A reflection on the (un)reliability of music aesthetical judgement

M.-A. TURNAGE, Passchendaele (creation) 

Bruges 14/10, Birmingham 2/11

1. Mark-Anthony Turnage, Passchendaele (2013)
2. The semantic indeterminacy of abstract music
3. The aesthetic appreciation of premieres
4. Precognition and perception

Paul NASH, The Ypres Salient at Night (1918)

On the 14^th of October 2014, Concertgebouw Brugge (Bruges) held its opening concert of GoneWest (the provincial commemoration of the Great War) with an all-English orchestral program. Under the baton of Nicholas Collon, Philharmonia Orchestra London played Edward Elgar’s Cello Concerto, Ralph Vaughan Williams’s A Pastoral Symphony and the world creation of the commission work Passchendaele by Mark-Anthony Turnage. On the 2^nd of November the latter work enjoyed its UK premiere in the Birmingham Symphony Hall. On this occasion Ben Gernon directed the CBSO Youth Orchestra, which is celebrating its 10 anniversary this year.[1] Not unimportant for my exposition is that this ensemble and another youth orchestra from California are co-commissioners of the work, together with Bruges.[2] In this blog post I will focus on the Bruges premiere. It’s not a review that we have in mind, or at least not a ‘re-view’ in the traditional sense. Rather than an evaluation (objective value judgement) of the composition and its performance, I will take my individual interpretation and appreciation (subjective value judgement) as a starting-point for a reflection on the aesthetical experience of premieres, its prospective stage in particular. Therefore a difference has to be made between the intrinsic qualities of the piece, the way it appealed to me and the way the audience reacted, once more, according to my assessment. This explains at the same time why I waited to put it online until after the Birmingham concert: I was hoping for a review with which to confront my opinion.

1. Marc Anthony Turnage, Passchendaele (2013)

Passchendaele (c12’) opens with a solo by the trombone. Repeatedly, the serenity of its melodic line is disturbed by dissonant outbursts of the whole orchestra. These lead to the first of several passages in which the increasing complexity of the texture goes along with growing feelings of unease and  – the way I feel it –  distress. Woodwinds and strings build up a series of crescendos under which the hopeful sounds of harp and celesta are smothered almost immediately. Perhaps because of the general motto of the concert, the combination of these increasing dynamics and the descending chromatic bass line sounds to me like an ever more vehement lamento.[3] Before the gravity of despair reaches its bottom, brass blows and elongated dissonances drag us into a chaos of both disorientating clusters and recognizable harmonies, into an explosive melting pot of emotions. Against the overall darkness of the lower registers there is a clash of motives, some of which resemble that of a warning horn. Increasing distress seems to turn into hopelessness. Then, along several crescendo sequences, the general mood shifts from confusion toward aggression. The almost deafening harshness of the dissonances is pierced through with percussion and short, repeated high brass blasts, which can be easily associated with the soundscape of war. This battle of sounds finally disintegrates into isolated blows of the brass. Appeased by the wood winds, they make room for a trumpet solo. This leads more or less to a recapitulation of the opening section, be it no longer in a spirit of serenity but in one of unsettling alienation.

About the Birmingham performance of Passchendaele Katherine Dixon wrote the following for Bachtrack, an online guide for classical concerts, opera and dance performances worldwide:
 

“It is in fact one of the trademarks of this orchestra [sc.: CBSO Orchestra] that they’re up for the challenge of new commissions, and they tackled Passchendaele with a maturity beyond their years. There was as much assurance in the full, multi-textured, angry orchestral sound as there was in the solo and ensemble fanfares and more reflective moments. Within the space of ten minutes, plaintive melodies on trombones were answered by orchestra; clashing percussion gave way to more melodic strings; a sinking, labouring feeling was punctuated with horns and gongs, shifts in the time signature creating a sense of tension and unease; outbursts gradually subsided and led back through the wind section to a poignant trumpet solo. A sense of calm rather than peace, to which the audience responded with thoughtful rather than ecstatic applause.” [4]

For now, I want to express my suprise as regards the similarity of the final sentence in both descriptions. (Mine was already written the day after the performance.) It seems, further, that also in Birmingham the applause was not overwhelming, a conclusion which only encourages me to tackle the problem of appreciating works at a first hearing.

2. The semantic indeterminacy of abstract music

My own description, as said written the next day, is nothing more than a recollection based on some scribbling during and after the performance. As a matter of fact, it only wants to establish a link between the possible concept (of which Turnage only offers us a glimpse) and my own individual approach. In an short interview with David Allenby for the website of Boosey &Hawkes we learn that Passchendaele:

“starts with hymn-like music led by trombone which provides a collective point of reference, without quoting any specific religious tunes. This becomes submerged as the anger and musical density grows, with outbursts subsiding in the final section to reveal lonely brass voices.” [5]

The fact that Turnage “wanted the new piece to be instrumental and more abstract” than his former war-related compositions,[6] turns its title into a passkey by which the listener can open whatever ‘door of perception’  – to use Huxley’s phrase in an alternative way. Perhaps it’s because I am born and living in the neighbouring city of Roeselare that I identified myself with the trombone as a random visitor of the imaginary landscape hidden beyond the many cemeteries along the way to Ypres. Superficial, innocent, indifferent thoughts of a driver suddenly disturbed by memories of his grandparents telling shocking stories… The usual annoyance about the many speed cameras minimized by all those horrifying pictures from television and magazines, popping up in his mind… The most upsetting consideration of all being that only ‘imagination’ allows us to ‘realize’ what happened (t)here one hundred years ago.

This highly personal perception of the piece should not necessarily be contrary to Turnage’s concept or to the experience of a British audience. Even though the word ‘Passchendaele’ evokes other associations in each of us. On the one hand, Turnage is my age, so I am old ánd young enough to fully appreciate what he means with “After all, I wasn’t there, so what do I really know?” On the other, he had grandfathers who fought in that Great War and the British survivors had certainly other things to recount to their grandchildren. Finally, when the composer talks about the images of his childhood, who knows he’s not literary referring to visual arts. Several of Turnage’s orchestral masterpieces are inspired by paintings, among which two by Francis Bacon and one by Gustav Klimt.[7] If his Passchendaele shows depictive characteristics, it certainly recalls the atmosphere of such impressions like The Ypres Salient at Night (1918) of Paul Nash. The artist wrote the following about it to the home front:

“I have seen the most frightful nightmare of a country more conceived by Dante or Poe than by nature, unspeakable, utterly indescribable.” And about this night view:

“Twilight quivers above, shrinking into night, and a perfect crescent moon sits uncannily below pale stars. As the dark gathers, the horizon brightens and again vanishes as the Very lights rise and fall, shedding their weird greenish glare over the land. … At intervals we send up Very lights, and the ghastly face of No Man’s Land leaps up in the garish light , then, as the rocket falls, the great shadows flow back, shutting it into darkness again.” [8]

Far from suggesting that Turnage was directly or indirectly inspired by Nash’s war drawings, paintings or letters, I want to emphasize that the explicit choice for an abstract orchestral piece must be seen as the composer's invitation for the listener to enter what I call a ‘domain of indeterminacy’ (see: my Intro-M): a meeting place where there’s no hierarchy between the artist, the work of art, and its 'consumer'. It was, in fact, my initial plan to confine this post to a confrontation of my personal listening experience and that of other concert attendants. When I drove back home, however, one unexpected response kept going round in my head. It eventually prompted me to drill into the issue of first hearings and the degree of precognition appropriate in the case of a premiere.

3. The appreciation of premieres

Turnage’s Passchendaele was the first work on the program and one cannot say the audience was bewildered, upset or thrilled by its world creation. Hesitating at first, the clapping developed into a loyal applause for the composer, when he appeared on the stage to thank the conductor and the orchestra. I know: this can hardly be called a reason to question the expressiveness of the piece or the quality of the performance. However, the collective response immediately after the last note more or less matched the reactions of the people I spoke to during the break and after the concert. Of course, many were there solely for Elgar’s cello concerto which dominated the first part of the concert. And, not only was this event part of a ‘Focus on Elgar’ within the program of the Concertgebouw, we must also admit that this composition derives a broad continental popularity from the exploitation of the opening passage in the biopic of ‘Jacky’ du Pré and such TV-series as Midsummer Murders. Thus, the charming performance and red dress of Alisa Weilerstein did much to put in the ‘second’ place what was meant to be 'a first’. In consequence, some had no aesthetic opinion at all about Passchendaele, while others tried to put a finger on the style or asked me if I knew more about the composer. In short, I felt a general indifference. It was when someone uttered that she simply disliked the work, that I started mulling over the psychological and sociological aspects of aesthetic experience, specifically in the case like this: the premiere of an abstract orchestral piece by a relatively unknown composer, somewhat unluckily programmed together with two major repertoire pieces.

Her verdict was unconditional and I took it seriously: the lady is a seasoned concert-goer and an accomplished musician, who had recently participated in a production of Strauss’s Elektra. Since we hadn’t seen each other for quite some time, our conversation quickly ‘went down memory lane’. Nevertheless I could deduce that her disapproval had nothing to do with the Elgar-factor, but with personal disappointment. For someone who, for the past weeks, had been involved in one of the highlights of 20^th century opera, Passchendaele apparently hadn’t been disconcerting enough within this innocuous program. In other words: for her, it did not meet the expectations, attached to its title and purpose. I repeat: we’re not sure if that was her argument and its possible that I’m projecting here what I personally felt after being overwhelmed by Vaughan Williams’s A Pastoral Symphony. The live performance of this work, which is rarely performed even in Britain, was, I think, a revelation to many of us. Did the “four mouvements, all of them slow” of this lyrical and introvert symphonic evocation [9] succeed where Turnage’s Passchendaele failed? Or must we agree that aesthetic judgements are not always reliable?

An apprehensive introduction to this matter is a well-documented paper by Kevin Melchionne, called A New Problem for Aesthetics.[10] The author is an American painter and writer on empirical psychology, aesthetics and art criticism. Based, among other, on the work of the psychologist Jonathan Schooler, he plays devil’s advocate by contesting the reliability and conscious nature of what we call ‘our taste’. He particularly questions the self-assuredness of the art critic (amateur or professional) as regards his aesthetic judgements. For him, these are not the authoritative product of conscious deliberation, but introspective reports trying to overcome the confusion caused by a conflict between cognitive and affective understanding. At a certain point in his exposition Melchionne discusses three situations in which Schooler identifies the vulnerability of introspection and certain distortions in the protocol of appreciation and evaluation: (1) the peak/end-effect, (2) verbal overshadowing, and (3) hedonic self-appraisal.

The first protocol is defined as follows:

 “Individuals’ retrospective evaluations overemphasize the pleasure or discomfort at the episode’s most extreme moment and at its ending, the peak and the end. Other moments have little effect on global hedonic assessments.” [11] 
Did Passchendaele lack a strong peak and end? Perhaps it can be argued that the similarity between the opening and closing section created a classic, symmetrical formal structure, which sets at ease rather than it stirs up the listener’s emotions. In this respect A Pastoral Symphony gets under your skin through the ‘bugle’-effect (2^nd movement) and the wordless soprano voice (3^rd movement) which, at the very end, leads the orchestra into a breath-taking silence.

The second protocol implies that efforts to put appreciation into words leads to so-called ‘dis-remembrance’:

“Cognitive operations engaged in during verbalization dampen the activation of brain regions associated with critical non-verbal operations.” [12]

This definitely applies to my own attempt to describe the work in English (see: above). To what degree, for instance, are my judgements influenced by writing them down in what is clearly not my native language? What did I maximize or minimize purely by finding or not finding the right words? The same can be said about those who had no opinion on Turnage’s piece: to what extend was this caused by the simple lack of experience in talking about abstract orchestral works, or about art music on the whole?

The third and last protocol may well have been at issue in the disapproval of our disappointed friend. “[Self-appraisals] are often calibrated with external events, related behaviours, and physiological responses.” [13]

The behaviour of this friend may well have been influenced by the recent opera project by which she was still enthused. Prejudice may have been a factor, based, for instance, on the verdict of experts within her circles. And - you never know - perhaps she reacted that categorically because she felt intimidated by me and my ‘musicological’ question. In fact, the same goes for me. Why do I always feel the propensity to defend English composers? Because I decided this is my duty since I got my PhD on British music? Because it really satisfies my taste? Or because I want to show-off my alleged expertise?

Melchionne has a point when he writes that, in aesthetical judgement, “reasons have their own beauty, which is easily confused with the works themselves.” More important however is the bottom line of his argumentation, namely that it is very difficult to know our aesthetic experience and to maintain that our aesthetic judgement is solely the result of an deliberative process of introspection. In the case of world creations such as Turnage’s Passchendaele, a lot of factors cause affective and cognitive instability. For instance: our mood and background, the environment, the composer and the composition as such, and the (lack of) affinity with both.

4. Precognition and perception

I hope the reader will understand that my reflections here were provoked by the fact that I expected the response in Bruges to be more enthusiastic, not by the idea that it necessarily deserved a better reception. Now that we understand why this aesthetic response may have been to a certain degree unreliable, the question remains whether the reception of new works, written by relatively unknown composers, could be ameliorated ánd whether such interventions are altogether appropriate or desirable. The core of the problem, I think, lies is the prospective stage of perception, including but not to be identified with precognition. Prospection starts with the decision to attend the performance and ends with the silence before the first note. It is impossible to disentangle its cognitive-affective-sensory amalgamation of information, expectation and experience, which takes place within the mental disposition of the attending listener. Nevertheless introductory texts and speeches betray great efforts to control each of these aspects.

Sensory perception is optimized by taking away aural and visual obstacles and creating a comfortable concert environment. It is not easy to say how, but there is no doubt that the imposing interior of the Birmingham Symphony Hall and the rather cosy atmosphere of Concertgebouw Brugge had a different influence on the perception of the piece. Affectivity is much more difficult to manipulate, since it is determined by a highly irrational relationship between the listener, the piece, the composer and the performers. Other determining factors are coincidental (often extra-musical) experiences, prejudicial tastes, preferences and opinion-forming relationships. One of the disadvantages of Turnage’s Passchendaele was, in both cases, its presentation next to repertoire pieces which overshadowed the premiere event with their magnitude and reputation.[14]

In an ideal world a second hearing of the new piece and/are a word by the composer would be an appropriate remedy for this. Unfortunately, a world creation enjoys such fortune only exceptionally.[15] Consequently, speakers or program notes often attempt to create an affective bond by integrating petite histoire, anecdotes or fun facts in their discourse, which is a good thing as long as it does not create the improper angle from which to approach the composition.

All this leads me into the domain of (pre)cognition, pre-eminently the territory (or shall we say: play-ground) of the musicologist. About the work itself, I think Turnage’s description of the overall design may be sufficient. The general question, however, is: what should be said and what should be withhold before the premiere of an unknown piece by a relatively unknown composer?  This is mutatis mutandis what also Kevin Melchionne asks himself: what are the implications for the Art Institutes, when aesthetical taste, introspection and judgement are to a high degree unreliable? “[This] unreliability,” he says, “makes accounts on the art work’s effects less useful than ordinarily assumed. Quoting Victoria McGeer, he further points out that our taste is often commissive: 

“In order to grasp our ‘emotional and cognitive situation’,[16] we adjust our self-appraisals in order to fit our taste. / In our aesthetic life taste plays a restrictive role rather than an enabling one. / Certain habits of discourse are thought to offer us opportunities for better experiences, c.q. better taste but empirical research on self-appraisal suggests that they may not really support the growth and refinement of aesthetic experience, at least not in the ways we think.”

Hence, instead of providing us (in advance) with historical, technical, aesthetical… reasons for our experience to come, art education (i.c.: the musicologist) should create what Melchionne calls ‘well-informed taste’: an equilibrium between commissive taste and mindful experience.

Insofar as there is not much to be said about a composition, introductions usually resort to information about the composer, by reference to some key works. There are three options: (1) the piece as an alibi to inform on the composer, (2) the piece as a point of reference in selecting information about the composer, (3) the middle way. Each option is a balancing act between affective and cognitive mediation. There is always the risk that the limitation in space or time and/or the fear of becoming ‘over-informing’ instead of ‘well-informing’ lead towards the serving of tidbits, which are often too tasty to be good appetizers. This exercise was more difficult in the case of the world creation than for the UK premiere. Birmingham is familiar with Turnage and his work, not only because he is British, but also because, in 1990, he was appointed Radcliffe Composer in association with the CBSO. With regard to the Flemish audience, the musicologist was deprived of these benefits. Obviously, when trying to arouse interest for Turnage-the-man, reference had to be made to his past as an angry young man, his affinity with jazz and the production of some controversial operas. If such anecdotic information lacks a contextual framework, the damage may well be threefold. Firstly, what affective bond does one create by telling that an yet unknown composer wrote a work about the heroin death of his brother in the nineties, while overlooking GG (2010), the work he wrote for his wife, a cellist and mother of his two children? Secondly, what happens when, time and time again, introductions rake up Turnage’s early obsession with Miles Davis and the Anne Nicole Smith-story behind his most recent opera? In the best case we have a one-sided exposure of a multi-talented composer; in the worst case the patriotic or conservative concert-goer may see such ‘frivolities’ as an self-affirming reason why Turnage was perhaps not the right man to get this Great War-related commission. We dare not even think about the possibility that people were expecting jazzy or operatic elements in Passchendaele, nonetheless some may have expected some sort of a symphonic poem with more 'narrative' sound-references to war, battle, anger, pain, grief...

The second option (the piece as a point of reference) is less sexy, but much healthier. Here one can articulate his expectations, starting from the war-related compositions by Turnage, mentioned above. Further, given the composer’s indication that Passchendaele is an abstract, orchestral piece, the musicologist has the possibility to say/write something about Turnage’s orchestral style. Finally, the choice of the title invites to dwell upon his ideas about war and peace on the whole and the Passchendaele-tragedy in particular. The introduction to the world creation in Bruges was more or less a mix of these two options; yet, due to the vagueness about these latter topics, particularly the irrelevant, anecdotic details kept lingering in our mind when the piece was about to be played.

Wàs there more to say? Should different accents have been placed to achieve the looked-for ‘well-informed taste'? First of all: an introduction should avoid everything which may distort the perception of the actual piece, especially when the composer is a relatively unknown person. Secondly, particularly in the latter case, the musicologist must give all the available information which contributes to a better understanding of the piece; and, above all, he must communicate everything the composer has said about the work and interpret it the way he said it. In the case of the B&H-interview, a nod is often as good as a wink. What is Turnage's underlying message when he somewhat paradoxically states that the work is not ‘programmatic’ and the hymn-like opening tune is not ‘religious’. Why, then, call the piece ‘Passchendaele’ and the opening-tune nevertheless ‘hymn-like’? The only answer I can find is that Turnage sees ‘Passchendaele’ not as a historical place but as a historical-symbolical dystopia and that he universalizes the semantic field of war through the ‘abstract’ language of music, i.e. by utterly refusing to describe a specific battle by means of a musical evocation. Furthermore, the rather conventional character of the composition could be related to an educational purpose. The last sentence of the interview can be seen as an indication that, in the first instance, he composed with these young, teenage players from Birmingham and Orange County in mind:

“The young musicians that will play the piece in Birmingham and LA are very distant from the First World War, but they should know what happened and make their own minds up for their generation.”

If this is the case, it does Turnage credit to have renounced the cheap acclaim produced by clever programmatic music, in favour of an abstract orchestral discourse providing the young player with reasons for reflection. Personally I don’t think it was wise to conceal, at Bruges, that two youth orchestras were involved in the project. On the contrary: I would have laid emphasis on it. I’m also convinced that musicologists should dwell longer on how and why a composer says something about a work. We will never know why the audience reacted the way it did. Actually, the reserved applause in Birmingham refutes the idea that the way Turnage’s Passchendaele was introduced at the world premiere would be responsible for the indifference and even aversion among some of my friends. Nevertheless, we dare conclude that, when precognition is non-existent, a more case-oriented approach is better than an appetizing one.

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[1] CBSO: City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra.

[2] The Orange County Youth Symphony Orchestra, led by Daniel Alfred Wachs. The UK premiere will be sometime in 2015.

[3] The motto of the concert was ‘Lamenti for the Great War’.

[4] Katherine Dixon: The CBSO Youth Orchestra celebrates reaching double figures with Turnage, Vaughan Williams and Holst (03-11-2014). 
[5] This and the following quotes are reprinted by kind permission of Boosey & Hawkes from David Allenby: Turnage interview. Commemorating Passchendaele (Augustus 2014).
[6] Cf. The Silver Tassie (opera, 1997-1999), Silent Cities (1998), an orchestral meditation inspired by the military graveyards of the Somme, and The Torn Fields (2000-2002), for baritone and large ensemble on war poems of Owen, Sassoon, Sorley, Rosenberg and Kipling.

[7] Three Screaming Popes (1988-1989, Francis Bacon), Dispelling the Fears (1994-1995, Heather Betts), Blood on the Floor (1995, Francis Bacon), Frieze (2013, Gustav Klimt).

[8] Jane Howlett & Rod Mengham: The Violent Muse. Violence and the Artistic Imagination in Europe, 1910-1939, 1994, p. 58.

[9] Vaughan Williams himself in The Music Student, 12, 9 (1920), p. 515.

[10] Contemporary Aesthetics (online journal), 9 (2011).

[11] Jonathan W. Schooler and Charles A. Schreiber: Experience, Meta-consciousness, and the Paradox of Introspection. In: Journal of Consciousness Studies, 11 (2004), p. 29. (= Schooler & Schreiber 2004)

[12] J. W. Schooler, Verbalization Produces a Transfer Inappropriate Processing Shift. In: Applied Cognitive Psychology, 16 (2002), p. 989.

[13] Schooler & Schreiber 2004, p. 28.

[14] At the Birmingham concert: Ralph Vaughan Williams, On Wenlock Edge (song cycle), and Gustav Holst, The Planets, Op. 32.

[15] See: my article on Schoenberg's A Survivor of Warsaw.

[16] Victoria McGeer: Is ‘Self-Knowledge’ an Empirical Problem? Renegotiating the Space of Philosophical Explanation. In: The Journal of Philosophy, 93 (1996), p. 485.