Performance-lecture given on August 10, 2014 at Geek Picnic in St. Petersburg, Russia

Translated by Maria Danova Edited by Yanina Gotsulsky

Translator’s Introduction

This lecture is not an ordinary one. It is structured as a musical piece, hence all the multi-layered repetitions and general allusion of the text, with lots of exclamation marks that can be interpreted as forte dynamic markings. When Nastasya read or, rather, performed it this August in front of the audience at a large event in St. Petersburg dedicated to technical innovations, the public was sitting there in quiet awe—so powerful was this musical-rhetorical statement unfolding before their eyes and ears. The multiple repetition of phrases and passages created an incantation effect and proved that this text is certainly musical: as the Russian scholar Alexander Makhov put it in his book Musica literaria, “in music, the degree of general repetitiveness is higher than in the text.”

The lecture in which, as you are going to see, lots of fragments are repeated over and over again, was accompanied with an equally repetitive sound and visual background, a monotonous electronic fragment combined with a video of Yuri Gagarin’s flight into space—and a peculiar blend of various musical, rhetorical and visual colors was created. The style of Nastasya’s performance was very passionate, even ruthless, but not without an ironic distance, as always in her art: as one of the listeners put it afterwards, that was a kind of “mental sauna,” with the blissful purging of the mind that this well-turned expression entails.

This was not the first time that Nastasya used such a theatrical method in a public lecture: she has, for instance, performed an analogous textual-musical piece together with a violinist as part of a theatre show The Soldier and the Devil after Stravinsky’s L’histoire du Soldat (The Soldier’s Tale) at the Great Drama Theatre and has very interesting plans to reconstruct Wendell Kretzchmar’s lectures from Thomas Mann’s novel Doctor Faustus in the near future. Such lecture-performances are an integral part of her art. For her, as she is closely connected with theatre and collaborates with an innovative collective TRUE Theatre, such lectures are a way to pack the more or less bitter messages she wants to get across in a sugar coating of theatre effects that impress the viewers and listeners and leave them puzzled and curious: what sky did this lightning-strike of a performance just come from?

The refrain “Can one have greater dreams…?!” lends a utopian, but also largely ironic note to the text that was performed: the ideal image of the future music that Nastasya was painting with furious word-sound strokes looks like a total utopia, reminiscent of the “bright future” that communist ideologists preached so aggressively, and everyone understands that such a reign of music and musicians will hardly be realized in our world soon, or perhaps ever.

Just as Gagarin’s flight into space was an ecstatic transcendence of man from the mundane into the celestial, the Music is transcendence for the word. Many authors in the Western tradition stated that music is the ultimate condition towards which all poetry strives. In one of the earliest extant treatises on music from medieval Europe, Musica disciplina by Aurelianus Reomensis (fl. c. 840–850), it is written: Musica ars omnes exsuperat artes [The art of music is superior to all other arts]. And even before Reomensis, there had already existed scholars that claimed, like Isidore of Seville (c.560– 636), that sine Musica nulla disciplina potest esse perfecta, nihil enim sine illa. Nam et ipse mundus quadam harmonia sonorum fertur esse conpositus, et coelum ipsud sub harmoniae modulatione revolve [without music there can be no perfect knowledge, for there is nothing without it. For even the universe itself is said to have been put together with a certain harmony of sounds, and the very heavens revolve under the guidance of harmony]—similar phrases can be found in Speculum musicae by Jacques de Liège (c. 1260–after 1330), De universo by Rabanus Maurus (c. 780–856), and other medieval treatises. Thus, for the Western mind, music has always represented a certain Absolute, a celestial horizon that determines the life on this side and gives it order, beauty, and purpose. Of course not ALL music: there are, as is well known, two kinds of music—the music and the Music, and this should be kept in mind by the readers of this lecture.

As the English literary and art critic and writer Walter Pater (1839–1894) summarized, “All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music.” This is in part what Nastasya’s lecture is about. But it is by far not only about that. It is also about the current condition of music itself and its own aspirations—for instance, to become a science, to be on par with advanced physics, to define human perception of the world as massively as science does. And even if it’s just a dream transmitted from the collective consciousness of the intelligentsia by an ironically-minded composer, the effect of this text is the multiplication of this dream, in the manner of Pierre Boulez’s frequency multiplication, and it might function as an actual incantation: what is repeated that many times might eventually turn into reality.

Questions were not allowed after the lecture. As she was reading—playing the piece, that is,— Nastasya was scattering the sheets with the text on the floor around and beside her, and when the last sheet was thrown abruptly on the ground, she left the stage and went out of the open tent where the performance was happening. All that the public was left with was a powerful impression of a theatrical catharsis, some repetitive electronic music still playing, and a piece of silence that hung like a clot amidst a summer day. Silence full of thoughts and dreams of the music of the future. After all, can one have greater dreams?

Note: As a conduit of Nastasya’s message, I felt the necessity to accompany her energetic text with a few “dry” footnotes that might be helpful to the reader. If you find them superfluous, feel free to simply ignore them.—Maria Danova

On Slow and Flawed Music: The Technologies of Future Music

Good afternoon dear friends and colleagues, both known and unknown to me!

My lecture is called “On Slow and Flawed Music,” but actually I will be talking about the technologies of future music. At first glance, this topic may seem too specific, of interest only to composers and musicologists. But there is more to this than is apparent at first. In talking about music, I will not only be talking about music. In talking about music, I will be talking about more than just music. In talking about music, I will also be talking about the future Man and even the future State.

Throughout human history, music has been assigned a sacred meaning. Almost every form of ritual included musical rhythm as its main component (as the German conductor, teacher, pianist, and composer Hans von Bülow put it, “In the beginning there was rhythm”). Since the dawn of time music has served as the tuning fork of the state. Music reflects the inner makeup of man. Therefore any depiction of a futuristic world, any depiction of future technologies, is, first and foremost, a representation of new music. Because music is a manifestation of man’s inner constitution, man’s inner constitution manifests as the essence of the state, and the essence of the state transmutes the meaning of the universe.

That is why, talking about music, I will be talking about the future in general—about the future of humanity, the future of the state, the future of the world.

I am going to tell you about the music of the future in six theses.

Here is my first thesis: the music of the future will be inextricably linked to literature.

Initially, music and language were a syncretic unity. Symbiosis is their natural state! Whether in church music from the Renaissance or in epics composed by troubadours, in Ancient Greece or in Imperial China, musical and linguistic thinking were inseparable.

Over time, these two art forms began to move away from each other, forming individual innate laws, principles, and forms. The so-called “pure” musical genres appeared: the suite, the concerto, the symphony—that is, structures that are in no way regulated by text.

However, the point when these arts parted for good was also the point when their mutual attraction started. Having parted, they began to be drawn to each other with doubled force! For many poets and writers, the desire to somehow bring their art closer to that of music became an idée fixe. “Having reached its limit, poetry will probably drown in music,” wrote Alexander Blok.[i]

Even my lecture today, while obviously an undertaking of the linguistic art, verges on a musical form. That is why I am not reciting, but reading it—the way a musical performer sight-reads a score.

Writers have often identified music with poetry transported to its logical conclusion, i.e. with a certain ultimate form of poetry: “Having reached its limit, poetry will probably drown in music,” wrote Alexander Block.

“…Before long poetry is going to dissolve into music,” wrote Joseph Görres[ii]. The formula poetry at its limit becomes music sometimes transforms into its opposite: poetry had originally been music. Thus, Goethe believed music to be the primordial wellspring of all the arts without exception, and the line “Oh word, restore thyself to music” from a poem by Osip Mandelshtam[iii] proclaims music to be the primeval source of poetry, implying that poetry had already been dissolved in music once.

“Having reached its limit, poetry will probably drown in music,” wrote Alexander Blok.

Indeed, my lecture today, although an undertaking of the linguistic art, verges on a musical form. That is why I am not reciting, but reading it—the way a musical performer sight-reads a score.

The phonetic “musicality” of poetry and the perception of music as the pinnacle towards which the poetic art strives, lead to writers experiencing a peculiar envy of the music’s inexhaustible range of possibilities. This envy represents competitiveness and an inspirational agon! This envy is an impulse for development and a transcendental urge! This envy is the wordsmith’s ambition burning “white-hot when faced with the possibilities of musical expression”! It is this envy that makes Friedrich Schlegel come up with his “categorical imperative” to turn poetry into music. It is this envy that provokes the ecstatically hermetic experiments of Paul Valéry who spent four years of his life recreating a verbal analogy of Gluck’s contraltos![iv] It is this envy that inspires Andrey Bely to write his Fourth Symphony, structured as musical counterpoint![v]

“Having reached its limit, poetry will probably drown in music,” wrote Alexander Blok.

That is why the writers increasingly strive to reproduce musical forms in literature, creating their exact structural analogies. That is why musical terms are increasingly encountered in the titles of literary works. There are The Fugue by Vyacheslav Ivanov[vi] and Death’s Fugue by Celan! There are the Variations by Kharms[vii] and the Theme with Variations by Pasternak[viii]! There is the Scherzo on Civil Motives by Zhemchuzhnikov[ix] and the Piano Sonatas and even a Cakewalk on Cymbals by Annensky![x]

And in this very vein, my lecture today, although an undertaking of the linguistic art, is more like a musical composition—that is why I am not reciting, but reading it—the way a musical performer sight-reads a score!

Composers are also actively drifting towards literature, borrowing from it both individual techniques and entire concepts. The composer Pierre Boulez admitted that his thinking is much more influenced by literature than by music. His vocal cycle The Hammer without a Master embodied the ideas of the writer Stéphane Mallarmé, which can be seen in the technique, the style, and the aesthetic of this work, as well as in the idea of the interplay of chance and order, cosmos and chaos that organizes the cycle. The very form of The Hammer without a Master, structured from three micro-cycles torn apart, is modeled on The Book by Mallarmé, a work of mobile structure.

“Having reached its limit, poetry will probably drown.”

Another composer—Luciano Berio—spent his lifetime examining the frontier between word and music. The text of his monumental Sinfonia took shape under the influence of a whole range of literary concepts: Umberto Eco’s idea of an “open work,” the musical and mythological schemes of Claude Lévi-Strauss, and the “polyphonic” experiments of James Joyce!

So this, my lecture today—although I keep saying that it more resembles a musical composition—is nevertheless an undertaking of the linguistic art, which is why I am reading my notes, not singing them.

Many threads tie key musical works of the last seventy years to literary concepts. The works of composers György Ligeti, Mauricio Kagel, and Peter Ablinger evolved in constant contact with literature.

A complex system of musical and literary reflections is profoundly symptomatic for this new music: the borders between music and literature are becoming ever more tentative, and the processes that occur in one of these arts can be better seen through the prism of the other. The key genre in the music of the future will be an inventively structured musical-literary palimpsest—a fulfillment, of sorts, of Wagner’s idea of Gesamtkunstwerk!

So this, my lecture today, although an undertaking of the linguistic art, verges on a musical form. That is why I am not reciting, but reading it—the way a musical performer sight-reads a score!

Before long there will be more and more works forcing music and literature to interact, and not mechanically at that, but organically—the means of these two arts are not just combined, but they form a complex system of non-linear interconnections, creating a multi-layered musical-literary “body”! Before long music will borrow from literature the verbal nature and the freedom from conventional musical forms! Before long poetry, having reached its limit, will probably drown. Before long literature will borrow from music its incredible phonetic suggestivity, new means of expression, and the logic of clear structural organization!

(music)

My second thesis: new music will use increasingly complex systems. The beauty of future music will be the beauty of complexity.

The music of the future will continue to evolve in complexity on a variety of levels: on the level of harmony, on the level of form, on the level of orchestration, on the level of poetics, on the level of aesthetics, and on the level of interaction with other fields of human thought!

In the last several centuries music has been constantly evolving and becoming increasingly complex. Yes, some of its components occasionally became simpler (thus, Mozart’s harmony is less complex than that of Bach), but others surely became complicated, were multiplied and developed. From the monody of the Gregorian chant—towards the two and three-part polyphony; from Haydn’s early sonata forms—towards the paradoxical sonatas of Beethoven; from the neutral orchestration of the baroque era—towards the immeasurable orchestral splendor of Wagner and the timbre melody of Schoenberg; from the bourdon technique[xi]—towards the frequency multiplication method of Pierre Boulez!

Therefore the beauty of the future music will be the beauty of complexity.

The Greek tetrachords were succeeded by systems of diatonic modes; the systems of diatonic modes were, in their turn, succeeded by tonality as a centralized constellation of tone inclinations. The tonality as a centralized complex of tone inclinations was succeeded by the expanded tonality, polytonality, omnitonality, and atonality! The ecclesiastical modes gave way to two modes; then these two modes disappeared and gave way to the one single tone sequence—the chromatic scale! As Arnold Schoenberg expressed it, the double gender has given rise to a higher race!![xii]

Therefore the beauty of the future music will be the beauty of complexity.

Not only did the mode systems become more complex. The musical forms and the very methods of composition were also becoming more elaborate. Motets came to replace the stanza of the Gregorian chant! Baroque fugues rushed in to replace the unpretentious allemandas! The old sonata form got replaced with the complex sonata form of the classical era! Open forms and mobile structures came to replace the traditional forms!

Therefore the beauty of the future music will be the beauty of complexity.

Not only were the methods becoming more complex, but also the mental constructs underlying the music.

In the 20th century, music attained such a level of complexity that it could not be satiated with itself anymore, and it began quoting itself. Multilayered allusions, intertext, intercrossing with other texts, references—these were its driving forces in the 20th century!

In his monumental Sinfonia the Italian composer Luciano Berio quoted a whole movement from Gustav Mahler’s symphony! Not just a separate fragment or a part of a movement, but—a whole movement![xiii] Moreover, this “reference” not only fits into the context of the work, but becomes its foundation, a kind of Ariadne’s thread in the poly-stylistic counterpoint of the allusional collage.

Indeed, in my lecture today, I am quoting this very same lecture. Before long—I will be quoting the quotes from it!

Therefore the beauty of the future music will be the beauty of complexity.

The music of the future will be so complex that it is going to pull all other arts and sciences into its orbit.

The magnitude of interdisciplinary connections in 20th-century music is simply off the charts: Iannis Xenakis is unconceivable without architecture, John Cage—without philosophy, Olivier Messiaen—without the heady brew of theology and ornithology. Stockhausen’s concept of “momentary form,” Zimmermann’s “spherical time,” and the space games of Nono and Xenakis would have hardly occurred were it not for Lobachevsky’s geometry and Einstein’s discoveries.

Before long—music will incorporate the most recent discoveries in physics and astronomy. Before long—musical technologies are going to become the new theory of superstrings. Before long—music will become the basis for an enormous Glass Bead Game that will involve whole layers of world culture as its components!

(music)

My third thesis: the music of the future will finally acquire the status of science.

The enormous increase in complexity that has been happening in music during the last several centuries is soon going lead to the condition when musical techniques will be as complex as the apparatus of exact sciences. That is, the music of the future will become a science!

Already back in 1958 the American composer Milton Babbitt warned that in the present day it is futile to demand that a composer creates works accessible to everyone, just as it is futile to expect that a physicist or a mathematician write only such scientific articles that could be understood even by a third-grader. If a layman chances upon a lecture on “Pointwise Periodic Homeomorphisms,” he would hardly dare announce: “That’s nonsense because I don’t get it.” At the same time, this is exactly what nearly always happens at contemporary music concerts.

The message of Babbitt’s article[xiv] is that music should be assigned the status of science—otherwise it will cease to develop.

Today, Babbitt’s article seems again—and especially!—timely!

Because the music of the future will become a science.

Of course there is not only an intellectual component in music, but also an intuitive one—that which can be grasped with intuition, beyond the rational. Yet, the very appearance of such a position is symptomatic. In the 21st century, Leibniz’s definition (“music is a hidden arithmetical exercise of the soul, which does not know that it is counting”[xv]) needs certain corrections: now the soul will perform this exercise in a conscious manner.

And in the future music is going to reveal the traits of its sibling, mathematics, ever more evidently.

As the American composer and music theoretician Milton Babbitt wrote, the future belongs to the music for and by specialists! He said: the revolution in musical thought that took place in the first half of the 20th century can be compared only with the one that happened in theoretical physics in the mid 19th century!

That is why the music of the future will become a science.

Milton Babbitt said: the new music employs a tonal vocabulary that is more “efficient” than that of the music of the past or of its derivatives! This music demands increased accuracy from the transmitter (the performer) and increased accuracy from the receiver (the listener)!

Milton Babbitt said: each “atomic” musical event in the new music is located in a five-dimensional musical space determined by pitch-class, register, dynamic, duration, and timbre. These five components not only together define the single event, but, in the course of a work, the successive values of each component create an individually coherent structure, frequently in parallel with the corresponding structures created by each of the other components! This is exactly why the music of the future will become a science!

Milton Babbitt said: musical compositions of the new music possess a high degree of contextuality and autonomy! That is, the structural characteristics of a given work are less representative of a general class of characteristics than they are unique to the individual work itself. Therefore greater and new demands are made upon the perceptual and conceptual abilities of the listener!

Milton Babbitt said: the new music presupposes a suitably equipped receptor! Such a listener who would be full of knowledge, musical experience, clarity, and flexibility of mind!

Milton Babbitt said: the new music is destined for intellectual isolation, and there is nothing wrong with that; it’s wonderful! The new music has achieved such a stage when the normally well-educated man without special preparation cannot understand it all that easily, just as he cannot conceive an advanced work in mathematics, philosophy, and physics!

Milton Babbitt said: if no-one expects common intelligibility from advanced mathematics, why does everyone demand it from the new music? The organizers of a mathematical conference wrote in the New York Times: “The scientific level of the conference is so high… that there are in the world only 120 mathematicians specializing in the field who could contribute.” Why then does the equally “specialized” music that can be conceived only by the very few, on the other hand, become subject to such strong censure?

Milton Babbitt said: if a layman chances upon a lecture on “Pointwise Periodic Homeomorphisms” and doesn’t get a word of what is being said there, he would hardly dare announce: “I didn’t like it.” Why then do the musical laymen constantly demand accessibility and easy digestibility from the new music?

Milton Babbitt said: let the composer commit a total, resolute, and voluntary withdrawal from the public world to one of private performance and electronic media! Let him be free to pursue a private life of professional achievement, as opposed to a public life of unprofessional compromise and exhibitionism!

And let the music of the future become a science.

The music of the future is not going to simply become a science; it will once again become a science. Indeed, it had originally been a science: both in Ancient Greece, when the Pythagoreans studied the music of the spheres, and in the Middle Ages, when music was part of the quadrivium of sciences, along with arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy. And today all of Babbitt’s statements are as timely as ever! In truth, aren’t Boulez’s frequency multiplication and the stochastic methods of Xenakis musical mathematics? In truth, doesn’t the analysis of Webern’s dodecaphonic variations Op. 27 demand a scientific apparatus? In truth?

Milton Babbitt said: the differences between musical composition and scholarly research are insubstantial! One cannot demand immediate “practical” applicability either from music or from scientific research!

Before long—composers are going to use only supercomputers! Before long—experiments in composition are going to be conducted in the manner of scientific ones! Before long—composers are going to be able to compete for the Abel Prize, one of world’s most prestigious prizes, on par with mathematicians! Before long—the further comprehension of the world is going to be unthinkable without the figure of the scientist-composer!

(music)

My fourth thesis: the music of the future will change the concept of the listener of such music. And not only that of the listener. The music of the future will change the concept of its performer. And not only him! The music of the future will change the concept of the composer, the concept of the performer, and even the concept of the listener of such music! Moreover—the very interrelation of these three figures will change; they are going to be able to interpenetrate and change places.

The composer of the future will be an intellectual in the broadest sense of the word. The mind of the composer of the future will be well-stocked with knowledge!

The composers of Bach’s era, for instance, were craftsmen (in the highest sense of the word): they were satisfied with their own musical language, and they needed neither verbal expression of this musical knowledge nor any other sciences or arts. Beethoven is to be considered a “frontier” composer in this respect: it is no accident that this man, who engaged in enthusiastic (albeit chaotic) self-education, studying foreign languages and writing out phrases from Kant’s works, became the creator of conceptual symphonism and, more broadly, the very idea of the opus as a universe. After Beethoven, composers could not do without an extensive educational background anymore, and more so with passing time—up until the informational trauma of postmodernism, which resulted in a fatal knowledge overload and, ultimately, in the fundamental and complete inability to compose anything.

In the future, the composer will be more than just a composer—he is going to be an intellectual!

As a result, the very concept of music education has to change.

This is truly a burning issue: today it is obvious that there are tectonic shifts coming about in the training system; a major change is at hand. Whole educational institutions are becoming outdated. We encounter more and more examples of how a musician educated outside of the Conservatory easily enters the composing arena and is ultimately in greater demand in Russia and in other countries than the so-called “academic musicians” who have obtained their diplomas with honors.

Before long—the conservatory course will include, besides the essential disciplines—harmony, polyphony, and orchestration—completely different subjects intended to train the composer in cognitive flight: logic, fundamentals of higher mathematics, and advanced art and theater history!

In the Baroque era the figure of the composer and that of the performer were merged together. Johann Sebastian Bach was simultaneously learning to play the harpsichord and to compose fugues. Today’s composers often cannot play any instrument at all. But it is not going to go on like that any longer! The future composers will penetrate the depths of the instrument through performance.

In the future, the composer is also going to be a performer, and the performer is also going to be a composer!

The music of the future will change the figure of the performer as well. The performer and the composer are going to be increasingly united in one person. Indeed, in today’s lecture I am both the author and the performer.

Before, when the performer played a concert with an orchestra, he was supposed to improvise a cadence himself. Who does this today? Who is able to improvise a cadence today? Today, cadences are, at best, composed beforehand, commissioned to the composers, while most often pre-composed, pre-rehearsed cadences are played!!

But in the future this situation will change.

The performer will both compose and perform. He will be a full-fledged accomplice in the artistic act of the composer! He is going to be a real demiurge!

In the future, the performer will be both a composer and a listener, and also partly the performer of the piece!

Finally, the music of the future will change the figure of the listener!

The main change in the concept of the listener will be the emergence of the ability to perceive the interconnections between the arts. Nikolay Gumilev[xvi] had already prophesied the development of an organ that would be able to perceive nature and art, i.e. about the emergence of the sixth sense. I do not know whether it has appeared already, but there is the seventh one ahead: the organ, which is able to perceive the interdisciplinary parallels, in other words—to play the Glass Bead Game. I do not imply the synthesis of the arts in the spirit of Wagner’s Gesamtkunstwerk or Scriabin’s Mysterium: this idea is rather ancient, but it remains utopian to this day. I am talking about those “yet non-emergent wings” that make people search for and find unexpected crossings of different arts and sciences, and build a unified cultural matrix. For these purposes, the listener will receive a third eye over time.

In the future, the listener is also going to be a performer, and the performer is also going to be a composer and partly a performer of the piece!

The increase in complexity in the musical language raises the requirements applied to the receptor; and music, like an intellectual novel, increasingly requires detailed explanations and commentaries. And, at times, it even needs ideal listeners—those who, like Joyce’s “ideal readers,” are ready to dedicate their “days and labors” to solving intellectual mysteries.

In the future, the listener will become both a composer and a performer, whilst the composer will have to be simultaneously a composer, a performer, a listener, and also a little bit of a composer!

Before long—the listener will receive the function of a demiurge, being able to create and reproduce musical texts on his own! Before long—the listener is not going to be called a listener at all anymore, since he will be first and foremost an artist! Before long—the figures of the composer, the performer, and the listener are all going to spin in a magnificent round dance, merging into one blazing whole!

(music)

My fifth thesis: the music of the future will wield much subtler tuning and pitch systems! The music of the future will split the octave into more than twelve parts!

Today, like the composers of preceding centuries, we are using a twelve-metric tuning system. Its manifestation can be observed in the twelve different keys on the piano keyboard: C, D, E, F, G, A, B and the five black keys (sharps and flats). But tuning has not always been like that! Neither is it going to remain like that forever.

The music of the future will split the octave into more than twelve parts!

The famous Well-Tempered Clavier by Johann Sebastian Bach was composed not for an equal-tempered clavier, but specifically for a well-tempered one—that is, its temperament is actually approximate! The so-called “well-tempered” tuning system is just a family of unequal temperaments.

The music of the future will be born in the search for a perfect system of tuning!

The well-tempered system was followed by an equal-tempered one. It took shape in the late 17th–early 18th centuries, when scientists were obsessed with the search for a certain “perfect” tuning system (this is the search that will give birth to the music of the future). Historically, it was preceded by the pure and the mean-tone systems, but they had not allowed transposing (transferring) music to other keys. In other keys there appeared a sharp dissonance that was very much discernible to the ear!

Even the well-tempered system is not perfect; it is tentative; it is simply conventional within our tradition. After all, it breaks the pure natural Pythagorean intervals! In the ideal sense, it consists of falseness all the way through. It provides ample opportunities for tonal transpositions, but the natural purity is lost.

Who said there should only be twelve notes? Why do we have to be limited by them?

The music of the future will emerge in the search for perfect tuning; it will be born from the spirit of perfect tuning! But where is it, this perfect tuning?

As the Austrian composer, and one of the founders of the Second Viennese School, Anton Webern wrote, “New music is that which has never been said. So new music would be what happened a thousand years ago, just as much as what is happening now, namely, music that appears as something previously unsaid.”[i]

As the Austrian composer, and one of the founders of the Second Viennese School, Anton Webern said, “a sound is a composite of sorts, consisting of the base tone and of overtones. Now, there has been a gradual process in which music has gone on to exploit each successive stage of this composite material.” At first it used that which lay closer, and then also that which lay further. “For we find an ever-growing appropriation of nature's gifts! The overtone series must be regarded as, practically speaking, infinite.”

Therefore the “new music is that which has never been said. So new music would be what happened a thousand years ago, just as much as what is happening now, namely, music that appears as something previously unsaid.”

As the Austrian composer, and one of the founders of the Second Viennese School, Anton Webern said, the difference between consonance and dissonance is not fundamental, but it is only that of degree. “…Simple compounds of notes are called consonances, but it was soon found that the more distant overtone relationships, which were considered as dissonances, could be felt as a spice. But we must understand that consonance and dissonance are not essentially different, that there is no essential difference between them, only one of degree. Dissonance is only another step up the scale, which goes on developing further.”

Because the “new music is that which has never been said. So new music would be what happened a thousand years ago, just as much as what is happening now, namely, music that appears as something previously unsaid.”

As the Austrian composer, and one of the founders of the Second Viennese School, Anton Webern wrote, “for we find an ever growing appropriation of nature's gifts! The overtone series must be regarded as, practically speaking, infinite. Ever subtler differentiations can be imagined…”

As the Austrian composer, and one of the founders of the Second Viennese School, Anton Webern wrote, “the overtone series must be regarded as, practically speaking, infinite.”

As the Austrian composer, and one of the founders of the Second Viennese School, Anton Webern wrote, “a note isn’t a simple thing, but something complex. You know that every note is accompanied by its overtones, an infinite number, in fact…”

In continuation of the thought of the Austrian composer, one may claim: the music of the future will be intensively technological.

The infinity of progress has already introduced to us the the boundless opportunities of computer music. It has an Escher-like space game going on inside of it, a continuous shift of the system of coordinates—and all this non-Euclidean geometry creates a feeling of immersion into a peculiar multidimensional world. If Lenin lived on to hear electronic music, it is this kind of music that he would have called “inhuman.” With the help of a computer, composers find sound effects that are equally distant from musical instruments’ timbres and from “concrete” sounds we hear in our life. For a traditional musician and listener, electronic music is “the fourth dimension,” mysterious and, like Solaris, full of boundless opportunities.

As the Austrian composer, and one of the founders of the Second Viennese School, Anton Webern wrote, “the overtone series must be regarded as, practically speaking, infinite.”

On a personal note, why “practically speaking”? Simply infinite, infinite, infinite! Just as any mathematical object can be infinitely reduced, divided, split down to an infinitely small dot, we can also split our semitone into increasingly smaller entities, increasingly subtler differentiations, and this process is infinite!

Before long—human hearing will develop so intensely that it will be able to discern increasingly subtler frequencies! Before long—we are going to be able to split each semitone into two, three, five and more parts! Before long—man will be able to use the tiniest nano-particles of sound just as easily as he can press two keys on a piano keyboard today! Before long—the composers are going to use not twelve-step, but nineteen and twenty-seven-step scales! Before long—the listener will be able to discern up to fifteen, twenty, seventy-five gradations of a semitone! Before long—we are going to be able to split the octave into an infinite, infinite number of parts!

(music)

(Music plays on; then it is turned off. Silence)

In conclusion, I would like to tell you about the most important thing. In the future, music will be a tool of state governing.

My sixth thesis: “…the music of a comfortable age is calm and cheerful, and so is its government. The music of a restless age is excited and fierce, and its government is delinquent. The music of a decaying state is sentimental and sad, and its government is imperiled.”[xviii]

These are the words of Hermann Hesse. Hermann Hesse often mentions the so-called music of decline, or the music composed in the prohibited keys (it appears in Klingsor’s Last Summer, in Steppenwolf, and in The Glass Bead Game): “The music of decline had sounded, like a thrumming bass on the organ.” According to Hesse, the condition of music reflects the condition of the state as a whole: the music of a comfortable age is calm and cheerful, and so is its government. The music of a restless age is excited and fierce, and its government is delinquent. The music of a decaying state is sentimental and sad, and its government is imperiled.

Hesse is talking about the legendary China of the “ancient emperors” where music was assigned the leading function, and where the chapel-masters were obliged to ensure the preservation of the “ancient keys,” not allowing the “prohibited” keys—which unexpectedly resonates with the motives of Plato’s Republic and the ethos of the Antiquity.

Plato considered only one musical mode to be truly Greek—the Dorian one: a manly mode that strengthens one’s temper and can protect one from harm. On the contrary, the Phrygian mode, according to Plato, is an agitated, ecstatic, and orgiastic mode used in the cult of Dionysus. In his dialogue The Republic Plato criticizes the Ionian (the mode of erotic lyric poetry and wine-drinking) and Lydian modes as “relaxed,” and does not recommend allowing them for “military use.”[xix]

And it is all because the condition of music influences that of the state as a whole. Because music is a manifestation of man’s inner constitution, man’s inner constitution manifests as the essence of the state, and the essence of the state transmutes the meaning of the universe.

As the Russian writer Victor Pelevin[xx] wrote,

“Chang heard some quiet music and tip-toed inside. He found himself in a spacious bright room with windows wide open into the sky, and in the middle of it, beside a white grand piano (note: a rare musical instrument resembling a big dulcimer), sat the Son of the Sky, all covered with wheat spikes and golden stars. It was instantly clear that this was not an ordinary person. Beside him stood a big metal locker to which he was connected with several hose tubes; inside the locker, something was gurgling quietly. The Son of the Sky was staring at the intruders, but it seemed that he didn’t see them; the wind flying inside through the windows was stirring his gray hair.

…Chang had now learned the secret of the white piano. The main duty of the Son of the Sky was to sit at the instrument playing some easy tune. It was considered that, doing this, he set the original harmony that determines the whole governing of the country. The rulers, as Chang learned, differed from each other by the melodies that they knew. As for himself, he could only actually recall the Flea Waltz and was playing it most of the time. He tried to play the Moonlight Sonata once, but made several mistakes, and the next day an uprising of the tribes occurred in the Far North, and an earthquake happened in the South, thankfully not resulting in any victims. But the uprising wasn’t such an easy matter: the rioters, carrying their black banners with a yellow ring in the middle, had been fighting the Brothers Karamazov Striking Division of landing troops for five days, until they were all killed to the very last man.

Since then, Chang never took such risks and kept playing the Flea Waltz only, but in return, he could play it in whatever way possible: with eyes closed, with his back turned to the piano, and even lying on it with his belly. In a secret box under the piano he found a collection of melodies compiled by the ancient rulers. In the evenings, he often flipped through it. He learned, for example, that on that very day when the ruler Khrushchev was performing the melody “Flight of the Bumblebee,” an enemy plane was shot down in the country’s airspace. The sheet music for many of these melodies were painted over with black paint, and it was already impossible to know what the rulers of those years used to play.”

And it is all because the music of a comfortable age is calm and cheerful, and so is its government. The music of a restless age is excited and fierce, and its government is delinquent. The music of a decaying state is sentimental and sad, and its government is imperiled.

In Ancient China, music was viewed as an integral part of the world-harmonizing ritual aimed at, to a greater extent than any other ceremonial act, establishing an interconnection between the society and the energies of the Universe and maintaining harmony and order in both realms.

“One who has conceived music is close to conceiving the ritual. One who has conceived both music and the ritual resonates with the energy of De. One who resonates with the energy of De is the one who has conceived the energy of De” (the Chou I treatise).[xxi]

For Hesse, the music of decline is also a lamentation over the vanishing layers of culture: “For us in Europe everything we had that was good and our own has already died. Our fine-feathered Reason has become madness, our money is paper, our machines can do nothing but shoot and explode, our art is suicide. We are going under, friends; that is our destiny. Music in the Tsing Tse key has begun.”[xxii] However, for Hesse, the music of decline embodies not only the destructive force, but also a certain kind of beauty: the beauty of fire in which art is burning; the inexpressible, painfully elusive beauty of that “last summer” that the artist Klingsor was enjoying: “Answers came from the stars and the moon, from the trees and the mountains. Goethe sat there and his alter ego Hafis; torrid Egypt and grave Greece rose up; Mozart smiled; Hugo Wolf played the piano in the delirious night.”

Because the music of a comfortable age is calm and cheerful, and so is its government. The music of a restless age is excited and fierce, and its government is delinquent. The music of a decaying state is sentimental and sad, and its government is imperiled.

Before long—music will become an integral part of the world-harmonizing ritual aimed at, to a greater extent than any other ceremonial act, establishing an interconnection between the society and the energies of the Universe and maintaining harmony and order in both realms.

During the first manned foray into space, the Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin—Hero of the Soviet Union, recipient of the highest orders of distinctions from numerous countries, honorary citizen of many Russian and foreign cities—Yuri Gagarin said: “Dear friends, both known and unknown to me, fellow Russians, and people of all countries and continents! The music of a comfortable age is calm and cheerful, and so is its government. The music of a restless age is excited and fierce, and its government is delinquent. The music of a decaying state is sentimental and sad, and its government is imperiled. In a few minutes a mighty spaceship will carry me into the far-away expanses of the Universe. Can one have greater dreams?!..”

Can one have greater dreams?!..

(music begins and plays for another 20 minutes)

FOOTNOTES:

[i]The quote is taken from Blok’s diary entry of June 29, 1909. The full passage goes as follows: “Music is the most perfect of the arts primarily because it expresses and reflects the design of the Great Architect to the fullest extent…Music creates the world…Poetry is exhaustible (although it is still able to develop for a long time; not even a hundredth has been done yet), so imperfect are its atoms – less agile. Having reached its utmost pitch, poetry will probably drown in music. Music precedes everything, and preconditions everything.”

Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Blok (born Nov. 28 [Nov. 16, Old Style], 1880, St. Petersburg, Russia—died Aug. 7, 1921, Petrograd [now St. Petersburg]), poet and dramatist, the principal representative of Russian Symbolism, a modernist literary movement that was influenced by its European counterpart but was strongly imbued with indigenous Eastern Orthodox religious and mystical elements. // Encyclopedia Britannica online

[ii]The quote is taken from Görres’s aesthetical treatise Aphorisms on Art [Aphorismen über Kunst, 1802]. The full phrase goes as follows: “Language has turned into poetry in the realm of feelings; just one more step—and poetry is going to dissolve into music.”

Joseph von Görres, in full Johann Joseph von Görres (born Jan. 25, 1776, Koblenz, archbishopric of Trier [Germany]—died Jan. 29, 1848, Munich, Bavaria), German Romantic writer who was one of the leading figures of Roman Catholic political journalism. // Encyclopedia Britannica online

[iii] Silentium

She has not yet been born,
She is both music and the word,
And thus the inviolable bond
Of everything that lives.

The sea’s breasts breathe peacefully,
But the day shines like a madman,
And the foam’s pale lilac
Lies in a basin of muted blue.

May my lips acquire this
Primeval muteness,
Like a crystal note
Pure from birth.

Remain foam, Aphrodite,
And word, return to music,
And heart, be ashamed of heart,
When fused with life’s foundation!

From: Cavanagh, Clare. Osip Mandelstam and the Modernist Creation of Tradition, Princeton University Press, 1995: pp. 42–43.

Osip Emilyevich Mandelshtam, Mandelshtam also spelled Mandelstam (born January 3 [January 15, New Style], 1891, Warsaw, Poland, Russian Empire [now in Poland]—died December 27, 1938?, Vtoraya Rechka, near Vladivostok, Russia, U.S.S.R. [now in Russia]), major Russian poet and literary critic. Most of his works went unpublished in the Soviet Union during the Stalin era (1929–53) and were almost unknown outside that country until the mid-1960s. <…> His first poems appeared in the avant-garde journal Apollon (“Apollo”) in 1910. Together with Nikolay Gumilyov and Anna Akhmatova, Mandelshtam founded the Acmeist school of poetry, which rejected the mysticism and abstraction of Russian Symbolism and demanded clarity and compactness of form. // Encyclopedia Britannica online

[iv] The 500-lines poem by Paul Valéry La jeune parque is implied. It is considered one of the greatest in French literature of the 20th century. Valéry worked on it for approximately four years and published it in 1917, after a Great Silence that had lasted for nearly twenty years. “There is no poem in French,” Paul Gifford writes in his review of Alistair Elliott’s English translation of this poem, “which reaches this sustained, algebraic density of language, this intimate concordance of music and sense, this intricate formal play of antithesis and symmetry in the use of leitmotif and symbol, or this summative power of echoing the poetic voices of France, all in the quintessentially French medium of the alexandrine” (The Modern Language Review, Vol. 96, No. 4 (Oct., 2001), p. 1090, quoted from Jstor.org). For a detailed analysis of the poem’s musicality read “Lyricism and Voice in La jeune Parque,” Chapter 1 of the dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Vesna Rodic, University of California, Berkeley, 2008; Googlebooks: http://books.google.ru/books?id=SxE9rJeGkewC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false.

[v] “The parallel with the form of symphonic movements rests on the way in which themes, initially established separately, and then divided, merged, reduplicated, repeated with modifications, reversed – indeed developed in most of the ways familiar from symphonic music. Images appear and re-appear in different contexts, in relation to different themes, so that their connotations constantly shift and expand. This allows for the creation of new and unsuspected relationships…” Andrey Bely: a critical study of the novels, Cambridge Studies in Russian Literature, Cambridge University Press, 1983: pp. 58–59.

Andrey Bely, pseudonym of Boris Nikolayevich Bugayev, Bugayev also spelled Bugaev (born October 14 [October 26, New Style], 1880, Moscow, Russia—died January 7, 1934, Moscow, Russia, U.S.S.R.), leading theorist and poet of Russian Symbolism, a literary school deriving from the Modernist movement in Western European art and literature and an indigenous Eastern Orthodox spirituality, expressing mystical and abstract ideals through allegories from life and nature. // Encyclopedia Britannica online

[vi] This poem by Ivanov has unfortunately not been translated into English yet.

Vyacheslav Ivanovich Ivanov, (born Feb. 16 [Feb. 28, New Style], 1866, Moscow, Russian Empire—died July 16, 1949, Rome, Italy), leading poet of the Russian Symbolist movement who is also known for his scholarly essays on religious and philosophical themes, incl. the cult of Dionysus. // Encyclopedia Britannica online

[1] Daniil Kharms (real name Daniil Ivanovich Yuvachov, 1905–1942) was an exceptional absurdist poet and esoteric philosopher, leader of the avant-garde collective OBERIU, or The Union of Real Art, and founder of a half-jocose philosophic Order of Equilibrium with a Slight Discrepancy, referring to the term by his friend, philosopher and theologian Yakov Druskin, quaedam equilibritas cum peccato parvo (according to Druskin, the Universe is structured as an equilibrium with a slight discrepancy between the two forces, This and That). His aesthetic centered around a belief in the autonomy of art from real world rules and logic, and the intrinsic meaning to be found in objects and words outside of their practical function. As the Slavicist Neil Carrick justly described him, he was a true “theologian of the absurd.” See Carrick’s book Daniil Kharms: Theologian of the Absurd, Birmingham Slavonic Monographs, No. 28. Online version: http://fege.narod.ru/librarium/carrick.htm

[viii] Boris Leonidovich Pasternak (born February 10 [January 29, Old Style], 1890, Moscow, Russia—died May 30, 1960, Peredelkino, near Moscow), Russian poet whose novel Doctor Zhivago helped win him the Nobel Proze for Literature in 1958 but aroused so much opposition in the Soviet Union that he declined the honour. <…> Young Pasternak himself planned a musical career, though he was a precocious poet. He studied musical theory and composition for six years, then abruptly switched to philosophy courses at Moscow University and the University of Marburg (Germany). // Encyclopedia Britannica online

[ix] Alexey Zhemchuzhnikov (1821-1908) was a Russian lyrical poet, satirist, and comic writer.

[x] Innokenty Annensky (1855–1909) was a poet, critic and translator who belonged to the first wave of Russian Symbolism. His poetry was a major influence on the later Symbolist and Acmeist poets, especially on Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966). Here is one of his most famous poems, translated by Dina Belyaeva:

Through macrocosm and scintillating orbs
I say the name of One Celestial Lover…
Not that I have been loving Her before,
But that I have been wearied by the others.

And if the doubt exacts a heavy toll,
She is the One I’m begging for true guidance,
Not that She brings more light into the world,
But that with Her one'd be content in darkness.

1901

[xi] Bourdon (French “dense bass”) is a low-pitched stop in an organ or harmonium, typically a sixteen-foot stopped diapason. // Oxford Dictionaries online

[xii] See Lecture VII by Anton Webern from his lecture series The Path to the New Music (April 3, 1933), translated from the German, edited by Willi Reich.

Online version: http://archive.org/stream/antonwebernthepa007300mbp/antonwebernthepa007300mbp_djvu.txt

[xiii] Tom Service (OnClassical Blog in “The Guardian”) on this symphony: “And there’s the third movement, the Symphony’s most famous section. It’s notorious because this entire central panel of Berio’s Symphony is written on top of the scherzo of Mahler's Second Symphony. The Mahler is inescapable because Berio makes his music the foundation of a spiraling chaos of quotations, allusions, and transformations of fragments of orchestral repertoire from Ravel's La Valse to Debussy's La Mer and Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, from Berg's Violin Concerto to Boulez’s Pli selon pli. And dozens of others.” // Tom Service. “Symphony Guide: Luciano Berio’s Sinfonia,” http://www.theguardian.com/music/tomserviceblog/2013/nov/05/symphony-guide-berio-sinfonia-tom-service

[xiv] Babbitt, Milton. “Who Cares If You Listen?” High Fidelity, February 1958. Further on in this section of her lecture, Nastasya quotes fragments of this article without quotation marks, since the quotes are slightly changed.

[xv] Musica est exercitium arithmeticae occultum nescientis se numerare animi. — From a letter by Wilhelm Gottfried von Leibniz (1646 — 1716) to Christian Goldbach, April 17, 1712. Arthur Schopenhauer paraphrased this quotation in the first book of Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung: Musica est exercitium metaphysices occultum nescientis se philosophari animi. (Music is a hidden metaphysical exercise of the soul, which does not know that it is philosophizing.) // Wikiquote

[xvi] Nikolay Stepanovich Gumilyov, Gumilyov also spelled Gumilev (born April 15, 1886, Kronshtadt, Russia—died Aug. 24, 1921, Petrograd [St. Petersburg]), Russian poet and theorist who founded and led the Acmeist movement in Russian poetry in the years before and after World War I. // Encyclopedia Britannica online

[xvii] “…new music is that which has never been said. So new music would be what happened a thousand years ago, just as much as what is happening now, namely, music that appears as something never said before.” // Webern, Anton. Lecture on February 20th, 1933 in The Path to the New Music. Ed. by Willi Reich. Theodore Presser Co., Pennsylvania, 1963. Online version: http://archive.org/stream/antonwebernthepa007300mbp/antonwebernthepa007300mbp_djvu.txt

[xviii] Hesse, Hermann. Magister Ludi (The Glass Bead Game). Translated from the German. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1970. Online version: http://people.brandeis.edu/~mikek/books/pub/Hesse,%20Hermann%20-%20Magister%20Ludi%20-%20The%20Glass%20Bead%20Game%20v3.0.html

[xix] Plato, The Republic. Whole text: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1497/1497-h/1497-h.htm

[xx] Victor Pelevin, born 1962 in Moscow, is a Russian writer in the genre of ‘mystical fiction’ who has a cult status in Russia due to his novels (Generation P, Chapayev and Void, Omon Ra, and others) and multiple short stories, and no less due to his mysterious image: he very rarely appears in public, and there even exist legends that the writer Pelevin is actually a team literary project. Many of his books have been translated into English and other languages. He often uses allusions to ancient mystical practices, Buddhism, and Taoism. The fragment quoted in the lecture is taken from Pelevin’s short story USSR Taichou Zhuang. A Chinese Fairytale [SSSR Taishou Ch’zuan’: kitaiskaya narodnaya skazka; no English translation of the text is available as yet].

[xxi] Chou I is another name for the famous ancient Chinese Book of Changes (also called the Classic of Changes, I Ching). This quote, referring to the Yü Hexagram (16), is taken from a book by a Chinese scholar Lyu Chou Yun The Complications of I Ching With New Commentaries, Beijing, 1998 [in Chinese, no English translation available] and quoted in the book by a contemporary Russian sinologist PhD Alexander Storozhuk The Three Doctrines and the Culture of China: Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism in the Art of the Tang Dynasty, St. Petersburg: The Faculty of Eastern Studies of the St. Petersburg State University, 2010. Unfortunately we haven’t been able to find these exact words in any of the existing I Ching translations.

[xxii] Hesse, Hermann. Klingsor’s Last Summer. Translated from the German. In: Hemingway-Hamsun-Gesse. Nobel Prize Library in 20 Vols., 1970. Online version: http://www.unz.org/Pub/NobelPrizeLibrary-1971v09-00317

About Nastasya Khroustcheva:

Nastasya Khroustcheva, born 1987, is a notable young composer and pianist based in St. Petersburg, Russia, who stands out for her audacious and ironic approach to composition, deep knowledge in various fields, and interest to multidisciplinary research. She graduated from the Rimsky-Korsakov St. Petersburg State Conservatory in 2010 where she obtained a Ph.D. in Art History with the dissertation “The Convergence of Music and Literature in the Oeuvre of Pierre Boulez, Luciano Berio, and James Joyce” in 2013 and now teaches a course on Western music history. She underwent Electronic Music training at the Warsaw Chopin Musical Academy (2008) and received the scholarships of the Bach Week in Ansbach (2009) and the Wagner Society in Bayreuth (2011). In 2009–2012 she was the chairwoman of the St. Petersburg Youth Section of the Russian Composers’ Union. In 2012 she was awarded with the youth prize of the St. Petersburg government “For the Achievements in the Field of Musical Art.” Kroustcheva’s pieces are performed in Russia, Sweden, Germany, Mexico, Poland, England and are released by the publishing houses Periferia Sheet Music (Barcelona) and Compositor (St. Petersburg). She now actively composes music for theatre shows at various Petersburg theatres, such as Alexandrinsky, Great Drama Theatre (BDT), and the young TRUE Theatre collective.

Key works:

Penelope’s Veil, monodrama for soprano and chamber ensemble based on the texts from Homer and Joyce (2007)
Concert for violin and orchestra (2010)
A Bit Nervous, proposal for violin and piano (2011)
Magbet, monodrama for Alexey Nikonov (Russian punk musician & poet) and chamber ensemble (2011)
Zaches, concert for bass flute and orchestra (2012)
Much Ado About Fury for piano quartet (2013)
Dances of a Gray Fox for violin and piano (2013)
Trio in Memory of a Mediocre Artist (2014) трио памяти невеликого художника (2014)
Happiness, madrigal for mixed choir based on the texts by Alexey Fishev (late Russian hardcore punk musician, head of the band Nostradamus’s Orgasm) (2014)

Nastasya Khroustcheva, Happiness, madrigal

Nastasya Khroustcheva, Dances of a Gray Fox