Figure1.8:Intabulationfromthe Robertsbridge Codex, BritishLibrary Add i-tional Manuscript28550,ca.1360,ofFermissimefidemadoremus/Adesto, SanctaTrinitasfromtheRomandeFauvel,BibliothèqueNationalede France, MSfr.146,transcriptionby WilliApel,1963.
Thereisanother,evenbetterexampleofthispoint. The mostobv iouslarge-scaledeparturefromtheoriginals madebybothoftheseintabulationsisthe melisma-likeornamentationoftheiroriginal melodies. Hereit wouldhaveto besaidthatthearrangeris mostfree withhisoriginaltext. Atthesametime, however,themelodyisonlywritteninthisflor idmannersothatthekeyboardin-strumentcanattempttomimicthevoice’sabilitytosustainpitches.Thepurpose oftheinnovativeornamentationisactuallytoallowtheintabulationtoapproach, notdistanceitselffrom,thesonicqualityoftheoriginalmotet.Thefeatureofthe arrangementsoftheAdestoandTribumquemwhichseemstobethemostdifferent fromitsoriginalisatthesametheonewhichistryingtobethe mostfaithfulto it.
WhyisArrangementD ism issed?
The workofappropriationartistsofthe1970slikeSherriLevinequestionsthe historicalandaestheticfoundationsfortheuseoforiginalityasatoo lfortheas-sessmentofart.Theirconclusion—anditisonesharedbyotherandmorerecent artistslike MandibergandBalar—isthatthesecriterianeednotbeconsidered universallysignificant. ArthistorianSherriIrvin,forexample,believesthatthe valueofappropriationartconsistsinitsdemonstrationthat“[t]hedemandfor originalityisanextrinsicpressuredirectedattheartistbysociety,ratherthan aconstraintthatisinternaltotheveryconceptofart.”25Extendingthispointto musicwouldnecessitateareconsiderationoftheaestheticsignificanceofmusical genresorpracticeswhichlackoriginalityorinnovation.Keyboardarrangement isthe mostobviousofthesepractices,onewhichisquiteclearlylack ingincom-positionaloriginality.Beforetheevidenceforsuggest ingthatkeyboardarrange-mentisdeservingofattentiononthegroundsthatitishistoricallysignificantis outlinedinchapterstwotofour,thatdiscussion mustbepreparedbyshowing
25[Irvin,2005,137].
first, why musical works which are not innovative are dismissed, and second, why this dismissal is no longer defensible.
That the elevation of originality to the status of aesthetic desideratum is a pro-gramme which has been running in western aesthetics since the early part of the nineteenth century has already been observed by several writers. In his attempt to find an alternative to this dominant aesthetic, an alternative which he calls serial aesthetics, Umberto Eco does a good job of explaining the importance it awards to the doctrine of originality. “Modern aesthetics and modern theories of art,” explains Eco, in his 1990 essay “Interpreting Serials”, “have frequently identified the artistic value with novelty and high information. The pleasurable repetition of an already known pattern was considered typical of Crafts—not Art—and industry.”26 “This is the reason,” he continues, a little later,
for which modern aesthetics was so severe apropros of the industrial-like products of the mass-media. A popular song, a TV commercial, a comic strip, a detective novel, a western movie, were seen as more or less successful tokens of a given model or type. As such, they were judged as pleasurable but non-artistic. Furthermore, this excess of pleasurability and repetition, and this lack of innovation, were felt to be a commercial trick (the product had to meet the expectations of its audience), not the provocative proposal of a new (and difficult to accept) world vision. The products of mass media were equated with the products of industry, insofar as they were produced in se-ries, and the “serial” production was considered alien to the artistic invention.27
Eco believes that repetitive products of the mass media show more affinity with the results of modern mechanised industry than they do with those of art. This is because “modern aesthetics” hold that the artwork is necessarily concerned with the unique, the individual, and the non-commercial; innovation is itssine qua non.
Eco is not alone in dismissing the “modern aesthetics” as ignorant of the value of repetition. Critic Linda Hutcheon, for example, makes the same point in her book on contemporary adaptations, from film adaptations of books, to theme park ride adaptations of computer game adaptations of films. “Adaptations are everywhere,” she observes.28Nonetheless, “in both academic criticism and jour-nalistic reviewing, contemporary popular adaptations are most often put down as secondary [or] derivative.”29 The basis for this critical neglect, is, she believes, the continued dominance of Romantic aesthetics. She cites specifically Immanuel Kant’s description of genius, a being whose essence “is entirely opposed to the spirit of imitation.”30 Artistic adaptations and appropriations are frowned upon, Hutcheon believes, because they violate the nineteenth-century principle of in-novative creativity.
26[Eco, 1990, 83].
27[Eco, 1990, 84].
28[Hutcheon, 2006, 2].
29[Hutcheon, 2006, 3].
30“Darin ist jedermann einig, daß Genie dem Nachahmungsgeiste gänzlich entgegen zu setzen sei.” Kant [1996], Part 1, Division 1, §47, my emphasis.
Both Eco and Hutcheon argue that the contemporary dismissal of repetitious, appropriating or adapting works stems from a reliance on older aesthetic para-digms which emphasise innovation. There are two observations to be made about this point. First, although both Eco and Hutcheon take the position as tyrannically dominant, the modern visual arts have partially succeeded in chal-lenging the notion that innovative genius is required to create great works. They have instead imprinted on the public mind the possibility that great art can be derivative, devoid of craft, or produced by the mere craftsman. The Chapman brothers’ “If Hitler Had Been a Hippy How Happy Would We Be” 2008 ex-hibition, for example, featured 13 watercolours (supposedly) painted by Adolf Hitler, on which the brothers daubed rainbows, smiling faces and floating hearts.
Antony Gormley’s 2006 “Field” comprises 35,000 small clay figurines sculpted by brickmakers in Cholula, Mexico, working under the artists’ guidance. Eco’s and Hutcheon’s positions must be tempered by the fact that the dominance of which they speak has already been partially undermined.
Second, however, it should also be observed that challenges to “modern aes-thetics” have only been successful in certain fields. While practitioners in the visual arts are now seemingly free to appropriate the works of others, musical works which do or have done so are less likely to be the target of historical at-tention than those which have not. There are three specifically musical reasons why this—and especially when thinking about arrangement—might be so. They all share in common a sense that there is something undesirable in the loss of the principles that Eco and Hutcheon have identified as dominant—innovation and genius.
The first group of reasons that keyboard arrangement has largely been dis-missed as aesthetically uninteresting revolve around the concept ofWerktreue.
Historian Kurt Blaukopf, for example, is so sure of the mutual influence of the ideology and arrangement that his 1968 book on the topic takes the two words as its title.31 There is no pressing need to embark on a history ofWerktreuehere, since excellent descriptions of it already exist.32 The earlier (and, to some extent, continuing) dominance of a belief in the principle has prohibited an accurate as-sessment of the importance of keyboard arrangement to musical life in the nine-teenth century because a believer in its insistence on fidelity is likely to argue that the preparation of a keyboard arrangement is a clear violation of the original work. According to this position, the nineteenth-century popularity of keyboard arrangement was simply an outgrowth of the fact that there were no other means to circulate music: arrangement was an empty and meaningless concession to practicality whose infidelities against the artwork first, cannot be excused and second, can only be explained by the fact that it was merely plugging a techno-logical gap. It was (and quite rightly so) forgotten as historical error as soon as a method of musical reproduction more faithful to the original—recording—was found.
Werktreue has had a particularly negative effect on historical interest in key-board arrangement because of the impact which arrangement has on
instrumen-31See Blaukopf [1968].
32See, for example, [Goehr, 1992, 243–286], and Danuser [2002].
tal timbre. Hector Berlioz, for example, argues that keyboard arrangement is re-jected by the modern composer because it undermines the time he or she has spent working on orchestration. “By destroying the instrumental effects,” he complains, “the piano at once reduces all composers to the same level, and places the clever, profound, ingenious orchestrator on the same platform with an igno-rant dunce.”33 Keyboard arrangement, Berlioz believes, sins against the original composition in terms of timbre: by transforming an orchestral work into a ver-sion for solo keyboard, its unique sound colour is obliterated. Given that timbre would grow through the nineteenth and into the twentieth century to become a fully independent compositional parameter, it is unsurprising that any musical practice which attempted to ignore it would itself be subject to a lack of respect and interest.
The second group of reasons for the contemporary disinterest in keyboard arrangement concern arrangement’s relationship with industry. It was shown above that Eco believes that copies are disliked because in recreating something as if from a mould they find themselves dangerously close to industry and thus
“alien to the artistic invention.”34 The perceived bifurcation of industry and art is profound and long-standing. While industry and its products are fungible and transient, the content of artworks is truth itself, and truth is timeless and unchanging. Arguably the most suspicious industry of all is thus also the most transient, its name in fact often standing as another word for transience: fash-ion. Dahlhaus argues that fashion is a category “whose ill repute in the arts is matched only by its uncontested domination of adjacent fields.”35Indeed, it is as fashionable objects in particular that keyboard arrangements suffer in contempo-rary estimations of them. Consider this ironic dialogue written by an anonymous critic in 1847:
“Have you heard the newSouvenir sur l’opéra ‘L’Ame en Peine’?”
Ah, it is godly; it must be an excellent Opera, full of spirit and melody.
“My daughter, who always buys the newest and most fashionable things, plays it like an angel.”
Oh, I assure you, in the Salon of Countess X, the new French dance from “Matrosen” had a volcanic success! Etc.36
The fast-changing dynamics of popularity meant that keyboard arrangement was in the nineteenth century a beloved vehicle for the demonstration of one’s fash-ionability. The ironic tone of this piece, however, exemplifies that this demon-stration made it inherently suspicious.
33[Berlioz, 1966, 84].
34[Eco, 1990, 84].
35[Dahlhaus, 1989, 140].
36“Haben Sie schon die neuen Souvenirssur l’opéra: “l’ame en peine”gehört? Ah, die sind göttlich—
muß eine ausgezeichnete Oper sein, voll Geist und Melodie.—“Meine Tochter, die stets das Neueste und Fashionabelste kommen läßt, spielt sie wie ein Engel!”—Ah, ich versichere Sie, im Salon der Gräfin X. hatten die neuen Françaisen aus den “Matrosen” einen wahren Chimborazo Erfolg! x.” [L., 1847, 435], line breaks mine.
Related to the fact that lack of serious interest in arrangement stems from its apparent similarities to the products of any fashionable industry is that arrange-ments found both an audience and a use which have long been viewed with disdain by serious musical culture. Keyboard arrangements in the nineteenth century were often easy to perform, simple to understand, and thus favoured by the supposedly ill-educated amateur of questionable taste: recall Cyril Ehrlich’s claim that arrangements were “mass produced for the ungifted and semi-trained to perform to the unmusical and half-listening.”37 Good music, so the argument goes, should not associate with such questionable company. To take an anal-ogous case, the reception of Haydn’s music as particularly profound has been hampered (in comparison with its reception as particularly funny, which has been strengthened) by the fact that its simple harmonic contour and approach-able classical architecture have led to it being appropriated as a pedagogical aid in mostHarmonie-andFormenlehre. This in turn has meant that it has often had to struggle to be accepted as a genre with serious musical aspirations.38 In the same way, the widespread use of keyboard arrangements at home and for the education of those often disrespectfully called dilettantes has meant that they too have suffered from a lack of historical interest and are rarely today taken seri-ously outside of their role as musical distraction. Neither the fashionable, the educational, the simple, nor the popular are capable of being real musical works, let alone ones worthy of study.
Finally, the third reason for ‘serious’ musicology’s disinterest in keyboard ar-rangement is that even when judged by those for whom appropriation is a valid form of artistic expression, the kind of appropriation practiced by keyboard ar-rangement seems to be particularly banal. In his 1982 book on imitation in liter-ature, for example, Gerard Genette lays out at length the several different ways in which one work can appear in another.39 One particular form of appropria-tion is imitaappropria-tion. Genette believes that for a work to be truly imitative, the new work has to do more than merely copy the old; it has to perform it. In the visual arts, imitation is a performance—it is called copying (in certain cases, forging), and it requires of the copier a certain degree of skill. In the musical arts, how-ever, this is not the case. “To imitate directly—i.e., to copy—a poem or a piece of music,” Genette argues, “is a purely mechanical task, at the disposal of any-one who knows how to write or to place notes on the staff, and without any literary or musical significance.”40 Keyboard arrangement is the clearest form of this mechanical copying. Genette believes that “direct imitation in literature or music, unlike what occurs in the visual arts, does not constitute a significant performance at all. Here, to reproduce is nothing.”41
Genette’s is a typically modernist position, one whose appearance in the work
37[Ehrlich, 1976, 93–94].
38This is the ‘Papa Haydn’ problem. See, for instance, Sutcliffe [1989] and James Webster and Georg Feder. “Haydn, Joseph. (§6, Character and Personality).” InGrove Music Online. Oxford Music Online, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/
music/44593pg6(accessed October 10, 2010).
39See Genette [1997].
40[Genette, 1997, 84].
41[Genette, 1997, 84].
of an arch-structuralist might not be surprising. Most importantly, it relies on the assumption that mechanical copying is less interesting to an audience than transformation. Genette believes that an audience could not find anything of artistic interest in an unchanged copy of an original. As will be shown below, this position is patently false.