Christian Wolff early piano music
During the period when these works were composed (1951-61), Christian Wolff was closely associated with John Cage, Morton Feldman, Earle Brown and David Tudor (they are sometimes referred to together as the 'New York School'). An essential part of the situation for all of them during the 1950s was the support and encouragement they were able to give each other. Working almost in complete isolation from
established American musical life, but with international
contacts in the European avant-garde, they effected as
radical a break with traditional ideas of music as anything that had occurred in the earlier part of the 20th century. Feldman later remarked that he was profoundly indebted to Christian Wolff ('I think of him as my artistic conscience') and that he was sure that 'if Cage didn't have Christian’s music with him all these years as his North Star, his trip would have been quite different'.
Wolff first met Cage in New York in 1950 when at the age of sixteen he began to study composition with him. Wolff later described some of the things he learnt from Cage:
"That musical structures are most usefully and clearly made in terms of time (rhythmic structures). That musical continuity need not follow along single, homogeneous categories That by making indeterminacy integral to the process of composing and (or) performing there can be brought about unpredictable successions, combinations, superpositions and overlaps which may surprise you, innocently and impersonally. That your work is not finished until performed, that it cannot but exist socially."
Already, even before he met Cage, Wolff was asking some fairly fundamental questions: 'What sort of sounds do you use?', 'Why should this sound follow that sound?', 'How do you structure this?', i.e. questions of compositional choice, procedure and continuity. His experience up to then had been in classical music, which he had studied from an early age; he was discovering Schoenberg, Berg, Webern, Bartok, Varese; he wanted to make a fresh start, to take nothing for granted. Someone gave him copies of Cowell's New Music magazine, virtually a compendium of American experimental music since the 1930s. He was looking for alternative models, 'anything to suggest you could work in a different way'. The meeting with Cage came at an opportune moment, when Cage had reached a critical point in his own work: 'I was with Cage when he finally decided that chance was the way to do it'.
The earliest of the works included here, For Prepared Piano (1951), consists of four short pieces, each with a pre-set time- structure of 25 bars, arranged as a square of 5 x 5 bars. A fixed array of sounds was chosen as material for each piece, mostly single notes and chords, each with its own fixed
duration and dynamic value. These elements were
distributed irregularly within the set time- structure, each sound usually discrete, repeated at unpredictable intervals, avoiding any sense of symmetry or progression. Wolff devised a method of composing which involved writing
vertically, bar by bar down and up the columns of the 5 x 5 bar square, so that the horizontal sequence in which the music is actually heard emerged ‘more or less without calculation or exact intent.’
First impressions may be of a music unlike any other: abrupt, delicate, astringent, enigmatic, disconcerting. The effect is as of isolated objects in space, sounds which seem to come from nowhere and lead nowhere, appearing and disappearing unpredictably, framed by silences. Attention is drawn to the immediacy of each sound. The ear is finely tuned to precise details, a microscopic world in close-up. Expectations derived from other kinds of music are not much help here; one is encouraged to listen afresh, with special alertness, as in unfamiliar territory, searching for clues.
Technically, the music arises directly from the mechanical action of the piano and emphasises its percussive character. The sounds are not joined up in familiar ways, the pedal is not used to give continuity, there is no legato phrasing, no illusion of the 'singing line'; instead there is a sharpness of attack, a stark exposure and isolation of individual sounds. The use of preparations enhances this impression: a method developed by Cage in the 1940s of transforming the sounds of the piano by the insertion of small objects (screws, coins, wedges, wood, rubber and other materials) between the strings. The sounds are altered in a variety of ways, in terms of pitch,
timbre and resonance; new timbral qualities are discovered, reaching out into the diverse sound world of percussion
instruments.
When he came to study with Cage, one of Wolff's first
assignments was to make an analysis of Webern's Symphonie op. 21. He was evidently much impressed by the interaction of sound and silence in Webern's music, by the transparency of the counterpoint and the way the linear, serial ordering of notes is offset by the spatial distribution of pitches in fixed
registers. Cage also set him exercises to write pieces using a limited number of notes: among the works he wrote in 1950 are his String Trio which has only 5 pitches, and other pieces exploring the fine distinctions which can arise with very restricted material.
For Piano I (written for David Tudor early in 1952) is based on a set of 9 pitches which remain fixed in register throughout, together with 9 dynamic values and 13 durations. These
preselected elements are distributed and combined within a rhythmic structure made up of determined time lengths, allowing for the occurrence of contrasting densities (the number of notes played in each time length) as well as silences. The schematically determined dynamics and
durations may reflect his discussions with Boulez (whom he visited in Paris, at Cage's suggestion, in the summer of 1951, when Boulez was working on his Structures for two pianos). In contrast, however, with European 'post-Webern' serialism, which is based on the idea of continual transformation and in which octaves are rigorously avoided, Wolff makes no use of serial procedures. The pitches in For Piano I are not ordered in a linear way, and among them are two F sharps and two G sharps, which means that, with so few pitches, octaves are often exposed. It was not so much the serial aspect of Webern's music which interested him as its spatial character. The fixity of elements in For Piano I accounts for the way it sounds: the music is objective and uncompromising, taking disjunct samples of the material, delineating the space with a sequence of stills. One notices that the same pitches are being repeated at irregular intervals, in different combinations, with different durations and dynamic levels; the sound space as a whole remains essentially static.
The next group of works (1953-57) shows a considerable increase in diversity: the writing was affected, as Wolff says, both directly and in reaction to the complex serial music of Boulez and Stockhausen (which Tudor was performing at this time). Boulez had asked, of his early pieces with restricted numbers of pitches, 'Why so few?' Wolff's response in
For Piano II (1953) was to use all 88 notes of the piano
keyboard. The music is pointillistic, with widely divergent
intervals, irregular barring and extreme use of syncopation. It moves in fits and starts, the sounds dissociated, scattered and thrown into irregular configurations without regard for linear continuity. The same characteristics are evident in Suite (I) (1954) for prepared piano, in three parts. Ten preparations are used, giving timbral transformations in parts 2 & 3 (they are not heard in the first part). The music is again sparse and disjunct, the preparations enhancing the diversity and highlighting the individuality of each sound. In these pieces Wolff is working with discrete preselected elements, juxtaposed and superimposed by means of intricate structural schemes not directly accessible to the listener. They were calculated to produce discontinuous intersections and
overlaps of the given material, the intervening silences being that part of the time structure not occupied by sounds. The compositional methods are described in his essay On Form (1960), in which the disjunction between composition and performance is also noted: "A piece is not played to exhibit its composed structure".
Listening to these pieces without prior knowledge of how they are put together is like seeing an arrangement of elements in space without any preliminary understanding or preconceived notions of order (cf. Wittgenstein, Zettel 711). Each new distribution seems to contradict what preceded it; since there are no predictable continuities, one can only listen in the immediate present to each moment as it occurs. The listener is now free to respond to the sounds as they happen, sounds which have broken free of the compositional procedure which brought them together. Instead of following the composer's train of thought, one's attention is drawn to the intrinsic qualities of the sounds themselves, to their distinctions and disparities. The ear grasps at unexpected repetitions and asymmetrical groupings, the sudden appearance of several notes in the same register sometimes giving rise to accidental melodic shapes.
In For Piano with Preparations (1957), again in three parts, the timbral range of the instrument is further explored: there are seventeen preparations, and the strings are also plucked, muted, touched at different points and in different ways to elicit a range of harmonics. Every means is used to liberate the sounds from the fixed striking position of the hammers. This diversification of resources leads, as in Cage's work, to the radical redefinition of the piano as a sound source, going (in later works such as For Pianist) far beyond its traditional role as a keyboard instrument. Every aspect of its construction is brought into play: the music seems to be derived directly from the physical materials of the instrument, rather than from its cultural history. John Tilbury sees the origin of this in Webern - the use of extreme registers and the pointillism of the texture (e.g. in the last movement of Webern's Variations op. 27) dissolving the traditional associations of keyboard playing, which arise from the use of adjacent fingers for adjacent notes, the normal hand positions for scales and arpeggios, and so on. Wolff's interest is always in heterogeneity and differentiation of individual sounds (a far cry from the uniformity demanded in the 1950s by the European serialists, who required that all elements be 'neutral' (Boulez) in order to function as components in a total system).
Early in 1957, realizing that he did not have time to complete a fully notated piece for himself and Frederic Rzewski to perform in a scheduled recital, Wolff devised an experiment in partly composed improvisation, with some specified material and some free choices of what was to be played (either to be prepared in advance or chosen spontaneously in the course of performance). Duo for Pianists I was written later the same year as a result of this experience; Wolff invented a form of notation which specifies a rhythmic structure made up of a sequence of time brackets of widely different lengths (e.g. from 1/16th second to 36 seconds), and a range of pitch materials from which each player chooses a specified number of sounds to be played within a given time bracket (see note). The rhythmic structure, based on a complex proportional system, is similar to that used in earlier pieces, but the difference here is that instead of being precisely notated within the time brackets, the sounds can occur freely within them: e.g. 3 sounds from a specified pitch source to be played within 1/4 second, or 14 freely chosen sounds (3 of them muted) within 30 seconds. The degree of specification is varied: dynamics are sometimes indicated, more often left free. The sounds can be played in any order,anywhere within the indicated time length, taking up any amount of it from a small part (leaving the rest silent) to its full length. Some of the time brackets have no sound in them (i.e. silence). The time brackets and the source material are the same or similar for both performers, but arranged differently, so that they overlap in unpredictable ways.
The effect of this new notation is to create a high degree of variety in the choice and combination of sounds, of
transparency and irregularity in their distribution, and a high level of involvement for the performers in deciding how, when and what to play. Since the two parts are rhythmically
independent and there is no way in performance for one player to predict exactly what the other will do next, they have to be extremely flexible and responsive to each other.
It was this situation which suggested the cueing procedure between performers which Wolff first introduced in his next work. Duo for Pianists II (1958). This is an ‘open form’ piece consisting of a number of sections of different lengths; the order in which they are played is variable, determined for each player by cues heard from the other player (e.g. a loud high note, a muted note, a silence of a given length, each requiring a different response). Any of the sections may be repeated several times (differently at each repeat), and the total duration is not fixed. Cage, who performed these works with Tudor, described the function of each performer in Duo for Pianists II as 'comparable to that of a traveler who must constantly be catching trains the departures of which have not been announced but which are in the process of being announced. He must be continually ready to go, alert to the situation, and responsible'.
For Pianist (1959) is an attempt to involve a single player in unpredictable situations such as those which arise in Duo for Pianists II. The notation again uses time brackets, with a given number of sounds from specified pitch sources to be played within them, but instead of responding to cues from another player the pianist here has to respond to cues which arise, unintentionally, from his own playing. For example, he may be required to play, at very short notice and while
simultaneously doing other things, a single note 'as soft as possible'. There are three possibilities: he may succeed, the sound may be louder than intended, or it may be inaudible. Each of these results determines a different continuation. Sometimes the continuation has to be combined with
something else which is already in progress: the player becomes involved in a labyrinth of alternative pathways and overlaps. David Tudor described the work as 'a conundrum'. The outcome is volatile and exhilarating: a divergent sequence of sporadic bursts, twists and turns and contrary impulses. The sound world is further extended with auxiliary instruments and sources external to the piano. Hence the title: it is now the activity of the pianist, rather than the instrument itself, which is the focus of attention. Wolff later paid tribute to Tudor’s virtuosity and resourcefulness; "Nothing was too hard for him, he liked it that way. He was absolutely clear and decisive, no matter how indeterminate the material".
Duet I (1960) for piano 4 hands introduces a new cueing
procedure: whereas in Duo II cueing is used to determine the order in which sections are played, and in For Pianist which of several alternative paths is to be followed, here cues are given for precise note-to-note co-ordinations, including attacks and releases of individual sounds. The score consists of two pages, each with a number of separate sections which can be played in any order; sections may be repeated (differently each time, e.g. in the choice of pitches) or omitted. Various kinds of interactions between the two players are specified. As in earlier pieces the sounds are finely differentiated; they are played directly on the strings as well as from the keyboard, and are sometimes required to be timbrally altered in the course of playing. The time bracket notation is no longer used: all timings are either free or dependent on coordinations. This requires very attentivelistening and creates a more spacious and relaxed sense of time; continuity from moment to moment depends on awareness of the quality and resonance of each sound, instead of on the exact measurement of predetermined durations.In Trio II (1961) for piano 4 hands and percussion, both types of cueing are used, first for specific note-to-note co-ordinations, then also for determining the order of sections for each player individually, so that the piece includes both co-ordinated and independent activity. The two processes can not always be clearly distinguished;
connections between sounds may arise either from co-ordination or by coincidence, and the way one listens to them can suggest relationships, whether consciously intended or not. There is a sense of inclusivity and non-discrimination, of the music being open to the wider environment of sound in general. The material for the percussionist extends the range of timbral resources, including sounds made with wood, metal, glass and friction. The score also calls for the construction of a special instrument, a ‘string box’ capable of producing ‘complex but unresonant’ sounds; crossing instrumental categories as conventionally defined, a reminder that the piano is itself both a string and a percussion instrument. In both these pieces the co-ordination and exchanges between players create subtle networks of distinctive and disparate sounds, often broken by silence, reminiscent of Webernian
‘klangfarbenmelodie’ (melody of tone colours).
As well as ingenuity and resourcefulness, the performance of this music requires a particular kind of awareness, objectivity and attention to detail. As John Tilbury has remarked, "You are so involved with actually making the sound that you have no opportunity for emotional indulgence; you have a job to do and it takes all your concentration to do it efficiently - i.e. musically. With this music you learn the prime qualities needed in performing: discipline, devotion and disinterestedness.â€
After the fragmentation and dissociation of elements in the earlier works, Wolff here suggests, tentatively and
meticulously, how sounds might be picked up and strung together again in new ways. As he said in relation to a slightly later piece, For One. Two or Three People (1964) , which develops the idea of responsiveness between performers and introduces social implications which were to become more explicit in his subsequent, politically motivated work, "The movement of the music is towards melody in its largest sense... This may not be always obvious, but then the times are not conducive to easy optimism".
Michael Parsons September 2002
Note: In this recording, John Tilbury plays a version of the first pianist’s part of Duo for Pianists 1 made by Cornelius Cardew in the early 1960s.
References:
Christian Wolff: Cues: Writings and Conversations (Musik Texte, 1998) (includes the essay 'On Form', originally published in Die Reihe 7 (1960)
David Patterson: Cage and Beyond (Interview with Christian Wolff)
Perspectives of New Music, 1994
John Cage: Composition as Process - Indeterminacy; in Silence (1961)
pp. 38-39
Morton Feldman: About Christian Wolff (talk given at SUNY, Buffalo, 1973;
transcribed by Nicola Walker Smith) The Musical Times, Autumn 2001
John Tilbury: The Contemporary Pianist (in conversation with Michael Parsons) The Musical Times, February 1969
After recent extraordinary releases of music by Feldman and Cardew, pianist John Tilbury pays homage to another friend and mentor, Christian Wolff, with this outstanding double CD (Wolff himself and percussionist Eddie Prévost help out on the second disc). Christian Wolff started studying music with John Cage when he was just sixteen in 1950, and 'For Prepared Piano' (1951) is an affectionate nod towards the rhythmic aspects of his teachers early music, its four short pieces each following a predetermined 25 bar (5x5) structure. In 1951, at Cage's suggestion, Wolff visited Pierre Boulez in Paris while the latter was working on his epochal 'Structures' for two pianos, and 'For Piano I' is a rigorous workout of nine pitches (frozen In register), nine dynamic values and thirteen durations. As if in reaction to this piece's frosty rigor, 'For Piano II' (1953) sets out to use all 88 notes of the piano, but it's still a challenging listen, with its sounds "dissociated, scattered and thrown into irregular configurations without regard for linear continuity" (to quote Michael Parsons' excellent and highly informative liner notes), In the 'Suite (I)' (1954), where "Wolff is working with discrete preselected elements, juxtaposed and superimposed by means of intricate structural schemes not directly accessible to the listener", you'll also have to come along prepared to think.
In 1957, Wolff began incorporating elements of Indeterminacy into his scores (see the two 'Duos for Pianists;), leaving performers free to choose certain specified sounds and insert them into time brackets of varying durations (Cage returned to the time bracket Idea In his late "numbers" pieces). In 'For Pianist' (1959), Wolff attempted to involve a single performer In unpredictable situations, specifying various activities to be executed - sometimes simultaneously - with precise instructions to be followed depending on the outcome. Though still disjunct and angular, there are more surprises in store - from the occasional slamming of the piano lid to the odd unadorned dominant seventh, In the 'Duet I' for piano (four hands) and 1961's 'Trio II' (adding percussion), Wolff developed systems of cueing to specify event order and duration, attack and release. As his work developed during the 1960s, text began to replace musical staff notation, but anyone imagining that following Wolff's Instructions Is child's play Is well advised to listen to John Tilbury: "You are so Involved with actually making the sound that you have no opportunity for emotional indulgence; you have a job to do and takes all your concentration to do it efficIently - i.e. musically. WIth this music you learn the prime qualities needed in performance: discipline, devotion and disinterestedness".
Dan Warburton
Signal to Noise May 2003
Member of the so-called New York School along with John Cage, Morton Feldman and Earle Brown, French/American composer Christian Wolff (b. 1934) also has a considerable history with improvisation.
Mostly self-taught, like many of the greatest jazzmen,he has been a professor of classics and music at Dartmouth College since 1970. Not only do many of his pieces allow for cues and other material to spark the performers' interpretations, but as apianist Wolff has improvised with, among others, soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy, turntablist Christian Marclay and, most notably, veteran British trio AMM.
That's why this two-CD set of the composer's early piano music is doubly interesting and valuable. The first disc features interpretations of Wolff's oeuvre by AMM member pianist John Tilbury, who is also an acknowledged master of performing Feldman's work. The second disc adds the composer himself on piano for four numbers as well as extending the mix with the percussion of another AMMer, Eddie Prévost, for the lengthy "Trio II." Wolff's work has always been characterized with a very limited number of pitches and over the years his notation has become simpler.
Like many modern composers he has frequently had to face the charge that his sounds are cold and uninviting, something experimental pianists on the jazz/improv side of the fence have had to put up with as well. Although the 17 creations here are certainly formal enough, this coldness only exists if the listener is expecting to hear something other than what Wolff authored. If sweeping 19th century Romanticism is your definition of so-called classical piano music, then Wolff's pieces will fittingly disappoint you.
Thelonious Monk and Cecil Taylor initially experienced
-- and in Taylor's case still experience -- this sort of wrong-headed or tin-eared criticism. If the listener expects the pure swing, manifest note patterns and pop song references of say Bud Powell, Art Tatum or Oscar Peterson, what Monk or Taylor plays is going to sound "wrong". That it's actually "right" because it's following a whole different set of
standards is precisely how Wolff's work is "right" and, in fact, anything but cold. What's cold to someone who has lived all his life in South Africa, for instance, isn't perceived the same way by someone who lives in Northern Canada.
Perhaps it's due to Tilbury's touch, which has always been able to reach the proverbial spaces between the keys, but on the first CD there doesn't seem too much difference between the composer's earlier prepared and non-prepared pieces. At least, that is, until the three-part "For piano with preparations - 1957" makes its appearance. Even here though, the 17 preparations and the instructions that the strings are to be
touched, plucked and muted at different times don't produce an unappetizing sound picture. Instead you have a straightforward exploration of varied harmonics, performed with the same nonchalant élan that contemporary Euro improvisers bring to their instant compositions.
Although the dual piano work that takes up most of CD2
includes so-called reciprocal improvisation as well as free sections, cues, open forms and stratagems for instant creations there's really no link to later raucous game pieces like John Zorn's. Don't expect dual piano work along the lines of Albert Ammons and Pete Johnson, Russ Freeman and André either.
Here, neither the composer nor the interpreter deems it necessary to play the accompanist role, nor would the silences, resonating cadenzas, occasional string plucks or odd whack on the instrument's side remind anyone of the boogie-woogie team or sequential swing stylists. If, in the context of 2003, Wolff's creations appear to resemble dual piano explorations of Alexander Von Schillipenbach, Irène Schweizer, Keith Tippett or Marilyn Crispell, it's because those
keyboardists -- and many others -- have internalized the New York School's formal experimentation along with Taylor's pianistic audacity.
Prévost's subtle percussion asides fit perfectly into this aural garden of rapport. Singular tones from triangle, drum head and other percussion appear fleetingly at various times -- and someone does whistle every so often -- but never does the drummer or the drums demand domineering attention. Nor do
these sounds disrupt the proceedings. Meanwhile the four hands of the pianists' appear to fuse into two. You could compare the result to certain contemporary single piano-drum kit displays, so thoroughly do Wolff and Tilbury merge. Wolff's relationship with AMM is such because its three members have confidence that when he works with them their aesthetic is respected. You can say the same about this disc. Without Keith Rowe's guitar and preparations, it still isn't an AMM
plus guest session. Instead both men subsume themselves so thoroughly into Wolff's work that the set should first be recommended to composition types who want a superior Wolff souvenir, then to improv followers, to see how versatile and selfless Tilbury and Prévost can be.
Ken Waxman
www.jazzweekly.com
May 2003