Visible Music:

Instrumental Music Theatre

Shaping Sight and Sound

in Instrumental Music

Elise Pittenger
Schulich School of Music, Department of Performance
McGill University, Montréal, QC
April, 2010

A thesis submitted to McGill University in partial fulfillment of the

requirements of the degree of Doctor of Music.

© Elise Pittenger, 2010

 i

Acknowledgements

My interest in this topic was first sparked by a course taught by my music research
advisor, Professor Lloyd Whitesell, who offered conceptual and substantive direction as
well as editing suggestions throughout the preparation of this paper and the related
lecture-recital. Professor Brian Cherney graciously accepted the time-consuming
challenge of writing a new piece for the project: Brahms and the German Spirit, a music
theatre work for clarinet and cello. With its intricate (and entertaining) graphic score, his
work provided another perspective on this repertoire and offered me the privilege of
witnessing and participating in the creation of a new work.

Thanks also to Professor Matt Haimovitz, my performance advisor, as well as to

other committee members: Professors Jonathan Crow, Julie Cumming, and Eleanor
Stubley. Professor Aiyun Huang generously offered her time and expertise in the field,
and Professor Dora Coracaju also provided invaluable suggestions and context during the
first stages of my research. The collaboration of clarinetist Louise Campbell, flutist René
Oréa-Sanchez, and pianist Amy Zanrosso gave me the chance to prepare and perform a
selection of instrumental music theatre works and thus experience them directly.

This work is dedicated to those whose love and enthusiastic support stand behind
my every endeavor: my parents, Arthur and Judy Pittenger, and to Fernando Rocha, my
best advocate and best friend.
 ii

Abstract
At mid-century, the avant-garde in both Europe and North America took a new interest in
the physicality of musical performance. Musicians began to acknowledge the importance
of concertgoers’ visual experience, and the elements of physical gesture, staging, and
even the relationships between performers, were drawn within the scope of composable
material. Instrumental music theatre was one of the results of this trend; it is a genre
which takes advantage of the visual drama of music-making, setting visual material
alongside acoustic material as an equal partner. Visual material, therefore, requires
performers’ thoughtful attention, engagement, and rehearsal, in order to be an effective
aspect of these works.

In this paper I explore the genre by considering various ways in which visual and
acoustic material can relate. I describe the historical context within which this new
direction first developed, looking closely at the styles and influence of Mauricio Kagel
and John Cage. I then propose four different paradigms to model the relationship between
sound and sight in instrumental music theatre, relating physical gesture to musical
material. Through a discussion of relevant examples, I show how each of these four
approaches creates drama and musical meaning at aesthetic, symbolic, and narrative
levels.

I then discuss the challenges posed by instrumental music theatre, using examples
from the repertoire. I believe that these challenges should also be considered
opportunities for musical growth, and that ultimately a study of this genre will enrich
musicians’ work in every performance, whether or not it is intentionally dramatic.
 iii

Résumé
Au milieu du siècle passé, l'avant-garde en Europe et en Amérique du Nord a développé
un intérêt nouveau pour la dimension physique de l'interprétation musicale. Les
musiciens ont commencé à reconnaître l'importance de l'expérience visuelle du public, et
les mouvements du corps, la mise en scène – incluant les relations entre les interprètes –
sont devenus des éléments du travail de composition. Le théâtre musical est un des
développements issus de cette nouvelle approche; ce genre met à profit la dramaturgie
visuelle de la performance musicale, en accordant la même importance à la dimension
visuelle et à la dimension acoustique. Par conséquent, pour être un aspect efficace de ces
oeuvres, les éléments visuels doivent faire l'objet d'une attention soutenue, d'un
engagement, et de répétitions de la part des musiciens.

Dans cette thèse, j'explore ce genre en examinant les différentes façons de mettre
en relation les éléments visuels et acoustiques. Je décris le contexte historique dans lequel
cette nouvelle approche est apparue, en étudiant les styles et l'influence de Mauricio
Kagel et de John Cage. Je propose ensuite quatre paradigmes différents pour théoriser la
relation entre le son et la vue dans le théâtre musical, mettant en relation les mouvements
du corps et les éléments musicaux. À l'aide d'exemples, je montre comment chacune de
ces approches crée un sens dramatique et musical aux niveaux esthétique, symbolique, et
narratif.

Je discute ensuite des défis posés par le théâtre musical, en utilisant des exemples
tirés du répertoire. Je pense que ces défis peuvent constituer des opportunités de
développement musical, et que l'étude de ce genre contribue à enrichir le travail des
musiciens lors de toute représentation, qu'elle comporte ou pas une dimension dramatique
intentionnelle.
 Contents

1 Introduction: Visible Music ....................................................................................... 2

2 Context...................................................................................................................... 5
2.1 What is instrumental music theatre?.................................................................... 5
2.1.1 Examples ..................................................................................................... 8
2.2 When/Where: The Genre/Historical Moment.................................................... 12
2.2.1 Darmstadt and the Post-War Avant-Garde.................................................. 12
2.2.2 John Cage .................................................................................................. 13
2.2.3 Mauricio Kagel .......................................................................................... 17
3 Structure and Meaning............................................................................................. 25
3.1 Organizing Musical Material ............................................................................ 25
3.1.1 Gesture of a Sound..................................................................................... 25
3.1.2 Sound of a Gesture..................................................................................... 29
3.1.3 Narrative and Semantics............................................................................. 33
3.1.4 Theatre Added ........................................................................................... 38
3.2 Musical Meaning .............................................................................................. 42
4 Performance Challenges .......................................................................................... 43
4.1 Notation............................................................................................................ 43
4.2 Extended Technique (Physical Gesture)............................................................ 50
4.3 Acting............................................................................................................... 52
5 Conclusion .............................................................................................................. 55
6 Bibliography ........................................................................................................... 57
 2

1 INTRODUCTION: VISIBLE MUSIC

John Cage once described sight and sound as the two “public senses.”1 Unlike the more
intimate experiences of touch, taste, and smell, seeing and hearing combine to create a
simultaneous and shared event for all viewers. Together, they are at the center of all the
performing arts. Moreover, the acoustic and visual dimensions of a work are not just
concurrent elements in performance; they are linked by our expectations of cause and
effect. Sound production is always related to an action, however subtle, and so the two
are linked: motion creates sound, and sound results from motion.

Given this connection, we can see that instrumental performance—a set of physical
actions—inevitably implies some kind of visual drama. This includes the energetic drama
of sound production, expressive gestures relating to phrasing and musical meaning, and
even the outward signs of relationship between musicians. A performance, in other
words, consists of the visual expression of a work as well as its sound.

Until the mid-20th century, this visual drama remained essentially a side-effect of
music, one which could be enjoyed but which was not given much attention by
composers. Audiences might appreciate the dynamism of a performer’s attitude, the
expressiveness of certain physical gestures, or the cues and communication shared
between musicians. But these things were never considered to be part of the work itself.
This began to change at mid-century, however, and by 1969, German composer Dietrich
Schnebel would write: “it is possible to compose strictly in terms of the visual element of
music—be it gestures of interpretation, movements, or relationships of the players to each
other and to the audience.”2

Something had shifted in musicians’ understanding of concert music in the 60s:

something which generated the new approaches to composition and performance.
Essentially, composers began to consider all of the parameters of performance as
potentially part of their music. They began to formally recognize that a musical
1
William Fetterman, John Cage’s Theatre Pieces: Notations and Performances (Amsterdam, Netherlands:
Harwood Academic Publishers, 1996), 45.
2
Dieter Schnebel, “Visible Music,” in Classic Essays on Twentieth-Century Music: A Continuing
Symposium, ed. Richard Kostelanetz and Joseph Darby (New York: Schirmer Books, 1996, 283-295), 287.
 3

performance involves real people, in relationship, exerting themselves over a score to

produce sound. They also saw that this visual drama, in combination with the music it
produces, can create a sense of narrative over the course of a work. Many composers
wanted to be involved not just with creating sound, but with creating and shaping all of
the drama on stage.

As composers began to address these many aspects of musical performance in their

works, new genres evolved. Schnebel notes some of the new directions in his article,
“Visible Music.” He categorizes many of the current (to 1969) movements in avant-garde
music according to their medium or emphasis: music in space, music in motion, gestic
play, musicalized theatre, musically structured film, and graphically symbolized notation.
Schnebel uses these categories to consider how the drama of music can relate to
parameters of space, time, and narrative.

One of the most flexible directions of music at that time, and perhaps the most
accessible, was the genre which occupied Schnebel’s own attention as a composer:
instrumental music theatre. Already at the end of the 1950’s a few composers (both in the
USA and in Europe) had begun to blur the lines between theatre and music. In a short
time the trend was clear enough to create a new genre, one which fit snugly at the
intersection of theatre, performance art, musical performance, and even dance. The trend
was so important that, as musicologist Paul Griffiths points out, “by 1970 there were few
vanguard composers who were not bringing theatrical elements into their music.”3

For composers, instrumental music theatre brought a wide range of new material
within the potential scope of a work, shifting their focus from the structure of musical
material to the structure of performance and thus broadening the conceptual possibilities
for exploration and inquiry. For performers, the genre is similarly rich. It demands that
the performer re-examine his or her role on stage to consider every moment of interaction
with the score, the instrument, and the other musicians as filled with purpose and
potential meaning. The sense of ‘performance’ begins to pervade the musician’s entire
relationship to his instrument, so that even the processes of study and rehearsal become

3
Paul Griffiths, A Concise History of Modern Music from Debussy to Boulez (London: Thames and
Hudson, 1978), 182.
 4

part of the work. My experience as a cellist performing works of instrumental theatre

leads me to conclude that some of the greatest challenges in these works are not physical,
but psychological.

I begin this paper by outlining the historical moment which gave rise to
instrumental music theatre, and I describe the work of key figures who shaped the genre
in the 50s and 60s. I consider some of the ways in which visual and acoustic material can
be combined and organized in a musical work by presenting a selection of representative
examples. Finally, I discuss the challenges which the genre presents, in terms of
preparation and execution, from a performer’s perspective. Throughout, I hope to convey
a sense of what instrumental music theatre is, and how it can be distinguished from other
musical genres and other forms of performance. It is a rich genre, capable of conveying
many levels of meaning simultaneously; in fact, each of the works which I mention
merits greater exploration than the scope of this paper permits. My intention in this
overview is only to offer a broad understanding of a fascinating body of work.
 5

2 CONTEXT

2.1 What is instrumental music theatre?

Instrumental music theatre is music that makes the drama of performance fully
intentional. Its material is both visual and acoustic, including the physical gestures of
instrumental performance as well as the many relationships between and among
musicians, audience members, the score, the stage, and, of course, the sound. It reclaims
the physicality—the actuality—of music-making, and is thus set against the idea of music
as something transcendent, best experienced through headphones or with eyes closed.

As a genre, instrumental music theatre developed in the post-World War II German

avant-garde. Theatrical elements also played an important role in the mid-century
experimental music of the United States, but these tended more towards performance art,
most obviously in the work of New York-based group, FLUXUS.4 Theatre work in
England, with its long tradition of vocal and choral music, tended towards sung theatre,
introducing an element of text and semantic meaning that eclipses the more abstract
theatre of instrumental music. Peter Maxwell Davies and Harrison Birtwistle provide
excellent examples of this kind of sung theatre in works including Eight Songs for a Mad
King (Davies) and Punch and Judy (Birtwistle).

In Germany, however, a movement took shape around 1960 that delved into the
theatricality of instrumental music. Composers like Schnebel, Kagel, Berio, Bussotti,
Ligeti, and Stockhausen began to explore ways to foreground the processes, rather than
the products, of music-making. Schnebel observes, “composition results, not from the
association of notes, sounds, and noises, but from the processes of producing them; it is
not just the final tonal result but its initial production that projects and prescribes. Thus
actions are formed.” He goes on, “in action composition, the relationships of the actors

4
This loosely organized, international group of artists, poets, and musicians explored many of John Cage’s
ideas about indeterminacy and the ubiquity of art (life as art). Their public events often implied a critique of
concert hall tradition, subverting conventional performance etiquette, as well as breaking down the
boundaries between audience and performer and encouraging a sense of unlimited creativity.
 6

must be determined—and to bring this about, something visible is necessarily

implicated.”5

Eric Salzman and Thomas Desi’s recent book, The New Music Theatre, reviews
and explores the overlap of music and theatre in various forms throughout the last
century. They consider all forms of music theatre, including those using voice and text
(contemporary expressions of opera and musical theatre).6 The scope of their work
therefore goes beyond that which I address in this paper. But their definition of music
theatre—in general—is nonetheless an excellent starting point for understanding
instrumental music theatre—in particular. It is:

theatre that is music driven (i.e., decisively linked to musical timing and
organization) where, at the very least, music, language, vocalization, and
physical movement exist, interact, or stand side by side in some kind of
equality but performed by different performers and in a different social
ambiance than works normally categorized as operas (performed by opera
singers in opera houses) or musicals (performed by theatre singers in
“legitimate” theatres).7

The authors point out a number of key characteristics which may be applied more
specifically to instrumental music theatre as follows:

1) First, music theatre is driven by musical principles. It is not theatre with musical
accompaniment or enhancement. Rather, it is music that is, in some fundamental way,
theatrical. This aspect of the genre is perhaps the most important in distinguishing
instrumental music theatre from musical theatre (sung) or performance art (acted).

French composer George Aperghis describes this principle in his 1993 article,
“Some Reflections on Musical Theatre,” as follows: music theatre “is equivalent to the
occupation of the theatrical temple by the abstract power of musical organization, and not

5
Schnebel, “Visible Music,” 284.
6
The use of text adds an element of semantics that has always separated vocal and instrumental music. This
holds true in contemporary works as well, although the line can be rather blurry. George Aperghis, for
instance, frequently includes voice in his ensembles, but he uses it to produces sounds rather than words,
removing one parameter of meaning (though not of symbolism). Mauricio Kagel, who rarely wrote for
voice, nonetheless uses words in some works which are considered “instrumental music theatre”; Sur scène
is one example. In this paper I discuss only strict instrumental music theatre, without the element of text.
7
Eric Salzman and Thomas Desi, The New Music Theatre: Seeing the Voice, Hearing the Body (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2008), 5.
 7

the reverse.”8 Thus, while narrative, characterizations, and symbolism may play an
important role in a work of instrumental music theatre, they emerge from the processes
and requirements of the music-making itself.

2) Second, music theatre articulates a number of elements equally: sound, physical

movement, and possibly vocalization or language. In other words, the visual and acoustic
aspects of performance exist in an intentional, articulated relationship. It is the
intentional—quite literally, composed—nature of the multiple aspects of performance
that distinguishes instrumental music theatre from instrumental music that is incidentally
dramatic or symbolic.

While the relationship between visual display and musical sound is part of any
performance, in instrumental music theatre it is articulated intentionally, so that visual
material becomes part of the work’s structure and meaning. The self-awareness which is
conveyed to each performance gesture, relationship, and sound brings to it a new level of
significance, one which is more complex than in other instrumental forms. There are
often multiple levels of structure and symbolism operating simultaneously: visual
material can contribute to the formal coherence of a work, while the acoustic landscape
may have its own formal structure. According to Aperghis, instrumental music theatre
deals with “physical or emotive energy resulting in violent confrontations between the
meaning of an image or a sound, and significance which is purely formal.”9

Mauricio Kagel comments on the creation of relationships in instrumental music

theatre in his article, “Qu’est-ce que le Théâtre Instrumentale?” He emphasizes the
importance of movement through space (with the implication that movement creates
visual display):

Movement is the fundamental element of instrumental theatre, and it is

therefore considered during musical composition: on stage, movement becomes
the essential distinction as opposed to the static nature of normal musical
performance. The use of movement must be considered equally as the creation
of a relationship between musical space and real space…10

8
George Aperghis,“Some Reflections on Musical Theatre,” Contemporary Music Review 8(1) (1993), 113.
9
Ibid., 113.
10
Kagel, “Qu’est-ce que le Théâtre Instrumental?” in Tam-Tam (Paris: Christian Bourgois Editeur, 1983),
107. (citation translated by the author)
 8

Karlheinz Stockhausen, another composer who has used movement, dance, and
theatre in many instrumental works, also comments on the relationship between physical
movement and musical sound. In a discussion of his theatre work, INORI, he describes
physical gesture in terms of dance: “The body of the gifted person, besides having all the
technique necessary for dancing, is able to “musicalize” the gesture in a visual form that
is truly valid. And this is dance. What I mean is that dance expresses musical structure in
a fundamental way. It expresses it for the joy of the eyes.”11

3) Third, the performers and performance space are, in some way, non-traditional—that
is, not traditionally theatre performers or spaces. In the case of instrumental music
theatre, performers are instrumentalists whose activities, while they may include some
unusual effects or requirements, nonetheless revolve around playing an instrument.
Moreover, even when the score requires them to move around the stage, to gesture, or to
vocalize, they are, first and foremost, musicians. Maintaining the musical character of
their roles is essential in order to avoid, as Kagel points out, “turning good musicians into
bad actors.”12

2.1.1 Examples

An example will do much to clarify the nature of the genre, and the clearest starting point
is 1960, with Mauricio Kagel’s first works of instrumental music theatre.13 Sonant
(1960), scored for guitar, harp, double bass and drums, was one of Kagel’s first musical-
theatrical works, dealing directly with the relationship between the visual and acoustic
aspects of performance. It takes the physical gestures of instrumental performance as its
subject matter—a study in sound and movement. Musical phrases and effects (with their
implied physical gestures) are notated in exquisite detail, but played extremely quietly
(‘as soft as possible’) or even, as in the movement, ‘pièce jouée, pièce touchée,’ only
mimed. The audience, watching gestures that at times become extremely complicated and
energetic, is struck by the disjunction between the visual and the aural effect, and the
piece becomes as much a dance performance as a musical work. Meanwhile, performers

11
Mya Tannenbaum, Conversations with Stockhausen (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), 58.
12
Kagel, “Qu’est-ce que le Théâtre Instrumental?” in Tam-Tam, 106.
13
Kagel is generally considered the “father” of the genre. I will consider his biography and work in depth
in section 2.2.3.
 9

must make sense of complicated instructions which imply that the score should be
approached with a sense of freedom—and yet it is so detailed that interpretive freedom is
impossible. The drama of the piece, therefore, comes from the tension and contradictions
that Kagel creates between the various parameters of the musical situation.

In “pièce de résistance,” another movement of Sonant, Kagel foregrounds not the

gestures, but the processes of music-making. Players cue one another, hum, grunt, and
otherwise demonstrate the practical details of musical interaction. They even read some
of the instructions in the score aloud, letting the audience into the secrets of musical
communication. The feeling is created that this is a rehearsal, and the audience has been
allowed backstage into the world of concert-making. A scene is implied, but it is simply a
scripting of the scene that is actually before us. In this way Kagel’s musicians are
required to act—but only to act as themselves.

The self-awareness that Kagel brings to the performing situation in Sonant is at the
heart of what marks it as a theatre piece. Kagel shared John Cage’s belief that every
moment of music-making is a moment of theatre, either potential or realized. “Theatre
begins at the moment when an individual is conscious of the intensity of his experience in
time, and that this intensity can be expressed; at this moment, the private aspect of
experience is translated into staged communication.”14 In other words, theatre is
grounded in the attention we give to experience, not in the nature of the experience itself.

While Sonant draws our attention to the gestures and physicality of music, other
works focus on the interaction between performers. Improvisation ajoutée, for organ, is
scored for three musicians: one organist and two assistants. The assistants pull the stops
of the organ, controlling timbre changes which do not follow the registral contour of the
music and therefore create an independent musical parameter. Even more importantly,
their struggles with the instrument—and with Kagel’s demanding (and rather arbitrary)
instructions—create much of the drama of the work. They labor over the instrument: they
clap, sing, and shout along with it as the organ rumbles along, all of this creating the

14
Kagel, “La Musique comme Théâtre,” Tam-Tam, 124. (citation translated by the author)
 10

impression of “players frantically struggling with an enormous machine that has

developed ‘a life of its own’ and is obviously out of control.”15

Meanwhile, the organist’s activities are totally overshadowed by all the fuss. Rather
than create a situation in which the musicians can work together to create a seamless
whole, Kagel has made it impossible for them to transcend their painful individuality.
Even a cursory look at the score, excerpts of which are reproduced in Figure 1, is enough
to see that the various parts are not working in harmony. The page itself presents an
overload of information, and the final result is distracting and somewhat chaotic. “Thus,
… the cooperation between the performers, or lack of it, is very much part of the piece,
the social dynamics of musical performance becoming part of the composition itself.”16

Works of instrumental theatre may emphasize the physicality of performance, the

rituals of the concert hall, or the relationships on stage, but whatever their focus, they
deal with an expanded definition of musical performance. The composer takes
responsibility not only for what the audience members hear, but for what they see and
how it is made. At mid-century, this dovetailed neatly with the aesthetic leanings of the
new generation. The post-war years were characterized by a craving for new models of
musical organization; this expressed itself in the analytical approach of the serialist
school. But some composers sought to fulfill the impulse for organization in ways that
could be more spontaneous and personal. A critical look at the physicality and theatre of
music-making offered an entirely new dimension to composers and musicians: the
context of performance itself. This, for many, was the new paradigm they needed. “Both
from institutions and from artists… there was a pressure to invent new unions of music
and theatre, while Cage’s work—especially the piano pieces he had written for Tudor in
the 1950s—had shown that no ‘new union’ was necessary, that all music is by nature
theatre, that all performance is drama.”17 And so, while it was Kagel who first articulated
the new genre within the world of concert music, it seems likely that, had he not
“invented” the instrumental music theatre, someone else would have.

15
Björn Heile, The Music of Mauricio Kagel (Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 2006), 43.
16
Ibid., 44.
17
Paul Griffiths, Modern Music and After (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 171.
 11

FIG. 1. Kagel, Improvisation ajoutée (pages 1 and 28). Score includes parts for
choir, organ, and two assistants. Notice the combination of traditional and
invented notation to indicate gestures.
 12

2.2 When/Where: The Genre/Historical Moment

2.2.1 Darmstadt and the Post-War Avant-Garde

After World War II, artists in Europe faced a shattered culture; more than museums,
musical instruments, and arts institutions had been destroyed. Assumptions about our
shared humanity, about the idea of progress and the possibilities of redemptive art had
been shaken, if not annihilated, by the bombs of the Axis and the Allied forces. In such a
changed world, societies sought new, or at least renewed, artistic paradigms. This need to
reinvent culture was particularly poignant in Germany, which in 1945 found itself
devastated, discredited, and faced with the task of total cultural reconstruction. It was
more than a challenge: it was a necessity for German culture to create something new in
order to redeem itself from recent history.

A significant institution that was founded to fill this cultural vacuum was the center
for new music at Darmstadt, founded by Wolfgang Steinecke one year after the end of the
war. The series of summer courses and congresses for composers at Darmstadt drew the
participation of many of the musical “greats” of mid-century Europe and soon became
one of the century’s most important centers for musical training and research.

Through the influence of Theodor Adorno, Messaien, Schoenberg, and the

emerging young composers Karlheinz Stockhausen and Pierre Boulez, the Darmstadt
“school” became associated early on with integral serialism, a method by which all the
elements of music (including dynamics, rhythm, and tone color as well as pitch) could be
organized. This new system satisfied the impulse to create a new kind of order, while
providing continuity with the efforts of the previous generation’s masters, Schoenberg
and Webern. But while the serial school took hold at Darmstadt, other possible directions
for music were also developing. The 1950’s saw the emergence of a wide array of
compositional methods and interests, including chance experiments and aleatoric
techniques, electronic music, “musiktheater,”18 graphic scores, and performance art. All
of these elements in the mid-century music scene made an appearance, however briefly,

18
Instrumental music theatre was first established as a genre in Germany; the word Musiktheater appeared
in connection with the work of Kurt Weill after WW I.
 13

at Darmstadt, and composers whose styles would later diverge radically rubbed shoulders
here.

Explorations into new paradigms of artistic expression were also unfolding in the
United States, where many of the same genres developed, but where experimental music
found more fertile ground. The American avant-garde began to move towards a radical
kind of performance art that defied categories. Musicians and composers showed a
responsiveness to the physicality of sound and highlighted the specificity of each
performance experience: no two performances can ever be the same. Concert rituals,
from the entrance of the musicians, to the ceremony of tuning, to tropes in the music
itself, were critiqued and subverted. Artists were pointing out that everything is theatre—
everything is staged. The paradigm of theatre, with its physicality, its rituals, and its role-
playing, came to stand for all kinds of performance.

This interest in the specific corporality of each moment of performance was not
limited to concert music. Artists in every field were moving away from narrative, away
from abstract formal structures, and closer towards the experiential details of their
material. The trend had begun in Europe at the beginning of the century, within the world
of theatre; it was now coming to a head in the world of music.

Just as music became more theatrical, so theatre had long overcome the
logocentricity of traditional drama, emphasizing both visual and (non-
linguistic) sonic elements. Dada, Italian Futurism, Russian Suprematism, the
theatre of the Absurd and The Living Theatre all strove in different ways for a
form of what is often called ‘total’ or ‘post-dramatic’ theatre, that is, a scenic
performance which is not primarily based on text and narrative but which
involves all senses and is experienced viscerally.19

2.2.2 John Cage

The degree of attention given to music’s theatricality in the 1950’s was due in part to the
work of John Cage. Cage’s work in the United States had moved increasingly toward the
dissolution of the boundary between life and art. As Salzman and Desi point out, “One of
Cage’s favorite aphorisms was that theatre is another word for life. We do not have to do
something new or different but merely perceive, look, and listen differently.”20 Cage felt

19
Heile, The Music of Mauricio Kagel, 34.
20
Salzman and Desi, The New Music Theatre, 124.
 14

that, rather than structure or comment on life, art (and specifically music) should simply
portray it. He described music as "an affirmation of life – not an attempt to bring order
out of chaos nor to suggest improvements in creation, but simply a way of waking up to
the very life we're living."21 Cage’s works of the time (most famously 4’33”) create
musical compositions out of traditionally non-musical sounds and events, organized,
often literally, by the roll of the dice. Rather than working to “hold together” the
components of performance, he preferred to create situations in which elements could
simply “be together.” He hoped that by portraying life-like situations on stage he could
remind his audiences to approach every moment of existence from an aesthetic point of
view.

Water Music, for solo piano, was Cage’s first theatre piece, in the sense of theatre
as “something which engages both the eye and the ear.”22 It was written in 1952 and first
performed in May at the New School for Social Research; later during that year it was
performed at Black Mountain College. In the summer of 1958, Cage performed Water
Music at Darmstadt for an audience that included Stockhausen, Kagel, and Boulez. His
visit to Darmstadt came at the end of a close—although brief—friendship with Boulez.
Indeed, Cage would both influence and alienate many of the leading composers of the
German avant-garde. A look at Water Music may explain why.

The first notable characteristic of the score is its size. Although it could easily fit
into a small, conventionally sized piano score, Cage’s instructions are that the large
sheets (the score is published as a folio of individual pages) be mounted onto a piece of
cardboard that is 34 inches by 55 inches. During the performance, the cardboard should
be visible both to the pianist and to the public, allowing the audience to follow along and
to anticipate what will happen next.23 According to Cage, “the first thing that could be
theatrical is what the pianist is looking at—the score. Normally nobody sees it but him,

21
John Cage, “Experimental Music,” Address to the Music Teachers National Association (Chicago: 1957,
http://academic.evergreen.edu/a/arunc/compmusic/cage1/cage1.pdf).
22
Michael Kirby and Richard Schechner, “An Interview with John Cage” (Tulane Drama Review, 10
(1965), 50-72) 65.
23
Fetterman, John Cage’s Theatre Pieces, 56.
 15

and since we’re involved with seeing now [because this music is about hearing and
seeing], we make it large enough so that the audience can see it.”24

The score consists of a series of 41 actions, which are laid out according to precise
timings (notated in minutes and seconds). In addition to a grand piano, “three whistles are
required: water warbler, siren and duck (plastic) whistle, obtainable in toy or five and
dime stores; a bowl of water; two receptacles for receiving and pouring water; a radio; a
pack of playing cards; a wooden stick; and (four) objects for preparing a piano (e.g.,
bolts, screws, rubber strips, etc.).”25 The actions include playing chords, plucking inside
the piano, pouring water, blowing the whistles, turning the radio off and on and adjusting
its tuning and volume, shuffling the cards inside the piano, and placing the wooden stick
inside the piano.

FIG. 2. Cage, Water Music. First page of score.

Clearly, the visual aspect of Water Music is as important as the sounds; and perhaps
most important is the relationship between the two: at moments a disjunction, and at
others a complementarity between physical motion and its resultant sound. The most
dramatic actions—pouring water from one receptacle into another, or shuffling cards into
the piano—create the least amount of sound, while the potentially noisiest sound, the
24
Kirby and Schechner, “An Interview with John Cage,” 60.
25
John Cage, Water Music (New York: Henmar Press, Inc.,1960).
 16

radio, is triggered by the simple flip of a switch. The way in which the performer moves
from one task to another is also part of the piece; not just the movements, but their speed
and style are dictated by Cage’s detailed timings.

FIG. 3. Cage: Water Music, p.2

Pianist Margaret Leng Tan, one of the early (and most frequent) performers of the
piece, explains this aspect of rehearsal and performance:

I think of the piece as being highly choreographed—it is what I call “pianistic

choreography.” I approach it as theatre, where I feel I am acting it as much as
playing it. It involves a total use of the body.
For instance, pouring water [at 4.4875 and 5.5525 in the score] is not as easy as
it seems. The first time you have to pour fast and the second time slower. I first
practiced it with a stop-watch at the kitchen sink. It probably looked very
peculiar to see me practice, but you have to do that, because it’s locked into a
time-frame.
By working this way I discovered that the reason Cage asks the performer to
use a stop-watch, and the reason that he has occurrences at a quarter of three-
quarters of a second, is because it forces you to move very rhythmically, and
very precisely.26

26
Fetterman, John Cage’s Theatre Pieces, 55.
 17

Although the actions being performed are everyday ones, the audience is directed
to consider the sights and sounds that they produce as aesthetic events: first of all,
because this is a musical performance in a concert setting, and second because the
actions, guided by Cage’s timings, are so stylized.

Works like Water Music were typical of Cage’s work at the time, and its
performance was profoundly influential in Europe. He pushed the boundaries of musical
composition beyond what most of his Darmstadt audience was interested in pursuing. But
his general direction, towards the visual, gestural, and social elements of performance,
represented an important trend. For the first time, composers were trying to compose
these elements as well as notes and sound.

2.2.3 Mauricio Kagel

Cage’s work in the States took him increasingly towards performance art, past that blurry
boundary where performance is no longer organized musically (considering my initial
definition of instrumental music theatre), no longer really rooted in instrumental
performance. In Germany, composers interested in the theatre of music were fascinated
by Cage, but most of them ultimately chose to work from within the framework of
traditional musical roles. Perhaps not coincidentally, it was a composer with ties to both
continents who is widely regarded as the founder of the genre of instrumental music
theatre. Argentine-born Mauricio Kagel was shaped equally by the experimentalism of
the Americas and the conservativism of German tradition, giving him a unique
perspective on both.

One could not invent a character more suited to articulate the schizophrenia of
musical life in the 50s and 60s than Kagel, with his colorful background and omnivorous
approach to aesthetic endeavor. According to Kagel scholar Björn Heile, “the importance
of Kagel’s formative years in Argentina [he moved to Germany at the age of twenty-five]
can hardly be overemphasized as they provided him with the backbone of his aesthetic
beliefs and the hallmarks of his later style.”27 Indeed, these early years were characterized

27
Heile, The Music of Mauricio Kagel, 15.
 18

by a heterogeneous mix of influences and interests which continued to surface in his

composition throughout his long life.

Kagel was born into a family of Russian Jewish émigrés, in a South American city
filled with Germans and Russians, at a time of growing Argentine nationalism. This mix
of cultures yielded a wealth of musical, linguistic, and philosophical materials that
coexist throughout Kagel’s oeuvre. Consider that among his early works were pieces for
bandoneon (Pandorasbox, 1960), a serialist string sextet (Sexteto de cuerdas, 1957), and
a choral piece (Anagrama, 1958) that calls on a mix of German, Spanish, Italian, and
French languages.

This last piece, although written using serialist techniques, evokes a kind of
fantastical Borgesian anarchy of sound and meaning “in an ocean of incomprehensible
babbling,”28 undermining the integrity and control of the compositional system. Indeed,
the irony implied by his use of serialism, a system of coherence, to create “multiplicity,
heterogeneity and chaos,”29 reflects a kind of critical, aesthetic distance which Kagel
maintained throughout his life. He liked to juxtapose styles without identifying himself
with them. He was, in fact, a connoisseur of style and genre. Kagel studied music theory
in Buenos Aires with a student of Webern, and he was well-schooled in twelve-tone
technique and other current compositional techniques. He had been exposed from an
early age to the music of the Viennese school, as well as the early German avant-garde,
the neo-classicist work of Stravinsky and Milhaud, and the experimentalism of Cowell,
Varèse, and even Cage.30 Despite this training, Kagel never subscribed to the
eurocentrism that often characterized the avant-garde in Germany. He described his own
attitude as one of “intellectual anti-chauvinism . . . since the active figures in the
Argentine intelligentsia, which I joined as a youth, do not see a clear distinction between
national culture and European culture ("Melos", no. 10, 1966).”31

The heterogeneity of Kagel’s early cultural influences was not only a product of
when and where he was born; it was also an expression of his inclinations. Although his

28
Ibid., 24.
29
Ibid., 24.
30
Ibid., 9.
31
<http://www.analogartsensemble.net/2007/03>, 12 May, 2009.
 19

musical studies began at age thirteen, and his compositions were performed as early as
1950, Kagel did not decide to focus on composition until he received a scholarship to
study in Germany in 1957. His university studies in Buenos Aires had included literature
and philosophy, and he was active in various projects in visual media, working as the
photography and film editor of Jorge Luis Borges’ journal, nueva vision. The young
Kagel even participated as an extra in films by SADE, Argentina’s premier film studio
(which happened to be next door to his family home); later he participated in the
“Cinemateca Argentina” both as a score composer and a director.32

The complexity of Kagel’s background was re-emphasized when he left Argentina,

adding one more layer to the composition of his cultural and artistic identity. Moreover, it
confirmed his situation as an eternal outsider: a situation which perfectly suited his
critical tendencies. Kagel comments on this position as follows:

I was regarded there as a European, and here [Europe] as a South American.

That’s a paradox that I’m very fond of these days, because of its peculiarity.
Actually I feel a little foreign everywhere – not fundamentally, but enough to
talk about “latent alienation”. And that creates a beneficial distance from some
things.33

Cologne

When Kagel moved to Cologne in 1957, his intention was to remain for just a year of
study. But he was quickly integrated into the Darmstadt circle and would remain in
Cologne for the rest of his life. Kagel arrived with a scholarship for work and study in the
electronic studio of Westdeutscher Rundfunk; this work eventually resulted in the
electronic piece, Transición II. But over the course of the year, his time was increasingly
spent outside the studio, composing, attending and giving lectures. He eventually taught
at both the Darmstadt Summer Courses and the Cologne Musikhochschule. He was an
important addition to the community around Stockhausen (Heile calls it a “club” and a
“notoriously sectarian and closed circle”34); already in 1959 Stockhausen used Kagel’s
Transición II as an example of music and graphics in a radio talk. And at the 1960 ISCM

32
Heile, The Music of Mauricio Kagel, 11.
33
Max Nyfeller, “Interview with Mauricio Kagel,” translated by Richard Toop
(http://www.beckmesser.de/neue_musik/kagel/int-e.html, 19 April, 2007).
34
Heile, The Music of Mauricio Kagel, 18.
 20

concert which included Kagel’s Anagrama, it was this piece, and not Stockhausen’s
Kontakte, which was the talk of the town.

John Cage’s ‘Darmstadt summer’ came just months after Kagel’s move to Cologne,
and his lectures on non-intention and chance fell upon ready ears. As evidenced in his
early works, Kagel harbored some skepticism about the inflexibility of serialism (indeed,
he harbored skepticism about every strict system). He notes in his reports that Cage’s
work in chance technique, the study of time, and his insistence on interpretive freedom
would move music to address “problems of a greater significance than the structuring of a
couple of twelve-note rows.”35

One might draw a parallel between Kagel’s background and that of his American
contemporary; both came relatively late to the decision to “be composers,” both worked
actively in a variety of media, and both clearly saw their work as participating in a larger
process of expression and critique, with composition as a means to this end. Both,
moreover, were sympathetic to a kind of social and political anarchy and were extremely
critical of the hierarchy and imposed order in contemporary musical culture. Heile’s
description of Kagel’s approach could be applied equally to Cage: “one of the most
fundamental of [the qualities which unify Kagel’s work] is what could be called
‘composition as a means of intellectual inquiry’: in his work, music is not so much
conceived of as autonomous objective structure, but used to comment on society and
culture.”36 In other words, the work is a means to participate in the broader aesthetic and
social conversation.

Another resonance between Cage’s work and Kagel’s developing style was the
importance of gesture, of physicality: “Cage was concerned with action.”37 Kagel was
clearly among the members of the audience who were impressed by Water Music, and the
importance of action in music would feed directly into his ideas about instrumental
theatre. Still, Kagel’s interest in Cage and the performance art of Fluxus (Nam June Paik
lived in Cologne, and the city was for a time a center of activity for the group) was
tempered by his fine, if bemused, sensibility as a composer. While Cage increasingly

35
Ibid., 17.
36
Ibid., 3.
37
Paul Griffiths, Modern Music and After, 137.
 21

emphasized an erasure of the composer’s intent, Kagel was consistently interested in

control. “For Kagel the perfectionist, who believes in artifice and accuracy of execution
even of the seemingly most bizarre actions, many happenings must have appeared simply
amateurish, pedestrian and willful.”38 Rather than undermining musical tradition, Kagel
was interested in critiquing it from within.

FIG. 4. Maurice Kagel: Match

Match

Kagel’s Match, für drei Spieler, (the “spieler” are two cellists and one percussionist), is
considered the iconic example of instrumental theatre.39 Kagel manages to imply an
entire scenario—a pseudo-athletic competition between two virtuosos—simply by
38
Heile, The Music of Mauricio Kagel, 35.
39
Ibid., 46.
 22

writing music with a keen sense of timing and visual effect. Two cellists are seated on
low podiums at either side of the stage, with the percussionist in between. They are
clearly in a competition of virtuosity, and they exchange wild passages of technical
stunts. The piece opens with Bartók pizzicati that sound like bouncing balls, implying a
comparison to a game of table tennis, but otherwise none of the gestures refer directly to
non-musical action. The cellists’ choreography, minus a few details (as when one cellist
seems to fall asleep), is entirely related to the production of sound, and a narrative or
descriptive aspect of the piece is only implied. Similarly, although the percussionist
clearly plays the role of the referee—even signaling new entries—he or she nonetheless
remains first and foremost a musician, playing percussion instruments with the gestures
that they require. Kagel is thus careful to imply a drama without staging it.

Match can be considered according to its two parameters: one strictly musical, and
one, theatrical. Considered musically, we see a motivic development as the instruments
respond to, compete with, and provoke one another. The technical prowess of all three is
impressive, and the physical gestures required by the music fascinating. Considered
theatrically, a situation unfolds in which these various competitions and interactions
make narrative sense. Match is quite episodic, and it is thus narrative flow—rather than
musical logic—which creates an overarching unity to the piece. In this sense the
semantics (i.e., the theatre) of Match does more than add to the humor and interest; it
plays a structural role.

Kagel scholar Björn Heile explains the relationship between the musical and
theatrical dimensions of Match as follows:

This exemplifies the nature of Kagel’s instrumental theatre: musical

performance and theatrical effect do not represent distinct levels but constitute
an integral unity. The players do not switch between musical performance and
theatrical role play (as tends to happen in some—usually less convincing—
forms of experimental music theatre), but carry out activities which are
characteristic of both and which are plausible on either level.40

Thus, Kagel takes the natural, visual theatre of music-making, which Cage had
extracted and exaggerated, and develops it into narrative. Like Water Music, Match is a

40
Ibid., 47.
 23

work in which gesture, action, and sound are conceived together, and the piece as a whole
emerges from the acoustic and visual dimensions in combination. Cage’s description of
theatre41 applies beautifully to Kagel’s work: the elements of instrumental music theatre
are not new; rather it is the intention with which they are put together—and the attention
which they evoke—that establishes a new genre.

FIG. 5. Kagel: Match. Penultimate page of score: notice the combination of

words, drawings, and notation used together.

Influence

Kagel’s early work in the genre helped to nudge many in the Darmstadt circle towards a
post-modern view of the performing situation, one which defied the highly
intellectualized approach of serialism. Even Stockhausen was drawn to the possibilities of
theatre in composition and performance. (Still, Stockhausen’s approach to physicality in
his music is characteristically controlled, and he incorporates it as another element to be
structured, rather than using it to question or to undermine musical form.) Other
composers such as Schnebel, Bussotti, and Berio were drawn by the genre’s tendency to
deconstruct and expand musical meaning. A somewhat later generation of composers,
influenced by Kagel, emerged in Paris ten years later, and their work continues to find
expression in projects that resemble experimental theatre as much as they resemble

41
“One of Cage’s favorite aphorisms was that theatre is another word for life. We do not have to do
something new or different but merely perceive, look, and listen differently.” Salzman and Desi, The New
Music Theater, 124.
 24

composed music. This group included Aperghis, Drouet, and Globokar, all of whom
continue to work with theatricality and corporality in some form.

Kagel thus developed a critical, thoughtful, and even skeptical approach to concert
music in his work, one which provided his colleagues with another entry point into
concert culture. His approach, which underlies instrumental music theatre, was grounded
in the particulars and processes of music making, allowing no relationships or rituals to
go unexamined. It influenced contemporary music to such an extent that no composer can
now entirely ignore the visual elements of their music; theatrical elements are now a
common and accepted element in composition, one parameter among many to be
considered and related to the work as a whole.
 25

3 STRUCTURE AND MEANING

3.1 Organizing Musical Material

Once brought into the foreground, the visual parameter of a work introduces new material
to be organized and brought into relation to its sound world. Either of these two aspects
may be primary, or they may emerge from one another, as in Match. Composers may
present material in one of the following ways:

1) Gesture of a Sound: Theatrical interest is found in pointing out the physical

gesture associated with a sound.
2) Sound of a Gesture: Gesture is primary. Sound is the by-product of a desired
physical gesture.
3) Creation of Narrative: The relation between the physical and acoustic is
problematized or highlighted.
4) Added Theatrical Elements: Sound is primary, enhanced by physical gesture or
staging effects.

3.1.1 Gesture of a Sound

We are naturally aware of the visual quality of music in any live performance. As
Schnebel points out, “Watching how someone performs music has long been appreciated
and was even necessary in some cases. Some crescendos are better experienced from the
espressivo face of the musician than from what comes to the ears. In other cases, it would
be better to close your eyes and just listen.”42 Attending to the gestures created in music
making is, therefore, an important aspect of an instrumentalist’s work. Performers must
consider and respond to the expressive content of a piece of music, choreographing their
motions accordingly.

Consider the final note of a piece. While the notation may only indicate duration
and dynamics, a performer must also decide how long to hold the ‘freeze’ moment of
stillness at the end, and at what speed to drop the pose. This last moment is important

42
Dieter Schnebel, in Salzman and Desi, The NewMusic Theater, 149-150.
 26

enough that some composers include a fermata—or even a specific timing—over the final
bar line of a piece, directing players how long to hold. At the end of George Crumb’s Vox
balaenae, for Three Masked Players, the composer goes even further. The final musical
gesture of the piece is repeated four times, in a kind of “fade-out” effect. Not only does
Crumb specify how long the musicians should wait between each repetition (and at the
very end), but he actually writes out a final iteration to be mimed. Thus the fade-out is
both an acoustic and a visual phenomenon.

FIG. 6. Crumb: Vox Balaenae. Final measures indicate an acoustic “fade-out,”

until the action of playing is only pantomimed.

This kind of attention to the visual became increasingly common at mid-century in

part because of the contemporary interest in new kinds of sounds and sound production.
Composers were increasingly interested in timbre as an element—and even an organizing
principle—of music. They experimented with new instruments, new combinations, and
new playing techniques. And this expanded vocabulary of extended techniques naturally
implied an expansion of the visual experience of music. New techniques required new
physical gestures, and they were often gestures which drew attention by virtue of their
unfamiliarity.

In the 1960’s, for example, Helmut Lachenmann began to develop his “musique
concrète instrumentale,” a kind of instrumental all-sound music. Lachenmann treats all of
the noises and processes involved in creating instrumental sound as compositional
material; this includes not only breath and gesture, but even the extraneous noises
produced by tension, strain, or simply touch on an instrument. Sounds may range from
the inaudible (hence, purely visual), to the most extreme, and the physical energy behind
 27

them helps to generate expressive form. Thus in his work, musical meaning is found in
the energetic drama of sound production.

Lachenmann’s Pression, for solo cello, demands an entirely new set of physical
gestures. In fact, its extended technique is so “extended” that it changes our ideas about
what a cello is, and what cello playing looks like. Even the score is unfamiliar: it is
essentially a pictograph, indicating how and where the cellist should strike, rub, or scrape
the instrument (musicologist Paul Griffiths calls it a “score for action”43). Figure 7
demonstrates two examples from Lachenmann’s score: on the first page, the cellist uses
the position of the left hand on the fingerboard to create sound, so the drawing indicates
this axis. Later in the piece, as depicted in Figure 8, sound is evoked by using the bow on
different parts of the body and bridge of the instrument, so the drawings depict the
vertical aspect of the instrument. With these visual instructions, the score is much less
symbolic than traditional notation: using time as the linear variable, Lachenmann draws
for the performer what he must do.

FIG. 7. Lachenmann: Pression. Excerpt from the score includes diagrams and
invented notation.
43
Griffiths, Modern Music and After, 198.
 28

FIG. 8. Lachenmann: Pression. This excerpt demonstrates three different

orientations of the cello, as required by each playing technique. The first staff
depicts an overhead view of the instrument; the second staff indicates hand
placement on the body of the cello; and the third shows the bridge in profile.

While Lachenmann would never describe his music as theatrical, it is nonetheless

profoundly visual. As Schnebel comments, “the visible aspect added to the acoustic by
the performance is achieved when the instrumental action deviates from the ordinary and
becomes worth watching. This in turn enriches the acoustic aspect in that sounds are
incorporated that had not heretofore been admissible.”44 In this way, extended technique
offered one approach to visual interest for the avant-garde.

Another possibility was to highlight or exaggerate familiar gestures. This

characterizes Kagel’s work: “Kagel was never content with the optical duplication of the
44
Schnebel, “Visible Music,” 284.
 29

acoustical events; rather, he exaggerated the gestures inherent in music, until they
acquired unexpected aspects. Thus in Match a musical confrontation takes on an athletic
character.”45 Indeed, in certain movements of Sonant, Kagel highlights the visual aspect
of performance to such an extent that it overtakes the interest of the sound-world of the
piece. Not only is physical gesture exaggerated, but the sound is completely muted. In
this case, gesture is primary.

Yet another approach to the visual world of musical performance is offered by the
work of George Crumb. Crumb is known for the atmospheric, almost ritualistic quality of
his works. While his primary consideration has always been the exploration of timbre,
Crumb’s scores also indicate a keen sense of the visual. For example, many of the
extended techniques which he employs require large gestures, choreographed at a pace
that is slow and suspended. He uses pauses and long, held notes that add to the ritualistic
quality of the musicians’ gestures. In some pieces, players must cross the stage to play
crotales, glasses, or bells—adding a kind of processional element to the music. And so
even in works that are not programmatic or referential, the gestural dimension of the
music seems weighty and symbolic.

3.1.2 Sound of a Gesture

Perhaps the most organic process of connecting sound and gesture, at least for a
performer, is to discover the physical implication of a sound as it is created; the sound of
the instrument is the starting point. This is the approach used by composers in the
examples above. But the process can also be reversed: when the composer’s interest is
primarily visual, the acoustic vocabulary of a work may be a consequence, a side-effect,
rather than an end in itself. In this case, sound may well be indeterminate, and it emerges
passively from gesture.

In an interview with Jean-Yves Bosseur, Kagel is asked whether he could imagine

a visual situation between musicians without concerning himself with the acoustic result.
His answer is succinct:

Naturally. Composing with different materials does not oblige one always to
think about sound. I think that one can compose with everything; situations

45
Ibid., 286.
 30

between musicians are eminently musical in a theatric sense; one can compose
these situations without a fixed, pre-existing musical result.

Kagel goes on to point out that examples of ‘conceptual’ pieces, in which the
composer’s idea about the work preceded any ideas about the acoustic result, abound in
music history; he cites works of Schumann and Liszt as his examples.

[These works] pertain in reality to theatric events: the situation exists in the
imagination of the composer, but not yet the sounds; the music which results
can vary the theatric situation; the two facts can exist independently of one
another.46

We have already seen two examples of this in Water Music and Match. In Water
Music, Cage scores the performer’s actions. The sounds produced are secondary, and
they are, moreover, quite imprecise. Cage was most interested in highlighting the theatre
of music-making, not in controlling the result. Kagel was much less laissez-faire with the
acoustic results of his writing, but in a work like Match he is clearly motivated by the
visual aspect of the effects, and he only chooses gestures which support the implied
program of the piece.

Björn Heile describes Kagel’s approach as follows:

Rather than starting with a musical idea, such as a melody or a chord sequence,
Kagel’s sketches from the time reveal that he normally begins by charting the
material available—studying the instruments, cataloguing and ordering playing
techniques—before proceeding to invent music that can be produced in these
ways. Thus, the physicality and kinesis of playing is not a mere means to
produce music but is central to it. This results in a new visual dimension to the
music-making, as many instrumental actions are chosen for their kinetic and
visual effects as well as for their acoustic results.47

In his 1971 work, Con voce, the gesture of music-making is separated completely
from its normal, acoustic effect. The score specifies how melodic fragments of the piece
should be rehearsed in terms of dynamics and effects (muting, ponticello, vibrato,
fluttertongue, etc); performers are instructed to study how to choreograph their actions
for each effect. But this instrumental version of the score is never actually performed. In
performance, the players mime the physical gestures of playing, while vocalizing in

46
Kagel, “La Musique Comme Théâtre,” in Tam-Tam, 125.
47
Heile, The Music of Mauricio Kagel, 35.
 31

imitation of the sounds that their pantomimed gestures should normally create:
“Throughout the piece, no instrumental sound is produced, only oral events (singing,
humming, whistling etc.) which are synchronized with the mute movements on the
instruments.”48 As in Sonant, Kagel’s choices for the effects must have originated in a
sense of the visual drama which they will create.

The balance between eye and ear can move even further towards the eye; it does so
in the instrumental theatre works of Dietrich Schnebel. Schnebel’s material in his series
of Visible Music scores is not the acoustic result; rather, it is the relationships established
between conductor, instrumentalist, and audience: relationships made visible by physical
gestures and facial expressions. Unlike Water Walk and Match, these scores are open to
interpretation. Schnebel does not provide a key for the performers to interpret the dots,
lines, and squiggles—thus indicating that any number of interpretations (and even
possible orientations for the score!) is possible.49

In Visible Music I, for conductor and instrumentalist, Schnebel sets up an

interaction between the two performers. It may be antagonistic, supportive, independent,
or some combination of these. In the notes to the score, Schnebel indicates how the two
might choose to read the score, and also how they should rehearse, both independently
and together. Essentially, he sets up a situation in which they will relate, and the piece is
created by the unfolding of that situation. As they attempt to play through the score
together, the performers make their relationship visible to the audience through their
choice of gestures, expressions, and overall attitude. Meanwhile, the acoustic dimension
of this work is left indeterminate.

48
Kagel, Con Voce, für 3 stumme Spieler (Frankfurt: Edition Peters, 1972), 6.
49
See Figure 9.
 32

FIG. 9. Schnebel, Visible Music I

 33

Another work from Schnebel’s Visible Music series is nostalgie (1962): an even
more radical departure from a traditional score. This work is scored for conductor alone,
and in performance all that the audience hears is the performer’s breathing. The notation
indicates only gestures and affect, thereby directing all of the dimensions of a musical
work except for the acoustic dimension. It is like a distillation of expressive content, a
“theater about music.”50

Thus, whether gesture or sound is primary, these works treat the two parameters
as related but separable. The result is a kind of composition whose parameters include
every perceivable element of performance.

3.1.3 Narrative and Semantics

Many of the works mentioned above highlight the visual in a new way, either
intentionally or as a natural result of the playing techniques they employ. When the visual
and acoustic aspects of music are set alongside one another in this way, their relation can
become problematic; that is, they become separable parameters which may coexist in
harmony or in opposition. The more that this relationship becomes the focus of the work,
the more possibilities for semantic meaning and even narrative develop.

I have already mentioned Kagel’s Con voce as an example of a work which

highlights gesture over sound. The composer does more than separate the two, however.
He uses the disjunction between visual and acoustic elements to provoke a new sense of
meaning to the events. Why are they separated? What different meaning does the visual
carry now? What is Kagel telling us with this bizarre juxtaposition? These are the
questions that imply the semantics, or narrative, of the piece. The feeling that there is
something symbolic at work in Con voce is born out by the dedication on the title page to
Kagel’s Czech friends after the Russian invasion of Prague in 1968. Scored for “three
mute players,” the implication is that, like the performers on stage, his friends’ artistic
voices have been silenced. Thus, while the mechanics of the work indicate a
characteristic fascination with the visual effect of music (and in this sense it closely

50
Salzman and Desi, The New Music Theater, 150.
 34

resembles Sonant), there is also a symbolic level of meaning to the work beyond the
aesthetic experience of eye and ear.

In Les Guetteurs de Sons, Georges Aperghis depicts another scene that begs to be
interpreted. The work is an exploration of the mechanics of sound: three percussionists sit
side by side, each with a drum, each trying to gain balance with their instruments even as
the patterns of sound and silence seem to have a will of their own. “The mechanism is
thus presented: silence – desire to produce a sound – transmission to the arms, the hands,
the fingers...”51 While at moments the mechanism functions normally, at other moments
something interrupts the connection between the will (the “desire to produce a sound”)
and the body or the instrument. Here, as in Con voce and Sonant, the visual and acoustic
dimensions of the work exist in an unstable relationship. Some of the musician’s gestures
produce the expected sounds; others are mimed, and still others are vocalized. Although
theatre is not added and no program is provided, the subject of the work clearly comes
out of the problematic relationship between sound and gesture.

In Vinko Globokar’s solo percussion work, ?Corporel, the public is provoked not
by a disharmony in the work, but rather by its instrumentation. The percussionist plays
his or her own body; vocal sounds supplement the percussive and rubbing noises that are
created. The use of the body gives the work a symbolic power from the outset, and the
experience of watching a performance feels both personal and difficult. The performer
seems trapped in his own body, and both the gestures and the sounds produced imply
violence and desperation. Performed live, the piece prompts us to read into it, to react not
only to what we hear and what we see, but to what it might mean.

51
Georges Aperghis, Program Notes to “Atelier cosmopolite: Parler/toucher,” 28 March, 2007 (Archipel,
Festival des musiques d’aujourd’hui. Geneva, Switzerland, March-April 2007,
http://www.archipel.org/archive/site07/prog/note070328-1.pdf, consulted 8 February 2010). (citation
translated by the author)
 35

FIG. 10. Globokar’s ?Corporel, performed by Steven Schick, percussion.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnxd1ko9QTE

Stockhausen’s Harlekin is a less disturbing example; in this case the theatre of the
work explores the genre’s potential for dance and humor. The piece is a 45-minute long
unraveling of one melody, developed in variation form and played by a single clarinetist
who represents Harlequin, the many-faceted character from Italian commedia dell’arte.
The clarinetist’s every gesture is strictly scripted in Stockhausen’s score, which gives
instructions not only for movements, expressive affect, and facial expressions, but even
for the manner and timing of the clarinetist’s breathing. In Figure 11, we can see the
detail with which Stockhausen notates the performer’s movements. Performers who have
worked with the composer also describe his tightly controlled attitude toward the work,
the sense that these motions must be exactly as the composer wished.
 36

FIG. 11. Karlheinz Stockhausen: Harlekin

As the melodic line transforms to depict Harlekin’s various roles (Dream

Messenger, Playful Constructor, Enamoured Lyric, etc), the gestures and dance also
change character, so that the performer quite literally embodies the score to tell the story
of the Messenger and his music. In her 2009 doctoral thesis, “Theatrical Elements and
their Relationship with Music in Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Harlekin, for Clarinet,”
Katarzyna Marczak describes another transformation which takes place in the
relationship between dance and music over the course of the work. The first movement
presents a clear melodic line, embellished by gestures and physical flourishes: here the
musical material is central. But in later movements, where the musical material becomes
more complex, Marczak argues that Stockhausen is using physical gesture to give
coherence to the work. Rather than following the music aurally, the audience is able to
follow it visually. At times the physical movement is therefore the more important aspect
of the work, admitting of less interpretive flexibility than the music. Marczak describes
this shift as follows:
 37

Over the course of HARLEKIN we can observe a changing relationship

between the music and the supplementary gestures. Stockhausen obviously
intended his piece to be clear, not mysterious, and wanted the audience to be
able to follow the narrative. Thus, where the musical train of thought gets
obscured, the composer uses gesture to clarify the scenario and, as a result,
sound and gesture have complementary sense-making functions and either one
or the other take the predominant role at various stages of the performance.52

FIG. 12. Suzanne Stephens as the Harlekin, 1976.

http://home.swipnet.se/sonoloco7/stockhausen/25.html

All of these works admit the possibility that the visual aspect of music can at times
lead the drama, and that an instrumentalist can actually become a dancer-actor. At the
same time, they remain fundamentally works about music and music-making. This
distinction keeps works of instrumental music theatre within the realm of musical

52
Katarina Marczak, “Theatrical Elements and their Relationship with Music in Karlheinz Stockhausen’s
Harlekin, for Clarinet,” (DMA Thesis, University of British Columbia: 2009), 73.
 38

performance as opposed to performance art.53 According to Kagel, the elements in

instrumental music theatre come together not just in the process of creating sound, but
actually to illustrate music visually and formally.

What Kagel attempted was not to stage the action, but the music, going so far
as to claim that ‘it is not enough to make musical processes visible, but musical
forms should in their visual realization revert back to music.’ In this spirit, the
principle of the instrumental theatre that all sound production must be part of
the action (and, to a lesser extent, vice versa) is strictly adhered to…54

In other words, the physical processes and acoustic dimensions of instrumental

playing are not just the tools used to create narrative, social critique, and philosophical
enquiry: they are the subject of that enquiry. Instrumental music theatre works by
composers like Crumb, Kagel, Stockhausen, Schnebel, and Aperghis—to name a few—
are intimately engaged with the structures, traditions, and processes of music-making.
While broader social or philosophical critiques in their oeuvres do emerge, they exist at a
second level of meaning in the works, unfolding from the way in which these composers
consciously wield and participate in tradition.

3.1.4 Theatre Added

We have seen that theatricality is an innate aspect of music that can be highlighted by a
composer’s attention to the visual. But theatrical effects can also be added to a work as a
kind of enrichment or commentary. Most of the works referred to here include, at some
point, instructions about the musicians’ attitudes toward their instruments or to one
another, instructions about lighting, how to enter, how to move. These instructions
address the practical situation of placing a musician on stage before an audience: they do
not result from sound production, but they are nonetheless essential to the portrayal of the
work as a whole.

53
I would argue that this distinction also indicates an important difference between the genre of
instrumental music theatre and the majority of John Cage’s works. Cage was adamant in defining himself
as a musician and composer, but there is something overly deliberate about his self-determination. Given
his biography and output it would be fair to say that he was an artist and thinker who decided to use music
as his palette for expression and commentary. The direct impact that his work had on all branches of the
performing arts in the 50s and 60s indicates that his work appealed to something fundamental to
performance, rather than something specific to music.
54
Heile, The Music of Mauricio Kagel, 58.
 39

Elements of staging, although in some sense external to the dramatic and musical
material, can, once added, illuminate that material. Consider the lighting and staging
instructions at the end of Crumb’s Night of the Four Moons. The work commemorates
the Apollo 13 mission, using poetry by Garcia Lorca that Crumb set for mezzo-soprano,
with a small ensemble including banjo, cello, and percussion.55 The cellist ends the work
with a long A harmonic, like a silvery beam of moonlight that has fallen across the stage,
played in eerie stillness. This central event is highlighted by the ceremonious exit of the
other musicians, one by one, and by lighting instructions, which illuminate the lone cellist
and bathe the rest of the stage in darkness. Staging highlights the drama of the moment.

Crumb’s Vox balaenae has a similar ceremonial quality. His notes to this score do
more than instruct; they explain the intention and symbolism of the stage directions as
follows:

Vox Balaenae (Voice of the Whale) was inspired by the singing of the
humpback whale, a recording of which the composer heard in 1969. Each of
the three players should wear a black half-mask (vizor-mask) throughout the
performance of the work. The masks, by effacing a sense of human projection,
will symbolize the powerful impersonal forces of nature (nature dehumanized).
Vox Balaenae can be performed under a deep-blue stage lighting, if desired, in
which case the theatrical effect would be further enhanced.

Stage directions like these are typical of Crumb’s work, although he does not
always include this type of explanation in his scores. His theatrical tendency has
provoked criticism for “distracting from the core of the composition, the music, as if [the
theatrical details] were entirely inappropriate and separate.”56 But Crumb has defended
his use of extra-musical elements as follows: “the theatrics, such as masks, lit candles,
processionals, special lighting etc., were gestures which seemed to come out of the
musical ideas themselves.”57 He also points out that these elements often do bear a direct
effect on the acoustics of a piece. Singing while processing through a concert hall, for

55
Invoking this work as an example raises (again) the issue of the use of voice or text in the genre, although
in this example I am interested in instrumental and theatrical effects, not the voice. Crumb’s work tends to
treat the voice as another instrument, and even works like this one with a set text include non-textual
sounds or unintelligible vocalizations. I would argue that his genre overall is overwhelmingly instrumental
in its feeling and techniques. Still, it is certainly true that it lies on the border of the definition of the genre
as I have laid it out in this paper.
56
David Cohen, George Crumb: A Bio-Bibliography (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2002), 13.
57
Ibid.
 40

instance (as in Echoes of Time and the River), creates a spatialization effect. Moreover,
this critique implies a limited definition of the musical work, one in which only the
recordable aspects of performance are the true material. This attitude stands against the
nature of instrumental music theatre as a fundamentally visual performance genre.

FIG. 13. Art of Time Ensemble, Enwave Theatre, Toronto, October 6, 2007
http://showtimemagazine.ca/blog/?m=200710

In the case of Crumb’s scores, the composer’s notes and added text are generally
used to lay out details of the stage set-up. In more open-ended works of instrumental
music theatre, text is often necessary to explain the affect or intention with which
musicians should approach the score. Schnebel’s score for Visible Music, for example,
includes many pages of instructions outlining how to interpret the score, how to rehearse,
how to set the stage, and how the musicians should relate to one another. Con voce is also
two parts text to one part notation. In these works the unfolding of the piece seems to
include the process of rehearsing and relating to the score as well as the moments of
performance. One wonders whether the composers are not “playing” the musicians in the
same way that musicians “play” their own instruments.58

58
I return to this idea in the section on “Notation” in section 4.1.
 41

FIG. 14. Kagel: Con voce. Extensive staging instructions comprise one third of
the score of Con voce. A second page of text indicates playing methods and
techniques.
 42

3.2 Musical Meaning

A work of music can be meaningful on a variety of levels: in terms of its internal

structure, the moment-to-moment aesthetic experience of its sound world, or in terms of
the relationships between instruments and instrumentalists which it encourages or
imposes. It can have symbolic meaning, implied by a title or program. It can even create
its own narrative line, with characters (presented musically) who interact and develop.
With the expansion of the scope of instrumental music theatre to include visual and
dramatic elements, semantic possibilities are accordingly widened, ranging from the most
concrete to the very abstract.

Just as we can appreciate traditional instrumental music purely for the acoustic
experience which it offers, we can view acoustic-visual music simply as a spectacle of
gesture and sound. Sonant, in which musicians labor over their instruments, foregrounds
the gestural aspect of music, with no implication (as in Con voce) that these gestures
represent anything beyond themselves. Harlekin can also be appreciated, apart from its
story-line, as a display of physical prowess or as a piece of abstract dance.

Still, the visual drama of these works invites interpretation, and many of them
operate on a symbolic level as well as a purely aesthetic one. The sense of narrative in
Match, the symbolism of Con voce, the ceremony of Vox Balaenae, and the violence of
the percussionist’s gestures in ?Corporel all contribute to the depth of these works, and to
our sense that something important is implied. Even the simplest action, once it is given
that intense attention remarked by Kagel and Cage, is magnified by virtue of its being on
stage. When a work has provoked this kind of attention, each facial expression and
gesture—as well as each sound—seems filled with potential meaning.
 43

4 PERFORMANCE CHALLENGES

Kagel is careful to point out that in works of instrumental music theatre the musician’s
role is identical to his role in a traditional instrumental work: “the musician executes his
score, or participates in its execution. He does not fulfill the part of an actor, only the role
of a performer playing the music which is given to him; his attention remains fixed on the
music.”59 But while the musician’s theoretical role, the executor of a musical score, is
quite familiar, the requirements of theatrical scores demand actions and skills that may be
entirely new. Moreover, the fact that formal attention is being given to gestures that a
performer generally takes for granted means that even old skills must be re-understood
and re-rehearsed.

The three primary performance challenges for performers of instrumental music

theatre are related to the following categories: notation, extended technique, and acting.
Not only do these aspects influence the performance of a work of instrumental music
theatre, they re-shape the rehearsal process as well. In some cases, the composer’s
intention seems to extend into the life of the work and its performers to such an extent
that even the stages of rehearsal begin to feel like part of the piece.

4.1 Notation

Traditional music notation has developed to indicate pitch, duration, dynamic,

articulation, and quality of sound. Composers may need to add some text to indicate what
part of the bow or string they want a musician to use, or what affect they would like to
portray. But there is certainly no notation for gestures like playing on the tailpiece or
rubbing the body of the instrument; when composers wish to include non-traditional
methods of playing an instrument, they must generally devise some kind of notational
system specific to each work or technique.

59
Kagel, “Qu’est-ce que le Théâtre Instrumental?” Tam-Tam, 107.
 44

FIG. 15. Vinko Globokar, ?Corporel

 45

In Lachenmann’s Pression, for example, the composer uses a combination of

invented notations (mostly graphic depictions of the instrument that indicate where and
how to strike it60) and modified traditional notations. In Globokar’s ?Corporel, the
percussionist must learn a new kind of notation, one which is also structured according to
where and how the instrument (the human body) should be struck, knocked, or rubbed. In
Figure 15, we see that Globokar has created a staff with lines indicating different parts of
the body. The linear axis indicates time, and shapes indicate the direction and quality of
percussive action (circular rubbing, hands moving from chest to head, etc.). He also
includes rhythmic notation, when appropriate.

In these two examples, Lachenmann and Globokar have modeled their scores on
traditional notation; they include established rhythmic notation and indicate pitch and
duration along a staff, with the axes representing pitch and time. Other composers have
found it more effective to represent music-theatrical situations graphically, either because
an invented notation can code more information, or because it can somehow convey the
expressive whole in a way that traditional notation cannot. In his works, Visible Music
and réactions (both multi-part series), for example, Dieter Schnebel is more interested in
setting up relationships in a performance situation than in a specific acoustic result, and
the score reflects his emphasis. It includes no recognizable signs for pitch or duration and
can be read in a variety of ways; performers are given almost total liberty, as long as they
try to decipher and to depict the expressive intention of the score (see Figure 9).

Schnebel’s scores evoke Kagel’s description of conceptual pieces,61 in which the

idea motivating the action is more important than the sound result. In Visible Music I, that
concept involves the relationship between two performers: a relationship that is
demonstrated during performance, but which develops primarily through the rehearsal
process. Schnebel has created a situation to be explored and solved. First, the players
must work out how to interpret the score, so that there is some coherence to the piece.
Schnebel details how both the conductor and the instrumentalist should go about
familiarizing themselves with the notation, gestures, and possible acoustic results.

60
See Figure 8.
61
See p.32.
 46

Preparation of a performance.
In order to prepare a performance of the piece, D. [conductor] and I.
[instrumentalist] must first of all make themselves familiar with the notation
sheet and its respective gestural and instrumental interpretation, and then co-
operate in an investigation of the possibilities of playing together, the result of
which they can use as a basis for their performances.62

The nature of their interaction is left open, although Schnebel suggests a variety
of possibilities: either performer may take a leading role, or they may intentionally defy
or frustrate one another, conveying to the audience a sense of antagonism or competition.
In this way, the composer begins to enter even into the rehearsal process:

Modification of behaviour towards the conductor.

Behaviour towards the conductor can be modified—it does not need to be
limited simply to following. Thus other possibilities arise apart from those of
receiving and reproducing the indicated periods. I. can act contrarily to D’s
signals…To begin with he can vary them—sometimes playing too high or too
softly, or persistently entering too late. More forcefully in that he opposes D’s
dictates—gives too little when D demands much, plays low tones instead of
high ones—in short that he schemes in many ways. I. may push the matter to
an outburst. Pay little or no attention to the notation which D. presents, and
play what he thinks best, or what happens to occur to him: or simply resort to
the notation himself in order to realize it without the intermediary actor.
Finally he can try himself to conduct by his playing or gesticulation: the
transference of conduction technique on to instrumental playing.

Con voce is another work in which the composer’s will seems to direct the
process of the piece, not just its result. As in Visible Music, the players are given
instructions as to how to rehearse. The piece is essentially a guided improvisation, with
directions for playing techniques as well as guidelines for the structure and length of the
work.63 Insofar as the musicians involved have experience with this kind of
improvisatory situation, the process is a familiar one: they must internalize the melodic
fragments and effects, and then experiment with various structural possibilities (order of
entrance, combination of effects, overall form).

In the background of all of these musical decisions, however, is the dedication of

the piece:

This piece was written after the Sovjet invasion of Prague and is dedicated to
my Czechoslovakian friends. Like the suppressed population, the three players
62
Schnebel, Visible Music I (Mainz: Schott Music International, 1962), 8.
63
See Figure 14.
 47

here are robbed of their instrumental voice and are thus, in a very real sense,
mute. Hence a motto from Franz Kafka’s “In the Penal Colony”:
“Up to now manual operation was necessary, but now the machinery works
entirely on its own.”64

The melodic fragments which Kagel includes in the score are lyrical, nostalgic, and
quite beautiful. But, played with this dedication in mind, they take on a haunted feeling, a
weight and shadow that come from the symbolism of the piece. Played without
considering the dedication, the improvisation is a fascinating combination of sounds—a
pleasure to explore. Played (or sung) with the sense of the work in mind, it feels tense,
weighty, and difficult. Rehearsal becomes exhausting, both physically and
psychologically, and the musicians begin to feel a sense of responsibility toward Kagel’s
distant, silent friends. Indeed, it is the psychological challenge of embodying and
conveying extra-musical meaning through musical action that presents the greatest
challenge of Con voce.

In works like these where intention is primary, the written document is crucial.
Whether the score is a graphic representation, permitting a variety of realizations, or an
exposition in prose about the author’s intent, it can take on an aesthetic value that may be
appreciated apart from the actual performance. In the case of Bussotti’s works, the score
is not only primary; it is a piece of art.65 Schnebel’s works, less visually compelling, are
almost like thought experiments, proposing and pursuing various implications of his
concept. These composers have included the fact of the score into the web of conscious
relationships that create a work of instrumental music theatre. And in Sonant, Kagel
creates a further complication by indicating that the performers should read musical
instructions aloud—thus drawing the audience into that web of relationships, into the
processes of the work.66

Brian Cherney’s Brahms and the German Spirit, commissioned for performance by
my clarinet-cello duo, offers an intriguing example of the artistic and even quasi-literary
possibilities of a score. The musical material of this work is relatively straight-forward; it
is rather the staging and theatrical indications which create the primary interest of the

64
Kagel, Con Voce.
65
Erik Ulman, “The Music of Sylvano Bussotti,” Perspectives of New Music 34: 186-201, 190.
66
Kagel, “Qu’est-ce que le Théâtre Instrumental?” in Tam-Tam, 112.
 48

work in performance. The piece depicts an interaction between two musicians: one
representing the overly serious, introverted, and moody artistic stereotype (in this case, a
cellist, obsessed with Brahms), and the other, a flamboyant, extroverted, musical diva
(here, a clarinetist, dressed to kill). It is a kind of Florestan-meets-Eusebius situation.
Over the course of the work the musicians never manage to come together for more than
a few lines of music; although placed together on stage, each is determined to present his
own musical voice, uncompromised. Cherney’s critique here of an egocentric musical
culture is both humorous and pointed.

In terms of the musical material, there are three types of music in the duo: one is in
the style of Brahms, one is reminiscent of highly technical contemporary music, and the
third is folksy pseudo-klezmer, played primarily by the clarinet. The struggle between the
Brahmsian music and the contemporary music is made fairly clear in the performance.
But the role of the klezmer material is only fully appreciated by examining the score.

The score of Brahms and the German Spirit is filled with characters from the
1890’s, copied and cut out from various photos and texts. Brahms appears, as do various
women from his life, both real and fictitious. Musicians of the time period play his music,
and there are scenes from the Vienna streets. But there are also characters whom he
would never have met: Jews from the countryside who gather in the streets, refugees, folk
musicians. A particular character, a klezmer violinist, appears again and again; eventually
on the last page of the score he stands next to Brahms’ deathbed, playing scraps of
Schumann on his violin. Text (in the form of thought ‘bubbles’ associated with various
characters) and images, as well as the music, connect Brahms with the culture of the
Eastern European Jews, making a fictitious link between the icon of high German culture
and the ragged, underclass culture of 19th century Vienna’s Jewish and gypsy ghettos.
Eventually the Jews are blacked out from the photos in the score as a symbolic reminder
of their fate.

Thus the score creates a narrative that, while it can be appreciated by the
performers and will doubtless influence their performance, cannot be conveyed to the
audience in performance. In the tradition of graphic composition from the 50s and 60s,
Cherney has intentionally created a score that is meant to be appreciated visually. On the
 49

page he is able to make references, both musical and literary, and connections that add
yet another level of meaning to the work beyond the musical, visual, and theatrical.

FIG. 16. Cherney: Brahms and the German Spirit

 50

4.2 Extended Technique (Physical Gesture)

In addition to mastering new kinds of notation, interpreters of instrumental music theatre

must integrate new gestures and motions into their physical repertoire. This challenge is
not unique to instrumental music theatre; it is related to the interest in new sonic
possibilities that characterized much of the music of the twentieth century. As the tonal
system fell into relative obsolescence, musical sound itself became a source of
experimentation and new endeavor, and instrumentalists were stretched both aesthetically
and physically.

Given the growing sense that each piece is its own world, composers in the early
twentieth century naturally sought to find new sounds that could become part of a
personal musical language. This might involve the use of electronics to manipulate and
create sound, or the exploration of untapped—and at times bizarre—possibilities of
acoustic instruments. By mid-century, any noise that could be coaxed from an instrument
was fair game for a composer. And while many experimental techniques have, by the
twenty-first century, become relatively familiar new idioms, any performer of
contemporary music knows by experience that it is essential to study scores far in
advance of a first rehearsal, in order to decipher notation and translate compositional
directions into physical gesture. “Never before have instrumentalists been confronted
with such difficulties as deciphering new notation for each different composer, mastering
new technical requirements for each new piece, and transmitting often unnotatable sound-
worlds convincingly to their audiences.”67

For performers, the challenge of integrating new techniques is a physical reality.

They must learn how to control effects that lie at the very fringes of instrumental
technique, and to move with fluidity from one effect to the next in order to present new
musical material with integrity and conviction. This requires more than an open mind: it
requires hours of practice and, as important, the curiosity about the physical potentials of
the body and the instrument that can yield solutions to new technical problems.

67
Frances-Marie Uitti, “The frontiers of technique,” in Cambridge Companion to the Cello, ed. Robin
Stowell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 211.
 51

Consider the cello in a theatrical setting. Because of its wide range, the variety of
timbral possibilities allowed by its size (its dimensions create enough space between
fingerboard, tailpiece, strings, and bridge to allow for a range of possible contact points
and effects), its power to project, and the dramatic potential of its size, the cello became
an extremely important instrument for solo and chamber writing in the second half of the
twentieth century. Areas of technical expansion included extended pizzicato effects,
bowing effects (related to contact point or variations of pressure), extended harmonic
effects, scordatura, and added percussive or vocal effects.68

The last of these categories is the most significant for works of instrumental music
theatre because it represents an expansion of the musician’s role, a theatrical sense that
the performer is a fundamental part of the work—as much as their instrument or the
sound that it creates. In Crumb’s Vox Balaenae, the cellist is required to whistle; in
Andriessen’s La Voce, to sing and play simultaneously. Con voce demonstrates a
situation in which the performers do not produce any sounds on their instruments;
instead, they must sing, hum, whistle, or otherwise imitate them. The cellist, in this
situation, does not actually play the cello, in the sense of creating sound on the
instrument—and yet he remains a musician, a performer, and a cellist on stage,
regardless. In works of instrumental music theatre, an effective performance can depend
more on physical expressivity than technical prowess.

Just as the performer is entirely part of the work, the cello is also a physical
presence on stage, and may be used theatrically as well as acoustically. It can become a
drum, a guitar, or even a prop (in the video version of Match, one of the cellists falls
asleep, leaning on his cello!). The cello is the size of a small person, and so the
relationship between the musician and the instrument becomes visually compelling in
these works, and must be carefully considered.

In addition to vocal and percussive techniques, many works of instrumental theatre

require cellists to play other instruments. These can include maracas, drums, crotales,
whistles, or other noise-making devices (including glass goblets, in Crumb’s Black

68
Ashley Sandor, “Extended Techniques for String Instruments as Applied to Selected Twentieth-Century
Cello Literature” (DMA diss., University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, 2004).
 52

Angels). If the added instruments are large, a certain amount of staging is necessary to get
the musician from one place to another. And so music edges ever closer towards theatre,
and the musician becomes a full participant in the creation of drama. Performers must
consider every aspect of their appearance and behavior in these works, including facial
expression, speed of movement, how we enter and exit, how we dress. In a sense, the
“cello part,” becomes the “cellist’s part,” and this requires a real comfort with one’s own
physicality and presence on stage.

4.3 Acting

This last point brings us to what is probably the greatest challenge of these works: the
necessity of acting. As many composers have pointed out, music performance is a
dramatic art; to the extent that a musician’s attitude and motivation is shaped by the
musical content of a work, this is familiar territory. But works of instrumental music
theatre often require a level of exaggeration that is unfamiliar to most performers. Once
the gestures are “about” something more than producing sound, we have entered a new
realm of performance.

This implies a range of new decisions. Musicians must decide not only how to
phrase a melodic line, for example, but why they are playing that particular line, how
they feel (in the context of the piece) towards the other musicians on stage, what their
relationship is to the audience, etc. These decisions have a profound impact on how each
work is played. A version of Con voce played with fearfulness, for example, will sound
quite different than a version played defiantly. Visible Music, as I have noted, can depict
two musicians in harmony, or two musicians who are absolutely at odds with one
another. Even a work that is as concrete as Match—where the theatre really is generated
exclusively by physical, musical gestures—can create a range of different narratives
overall, depending on the affect of the performers.

In my ensemble’s work with Con voce, we were immediately drawn in by the

beauty of the musical material which Kagel provides, and we explored its potential
textures and melodies in rehearsal. Our improvisations became quite dense, filled with a
sense of shape and motion. However, initial responses to this interpretation led us to
reconsider the dedication of the piece. We realized that the fullness of our sound
 53

projected a sense of confidence and expressivity that was at odds with the image of artists
who had been silenced by political repression. While one could offer the explanation that
we were somehow restoring the Czech artists’ voices, we decided that we wanted to
convey a sense of repression rather than one of triumph. This new motivation greatly
changed the interpretation: it became hesitant, strained, halting. We felt that the music
should be allowed to soar at moments, but that it must be immediately contained again by
a sense of fearfulness.

The decision to project a feeling of repression affected not only the pace and
feeling of the music, but it also determined our physical aspect while playing and our
demeanor during the entrance and exit of the performance. We tried to convey this
feeling through our facial expressions, the direction of our gaze, and the way we held our
instruments. To a certain extent, instructions on the page can help composers to direct
and control decisions like these. Stockhausen is known for scripting every motion that the
performer must execute, and Kagel is also, in general, very specific, guided by his effort
not to turn good musicians into bad actors. But even the most tightly controlled work
brings with it a set of variables, variables whose specificity lies at the heart of the genre:
people, places, and instruments that are physical, fallible, and unpredictable. The best that
a composer can do is to clearly convey his expressive intent so that the ensemble’s
interpretive decisions can be as well-informed as possible.

Kagel worried about the complexities of this situation, but in truth they are not so
unfamiliar to performers. As Schnebel points out: “in these [works], musicians become
actors. The result: it is not, as is sometimes suspected, that musicians are to be turned into
second-rate actors; rather, it is a matter of turning the second-rate, unreflecting actors that
they are into good ones. This takes practice.”69

Having experienced the process of bridging musical and theatrical performance, I

would suggest that both perspectives are correct. It is true that musicians are not trained
actors. We are not used to planning physical gestures apart from the instrument, and we
are not used to using our voices and faces actively in a piece, or to considering details of
staging. However, the development of contemporary music is filled with moments when

69
Schnebel, “Visible Music,” 285.
 54

performers have needed to expand our understanding of our roles and abilities. Many
extended techniques which seemed outside the musician’s realm at first are now accepted
aspects of our musical and physical language. Moreover, I would suggest that we are, as
Schnebel and Cage have pointed out, already actors: we must simply become conscious
ones. Effective theatre, like any performance technique, requires focused attention,
sensitivity, and practice; it is a skill that must be rehearsed and pursued. But, once
acknowledged as another aspect of our work, theatrical awareness can enrich our
performances in every genre. Ultimately, accepting our role as actors will make us more
complete musicians.
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5 CONCLUSION

While the cultural moment that stimulated so much interest in combinations of music and
theatre is now over fifty years old, the genre still yields works that can surprise and
challenge performers and audiences. Many of the rituals of concert music which Kagel
and his contemporaries critiqued in their works are still intact, and instrumental music
theatre continues to work against their ossification (and our own). Because the genre is
grounded in the specifics of the performance experience, works can remain always fresh;
even Stockhausen cannot ensure that two performances of the same work will be the
same (or even close to the same). Moreover, the semantic possibilities of instrumental
music theatre keep it current as well; it is a genre that can always be used to tell a new
story or to draw new connections between the concert world and the world off-stage.

Because this genre is still, therefore, very much alive, I hope that this paper can be
useful as a starting point for performers and audience members. Besides the context and
history of instrumental music theatre which begins my overview, I have tried to clarify
different ways that composers and performers can consider visual and acoustic material
together in a work. I have presented these various approaches to visual, acoustic, and
narrative material as if they created clear and separate categories; but in fact, the aspects
of gesture, sound, and semantics work together fluidly, to varying degrees, in every
musical work. Organizing musical meaning from a single perspective, however—be it
sound production, gesture, symbolism, or relationships—can help us to find an entry
point into a work, either as audience members or performers. It can also remind us which
elements of performance need the most attention.

For performers, understanding the many levels at work in a piece of instrumental

music theatre is critical to a convincing performance. Playing all the notes on the page is
not enough in these pieces; they require that performers plan all the aspects of the work,
from the entrance, to the lighting, to facial expressions and extra-musical gestures.
Performing can feel like being taken over completely, overwhelmed by a work to a
degree that is almost intrusive. But the reminder that a piece of music can be a total,
dramatic experience is one that can ultimately be applied to all of our work in music
 56

performance. The habit of rehearsing every aspect of a piece helps us to create more
satisfying performances for the audience in terms of visual experience—even when a
work is not overtly theatrical. In addition, considerations of emotional motivation and
characterization can enrich our approach to our instrument’s role in an ensemble and to
the expressive content of its musical material.

I hope that my overview will encourage performers to delve into this genre, whose
works are often underplayed. Most of all, I encourage an attitude of serious engagement
with the challenges of theatre. It is a genre that deserves our thorough attention as
listener-viewers and as performers, and one whose rewards are both abundant and
unpredictable.
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