»Liberating« Sound and Perception: Historical and Methodological Preconditions of a Morphosyntactic Approach to Post-Tonal Music

A short perception-based analysis of Helmut Lachenmann’s Pression for cellist (1969/70) serves as point of departure for a general discussion of sound and perception as key methodological elements in the analysis and interpretation of post-tonal music and in their historical implications. Diverse perception strategies are applied to Pression: an »architectural« strategy, based on cross-references between salient cues in the sound surface, a transformation-oriented strategy, based on »categorical transformation« between noise and pitch, and strategies that emerge from the experience of presence and aspects of performance practice. From this analytical sketch emerges a provisional threefold definition of sound which tentatively suggests (1) that the term includes the entire spectrum between isolated sine waves and unpitched noises of maximal spectral complexity, (2) that there is no viable distinction between musical and non-musical sounds as it is not the property of an acoustic event, but only our interpretation of it that makes it part of a »musical« or »non-musical« context, and (3) that, consequently, our perception has the capacity to »organize« any acoustic event into a »sound«. Such a »liberal« and context-oriented definition motivates a historical review of the concept of sound and related perception theories since the late eighteenth century. Sound has been a prominent »Other« in nineteenth-century music theory and aesthetics, disciplined mainly by »form«, »structure«, or »logic«, supported by eye- and architecture-related metaphorical language. An early emancipation of sound, in contrast, was articulated through ear- and »wave«- or »stream«-related metaphors that profoundly influenced modernist music aesthetics (Herder, Richard Wagner). Facets of this discourse can be traced to the association of sound with the world of the unconscious and suppressed emotions as well as the discussion about the concealment or disclosure of a sound’s source. This debate expanded well into the later twentieth century including criticism of Wagner’s »objective sound« (Adorno), theories of »acousmatic listening« (Schaeffer, Scruton), »musique concrète instrumentale« (Lachenmann), and the twofold model of »hearing-in« (Hamilton). Music theory has yet to cope with the emancipation of sound as a primary category in the twentieth century as it was, and in part still is, limited by the persistence of a hierarchical »surface-depth metaphor« that places (sub-)structural relationships above »surface events«. The morphosyntactic analytical methodology, developed as part of the research project A Context-Sensitive Theory of Post-Tonal Sound Organization (University of Music and Performing Arts Graz, 2012–2014), in contrast, aims to place a bodily-perceptual experience of sound events at the centre of analytical attention, based on three principal preliminaries: (1) the theory assigns a prominent role to the interaction of morphological (Gestalt-oriented) and syntactic (time-oriented) perceptual processes based on syntactic archetypes (tension/release, call/response, presence etc.); (2) it does not idealize a particular listening strategy, but aims at a multiplicity of perception modes that provide the basis for »performative listening«; (3) it under- stands musical perception as an interaction of cognitive factors and social construction with a particular focus on the relevance of everyday perception. A concluding analytical sketch aims to demonstrate the interaction of the archetypes »tension/release« and »presence«. A short morphosyntactic analysis of the third movement from Giacinto Scelsi’s I Presagi (1958) demonstrates how the »flat«, non- hierarchical absence of a conventional »event structure«, provoking the perception of a timeless presence of sound, is juxtaposed with a breath-like, ritualistic phrase arch- ing, suggesting a contemplative experience of sound transformed in time. »Performative listening« might be defined as a mode of perception that (consciously or intuitively) oscillates between such juxtaposed archetypes, allowing for an integration of a broad spectrum of meanings, associations, and emotions