Concept and Context A Historiographic

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Concept and Context: A Historiographic

Consideration of Lachenmann's
Orchestral Works
Richard Toop
Available online: 15 Sep 2010
To cite this article: Richard Toop (2004): Concept and Context: A Historiographic Consideration of
Lachenmann's Orchestral Works, Contemporary Music Review, 23:3-4, 125-143
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Vol. 23, No. 3/4, September/December 2004, pp. 125 143
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Concept and Context: A

Historiographic Consideration of
Lachenmanns Orchestral Works
Richard Toop
Orchestral music has occupied a central position in Lachenmanns work. Although one
can divide these works into distinct periods, there is a consistency of purpose and style
that runs through them. Nevertheless, it is argued here that certain consistent features
acquire different signicances, depending on the general context of European new music
at the time. To this end, the works are placed in a broader compositional context than
that of Lachenmanns own output.
Keywords: Analysis; Context; History; Orchestra
People constantly accuse Nono of standing still. In doing so, they
fail to recognize what standing still means at a stage where all other
composers have gone backward, side-stepping onto paths of less
resistance. (Helmut Lachenmann, 1969)1
For me, talking about a work means describing the concept of
material defined in it, and thus, shedding light on the contexts that
situate and delimit it. (Helmut Lachenmann, 1995)2
Orchestral practice and the instrumental practice of experimental music are

mutually exclusive: thus begins an essay by Hans Rudolf Zeller on Lachenmann und
das Orchester (Lachenmann and the Orchestra).3 With this sentence, Zeller
immediately points to a paradoxical aspect of Lachenmanns constant engagement
with the orchestral medium; one which, for Zeller, writing in the 1980s, was the very
one in which, since the 70s, younger composers have given free rein to their antiexperimental impulses and resentments.4 That time of neo-Romantic reaction, one
might argue, has passed by, and been succeeded by a period of postmodernist (or
even post-postmodernist) relativism, in which, at a level of broad cultural
interpretation, no medium is particularly relevant or irrelevant. But the paradox of
a highly signicant composer who, in the course of nearly four decades, has sought to
ISSN 0749-4467 (print)/ISSN 1477-2256 (online) 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd
DOI: 10.1080/0749446042000293501
126
R. Toop
project radical thought through a medium that is not only traditional but seems also
to embody the potential fossilisation of western art music, and has been the constant
object of critiques from both modernists and populists, surely merits some
investigation.
Let us consider the sheer dimensions of orchestral music in Lachenmanns output.
Discounting the unperformed and largely unknown Souvenir and Due Giri (the latter
withdrawn) as (presumably highly Nono-inuenced) student works, we can begin
with the Notturno (Musik fur Julia) for cello and small orchestra (1966/1968, revised
1990) that Clytus Gottwald (1988, p. 3) plausibly identies as the work in which
Lachenmann rst nds a personal voice. Table 1 shows, then, how the orchestral
output looks.
That makes fourteen works in all, lasting a total of more than six hours, and all but
the last two written within just over 20 years (1968 1989). Moreover, the decade
between Tableau and NUN was largely taken up with composition of the opera Das
Madchen mit den Schwefelholzern, which involves very little conventional singing, but
a great deal of orchestral musicabout two hours worth.
One fundamental question to be considered in what follows is whether one should
regard this output as a linear historical journey (the composers), as a gradual
exploration/exhaustion of possibilities, or as some kind of dialogue or dialectic
between the two. A second question is a little more complex, and perhaps one can
foreshadow it by referring to a short allegorical ction by Jorge Luis Borges: Pierre
Menard, Author of the Quixote. It takes the form of a (ctitious) review and
compares two identical (but entirely independent!) texts of Don Quixote: a complete
one created by Cervantes in 1602 and the other (only fragmentary) by the imaginary
Pierre Menard in the early 20th century. Comparing these two identical texts in terms
of their historical context, the reviewer proves (at least to his own satisfaction) that
Table 1 Lachenmanns Orchestral Works

Year
Work5
Duration
1968
1969
1971
1972
1973
1975
1976
1980
1983
1985
1987
1989
1999
2003
Notturno (Musik fur Julia) for small orchestra with cello solo
Air. Music for large orchestra with percussion solo
Kontrakadenz. Music for orchestra
Klangschattenmein Saitenspiel
Fassade (2nd music) for large orchestra
Schwankungen am Rand. Music for brass and strings
Accanto. Music for a solo clarinettist with orchestra
Tanzsuite mit Deutschlandlied. Music for orchestra with string quartet
Harmonica. Music for orchestra with solo tuba
Ausklang. Music for piano with orchestra
Staub. For orchestra
Tableau. (Piece) for orchestra
NUN. Music for ute, trombone, (and) orchestra with male voices
Schreiben6
ca
ca
ca
ca
ca
ca
ca
ca
ca
ca
ca
ca
ca
ca
18
19
18
27
22
30
25
36
31
50
19
10
39
24
127
Menards incomplete version is superior in every instance, since it has a wealth of

cultural references inaccessible to poor Cervantes.
Clearly, the present author has no intention of going to such extremes! However, I
shall seek to show that there may be a difference between the consequences of
evolving a personal aesthetic in a particular historical context and those of pursuing it
uninchingly in changing, perhaps less receptive environments. Many highly gifted
composers remain wedded to the same essential style over many decades (as
Mendelssohn did, for example) and, in a present-day context, to do so runs the risk
of being accused (sometimes quite justly) of being a composer-ostrichburying
ones head in the sand (which, if one feels one is in the midst of a desert, may seem to
be the only option!). The point at issue is, put simply, whether adherence to a
particular modus operandi in the face of changing social conditions is the result of
reection and consequent hard-necked persistence, or simply complacent habit. In
relation to Lachenmann, I shall be emphatically arguing the former. If my emphasis,
on the whole, is on earlier works, this has nothing to do with assessments of quality:
personally, I take the view that Lachenmanns output begins at a very high level and
consistently nudges upward. However, I also take the view that the socio-political and
aesthetic environment of the later worksan amoeba-like relativismis so diffuse as
largely to defy any attempt to associate them concretely with a Zeitgeist. Put
polemically, under post-postmodernism, there is neither Zeit nor Geist: no time and
no spirit. Yet for creative spirits such as Lachenmann, personal inspirations,
convictions, ideals and compulsions will always create their Eigenzeit: their own time,
both fragile and invulnerable.
Let us consider the historical context from which Lachenmanns earliest
acknowledged orchestral works were derived and into which they were projected.
The period in question is the late 1960s, yet there are certain inuences that
clearly go back at least a decade earlier. The most obvious of these are Luigi
Nono, with whom he studied, and Karlheinz Stockhausen: these are the models to
whom Lachenmann constantly refers in his writings. For the young Lachenmann,
Stockhausen is, above all, the composer of Gruppen for three orchestras, which, he
says, Nono also admired, while regretting what he saw as its regression to a
gurative style.7 What Lachenmann praises in Gruppen, apart from its sheer
dynamism, is the interaction of timbre and structure; on the other hand, he
sometimes criticises what he sees as latently philharmonic traits and, perhaps
more signicantly, a tendency to treat instruments only as acoustic entities,
without regard for their cultural aura.8
As for Luigi Nono, at one level he had taken the orchestra as a traditional given;
naturally, where the opportunity arose, he would write orchestral works, which
implied not only larger resources than those of chamber music, but also a more
public arena. Yet, given his strong Marxist convictions, the medium had to bear a
message and in each case one had to decide whether there was a natural correlation
between the two, or an innate opposition. Throughout the 1950s, there is a clear
polarisation in Nonos work between abstract titles (Composizione per orchestra,
128
R. Toop
Incontri, Varianti) and politically committed ones (Epitafo per Federico Garca Lorca,
La victoire de Guernica, Il canto sospeso), with the latter prevailing.9 In that respect, it
seems symptomatic that when Nono nally composes a Composizione per orchestra n.
2 (subtitled Diario polacco 58, but completed in 1959), not only have eight years
elapsed since the initial Composizione per orchestra of 1951, but in the meantime there
have been at least eight other works (admittedly, many with voices) that involved an
orchestra or at least a substantial chamber orchestra. Such considerations must
inevitably have played a role in determining how Lachenmann himself initially
viewed the orchestral medium.
There is no doubt that we are dealing here with an exceptionally partisan young
composer, for whom essentially all of the major gures from the 1950s, except Nono,
have sold out in one way or another, and the newly emerging gures like Ligeti, Kagel
and especially Penderecki are bringing about a debasement of hearing, a regression to
lazy listening habits. But even Nono, it appears, needs to be succeeded, or at least
supplemented: It is a matter of going beyond Nono. To date, no direct opponent of
his has managed this. 10 It is clear that, while Lachenmann had no intention of
casting himself as a direct opponent, he did feel an obligation to move on, in an
equally intransigent manner, on a parallel but not identical path. However, there is a
paradox here. By the late 1960s, when Lachenmann wrote these words, the pointillism
of the 1950s was no longer characteristic of Nonos own practice: he had effectively
said farewell to this style with the Canti di vita e damore: Sul ponte del Hiroshima
(1962) and the Canciones a Guiomar (1963); subsequent pieces for large ensemble,
clearly inuenced by his espousal of electroacoustic music,11 would take a textural
approach much more akin to the Polish school, which Lachenmann himself regarded
with such disdain.12
Here, perhaps, we should note two critiques implicit in the article on Nono cited
above. One is that Nonos instrumental practice is rather abstract, in a Webernian
sense: it does not consciously engage with the physical production of sound as a
category of labour.13 Yet early structuralist scores such as Funf Strophen (1961) and
Angelion (1962/1963, both withdrawn) suggest that, initially, Lachenmann had
adopted a similar attitude. In the emphatically aleatory work Introversion II (1963,
withdrawn) there are certainly moments (notably in the double bass part) that offer
glimpses of the more radical view of sound production that was to emerge shortly,
but, for the most part, the depiction of the musical events is still very abstract.14
Lachenmanns second, discreetly voiced critique has to do with the undeniable
element of pathos that arises from explicitly political-humanitarian concerns, even in
Nonos earliest worksfor example, in the Epitafo per Federico Garca Lorca (1951/
1953), La victoire de Guernica (1954) and parts of Il canto sospeso (1956). This resort
to pathos was alien to the young Lachenmann and has largely remained soin fact,
one probably has to wait for Das Madchen mit den Schwefelholzern, 40 years later, to
nd any signicant trace of it. This in turn points to another essential distinction
between Lachenmanns work and Nonos, which will doubtless be more thoroughly
examined elsewhere. Put simply, Lachenmann largely shared Nonos Marxist
129
convictions, but not their projection into overtly communist work agendas. To date,
his most politically explicit work title is that of the two-guitar piece Salut fur
Caudwell, in the course of which a passage from the English Marxist writer is spoken
by the guitarists, but in a highly stylised, sharply rhythmicised manner that
immediately strips it of emotive sermonising.
Even in early writings, Lachenmann emphasised the break of two years that
separated the commencement of Notturno in 1966 from its conclusion in 1968.
Indeed, it is crucial not only for the work in question but also, arguably, in shaping
Lachenmanns whole dialectical approach to the orchestral medium. It is during this
period that, without ever renouncing structuralism, he begins to sense new
possibilities for what rigorously conceived structures can serve to project.
Evidently, the Notturno is not a virtuoso concerto in the sense of the tightrope
displays that Gyorgy Ligeti and Bernd Alois Zimmermann had recently written for
Siegfried Palm;15 arguably, it is not even a concertante piece, even though the solo
part is evidently highly demanding and there is a long cadenza.16 However, our
concern here is not only with the solo part, but with how, as the rst of many works
by Lachenmann that place a solo instrument with the orchestra (the subtitle here is
Music for Small Orchestra with solo Violoncello), the notion of with operates. At one
level, the opening of Notturno betrays its historical roots in Nonos pointillism:
isolated notes, sustained to different degrees, in contrasting registers. But these notes
do not simply sit there: they make sharp crescendi or decrescendi, or glissandi. So,
compared with classic pointillism, they are already internally animated (coincidentally or otherwise, Nono too does something similar with the brass at the start of
Diario polacco 58). Concerning the solo cello part, in the opening minutes, its role is
hard to tie down: not with or against the ensemble, so much as ahead:
symptomatically, it seems to be testing out future possibilities.
Notturnos cadenza, far from conrming a relationship to concerto conventions,
establishes Lachenmanns distance from them, both in terms of formal placement and
of content. Re the former, the main conventions are that, if there is only one cadenza,
it will come toward the end; re the latter, that it will be relatively short and also that it
will be a more or less ostentatious display piece, drawing on the pieces earlier
materials. Here, the cadenza obeys none of these precepts. First, it comes near the
beginningabout four minutes into a piece that lasts circa 18 minutes. Second, in
terms of duration it is huge: it lasts about eight minutes, i.e. half the length of the
whole piece. Third, in no way is it a conventional display piece. In the opening
minutes of the work, the solo cello has negotiated hair-raising obstacles, not least by
often pretending to be one of the violins. But what one witnesses in the cadenza is not
so much the virtuoso instrumentalist as the virtuoso sonic explorer (meaning both
the composer and the performer!). Bit by bit, the musique concre`te instrumentale
fundamental to works like Pression evolves before our eyes and ears, but for the most
part, it does so at the verge of audibility; although discreet amplication is permitted
while the cello is playing with the orchestra, for the cadenza it is emphatically
forbidden.
130
R. Toop
When the orchestra re-enters, it is almost as if the soloists music had become a
virus that progressively and remorselessly infects the rest of the ensemble. The one
problem arising from this, perhaps, is that, in drawing the orchestra collectively into
these new performance modes, Lachenmann sometimes comes perilously close to the
kind of textural tachisme that he was critical of in other composers works, especially
those of the Polish school. And that may be why (even if it is unconscious), at the
very end of the piece, there is a momentary return to the clean, fragmentary textures
of the opening (which also removes any suspicion of a nal climax/peroration).
As it happens, only just over four months separated the premie`re of Notturno
(Brussels, April 1969) from that of Air (Frankfurt, September 1969). But in the year
separating the completion of the two works, the European political climate had
undergone radical changes. In the mid-1960s, the only leading European composer to
have declared a clear left-wing political engagement, and to have exemplied it in his
work, was Nono. Hans Werner Henze was about to make a sudden realignment to
the radical left, but it had not happened yet: as of 1967, his latest works were a second
piano concerto and Telemanniana (!). And in the wake of works such as La fabbrica
illuminata (1964), A oresta e jovem e cheja de vida (1966) and, perhaps above all, Per
BastianaTai-Yang Cheng, Nono became a persona non grata at the major European
festivals, especially in Germany.17
By 1969, the situation was different. May 1968 had been and gone, but had left
huge cultural resonances. Air was premie`red in Frankfurt, but as part of the 1969
Darmstadt Summer Courses; naturally Lachenmann attended the latter. The
buzzwords at the courses were multimedia (in a sense that would seem rather
nave these days) and engagierte Musiki.e. (leftist) politically engaged music.
However, the focal and undoubtedly most controversial events were the daily
performances of texts from Aus den Sieben Tagen that constituted Stockhausens
composition seminars, with little or no verbal commentary. It soon became clear that
these worksunlike many earlier oneswere totally resistant to Marxist interpretations and assimilations. Thus, a confrontational situation built up. There was a
roundtable discussion in which Lachenmann took part. Stockhausen was not
involved, but Johannes Fritsch, a key member of the Stockhausen Ensemble, was
there as his spokesman. As I recollect, Lachenmann pitched in with a fairly
inammatory question: Mr Fritsch, when you are playing Stockhausens Aus den
Sieben Tagen pieces, which of Stockhausens ngers controls you? 18 Fritsch ushed,
angrily, and snapped back: The little nger!
And yet there is a certain paradox here, as well. On the one hand, it is clear that
ideologically, Stockhausen and Lachenmann were breathing air from different planets.
Yet, in terms of emphasising the physicality of sound production, the two could
scarcely have been closer. One could surely argue that Stockhausens Mikrophonie I
(1964), where in live performance one is intensely aware of the relationship between
physical actions and acoustic outcomes, is just as much an instance of musique concre`te
instrumentale as the music that Lachenmann wrote in the immediately succeeding
years. And the same was largely true for the Aus den Sieben Tagen performances.
131
Underlying ideology apart, the most signicant difference may be that, whereas
Stockhausens live-electronic manipulations at the mixing desk sought to amplify the
results of the performers actions (not only in terms of volume levels),
Lachenmannseffected by the performers themselveswere more inclined to stie
them.
There is no doubt that, for all of the controversy it elicited, Air made a very strong
impression at its rst performance and not merely through its provocative aspects,
which seemed to embody the new radicalisma critically founded breakout from
tradition and all existing orthodoxies. The German composer Walter Zimmermann,
then at the very beginning of his career, recalls that the atmosphere was very tense,
because the orchestral musicians were very opposed to the piece. It was a kind of
revelation, since I had never heard an orchestral work with such sonic renement. 19
So exactly what was so provocative about Air? Certainly not the idea of a percussion
concerto, which already existed as a genre (Milhaud, for example), but a decidedly
undistinguished one: historically, or in terms of genre, this was neutral territory.20
The point at issue was the inuence that the percussion exerted on the whole
orchestra.
In Notturno, the idea that a string instrument (the solo cello) steered the sound of
the whole ensemble was not, of itself, new. The orchestra, ever since its birth, has been
string-steered: what was new here was the behaviour of the steering instrument. But
in Air, it is the percussion world that becomes the norm into which the rest of the
orchestra is assimilated. Even though other instruments are, for the most part, clearly
identiable as woodwinds, brass or strings, they mostly behave as if they were a
special case of percussion. There is scarcely a moment in the piece where the
orchestra emerges as an autonomous unit, detached from the overriding percussion
entity. In other contexts, for example, bowed cymbals have seemed to emulate strings;
here it seems to be rather the other way around.
The transference of a percussion mentality to the orchestra is reected in the
notation, which becomes almost entirely an action notation: an indication of what is
to be done rather than the sounding result. The same largely holds for the dynamics,
which often reect the vigour of the action, rather than the loudness of the outcome
(in any case, in many instances what is affected here is pitch rather than volume). In
short, the whole act of performance is emphatically physicalised, even in the score: in
this respect, Air remains one of Lachenmanns most radical works. In his programme
note of 1969, Lachenmann clearly articulates an aesthetic that was to remain basic to
his work:
The alienation of instruments that is a favourite excuse for audiences (and also
some players) to cast stonesthe stied stroke, the blocked string, the pitchless
emission of air: in this context, it is not meant as a surrealist gag, or aggressive
provocation, but as the logical integration of the entire available repertoire of
sounds and noises: not simply what was previously salon-compatible. It serves a
concept of beauty that breaks through the taboos of custom, and is orientated to
the purity and structural clarity of the sonic situation, as an energy-dened eld.21
132
R. Toop
To be honest, the instrumentation of Air does also have its provocative aspects, not
least the use of dry wooden branches (which are broken), and a small plague of toy
frogs operated by the wind and brass players.22 Yet on the other hand, one has to
detach Air, and Lachenmanns subsequent output, from the kind of agent
provocateur attitude pursued in the immediately following years by Nicolaus A.
Huber in works like Versuch uber Sprache (1970) and, more notoriously, Harakiri
(1972). For all that Lachenmann has consistently and loyally solidarised with Huber
over many years, and named him as his closest fellow spirit, there are fundamental
distinctions to be made between the two. With Huber, a primary (though not
exclusive) tool has been confrontation. In this respect, Harakiri was, as its title
suggests, emblematic: the string ensemble has its strings tuned down so far that they
are barely capable of producing identiable pitches except at high volume/energy
levels, and it starts out at the verge of audibility. To that extent, it inhabits a
Lachenmann-like world. But thereafter, the work consists of a single, remorseless and
increasingly abrasive crescendo over circa 11.5 minutes, after which a pre-recorded
tape part takes over: there is an apocalyptic clap of thunder, about a minute of rainfall
replayed at the threshold of pain, and then, for slightly more than two minutes, a
Marxist critique (whose gentle female voice provides a further dialectical element) of
the socially manipulative role of crescendi and decrescendi. The works basic outlook is
one with which Lachenmann may well have identied, but it is inconceivable that he
would ever have used such placard-like means to articulate it.
Kontrakadenz, written the year after Air, pursues many of the same aims as its
predecessor, albeit without a focal soloist, and indeed operates with largely the same
orchestral forces.23 Here, the push for idealised orchestral resources involves, among
other things, devising an unorthodox layout for what is, essentially, a standard large
orchestra with an unusually large percussion section. The cellos and contrabasses are
at the front, placed respectively to the left and right of the conductor, while the rst
and second violins and violas each form a straight line radiating out from the
conductor. The pitched percussion, harp, piano, etc. are placed between the string
lines, and the woodwind and brass are, to a degree, intermingled.
Such departures from standard orchestral layout were, of course, common enough
at this time. The most extreme examples were probably Xenakis two sonotron
piecesTerretektorh (1965/1966) and Nomos gamma (1967/1968)where the
members of the (large) orchestra are seated amongst the audience, but it was
commonplace to see orchestral scores calling for unusual layouts. It has to be said
that acoustically, they did not always work; and here, it cannot be overlooked that it
was a basic assumption that such performances would be recorded and broadcast,
whether live or subsequently. During my own days in Cologne, at nearly the same
period (specically, 1973 1974), it seemed clear that many composers were
depending on radio microphones to balance innately impossible acoustic situations:
to that extent, the pieces were written more for the microphones than the live
audience.24 Never having heard Kontrakadenz liveonly via a single recording25
the author cannot comment on the acoustic effect of this layout, as opposed to its
133
polemic content. On the other hand, given Lachenmanns constant insistence on the
fundamental importance of accurate hearing as a basis for understanding, and the
exceptional ear to which even his early scores attest, one would be very reluctant to
include him in the ranks of the 1970s mixing-desk composers!
Another striking aspect of Kontrakadenzs instrumentation is the incorporation of
what Lachenmann describes as four ad hoc players. In effect, they are additional
percussion players, bringing up the overall complement to about the same as in Air,
though unlike the four designated percussionists, their parts require no particular
technical skills.26 What is more signicant here, perhaps, is the ad hoc designation
itself, implying a break with the basic orchestral convention wherebyas in the
maa!each player is bound for life to a family. These performers, by contrast, are
free agents: they could be collaborators (facilitators) or subversives, though in a
context like this one may reasonably assume the latter.
The rst two ad hoc players duties involve a relatively marginal but nonetheless
memorable aspect of Kontrakadenz: the use of radio sets (and at one point, a
simulated radio announcement of the performance of Kontrakadenz itself). Cageian
origins apart, this was a notion that wasforgive the near pun!in the air at the
time. It was not so much a matter of Stockhausen having used short-wave radios,
recorded or live, in works like Hymnen (1966/1967), Kurzwellen and Spiral (both
1968), where the radio signals are primarily a source of quasi-unforeseeable material.
Rather, it was a form of (usually ironic, but also serious) reection on the
overwhelming role of radio in the diffusion of new music, whether as a present or
past event. This is already foreshadowed in a couple more works from 1968: at the
end of the third movement of Luciano Berios Sinfonia, which includes a pseudoradiophonic acknowledgement of the performers (not on tape, but at leastlive
through loudspeakers; here, the spoken text [e.g. Thank you, Mr Boulez] implies
completion before the performance has in fact ended).27 More strikingly, in Johannes
Fritschs orchestral work Akroasis (which presents him more as the former student of
Bernd Alois Zimmermann than as a close Stockhausen collaborator), there is a live
news reader, whose reports, from Vietnam or wherever, set out to destroy the illusion
of a radio concert hall (Grosses Sendesaal) cocooned from an outside world, the
reportage of whose disasters are, perhaps, the primary social focus of the radio
stations activities. In Bernd Alois Zimmermanns own Requiem fur einen jungen
Dichter (1967/1969), the often dense tape collages have a distinct radio orientation,28
and in Peter Ruzickas In processo di tempo. . . (1971), whose sonic world is clearly
inuencedone could almost say denedby Lachenmanns work (especially Air),
there is a moment towards the end where the works title is announced on tape.
By the beginning of the 1970s, there was a real controversy within New Music
circles as to the viability of the orchestra. It was in this context that Mauricio Kagel
(whose rst, often highly aleatory orchestral work Heterophonie [1959/1961] had been
written for the Cologne Radio Symphony Orchestra, and dedicated to the Marquis
de Sade)29 wrote Zwei-Mann-Orchester (1971/1973), in which a huge array of mainly
rather decrepit sound sources are manipulated by only two players, often pulling
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R. Toop
threads to activate instruments at a considerable distance. The piece is dedicated to

the memory of an institution that is on the point of dying out: the orchestra30 and
the implication is that if earlier dreams of a liberated orchestra had proven empty, it
was now time uninchingly to depict orchestral musicians as virtual galley slaves. It
was partly in the same spirit that Stockhausen wrote Trans (1971), where all but the
strings are playing backstage and the string players play only long, held notes, their
totally synchronised movements being controlled by whip-like sounds on tape: at one
stage, Stockhausen contemplated calling the piece Requiem for the Orchestra.
Though it is probably unconscious, one can sense an echo of this in
Klangschattenmein Saitenspiel (1972), for 48 strings and three pianos. The
stringently focused orchestral resources (standard in terms of the strings, but by
no means for the keyboards) have various motivations. Looking back nearly a
quarter-century later, Lachenmann commented, almost apologetically, that in Air
and Kontrakadenz the new emphasis on hearing as physically conditioned had been
let in through the backdoor of expanded percussion and additional ad hoc
instruments,31 and that it was now time to work without backdoors, but not to
renounce anything: In composing, I could not simply make use of the means I
developed earlier, but nor could I abandon the territory that had been gained. 32
Although initially posited in relation to the rst string quartet Gran Torso (1971/
1972, with later revisions), these ideas are also reected in Klangschatten, not least
through its deliberately limited sonic palette, which in turn is linked to a
preoccupation of varied repetition. The sonic core of Klangschatten is short, sharp,
exactly synchronised sounds; or at least, this is what the look of the score (the
Notenbild) overwhelmingly suggests. But the actual methods of sound production are
such that perfect synchronisation is rarely possible: instead, as one hears on the CD
recording, there tends to be a quasi-stochastic scatter around the theoretical point of
entry.33 The short, sharp, often savage sounds that dominate Klangschatten may well
recall the whip sounds of Stockhausens Trans, but here, instead of being
administered by an unseen master, they are visibly executed by the players. To that
extent, these sounds have a sort of agellatory quality, as if the players were
castigating themselves for their own enslavement.
Yet dreams of the liberated orchestra still remained and, in some respects at least,
they are embodied in Schwankungen am Rand (1974/1975), which at circa 30 minutes
was easily Lachenmanns longest orchestra work to date. Here the instruments are
distributed around the hall, but amplied so that the live sound itself and its spatial
location can be modied. Naturally, this suggests the live electronic practice of
Stockhausens 1969 Darmstadt performances (!), though for Lachenmanns piece
there is not a single master sound-projectionist, but six independent ones.
Inevitably, there is also the idealised social element. At the end of his note for the
Donaueschingen premie`re of Schwankungen am Rand in 1975, Lachenmann wrote: I
hatenot just in artthe messiah and the clown. For me, each is the distorted image
of the other. On the other hand, I love Don Quixote, and I believe in the little girl
with the matches. 34 Whereas Don Quixote may have embodied an enduringalbeit
135
unrealisticidealism, the reference to Hans Christian Andersens Little Match Girl,

anticipating the opera Lachenmann would start to write more than a decade later, it
also had a very contemporary resonance, albeit a largely hidden one. On the one
hand, he had recently re-encountered the story he had known since childhood in a
Japanese radio version in which the uncomplaining stoicism of the little girl in the
face of social injustice seemed doubly touching. Yet, on the other hand, for
Lachenmann, the little girl with the matches was also the incendiary BaaderMeinhof urban terrorist Gudrun Ensslin, whom Lachenmann had known since his
childhood, and whose career he, like many Germans in the late 1960s and 1970s, had
followed with a mixture or horror and empathy. Ensslin had been captured in 1972,
and in 1974 was transferred to Stammheim prison. At the end of the year, she and
other gang members were nally indicted and in mid-1975 the trial itself began, in
the midst of actions by Movement 2, the successor to the Baader-Meinhof gang. It
was in this context that Schwankungen was composed and performed and, looking
back, Lachenmann feels that by writing that sentence in the programme booklet, I
basically propelled myself into a sort of considered radicalism.35
However, by the mid-to-late 1970s, the situation of German New Music was again
beginning to change, and by no means in the direction of radicalism. Now the Young
Romantics (most notably Wolfgang Rihm) were starting to move into focus, most of
them heavily promoted by the Schott-Verlag, which at that stage was certainly the
most inuential force in German music publishing.36 This was basically a
conservative movement and as such both its practitioners and its promoters were
more than willing to invoke the virtues of tradition. But, especially in a German
context, the notion of tradition is equivocal: it has some of the conventional AngloSaxon connotations of enduring values, including an implicit (lost/ctitious) Golden
Age, but, more strongly, it has the implication of something to be continued in a
radical sense, where what is to be perpetuated is not a style, or even an aesthetic, but a
unied sense of responsibility to past and present.37 At the same time, it is easy to
forget that even more or less radical composers can have just as much affection (or
even more) for the great works of western art music as the dedicated traditional
music lover. The fact that a photograph in Ulrich Dibelius Ligeti monograph shows
the composer at the piano with what (using a magnifying glass) one can identify as
Schuberts last piano sonata (in B at major, D956) does not make him a better or
worse composer than Xenakis, whom one can scarcely imagine in such a context. But
it is a signicant factor within his overall compositional make-up and it certainly
plays a role for Lachenmann too.38 Yet, for a composer of New Music, this attitude
can scarcely be other than equivocal: the very music one loves can also be, in terms of
the politics of the concert hall, ones enemy. One may not feel compelled to hate
what one loves, but one can scarcely avoid, sometimes at least, hating that to which
the consumerist drives of the culture industry have reduced it.
There are three of Lachenmanns orchestral works that particularly engage with
such matters: Accanto (1975/1976, revised 1982), Tanzsuite mit Deutschlandlied
(1979/1980), andas the most elliptical but also the most extreme of the trilogy
136
R. Toop
Staub (1985/1987). Their three specic points of reference are, broadly speaking, the
sentimental, the structural and the tragic-apocalyptic dimensions of the inherited
classical tradition, each embodied in particular canonical works.
In the case of Accanto, the point of reference is Mozarts A major clarinet concerto
K622. The choice of work is anything but arbitrary: of all major classical composers,
Mozart is the most fetishised and, at least in the view of promoters, the most readily
consumable (i.e. saleable). Hence the personal dilemma that Lachenmann seeks to
address in this work:
For me, Mozarts clarinet concerto is the embodiment of beauty, humanity and
purity, but at the same time it also exemplies a means of running away from
oneself that has been made into a fetish: an art that seemingly engages intimately
with humanity, but in reality has become consumer goods for a society that views
art in terms of oohs and aahs.39
Here, perhaps, one can read quite a lot into the exact description of the work as for a
solo clarinettist and orchestra. In Air, the solo percussionist is the chief initiator of
action; in Accanto, before the music even starts, the clarinettist is the primary focus
for all those audience desires that are going to be refused, denied. Partly this is
because, for many (most?) music lovers, the mere presence on stage of a solo
clarinettist in front of an orchestra implies Mozart (rather than Weber, Nielsen,
Francaix, or anyone else). And once the music does startassuming the listeners
know that Accanto has a Mozart connectionit is the soloists numerous, barely
audible little runs or sustained, breathy cantabiles (emblems of both beauty and
kitsch) that, above all, lead one to wonder: Is that the Mozart? In fact, the Mozart is
constantly present, but technologically caged: a recording of the concerto runs
continuously on tape throughout the performance of Accanto, but is only
intermittently audible.40 Initially, its presence is almost subliminalthe playbacks
are so brief that there is no possibility of identifying what is on the tape: all one can
sense is that there is a tape. Signicantly, it is toward the end of the work, as the
soloists part starts to abandon any semblance of delicacy and moves towards the
paranoid sound world of Vinko Globokars Discours series, that the tape becomes
increasingly audible, as evidence of an aesthetic that the live music has emphatically
abandoned.
The degree to which discussion (including Lachenmanns own) of the Tanzsuite
mit Deutschlandlied, for amplied string quartet and large orchestra, has focused
either on the Emperors Hymn by Haydn that subsequently became Deutschland,
Deutschland uber alles, or on the Siciliano fragment from the Pastoral Symphony in
Bachs Christmas Oratorio is, perhaps, misleading. It is misleading above all because it
suggests that, as with Accanto (and later Staub), such canonical repertoire is the
works main point of reference, whereas in fact the real focus is the forms of regional
music makingwith no aspirations to high artthat are transmuted into high art by
composers such as Bach (and endless others too, but Bachs suites and partitas
represent a sort of preliminary locus classicus). The dance forms evoked in the
137
Tanzsuite are mainly those formerly appropriated by baroque composers, but not
exclusively so, as witness the inclusion of a waltz, a tarantella, a polka and a gallop: in
essence, the selection spans the range of philharmonic dance culture (from Bach to
Offenbach, so to speak).
But why? Perhaps one can best answer this indirectly. Another orchestral piece
premie`red at Donaueschingen in 1980, though not in the same concert as the
Tanzsuite, was a 12-minute segment from Walter Zimmermanns LandlerTopographien, which forms part of a much larger work project entitled Lokale Musik
(Local Music). It was based on the melodic and rhythmic stereotypes of traditional
dances from Zimmermanns native Franconia (also including waltzes and gallops),
subjected to a rather arcane system of transformation and permutation lying
somewhere between serialism and Cages (notated) works. Whereas the French critic
Harry Halbreich (at that time a passionate and inuential advocate of Jean Barraque
and Brian Ferneyhough) attacked Zimmermanns use of traditional materials as Blut
und Boden neo-fascisma bizarre opinion that utterly shocked the composer
Lachenmann found some real points of afnity, despite the utterly different sound
worlds of the two composers. Both were seeking, in their own ways, to extrapolate
universals from local phenomena, and to recover, without any regressive intent, a
certain lost magic inherent in notions such as home territory. And not the least
notable aspect of this, in terms of Lachenmanns piece, is that for once (as with Bach)
it permits a certain breakdowneven in the post-Adorno late 20th centuryof the
borders between serious intent and playfulness (in the inherited sense, not the
narcissistic postmodern one): Lachenmann talks of transitions between Heiserkeit
und Heiterkeithoarseness and hilarity.
Here, a small digression concerning technology. If one is looking for innovative
features in European new music making in the early 1980s, it would be natural to
mention two related, primarily French phenomena: the development of computer
music in relation to live performance (especially IRCAMs 4X software and its
successors) and the spectral music school. The year after the Tanzsuite, one of the
main premie`res at Donaueschingen was the rst part of Boulezs Repons, with its
array of glamorous live-electronic sound transformations. Lachenmanns response,
allegedly, was it is so polished, you cant see what it is, and indeed, one can scarcely
imagine anything more alien to Lachenmanns notion of sound realism than these
elegant, synthetic-cosmetic constructs. For Lachenmann, it seems, technology has two
primary functions. One is to amplify live sound functionallyi.e. to make it more
audible without changing its acoustic character (hence his insistence on acoustic
microphones, not the contact microphones that became so fashionable in the
1960s).41 If used, it tends to operate consistently throughout a work (the fact that, as
noted above, it is switched off for the extended cadenza in Notturno, is a special case).
The second function, by contrast, is typically fragmentary: the use of music or other
sound over loudspeakers to connote instantly, above all, media and consumption (as
in Accanto), and the lobotomization, both artistic and social, that the two constantly
unite to foster. As such, the sound quality is realistic only in so far as it accurately
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R. Toop
evokes the unreal sound (and signicance) of art music in the era of its mechanical
reproduction.
The engagement/confrontation with the past reaches a peak in Staub. The work
may be shorter than Accanto and the Tanzsuite, but the point at issue here is not the
duration of the work, but the mythical stature of its adversary: nothing less than
Beethovens Ninth Symphony. Inevitably, one thinks not only of the passage in
Thomas Manns Doktor Faustus where Adrian Leverkuhn says he will revoke the
Ninth, but also of Herbert Marcuses 1967 commentary on it:
One must revoke the Ninth Symphony not only because it is wrong and false (we
cannot and should not sing an ode to joy, not even as promise), but also because it
is there and is true in its own right. It stands in our universe as the justication of
that illusion which is no longer justiable. However, the revocation of a work of art
would be another work of art. (Marcuse, 1972, p. 66)
In Staub, the Beethoven reference is, for a start, given concrete form by the
instrumentation, which, with the obvious exception of certain percussion
instruments, is exactly that of the Ninth Symphony, and specically, that of the
nale. However, Lachenmanns most obvious points of reference are not to
Beethovens nale, but to his rst movement, which is not a would-be glorious
apotheosis, but in many respects an enduringly savage and bleak vision of tragic
and only arbitrarily terminated (paused) conict. It is natural that Lachenmanns
work would focus on it, for various partly related reasons. Prosaically, given the
ideologies underlying present concert practice, it is scarcely conceivable that Staub
would ever be performed after Beethovens symphony, so it makes sense for it to
relate to the part of that work closest to the performance of Lachenmanns work.
But, more seriously, the latter has natural afnities to the rst movement.
Lachenmann has often referred to the idea of the (socially relevant) work of art as a
Trummerfelda pile of rubble, a scene of post-catastrophic desolation. It is
precisely such a spiritual scenario that underlies Staub, which, rather than
providing a modern commentary on the whole of Beethoven work, is in fact the
logical continuation of its rst movementit is an extraordinary work, whose
disturbing emptiness gives rise to a wealth of reection. It would be fascinating to
attend a performance of the two works in which Beethovens Ninth came rst, but
with its movements played in reverse order,42 so that the initial (modern) doubt of
the nale and its nal triumphant outcome led to the melancholy serenity of the
Adagio, then to the mechanistic vitalism of the Scherzo, and nally to the
battleeld of the rst movement, whose natural post-echo would be Staub.
One could scarcely expect to battle such a cultural Goliath as Beethovens Ninth
without sustaining some bruises. By the late 1980s, all trace of 1960s-era idealism,
whether constructive or anarchic, had disappeared, and even the erstwhile avant
garde seemingly existed only to be chronicled (or, as they say on the X-Files,
programmed, categorized, or easily referenced) by institutional bodies such as the
Deutscher Musikrat. Within Austro-German culture (and not only there),
139
Beethovens Ninth had become not only a vehicle for spurious general cultural
celebration, but above all, the preferred means by which institutions (including
musical ones) celebrated themselves. Within this context, the tale of Staubs aborted
premie`re was (and remains) symptomatic. It was commissioned by the SWFSinfonieorchester Baden-Baden, for a festival concert in June 1986 celebrating the
orchestras 40th anniversary, where the new work would act as prologue to a
performance of Beethovens Ninth. At short notice, the orchestral manager struck
Staub from the programme. Lachenmann was sufciently well known as a composer
for it to be clear what kind of piece he would write and the orchestra had a long track
record of premie`ring radical new music.43 What was at stake here is neatly
encapsulated in the title of an interview with Lachenmann about the incident: Not
with Beethoven, and not in front of Spath44 (Spath being the federal minister for the
Baden-Baden region).45
At the time, Staub had only one orchestral successor: Tableau (1988/1989), whose
length of 10 minutes makes it easily Lachenmanns shortest orchestral work to date.
Here it seems useful to cite the composers entire (brief) commentary:
Five broad sequences of chorally deployed signals with one or two soundsthe
simplest consisting only of a single held notedelineate a space in which sonorous
technical archetypes lying between inwardly mobile mixture-sounds and rhythmicised noise encounter one another: not so much a ceremony from the alembic as a
spot check of magical artefacts, in which organisation, as cold ordering, still leaves
everything open, allows a glance behind the curtains (into the corporeality of the
sound objects, so to speak), intending observant hearing; and in which the uency
of the recalled expressive elements acknowledges their loss of language: a rst step,
always starting out afresh, in the search for forms of illusion-free communication.46
This is a curious statement, not least because so much of it reads like a resume of
Lachenmanns enduring preoccupations, while the nal clause, seemingly contradictorily, implies a new beginning. What is one to make of this? On the one hand,
maybe, it represents a reluctant disengagement from the combative sociological
strategies of earlier works: it is as if Lachenmann had reached the end of Voltaires
Candide and accepted that, at least for the time being, il faut cultiver notre jardin. If
so, it does not mean that there is not still magic in the garden: there is. But now,
perhaps, the immediate priority is to take a step back from interpreting and
deploying it: to let it parade itself freely, without externally imposed teleologies and
see afresh what it amounts to. It is to this end (perhaps) that Tableau seems to aunt
a two-dimensionality not apparent in Lachenmanns work since Klangschatten.
Another factor underlying the back-to-basics stance of Tableau is that, by the late
1980s, the kind of historical perspectives in German music referred to earlier had
largely disappeared. There simply are no underlying cultural dynamics; there are only
established composers going on being (more elderly versions of) their former selves
and younger ones failing to make a signicant impression. So if ones work depends,
in some respects, on struggle, one has to construct that struggle within ones own
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R. Toop
conscience, as the determination to persist with a vision in a manner that constantly

demands redenition, not repetition.
However one interprets the intentions of Tableau, the fact is that another decade
would elapse before Lachenmann completed another autonomous orchestral work:
NUN (1997/1999, revised 2002). And here, in fact, the notion of autonomy is relative,
since the composer describes the piece as an appendix (parergon) to his opera Das
Madchen mit den Schwefelholzern, and one in which the tasks of the two soprano solos
in the opera are transferred to the two solo instruments: ute and trombone. Since
the work is examined elsewhere in this volume, sufce it to say that, in comparison
with most previous works, one is struck by the extent to which sound, far from being
stied, is allowed to resonate (the closest parallel would be with Ausklang). And since
then, there has been Schreiben (Writing), whose title, at least, suggests (as with NUN)
an orientation to action rather than attitude. But at the risk of vulgarising
Wittgenstein: of that we have not heard, we should not speak.
Notes
[1]
[2]
[3]
[4]
[5]
[6]
[7]
[8]
Man wirft Nono immer wieder vor, er sei stehengeblieben. Man verkennt dabei, was
Stehenbleiben bedeutet in einem Stadium, wo alle andere Komponisten zuruckgegangen und
auf Wege geringeren Widerastands ausgewichen sind (Lachenmann, 1996, p. 252 [Luigi
Nono oder Ruckblick auf die serielle Musik]).
ber ein Werk sprechen, heisst fur mich, den in ihm ausgepragten Materialbegriff
U
beschreiben und in den Zusammenhangen beleuchten, in denen er steht und sich abgrenzt
ber mein Zweites Streichquartett, Reigen seliger Geister]).
(Lachenmann, 1996, p. 227 [U
Orchesterpraxis und die Instrumentalpraxis der experimentellen Musik schliessen einander
aus (Zeller, 1988, p. 30).
. . .in denen gerade jungere Komponisten seit den siebziger Jahre ihren antiexperimentellen
Impulsen und Ressentiments freien Lauf liessen (Zeller, 1988, p. 30). Though published in
1988, the fact that Zellers essay does not refer to works beyond Harmonica (1981/1983)
suggests that it may in fact have been written a few years earlier.
The nomenclatures here are basically Lachenmanns own, with the title itself always as in the
original, but the rest translated into English. For ease of reference, only the year of
completion is mentioned here.
Since, at the time of writing, the author has not heard this work or seen the score, it will not
be discussed in this essay. It is included for the sake of completeness.
Nono bewunderte die Gruppen von Stockhausen, aber gleichzeitig sah er in ihnen einen
Ruckfall in einen gurativen Stil (Lachenmann, 1996, p. 206 [Paradies auf ZeitGesprach
mit Peter Szendy]).
For example, he contrasts Mahlers use of cowbells (e.g. in the Symphony No. 7) with that of
Stockhausen in pieces like Gruppen and Zyklus. For Mahler, he suggests, these instruments
evoke a countryside environmentperhaps idyllic, but also realin which they play a
specic functional role (attached to the necks of cows!), whereas for Stockhausen, they are
merely instruments with useful spectral components. Tongue-in-cheek, Lachenmann
comments: Tough on the farmer, when he nds that out! (Wehe, wenn der Bauer das
ber das Komponieren]). Conversely, though, one may
erfahrt!; Lachenmann, 1996, p. 76 [U
argue that, since much of Gruppen was composed in a little Swiss Alpine village, its cowbells
may have more auratic presence than Lachenmann wants to concede. Of course, it is hard to
make the same argument for Zyklus or Kontakte!
141
[9] From the early 1960s onward, the abstract titles, for the most part, disappear.
[10] Es geht darum, weiter zu gehen als Nono. Bis heute hat ihm noch keiner direkten Widerpart
geleistet (Lachenmann, 1996, p. 256 [Luigi Nono oder Ruckblick auf die serielle Musik]).
[11] Lachenmanns only engagement with electroacoustic music was Szenario, a work realised at
IPEM in Ghent in 1965. It may be that this was a response to Nonos increasing espousal of
this medium.
[12] The most obvious example is Nonos Per BastianaTai-Yang Cheng (1967).
[13] On the face of it, the solo violin part of Varianti, with its many different modes of sound
production, may seem to be an exception, but it is not really so: it is more like a rationale for
serialising the ever-problematic timbre parameter.
[14] This work dates from the period where Lachenmann was attending Stockhausens First
Cologne New Music Course (he also attended the Second Course in 1964). Among other
things, he worked on a part-realisation of Stockhausens Plus-Minus (1963), an experience he
has described as a long-overdue supplement to his studies with Nono (see Lachenmann,
1996, p. 205 [Paradies auf ZeitGesprach mit Peter Szendy]).
[15] Ligetis cello concerto (1966) and Zimmermanns Concerto pour violoncelle et orchestre en
forme de pas de trois (1965/1966).
[16] Actually labelled as such in the score.
[17] Apart from a signicant revival of the opera Intolleranza in Nuremberg in 1970, Nonos next
major German premie`re was of Ein Gespenst geht um die Welt, in Cologne in 1971.
[18] Stockhausen was controlling various aspectsespecially amplication levels and spatial
projectionfrom the mixing desk.
[19] . . .die Atmosphare war sehr gespannt, da die Orchestermusiker sehr gegen das Stuck waren.
Es war eine Art Offenbarung, da ich noch nie ein Orchesterstuck dieser klanglichen
Rafnesse gehort habe (personal communication, January 1, 2004).
[20] The wave of Japanese works for percussionist(s) and orchestra unleashed by Toru
Takemitsus Cassiopeia (1971) still lay in the future. The emphasis on physical sound
production in the solo shakuhachi and biwa parts of Takemitsus November Steps (1967)
offers interesting parallels to Air, not least through the emphatic contrast between short,
percussive sounds and sustained ones involving constant timbre transformation with a
substantial noise factor. The most obvious difference is that Takemitsus usage arises from a
reinterpretation of age-old practice, whereas Lachenmanns aim is to subvert inherited
philharmonic practice.
[21] Instrumentale Befremdung, beliebter Stein des Anstosses beim Publikum und auch bei
manchen Spielern; der erstickte Schlag, die gepresste Saite, der tonlose Luftstoss: Sie
bedeuten in solchem Zusammenhang nicht surrealistischen Gag oder aggressive Provokation, sondern logische Integration des gesamten verfugbaren Klang- und Gerauschrepertoires
ubers bislang Salonfahige hinaus, und sie dienen einem Schonheitsbegriff, der das Tabu der
Gewohnheit durchbricht und sich orientiert an der Reinheit und strukturellen Klarheit der
klingenden Situation als energetisch bestimmten Feld (Lachenmann, 1996, p. 380
[Commentary on Air, 1968/1969]).
[22] Cf. Rainer Nonnenmanns astute comments on the day-to-day connotations of these and
other instruments in Air in the second part to this collection of writings on Lachenmann.
[23] Kontrakadenz restores the standard oboes missing from Air, has two more horns and one less
contrabass (compared with the 1969 version of Air; the instrumentation of the 1994 revision
is slightly different).
[24] Sometimes, before going to such concerts (at the WDR), I would switch on a long-play tape
at home to record the concert, not merely as documentation, but on the assumption that
even a slow-speed stereo recording may give a much better acoustic picture than what I had
heard in the hall.
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R. Toop
[25] LP: Wergo: WER 60122, Michael Gielen/SWR Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart, reissued on
CD as Kairos: 1223.
[26] To a degree, this is anticipated in Air, where two players are designated, somewhat
enigmatically, as Wasserhorner and have comparatively straightforward duties. In the 1994
revision, they are reclassied as ad hoc players, standardising with Kontrakadenzs
nomenclature.
[27] Although in the context of the original four-movement version, it has almost ended: there is
only a wispy little coda to come.
[28] In the commercial CD recording (Wergo: 60180) this aspect isperhaps necessarilyso
exaggerated that one has the impression of a Horspiel with, for some reason, incidental
instrumental and vocal music. In live performance, the impression is (or should be) very
different.
[29] Clearly, an ironic allusion to Igor Stravinskys Symphony of Psalms, which was written to the
glory of God, and dedicated to the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
[30] Notoriously, the organisers changed Kagels wording to in danger of dying out.
[31] . . .durch die Hintertur uber erweitertes Schlagzeug und zusatzliche Adhoc-Instrumente
(Lachenmann, 1996, p. 227 [U
One cannot help noting that Lachenmanns self-criticism often assumes near-masochistic
dimensions. If his composition students sometimes found him to be a hard taskmaster, they
at least had the consolation of knowing that he was far, far harder on himself.
[32] Weder durfte ich beim Komponieren mich einfach der fruher schon entwickelten Mittel
bedienen, noch konnte ich das einmal gewonnene Terrain aufgeben (Lachenmann, 1996, p.
227 [U
[33] Since the conductor is Michael Gielen, the superb and precision-obsessed Fritz Reiner of
New Music, one can scarcely imagine that these imprecisions represent lazy oversights.
[34] Ich hassenicht nur in der Kunstden Messias und den Hanswurst. Der eine ist mir
Zerrbild des anderen. Dafur liebe ich den Don Quichotte, und ich glaube an das kleine
Madchen mit den Schwefelholzchen (Lachenmann, 1996, p. 154 [Selbstportrait 1975]).
[35] Indem ich diesen Satz ins Programmheft geschrieben habe, habe ich mich im Grunde selbst
in eine Art reektierter Radikalitat vorwarts getrieben (text for the premie`re of Das Madchen
mit den Schwefelholzern, reproduced in the booklet text, Kairos: 1228).
[36] With the exception of Rihm, whose works are published by Universal Edition in Vienna.
[37] Stockhausen once commented to the author that, at least at the start of his career, when he
composed he felt he had Stravinsky looking over one shoulder and Schoenberg over the
other. This had nothing to do with style (he had no stylistic adherence to either), but with
moral and aesthetic responsibility to great forebears: for him, the point at issue was
standards: this was the legacy of tradition, and ones responsibility toward it. As for past and
present, it can scarcely be fortuitous that the German equivalent of the Grove Dictionary of
Music is called Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, for which Music in the Past and the
Present would be a fair paraphrase.
[38] In 1983, the young Australian composer Michael Whiticker attended the Darmstadt Summer
Courses. He sought an interview with Lachenmann, and as a recording still in my possession
testies, Whiticker found him seated at a piano, playing the slow movement of Anton
Bruckners Symphony No. 8 from memory.
[39] Das Mozartsche Klarinettenkonzert ist mir Inbegriff von Schonheit, Humanitat, Reinheit,
aber auchund zugleichBeispiel eines zum Fetisch gewordenen Mittels zur Flucht vor sich
selbst: eine Kunst scheinbar mit der Menschenheit auf Du und Du, in Wirklichkeit zur Ware
geworden fur eine Gesellschaft mit der Kunst auf Oh und Ah (Lachenmann, 1996, p. 389
[Commentary on Accanto 1975/1976]).
[40] More precisely, the tape is to contain two recordings of Mozarts work, with the pauses
between movements removed. Two recordings, because Accanto is slightly longer than
[41]
[42]
[43]
[44]
[45]
[46]
143
Mozarts concerto (in practice, it would surely be sufcient to re-record only the rst
movement), and the removal of pauses so as to ensure that whenever the tape is switched on,
there will be some Mozart to hear.
In this respect, as suggested above, Schwankungen am Rand is an exception.
This means, of course, that the reminiscences of former movements at the start of the nale
would become premonitions: another unsettling prospect.
Among others, it had given the Donaueschingen premie`res of Lachenmanns Schwankungen
am Rand in 1975 and the Tanzsuite mit Deutschlandlied in 1980.
Nicht mit Beethoven und nicht vor Spath (Lachenmann, 1996, p. 186).
The work was nally premie`red, 18 months later, on 19 December 1987 in Saarbrucken, with
Myung-Whun Chung conducting the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Saarbrucken.
Funf breite Sequenzen aus chorisch gesetzten Ein- und Zweiklang-Signalendie einfachste
aus einem einzigen gehaltenen Ton bestehendstecken einen Raum ab, in dem sich
klangtechnische Archetypen, zwischen innerlich bewegter Mixtur und rhythmisiertem
Gerausch, begegnen: weniger Zeremonie aus der Retorte, als Stellprobe von magischen
Requisiten, wobei Ordnung als kalte Anordnung noch alles offen lasst, den Blick hinter der
Kulisse, sprich: in die Korperlichkeit der Klangobjekte selbst, freigibt, beobachtendes Horen
meint, und wo die Sprachfertigkeit der abgerufenen Ausdruckselemente ihre Sprachlosigkeit
erkennt: erster Schritt, immer wieder von neuem, bei der Suche nach Formen illusionsloser
Kommunikation (Lachenmann, 1996, p. 400 [Commentary on Tableau, 1988/1989]).
References
Gottwald, C. (1988). Vom Schonen im Wahren. Zu einigen Aspekten der Musik Helmut
Lachenmanns. Musik-Konzepte, 61/62 (Ed. H.-K. Metzger & R. Riehn), 3 11.
Lachenmann, H. (1996). Musik als existentielle Erfahrung. Schriften 1966 1995 (Ed. J. Hausler).
Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & Hartel.
Marcuse, H. (1972). Art in the one-dimensional society. In L. Baxandall (Ed.), Radical perspectives
in the arts (pp. 51 67). Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Zeller, H. R. (1988). Lachenmann und das Orchester. Musik-Konzepte, 61/62 (Ed. H.-K. Metzger &
R. Riehn), 30.

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Contemporary Music Review