16 Tempo 57 (223) 16 – 41 © 2003 Cambridge University Press

DOI: 10.1017/S0040298203000020 Printed in the United Kingdom

   

’   :
  *
Julian Anderson

Songs without Voices, composed in 1991–2, is a set of four pieces for

small instrumental ensemble comprising flute, cor anglais, clarinet,
horn, piano, violin, viola and cello, lasting about eleven minutes. It
follows on naturally from Knussen’s Whitman Settings which preceded
it, as three of its four movements derive their main melodic lines from
purely instrumental settings of Whitman texts from the collection
Leaves of Grass.1 Indeed the first movement’s source text, Soon shall the
winter’s foil be here, is placed by Whitman in the collection immediately
after The Voice of the Rain, the final text of Knussen’s Whitman Settings.
The four movements are sharply contrasted in mood and texture.
The first is highly changeable, almost manic in its abrupt swerves of
direction until it reaches a stable conclusion (depicting the arrival of
spring of which the poem speaks). The slow second movement sets
the richly evocative Prairie Sunset as a miniature cello concerto,
designed for the work’s dedicatee Fred Sherry, the then Artistic
Director of the Chamber Music Society of the Lincoln Center for
whom the piece was written.2 The third movement, setting First
Dandelion, forms in effect the scherzo of the set, and is extremely
rapid and fleeting. The final movement, Elegiac Arabesques, a memorial
to the Polish composer Andrzej Panufnik, was originally composed as
a duet for cor anglais and clarinet in 1991, using pitch material related
to the other movements, and was transcribed and adapted to form a
lyrical conclusion to the present set a few months afterwards.
The composer’s sketches reveal that the final shape of the work
was altered from his original plan. A fifth movement, setting
Whitman’s poem Broadway, was abandoned, and the order of the
second and third movements was swapped. An initial scheme from
the sketches reads as follows:
I- Winter’s Foil
II- First Dandelion
III- Prairie Sunset
IV- Arabesque
V- Broadway
Elsewhere, the composer assembles the key centres for the move-
ments (by this time the second movement was clearly Prairie Sunset,
which opens very obviously in B flat):

* Part I of this study appeared in Tempo 221 ( July 2002), pp.2–13. (Ed.)
1
This device has a considerable history. Prominent uses of word settings which are sup-
pressed through being set instrumentally rather than vocally are found in the output of Berg
(the finale of the Lyric Suite setting Baudelaire’s De Profundis), several works of Hans Werner
Henze and Robin Holloway (Evening with Angels, setting Tennyson), amongst others.
2
Knussen held the Elise L. Stoeger Composer’s Chair Award with the Chamber Music
Society of Lincoln Center during this period.
     ’   :   17

I- D–G
II- B flat
III- ?
IV- A flat
V- B natural
With the final work, we have an almost classical four-movement
sequence – virtually a small chamber symphony – with opening
allegro, slow second movement, scherzo third and a song-like finale.3
The proportions and mood contrasts seem so balanced and inevitable
in the work as published that the idea of a fifth movement seems
retrospectively slightly out of place. The sequence of four keys now
runs as follows:
(I show the four tempi and the final titles, or rather ‘after-titles’, also):
I- Fantastico (Winter’s Foil) D – G
II- Maestoso (Prairie Sunset) B flat
III- Leggiero (First Dandelion) E [N.B. this is my interpretation]
IV- Adagio (Elegiac Arabesques) A flat
The variety of keys that the composer was seeking in planning out
his tonal centres for the Songs thus seems to be clearly present, rein-
forcing the general contrasts of mood and speed already remarked
upon. Like Debussy in his Préludes, Knussen places the titles of the
poems at the end of each movement, between parentheses and
preceded by three dots. He thus signifies that this is not programme
music, rather a sequence of musical images evoked by certain extra-
musical starting points.
F RE E D E
S H E R(RY) (Retrograde)

(Inversion on B) (Retrograde Inversion)

Example 1a: Basic pitch sets

of Songs Without Voices.

In order to clarify the manner in which this works in practice, the

opening movement of the set will be examined in some detail. The
poem on which the movement is based celebrates the imminent
arrival of spring. This evokes a particularly quixotic form in the music;
despite elements of reprise – the flute solo at letter A returns altered
in the coda at 2 bars after letter E – the music generally seems to be
perpetually changing direction, following no easily categorizeable
shape but freely responding to the rapidly altering images of the
poem. The basic set of Songs without Voices is a musical spelling of its
dedicatee Fred Sherry (see Ex.1a). Every pitch of the work is derived
from either a linear version of this row (or its inversion, retrograde,
etc.) or a verticalisation of the row as harmony from which a vocabu-
lary of transposed inversions is derived (see Ex.1b).
Example 1b: Harmonic syntax
for Songs Without Voices.
Despite apparent diversity, there are
in fact only 14 chords, lettered a
to n due to octave equivalence.

3
Knussen points out that this is also true of the Whitman Settings, which form a similar four
movement sequence and which, the composer says, he thought of as a sort of miniature
Song of the Earth.
18 

Chords of transposed inversion

f a g h b
a b c d e

F D

I II III IV V
I II III IV V

h d a c i j c h a k

E E

I II III IV V I II III IV V

e f l m a b n k i f

B A
(mediator)
Example 1b (continued): Chords of
transposed inversion. I II III IV V I II III IV V

An introduction and coda, both marked by relatively stable tonal

centers (the introduction on D, the coda on G) frame the poem proper
– the main part of the piece, which starts at letter A and ends just
before letter E in the score. A sequence of solos spread across the
whole ensemble sets the Whitman poem so that it is possible to make
a melodic ‘short score’ of most of the movement following the setting
of the words. This is shown in Ex. 2, from which it becomes evident
that much of the music’s rhythmic agility is the suggested directly by
the rhythms and stresses of the Whitman text. Compared to the vocal
lines of the Whitman Settings, the word setting here is predominantly
syllabic and therefore much faster and more jerky than would be
feasible in a vocal setting.

A = 132c.
fl.

3
3

Soon shall the win ter’s foil be here;

(fl.)

3
3
Soon shall these i cy li ga tures un bind and melt

Example 2: Part of the instrumental 6

setting of Whitman in the first cl.
of the Songs Without Voices.
The sketches show much detail
of word-setting; the rest can 3 3
be deduced from the contexts
without difficulty. A lit tle while, And air, soil, wave,
     ’   :   19

fl.
cl. cl.

3
3 3

Suf fused shall be in soft ness, bloom

(cl.) (hn.)

3
Hn.
poco
and growth a thou sand forms shall rise
cor.ang.
vc.
3 3 3 3

Hn.
From these dead clods and chills as from low

(vc.)

3
hn.
bu ri al graves.

B poco meno mosso = 116c. ww. (harmonized)

vn. (harmonized)
3

3
espr. 3
poco
Thine eyes, ears all thy best at tri butes –

vn. (harmonized)

poco
all that takes cog ni zance of na tural beau ty,

fl. / cl.
(short instrumental
cl. interlude) C

3
3 keck

Shall wake and fill. Thou shalt per

pf. (with 8ves)

(fl. / cl.)
3
vn.

(ten.) brillante 3 3
espr.
ceive the sim ple shows, the de li cate

cl./vn. pizz. pf.

3

5
etc
poco
Example 2 (continued) mi ra cles of earth, Dan de lions, clo ver
20 

As with Whitman Settings, a main preoccupation of the music is the

relating of these linear elements to their harmonic counterparts in the
‘accompaniment’ (I put that word in inverted commas because there
is nothing secondary about the complex textures surrounding the
solos). The introduction (Ex.3) annuls the distinction between hori-
zontal and vertical by having the muted horn solo stating the primal
cell of the work, starting in a kind of D minor,4 simply shaded by
heterophonic echoes of its pitches on the strings. The result, coinci-
dentally, is curiously redolent of a moment in Britten’s largely hetero-
phonic church parable Curlew River – specifically the arrival of the
Ferryman (who is characterized by horn solo with heterophonic
echoes on viola).5 Such unison or out-of-phase unison echoes or
doublings are brought back at the start of the final movement, Elegiac
Arabesques, as the transcription of the original duet gradually develops
a life of its own. These two prominent passages of unison hetero-
phonic writing remind us that the original sketches contained an indi-
cation for a planned ‘unison-ish finale’ (presumably the abandoned
Broadway). The composer may have abandoned the projected fifth
movement as redundant when he realised that the fourth movement
does indeed start as a ‘unison-ish finale’, before developing into more
variegated textures and harmony.

Fantastico = 66c.
hn., muted
3 3

poco
3

str. muted
(sul tasto/ norm.)

poco 3 3
3

etc.
molto

Example 3: Heterophonic harmony

at the opening of the first of the
Songs Without Voices.
Aside from such heterophonic passages, the relation between hori-
zontal and vertical is generally achieved by employing the same trans-
position levels to the harmony as to the linear cells, so that a cell
transposed onto F will be heard against harmony derived from the
4
Also the main key of the Horn Concerto (1994)!
5
The resemblance here is certainly accidental, but in passing it’s interesting to note that as a
boy Knussen attended rehearsals for the premiere of this opera, which made a deep impres-
sion on him (his father was playing double-bass).
     ’   :   21

transposed inversions on the same pitch. Ex. 4 gives several examples

of this from throughout the movement, as well as of other kinds of
interaction between vertical and horizontal, generally involving
common tones. Whilst sketching Knussen was careful to mark on his
transposed inversion table which chords were equivalent in pitch
content to each other, so that he can move quickly from one transpo-
sition to the next by means of such equivalences, or else simply by
means of common tone progressions. Overall, the movement refines
the techniques already employed for pitch generation in Flourish and
the Whitman Settings, enabling the music to contrast areas of more
hectic instability and change than any Knussen had previously
(F)
O
fl. solo

FI FI+V
FII
(+ cl.)
pf.

3
3
chiaro

3
FIII BIII
BII 8
vn.
cl.

3 pf.

5
va.

hn.
vc.
3
F III
+ A (from BII)
(F) ( )
(F)
I

fl.

3
FIV 3
8
3
(pf.) pf.

pf. 3
etc.
5
3

Example 4a: Songs Without Voices, FIV BIV str. pizz.

I, bars 8–13. FV
22 
Example 4b: Songs without Voices,
I, bars 25–35 (reproduced from
composer’s manuscript; annotations
by JA).
composed with the stability and poise of the coda, as the music settles
gently onto a final cadence (complete with pastoral cuckoos provided
discreetly on the clarinet!). Even more than the end of the Whitman
Settings, the sense of harmonic closure here is a remarkable achieve-
ment in a post-tonal idiom.
     ’   :   23

Example 4b (continued)

Knussen’s Two Organa date from 1994 and owe their origin to two
very different occasions, both of which reflect Knussen’s involvement
with the Dutch new music scene. The first, entitled Notre Dame des
Jouets, was originally composed for a two-and-half octave music box
which played only the white notes of the C major scale.6 Knussen
responded with a piece celebrating the organa of 12th-century Notre
Dame, specifically those of Pérotin (whose Alleluia Nativitas he had
transcribed for wind quintet in 1987, and whose influence had already
been in the trombone writing in the first movement of the Third
Symphony). It uses a plainsong-style cantus firmus (of the composer’s
own invention) played in long notes against several layers of faster
canonic decoration derived from the same melodic source, with each
new voice doubled at a different interval. The reference to Pérotin is
made explicit in the short coda (from bar 38, letter E in the score): a
faster version of the cantus firmus, in dotted minims and dotted
crotchets, is played against a fast dance-like counterpoint – a texture
known as clausula organum, found towards the end of a verse of
organum. The writing here features the rhythmic pattern quaver-
crotchet frequently found in medieval music (it is one of the medieval
rhythmic modes). A concluding statement of the invented plainsong at
normal speed completes the formal parallel with Pérotin organa.
The orchestration, made some months later, brings out the multiple
layers with greater clarity than was possible in the musical box
original, although the range of the whole is still restricted to the range

6
This was one of a series of pieces requested by Ron Ford, the American composer living in
Holland, for this musical box, for issue on a CD (VPRO Eign Wijs EW 9413 [Hilversum,
Holland 1994]). The device comes complete with paper rolls and a hole puncher, so that the
user can compose their own pieces for the box, regardless of rhythmic complexity. Other
composers who participated include Louis Andriessen, Reinbert de Leeuw, Richard Baker,
Richard Barrett and Ron Ford himself.
24 

of the original. It also makes a good foil for its companion piece, intro-
ducing many of the same ideas of layeredness and simultaneity which
are to feature in a more complex manner in the second movement.
This ranks indeed as one of Knussen’s densest and most complex
constructions, in some senses a successor to his similarly intense,
virtuosic ensemble piece from the 1970s, Coursing. The parallel
between the two is reinforced by fact that like Coursing, this Organum
opens with a unison melodic line which here, even sooner than in
Coursing, sprouts other lines derived from serial operations on itself.
However, despite its calm opening, the second Organum is still more
compressed and layered than Coursing, packing a huge variety of
layering and textures into scarcely three-and-a-half minutes.
Paradoxically, for all the precision of its organisation, the piece gives
the impression of being free and spontaneous, almost improvisatory.
A propos of this, Knussen comments ‘I think most examples of good
improvisation do fantastical things over a quite rigid, or at least well-
defined framework’.7 As with several other works of Knussen since
the 1980s, the structural and pitch basis of the piece’s strict framework
were determined by the circumstances of the work’s composition – in
this case, a tribute to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Schönberg
Ensemble of Amsterdam, founded by Knussen’s close musical friend,
the Dutch conductor Reinbert de Leeuw.8 Two pieces of musical
material are derived from this: Ex.5a shows the first, the musical
cypher for Arnold Schönberg’s name used by Alban Berg in his
Chamber Concerto. Ex.5b shows the second source set, a musical
cypher on the name of Reinbert de Leeuw of Knussen’s own devising.
The basic duration around which events in the piece are organised is
20 beats long, a reference to the 20th anniversary being celebrated.

A D S C H B E G R E in B E R T D E L E E UW

Examples 5a and 5b The two pitch sets in Ex.5 provide all the material for the piece. The
‘Schönberg’ cypher is heard in very long note values as a cantus
firmus, and slowly accelerates through the work. Meanwhile the
cypher based on Reinbert de Leeuw’s name opens the work relatively
fast as an ostinato and gradually retards across the whole structure.
Against these two backbones, two other types of material are heard: a
set of virtuosic solos (at one point flourishing into a quartet) for the
various soloists of the ensemble,9 and a chorale-like chord progression
which floats alongside the other three layers and, as we shall see, is to
a great extent dependent upon them.
To deal with the background first: the ‘Schönberg’ cantus firmus is
heard in three forms, successively the Original, Inversion and
Original, with a degree of overlap between adjacent forms so that

7
Conversation with the author in August 2002.
8
Also a distinguished composer, until he virtually abandoned composition in the late 1970s
(not to be confused with the unrelated, well-known Dutch composer Ton de Leeuw). As a
composer, Reinbert de Leeuw is best remembered today as the author of one of the finest
orchestral works of the 70s, Abschied. He was also a co-author – along with Andriessen and
Peter Schat, amongst others – of the collective opera Reconstructie, a major event in Dutch
cultural life in the late 1960s.
9
As an extra game, even the order of the solos was determined by circumstance: for instance
the placement of the violin solo near the end was determined by the fact that the player con-
cerned joined the ensemble later than her colleagues.
     ’   :   25

later on in the piece there are often two cantus firmus notes being
heard at once. These forms, and their overlapping, are shown in Ex.6
– they have been reduced to a single octave for purposes of clarity, but
as well shall see their registration is a crucial element, decided entirely
by the composer’s instinct, in determining the harmonic context of
the music.
Durations
in → 20 20 19¹⁄³ 13¹⁄³ 13¹⁄³ 10½ 10 10 3¾ 3¾ 3¾ 3¾ 5 5¾ 2½ 2½ 2½ 3¾ 3¾ 20½

(Durations
in )
15 20 5 5

Example 6: The cantus firmus in the
second Organum, with durations
shown in crotchets.
Above and below the pitches of the cantus in Ex.6 are a sequence of
figures showing the duration of each pitch in crotchets. Although
some longer durations are introduced as counterpoint towards the
middle, the overall pattern, as explained above, is a gradual accelera-
tion starting from the ‘home’ duration of 20 crotchets, and acceler-
ating over four minutes to a minimum duration of 21/2 crotchets. Two
slightly longer durations of 33/4 crotchets precede the final return to
the ‘home’ duration of 20 crotchets, extended by an extra quaver
(perhaps symbolic of the continuing life of the Ensemble).
Ex.7 shows the form plan for the entire work, with the pitches of
the cantus shown in their octave registration. The changing registers
of the cantus constitute a vitally important compositional interven-
tion, as the cantus pitches contextualize all other harmonic and
bar 3 bar 5 bar 8
Ostinato (OD) (I E) (OD) (I E ) etc. (OE)

etc. etc.
etc. etc. 10 etc.

(O D )

(I F )

bar 12 13 bar 15 bar 17

20
(I E) C
Flute solo (20 )
(O ) (OA ) etc.

(starts simultaneously
A
Cantus with O )
D
(I )

(OD )
(ID)

bar 21
bar 19 D) bar 23
E (R C)
(O ) (OD ) bar 25

etc. etc.
Example 7: Form scheme for the
second Organum. Ostinati start with cl. solo (20 )
notes marked or . Only the
first few notes – generally the first
three – are shown of the ostinati.
Cantus notes are shown in whole (I E )
notes – their duration given in . D)
26 

bar 29 bar 30
bar 32
(I G )
(I C)

19¹⁄³
(OF ) (OF ) (I F ) vc. solo (20 )

etc.
bar 28 bar 31 bar 34 bar 35

bar 42
bar 37
(O A )

(O E - harmonised) (harmonised)
D C E E
13¹⁄³ (fragments of O , O etc.) 13¹⁄³ (then fragments of I , I )

bar 36

OB (O G )
(O D)

10
Quartet (fl., cl., vn.II, vc.)
10½ bar 48 bar 49 bar 53 ‘Cadenza’ (20 ) (bar 53)

bar 47
15
pf. solo (20 )

vn. solo (20 ) 3¾ 3¾

3¾
3¾

10
bar 58
20 (O F) bar 63 bar 64 bar 66
(IB ) bar 68
(vn. solo contd.)
db. solo (20 )

bar
bar 60 65
bar 69
(O G )
5¾

bar 72 bar 73

bar 71 * 2½ 2½
5
(distance between attacks
[from here till end])

5 (held till end)

bar 77 all * notes stop here

* bar 74
D
* * (O )

etc.
3¾ 3¾ 3¾ 20½

hn. solo (held till end)

Example 7 (continued) (to start of last bar)
     ’   :   27

melodic activity. A very low pitch in the cantus – like the second pitch,
D – provides a deep resonance which colours all the other layers and
makes them sound almost like changing overtone resonances of the
low pitch (bars 21–29). On the other hand a medium register pitch in
the cantus – such as the fourth pitch, C – allows both upper and lower
registers full linear freedom, providing a central anchor for all the
polyphony around it (bars 36–42). The highest pitch is the fifth (B),
directly contrasted with a prominent low B-flat (pitch six) in the
following section. The registers of both pitches is followed by the rest
of the ensemble: the high B corresponds to a flurry of extremely fast
activity in the top register, the low B-flat provoking an eruption in
bars 47–8 of low instruments (amplified by timpani, bass drum and
tam-tam) which, however, gradually expands upwards to reveal a
richer and more overtone-spaced harmony against the cantus note
(bars 49–52).

Original

Inversion
Example 8a

The retarding melodic ostinato based upon Reinbert de Leeuw’s

name is constructed from both the original version of the resultant
pitches and their inversion. Ex. 8a shows that the pitch level of the
inversion is chosen to create an overlap of pitches (especially of D-E)
with the original form. This enables Knussen to jump from original to
inversion to extend the opening melody. Ex.8b shows the opening ten
bars of the work, illustrating the manner in which different pitch levels
of original and inversion create an intertwined polyphony which

(I E)
(OD)

OD

(I E )

(O D )

(O E)

(I F )
Example 8b: Reduction of the first
eleven bars of second Organum
(slurring omitted).
28 

expands and changes much more than is customary for what is notion-
ally an ostinato. Finally, the retarding process undergone by this layer
through the work is shown in Ex. 8c, which lists the incipits of several
successive statements – the final statements include octave transpos-
itions of pitches in the original ostinato (especially in the violin and
double-bass solos) which render it less and less recognizable as such.

= 120c.
bar 1
str.

etc.

bar 23 tpt.

etc.

3 3 3 3
3

= 80c.
bar 37
ww. etc.

= 120c.
bar 48 hn. 1

= 112c. imperceptibly return to = 60

vn. solo
bar 60
3 3 etc.

3 3 3
molto espr. sub.

bar 65
db. solo etc.

poco più
Example 8c molto espr.

The simultaneous acceleration of the cantus against the decelera-

tion of the ‘Reinbert de Leeuw’ ostinato result in a exchange of roles
between the two layers. At the start of the work, the relatively quick
ostinato is certainly perceived melodically, whilst the cantus notes are
too slow to be perceived as anything other than drones. By the end of
the Organum the cantus, on the other hand, is fast enough to be
perceived as a wide-spanning melody (or perhaps an arpeggiated
chord, bars 72–76), whilst the ostinato is now slow enough to
generate the actual solos. This structural use of accelerations and
decelerations to effect transformations of material across the entire
span of a piece has precedents in the work of Elliott Carter,10 but
Knussen’s use of it here is in musical context and style highly
personal, and its changing harmonic hues are quite unlike Carter.

10
Specifically his Variations for Orchestra (1955) in which two ritornelli – one ascending, the
other descending – gradually decelerate and accelerate (respectively) on each of their
appearances through the work.
     ’   :   29

(i) flute solo

5 5

3 3

(pitches from
+ previous hexachord
are retained)

3
6
3 3

(ii)

etc.

etc.

clarinet solo
5
5

etc.

3
Example 9: Flute and Clarinet solos 3 3 3 3 5
– serial derivation. (both hexachords mixed)

Two other layers remain to be commented upon: the sequence of

solos, and the ‘chorale’ harmonies. The solos all stick to the basic
duration of 20 crotchets, as can be seen from the form plan. The
sequence of solos culminates around a decorative central quartet for
flute, clarinet, violin 2 and cello in rhythmic unison, which the
composer considers ‘a sort of cadenza’11 – the ostinato is silent during
this passage (bars 53–60). Initially, the solos are the freest and most
spontaneous sounding musical layer – the composer refers to them
informally as ‘free jazz’ – and take for their source material a twelve
note series which deduced from the pitches in the Reinbert de Leeuw
ostinato. As in other pieces by Knussen, these rows are gone through
freely with regard to pitch order (Babbitt would call them ‘unordered
sets’), to generate a modal sequence of pitch fields which actually
11
In fact scored for the founding members of the ensemble. (Letter to the author, 28 August
2002.)
30 

unfolds the total chromatic relatively slowly, and with extreme care
for their textural and harmonic surroundings. Ex.9 clarifies how the
first two of the solos, for flute and clarinet, derive from their source
sets. Following the quartet, the remaining solos (violin, double-bass,
horn) become part of the retarding ostinato – and are consequently
slower and less elaborate.
The final layer of the Organum to be considered is the harmonic
one. As we might by now expect, the harmonies are derived from a
verticalization of the ostinato hexachord. This vertical sonority is then
subjected to the same process of transposed inversion already
observed in Flourish with Fireworks, the Whitman Settings and Songs
without Voices (see Ex.10). As with those pieces, so here the chords
resulting from transposed inversion are treated freely with regard to
octave position and spacing. Crucially, the choice of harmonies in the
chorale layer is entirely dependant on the surrounding activity of the
three other layers. The composer comments that ‘the cantus deter-
mines which chord-family is in use at any moment; also to some
extent the ostinato in use at any given moment is a co-determinant.
The closing stages (post cadenza) where there are sometimes two
cantus-pitches and an ostinato/solo to be taken into account meant
that the available chords (those containing at least three of the
prevailing pitches in play) were very limited.’12

(Chords of
E I II III IV V VI transposed
inversion)

D I etc., and transposed onto B , B , A and C

Example 10: Harmonic vocabulary

for the second Organum.

The derivation of the chorale harmony and its constantly shifting

interaction in pitch terms with the other layers (especially the cantus)
is illustrated in Ex.11, a selective reduction of bars 12–21 covering the
first two pitches of the cantus (A and D). Much play is made of
common tones between the layers to control resultant verticals
between them; scrupulous care is thereby taken to ensure that they
relate satisfactorily to each other. Composition in layers has been a
commonplace of modern music since Ives. Solving the problem of
relating simultaneous layers of musical activity coherently to each
other whilst maintaining their audible independence is one of the
12
Ibid.
     ’   :   31

chief tasks composers are faced with in contemporary music, what-

ever their aesthetic or style. It touches areas of the work of such
otherwise diverse composers as Messiaen, Carter, Ligeti, Birtwistle,
Grisey, Benjamin, Lindberg and Wolfgang Rihm. Knussen’s Second
Organum is one of the finest recent examples, moving with such
fluency and naturalness that the listener is scarcely aware of the
problem being solved. The four layers interact clearly yet maintain
their identity; the strict proportional schemes underneath provide no
hindrance to the music’s immediacy of utterance or its inventiveness.

Example 11: Interaction between

layers in the second Organum. The
harmony is parsed according to the
pitch syntax in Example 10. Notes
common to the harmony and the
upper layers are ringed (whether in
the same octave or others). Many
unringed notes are common with
the drone of the cantus firmus.
32 

Example 11 (continued)

Knussen’s most recent major works are both concertos: the Horn
Concerto (1994) and the Violin Concerto (2002). Both are multi-
sectional forms which play continuously, and both mark a distinct
move away from his detailed compositional workings of the early
1990s towards a freer, more instinctive type of composing in which
moment-to-moment details are invented spontaneously against care-
fully planned formal backgrounds. For this reason, these two works
will be considered in a rather different manner from the previous
     ’   :   33

pieces in these two articles. There are few charts of rotation or trans-
posed inversion for these concertos. Indeed the sketching method
appears to have been quite different from earlier works. Instead of
elaborate pre-compositional mapping of harmonic and melodic
syntax, the sketches comprise mainly the plotting of formal schemes,
which are then adapted and realized straight into short scores which
show little substantial deviation from the final version. There was a
small amount of revision to the Horn Concerto after its première; at
the time of writing, the Violin Concerto is also undergoing slight
changes in the light of its first performance in time for the second, to
take place in Philadelphia at the end of February 2003.
B A R R T U E L L
Example 12: Musical derivation
of Barry Tuckwell’s name.

Knussen had known Barry Tuckwell since childhood, when

Tuckwell was principal horn of the London Symphony Orchestra,
and had long cherished an ambition to compose something for him.
The present piece was triggered by a commission from Suntory
Limited for a work to be premièred in the Suntory Hall, Tokyo, as part
of a series of composer portrait concerts organized by the late Toru
Takemitsu.13 A horn concerto seemed an ideal way to exploit the
acoustics of the hall, and the piece was composed right after the
second Organum in about five weeks. The primal cell on which it is
based emerges in its simplest form only in the concerto’s last bars; like
Songs, this is a musical spelling of its dedicatee’s name (see Ex.12).
Rotations of this melodic cell were used to determine the pitches in
both the opening horn cadenza and the concluding section of the
work. It is subjected to decoration to produce much of the melodic
material. Aside from that, the pitches of the cell seem also to have
given rise to the overall hue of D minor, characteristic of this piece.
This is not to be understood as a conventional D minor, but a personal
re-invention of it in the light of Knussen’s other harmonic habits such
as the use of the all-interval tetrachord (0146) and its inversion (0256)
– the latter is especially prominent. However, the fact of their
containing all intervals seems less important here than their being
subsets of the octatonic scale, since octatonicism is a very prominent
feature of the harmony throughout the work.
The composer explains his change in compositional habits in this
piece:
The piece was an attempt to compose almost entirely ‘in my head’ (e.g. Britten,
Shostakovitch) and to see what would happen if I did this. I went for a walk or
drive every day, blocking out the next bit in my head (after pre-planning, of
course). Hence, over the five weeks it took to write the piece, some surprises
occurred.14
The surprises Knussen refers to altered the original plan for the work
considerably. This had consisted of two continuous movements preceded
by a short introduction and separated by an accompanied horn cadenza.
The second of the two movements was to be a series of variations on a
ground bass, but this device became useful in focussing the structural
progress of the main movement, thus shortening the final part into an
Envoi, which provisionally concludes the ground bass variations.
13
The Suntory International Program for Music Composition. Other prominent commissions
from this series have included Nono’s late work hay que caminar for seven orchestral groups,
and Magnus Lindberg’s largest orchestral piece to date, Aura.
14
Letter to the author, 28 August 2002.
34 

Example 13: Ground bass of Horn

Concerto.

The ground bass theme is shown in Ex.13, and consists largely of

chains of minor thirds and tritones, outlining diminished sevenths. It
is heard in a total of eight versions through the whole concerto,
starting at bar 94: the starting pitches are given in the composer’s final
formal scheme for the work, Ex.14, and clarifies its role in the
dramatic sequence of events. This elaborate and detailed explanation
should be consulted with the score to hand. It reveals much about the
highly original tonal structure of the work, which in fact avoids
conventional tonic-dominant structures in favour of keys related by
thirds. The dominant (A) is deliberately avoided until the final bar of
the work, which thus comes as something of a surprise harmonically.
That the composer should term section B of the form plan ‘Night
Music’ is especially significant. The working title for the piece was
originally ‘Night Air (Concert Aria for Horn and orchestra)’: it is the
latest in a long sequence of nocturnal pieces by Knussen. The earliest
is his first mature work, the Second Symphony (1970–71, setting
poetry by Trakl, Plath and Rilke) which moves from twilight to dawn
over a four-movement sequence. The slow movement of the Third
Symphony is also a nocturne and, like much of the Horn Concerto, a
passacaglia-like set of variations on a 13-chord sequence (rather than a
ground bass). Substantial segments of both Wild Things and Higglety
Pigglety Pop! (which indeed Knussen revised during this period) fall
into this category of nocturnal music as well, and the composer has
observed that the Horn Concerto is in some senses a continuation of
aspects of the musical world discovered in Higglety. In the Concerto,
the aspect of nocturne is more elaborate since, as the form plan indi-
cates, there is an entire section (bars 74–93) of allusions to night
music by other composers, notably those which involve use of horn
calls. These allusions are quite subtle – even a knowledgeable ear
could easily miss many of them, but whether registered as allusions or
not, the tapestry thus created serves to heighten the fantastical atmos-
phere of the music and provide a ready contrast to the calmer lyricism
found elsewhere in the piece.
Curiously, the composer has expressed privately some reservations
about the proportions of the piece as it now stands, but it is difficult to
hear why. The piece feels ample and natural in its timing and propor-
tions; the Envoi provides the perfect counterbalance to the nocturnal
agitations of the main movement, and the surprise move to the domi-
nant at the very end has an appropriately startling finality about it
which rounds the work off in a nicely open-ended manner, avoiding
the false rhetoric of so many conclusions in recent music.
Knussen’s Violin Concerto was completed in April 2002, just before
its premiere by Pinchas Zukerman (for whom it was composed) with
the composer conducting the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. It
forms an interesting point of comparison with its predecessor. It
continues the Horn Concerto’s move away from pre-compositional
harmonic and melodic reservoirs of material in favour of mapping out
broader proportions and their relationship, leaving the bar-by-bar
composing to contextual decisions freely made on the spot, so to
speak. It follows that, as for the Horn Concerto, the sketches for the
piece consist mainly of plans for large-scale forms, which the composer
relied upon whilst composing straight into short or even full score.
     ’   :   35

Example 14 Unlike the previous concerto, this one follows an apparently tradi-
tional three movement plan: Knussen entitles his three linked move-
ments respectively Recitative, Aria and Gigue. As the sequence of titles
indicates, the main cadenzas for the soloist are in the first movement,
leaving the slow movement to bear the brunt of the lyrical melodic
writing in the piece, with the finale a (largely) 6/8 moto perpetuo quite
unlike anything else in Knussen’s recent output. The playfully
humorous, dance-like character of this finale is partly due to its quirky
36 

source of inspiration: an old black and white film of a vaudeville

clown, Wilbur Hall (a member of the Paul Whiteman Orchestra),
performing a series of verses of Pop goes the weasel whilst tossing his
violin into every conceivable position between successive phrases of
the song – even, at one point, playing the violin upside down behind
his back! A fragment of the song is even quoted briefly in Knussen’s
finale, and the extemely rapid alternations of normal bowing with
other playing techniques such as left hand pizzicato and excess bowing
pressure are references to the special sonorities heard in this vaude-
ville act (cf especially the alla burlesca section of the finale).
This places the mood of the music at the opposite extreme from the
slow movement, a sort of ‘Berceuse elegiaque’ – perhaps the most
openly lyrical music Knussen has yet given us. It consists of three broad
phrases for the soloist with rocking harmonic accompaniment in the
orchestra, preceded by an ascending introduction and interspersed
with two short intermezzos instrumental of related material. The
movement concludes with a further ascent by the soloist, leading to
the same high E harmonic which began the concerto to open its finale.

Example 15
Example 15 gives a typical instance of the composer’s composi-
tional pre-planning in the form of a scheme for the first movement
adapted from the composer’s sketches. It shows the sequence of alter-
nating cadenzas and episodes as they unfold in the final piece,
together with the approximate timings of each part in seconds.
The form of the first movement is complicated by two factors not
evident from the composer’s form plan. The first is a sequence of
previews of the slow movement melody which punctuate the struc-
ture, each slower than the last. Thus the slow movement functions as
the culmination of a process of retarding, not unlike the structural
retard of the ostinato in the second Organum, so that the opening
movement has a multiple layered form quite characteristic of
Knussen. Ex.16 shows first the main phrases of the final melody, and
then the successive glimpses of it foreshadowed in the first movement.
     ’   :   37

Adagio = 56–60c A
vn. solo

B
ww.

etc., later
Example 16a: The slow movement 3
3
melody of the Violin Concerto.

= 132c. A A etc.
(i) 3 3 3

sub. dolce

etc.

3 3

= 80 B
(ii) 5

5 3
dolce

A A

(iii) meno mosso (ad lib.)6 3 3 3

X
espr.

= 60 B
B
(iv) 6

6 meno 6

A inverted

(v)

Example 16b: Successive glimpses of

the slow movement melody within 6
3 5
the violin solo part of the first espr. 3 5
movement. più
38 

The other factor which plays an important part in the first move-
ment from bar 6 of the ‘Cadenza 2’ section, is the introduction of a
fast quasi-ground bass – derived from the all interval set (0146) –
utilizing a fast triplet and dotted-triplet rhythm. Repetitions and trans-
positions of this persist from this point, with a few interruptions, right
up to the climax near the end of the movement. However, both in its
rhythmic agility and its interval content, it is quite different in char-
acter and effect from the ground bass of the Horn Concerto. The bass
lines of the slow movement, on the other hand, with their chains of
transposed minor third sequences determining the harmonic changes,
have a lot in common with the bass lines of the earlier concerto,
although the harmony here is much richer.
The plan in Ex. 15 displays several chains of number series in three
sections of the first movement (‘Cadenza 1’, ‘Cadenza 2’ and
‘Climax/Cadenza 3’). As these suggest, a main proportional guide for
several sections was the Fibonacci series 1-2-3-5-8-13-21. This arises
not out of any mystical belief in the properties of the Golden Section,
but is simply used as an aid to compositional invention on both larger
and smaller scales. A reduction of the first section of the work
(‘Cadenza I’), annotated with numbers, will clarify how this works in
musical practice (see Ex.17). As can be seen, the Fibonacci proportions
are not used slavishly: Knussen feels no compunction in drooping
phrases across Fibonacci durations, so that the duration scheme will
not always be immediately audible. Nor is it intended to be: it’s a scaf-
folding for the progress of the music, a stimulus for a dialogue with
the imagination and instinct of the composer, which is surely how
such things are best considered. Fibonacci rhythms also feature promi-
nently in the finale of the concerto: here they determine both many
of the phrase durations and also the rhythms of the concluding brass
chorale which ties the harmonic threads of the whole work together
in a strongly directional, even cadential manner.
The harmonic style of the Violin Concerto focusses, like the Horn
Concerto, on the free use of the all-interval tetrachords (0146) and
(0256). There is some use of transposed inversion progressions on
these two tetrachords, notably using the tubular bells’ chord at the
opening of the work (see Ex. 17) as starting point, and ending with its
inversion at the end of the piece. The Violin Concerto is less obses-
sively key-centred than its predecessor, but like it nevertheless offers a
fresh and personal interpretation of tonally-tinged harmonic syntax
with hardly any sense of neo-Romanticism. And as the Horn
Concerto used the history of the instrument’s idiom in some degree
as a compositional factor, so the Violin Concerto openly reflects
aspects of the violin’s idioms over the past 150 years as a constructive
element in the composing. This is especially apparent in the cadenza
that opens the work (which perhaps distantly recalls the recitative-like
opening of the second part of the Berg concerto), and in the taran-
tellas of the Gigue finale.
Overall, the two concertos show how Knussen has evolved out of
the extremely strict, detailed compositional techniques of the pieces
from 1988 onwards. It is unlikely, however, that he could have under-
taken composing with the degree of local freedom evident in these
concertos without the background of pieces such as Songs without
Voices. The recent concertos are in this sense the direct outcome of
the period of strict composition which preceded them. The world
they inhabit is the same but the perspective they encompass has
shifted from close-up to predominately long-shot. In any case, it’s
worth pointing out again that the strictness of the early 90s pieces is
     ’   :   39

not as apparent to the ear as their wealth of colour and harmonic

variety. The real change, to the ear, in the recent works is the wider
variety of detail in textural activity, including passages of less immed-
iately detailed textural surface, giving the Envoi of the Horn Concerto
or the Violin Concerto’s slow movement a new-found spaciousness
(although the tuttis in the Horn Concerto are quite as complex and
multi-layered as anything in Knussen’s earlier works).
Ultimately, whatever the compositional methods they employed,
the last 14 years of Knussen’s output show a remarkable balance
between the composer’s instinct and his devising a personal technical
= 66c.
8va
vn. solo

6 6 3
appass., rubato
colla parte
8 hp., pf.
5
t.bells
str. pizz.

l.v.
orch.
s.dr.

(t.bells damp)

3
hns.

s.dr.

tbnes., bsns.,
dbs., pf.

in tempo
(5)

in tempo
fl. (flz.), (+pf.)

Example 17: Reduction of the first vc., db.

19 bars of the Violin Concerto’s first

movement, showing Fibonacci
proportions. 2
40 

7 colla parte

sub.
meno

2
ww. (+hp.)
colla parte
str., pizz. ww.

cl. str., ww.

5 str.
5

1 1

(8) 6
3 6

(sim.)

10

5
5
molto
5 ww., hns.
hns., bsns.

in tempo ← = = 88c.→ accel.

12

sub. dolciss.
6=8 5
hp., cel. fl., cor.ang. ww., cel.

vn.1

vibr., fl.

Example 17 (continued) vn.1

     ’   :   41

(accel.) = 116c.

14

cresc.
3 2 “1"
(centre)

a tempo subito = 88
17

etc.

2 3 5
Example 17 (continued)

means of realizing his musical vision. Strictness or freedom, in the last

resort, are questions that sort themselves out according to musical
context. The ear remains the final arbiter – and, as I hope is made
clear in this pair of articles, Knussen’s ear is one of the finest
anywhere today. His music is, as his colleague Magnus Lindberg has
said, a model of what music can and should be.15

Music examples from Songs without Voices © 1992 by Faber Music Ltd; from Two Organa
© 2002 by Faber Music Ltd; from Horn Concerto © 1996 by Faber Music Ltd; from Violin
Concerto © 2002 by Faber Music Ltd.

15
Interview for a BBC4 documentary on Knussen, screened in November 2002 (director Barrie
Gavin).