
octatonic, bichordal, bi-isotopic, juxtaposing stikhíya discourse anticipates
the potential responses of an absent, imagined, tonal, linearly unfolding,
organic, kul’túra Bach; a Bach emblematic of anticipated objections and
interjections from German organicism; the grain against which
Stravinsky’s discourse evolved.

Conclusion
The introversive-extroversive divide of Stravinsky’s music (correlating
to autonomous linguistics and referential stylistics) is thus seen more as
one of interanimation between the two dimensions (and three levels) of
even his apparently most abstract formalist music. If Stravinsky’s music
has been dehumanized by his own hand (including in the Piano Sonata’s
case by his proto-fascist aesthetic alignment) and by formalist and
contextualist musicology, it is largely because the interanimation of
syntax with expressive language styles has been marginalized from its

10
Walsh, p.121.
11
Bakhtin, p.207.
Introversive and Extroversive Processes 33

hermeneutics. A music-semiotic model of interpretation, as articulated


here however, offers a corrective; a means of rethinking Stravinsky that
unearths and interprets the expressive dimensions of his music, re-voicing
and re-humanizing works such as The Rite, Oedipus’ Shepherd’s aria, the
Piano Sonata and Piano Concerto against the grain as dialogues between
the pure signs of linguistic syntax and the expressive referential signs of
language styles.
The spectre of intentionality rears its head. Can one say that Stravinsky,
consciously or otherwise, employed these introversive and extroversive
processes as compositional methods/practices or are formalists and
semioticians guilty of reading Stravinsky’s music as exhibiting these
processes purely to vindicate their own analytical and hermeneutical
methods/practices? In other words, are we evaluating Stravinsky’s music
and process or are we looking at his music as (a particular kind(s) of)
process? The distinction is largely academic, as indeed the title of this
book suggests. This chapter, however, contends that, while a
predominantly formalist twentieth century has made comfortable and
commonplace the view that Stravinsky’s music and introversive
process(es) are mutually inclusive and dependent in compositional terms,
his music as extroversive process(es) is far more problematic and less
dependent. It clearly displays similar alienation tropes of dialogism and
dysphoria found in his music’s introversive processes but to a degree—and
at a more subjective perceptual level—that questions its validity as a
compositional method. In short, understanding Stravinsky’s music and
introversive process(es) go hand-in-hand, while reading his music as
extroversive process(es) remains marginalized.
CHAPTER TWO

ON THE NATURE OF SUBJECTIVITY


IN MUSIC ANALYSIS:
SOME OBSERVATIONS ON ANALYSING
AN EARLY SCORE BY PHILIP GLASS

SUZIE WILKINS, KEITH POTTER


AND GERAINT A. WIGGINS

This chapter examines issues of ‘process’, both through a discussion of


a composition based on an unusually high degree of melodic and rhythmic
repetition (in a style often called ‘minimalist’ and sometimes called
‘process music’), and, in particular, through a discussion of listening
strategies for such music. Possible readings of Philip Glass’s Gradus for
solo soprano saxophone (1968) are actualized in the experiences of two
listeners with different kinds of musical background. We offer some
analytical observations on a particular piece of ‘process music’ that—due
to the fact that its ‘processes’ are less schematic than those found in most
more familiar minimalist compositions of this period, such as Glass’s Two
Pages and Music in Similar Motion (both 1969)—at once presents
particular challenges to the listener and yet at the same time might also
lend itself to listening strategies that have more in common with
compositions associated with more familiar tonal repertoires. We are also
interested in using these accounts to contribute to a wider discussion
about musical expectation and, indeed, the value of the dual-listener
methodology deployed here. This chapter builds on a previous analysis of
Gradus presented by Potter, Wiggins, and Pearce1 and expands on this

1
Keith Potter, Geraint A. Wiggins, and Marcus T. Pearce, ‘Towards Greater
Objectivity in Music Theory: Information-dynamic Analysis of Minimalist Music’,
Another random document with
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The Project Gutenberg eBook of The principal
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eBook.

Title: The principal girl

Author: J. C. Snaith

Release date: May 13, 2022 [eBook #68069]

Language: English

Original publication: United States: Moffat, Yard and Company,


1912

Credits: D A Alexander and the Online Distributed Proofreading


D A Alexander and the Online Distributed Proofreading
Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced
from images generously made available by the Library
of Congress)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE


PRINCIPAL GIRL ***
THE PRINCIPAL GIRL
BY THE
SAME
AUTHOR

MRS. FITZ
ARAMINTA
FORTUNE
WILLIAM
JORDAN,
JUNIOR
HENRY
NORTHCOTE
BROKE OF
COVENDEN
MISTRESS
DOROTHY
MARVIN
etc., etc.
THE
PRINCIPAL GIRL
BY

J. C. SNAITH

NEW YORK
MOFFAT, YARD AND COMPANY
1912
Copyright, 1912, by
MOFFAT, YARD AND COMPANY
New York

All Rights Reserved


CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I A GREAT PROCONSUL; AND OTHER
PHENOMENA 1
II TOUCHES UPON A MATTER OF GRAVE
PUBLIC IMPORTANCE 7
III IS DOMESTIC IN THE MAIN, BUT WE
HOPE NOT UNWORTHY OF A GREAT
CONSTITUTIONAL STATESMAN 12
IV IN WHICH THE GENTLE READER HAS
THE HONOR OF AN INTRODUCTION TO
THE SEVENTH UNMARRIED DAUGHTER
OF NOT QUITE A HUNDRED EARLS 18
V IN WHICH THE GENTLE READER IS
TAKEN TO THE PANTOMIME IN THE
COMPANY OF MARGE AND TIMOTHY
AND ALICE CLARA AND DICK AND THE
BABE AND HELEN AND LUCY NANNA,
AND WE HOPE YOU’LL ENJOY IT AS
MUCH AS THEY DID 27
VI IN WHICH WE DINE OUT IN GROSVENOR
SQUARE 47
VII IN WHICH WE DRINK TEA AGAIN AT THE
CARLTON 62
VIII IN WHICH WE MAKE THE ACQUAINTANCE
OF THE GODDAUGHTER OF EDWARD
BEAN 77
IX A LITTLE LUNCH AT DIEUDONNÉ’S 83
X AFFAIRS OF STATE 100
XI LICENTIOUS BEHAVIOR OF THE GREEN
CHARTREUSE 108
XII THE PROCONSULAR TOUCH 115
XIII JANE’S AFTERNOON OUT 121
XIV IN WHICH MARY QUALIFIES FOR THE
RÔLE OF THE BAD GIRL OF THE FAMILY 132
XV IN WHICH WE SIT AT THE FEET OF
GAMALIEL 152
XVI IN WHICH THE MOUNTAIN COMES TO
MAHOMET 157
XVII IN WHICH WE ARE TAKEN TO VIEW A
LITTLE FLAT IN KNIGHTSBRIDGE 166
XVIII IN WHICH THE CONSEQUENCES ARE
DAMNED WITH NO UNCERTAINTY 174
XIX A GREAT OCCASION 184
XX LOVE’S YOUNG DREAM 191
XXI ADVENTURES RARE AND STRANGE 199
XXII IN WHICH PHILIP RENEWS HIS YOUTH 210
XXIII IN WHICH GRANDMAMMA RENEWS HERS 226
XXIV IS OF A POLITICAL NATURE 239
XXV IS VICTORIAN IN THE BEST SENSE 259
XXVI A CONSTITUTIONAL CRISIS 268
XXVII ANOTHER TRIUMPH FOR FREE TRADE 290
XXVIII THE END OF THE TALE 300
THE PRINCIPAL GIRL
CHAPTER I
A GREAT PROCONSUL; AND OTHER
PHENOMENA

The great Proconsul stood on one of Messrs. Maple’s best


hearthrugs in Grosvenor Square. A typical payer of the super-tax, a
pink and prosperous gentleman in a morning coat and striped
trousers, his appearance had long commanded the admiration of his
country.
He had not ruled the teeming millions of the Ganges, although
the strength of his digestion and his absence of imagination would at
any time have enabled him to do so. But for a period of nine weeks
he had been the Resident of Barataria North-West; and partly for
that reason and partly for a reason even more cogent, he had the
distinction of being the last peer created by Mr. Vandeleur’s last
government.
The world is familiar with Sir William Richmond’s fine portrait of
Walter Augustus, first Baron Shelmerdine of Potterhanworth now, on
loan at the National Portrait Gallery. In this the national asset
appears as he encountered his Sovereign in knee breeches, silk
stockings, shoe buckles and other regalia.
Competent judges consider it an excellent likeness, and of
course quite unexceptionable as a work of art. It is the portrait of a
happily endowed Englishman in his manly prime, to which the nation
at large is able to refer between the hours of ten and four, Fridays
excepted.
Eton, Balliol, diplomacy, private means, together with various
places of emolument under the Crown, had each a share in raising
Shelmerdine of Potterhanworth to his elevation. A first baron
certainly, but not a mushroom growth. The honors of a grateful
nation had come to him mainly because he had not been able to
avoid them. From early youth he had been ranged with those who
always do the right thing at the right time in the right way. He had
always hit the bull’s-eye so exactly in the centre that public regard
had had to strive to keep pace with his progress.
Up till the age of one-and-thirty, Shelmerdine—not then of
Potterhanworth—had like humbler mortals just a sporting chance of
getting off the target. But at the age of thirty-one he married. By that
judicious action he forfeited any little chance he may have had of
dying an obscure, private individual.
Sociologists differ as to what is the most portentous phenomenon
of the age in which we dwell, but there is a body of the well-informed
which awards the palm unhesitatingly to that amiable institution, the
Suffolk Colthurst.
The world is under great obligations to this interesting
representative of the higher mammalia. The upper reaches of
Theology are whitened with the bones of the Suffolk Colthurst. It
makes an almost ideal Under-Secretary, it is always so smooth-
spoken and well-brushed; it makes a most excellent Judge; there is
no place of emolument it is not fitted to grace; and in the unlikely
event of a doubt invading your mind as to whether the particular
schoolmaster will be inducted to the vacant see of Wincanton, you
have only to look up which branch it was of the Suffolk Colthursts
into which he married, and at what period of his life he married her.
What would be the Established Order without the Colthurst of
Suffolk? What would be the Navy and Army, Law and Medicine,
Parliament itself, Art—and yes, gentlemen!—Letters, without the
Colthurst of Suffolk?
It is an error, however, to suppose that this pleasant phenomenon
confines itself to one little corner of the globe. The Colthurst is
indigenous to Suffolk, but for generations there has been quite a
colony settled in Kent. There is also the world-famous Scotch variety,
and of late traces of the Suffolk Colthurst have been found in
America. The Transatlantic mind, never slow at diagnosis, and with
its trick of masterful and telling speech, has already ventured to
define its creed. In America the creed of the Suffolk Colthurst has
been defined as the Art of Getting There with Both Feet.
Please do not assume that there is anything ignoble about the
Colthurst of Suffolk. Quite the contrary. It has been laid down as a
general principle that the Suffolk Colthurst never makes money but
always marries it. That is not to say, of course, that a Suffolk
Colthurst has never been known to make money, because such a
statement, however pleasant, would be in excess of the truth. But
the Suffolk Colthurst, pur sang, sets less store by the making of
money than by the spending of money in the way that shows it has
always had money to spend.
As a matter of fact it always has had money to spend. As soon as
banking, brewing, land-jobbing, share-broking, and other polite arts
began to flourish in Suffolk, the Colthurst began to marry and to give
in marriage. And to this day if you enter a small private bank in a
quiet cathedral city, and you take the trouble to make inquiries, you
are quite likely to learn that the local Suffolk Colthurst has the chief
proprietary interest in the concern. The family has always been
partial to banking. It is such an eminently sensible practice to lend
money at double the rate at which you borrow it; and it has the
additional advantage that you can’t call it Trade.
Our immediate business, however, is with the blameless
gentleman who at the age of one-and-thirty was accepted in
marriage by a charming representative of the genus, and at the age
of nine-and-fifty was made a peer by Mr. Vandeleur’s government,
immediately antecedent to its total and permanent eclipse.
To return, then, to Shelmerdine of Potterhanworth. For nearly an
hour had he occupied the tasteful hearthrug provided by Messrs.
Maple. A frown chequered his serene front and several times he had
recourse to the Leading Morning Journal which lay open on his
writing-table at page four.
At the top of the third column was a communication dated from
the Helicon Club, S. W. It was signed by himself and had been
crowned with the glory of the largest type you could have without
having to pay for it. Immediately below, in type equally glorious, were
communications veiled in the discreet anonymity of “A Lover of
Animals” and “Verax.”
Discreet anonymity is disagreeable as a rule. The fact was the
great Proconsul was in the act of rendering a signal service to the
Public; and in consequence the Public did not thank him for his
interference. To be sure, it was the first time in his life that he had
been guilty of such an indiscretion. This was his first single-handed
attempt to render a service to society at large; and, as was only to be
expected, society at large was not making itself very pleasant about
it.
There could be no doubt that at this moment the great Proconsul
was the most unpopular man in London. Old ladies in ermine tippets
scowled at him as he passed along Park Lane; and a hostess of
mark, famous for her wealth and her humanity, had already crossed
him out of her dinner list.
CHAPTER II
TOUCHES UPON A MATTER OF GRAVE PUBLIC
IMPORTANCE

Of what crime, do you suppose, has S. of P. been guilty? It was


merely that in a public print he had ventured to ask why the payment
of the nominal sum of seven and sixpence per annum conferred
upon the dogs of London certain privileges in respect of its
pavements which society at large, for some little time past, has
ceased to claim.
The resources of civilization were ranged already against
Shelmerdine of Potterhanworth. Nice-minded women in point lace
refused to meet the self-constituted champion of public amenity; the
black-velveted mistresses of the Flossies and the Fidos thought the
state of his mind must be unpleasant; he was an object of contumely
where all that was fair and of good report held sway in the life of the
metropolis.
It was a pretty quarrel, and both sides were sustaining it with
spirit. The Pro-Darlings, with Verax and a Lover of Animals at their
head, had rejoined with mannerly vituperation to the polished
sarcasm of the Anti-Darlings. What is your remedy? had inquired the
Friends of Fido with a rather obvious sneer. Banish the dumb
creation from the pavements of great cities, had replied Inspired
Commonsense.
And for our own poor part, Commissioners of the Office of Works,
we think that reply is worth a statue.
Verax was making merry though at the expense of a public
ornament, and the occupant of Messrs. Maple’s best hearthrug, who
remembered Verax perfectly well as a grubby infant at his private
school, had already formed the pious resolve of putting the fear of
God into Verax.
S. of P., having pondered long, sat down at his writing-table;
dipped his quill with a certain inherent natural grandeur, and started
out on his crushing reply:—“Sir, I have read with amazement the
diatribe against my humble and unworthy self which appears under
the signature of Verax, to which you have extended the generous
hospitality of your columns.”
At this point S. of P. bit his quill with such violence that a large
blot was shaken from the end of it upon the monogram which
decorated the communication.
“The problem as I envisage it”—S. of P. took a small gold pencil
out of his waistcoat pocket and made a note on his blotting pad. “The
problem as I envisage it”—but the problem that he did envisage was
the Suffolk Colthurst, who at that moment entered the room.
The Suffolk Colthurst was large and blonde—so large and so
blonde that to a profane mind she rather conveyed the suggestion of
a particularly well-grown cauliflower.
“Wally, please, don’t let me spoil your morning. Don’t let me
interrupt you, please.”
The voice of the Suffolk Colthurst was really quite agreeable,
although a little light in the upper register. You might even call it
flutelike if you cared to indulge in metaphor.
“Not at all, Agatha,” said S. of P. with excellent chest resonance.
“I am merely envisaging the problem of the—ah—”
“Don’t, Wally.” The voice of the Suffolk Colthurst was perhaps a
shade less flutelike if history really calls for these nuances. “You are
making yourself ridiculous. Please drop the subject.”
“No, Agatha.” The sun setting over Africa might be compared to
the brow of the great Proconsul. “Man in The Thunderer most
impertinent. Signs himself Verax. Suspect it’s that fellow—”
“Wally.” The Suffolk Colthurst roared here a little less gently than
usual. “I will not uphold you! Everybody thinks it is most injudicious.”
“Everybody, Agatha?”
“Paul and Millicent consider—”
“Public health, Agatha, public dec—”
“Wally, once for all, I absolutely refuse to discuss the subject. I
will not have you make yourself ridiculous.”
The Suffolk Colthurst, with an approximation to natural majesty,
put on a pair of gold-rimmed eyeglasses which were suspended
round her neck by a cord, and took the Leading Morning Journal off
the First Baron’s table.
“Impertinent, certainly. Sarcasm, I suppose.”
“Suspect it’s that fellow Huffham, because I declined to propose
him under Rule Two.”
“Certainly you do appear to have laid yourself open, but the letter
is most ill-natured.”
“As though I should be likely to propose him. Known the man all
my life.”
The Suffolk Colthurst gathered her majestic inches for the
ultimatum.
“Wally, you must listen to me. This matter has already gone too
far. Let it drop. It is the first time I have known you go out of your way
to make yourself ridiculous.”
“Public health, Agatha, public decency.”
“Leave it to the County Council.”
“They are not competent to envisage such a problem as this. And
I am determined, in the face of that letter—”
“Paul says that no man can afford to make himself a public
laughing-stock.”
“Paul’s a coward.”
“Paul says they are certain to make you an Apostle.”
“Eh?”
“If you don’t make a fool of yourself.”
“Paul said that! Why, pray, should they make me an Apostle?”
“Because there’s nobody else; and people will say the race has
already passed its zenith if the vacancy is not filled up at once.”
“I will say this for Paul—he is well-informed as a rule.”
“Wait, Wally, until you are an Apostle.”
“Very well then, with the greatest possible reluctance I yield the
point for the present. Verax shall wait until—Tell me, Agatha, what
have you to say to me?”
The good, the noble—forgive our fervor, O ye Liberal organs of
opinion, even if your bosoms be not thrilled by this whole-souled
devotion to the public weal—the good and noble Shelmerdine of
Potterhanworth flung the offending print upon Messrs. Maple’s
expensive carpet in a sudden uncontrollable access of private pique.
“Agatha.” The accents of the great Proconsul were choked with
emotion. “Tell me, Agatha, what you have to say to me?”
“Wally,” said the Suffolk Colthurst, “what I have to say to you is
this.”
CHAPTER III
IS DOMESTIC IN THE MAIN, BUT WE HOPE
NOT UNWORTHY OF A GREAT
CONSTITUTIONAL
STATESMAN

When you are up against a serious anticlimax it is a golden rule


to begin a fresh chapter.
The Suffolk Colthurst paused, and sat with a further access of
natural majesty upon a chair Louis Quinze, supplied, like the
hearthrug, by Tottenham Court Road.
“Wally, Philip has declined to come to the Queen’s Hall this
afternoon to hear Busoni.”
Doing his best even in this dangerous anticlimax, S. of P.
retrieved the Leading Morning Journal from the carpet, straightened
out its crumpled folds with patient humility, laid it on the table, sat
down in his own chair—Tottenham Court Road of the best period—
put up his eyeglass—by Cary of Pall Mall, maker to the Admiralty—
and, in the voice of one pronouncing a benediction, said, “Well,
Agatha?”
“Actually declined. Tells me he’s engaged to a pantomime at
Drury Lane.”
“Matter of taste, I suppose.”
“Taste, Wally! Dear Adela is coming, and I have taken such
trouble to arrange this.”
The Proconsul showed a little perturbation.

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