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Journalof theRoyalMusicalAssociation,125 (2000) @ RoyalMusicalAssociation
For their advice and encouragement I would like to thank Richard Kurth, Vera Micznik, Robert
Morgan andJohn O'Brian.
1 For a discussion of Kopystiansky,see Helena Kontova, 'Igor and Svetlana Kopystiansky',Flash
Art, 26/clxxii (1993), 109-12. Recent exhibition catalogues that contain reproductions and
discussions of his work include Adaptationand Negationof SocialistRealism:Contemporary SovietArt
(Ridgefield, CT, 1990); ThePurloinedImage,ed. Christopher R. Young (Flint, MI, 1993); and Igor
Kopystiansky, TheMuseum (Dfisseldorf, 1994).
2 Jean Baudrillard, Simulations,trans. Paul Foss, Paul Patton and Philip Beitchman (NewYork,
1983); Hillel Schwartz, The Cultureof the Copy:StrikingLikeness,Unreasonable Facsimiles(New York,
1996).
3 Important precedents of this type of copying include works by Marcel DuChamp, John Clem
Clarke, Andy Warhol and Larry Rivers. For a discussion of other artists working in this vein, see
ThePurloinedImage, ed. Young, and Art aboutArt, ed. Jean Lipman and Richard Marshall (New
York, 1978).
4 Thomas McEvilley, TheExile'sReturn:Towarda Redefinitionof Paintingfor thePost-ModernEra
(Cambridge, 1993), 167-70.
94 DAVID METZER
5 A discussion of the proximity of the two approaches can be found in Andrew Solomon,
'Something Borrowed, Something Bloom', Artforum,26/ix (May 1988), 122-6.
6 Robert P. Morgan, 'Tradition, Anxiety, and the Current Musical Scene', AuthenticityandEarly
Music, ed. Nicholas Kenyon (Oxford and New York, 1988), 57-82.
96 DAVIDMETZER
RENDERING
7 These include realizations by Brian Newbould (London, 1995) and Peter Giilke (Leipzig,
1982). In 1982 the Swiss composer Roland Moser completed a 'fragmentarisches Klangbild' of
the second movement.
8 David Osmond-Smith, 'Berio and the Art of Commentary', Musical Times,116 (1975), 871-2,
and idem,Berio (Oxford and New York, 1991), 42-55.
9 Luciano Berio, TwoInterviews,trans. David Osmond-Smith (New Yorkand London, 1985), 107.
10 Another recent work focusing on Schubert's death and unfinished works is John Harbison's
November 19, 1828. This work incorporates a Rondo fragment from 1816 and concludes with a fugue
based on a subject derived from the composer's name, part of an assignment given by Simon
Sechter to Schubert shortly before his death.
11 In a recent interview, Berio asserted: 'I have an especial dislike for musicologists who decide
to complete an unfinished work. It has been done with Schubert piano sonatas for instance, where
people tried to squeeze an artificial form out of the sketches, basing them on the sonata form. But
things didn't work that way for Schubert.' Theo Muller, "'Musicis not a solitary act":Conversation
with Luciano Berio', Tempo,199 (January 1997), 19.
MUSICALDECAY 97
his name up front, citing dual authorship, and compares his role to that
of an art restorer:
12 Franz Schubert-Luciano
Berio, Rendering(Vienna, 1989), preface. In the interview with
Theo Muller cited above, Berio offered a more offhand description of the piece: 'Renderingisboth
orchestration and a restoration, like the reparation of a painting damaged by time. When you go
to Assisi, you will find beautiful Giotto paintings, some of which are damaged. Now instead of
having them repaired by some stupid painter who pretends to be Giotto and fills in what is missing,
they decided to leave the white, the concrete as it was, which is very expressive too. I did the same
thing with Schubert. I orchestrated, completed some parts, but where the sketches stop I created
a kind of musical concrete, a plaster made of many different things, with a totally different sound.
Then you go back to the next Schubert sketch.' Muller, "'Music is not a solitary act"', 19.
13 Ibid.
14 In the recording by Christoph Eschenbach and the Houston
Symphony (Koch 3-7382-2 H1),
Berio's interpolations make up around 11 minutes of the total 35' 7" performance time.
98 DAVIDMETZER
TABLE1
refrain D major
episode B6major chorale-liketheme
refrain D major rondo theme with counterpointinverted
D minor Hungariandance
episode F major
A minor fugato
refrain D major
coda D major
A New Perspective(London,
Adapted from Brian Newbould, Schubertand theSymphony:
1992),270.
Those losses appear especially great in the drafts for the third move-
ment, which are full of contrapuntal intricacies and possibilities largely
unbroached in previous works. So committed was Schubert to that new
path that he arranged to take lessons from the Viennese fugue master
Simon Sechter, completing only one, however, before his death. The
contrapuntal emphasis appears out of character with Schubert's desig-
nation of the movement as a Scherzo, being instead more appropriate
for a Finale. Indeed, confusion arises over whether the movement is a
Finale or a Scherzo, or possibly some new conflation of the two.21The
duple metre and loose rondo design suggest the former, whereas the
character of the spirited opening theme accords with a Scherzo. These
ambiguities extend to the form of the movement. Although a recurring
refrain points to a rondo design, the exact structure remains unclear
owing to the clutter of revisions and fragments in the sketch. Never-
theless, an approximation of the intended form can be made, as shown
in Table 1, which presents Brian Newbould's realization.
Berio, however, does not care so much about the form that may have
been as the form that exists, that of the sketches themselves. His presen-
tation works within that design, not the conjectured one of a recon-
struction. To summarize briefly, the drafts for this movement consist of
six pages.22 The first two are worksheets made up of scattered ideas,
including the initial conception of prominent themes, reworkings of
those themes, and material that was later discarded. The remaining four
pages present the more polished version of the movement. However,
even this section lacks continuity, and realizing Newbould's interpre-
tation requires cross-stitching together sections from separate pages.
Rendering incorporates both the more complete final pages and the
21 For a discussion of the formal
problems surrounding this movement, see Newbould, Schubert
and the Symphony:A New Perspective(London, 1992), 269-75, and Schubert, Symphonyno. 10, real-
ization by Newbould, iii-iv. In his preface to Rendering,Berio states: 'These sketches alternatively
present the character of a Scherzo and a Finale. This ambiguity (which Schubert would have
solved or exasperated in some new way) was of particular interest ...'.
22 Brian Newbould, 'A Working Sketch by Schubert (D. 936a)', CurrentMusicology,43 (1987),
26-32.
100 DAVID
METZER
TABLE 2
THIRD MOVEMENT
RENDERING,
'fanfare'introduction(Berio)
page 1 of sketch (worksheet)
interpolation
pages 5-6 of sketch (laterversion)
interpolation
page 2 of sketch (worksheet)
interpolation
page 4 of sketch (laterversion)with brief interpolationsat the end
23 A similar idea is used in the first movement. Berio contrasts Schubert's two different sketches
of the exposition, separating them with an interpolation.
24 Newbould, 'A
Working Sketch', 26-31.
25 Schubert-Berio, Rendering,preface.
MUSICALDECAY 101
TABLE 3
A
a b
theme 1 theme 2 theme 1 theme 3 theme 2
B minor F# minor F# major F# minor
A' coda
a' b'
theme 1 theme 2 theme 1 theme 2
B minor E minor B minor B minor
early draft -> later draft -> restoration -> Schubert's Tenth Symphony
The last step, of course, is unattainable, but the emphasis on completion
raised by Berio's sequence of materials places that goal more tantaliz-
ingly in sight. Any attempt to claim it, however, will get only as far as an
intermediary stage, be it a Berio-like restoration or a reconstruction. Yet
both reveal how close the symphony is to coming to life. Rendering,
however, differs from a reconstruction by pointing out that the sketches
will never rise from their archival slumber. The work repeatedly calls
attention to the draft status of the desired symphony, even going so far
as to manipulate the sketches - the forced pairings and imposed inter-
polations - to emphasize the unavoidable breaks and holes.
But what if there were no discontinuities, if Schubert's drafts were
more or less intact? Such is the case with the second movement, which,
except for one slight break, is continuous. This movement spins out a
B minor Andante that recaptures the searching melancholy of the
'Unfinished' Symphony. For Berio, the 'stunning' 'expressive climate'
also looks forward, at times 'inhabited by Mahler's spirit'.26 Whether or
not the draft presents the final form that the Andante would have taken
remains unclear. The structure of the movement is ambiguous,
suggesting double variation, modified strophic and sonata-allegro
designs.27 Taking it on its own terms, the movement breaks down into
two sections: the opening A and its varied repetition (see Table 3).
26 Ibid.
27 In his realization of the symphony, Peter Giilke describes the movement as
blending
elements of double variation and song forms. The movement does suggest both formal types. The
repetition of two themes in recurring units hints at a double variation, although the surprise
appearance of a new theme and the absence of conventional variation procedures are atypical of
that structure. On the other hand, the subtle changes between the different units, not to mention
the lyrical quality of the themes, suggest a modified strophic design. Newbould, on the other
hand, views the movement as a sonata-allegro form. This description is less convincing. The tonal
structure and repetition of two theme units (the back-to-back pairing of themes 1 and 2) argue
against such an interpretation. In addition, the movement lacks a development section, although
Newbould unpersuasively claims that the brief transition between the two A blocks serves as an
abbreviated development. Drei Sinfonie-Fragmente, ed. Peter Gillke (Leipzig, 1982), 97; Newbould,
Schubertand the Symphony,266-7.
102 DAVID
METZER
TABLE4
Introduction A
a Interpolation b Interpolation
theme 1+2 theme 1 theme 3
B minor F#minor F#major
A'
a' b' Interpolation/Close
theme 1+2 theme 1
B minor E minor
Each further divides into a and b units, both of which contain themes
1 and 2. In the first b section, Schubert introduces a new theme (theme
3), which appears only once. He conceived of this melody after draft-
ing the Andante and wrote it down in the sketch of the third move-
ment, directing that it be moved 'zum Andante'. This later insertion
produces the one gap in the sketch.
In his 'rendering', Berio frames the movement with his own sections
and then internally interrupts it twice (see Table 4). These four inter-
polations are the same number as in the third movement, a surprise
given that this is the most continuous section of the draft. That conti-
nuity, however, is never attained. The music strives to wind its way
through the unusual form, but it cannot make it, falling apart on three
different occasions. With one exception, these breaks are not the result
of gaps in the manuscript; rather, they appear to be the result of decay.
The Andante, embryonic yet almost 200 years old, collapses with age,
pieces of its lyrical lines falling into the void along with fragments of
other aging works by the composer.
Decay sets in early. The initial break occurs during the brief tran-
sition section between the first a and b sections. Nothing at this junc-
ture suggests an interstice - no blank spaces, no juxtaposition of
different sketches. Berio instead pushes aside Schubert's linking
passage to make room for his own material, which, however, does not
completely cut off the musical flow. Presenting amorphous premoni-
tions of a semiquaver accompanimental figure used in the b section,
the interpolation serves as a shadowy transition, thus commenting on
the passage it supplants.
In contrast to this disruption, the second internal break does result
from a gap, the one made by the insertion of theme 3. Schubert's
music, however, gives no impression of a hole, so seamlessly did the
composer later weave in that melody. In that spirit, Berio gradually
works in his own material, slowly overlaying the interpolation onto the
sketches to produce a stylistic suspension in which Schubert's melodies
dissolve. Anxious again to check continuity, the interpolation does not
even wait for the new theme to finish before overtaking it. After that
MUSICALDECAY 103
melody has dwindled down to a solo flute line amid the harmonic void,
Berio's passage severs the rest of the b section, not even allowing the
concluding theme 2 to sound.
Besides breaking up the sketch, Berio frames the movement with his
own sections. This phantom periphery further enhances the percep-
tion of the interpolations as a void, suggesting a space from which the
Andante has emerged and to which it will return. Among the sounds
encountered there are Schubert's marginalia, a brief two-voice coun-
terpoint exercise that Berio incorporates into his opening section. This
music that never existed, or never was meant to be performed, is just
one of the melodic shades walking around the void. In that realm it
sounds no different from the scraps of the sketches or completed com-
positions, declaring that all melodies, including those of jottings and
masterpieces, are 'rendered' equally lifeless and disjointed in this
netherworld.
Having momentarily lifted the Andante from that void by restoring
it, Berio then forces it back into that space. The last interpolation
abruptly cuts off the movement before it reaches the coda. Again, no
perceptible gap prompts this disruption; rather it apparently results
from the desire to obstruct the musical flow.28Nowhere in Renderingis
that obstruction more invasive than here. Instead of the overlay used
previously, this interpolation swiftly blocks the sketches. Moreover, it
not only arrests the movement at an especially expressive moment but
also prevents it from returning to the tonic, forcing it to end in the sub-
sidiary key of E minor. Left tonally bereft, the Andante immediately
disintegrates into the temporal void - all that can be heard in Berio's
closing passage are diffused fragments.
A conventional restoration would obviously vanquish that void rather
than have it reclaim a past work. Moreover, it would never break that
work apart. However, Berio, unlike the art restorers he admires, has
used restoration not as a means of attaining historical fidelity but rather
as a creative act, one that evokes loss and disintegration. Once orches-
trated, the drafts are manipulated and splintered even more so as to
bring out the incompleteness and decay of the symphony. In this way,
the sketches have been restored - restored to the fragmentary state of
the past, not the artificial reconstructions of the present.
5
EUROPERA
Whereas Renderingconveys the loss of symphony that could have been,
Cage's Europera5 traces the loss of a genre that has thrived: opera. The
work is the last instalment in a series of that title. Paired together, the
first two operas, Europeras 1 & 2, were premiered in 1987, and the
following duo in 1990. Although Cage claimed the series follows no
28 The interpolation might suggest the absence of theme 3 in the second half of the movement,
which Schubert perhaps intended but never directed to be placed in an analogous position of
that section. It could also respond to Schubert's scratching out of the coda, which, however, does
not begin until several bars later.
104 DAVID
METZER
29 Musicage:CageMuses on Words,Art, and Music, ed. Joan Retallack (Hanover, NH, 1996), 226.
30 On Europeras1 & 2, see Laura D. Kuhn, 'Synergetic Dynamics in John Cage's Europeras1 &
2', Musical Quarterly,78 (1994), 131-48, and Herbert Lindenberger, Opera in History:From
Monteverdito Cage (Stanford, 1998), 240-64. A discussion of all the Europerascan be found in
William Fetterman, John Cage'sTheatrePieces(London, 1996), 167-87.
31 The directions for the work list 'one antique mechanical horn phonograph (His Master's
Voice Victrola)'. They also state that a jazz station is 'preferable'. Sections of the score can be
found in Musicage,333-9.
32 Musicage,300, 335.
MUSICAL DECAY 105
33 Ibid., 226.
34 'Shadow playing' also serves as another means of reducing the obstruction produced by the
three live musicians performing simultaneously.
35 Europera5, Durational Chart and List, The John Cage Collection, Research Library for the
Performing Arts at Lincoln Center, New York Public Library, New York.
106 DAVID
METZER
36 Cage's droll direction that each of the vocalists at one non-singing moment in the work wear
'a head and shoulders animal mask' also effaces the performer's presence, besides adding some
levity to the work.
37 Before Europera5, Cage had discussed the idea of replacing singers with phonographs. David
Revill, TheRoaringSilence:John Cage,A Life (London, 1992), 293.
38 Baudrillard, Simulations,83-159.
39 Walter Benjamin, 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction', Illuminations,
trans. Harry Zohn (New York, 1968), 220-2.
MUSICALDECAY 107
40 Baudrillard, Simulations,103-52.
41 Jean Baudrillard, Seduction,trans. Brian
Singer (Montreal, 1990), 159-63.
42 A different sort of simulacrum
autonomy is attained by Truckera, which remains beholden
to opera but transforms the fragments of the genre into its own distinct sound, a noise unknown
on the opera stage.
43 Although well produced, the CD on the Mode label (Mode 36) testifies to the inadequacies
of recordings in capturing the piece.
108 DAVID
METZER
DECAY
44 Fetterman also discusses the feelings of nostalgia and wistfulness evoked by the work. John
Cage'sTheatrePieces,186-7.
45 Musicage,333.
46 Revill, TheRoaringSilence,293.
47 Quoted in Fetterman, John Cage'sTheatrePieces,169.
MUSICALDECAY 109
48 Musicage,339. Accounts of the 1992 performances at the Museum of Modern Art in NewYork
City, however, make clear that Truckera went well beyond 'bare audibility'. Fetterman, John Cage's
TheatrePieces,186.
110 DAVID
METZER
m
on"" ?e
Figure 2. Mike and Doug Starn, Crucifixion, 1985-8. Toned silver print, wire, ribbon,
and the
wood, tape, 120" X 120".CourtesyLeo Castelli,PaceWildensteinMacGill,
artists.
49 A similar gesture occurs in the RestoredPainting, No. 5. A reproduction of that work can be
found in Art News, 88 (March 1989), 143.
50 In their recent work, the Starns have focused on images of the sun, often incorporating
digital shots taken by a NASA satellite. These works have appeared in a variety of media, including
video.
MUSICAL
DECAY 111
The Starns' yellowed Christs and the three other works discussed
above extend a tradition of aestheticizing decay. Predecessors in that
tradition include eighteenth- and nineteenth-century paintings of the
Roman Forum and Chateaubriand's musings upon the 'poetics of the
dead' overheard in sacred ruins.53Such evocations often peer back at
a distant and faint past, like the Roman and Gothic ruins which speak
of their time in mysteries and fragments. The late twentieth-century
progeny of that tradition, on the other hand, usually draw on a voluble
past - operas that still ring in halls and paintings that hang in museums.
They treat these familiar pieces with a high degree of artificiality and
irony, hallmarks of so much recent art. In that vein, the above four
works do not depict actual dilapidated objects but appropriate intact
works (or, with the Schubert sketches, an intact incomplete symphony)
and subject those secondary versions to decay.
If the decay is artificial, so is the means of borrowing. Each of the four
works draws upon past originals under the claim of restoration and
reproduction. That conceit facilitates the wholesale borrowing of earlier
pieces. In their respective modes of presentation those two approaches
focus on entire works and aim to minimize any alterations to them.
Appropriating those practices, the four works, especially Renderingand
Restored Painting, can drawupon complete originals and downplay trans-
formation to achieve a close likeness to the originals, while all the time
making room for differences, specifically the signs of decay and frag-
mentation. The presentation of a whole original deepens the illusion of
disintegration. We see or hear what seems to be an entire, possibly even
familiar, work having succumbed to age, its expansive surface scarred
and faded, its bulk breaking apart into shards.
That illusion is part of the chronological outlook of dissolution shared
by these four works. In this view of time, nothing lasts. The past, be it
Ingres, Champaigne, opera, or even an incipient symphony, fades away
into nothingness. The process of disintegration is irreversible. Attempts
at restoration and reproduction, the four works make clear, only exacer-
bate it. The present is also a site of loss. In Europera5 and Rendering,that
period emerges as either a void depleted of the creative wealth sought
in earlier centuries or a technological realm oblivious to those riches.
Both pieces draw on works and traditions that are disappearing, if not
entirely lost, and do not offer any new styles to replace them. The two
instead lead into emptiness, the blank stretches that abound in each,
like the voids opened up in the symphonic sketches or the extended
silences and media ethereality of Europera5. The artworksfollow similar
paths, this time leading to white walls and black canvases.
This bleak view appears to portend an aesthetic crisis or, as one critic
recently said of postmodern musical styles in general, a descent into 'the
black hole of nihilism'.54 Before sliding into that hole, it is important to
remember that twentieth-century arts, including postmodern styles,
have offered myriad ways of viewing the past - some bleak, some not.55
Two other works by Berio, for instance, see the past and the present
quite differently from Rendering. In Recital I (for Cathy) the past similarly
exists in fragments; however, instead of dwindling away,those pieces are
piling up and threatening to overrun the present. Starring in this
chronological drama is a recital singer who is being buried under three
centuries of repertoire. She finishes her concert not with an encore but
with a prayer, a prayer for liberation from the past. Like Rendering,the
third movement of Sinfoniafeatures an entire work from the past, this
time the Scherzo from Mahler's Second Symphony. The Scherzo takes
us on a voyage through bits of spoken texts (Beckett, Valery, student
protests, among other things) as well as the musical past and present,
passing through a Beethoven symphony one moment and a Boulez work
the next. That journey, though, is in constant peril, as the Scherzo, like
Schubert's symphony, is always breaking apart.56 The Mahler move-
ment, however, does reach the end of the trip, ending intact in its final
bars. With it, we have come to the end of a journey through (to use a
phrase from the verbal text) the 'unexpected', a voyage at times exhil-
arating, frightening and comical. Unexpected too is the experience of
the past not as dead or decaying but as a living period from which we
can survey both other vibrant pasts and an equally active present.57
Renderingand Europera5, on the other hand, lead us into nothing-
ness. What this disintegration of past and present says about the late
twentieth century can only be conjectured. Such scenes of decay may
spring from a mingled unease and fascination with the fragility of the
past or from a scepticism over what new styles can be created to stand
beside those of previous centuries. Whatever the impetus, the two
musical works represent the present as a period in which decay eclipses
creation. Yet, in both, decay itself becomes a means of creation, that is,
the past can be made new, experienced again and differently, by
making it old. The touches of disintegration and emptiness lend the
replications of earlier works that 'expressive' quality that Berio found
so inspiring in the bald walls of the Giotto frescoes. This scratching of
new expressive wrinkles into earlier works suggests that even these pes-
simistic pieces want to keep the past alive, to find something new in its
familiar sounds. Renderingand Europera5, however, make clear how
ephemeral these revivalsare, as they keep a nascent symphony and ven-
erable operas caught in the slow ebb of the past.
55 For different approaches to the relationships between past and present in recent works, see
Robin Holloway, 'Modernism and After in Music', The CambridgeReview,110 (1989), 60-6; Jann
Pasler, 'Postmodernism, Narrativity,and the Art of Memory', Contemporary MusicReview,7 (1993),
3-32; and David Nicholls, 'Avant-Garde and Experimental Music', The CambridgeHistory of
AmericanMusic, ed. David Nicholls (Cambridge, 1998), 522-34.
56 On the handling of the Mahler Scherzo in Sinfonia, see David Osmond-Smith, Playing on
Words:A Guideto Luciano Berio'sSinfonia (London, 1985), 43-53.
57 These two works are further discussed in my in-progress study of quotation in twentieth-
century music.
114 DAVIDMETZER
ABSTRACT
Restoration and reproduction have served as two of the primary means by
which the present has approached the past. These practices are the focus of
Luciano Berio's Renderingand John Cage's Europera5, two recent works that
draw upon earlier compositions. In Rendering,Berio 'restores' the drafts for
what would have been Schubert's Tenth Symphony. Contrary to conventional
restorations, Berio not only builds up the sketch materials but also fragments
them, having Schubert's themes disappear into musical voids. Europera5 looks
back at eighteenth- and nineteenth-century opera, which is presented in a
collage of live performance and reproductions. During the course of the work,
opera gradually disappears into a world of reproductions, losing its vocality
and presence. In both compositions, restoration and reproduction ultimately
make the past more distant and inaccessible. A similar use of these two prac-
tices occurs in recent visual artworks by Igor Kopystianskyand Mike and Doug
Starn. Both the musical and visual artworks create scenes of decay, in which
the past appears as crumbling and the present as an emptiness.