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THEMUSIC REVIEW

Founded by GEOFFREY SHARPVOL. 55, No.1 February, 1994

EditorA. F. LEIGHTON THOMAS

Editorial ConsultantJOHN BOULTON

CONTENTSFranz Liszt: Symphonist of the KeyboardA Parry Miscellany: Some Manuscripts in the BodleianLibraryHolst and GregynogWilliam Tritt as TeacherWar Music and its Innovations"Improving the Classics": Some Thoughts on the"Ethics" and Aesthetics of musical ArrangementBook ReviewsCorrespondence

Walden Hughes.

J. Barrie JonesAlan GibbsGlen CarruthersBen Arnold

Millan Sachania

THE MUSIC REVIEW is published in February. May, August aud November. Single copies, 15.25 postage extra. Annualsubscription, 52.50 post ree to all parts of the world, from the publishers or obtainable through auy bookseller.Manuscripts, material or review and letters to the Editor should be addres sed to:-A. F. Leighton Thomas, "Glyneithin", BunyPort, Carmarthenshire. Advertising:-Black Bear Press Limited, King's Hedges Road, Cambridge CB42PQ. Tel. Cambridge424571. 110 page, 60 half, 35 quarter. All other correspondence to the publishers:-

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War Music and its Innovations*BY

BEN ARNOLD

From the Renaissance to the present day, war music has frequently been at the forefrontof new musical development and has, in some instances, contributed innovations ofsignificance. While critics have often maligned music that evokes or represents theatmosphere of wars for its quality or lack thereof (especially battle composition of theeighteenth and nineteenth centuries), they have also overlooked its anticipatory role inthe development of instrumental techniques and musical style. This essay willdemonstrate that war music was an early proponent of several techniques that laterbecame prominent in non-programmatic compositions.The difficulties of searching for the "first" in music history-or, for that matter, inany other field-are considerable. Leonard Meyer pointed out that "the limits of a styleor movement, particularly its beginnings, are difficult to define precisely. Styles do notcome into existence clearly and fully articulated, but tend to change in a processive wayfrom barely noticeable beginnings".l The same holds true for innovations. In only afew instances can we unequivocally state that a particular composer was the first to usea particular technique and was not noticeably influenced by some other composer. Inall probability some of these innovations were first improvised, possibly by amateurmusicians, and only later preserved on paper.For example, The New Grove Dictionary, Eggebrecht's Handworterbuch dermusikalischen Terminologie, the New O xford Encyclopaedia of Music and Riemann'sMusik-Lexikon credit Henry Cowell with "inventing" the note cluster. The New Grovestates that "Clusters were probably first used by Cowell in The Tide ofManaunaun forpiano [in] (1912)",2 the earliest date listed in other sources as well. Keyboard clusters,however, appeared in at least eight compositions prior to the twentieth century and dateas far back as 1724 with Dandrieu's Les caracteres de la guerre? Hemy Cowell mayhave been the first to call this technique a cluster, but he was certainly not the first toincorporate it into a musical composition.Notwithstanding the difficulties of pin-pointing such innovations, a number ofimportant musical developments seem to have their origins in war music. While theseinnovations are of different types and of varying significance, as a group they illustratethe experimental quality of war music. Table I provides a chronological listing ofcertain techniques originating in music related to war. Those with an asterisk besidethem indicate that music scholars recognize them as the first compositions to employ

* Research for this article was supported in part by the University Research Committee of EmoryUniversity.1 Leonard B. Meyer, Music, the Arts, and Ideas: Patterns and Predictions in Twentieth-Century Culture(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967), p. 94.

2 The New Grove Dictionary of Music, s.v. "cluster".3 Clusters have appeared in numerous earlier programmatic compositions of Jean-Fran90is Dandrieu,Domenico Scarlatti, Abbe Vogler, Daniel Steibelt, Jan Ladislav Dussek, Bernard Viguerie, Charles Alkan andThomas Bethune.

Date1528*1624*16241624*1673

*1 67316731673*1724*1796181 3*1956*1960

ComposerJanequinMonteverdiMonteverdiMonteverdiBiberBiberBiberBiberDandrieuHaydnvon WinterNonoPenderecki

WAR MUSIC AND IT S INNOVATIONSTABLE I

INNOV ATrONS AND EARLY USES IN WAR MUSICCompositionLa guerreII combattimento di Tancredi e ClorindaII combattimento di Tancredi e ClorindaII combattimento di Tancredi e ClorindaBattaliaBattaliaBattaliaBattaliaLes caracteres de la guerreMissa in tempore belliSchlacht SymfonieII canto sospesoThrenody to the Victims of Hiroshima

Innovationonomatopoetic devicesstile concitatopizzicatotremoloprepared instrumentpolymodalitypolyrhythmcollegnonote clusternew church musicchoral symphonytext broken into syllablesexpanded string techniques

The "*,, signifies the compositions generally credited as first requiring the technique or device listed.

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particular techniques. Those without asterisks have not necessarily been substantiatedas the first but, in each case, must be considered one of the earliest uses of the deviceindicated.Janequin's La guerre is largely responsible for establishing the popularity of warrelated music, even though it was not the first composition written on the subject ofwar. Howard Brown writes that La guerre "became one of the best-known pieces of theentire century, copied by many other composers and arranged for keyboard or lute soloand for all varieties of instrumental ensembles".4 This work is important for its creativeuse of onomatopoetic devices, i.e. basses singing the word "pon" eighty-four times toimitate the sounds of battle drums or the noise of cannon fire. In order to create theconfusion of battle, Janequin chooses several novel combinations of sounds: "trique tacpatac", "pa-ti-patac" and "chipe, chope, torche, lorgne, chipe, chope, torche, lorgne".In the second half of the work, in which the battle is musically re-enacted, nonsensesyllables are present in 117 of the 151 bars. In one segment, nearly thirty bars passwithout a single meaningful word. Although La guerre is not necessarily the first toinclude these types of verbal techniques, it is nevertheless one of the programmaticchansons that made them rather common.Perhaps the greatest and most influential war work in the history of music,Monteverdi's II combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda (1624) introduces twoinnovative devices that are still used t oday in one form or another: stile concitato andthe pizzicato. The pizzicati beginning in bar 174 represent the blows delivered in thebattle, and the agitated style of the stile concitato with its measured tremolo in thissection creates the intense atmosphere of war. In the preface to his eighth book ofmadrigals, Monteverdi writes of his "rediscovery" of this agitated, warlike style, whichhe developed while studying the philosophies of Plato and Boethius:

After reflecting that according to all the best philosophers the fast pyrrhic measure was usedfor lively and warlike dance . . . I considered the semibreve, proposed that a single semibreveshould correspond to one spondaic beat; when this was reduced to sixteen semiquavers, struck4 Howard M. Brown, Music in the Renaissance (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1976), p. 215.

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54 TH E MUSIC REVIEWo ~ e a f ~ e r the other, and combined with words expressing anger and disdain, I recognized inthIS bnef sample a resemblance to the passion which I sought . . .

According to the Harvard Dictionary of Music, Il combattimento di Tancredi eClorinda is also the first composition to include a tremolo "to express excitement anddanger . . . [a technique] which . . . has been used innumerable times".6 The pizzicati,so common today and. ~ e v o i d of their original symbolic significance, also appearedsoon after MonteverdI m other Baroque works, such as Carlo Farina's Capricciostravagante (1627), Keiser's Adonis (1697) and Handel's Agrippina (170 9).Although Monteverdi claims to have invented stile concitato, he was, in someways, only the first to give this fast repeated pattern a name. Both Janequin in Laguerre and ~ y r d in The Battle :vrote a series of fast, repeated pitches on a single noteor chord to Illustrate the passIOns of war decades earlier than Monteverdi and areclearly forerunners of stile concitato.

W h i . l ~ other composers incorporated Monteverdi's novel techniques into their owncomposItIOns relatively soon after his "discovery", the innovations found in HeimichBiber's. Battalia. in 1673 did not directly influence Biber's contemporaries or thegeneratIOns that Immediately followed. Some of Biber's innovations were hundreds ofyears ahead of their time and were apparently neither compatible with existing valuesnor of .advantage to other composers-two conditions, according to Everett M.Rogers m. hIS Communication of nnovations, that affect the length of time required forthe adoptIOn and success of innovations.7To.descri?e the good-natured camaraderie of soldiers in camp, for example, Biberuses eIght d i f f e r ~ n t melodies at once in Die liederliche Gesellschaft von allerleyH.umor and explams: "Here all is dissonant everywhere since different songs are sungs i m u l t ~ n e o ~ s l y " ..8 In addition, the major and minor modes appear concurrently and, atone pomt, SIX adjacent notes of at least a crotchet in length sound at the same time ineffect creating momentary note cluster. Not only could this example be c o n s i d e ~ e d ~ o I Y m . 0 d . a l , but It ~ o u l ~ also be c ~ n s i d e r e d polymetric. Although the metre is 4/4, thefust vrolm enters m tnplets creatmg a 12/8 metre for its part.

In Der Mars. m o v e m ~ n t Biber instructs the double basses to place a piece of paperunder the A stnng to gIve the effect of a snare drum-one of the earliest uses ofprepare.d instruments. From bar 52 to 62 the double bass plays only one note in variousrhythmIc patterns while the violin plays repeated demisemiquaver patterns above it. He~ l s o takes Monteverdi's stile concitato a step further, turning the repeated-note ideamto a full-fledged tremolo in the battle movement and uses fortissimo pizzicati torepresent shots. In addition Biber requests the string performers to strike theirinstrument with the wood of the bows-an early use of col legno.Biber's Battalia provides an excellent example of how composers look for novele f f e ~ t s to express a musical programme. Without attempting to express musically thepaSSIOn of war, Monteverdi would not have invented stile concitato. Without trying to

5 Claudio Monteverdi, "Madrigali guerrieri ed amorosi", in Source Readings in Music History ed OliverS t ~ n k (New York: W. W. Norton, 1950), p. 414. ' .7 Harvard Dlctzonary of Music, 2nd edn., s. v. "tremolo".Everett M. Rogers, Communication of nnovations: A Cross-Cultural Approach, 2nd edn. (New York: TheFree Press, 1971), pp. 17-21.8 "Hie dissonant ubique, nam enim sic diversis cantilenis clamore solent".

WAR MUSIC AND IT S INNOVATIONS 55capture the confusion and noise of battle, Janequin may not have conceived the idea ofonomatopoetic sounds and fast repeated notes. Moreover, because of the programmaticnature of his Battalia, Biber was using polymodality, polyrhythms, unusualdissonances, "percussive" string basses andfortissimo pizzicati over two hundred yearsbefore the experimental composers of this century.While the earlier innovations we have examined involved the human voice orstrings, the note cluster created on the keyboard was perhaps the most importantinnovation that was later adopted by twentieth-century composers. The earliest use ofthe keyboard note cluster I have found is in Dandrieu's 1724 harpsichord transcriptionof his orchestral composition, Les caracteres de la guerre, written nearly two hundredyears before Hemy Cowell supposedly invented the technique. Dandrieu describes hisuse of the cluster in the preface:

In that section of the Caracteres de fa guerre that I call "The Charge" there are several placesnamed "cannon shots" that are indicated only by four notes fanning a complete chord. But inorder better to express the noise ofthe cannon one may, each time, in place of these four notes,strike the lowest notes on the keyboard with the entire length of the flat of the hand.9Until this century, the cluster was among the most unmusical sounds available tomusicians. It s devoid of melodic and traditional harmonic content, yet it is perhaps thebest device (and certainly one of the most common) ever configured to imitate the

sound of a bomb or a cannon. While most musicians before this century might think itan unmusical sou,nd in a non-representational work, it might seem appropriate to themin a battle composition. Now in the twentieth century clusters are common sonoritieswith no particular representational denotation.During the Classic period, the most important innovations o f war music dealt withchanges in genres rather than in specific instrumental techniques. According to WintonDean, the revolutionary oratorios of M6hul and Gossec, and the massive musicalcelebrations of the French Revolution, enormously influenced later French musicians.Dean writes: "The grand operas of Spontini and the whole aesthetic of Berlioz wouldbe unthinkable without them".10 Several of these celebrations, which took placeoutdoors so that the masses could attend, consisted of thousands of performers. AtRobespierre's Fete de I'Etre Supreme in 1794, 2,400 vocal and instrumentalperformers, along with 130 pieces of artillery, formed the chorus and orchestra. Thisphenomenon was magnified considerably after the American Civil War, when PatrickGilmore organized public concerts for "5,000 voices, 500 bandsmen and a trumpet anddrum military corps",uMoreover, war innovations made their way into religious music. Haydn's Missa intempore belli (1796), which consists of heroic music replete with brass fanfares andtimpani, illustrates how the events of war have led composers to make innovations inworks other than programmatic battle compositions. H. C. Robbins Landon writes:

9 Arthur Loesser, Men, Women & Pianos: A Social History (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1954),P170 .

10 Winton Dean, "French Opera", in the New Ox ford HistoryofMusic: The Age ofBeethoven, VoL 8, ed. GeraldAbraham (London: Oxford University Press, 1982), p. 28.11 Harold Gleason and Warren Becker, Early American Music: Music in Americafrom 1620 to 1920, 2nd edn.,"Music Literature Outline Series", III (Bloomington: Frangipani Press, 1981), p. 145.

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TH E MUSIC REVIEW

Its first perfonnance will have left the audience shaken in a way that possibly no religiousmusic had done since the days of Bach and Handel. Haydn had, with the whole Missa intempore belli, but of course especially in the whispering doubt of the Agnus Dei and therabble-rousing fanfares of the Dona nobis pacem, created a new church-music style asimmediately influential as it was to become lastingly controversial. 12In 1813, two decades after Haydn's Mass, Peter von Winter wrote his SchlachtSymfonie, an early choral symphony that predates the completion of Beethoven's ninth

Symphony by over ten years. Although it is in one movement, it is one of the earliestworks entitled "symphony" to include a chorus. Numerous composers of the last twocenturies, including several of the greatest symphonists, such as Mahler, Shostakovichand Vaughan Williams, have endorsed the choral symphony.Innovations in war music have continued in the twentieth century, although it is toosoon to see how influential many of them will be. The most important innovativecompositions of the last few decades are Penderecki's Threnody to the Victims ofHiroshima (1960) and Nono's Il canto sospeso (1956). Penderecki expanded stringtechniques through playing on the bridge and bowing the wood of the bridge at a rightangle at its right side and, as well, through playing on the tailpiece (arco) and bowingthe tailpiece at an angle of 90. In Nono's Il canto sospeso, based on actual letterswritten by nine resistance fighters before their execution, the composer "broke up thetexts into words, syllables, and phonemes and allowed these to wander through thevoices-an innovation that is widely used today".13Because composers often search for particular, meaningful sounds or effects intheir war compositions, they begin to experiment with techniques that might imitate orrepresent the sounds of battle and fighting. Since we know the specific, concretesounds of war, composers then experiment with different sonorities or techniques intheir attempt to find musical equivalents of these sounds of warfare. As we have seen,composers must often look outside the traditional compositional language of abstractmusic in order to produce these specific sounds.On the other hand, the "meaning" of several of these early representational deviceshas become considerably weakened from their original purpose to the point where theynow sound like abstract sonorities. Pizzicati and clusters first appear to portray gun orcannon shots; now they are only sounds in themselves. Tremolos no longer necessarilyrepresent fear or danger; eight dissonant voices sounding at once do not represent thedisorder of soldiers at camp but are commonplace in abstract twentieth-century music.The history of these particular techniques illustrates the musical evolution from therepresentational to the purely abstract.While many recent innovations cannot be attributed to war music, warcompositions have quickly utilized these developments to further the realistic soundsof war. In war compositions of the last two decades, composers have used screams,shouts, whispering, electronically produced bomb explosions, taped machine-gun fire,Augenmusik and various multi-media techniques. War music actually provides musicalmeaning for many of these devices. Although screaming and shouting, extremely fast

12 H. C. Robbins Landon, Haydn: The Years of The Creation' 1796-1800 (Bloomington: Indiana UniversityPress, I977), p. I75.13 John Vinton, ed., Dictionary of Twentieth-Century Composers (New York: E. P. Dutton, I974), s. v. "LuigiNona", by Paul Hansjorg, trans. Jeanne Wolf.

WAR MUSIC AND IT S INNOVATIONS 57and loud indeterminant sections and acute dissonances may offend our musicalsensibilities in some non-programmatic works, they may make perfectly good sense ina war composition. Penderecki, Karel Husa, R. Murray S c h ~ f e r , ~ o g e r J : I a n n a ~ andGail Kubik incorporate these and other innovations effectlVely In theIr mUSIC tosimulate the turmoil and destruction of war.Nevertheless it is not the innovation per se but what is done with it that isimportant. We m ~ s t keep in mind that it is difficult to give birth a n ~ reach the pinnacleat the same moment. These techniques and experiments developed In these war-relatedcompositions have had a significant impact on the later d e v e l o p ~ e n t of m ~ s i c , and weshould credit these composers for thrusting these ideas forward Into the mInds of othercomposers who later improved, developed and refined them.