With this brave new book, James McHard pulls away all the negativity shrouding the word "modern" in the realm of classical music. Through a skilled analysis of prominent composers from 1890 to the present, along with their musical styles, philosophies, and incentives, McHard reveals modern music as the "fully enriched and enriching listening experience" that it is.

". . . Both as a scholar and as a composer I want to thank you for the extraordinary work you have done on your book . . . Your research shows a very original attempt for the recovery of the notion "Modern" in music . . ." 

" . . . Each composer that you study took the hard route, making music that was uniquely his own. Thus, not only is your book a lesson in musical history; it is also a study of artistic integrity and ethical courage. I thank you most sincerely for writing the musical history of our time and of the time to come." 

By mid-20 ^th century there appeared to be proliferation with no hope of unity. Free atonality, serialism, free chance, indeterminacy, stochastics, clustering, eclecticism, collage, protocubism, neo-classicism, dada, neo-baroque, neo-romanticism, impressionism and expressionism all were touted in various quarters as the wave of the future. Ultimately, post-modernism emerged as an ‘antidote’ to the complexities and difficulties inherent within certain of these trends, especially in total serialism and indeterminacy.

One of the prominent features of post-modernism lies in the use of collage in composition. This technique relies upon a gathering together of seeming-diverse sounds, patterns, styles, etc. in a soup of mixed effects. However, this ‘solution’ is really a refusal to choose. If one believes that one may escape the grueling demands of original work by hiding from disciplined choice behind that which has gone before, the art of serious composition need proceed no further. One may as well say, "I give the responsibility for original work to someone else. I can entertain listeners without it."

I believe that the signs of decay in a culture are reaped by such attitudes. The apex of the ancient Greek and Roman civilizations, for example, existed in the days of high literature and of original mathematical discovery. Those days gave way to ones of ‘commentary’ upon older original work. This led to decay. A civilization that cannot create afresh, but can only re-create, will decay.

Composition and new music, as research and teaching tools, best serve to achieve the goal of returning music to its triple role. Entertainment is good in its appropriate context; but only research and teaching can elevate art making to a lofty status. These are the activities that protect the mind from intellectual atrophy.

The work of one prominent composer of the last century serves as a pertinent example for all present-day composers. This composer, the greatest radical in music history, was basically self-taught. Arnold Schönberg needed no stereotypical crutch, though, to help him launch his revolution from which music will never recover. His mantra was to explore; to be true to oneself. This severity of purpose resulted in his special gifts to us, not the least of which is "tone-color melody". It is a method that required of him travel along the hard road, a road that offered no simple answers. His Germanic term, Klangfarbenmelodie, has stuck by virtue of its own ring. This approach requires an exceptionally keen rigor. It also requires deep understandings of the nature of sound, hard won through study and focus upon one’s most advanced composing skills. Today, we can continue to create great and original work through similarly disciplined methods, thereby avoiding the pitfalls associated with easy eclecticism.

How can the concept of klangfarbenmelodie be marshaled to rescue musical discipline from torpid conformity? Music’s rescue can be achieved through a real understanding of the historical development of klangfarbenmelodie and its role in the music of diverse 20^th century composers. First, what is klangfarbenmelodie? Is it simply tone-color melody? What is that? The answer to these questions requires a little background, so the following survey provides a tracery for what occurred throughout the 20^th century.

Schönberg freed music from the bonds of traditional tonality. This freedom enabled him to concentrate on sound qualities, as opposed to arrays. The regimen of expressionism demanded absolute focus upon appropriate sounds to capture an ambience that would conjure certain feelings. Some of these emotions were unpleasant and extraordinary. They required special sounds conveying unusual traits. In his work with this, Schönberg noticed that changing timbre was capable of carrying the freight of musical patterns. The transformation of color (the variance of preferred harmonics within the overtone series) acted in a manner akin to transformation of pitch. So, whereas pitch change conferred a melody upon a stream of sound, timbral change ought to be able to perform an analogous function. Let’s examine two opposing techniques that Schönberg brought to bear: one was Sprechstimme, or speech-song, a kind of inexact pitch setting; the other was intense tone-color control within an exact pitch context. These diverse techniques actually worked harmoniously with one another to enrich the sound spectrum available to Schönberg. And they required high discipline in sound manipulation. Though this exacted considerable effort, Schönberg was up to the task!

A crucial work in this œuvre was the Five Pieces for Orchestra (1909). The classic third movement, Farben (Colors), consists of a slowly emerging sound flux with changing instrumentation and special handling to elicit evolving timbres. In theory, Schönberg posited, a whole melody could be devised within a single tone --timbral variation alone -- thereby carrying the role normally associated with pitch variation. ( in fact, the tones in Farben’s setting do transform between pitches very gradually, leading to a slightly impure realization of the master’s original concept.) He had actually confided his new approach to Mahler, who vehemently disagreed with him regarding its validity. Interestingly, shortly thereafter, Mahler was to develop a variant of his own on the idea of tone coloration that bears distant roots within the klangfarbenmelodic handling.

This variation upon Schönberg’s ‘theme’ was a quasi-hocket handling of tones in a melody (the 12^th century hocket form is a contrapuntal handling which prescribes sudden interruptions with alternation of voices). In this method each separate tone was assigned its unique instrument so that tone color is changed within the phrase, almost note-by-note, but each color was assigned to a discrete pitch. This is not real tone-color melody, but a distant cousin; one, the distinction of which, I believe will clarify some crucial differences between certain seemingly similar trends in advanced music (e.g., between that of Penderecki or Ligeti, and that of Xenakis, which we examine later).

This particular handling of Mahler’s can be seen in his masterpiece, 9^th Symphony (1909-10), in the opening measures. A tone is repeated, but stated in different instruments (horn, cello, harp), then elaborated by pitch additions with harp and muted horn shaping the phrase in a set of answering mottos. This handling was expanded greatly in the work of Anton Webern, especially in his Symphonie (1929), and Concerto (1934).

This concept of tone-color melody ushered in a new concentration upon special tone qualities that invites much further work. Not much is done in this arena in universities, inasmuch as collaging and set-ordering are emphasized, instead. Tone-color melody demands an understanding and a focus that are inherent in the disciplines associated with truly sound-based composition. The nature of sound and the way we perceive it are part and parcel of both sound-based composition in general, and klangfarbenmelodie in particular. Indeed, klangfarbenmelodie is a special technique within the general concept of sound-based composition.

Within more recent developments, Xenakis’ work has introduced a couple of very interesting variations on Schönberg’s concept of tone-color melody, as unexpected as this interrelationship may seem to be. A special case is found in Xenakis’ delicate early masterwork, Atrées – (Hommage à Pascal - 1962). The opening of section one unfolds a static single tone subjected to some sophisticated color variations. Flat (non-vibrato) tones in clarinet and violin transform to tremolo (violin) on the same pitch, and back. These and similar fabrics evolve and emerge on that same pitch for a period of a couple minutes. More in a theoretical context, Xenakis discusses in great detail his handling of timbral (or cloud amalgamations) evolutions in his groundbreaking book, Formalized Music: Thought and Mathematics In Music (Iannis Xenakis, Pendragon Press , Stuyvesant New York, 1962), pp.50-63, chapter II "Markovian Stochastic Music – Theory". He outlines here his use of logic screens by which timbre may be evolved through time. A more controversial look at tone color in Xenakis’ work concentrates upon examining his handling of clouds of sound in Pithoprakta (1955-56), or the granularities in Bohor I (1962).

I implore the listener/reader, upon encountering these two works, to treat the massive array of individual particles of sound not as a collection of individual, discrete tones, but as a single, sound-mass in flux: one that bubbles, gurgles and erupts. Here lies the basis for a crucial distinction, previously suggested, to be made between Xenakis’ work and that of other seemingly related composers of the so-called cluster camp (especially Penderecki and Ligeti). This distinction emerges from the fact that Penderecki and Ligeti, in their work of this kind, do not really handle masses containing innumerable, inseparable, packets in flux, as does Xenakis. Their early pieces (notably Threnody: To the Victims of Hiroshima – Penderecki - 1959-61; and Atmospheres – Ligeti – 1961) handle massed bands of sound that usually move as a unit, rather than in flux. They do handle points, but when they do, these points remain discrete and separable. Timbral variation in the work of these composers is more like that in Webern’s work: discrete tones, discrete tmbres. Xenakis’ work has the characteristic of a large mass under real timbral evolution, part of which is internal granularity. This quality of single-tonal transformation is elaborated even more in the work of Giacinto Scelsi, albeit on a very miniature scale.

Scelsi’s work brings klangfarbenmelodie to a climax. Never in musical history has a single tone received more intense scrutiny than it does in Scelsi’s work. (One critic even considered Scelsi’s work to consist entirely of transition!). The best example here is the epic Quattro Pezzi (1959). In this work, microtonal variations within variable amplitudes combine with variable vibrato and dynamical variations, as sound breaks into split octaves. These split sounds thusly amplify the harmonics. This is strange music in which serpents from another world seem hurled through unimagined dimensional barriers. Sounds ‘orbit’, then hover. This is delightful plasma of sound in turmoil! I wonder if Schönberg could ever have imagined this, or the sound world of Xenakis!

But how does this discipline rescue music from its present torpor, and our collective minds from intellectual stagnation? We might want to answer that with a challenge to ourselves and to today’s composition teachers at universities. In fact, let’s lay down the gauntlet and administer a test. As we know, many academicians pride themselves in academic discipline; but I think some may have forgotten what it’s like to have to take the medicine they dish out to their students.

Now, some of the tests they devise involve recognition exercises. Here’s one for the professors. Listen to Estrada’s Ishini’ioni – the way you require students to listen to, say, Schönberg or Beethoven. Follow, and then describe in writing, the twists, turns and the churning, roiling evolving plasma. Complete this description within the context of defining a timbral transformation. (Note that Estrada uses TWO sets of staves, to enable him to place extraordinary controls over the changes in sound.). So the answers ought to be very detailed.

But why do the exercise? The answer is that it will result in an epiphany. The ghosts unfurled in shards of sound will infuse the listening mind with an indelible impression of wonder in the making. Through this concentrated effort, the listener will become sensitive to the care and diligence spent in the composer’s effort to communicate something original, and of value! The best music making demands no less. This is gorgeous stuff. But it transcends entertainment value (although, I do believe the music does entertain); it teaches possibilities that I know some don’t realize exist. It also provides a template for further research. Through this experience, those professors will be able to see for themselves what disciplines can -- ought to -- be had. Estrada’s Continuum theory, the unfolding of which is so redolent in this example, will be examined in a book (in French) late in 2001 or early 2002 (Le Continuum). It is also explored in my forthcoming book, The Future of Modern Music, to be published by Iconic Press.

No discipline worth its salt rests solely upon the rock of comfort. These morsels provide a promise of musical enrichment, and of new disciplines promised for the music of the future. Klangfarbenmelodie has many forms. Its understanding will pave the way for the special understandings demanded for the field of sound-based composition.

The concepts in this survey are protected by copyright, and are based upon those contained in my forthcoming book, The Future of Modern Music.