ANALYSIS OF TONAL ALLUSIONS IN LACHENMANN’S MUSIC

THROUGH HATTEN’S THEORETICAL CONCEPTIONS OF STYLE

GROWTH

Rossana Lara Velázquez

Escuela Nacional de Música
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
conse_ross@yahoo.com.mx
Abstract

One of the aesthetical premises in the work of the German contemporary composer Helmut
Lachenmann is to provoke a critical reflection about the way our perception is and has been
socially conditioned. In his string quartet Gran Torso Lachenmann conceives tonality –with its
rules and taboos– as well as the classical instruments as the listener’s principal framework to be
alienated through its interaction with new logics of string instrument performance producing
mostly “noise”. To analyze those adaptations and veiled references to tonality a flexible
theoretical framework focused in the principles of style growth in tonal historic music styles was
needed. In this paper I present some results of this analysis inspired in Robert S. Hatten’s musical
gesture theory in order to discuss some connections between Hatten’s theoretical and
Lachenmann’s aesthetical concern with style growth and adaptation strategies. Moreover I also
present the advantages of using open, flexible concepts to distinguish and evaluate complex
connections between tradition and modernity in music and arts in general.

Keywords: Lachenmann, tonality, Hatten, gesture theory

By introducing compositional material and performing techniques that disrupt or contradict the
listener’s frame of reference related to the concert tradition, Lachenmann associates himself with
a long German tradition of critical composition that can be traced back to the 18th Century, when
music gains autonomy from its previous decorative and religious functions. Music turned into a
very important tool for Enlightenment’s “civilizing” project. New music genres and forms are
developed, as the inner structure of music itself becomes the focus of attention in the public
concert encouraging the listener to new listening behaviors. The formal complexity of music
demands from the listener a constant self-reflection, it requests an open-ended development of
critical listening continuously confronting conventions and perceptual habits. Through theses
arguments, Lachenmann understands (German) tradition in a teleological narrative, not as a
conservative but as a revolutionary one. In Lachenmann’s view, the history of ‘tonality’ as the
common frame of European music tradition should be regarded as the history of its continuous
deconstruction, an open-ended project that should be maintained and not removed from the
aesthetical and compositional debates of contemporary music. By recovering this progressive
sense of tradition, Lachenmann seeks to counteract the current status of classical tradition, which
in his view has been completely devoid of its historical grounds, fetishized and reduced to mere
commodity by the cultural industry. On the other hand, he seeks to position himself in face of the
“postmodern” compositional trends of the 1970s, a period that he associates with “restoration”
and “stagnation” [1].
According to Lachenmann, only a dialectical compositional approach to tonality, taken as the
“unavoidable condition of listening experience” could produce a real change in our preserved
listening conventions, reinvigorating tradition while expanding our horizon of aesthetical
appreciation to really unknown domains. In short, Lachenmann’s poetics assume that in order to
alter any convention this has to be necessarily alluded. Accordingly, with his string quartet Gran
Torso (1971-72/1988) Lachenmann aims to confront our expectations concerning the string
quartet sound by working with the taboos of traditional performance practices. That means: 1) to
focus on those traditionally avoided “noisy” sounds attached to the moment of friction of the bow
against the strings. 2) The organizing principles are not grounded in the intervallic relations of
pitches, but in the varying physical–energetic conditions of sound production inherent to the
sound quality. 3) To change partially the conventional tuning of the strings, thus altering the
automated relation between stopping and resulting pitch. 3) To prevent completely or partially
the vibration of strings.

By considering the qualities of sound that prevail in Gran Torso, a series of questions concerning
the analysis of this piece emerge. What materials and organizing principles in Gran Torso could
allude to tonal principles? How can these allusions be recognized as such? How allusions to tonal
principles are in turn alienated? To address these questions a theoretical framework focused on
the dynamics of historic music styles, genres and forms, as well as on the compositional
strategies that propel adaptations, disruptions, transformations in style growth, was needed.
Robert Hatten’s gesture theory to approach historic tonal styles was very appropriate to my
inquiry, since the definitions and characterizations of compositional strategies fostering style
growth proposed by him allowed me to analyze principles of continuity of tonal tradition in a
completely different sound context such as Lachenmann’s Gran Torso. On the other hand,
Hatten’s approach gives prominence to the corporeal dimension of sound as an important
organizing factor of the compositional work, what was crucial in order to understand the
correlations in Gran Torso between the corporeal aspect (i.e., the physical–energetic conditions
of sound production) and the formal-structural aspect. Hatten starts out with a definition of
human gesture
rather inclusively as any energetic shaping through time that may be interpreted as significant [...]
Note that this definition embraces not only all varieties of significant human motion [...] and
perception, but also the ‘translation’ of energetic shaping through time into humanly produced or
interpreted sounds [2].
In addition, musical gestures
may be comprised of any of the elements of music, although they are not reducible to them. [...] The
elements synthesized in a musical gesture include specific timbres, articulations, dynamics, tempi,
pacing, and their coordination with various syntactic levels (e.g., voice- leading, metric placement,
phrase structure). [...] they are not merely the physical actions involved in producing a sound or series
of sounds from a notated score, but the characteristic shaping that give those sounds expressive
meaning [3].
From Hatten’s classification of strategic functions of gesture, four are fundamental for this
analysis: the thematic, the topic, the tropological, and the rhetorical function.
The most important function of gesture comes from its thematization; “a gesture becomes
thematic when it is (a) foregrounded as significant [...] and then (b) used consistently [...] and
may be subjected to developing variation as part of a coherent musical discourse” [2].
Nevertheless, what is crucial of this definition is that a thematic gesture can be constituted by
what might appear as “accessory”, as articulations and dynamics. Indeed this is precisely the case
in Gran Torso, which as mentioned above, is not structured by pitches or particular rhythmic
configurations. Accordingly, as Hatten points out, “its modes of its development will result not
merely from the ‘developmental calculi of fragmentation, inversion, transposition’– techniques
[...] but from the unfolding of its gestural and implied expressive meanings” [3]. Lachenmann
himself has finally admitted the pertinence of a concept as “thematic gesture” to analyze how all
these residual components such as variants of bow pressure, actions of different parts of the
instrument, bow motion and the relations among them “can be easily transferred to compositional
processes [and] categories of classic motivic-technique” [4]. In my analysis I found six thematic
gestures treated in the form of developing variations constituting the principal material of Gran
Torso. Because of space limitations in this article I referred only some of them.

Other functions of gesture may result through the variation of thematic gestures. Thus, a thematic
gesture may have a variety of functions, depending on its treatment and the context where it is
inserted. In some variations of thematic gestures it is possible to recognize the presence of
archetypical rhythmic configurations, which Lachenmann has abstracted from tonal syntax and
we can identify as topics. Leonard Ratner states in his book Classic Music that topics are forms
of associative signification. They consist in musical types, and include various stylized dances
from the earlier part of the eighteenth-century, which classic music inherited [5]. According to
Hatten, topics may involve characteristic ‘rhythmic gestures’. Use of topics is significant in Gran
Torso for it provides the familiar element to be alienated. Use of topics is then motivated by its
tropological potential. A trope may be engendered “when typical material is combined in atypical
ways [...] Like a metaphor in literary language, a trope is sparked from the collision or fusion of
two already established meanings, and its interpretation is emergent” [3].

There is another function of gesture classified by Hatten as rhetorical. This rhetorical action is
recognized “in a sudden reversal, a collapse, an interruption, or a denial of implication.
Rhetorical gestures disrupt or deflect the ongoing musical discourse, contributing to a contrasting
dramatic trajectory” [3]. Since they promote “the atypical” by disrupting the continuity of a
musical discourse hence confronting listener’s expectation, they play a central role in Gran
Torso. Rhetorical gestures in Gran Torso function mostly to mark the beginning and the end of
sections and subsections of the piece, where new variants of thematic gestures are abruptly
inserted. Finally, there is an extra function of gesture that Lachenmann himself calls Kadenzklang
or cadence-sound. It is the result of an accumulation of the sound energy (a tension process) that
concludes with a distention as the energy fades out. It is used in Gran Torso to mark the ends of
sections or higher-level gestures.
In the following examples I want to show, on the one hand, how the same thematic gesture can be
varied to acquire different strategic functions, even simultaneously, which means that by varying
some aspect of the same thematic gesture a topic, rhetorical or tropological function might
emerge. On the other hand, I want to illustrate how different thematic gestures may have
equivalent functions.
The same thematic gesture is present in both examples, but varied in a way to produce very
different sound qualities with completely contrasting functions. I call this thematic gesture
“pressed bowing”, which is its most essential, identifiable aspect. In Ex.1 the series of pressed
bowing impulses played by the first violin with ritardando as well as a dynamic (volume)
decreasing al niente delineates the gesture as a cadence. This cadence-sound is reinforced by
another thematic gesture, which I identify as “arco flautato”, played by the cello in the way of a
large descending glissando with a decreasing dynamic to pppp. This is an example of two
different thematic gestures with equivalent functions, working together to produce one single
cadence-sound.

Ex. 1. Measures 53-58

Ex. 2. Measures 61-64

In Ex. 2 variations of the “pressed bowing” gesture produce in context a variety of functions. The
previous cadence-sound gives way to this new section, marked by a tremolo in the first violin.
Two sequential attacks of the pressed bowing with maximal pressure in fff are abruptly
introduced as the new motivic variation of this gesture (m. 61). This irruption can be interpreted
as a rhetorical gesture that affects the rest of the passage. The tremolo dynamic in the first violin
increases to ff adopting a “furious” character (furioso). With a second irruption of the pressed
bowing with maximal pressure (expanded to the second violin, viola and cello) the tremolo figure
adopts also the modality of the pressed bowing (m. 63). This emergent gesture might be
characterized as a trope (the fusion of a conventional gesture, i.e. the tremolo, with an “atypical”
articulation, i.e. the “pressed bowing” gesture). This trope also functions as a modulation passage
leading the original tremolo figure to a new variant of the “pressed bowing” thematic gesture (a
quintuplet ostinato articulation in fff (“quasi Säge”, m. 64)). This transition to the new thematic
variation of the “pressed bowing” gesture is reinforced by a second tropological gesture,
consisting in a harmonic pitch played by the viola producing a cadence-form (Kadenzklang, m.
63) and the superposition of the pressed bowing gesture with maximal pressure, producing a
“noisy” sound. Finally, because of the previous context we can easily associate this new ostinato
variation of the “pressed bowing” gesture with the production of a “slowing-down” tremolo. This
example shows how expressively and syntactically rich a single gesture such as the “pressed
bowing” might be. The analysis stresses how heterogeneous and adaptive are gesture’s significant
motivations, what prevents me to naively assign the thematic gestures an essential or single
expressive quality. In addition, Hatten’s definitions of strategic gestures allow analyzing
principles of continuity of historical compositional strategies (generation and development of
motivic-thematic material inspired by the gestural conditions of sound production) in completely
contrasting musical contexts with quite different gesture material, as it is the case in Gran Torso,
by means of which the very definitions and identity conditions of such historical gesture
strategies are interrogated, modified, and expanded. In addition, theoretical and analytical tools
must be understood as open concepts to distinguish, comprehends, and evaluate veiled and
complex connections between tradition and modernity in music and arts in general. This
obviously implies also that the very analytical or theoretical concepts can be redefined.
According to the music philosopher Lydia Goehr [6],
open concepts have most been described as: i) not corresponding to fixed or static essences; ii) not
admitting of ‘absolutely precise’ definitions of the sort traditionally given in terms of necessary and
sufficient conditions; iii) intentionally incomplete or ‘essentially contestable’ –because of the
possibility of an unforeseen situation arising which would lead us to modify our definition can never
be eliminated [...] Continuity is crucial to the functioning of open concepts. [...] Such continuity is
guaranteed through the expansion or modification of definitions rather than through their replacement.
[...] An open concept sometimes undergoes quite radical shifts in function and meaning, but it does not
thereby lose its identity. Its identity is preserved by the continuity that is guaranteed at any point in
time if the concept’s present use is appropriately connected to its previous uses.

Conclusions
The use of open concepts in music analysis is particularly relevant to elucidate principles of
change and continuity that construct music tradition as a living and constantly reevaluated
practice. I hope this article has contributed to show the possible applications and vantages of an
analytical framework grounded in open concepts, to interpret (in this case) how Lachenmann
dialogues with the growth principles of tonal historic music styles in a radical piece like Gran
Torso. The use of open concepts is an attempt to counteract those methods of music analysis and
music theory that privilege the focus on rules over exceptions, thus using music to illustrate
guidelines or relatively established and fixed principles that are consisting with previously
determined fixed concepts. The use of frameworks grounded in open concepts is on the contrary
needed, if music scholars are interested not in reifying music tradition through their analytical
tools and theoretical frameworks, but in regarding tradition as a dynamical, living and dissenting
practice.

References
[1]  Lachenmann,  H.  (2004),  “Composing  in  the  Shadow  of  Darmstadt”,  Contemporary  Music  Review,  
vol.  23,  no.  3-­‐4,  p  47.  
[2]  Hatten,  R.  (2006),  “A  Theory  of  Musical  Gesture  and  its  Application  to  Beethoven  and  Schubert”,  
Music  and  Gesture,  p  1.  
[3] Hatten,  R.  (2004)  Interpreting  Musical  Gestures,  Topics,  and  Tropes.  Mozart,  Beethoven,  Schubert,  
2004,  pp.  93-­‐94.  
[4]  Lachenmann,  H.  (2004)  “Fragen-­‐Antworten”,  in  Musik  als  existentielle  Erfahrung,  2004,  p.  197  
[5]  Agawu,  K.  (1991)  Playing  with  Signs:  A  Semiotic  Interpretation  of  Classic  Music,  1991,  p.  32.  
[6] Goehr,  L.  (1992)  The  Imaginary  Museum  of  Musical  Works,  1992,  pp.  91-­‐94.