Surrealism (music)
Encyclopedia
Surrealist music is music
which uses unexpected juxtapositions and other surrealist techniques
. Discussing Theodor Adorno, Max Paddison (1993, 90) defines surrealist music as that which "juxtaposes its historically devalued fragments in a montage-like manner which enables them to yield up new meanings within a new aesthetic unity," though Lloyd Whitesell says this is Paddison's gloss
of the term (Whitesell 2004, 118). Anne LeBaron
(2002, 27) cites automatism
, including improvisation
, and collage
as the primary techniques of musical surrealism
. According to Whitesell, Paddison quotes Adorno's 1930 essay "Reaktion und Fortschritt" as saying "Insofar as surrealist composing makes use of devalued means, it uses these as devalued means, and wins its form from the 'scandal' produced when the dead suddenly spring up among the living" (Whitesell 2004, 107 and 118n18).
, who wrote the score for the ballet Parade, causing Guillaume Apollinaire
to coin the term surrealism, and George Antheil
who wrote that, "The Surrealist movement had, from the very beginning, been my friend. In one of its manifestos it had been declared that all music was unbearable—excepting, possibly, mine—a beautiful and appreciated condescension" (LeBaron 2002, 30–31).
Adorno cites as the most consequent surrealist compositions those works by Kurt Weill
, such as The Threepenny Opera
and Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny
, along with works by others drawn from the middle-period music of Igor Stravinsky
—most particularly that of L'Histoire du soldat
—and defines this surrealism as a hybrid form between the "modern" music of Arnold Schoenberg
and his school, and the "objectivist" neoclassicism/folklorism of the later Stravinsky. This surrealism, like objectivism, recognizes alienation but is more alert socially, and so denies itself the positive solutions of the objectivist, which are recognised as illusion, and instead remains content with "permitting social flaws to manifest themselves by means of flawed invoice which defines itself as illusory with no attempts at camouflage through attempts at an aesthetic totality", thereby destroying aesthetic formal immanence and transcending into the literary realm. This surrealism is further differentiated from a fourth type of music, the so-called Gebrauchsmusik
of Paul Hindemith
and Hanns Eisler
, which attempts to break through alienation from within itself, even at the expense of its immanent form (Adorno 2002, 396–97).
The early works of musique concrete
by Pierre Schaeffer
have a surrealist character owing to the unexpected juxtaposition of sound objects, such as the sounds of Balinese priests chanting, a barge on the River Seine, and rattling saucepans in Etude aux casseroles (1948). The composer Olivier Messiaen
referred to the "surrealist anxiety" of Schaeffer's early work in contrast to the "asceticism" of the later Etude aux allures of 1958 (Messiaen 1959, 5–6). After the first concert of musique concrete (Concert de bruits, October 5, 1948) Schaeffer received a letter from one member of the audience (identified only as M. C.) describing it as "the music heard, by themselves alone, by Poe and Lautreamont, and Raymond Roussel. The concert of noises represents not only the first concert of surrealist music, but also contains, in my view, a musical revolution" (Schaeffer 1952, 30–31). Schaeffer himself argued that musique concrete tended either towards atonality or surrealism, or both (Schaeffer 1959, 19–20).
Music
Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...
which uses unexpected juxtapositions and other surrealist techniques
Surrealist techniques
Surrealism in art, poetry, and literature uses numerous techniques and games to provide inspiration. Many of these are said to free imagination by producing a creative process free of conscious control. The importance of the unconscious as a source of inspiration is central to the nature of...
. Discussing Theodor Adorno, Max Paddison (1993, 90) defines surrealist music as that which "juxtaposes its historically devalued fragments in a montage-like manner which enables them to yield up new meanings within a new aesthetic unity," though Lloyd Whitesell says this is Paddison's gloss
Gloss
A gloss is a brief notation of the meaning of a word or wording in a text. It may be in the language of the text, or in the reader's language if that is different....
of the term (Whitesell 2004, 118). Anne LeBaron
Anne LeBaron
Alice Anne LeBaron is an United States composer and harpist.-Biography:Anne LeBaron holds a B.A. in music from the University of Alabama , an M.A. in music from the State University of New York at Stony Brook , and a D.M.A. from Columbia University...
(2002, 27) cites automatism
Surrealist automatism
Automatism has taken on many forms: the automatic writing and drawing initially practiced by surrealists can be compared to similar, or perhaps parallel phenomena, such as the non-idiomatic improvisation of free jazz....
, including improvisation
Improvisation
Improvisation is the practice of acting, singing, talking and reacting, of making and creating, in the moment and in response to the stimulus of one's immediate environment and inner feelings. This can result in the invention of new thought patterns, new practices, new structures or symbols, and/or...
, and collage
Collage
A collage is a work of formal art, primarily in the visual arts, made from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole....
as the primary techniques of musical surrealism
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
. According to Whitesell, Paddison quotes Adorno's 1930 essay "Reaktion und Fortschritt" as saying "Insofar as surrealist composing makes use of devalued means, it uses these as devalued means, and wins its form from the 'scandal' produced when the dead suddenly spring up among the living" (Whitesell 2004, 107 and 118n18).
Early surrealist music
In the 1920s several composers were influenced by surrealism, or by individuals in the surrealist movement. The two composers most associated with surrealism during this period were Erik SatieErik Satie
Éric Alfred Leslie Satie was a French composer and pianist. Satie was a colourful figure in the early 20th century Parisian avant-garde...
, who wrote the score for the ballet Parade, causing Guillaume Apollinaire
Guillaume Apollinaire
Wilhelm Albert Włodzimierz Apolinary Kostrowicki, known as Guillaume Apollinaire was a French poet, playwright, short story writer, novelist, and art critic born in Italy to a Polish mother....
to coin the term surrealism, and George Antheil
George Antheil
George Antheil was an American avant-garde composer, pianist, author and inventor. A self-described "Bad Boy of Music", his modernist compositions amazed and appalled listeners in Europe and the US during the 1920s with their cacophonous celebration of mechanical devices.Returning permanently to...
who wrote that, "The Surrealist movement had, from the very beginning, been my friend. In one of its manifestos it had been declared that all music was unbearable—excepting, possibly, mine—a beautiful and appreciated condescension" (LeBaron 2002, 30–31).
Adorno cites as the most consequent surrealist compositions those works by Kurt Weill
Kurt Weill
Kurt Julian Weill was a German-Jewish composer, active from the 1920s, and in his later years in the United States. He was a leading composer for the stage who was best known for his fruitful collaborations with Bertolt Brecht...
, such as The Threepenny Opera
The Threepenny Opera
The Threepenny Opera is a musical by German dramatist Bertolt Brecht and composer Kurt Weill, in collaboration with translator Elisabeth Hauptmann and set designer Caspar Neher. It was adapted from an 18th-century English ballad opera, John Gay's The Beggar's Opera, and offers a Marxist critique...
and Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny
Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny
Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny is a political-satirical opera composed by Kurt Weill to a German libretto by Bertolt Brecht. It was first performed in Leipzig on 9 March 1930.-Composition history:...
, along with works by others drawn from the middle-period music of Igor Stravinsky
Igor Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ; 6 April 1971) was a Russian, later naturalized French, and then naturalized American composer, pianist, and conductor....
—most particularly that of L'Histoire du soldat
Histoire du soldat
Histoire du soldat , composed by Igor Stravinsky, is a 1918 theatrical work "to be read, played, and danced" . The libretto, which is based on a Russian folk tale, was written in French by the Swiss universalist writer C.F. Ramuz...
—and defines this surrealism as a hybrid form between the "modern" music of Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg was an Austrian composer, associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School...
and his school, and the "objectivist" neoclassicism/folklorism of the later Stravinsky. This surrealism, like objectivism, recognizes alienation but is more alert socially, and so denies itself the positive solutions of the objectivist, which are recognised as illusion, and instead remains content with "permitting social flaws to manifest themselves by means of flawed invoice which defines itself as illusory with no attempts at camouflage through attempts at an aesthetic totality", thereby destroying aesthetic formal immanence and transcending into the literary realm. This surrealism is further differentiated from a fourth type of music, the so-called Gebrauchsmusik
Gebrauchsmusik
Gebrauchsmusik is a German term, essentially meaning “utility music,” for music that exists not only for its own sake, but which was composed for some specific, identifiable purpose...
of Paul Hindemith
Paul Hindemith
Paul Hindemith was a German composer, violist, violinist, teacher, music theorist and conductor.- Biography :Born in Hanau, near Frankfurt, Hindemith was taught the violin as a child...
and Hanns Eisler
Hanns Eisler
Hanns Eisler was an Austrian composer.-Family background:Eisler was born in Leipzig where his Jewish father, Rudolf Eisler, was a professor of philosophy...
, which attempts to break through alienation from within itself, even at the expense of its immanent form (Adorno 2002, 396–97).
The early works of musique concrete
Musique concrète
Musique concrète is a form of electroacoustic music that utilises acousmatic sound as a compositional resource. The compositional material is not restricted to the inclusion of sounds derived from musical instruments or voices, nor to elements traditionally thought of as "musical"...
by Pierre Schaeffer
Pierre Schaeffer
Pierre Henri Marie Schaeffer was a French composer, writer, broadcaster, engineer, musicologist and acoustician of the 20th century. His innovative work in both the sciences —particularly communications and acoustics— and the various arts of music, literature and radio presentation after the end...
have a surrealist character owing to the unexpected juxtaposition of sound objects, such as the sounds of Balinese priests chanting, a barge on the River Seine, and rattling saucepans in Etude aux casseroles (1948). The composer Olivier Messiaen
Olivier Messiaen
Olivier Messiaen was a French composer, organist and ornithologist, one of the major composers of the 20th century. His music is rhythmically complex ; harmonically and melodically it is based on modes of limited transposition, which he abstracted from his early compositions and improvisations...
referred to the "surrealist anxiety" of Schaeffer's early work in contrast to the "asceticism" of the later Etude aux allures of 1958 (Messiaen 1959, 5–6). After the first concert of musique concrete (Concert de bruits, October 5, 1948) Schaeffer received a letter from one member of the audience (identified only as M. C.) describing it as "the music heard, by themselves alone, by Poe and Lautreamont, and Raymond Roussel. The concert of noises represents not only the first concert of surrealist music, but also contains, in my view, a musical revolution" (Schaeffer 1952, 30–31). Schaeffer himself argued that musique concrete tended either towards atonality or surrealism, or both (Schaeffer 1959, 19–20).
Sources
- Adorno, Theodor W. 2002. Essays on Music, selected, with introduction, commentary, and notes by Richard Leppert; new translations by Susan H. Gillespie. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-22672-0 (cloth), ISBN 0-520-23159-7 (pbk).
- Anon. n.d. "Profile: Pixies". 4AD.com (archive, accessed 1 July 2011).
- Dylan, Bob. 1965. "Desolation Row" (lyrics). BobDylan.com.
- Lebaron, Anne (2002). "Reflections of Surrealism in Postmodern Musics", Postmodern Music/Postmodern Thought, edited by Judy Lochhead and Joseph Auner, . Studies in Contemporary Music and Culture 4. New York and London: Garland. ISBN 0-8153-3820-1.
- Messiaen, Olivier (1959). "Préface". La revue musicale, no. 244 (Experiences musicales: musiques concrète, electronique, exotique, par le Groupe de recherches musicales de la Radiodiffusion Télévision française).
- Paddison, Max (1993). Adorno's Aesthetics of Music. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-5214-3321-5.
- Queen (musical group). 1994. Liner notes to album, Queen IIQueen IIQueen II is the second album by British rock group Queen, released in March 1974. It was recorded at Trident Studios, London in August 1973 with co-producers Roy Thomas Baker and Robin Cable, and engineered by Mike Stone....
. CD audio disc. London: EMIEMIThe EMI Group, also known as EMI Music or simply EMI, is a multinational music company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the fourth-largest business group and family of record labels in the recording industry and one of the "big four" record companies. EMI Group also has a major...
. Originally issued on EMI LP EMA767, London: EMI, 1974. - Schaeffer, Pierre (1952). A la recherche d'une musique concrete. Paris: Editions du Seuil.
- Schaeffer, Pierre (1959a). "Situation actuelle de la musique expérimentale". La revue musicale, no. 244 (Experiences musicales: musiques concrète, electronique, exotique, par le Groupe de recherches musicales de la Radiodiffusion Télévision française): 10–17.
- Schaeffer, Pierre (1959b). "Le Groupe de recherches musicales". La revue musicale, no. 244 (Experiences musicales: musiques concrète, electronique, exotique, par le Groupe de recherches musicales de la Radiodiffusion Télévision française): 49–51.
- Themikman. 2003. "Interview: Venetian Snares: Satan’s Baby: Is My Music That Absurd That Nobody Could Possibly Be Buying It?" The Milk Factory (February) (Accessed 1 July 2011).
- Whitesell, Lloyd (2004). "Twentieth-Century Tonality, or, Breaking Up Is Hard to Do". In The Pleasure of Modernist Music: Listening, Meaning, Intention, Ideology, edited by Arved Mark Ashby. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press. ISBN 1-58046-143-3.
- Williamson, N. [n.d.]. "The Rough Guide to Bob Dylan"