Toward a Pandiatonic Serialism: Richard Rodney Bennett’s Impromptus (1968) and Sonata (1983)

One of the characteristic aspects of Bennett’s guitar works is his use of exclusively pandiatonic pc sets, and of his treatment of tone rows as generating complexes rather than as themes. Richard Cohn defines pandiatonicism (after Slonimsky) as “using diatonic scales without triads.” I use the term principally to refer to diatonic, non-triadic sets that are combined in (often freely) chromatic combinations. In the first of the Impromptus, the pandiatonic quality of the row’s constituent sets represents an almost incidental facet of the overall musical argument, which privileges more standard means of post-tonal motivic development. Pandiatonic sets account mostly for the relative consonance of the surface, although they can still be understood abstractly to frame sections in ways almost suggestive of a tonal center. In the final Arioso, however, a single, prolonged set class, intoned melodically, is juxtaposed with and contextualized by a number of different pan-diatonic verticals. The levels of relative dissonance or consonance that result are dependent on scalar proximity or distance (as determined by the cycle of fifths). Furthermore, the unfolding of the piece is determined by the “prolonged” pandiatonic set class’s becoming increasingly “denatured” (i.e., turned into a fully chromatic pitch grouping) in its middle section, before being restored at the beginning of the movement’s final section. In the opening Allegro of the Sonata, by contrast, a twelve-tone row is arguably supplanted by an initiating eighteen-note gestural shape, which is then transformed serially. Bennett’s new, more extensive row ultimately carries his earlier pan-diatonic arguments one step further, modeling a vectored motion from pan-diatonic overdetermination to pan-diatonic specificity. Even where strict serialism is decentred, in sections of the Allegro and the work’s other movements, this is in aid of creating a richer harmonic argument, juxtaposing pan-diatonic sets with chromatic, octatonic, hexatonic, and whole-tone sets (thus building on the “denaturing” process encountered in the Arioso)

A DIMINISHED-SEVENTH BASSBRECHUNG: TONAL AMBIGUITY AND THE PROLONGATION OF FUNCTION IN EDWARD ELGAR’S STRING QUARTET, 1ST MOVEMENT

Analysis of the Allegro moderato from Edward Elgar’s String Quartet op. 83 gives rise to a number of interpretative ambiguities, typical of late-romantic repertoire. Essential to these are the sophisticated interactions which the movement effects between its diatonic and chromatic voice-leading processes. Viewed abstractly, the result of this syntactic mixture on the movement’s overall tonality can be interpreted in three ways: The Allegro moderato is monotonal; chromaticism is ultimately an attractive surface distraction from its deeper-level diatonic structure. One can produce a traditional Schenkerian analysis of the movement’s middleground from which chromatic discrepancies can be responsibly erased. The movement is monotonal, but chromaticism is essential to its articulation of a single, global triad. While best analyzed in Schenkerian terms, its middleground only makes sense if dissonant prolongations are accommodated, which can be shown to contribute to the composing-out of a background cadence. The movement is split between two harmonic syntaxes: one, predicated both on structural root-motion by fifth and shared membership of a diatonic collection; and the other, chromatic, dependent on parsimonious voice-leading transformations between major and minor triads, the fundamental roots of which are purely incidental. On this view, different parts of the movement might still be meaningfully associated (either in terms of motive, harmony, or voice leading), but their effect is not cumulative: i.e., they do not compose- out a nested hierarchy of diminutions which emanate from a single tonic. While by no means incoherent, the piece is tonally and syntactically disunified. (Broadly speaking, this is the kind of position often taken by analysts of a neo-Riemannian bent [see Cohn 2012].

Introduction

While the history of the formation of a modern British guitar repertoire around the central figure of Julian Bream is known in broad brushstrokes, we lack a thoroughgoing, technical understanding of the particular idiom that Bream’s composers developed. Important in the nascent stages of the guitar’s modernist evolution, for example, was its relationship to twelve-tone serialism. Through close readings of individual works by Reginald Smith Brindle (El polifemo de oro, 1956), Denis ApIvor (Variations, 1958), Thomas Wilson (Three Pieces, 1961; Soliloquy, 1969), and Richard Rodney Bennett (Impromptus, 1968; Sonata, 1983), I map the formation of a peculiarly British vein of dodecaphony. To varying extents, these composers adapted or rejected the techniques, systems, and/or aesthetics of the Second Viennese and Darmstadt schools in order to arrive at a more moderate compositional approach. But despite this common cause, their approaches to composing dodecaphonically on the guitar differed substantially: ApIvor and Bennett attempted to build their twelve-tone materials around the guitar’s affordances; Smith Brindle and Wilson saved idiomatic sonorities and playing techniques for moments in which twelve-tone logic was to be purposefully overridden. By exploring the foregoing ideas and themes analytically, I attempt to demonstrate, in as musical a way as possible, how some of the most pressing compositional questions of the mid-twentieth century—Is twelve-tone serialism the only way forward? Is musical tradition dead in the water?—were responded to by composers crucial to the guitar’s modernist legacy

Symmetry, Schoenberg, and the Musical Idea: Denis ApIvor’s Variations, Op. 29 (1958)

Perhaps guitar composers innovated in the field of twelve-tone composition because they were not really aware of what their colleagues, continental or domestic, were doing? They had latched onto an abstract, theoretical principle, detached from the rich Second-Viennese repertory that had given it life, and then developed it in their own way and for their own ends. Chapter 2 suggests that this narrative would be too reductive. It argues that the opening Poco lento from ApIvor’s Variations, Op. 29, demonstrates the composer’s sensitivity to, and detailed understanding of, the ways in which Schoenberg used intervallic symmetry as an ideal that structured the unfolding of an entire dodecaphonic piece—by means of that ideal’s being hinted at, frustrated, and then ultimately realized. As the first variation develops, ApIvor uses the collectional invariance afforded by hexachordal combinatoriality to manipulate row order, thus facilitating the eventual realization (after a thwarted attempt) of the previously inchoate symmetrical potential of its two constituent hexachords. This aspect of Schoenberg’s twelve-tone technique—dynamic and developmental—has only recently received extensive treatment in scholarly literature (as in the work of Jack Boss). That ApIvor had potentially recognized its importance as early as 1958 suggests the inherent interest of the Variations as a document of Anglophone Schoenberg reception. Furthermore, the variation\u27s symmetrical solution—a new ordering of the basic row—is wonderfully idiomatic, consisting of a sliding-sixths handshape and open strings. Far from the adoption of a modernist idiom forcing the guitar to behave as if it were something other than itself, twelve-tone denouement here coincides exactly with the music’s becoming most guitaristic. The Variations might thus be thought to represent an important point of synthesis between the history of musical modernism and the history of guitar composition

Tonal-Atonal Equilibrium: Reginald Smith Brindle’s \u3ci\u3eHarmony of Peace\u3c/i\u3e (1979) and \u3ci\u3eEl Polifemo de oro\u3c/i\u3e (1956)

Reginald Smith Brindle once claimed that “a whole generation [of composers] dedicated their efforts in one way or another to the exploration of the field between tonality and atonality, and to the integration of serialism into a more accessible language.” But how was such integration actually to be achieved? Chapter 1 addresses this question from a music-theoretical perspective. In an attempt to explain how post-tonal harmonic progressions might “make sense,” Smith Brindle himself formulated theories of tension flow and tonal-atonal equilibrium in his 1966 textbook, Serial Composition. The former theory compares the number of consonant and/or dissonant intervals between chords, albeit without providing a consistent means of distinguishing between similar sonorities; the latter observes that various musical passages strike a balance between functional and non-functional harmony, albeit without explaining the nature of said balance (or, indeed, what it is for something to be functional or non-functional). While his ideas are evocative, they lack theoretical finesse. Placing them in dialogue with recent developments in post-tonal scholarship helps to unlock their potential. Joseph Straus’s theory of voice leading in set-class space, for example, defines tension flow more rigorously: coherent post-tonal progressions often move smoothly from an initial, chromatically compact set class to one that is more open and spacious. To my mind, sets of the latter type often resemble traditional seventh chords; they contain a tritone that requires resolution. If this tritone resolves to a third, then a contrapuntal resolution takes place, even if that third is housed in a dissonant harmony. Smith Brindle’s concept of tonal-atonal equilibrium neatly captures this effect—of simultaneous melodic release and increased harmonic tension. I explore the practical implications of these ideas through analysis of The Harmony of Peace from Smith Brindle’s Ten Simple Preludes (1979) and the first fragment of his El Polifemo de oro (1956). I conclude the chapter, however, with an analysis of the latter piece’s third fragment, in which tonal-atonal equilibrium is manifested by non-dodecaphonic means. Rather than clinging to serialism unthinkingly, Smith Brindle uses it as a creative spur to craft his own system and affects

Abstract and Acknowledgments

An overview of the contents of the book, plus the author’s acknowledgements

Conclusion

In this book’s conclusion, I argue that the guitar is an eminently portable object, a musical amphibian at home in all manner of styles. Smith Brindle, ApIvor, Wilson, and Bennett wrote music for the instrument that reflected this hybrid spirit: they strove for their music to “make sense,” at the same time as expanding what it meant for music to “make sense” at all. In this way, my narrow selection of repertoire might be seen to open out onto something broader: namely, a much-overlooked, pragmatic, and modest path that one might follow within the rhizomatic network that was twentieth-century modernism. Whether it leads somewhere illuminating is ultimately for the readers of this book to decide. I have merely tried to hollow out a small space for contemplation and to block out some of the ambient noise, so that these musical works might be heard once more over the competitive cacophony of history

Cover

The cover features an untitled painting in cubist style by one of the composers discussed in this monograph, Reginald Smith Brindle (1917–2003). This and other paintings by Smith Brindle can be seen on the website dedicated to the composer. We are grateful to the composer\u27s family for permission to use this image