Review of Analytical Studies of the Music of Ashley, Cage, Carter, Dallapiccola, Feldman, Lucier, Reich, Satie, Schoenberg Wolff and Xenakis: Essays in Contemporary Music
Reviewed by Christian Carey, Contemporary Music Review
Thomas DeLio is a Professor at the University of Maryland. A composer and music theorist, he has published widely on topics in twentieth century music. His output includes seven books as author and/or editor and many essays in academic journals. Analytical Studies is the first book in a projected two-volume project for Mellen Press that collects his essays. Covering the period from 1980–2000, it contains 15 chapters on, as the title above indicates, a diverse group of composers.
DeLio’s contributions to the research of the New York School have been noteworthy. For instance, his book on Cage’s Amores is an important resource for those interested in studying or learning about the composer’s music. The first chapter in Analytical Studies, ‘The Morphology of a Global Structure: John Cage’s Variations II’, is one of several originally published, in modified form, in Perspectives of New Music. Variations II is not the type of score one might consider to be readily analyzable; it is made with dots on interchangeable transparent sheets, with considerable freedom allowed to its performers. Yet DeLio does a deep dive, taking a mathematically rigorous approach that explicates the various ways in which the score’s deployment may be manifested in performance. Note: Those who find formulae or statistics anathema will likely be overtaxed by the approach taken here and elsewhere. DeLio is a theorist who revels in the beauty of mathematics alongside its aesthetic corollaries in music (and in the visual arts, as will be seen presently). In two separate chapters, Morton Feldman’s Durations III #3 and Last Pieces #3 are subjected to painstaking assessments of their intervallic makeup.
DeLio eschews the terminology of much pitch class set theory, a type of analysis introduced by Allen Forte and customarily employed in much American post-tonal music theory. This is paradoxical, because he employs some of pc-set theory’s methods – such as interval class and the calculation of interval vectors – quite frequently. Why not call them by name? A clue is given elsewhere in the book. DeLio takes issue with one of Forte’s important early essays, which studies Schoenberg’s Op. 19 No. 2, suggesting that his own approach bests it. He then lists other Forte-inspired approaches that fall short. The Schoenberg chapter in Analytical Studies’ is interesting, but by no means the solitary sensible pathway through the piece that DeLio somewhat immoderately suggests. On the other hand, his statistical approach to Feldman reaps ample rewards, revealing systematic use of pitch and pitch-class intervals. It delineates structural relationships in a repertoire that, again, many have suggested resists analysis.
However, just as the book presents standard formulae used in group mathematical theory, one wishes that the post-tonal terminology used was similarly standardized; it would make Analytical Studies more relatable to a host of other theoretical literature (and to many more graduate students). Indeed, the one footnote that explains inversion of intervals when calculating interval class (without using the term interval class) is 10 pages into the essay – interval calculations have been already occurring for at least eight of them. A missed opportunity for some judicious editing.
Two chapters are devoted to another New York School composer, Christian Wolff. One is a thoroughgoing and engaging analysis of a seminal Wolff piece, For One, Two, or Three People. The other is a liner notes essay. It, and a short piece on Steve Reich for an exhibition catalogue, indeed make the book a complete overview of the author’s essays for two decades; but both are more about aesthetic philosophy than analysis. Moreover, the Reich is a thinly constructed entry in DeLio’s otherwise impressive collection. Xenakis is a composer about whom DeLio has written groundbreaking research. He does an impressive job explicating the group theory with which Xenakis structures much of Nomos Alpha while at the same time taking account of the more entropic material juxtaposed against it. Perhaps the best analysis in the book is the chapter on Xenakis’s Linaia-Agon, which serves as a detailed introduction to the use of game theory in composition. Canonic structures are another passion of DeLio’s. He writes about canons as they are used by two very different composers: Elliott Carter and Luigi Dallapiccola. Carter’s Canon for 3, a piece commissioned by TEMPO in 1972 for its memorial issue dedicated to Stravinsky, may be a brief occasional piece, but its structure is captivating. DeLio goes through every note of it with a fine-toothed comb and renders its technical details eloquently. It might have been satisfying to relate the piece back to its origins in late Stravinsky’s music for an enriched portrayal. The canons in Dallapiccola’s Goethe Lieder are another pair of knotty puzzles, with even more to unravel. Here, as one reads elsewhere in DeLio’s analysis of Satie’s Parade, the rhythmic dimension is given equal analytical weight to that of pitch. Complex metric ratios abound in these chapters, yet the author’s construction of precise charts helps immeasurably to clarify them. The textual analysis of the Dallapiccola lieder isn’t as compelling; perhaps because it seems somewhat speculative when compared to the vigorous and objective criterion on which the rest of the analysis is based. The author has been at the vanguard of those seeking to introduce experimental music studies to academe. The book represents this well, including provocative chapters about two of experimental music’s principal figures and an overview of some of the philosophical connections between this milieu and corresponding examples from the visual arts and literature. The latter essay is wide ranging and provocative, comparing Cage’s Variations VI and Alvin Lucier’s “I am sitting in a room” to Robert Irwin’s Black Line Volume, Hans Haacke’s Seurat’s ‘Les Poseuses’, and Dan Graham’s Schema. Given the wide range of material considered, what could be a diffuse meditation is instead razor-sharp: a near ideal introduction to interdisciplinarity and considerations of postmodernity in music theory. The approach in the chapter on Robert Ashley’s in memoriam . . . Esteban Gomez also demonstrates connections between recent visual art and experimental music. Both writings and detailed examples of the working processes of sculptors Richard Serra and Robert Morris are explored. DeLio then suggests a persuasive through-line, that within indeterminate artworks, structure can be an ‘activity of change’. The discussion of Ashley’s use of graph scores is equally illuminating. One of the founding fathers of Sound Art, Lucier’s music in many ways transcends solely aural expression, presenting sound as a vividly physical presence: this is particularly true in the piece DeLio analyses. Thus, unconventional means, by music theory standards, are made necessary. The poetry of William Carlos Williams and sculptures of Carl Andre are bases for comparison with Alvin Lucier’s Music for Pure Waves, Bass Drums, and Acoustic Pendulums. By relating Lucier’s artistic processes to those of artists from other disciplines, DeLio provides a convincing framework for evaluating this repertoire.
Many of the notated examples and charts are handwritten instead of engraved. One wishes that a music copyist was part of the editing process: a minor caveat. The true challenge is the hardcover’s $260 price tag, which precludes purchase by most who aren’t in institutional settings. A pity. The myriad approaches DeLio fluently brings to bear in his theoretical work certainly merit anthologising it. What’s more, reading another volume of his essays seems an appealing prospect. Stay tuned – and save your shekels.