Eco believes that “serial products” have tended to be dismissed by “modern aes-thetics”. The best explanation of why this dismissal is misguided is to be found not in Eco’s work, but in that of one of his colleagues, Omar Calabrese. In his 1987 book,Neo-Baroque: A Sign of the Times, Calabrese is, like Eco, concerned with at-tempting to find a means of judging the products of systems of mass production which is more sympathetic to the ways that these systems operate. He grounds this exploration by critiquing the prevailing mode of judgement which has typ-ically ignored these products. The critique is worth quoting at length. “After having lived through not only idealism but also the historical avant-garde,” he writes,
common sense tells us that repetition and serialism should be re-garded as the exact opposite of originality and the artistic. . . When we read contemporary newspaper reviewing we too often find ourselves reading criticisms of aesthetic objects that “replicate” other objects, which are then considered to be forerunners of a type of se-ries. This is permitted by the adoption of a group attitude that pro-motes serial products to the status of cult objects simply because, in doing so, an aesthetic value is produced that resides not in the work being cultivated but in the position of the consumer. This kind of po-sition seems confused, out of date, and inadequate when confronted by the aesthetic objects produced by our culture. Confused, because the attitude, which is not only idealistic but survives in many other philosophical formulations, tends to superimpose upon each other a variety of accepted meanings of repetition without distinguishing be-tween them. Out of date, because an attitude that idealises the work of art’s uniqueness has undoubtedly been swept away by contempo-rary practices; since the 1960s, invented multiples, modern art move-ments have delivered a death blow to the myth of the original, and the idea of citation and pastiche is now exalted in many so-called post-modernist creations. Finally, inadequate, because the pre-conceived notion prevents us from recognising the birth of a new aesthetic, the aesthetic of repetition.42
For Calabrese,“idealist” aesthetics and their insistence on “uniqueness” and “the myth of the original” are masking the birth of a new aesthetic of production—
one which places mass repetition at its heart. Mass and serial production is not
42[Calabrese, 1992, 27–8].
something to be bemoaned by an idealist aesthetics, but rather, and given its thorough penetration of both the artistic and commercial worlds, something to which any aesthetic system appropriate to contemporary mores should have to respond. Repetition, in other words, is no longer a sign of the decay of western society; it is its an essential contributor to that which makes it unique.
Calabrese’s argument that any decent contemporary aesthetic system has to rise to the challenge of responding to repetition as a defining cultural enterprise rather than dismissing it as contravening the idealist injunction towards origi-nality is an attack on the notion that origiorigi-nality is necessary for the production of good art. The work of the appropriation artists is only one instance in which a similar point is practically articulated. It is not hard to find others. During the Classical era, for instance,imitatiowas a rhetorical practice in which students were expected to become extremely proficient and which consisted, in essence, of imitation. For Philodemus, “those who take over a story are better than its previ-ous users, if they make a greater contribution of poetical excellence”: the imitator could, in other words, be better even than the original author.43 Seneca took this idea even further when he argued that it actually paid to be second: “[t]he last comer is best placed. He finds the words to hand; differently arranged, they take on a new look.”44 While governed by specific rules and injunctions, the sub-tleties of which will not be discussed here, the basic point concerningimitatiois that imitating a text in the Classical era was not seen to give rise to exclusively inadequate works, but was rather a sign of the author’s laudable willingness to engage with his or her artistic heritage.
The logic at work in these practical examples has also had an impact on aca-demic thought concerning appropriation in the visual arts. The consequence is that more interest has been shown to those artists who were supposedly ‘copiers’.
A notable example is Stephen Bann’s 2001 bookParallel Lines, in which the author explores the relationship between French nineteenth-century artists and print-makers, as well as the effect that changes in print-making technology wrought on both the print, the concepts of the original and image, and the original itself.45 Bann’s study of print-making in nineteenth-century France has analogous signif-icance to this study of nineteenth-century arrangement because the practices are themselves analogous. Both aimed at mass circulation of works which would otherwise have had little public impact; both were produced by individuals (ar-rangers and engravers) who have so far been understood as more or less histori-cally invisible and subjectively transparent; both were often associated with large amounts of profit; both found a market among the newly emerged middle class;
and so on. The two realms in fact often touched one another; Chopin and Liszt, for example, were known to have visited the print-making studio of Calamatta sometime in the 1830s.46Theodor Adorno, writing in 1933, directly compares the impact of the two practices on late nineteenth-century European bourgeois
par-43Philodemus, quoted in [Russell, 1979, 4].
44Seneca, quoted in [Russell, 1979, 5].
45See Bann [2001].
46Probably 1835. See the recollection of Charles Blanc in [Bann, 2001, 1]: “This studio, silent for the most part, was visited by artists and well-known people. . . Franz Liszt, and the pale Chopin, who came in like a cold and polite ghost.”
lour life and argues that “four-handed playing [of arrangements] was better than The Island of Deathover the buffet” (a reference to the numerous and extremely popular prints of Arnold Böcklin’s 1880 paintingDie Toteninsel, see figure 1.9).47 If Bann restitutes the print and the print-maker as objects worthy of historical attention, then, by analogy, he does the same for arrangement and the arranger.
Bann’s book makes a number of points as to how print-making culture in nineteenth-century France challenges the inherited view of reproduction as cre-atively arid. He refers, for example, to several instances in which it is clear that the role of print-maker was not that of mere copier. Paul Mercuri, to cite the most obvious case, worked obsessively for over twenty-two years on the production of his engraving of Paul Delaroche’sJane Grey.48 This feat alone would surely qualify his supposed ‘copy’ as its own work of art, notwithstanding the fact that Delaroche “was quite explicitly relying on Mercuri to correct his own mistakes of more than twenty years before.”49 Indeed, it was in fact an uncontroversial truth to nineteenth-century Parisian artistic circles that the engraver was always something more than a copyist: witness, for instance, nineteenth-century print-collector Philippe Burty’s dismissal of the emerging technology of photography on the grounds that it—and not the engraving—is nothing more than an empty copy. “Photography,” he claims, “is impersonal; it does not interpret, it copies;
there is its weakness as well as its strength, for it renders with the same indiffer-ence the superfluous detail and the scarcely visible, scarcely sensible nuance that gives soul and likeness.”50 Contemporary evidence, in other words, suggests that the dominant position was that copying was very rarely merely copying.
Bann’s aim, however, “is not just to invert the telescope and give due attention to the assiduous artisan, rather than the star of the salon” by arguing that the ar-tisan produced images worthy of being called originals.51 Rather, he is trying to problematise the very nature of the distinction between original and image at all, to ask “on what grounds, and according to what criteria, should the line between the ‘original’ and its reproductions be drawn?”52 The existence, for example, of a print-maker like Mercuri who is interpreter enough to alter the very original which he has been contracted to copy suggests that the distinction drawn at this time between the two was in fact quite slim. Bann goes so far as to argue that this point in Western art history represents a move away from the separation of original from copy and towards the notion of the natural fecundity of the im-age. He relates this position to the Byzantine notion of economy, “epitomised by the act of God in offering the image of his Son as a model for action”, and in stark contrast to Platonic mimesis which “notoriously represents the artistic im-age as a form of double derogation from the purity of the Idea.”53 He concludes that “nineteenth-century artistic practices in France were far from being regu-lated programmatically by the distinction between the ‘original’ and the ‘copy’ ”
47“Aber das Vierhändigspielen war besser als die Totinsel überm Büffet.” [Adorno, 1982, 304].
48See Bann [2001], chapter four.
49[Bann, 2001, 136].
50Philippe Burty in 1859, quoted on [Bann, 2001, 25].
51[Bann, 2001, 3].
52[Bann, 2001, 23].
53[Bann, 2001, 29–30].
Figure1.9:ArnoldBöcklin,DieToteninsel,DritteVersion,1883.
and that in fact (and here he quotes art historian Richard Shiff) “pure original and perfect copy must be situated very close together. . . They occupy nearly the same position, while each maintains its unattainability.”54 Bann’s belief is that the print, rather than being guilty of one of the first mass-market violations of the principles of originality, genius, creativity, and so on, actually represents the birth of a period in which those principles are undermined by the disappearance of the distinction between copy and original.
Bann’s contention that the process of print-making in the nineteenth century was not a facile act of copying but arguably represents the birth of a new era of the image analogously vindicates historical investigation of keyboard arrangement.
Indeed, Bann’s conclusion that original and copy are situated on a continuum, and closer together than typically thought, is precisely the kind of attitude that typifies some contemporary engagements with arrangement. Malcolm Boyd’s description of arrangement inThe New Grove, for example, concludes by arguing that “[i]t would be unrealistic to propose that arrangements should be judged without reference to the original, but it is perhaps only by regarding the arrange-ment and the original as two different versions of the same piece that a solution to the aesthetic dilemma they so often create will be found.”55 Bann’s position has already found some expression in musical circles.
It was explained above that the first specifically music-historical reason for the lack of interest shown to nineteenth-century keyboard arrangement was that ad-herence to the principle of Werktreue in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries meant that any change to a score was considered a violation of the almost holy sanctity of the composer’s thoughts. Although its historical importance is un-deniable, Werktreue is now a deeply interrogated and problematic ideology—a consequence of the writing of its history has been a profound questioning of its validity. There are three relevant issues. First, Blaukopf argues that Werktreue is an ideal which actual nineteenth-century musical practice could never realise:
composers were simply too reliant on arrangement as a means for communicat-ing their music to new audiences to allow their desire to be faithful to their own work to take precedence. Even Berlioz, as Blaukopf notes, was not averse to ar-rangement when he stood to profit from it.56 Second, it is never clear to what musical society is meant to be being faithful: the first published score, the most recently published Urtext, the composer’s first draft, the composer’s last draft, printed editions annotated by the composer, recordings of the composer perform-ing his own work, and so on. The list of possible “authoritative” sources is long, and none (or rather, all) have a strong claim to being the most authoritative. As Blaukopf concludes, “the concept ofWerktreueis questionable.”57
Third, and finally, certain modern musical practices reveal Werktreue to be deeply anachronistic. In modern operatic performances, for instance, as con-temporary stagings become less and less similar to those imagined by the
com-54[Bann, 2001, 40], and Richard Shiff, in 1983, quoted on [Bann, 2001, 41].
55Malcolm Boyd. “Arrangement.” InGrove Music Online. Oxford Music Online, http://www.
oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/01332 (accessed Jan-uary 27, 2011).
56See [Blaukopf, 1968, 12].
57“Der Begriff der Werktreue ist fragwürdig.” [Blaukopf, 1968, 7].
poser and librettist, the corresponding musical insistence on absolute accuracy to a supposed written authority seems more and more unreasonable, and the al-ready often uncertain relationship between music and drama becomes more and more bifurcated. In this sense, cinema and the theatre provide interesting provo-cations with regards to the “arrangement” of old dramas in new ways: there are countless film versions of Shakespeare’s plays, for instance, from Hollywood teen-dramas (10 Things I Hate About You, 1995, based onThe Taming of the Shrew) to broadway musicals (West Side Story, filmed in 1961, based onRomeo and Juliet) to Japanese period dramas (Akira Kurosawa’s 1985 Ran, based on King Lear).
Theatrical “arrangements” are no less common, including, for example, Tom Stoppard’s 1966 Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, the 2003 Sleep No More (a HitchcockianMacbeth), or even Henrik Ibsen’s 1853St. John’s Eve, based onA Midsummer Night’s Dream. Musical arrangements should not be dismissed on the basis of their trespass against the integrity of the original artwork because it is no longer clear that the sanctity of the original is something which it is necessary—in the other arts, at least—to protect.
The second specifically musical reason for disinterest in keyboard arrangement is its close association with the apparently transient and thus false glory of indus-try, and most particularly, fashion. Criticising arrangement on these grounds, however, is to misunderstand the role that fashion played in the nineteenth cen-tury (and, indeed, to be somewhat of a snob with regards to the role that it plays today). Dahlhaus, for example, argues that the principle of fungibility of a musi-cal hit—what in the nineteenth century was referred to asstagione—was not ab-horred, but rather, accepted: “thestagioneprinciple of the nineteenth century pro-ceeds from the thoroughly unobjectionable premise that one season’s hit, rather than being perpetuated, will be superseded by a new hit in the next.”58 The fact of a work’s fleeting popularity can change the way that it is regarded as an his-toricalmusicalobject—its fleetingness means that even today we might have dif-ficulty accepting it as great music—but it should not affect the understanding of it as anhistoricalmusical object. If something was popular in the past, no matter how briefly, we are arguably bound as historians to be interested in it today.
In one way, this is already a response to the position that keyboard arrange-ment should be dismissed because of its simplicity and relationship with the clueless amateur. Since the genre was historically significant, the question of its relative ease or the nature of its audience plays no part in determining whether or not it should be studied. Regardless, the point can even be dismissed on its own terms. In chapter two it will be shown that keyboard arrangements actu-ally only developed their reputation for keeping such poor company in the last years of the nineteenth, and early years of the twentieth, centuries, when they had already—to a certain degree—become artefacts of an earlier musical genera-tion. In fact, in the earlier part of the nineteenth century, keyboard arrangements were not only accepted as making a valid contribution at both ends of musical culture, but were celebrated for it. In 1814, for instance, Ignatz Moscheles records the pleasant interaction between himself and Beethoven as they proceed with the production of an important arrangement: “[t]he proposal is made to me. . . ,”
re-58[Dahlhaus, 1989, 140].
calls Moscheles, “to arrange the great master-piece “Fidelio”, for the piano. What can be more delightful?”59
Finally, Genette’s position is that musical appropriation is of no interest be-cause it is rarely anything more than simple copying. This point can no longer stand. As has already been evidenced by the afterlife of Walker Evans’ images, copying can be an artistically appropriate, appropriating position, one that chal-lenges audiences to ask certain questions concerning the nature of originality and the artistic act. Furthermore, and as has been seen in Bann’s work on French print-makers, it is not the fact of the difficulty of the preparation of an appropri-ation which is relevant, but rather, the extent to which the distinction between original and copy is held to be determinate. Ultimately, if it is agreed that in-novation is no longer necessary for the production of great art, then Genette’s argument can be dismissed at an absolutely fundamental level. If an artist no longer needs to be innovative, then is there really a need to maintain that he or she needs to be doing something particularly difficult?
This last point can be clarified by driving more carefully at the distinction be-tween poiesis and esthesis. The esthesic question of the complexity or otherwise of the object which results from the act of arrangement (a copy of a score for the piano) is not the primary concern here. This thesis does not attempt to defend the study of keyboard arrangements by showing that some of their number possess a hidden artistic depth which actually chimes with the dictates of contemporary aesthetics: it does not claim, for example, that keyboard arrangements in general should be studied because they show a prescient interest in postmodern issues like multiple-authorship and intertextuality (although, as will be shown in chap-ter four, some of them do). Making this kind of claim when justifications of the study of a new body of material are attempted is common, but it creates a false aesthetic economy. As the ‘new’ object removes (for example, and in the case of arrangement) its veil of banality to reveal its ‘true’, complex aesthetic credentials, it loses its power to challenge the status quo by tacitly agreeing that the posses-sion of complexity is necessary if the study of it is to be justified. Thus, rather than expanding the prevailing aesthetic mode, the difference which made the object interesting in the first place is lost. To argue that keyboard arrangement is worth studying because it is actually compositionally subtle would be to deny it that which makes it unique: its derivativeness. In order to avoid this danger, what has been discussed here is the poiesis of the arrangement, the idea that in-novation is neither necessary nor an ahistorical desideratum for the production of new and interesting art.
This last point can be clarified by driving more carefully at the distinction be-tween poiesis and esthesis. The esthesic question of the complexity or otherwise of the object which results from the act of arrangement (a copy of a score for the piano) is not the primary concern here. This thesis does not attempt to defend the study of keyboard arrangements by showing that some of their number possess a hidden artistic depth which actually chimes with the dictates of contemporary aesthetics: it does not claim, for example, that keyboard arrangements in general should be studied because they show a prescient interest in postmodern issues like multiple-authorship and intertextuality (although, as will be shown in chap-ter four, some of them do). Making this kind of claim when justifications of the study of a new body of material are attempted is common, but it creates a false aesthetic economy. As the ‘new’ object removes (for example, and in the case of arrangement) its veil of banality to reveal its ‘true’, complex aesthetic credentials, it loses its power to challenge the status quo by tacitly agreeing that the posses-sion of complexity is necessary if the study of it is to be justified. Thus, rather than expanding the prevailing aesthetic mode, the difference which made the object interesting in the first place is lost. To argue that keyboard arrangement is worth studying because it is actually compositionally subtle would be to deny it that which makes it unique: its derivativeness. In order to avoid this danger, what has been discussed here is the poiesis of the arrangement, the idea that in-novation is neither necessary nor an ahistorical desideratum for the production of new and interesting art.