From Deutscher Musikrat, Zeitgenössische Music in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, volume 10, Bestellnummer DMR 1028-30:

DIETER SCHNEBEL

Born in Lahr (Black Forest) on 14th March 1930, he studied from 1949 to 52 at the Freiburg Music Academy (passing his piano teacher's exam), then went on to study theology, philosophy, and musicology in Tiibingen until 1955, writing his doctor's thesis on Schoenberg's dynamics. At the same time he wrote a comprehensive analysis of Webern's works and made his first attempts at composition in "Versuche"; Adorno, Barth, Bloch, and Freud were at this time just as relevant to his work as were Varese, Nono, and Stockhausen (whose early writings he later edited), and, since 1958, above all, John Cage. After finishing his theological studies, Schnebel was at first a clergyman until 1976, then teacher of religion and music at grammar schools in Kaiserslautern, Frankfurt and Munich, where he founded the Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Neue Musik (Work Group for New Music), and composed the cycle "Schulmusik". Also later as professor of musicology and music teaching at the Berlin Academy of Arts he continued his practice of working together with "lay performers" in many events in Germany and abroad, and continued the experimental presentation of traditional forms in the series "Bearbeitungen" and "Tradition", and in his essays on Schubert, Verdi, Bruckner, Schumann, and Mozart.

Schubert-Phantasie (Schubert Fantasy), Bearbeitungen Nr. 5 (Adaptations no. 5)

If it was characteristic of Schnebel's series "Bearbeitungen" (Adaptations) from its inception in 1972 that each of the pieces produced so far pursues a specific strategy of modernisation, this applies all the more to his "Schubert-Phantasie", and yet falls short of the actual results. For with this work Schnebel again expands his already expanded concept of adaptation so that it no longer means simply the transferral of notated sounds into a novel acoustic medium, but also the revelation of latent preconditions and abandoned possibilities, possibilities which were left to Schnebel to define, or rather to compose.

In the strict, almost traditional sense, this work is an orchestral transcription of the first movement of Schubert's G-major Piano Sonata D 894. However, this transcription is only one aspect of the work: it forms the upper level of a process which actually begins four bars previously with the so-called "imaginary sound" which Schnebel deduced by analysis and appended to his composition. It may be that this sound is intangibly present in every performance of this movement; yet it is never presented by the performer since it can only be formulated in compositional terms, and is only audible to the composer. This apparently purely theoretical substrate of the original text, this abstract basis for the progress of the music, takes on a life of its own in Schnebel's adaptation, becoming in the process a self-contained composition to which Schnebel has given the title "Blendwerk" (Mirage). It may even be performed separately, without the transcription, though in this case it must always be followed by a simultaneous performance of both"layers" of the adaptation. The orchestrated sonata movement, on the other hand, should never be performed without the accompanying "Blendwerk".

As the special status of this "subcomposition" doubtless implies, the imaginary sound devined by Schnebel is just as important as his orchestration of the textures actually set down by Schubert. On the other hand, the orchestrated version also has the function of illuminating the innate "Klangfarben" structure of the movement. In his analysis, Schnebel derives the various components of the structure from an aggregate of materials for the "free play of the fantasy". This probably explains the underlying motive for his choice of title - which incidentally also refers to the fact that in early posthumous editions this sonata was called a "Phantasie". The aforementioned materials include the following: "a gushing sound, a throbbing rhythm consisting of five or six pulses, a melody made up of several notes of the scale; and this minimal material itself emanates from a single source: sound as a phenomenon".

The bass fundamentals and sound-spectra of the "Blendwerk" are played by the monochrome tutti strings, in the course of which we can descry the sections of the sonata movement: the exposition appears in the fundamentals, to be played "sostenuto", the development section in the "dense tremolos", and the recapitulation in the "gently throbbing repeated notes". Against this open-ended yet ever-present backdrop the orchestra, with its many divisi passages and groupings, projects the subtly sculpted shapes of the sonata movement. In the development section the transcription uses up the whole of the acoustical space; usually, however, it gives way to the "Blendwerk", the instrumentation and composition illuminating and concealing one another in mutual interaction.

The end result of this simultaneity of proximity and distance is that the Classical piece is reconstituted in its original aura, which - as Schnebel expressly states in his conception of this series - is constantly being evoked by the media and yet systematically undermined in the process. What the media broadcast, sell and squander on us are invariably adaptions in many senses of the term; and it is no coincidence that the avant-garde has reacted to this with techniques such as quotation, montage and collage, and will not be thwarted in its attempt to adapt the rubbish generated by the media to its own productive and polemical ends, using relevant technological means, and thus to produce new works. By comparison, Schnebel's experiments in adaptation are out of step with the avant-garde: they represent precisely the opposite course, proceeding strictly and exclusively from the work itself rather than profiting from current surrogates. In this way he has taken on an interpretive task which once belonged to the performer. Considering the way the media are developing, this task is most likely to be fulfilled by applying those analyses which, however theoretical at first glance, illuminate the full complexity, the "inner life" of the work. Once the work has been thus illuminated it will become as an epiphany amidst the mirages of our everyday existence.

Hans Rudolf Zeiler (Translation: J. Bradford Robinson)


From Wergo WER 60108:

Dieter Schnebel (1930)

Schubert-Phantasie für Orchester (1978), 29'15.

Sinfonieorchester des Sudwestfunks. Leitung: Zoltan Pesko. Aufnahnie des Sudwestfunks Baden-Baden, Juni 1983. (c) 1979 8. Schott's Sohne, Mainz

In motu proprio, Kanon a 7 fur gleichartige Instrumente (Tradition I1 - 1975), 10'50

Musica Negativa. Leitung: Rainer Riehn. Aufnahme des Westdeutschen Rundfunks Koln, 1976

Diapason, Kanon a 13 fur ungleichartige Instrumente, bzw. Instrumentalgruppen (Tradition I2  -1976/1977), 18'55

Sinfonieorchester des Sudwestfunks. Leitung: Ernest Bour. Aufnahme des Sudwestfunks Baden-Baden, September 1977. (c) 1975/1977 B. Schott's Sohne, Mainz 


In the 1970s, I started work on two groups of works which complemented each other. The Arrangements cycle is concerned with enabling several historic works (by Bach, Beethoven, Webern, Wagner, Schubert) to receive a fresh hearing relevant to contemporary experience. The procedure in the Tradition series is the opposite: whereas in Arrangements material from the past acquires a contemporary thrust, new music here is viewed in the light of tradition.    (1978)

Arrangements

Tradition is no longer truly alive in today's culture. In earlier days, it was itself part of the present as a constantly ongoing process of transmission. Our heritage has since become an object to be preserved as a cultural commodity and is exhibited in all kinds of showcases. These "values" are not so much handed down as dumped onto the market, regardless of actual demand. Instead of an encounter with traditional culture there is merely consumerism, which prevents the artworks from being actually perceived. Traditional music consumed in this manner moves only along well-worn circuits within the listener, thus becoming worn-out itself. The all-too-familiar sinks to the level of empty convention, devoid of content. The intent here of Arrangements is not only to knock off the crust of convention but also to open up the potential of the past, to carve out, as it were, its perhaps still undiscovered and current possibilities-in other words, to penetrate to levels which could not be truly experienced or even come to light before today.

In the case of Bach, that would mean listening to the spatial dimensions (e. g., in some Contrapunti from the Art of Fugue), and then distributing the performers throughout the hall in order to represent the scope of this music in real terms. This should also make clear symbolically how the language of its parts can span distances and create a new, living communication.

In the case of Beethoven (e. g., in a piano sonata), that would mean perceiving the closely interrelated - and at the same time, rational - motives in which, just as in molecular motion, one particle strikes another and transfers its energy in a specific direction. It was then a matter of clarifying this motion by means of instrumentation in order to convey a feeling for the driving nature of this music and, at the same time, to point out what revolutionary elements from the Enlightenment are at work in this music's motives.

'In the case of... but there is so much music, closer at hand and more remote, and many possibilities are suggested - and many a need for arrangement.

To Schubert

Older editions read: Phantasie, a title added posthumously to a sonata in strict form. Nonetheless, it does comprehend the nature of Schubert's work (Piano Sonata in G Major, D. 894), in which forms take on a vague shape, ramble off into the distance, approach again, dissolve into figuration, then suddenly condense into almost concentrated forms, thin out into wisps and immediately knot into almost crude clumps - only to relapse once more into bare perceptibility, dripping off into the void.

All this is created out of just a few elements which have anything of a formal nature. They are materials for the free play of imagination: a swelling sound, a rhythm of five, six impulses, a melody built on some scale tones. These meager materials themselves seem to be but emanations of one thing: the phenomenon of sound. An imaginary spectrum extends throughout the entire first movement of the G Major Sonata, given ever-new colors by discreetly alternating basic tones. These latter often are of long duration - sounding throughout the two outer movements, for example. At other times, however, they alternate in a lively fashion, as in the development section, which foreshadows Bruckner. Such a procedure turns Schubert's work into a Klangfarben composition.

The Schubert Fantasy, as homage to the revered master, seeks to unfold in orchestral colors the latent tone-shaping without sacrificing the character of the musical ideas. Solo winds and strings fancifully outline the play of colors in the melodies, tones and rhythms. The string tutti, on the other hand, articulates as its own layer - as an independent composition even - the imaginary sound which creates both the background as well as the enveloping and obscuring foreground of Schubertian textures. The tonecomposition has a somewhat indistinct quality inasmuch as the changes of spectrum are almost imperceptible, with sounds being continuously crossfaded. This tone-layer is therefore referred to as a "sound-screen." Since the latter represents, on one hand, the substratum of Schubert's composition - its "soundscape" - and, on the other hand, its realization as a perspective drawn into our own times, it should be played from the start as a kind of modern horizon onto which the Schubertian forms are projected.

Tradition

In Jewish theology, which was later adopted by early Christianity, tradition means to receive and pass on in the sense of listening to transmitted material and making it one's own - while at the same time discovering hidden contents and unfolding new life. The cycle entitled Tradition seeks in just this manner to pass on that which has been received from a great past. That means, first of all, turning to the manifold forms which have grown up, tracing which form-giving possibilities developed in all of these pieces which were once simply referred to as motet, canon, fugue, variation, suite, sonata, symphony or whatever, in order then to transmit these possibilities and to make room in passing-on for independent life. Secondly, it means turning to the contents of that which is received: appropriating that which has once been said in certain historical circumstances, in order to allow the prevailing dynamics once again to find expression, and also to lead to a new present and future.

Canons

The first groups of works from Tradition, the Canons - In motu proprio and Diapason - take up the venerable form of the canon, in which the same theme, transposed in time, is multiplied by itself. Each overlapping entry of a new voice, however, leads to repetition. The progress of the first voice, meanwhile, calls into play each of the other moments which in the succeeding voices are then picked up and, by means of constantly changing, permutating combinations, produce in turn further repetitions. On the other hand, the successive wandering of the one theme through the voices - whose number determines the constant reappearance of each phrase of the first voice - leads to a kind of circling around this unity. The canon thus creates a literally concentric form: everything revolves around unity - not in the same place, to be sure, since each small revolution produces other facets of this unity. The canon's circular form always leads in this way into newness, while the old is still in progress, so that unity unfolds in diversity. Inasmuch as this more or less unending process - basically flowing back to the beginning - creates diversity, it invokes the timeless image of the circle as symbol of fullness.

Structural Processes

The Canons are not such in the strictly traditional sense so much as compositions governed by canonic principle. The first piece is linear in design. It begins with a tutti (time-interval of all voice entries equal to zero), whereby all seven related instruments intone an indefinable wideband spectrum. From this ápeiron (Anaximander: "unknown") the sequence of canonic voices then emerges. This begins with a prolonged tone, very soft and unwavering. In the second phase, it is two somewhat shorter tones with small dynamic changes, in the third phase, four tones whose pitch also fluctuates slightly. Gradually, the pitch and dynamic oscillations increase, thus broadening the spectrum into a wider noise-band, and they become more airy, so to speak, and disintegrate into quasi-improvisatory gestures. Such gradual and yet phased alterations of an initially straight line leads, with the entry of each new voice, to an alteration of the overall dynamics and timbre. This affects in turn the individual voice: the successively entering voices take on respectively new colors. Thus, for instance, the fifth voice no longer enters as a soft, pitched tone, but rather as a loud, high-information sound. That means that, although the canonic principle is retained, each voice runs its own course, and a canon in motu proprio (in its own motion) develops.

As the process continues, the noise-band sounds narrow into pitched tones. Indeed, clear tones appear, whose simple melodic sequences combine with the voices to form harmonies of first ancient, then quasi-Classical triadic character. As the voice-leading - and sound-formation - become more complex, there arises an increasingly chromatic harmony whose Late-Romantic lushness quickly leads to free atonality. By means of ever-extremer dynamic contrasts - including stabbing accents - the music becomes punctuated and smacks of serialism. At the same time, the noise-band broadens once more until in the closing canon nothing remains but amorphous strands of noise - and the music flows back into the ápeiron-sound.

In Canons second piece the revolving repetition occurs "dia pason," that is, "passing through everything." The thirteen individual voices branching off from the central core constantly form new relationships to each other and fuse into the most diverse complexes. Diapason is thus vertically structured throughout its entire course. It opens with sharply punctuated octaves. In Greek music theory, diapason refers to the interval of the octave which is reached by going through all the scale steps until the first note repeats itself on a higher level. Gradually, the points precipitate out of the octave pattern and undergo changes in intonation so that other intervals ore formed with adjacent voices until ultimately the entire tonal gamut is filled out and a sort of dodecaphonic context is created. Meanwhile, the tone-points have obscured themselves or extended themselves into dynamic lines - or else encountered each other and formed tone-rows. As the process continues, these rows - now consisting, as such, of certain intervals - are ordered according to their degree of inner complexity into various octave- levels: at the top are intervals of the simplest ratios, 1:2, 2:3, 3:4 (i. e., octaves, fifths and fourths), below which in descending order are the increasingly complex intervals (thirds, seconds), ending with micro-intervals. This creates a kind of natural tone-spectrum, that of the subharmonic series below the fundamental C. The F-Minor spectrum contained within the latter can be increasingly distinguished. After the tone-points and tone-complexes had started to vibrate vigorously, the tremolo slows down and turns into melody. A tonal movement arises which then subsides through intervalic groupings ranging from jagged whole- and halfsteps to a flowing quartal pentatonic texture. Towards the end, the lines contract back to points which fill out the octave levels in varying densities. Finally, these, too, shrink together until the diverse soundsurfaces collapse into unison points of varying strengths.

Historical and new colors

Although the voices of Diapason are conceived, so to speak, as colorless - the original specification being simply: for thirteen instruments (instrumental groups) - a specific color is nevertheless appropriate to each. To be sure, the situations at beginning and end are comparatively noncharacteristic: diffuse noise-points, but along the way, the piece repeatedly acquires different historical colorings. As in the first canon. In motu proprio, a kind of central core is formed of tonal processes which evoke the worlds of departing Late-Romantic and incipient New Music: with In motu proprio, it is an ecstatic culmination, with Diapason, it is the softest withdrawal of the music - a negative culmination, if you will, or nadir. Surrounding the center are other tonal processes serving respectively as introduction or development: quasi-Classical, Medieval, Baroque, Romantic, Renaissance-style, archaic-style pentatonic, or - further afield - that of increasingly recent music.

As the purely material processes acquire historical features, tradition is received. Music of the past flows into the present, forming modest amalgams - but also strange phases, inasmuch as the old contents are not immediately accessible to experience. Contemporary music thus becomes transparent and earlier layers from which it grew come to light. In the same way, the historical appears full of intimations of what followed, whereby both past and present press on toward the future. Due to the many kinds of connections arising in this manner - possibly that chief connection of tradition which reaches into the present - emerging in vague outlines, the submerged contents of the subjective and collective musical unconscious become to some extent revealed, just as in psychoanalytical processes experiences and images momentarily surface from the hidden depths of the recent or remote post - or else from an archaic source common to all. In such an attempt to admit what has been received to music, not only the old formative methods can gain in relevance, but also the contents as living materials. Thus perhaps tradition itself takes place as precisely that receiving and passing-on within the formative process of musical material.

Expression

Since, however, this process is at the same time a human one and concerns the musical perception, the artistic experience of people who themselves are rooted in that tradition, its expressive qualities are also characterized as active and receptive. Thus an attempt is made in the canon. Diapason, to activate the interpreter's own formal creativity - and this may be transferred to the listener. The work covers in the individual phases a series of feelings which are to be realized by the performer with just as much self-identification as the listener's empathetic reaction. The course of expression of in motu proprio is outlined in the following instructions: without expression / very peaceful / awakening somewhat / dream- like / mournful / sighing / groaning / as if intoxicated / with "fear and trembling" / tense / sharp / as if astonished / tormented / plain and simple / somewhat rigid / with warmth / very expressive / enthusiastic / overwrought / shyly hesitant / eloquent / breaking out in rage / wincing / explosion and silence. The phases of Diapason are marked as follows: jabbing / calling / as if recoiling / tortured / extroverted - introverted / outflowing - suddenly freezing / with much movement / very changeable: diverse stages or excitation / with quiet equanimity / furious - gradual appeasement / as if rebelling / writhing / wincing as if struck.

In an expression-composition of this sort the strict, absolute music of the canon acquires symbolic import. To make this more concrete, it was my orginal intention while writing Diapason (between 1976 and 1977 for the occasion of the 500th anniversary of Tübingen University) to accompany the canons' absolute music with optional texts on placards, slides - or simply in the printed program notes - whose perusal was to extend further in the listener's mind the available lines of expression. In the opposite sense as in Song Without Words, in which the text belonging to the music disappears into potentiality and the work thereby becomes absolute music, in this case just such a non-song, as it were, in the canon was supposed to find corresponding words. Several of the selected texts stemmed from the intellectual ambience of Tübingen University, which harbored the likes of Kepler the astronomer, Bengel the theologian, the philosopher Hegel, the poet Hölderlin, the critic David Friedrich Strauß and finally, the philosopher Ernst Bloch - and which also decisively put its stamp upon me during my studies. Other texts were closely related to this Swabian ambience. In the meantime, however, I abandoned the idea of providing texts to be read while listening to the music of Canons because the concentrated music does not allow any peripheral occupation. Nonetheless, the collection of texts would still be appended to the music for setting the mood or inviting reflection.

The Goal, absolute knowledge, or Mind knowing itself to be knowledge, has also in its way the memory of the spirits, how they are in themselves, and how they accomplish the organization of their realm. Their preservation in terms of their free existence appearing in the form of chance is history; in terms of their understood organization, however, it is the science of manifest knowledge. Both together, history understood, form the remembrance and the Golgotha of absolute Mind, the reality, truth and certitude of its throne, without which it would be lifeless loneliness; only - out of this spirit-realm's chalice bubbles forth to him its endlessness.

G. W. F. Hegel

Spiritual vigilance is an inner alertness and an unhampered use of one's spiritual and natural senses as renewed by Grace, since in God's light one is properly in control of himself. A natural man, before life and light enter into him, is in terms of spiritual things sunk in the sleep of death, and in his other actions like one who dreams.

J. A. Bengel

What in my weeping eye oft checks a tear is a child at play or bird on the wing.

J. Kerner

It is well known that one star exists which is above all others. This is the star of the Apocalypse, and the second is that of the Ascendent. The third is that of the Elements, of which there are four. There are, then six stars. Besides these is yet another: Imagination, which is a new star and begets a new heaven.

Paracelsus

Humanity is the union of both natures: God become man, the Infinite emptying itself into finiteness, the finite spirit recalling its infinitude; it is the child of the visible mother and the invisible Father: of Nature and the Spirit...

D. F. Straufi

Somewhere a fir grows green in woods - who knows? A rosebush in which garden - who can say? Already they are chosen (consider. Soul!) to take root on thy grave and there to grow. Two black young steeds now grazing on the meadow, with frisky bounds return home to the town. Step by step they shall go beside thy corpse; perhaps, perhaps before their hooves are free of the iron flashing in my eyes!                                                    

E. Morike

... the first groundless being approaches ever nearer to the observer, regarding him with open, meaningful eyes. True, it still appears to wish to withhold a secret and to reveal only certain sides of itself. Yet shall not this very divine confusion and incomprehensible plethora of creatures, once he who is merely observer of the works has given up all hope of grasping them with his intellect, ultimately introduce him to the holy sabbath of Nature, to that Reason where it rests over its ephemeral works, recognizing and interpreting itself? For to the degree that we fall silent within ourselves, it speaks to us.

F. W. Schelling

It is the task and destiny of the Earthsoul to stimulate the earth's sweat so that rain be created and the earth be moistened for our benefit. It is driven to perform this task through the stimulus of the planetary aspects, somewhat as celestial music. It makes no move, the heavens call the tune.

J. Kepler

As a lovers' quarrel, so are the dissonances of the world. In the midst of strife is reconciliation, and all that which is estranged finds itself again. The arteries part and return to the heart and Life - one, eternal and luminous - is everything. So I thought. More later.

F. Hölderlin

The root of history, however, is homo faber - working, creating man, who takes circumstances and reshapes, surpasses them. When he has comprehended himself and founded what is his in true democracy, there arises then in the world something which radiates to everyone in childhood and in which no one has ever yet been: homeland.'

E. Bloch

English Translation by John Patrick Thomas