SAPAAN: Vol. 2 Fall 2003 - Montage-configuration by Michael Gardiner

"It is not a question of junking these [sonata] [1] concepts, nor do we have the means to do so…It is more necessary, from within [music theory] to transform concepts, to displace them, to turn them against their presuppositions, to re-inscribe them in other chains, and little by little to modify the terrain of our work and thereby produce new configurations" (Derrida, 24). Schubert's D major Piano Sonata, Opus 53, first movement, thus presents the author with the sonata form as a concept and the possibility of its re-inscription from outside sources.

There is rhythm whenever there is a transcoded passage from one milieu to another, a communication of milieus, coordination between heterogeneous space times. Drying up, Death, intrusion [each] have rhythm…Rhythm is critical; it ties together critical moments, or ties itself together in passing from one milieu to another. [Deleuze, Milles Plateaus. Brian Masumi, trans. Univ. of Minnesota Press. 313]

By applying Deleuze's concept of rhythm to a sonata two tasks lie ahead: 1) establishing the design of individual phrases and 2) looking into the relationships/disjunctions which occur between them. In information theory that which breaks with prior causality, eluding the equiprobability of previous material, increases the information of a message. We learn that the more an expectation is thwarted the more it says. The unique qualities of a gesture create an imprint of difference--a fluctuation within a continuum of variation creating a structural rhythm. Considering this poses the need for an analysis of pivots or the juxtaposition of textures.

Danish film director Carl Dreyer masterfully incorporates pivots when coordinating between scenes, as an example from his 1928 film, The Passion of Jean D'Arc, succinctly shows. Jean stands accused before her judges and is to burn at the stake. Thus far in Dreyer's film the camera shots have been extremely compartmentalized. She has been imprisoned not only by her accuser's but also by the camera, which often even cuts portions of her face. Then the shift to the outside-the shot quickly pivots 180 degrees upside down on a rotor wheel from Jean’s interior prison-scape to the exterior location where she will be put to death--drastically altering the viewer’s orientation as the shift it made to a new topography, a new plane is opened onto. This happens several times in the later half of the film. The camera’s movements there are liberated as it traces wisps of smoke and scattering formations of birds--a spiraling towards God. The outside is more than a physically new location, it is a pointing (more than a landing) towards a heavenly plane. It implies more than it achieves. It is a virtual pivot. The camera's movements there are liberated as it traces wisps of smoke and scattering formations of birds--a spiraling towards God. Such is an example of early film theory, which has long considered montage an essential element in the construction of rhythm through different scenes (space-times) and images.

Brian Newbould, in his book, Schubert: The Music and the Man compares Schubert's radical crosscutting of phrases in D.845 to similar techniques in modern film. He is certainly correct in relating the composer's montages of phrases to those of film. His error, however, lies in his assumptions about modern film: “The crescendo drives to the next idea; and the lack of self-fulfilment in the first theme leaves the ear expectant of later resumption and development. This crosscutting technique is familiar in modern film, where a number of discrete scenes or episodes follow each other rapidly, to be drawn into a meaningful relationship later as the story unfolds.” Here Newbould is forcing modern film into a sonata form rather than opening the sonata to other formal possibilities. I would ask the reader to explore the comments of Alain Robbes-Grillet (a French director/writer of incredible caliber) on page 5 of this essay to gain a more accurate picture of the aesthetics of modern film. It is hard to say if Newbould really believed what he said, or was his example of film just meant as a 'colorful' comment? For this author, the appropriation of new models (film, philosophy, literary theory etc.) in a critically theoretical atmosphere is crucial and needs to be taken as seriously as the holy-Schenker-graph (with its unusual and suspect powers of unification). We should be held accountable for our borrowings from other disciplines. They are not just an 'academic cologne' to give the scent of erudition, but foundations for new concepts and theories. Let us apply some of these new sonata concepts in a more detailed fashion through an analysis…

The opening gesture of the first movement displays a sweeping force, which undergoes a transformation reaching almost protean agility, blending symmetry and difference.

A forte D major chord, verticality spanning interval 48 symmetrically infolds, the right hand leaping down interval 24, with an overall density change from TAP (total attack points) 6 to 4. Following this contrary motion between hands the gesture continues in parallel motion, pushed upwards by the force of an accent (m. 2) but arrested by a brief, jolting eighth note rest, continuing with an increased density of 6 and the addition of a C natural, implying a movement away from the tonic. Another accent at the onset of m.3 pushes the line in another direction, diminishing the density from 6 to 2, accelerating/alternation to triplet eighth notes, yet maintaining the parallel motion. This figure's articulation is also slurred and given a crescendo leading to the next jolting interruption--an eighth rest, after which the lines revert to a contrary motion. Furthermore, the shift in density and character of line is embellished through the addition of two more accidentals, Bb and C# (which appears after two measures of C natural) implying the d minor center sounded in mm. 5.

The opening measures paradoxically maintain a symmetrical motion of line (contrary to parallel, then parallel to contrary) amidst a drastic alteration of texture. Furthermore, the gaps (both vertical leaps and horizontal rests) act as membranes across which change occurs. The vertical shift of interval 24 in measure 1 of the right hand opens a space--one which at once asks to be filled and calls for more holes and more uses for these holes. It riddles this first movement. In one sense the hole is filled in by the left hand, which traces an ascent of interval 29 (from D2-G4, mm.1-4) exceeding the initial leap and verges on leaving its established territory of the bass clef/left hand to cross into that of the treble/right hand. But the question of holes and territory will resurface throughout the Sonata, each time giving different answers. Or a collection of different questions…

A book always begins with "I was born…" and this one ends paradoxically with a whole collection of possible beginnings, all opening with these three words, but degenerating into a cacophony of unfinished sentences, cries, stammerings…" (Robbes Grillet, For a New Novel. Grove Press, 1965. 132)

If we had to characterize the opening measures, to make a template for the processes of discontinuity in this movement, three processes in particular stand out: First is the activation of space. Second is the use of emptiness. Third is the pivoting between textures. In what forms do these processes appear later in the score and do they conform to our expectations of a sonata? Everywhere we find a wrinkling of local topologies and deferring of that much sought sonata-unity which exists perhaps only as an ideal--ingrained within the floating fragments of a traditional language which lies shattered and strewn across the floor of classicism.

One response to the gap opened in the first measure is to fill it in. This occurs on both local and global levels. The local material consists of the ascent (already mentioned) in the bass from D2-G4. A global response could be derived from the expansion of the scalar triplet motive throughout the first movement. In the first 38 measures this motive expands its compass from interval 3 to interval 40, thereby exceeding the space opened by the right hand in the opening measure. But the verticality of interval 48, which defines the first chord remains to be surpassed. After mm. 38, this expansion of range remains dormant until the last page (mm. 238-241) where it plays in the stratosphere (finally expanding its range to interval 53), adding further colors to the spectrum just before the close of the movement.

Another view of this triplet motive is brought into play by Charles Rosen in the book of essays Schubert the Progressive where he presents the argument that Schubert relied on more conventional [anti-thematic] material in the second half of the exposition for the development of a more spacious and enlarged form. Such passagework contrasts greatly with the idiosyncratic gesture at the opening. In Opus 53 the author sees this 'conventional material' as the vector sought by the scalar triplets that carve the spatial boundaries (the apex, mm.241, and nadir, mm.132, of the pitch space occur in passages containing the triplet motive) of the form and lack unique melodic traits. Their role is more functional than expressive.

One response to an opened space is to fill it in. Another is to open it even more…

Measure 33 constitutes a tear in the fabric of space-time established thus far by the musical gestures. This fabric consists namely of the homophonic coordination of the treble and bass materials [2] and the territorial/registral stability each of hand's respective material. This territory is clearly violated at measure 33, and its implications are far reaching. The first result is breaking of the homophonic texture--a bi-frucation into multiple lines, each with their own vector. But it was only a glimpse, as the doppelganger of the first measure (m.35) appears doubly infected by a tritone relationship in the top voice and the emergence of 16th notes for the first time into the texture. The theme has been fragmented by the tear, which tears again in m. 36, this time offering a different solution--a melody/accompaniment gesture with an erased accompaniment (see spectrograph of mm.36-42, Schiff). Sonata forms are prone to develop. This one simply develops a negative.

Spectrograph of mm.36-42 (Andras Schiff), the erased accompaniment seen in the middle

The erasure of the accompaniment pattern, while unique unto itself, also serves as the pivot point between the delicate texture of mm. 40 and the previous intensity of line. As we step back and view the piece from a greater distance, we notice the stunning changes in texture that are threaded together (see spectrograph of mm.32-54, Uchida). A delicate constellation-texture [3] is heard in mm. 40-47, forming an interesting relationship with the measure of 'erased accompaniment' [4]. This constellation is fused through the next montage to a tempo change and new material at m. 48 that captures (perhaps fossilizes) the duple/triple opposition coalesced into a single figure of a harmonically/texturally static nature. A moment of geological time stratified in the otherwise protean form.

As a broken geometry, this accompaniment shares more traits with Dreyer’s work. Section II mentioned his use of circular/rotational camera movements. Again, in the second half of his film, we notice an abundance of broken and fragmented triangles (from corners of pulpits to portions of doorways in the background). The triangle-trinity relation is obvious, but when a portion of a triangle is missing, two of the sides become lines with driving vectors which converge outside of the shot. These vectors point towards an outside plane by their very incompletion. Another virtual link.

In looking at the contrasting natures of the different sections--the abundance of difference in the first four measures, or the first 42 measures, one realizes that what occurs is not so classical. If questions are posed at the outset, they are answered in different ways and with a variety of techniques which open the piece rather than close or unify it. A collection of possible beginnings. Furthermore, classical metaphysics has always been more comfortable synthesizing difference (thesis-antithesis-synthesis) into a singularity rather than admitting the space between things and its consequences. Just as theories of physical space have had to fight their way into analysis, so to conceptual space (pivots between sections, incorporation of multiple forms in a form, parallel responses to initial conditions…) must inscribe extant concepts and gradually bring about new configurations.

Works Cited
Deleuze, Gilles. A Thousand Plateaus. Trans. Brian Masumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987.

Derrida, Jaques. Positions. Trans. Alan Bass. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981.

Michael Gardiner is a composer/theorist currently enrolled in the doctoral program at The New England Conservatory of Music and has had performances in America, Europe and Japan.