1 Introduction: The Three Impediments to Musical Narrativity in Tom Johnson’s Minimalist Metaoperas
With the unexpected success of L’Opéra de quatre notes1 in 1972, American composer Tom Johnson tiptoed his way onto the international stage. Audiences at the Cubiculo Theatre of New York instantly welcomed the premiere of one of the first lyrical statements of minimalism. Their enthusiasm immediately caught on with the television industry as well: a few months after the opening at the Cubiculo, CBS broadcasted the first attempt at drama of a thirty-three-year-old composer nobody had heard of. Other theatrical pieces followed, while L’Opéra de quatre notes remained a favorite among music-lovers all over the world. Within a twenty-five-year span, the work had already been translated into eight languages and inspired more than fifty productions in sixteen different countries.
And yet, if one should ask audience members about the plot of L’Opéra de quatre notes, they would be met with a surprising degree of hesitation. This reluctance to verbalize the story is somewhat understandable when we take a closer look at Johnson’s other works. Indeed, for over four decades, the composer has been depriving his lyrical repertoire of a literary plot, relying exclusively on self-referentiality to create opera about opera. Through his musically descriptive librettos, the power of story-telling leaves the verbal medium to infiltrate the realm of sound. Such an approach inevitably challenges musical narrativity on three fronts.
The first impediment that hinders the narrative potential of music is the presence of a verbal dimension in the transmedial genre that is opera. The libretto traditionally carries the narrative weight, relegating sound to a subsidiary position. Language tells the story, while music merely fulfills an emphatic function, highlighting the emotions and ambiances implied by the text. Johnson’s metaoperas inevitably arouse the same skepticism towards the libretto’s dominance triggered by vocal genres in general and beg the question of how self-sufficiency of musical narrativity asserts itself within a transmedial artwork. Self-reflexivity arises as Johnson’s weapon of choice to reverse the hierarchical dominance of text over sound. His self-written librettos are exclusively devoted to the description of musical structures and are therefore completely devoid of plot. Once self-reference has effectively shifted narrative focus from words to sound, language can emancipate itself from meaning to become part of the musical material. Music is all that remains, and its narrative autonomy can no longer be called into question.
Johnson’s evolution in the field of drama can be interpreted as a long-lasting battle to reinforce the supremacy of music over the verbal medium, by subjecting the text to multiple fragmentation processes that ultimately lead to complete obliteration. But if his self-referential operas succeed in neutralizing language as a narrative force, then they become instances of instrumental music for all intents and purposes. As such, the second impediment to musical narrativity becomes clear: instrumental music’s shortcomings with regard to heteroreference, that is, the capacity of a sign to “designate elements of what conventionally is (still) conceived of as ‘reality outside’ a semiotic system” (Wolf, “Metareference Across Media” 18). The semantic vagueness of sounds has been highlighted by many scholars. In her contribution to the Handbook of Narratology, Marie-Laure Ryan embodies one of the more radical stances when she rescinds music’s narrative pretensions, arguing that “as a semiotic substance, sound possesses neither the conventional meaning nor the iconic value that allow words and images to create a concrete world and bring to mind individuated characters” (13). Werner Wolf’s approach allows for a broader spectrum of narrative degrees. Although he considers instrumental music as “notoriously under-privileged as far as its capability of “heteroreferentially” pointing beyond itself is concerned” (Wolf, “Preface” vii), he also acknowledges its unrivaled self-referential capacity to point to itself and create music about music. Johnson’s lyrical repertoire puts into practice Wolf’s observations. Instead of designating an extraneous reality, his metaoperas call attention to the music world itself. The stage set duplicates the decorations and furniture of the opera house while the characters become copycats of their own performers: the soprano impersonates the capricious prima donna, the tenor portrays the seductive primo uomo and so on. Following the same pattern, the realm of sound foregrounds its own devices through caricature, failure and doubling. By systematically mirroring its own structures, self-reference successfully implements intra-musical narratives where the voice becomes the protagonist and faces its own array of twists and turns.
Although Johnson’s metaoperas successfully circumvent the heteroreferential predicament, they still seem at odds with traditional narrative theories inspired by literary models. Transmedial interpretations offer a more comprehensive analytical framework, such as Byron Almén’s media-unspecific perspective in A Theory of Musical Narrative: “I will understand narrative as articulating the dynamics and possible outcomes of conflict or interaction between elements, rendering meaningful the temporal succession of events, and coordinating these events into an interpretive whole” (13). The partition of the concept “narrative” into three abstract components (conflict/interaction, temporal succession and interpretive coherence) guarantees its applicability to any given art or medium, including instrumental music. And yet, one aesthetic movement seems to fall outside the scope of his all-inclusive model, namely minimalism.
The specificity of repetitive music triggers the third impediment to narrative consideration of Johnson’s operas. In their quest for objectivity, minimalist composers have often rejected the emotional and psychological dimension of music that has frequently attracted narratological theorists. However, since it is ultimately the listeners that make sense of their own musical experience, a supposedly neutral approach on the part of the composer cannot effectively prevent the emergence of a narrative experience on the recipient’s (and the musicologist’s) part. Still, the frequent reduction of musical means to a single motif contravenes the dialectic tension featured in nearly all the definitions of narrativity. Indeed, not many scholars acknowledge the possibility of a narrative development based on gradual transformation rather than opposition. In his Introduction to Poetics, Tzvetan Todorov is one of the few to consider this gradual process in narrative. He identifies two categories of narrative episodes: “those that describe a state (of equilibrium or disequilibrium) and those that describe the transition from one state to the other” (Todorov 51). While the first type of episode implies a succession of antithetical states (equilibrium/disequilibrium) that echoes Almén’s conflict/interaction dichotomy, the second type of episode presupposes a non-dialectic conception of narrative as transition. Major branches of minimalism such as phase music, with its transmutation from simultaneity to asynchrony, and process music, as in compositions by Johnson, can be aligned with Todorov’s second model. This transitional view of narrative implies a link of causality between the intermediate stages that connect the initial and the final states. Minimalism’s extreme repetition tends to obliterate temporal sequentiality in addition to negating a dialectic narrative tension. The circularity of repetitive music prevents the emergence of teleology within musical discourse. However, to restore causality, Johnson’s operas introduce underlying numeric patterns inspired by mathematics that redirect the sound progression and introduce sequentiality within the cyclic time of repetitive music. His musical processes then become predictable, circumscribing the potentially eternal dimension of circularity between a beginning and an ending point.
Drawing on a wide range of archival sources, this chapter shows how Johnson’s minimalist metaoperas circumvent the three impediments for musical narravity by resorting to self-referentiality and numeric logic. In the first part of this contribution, “When metaopera trumps language”, I analyze the mirroring power of music as a way of surpassing the verbal predicament and achieving narrative autonomy. In the second part of the chapter, “When music finds itself in the mirror”, I once again address self-referentiality, this time considering its potential for bypassing the heteroreferential deterrent. The representational capacity of Johnson’s metaoperas is here assessed through the study of musical characterization. The last part of this contribution, “When music becomes the plot”, focuses on Johnson’s mathematical strategies as a way of counterbalancing minimalism’s narrative shortcomings regarding its non-dialectic, inexpressive and acausal nature. In “The hidden drama of voice” I then conclude my study by briefly discussing the new types of musical narratives that emerge in Johnson’s metaoperas as a result of these processes.
In order to fully understand Johnson’s perspective, I draw my examples from the vast diversity of his dramatic corpus, which comprises twelve catalogued works and two withdrawn pieces. The case studies considered in this chapter are the following works:
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1) Three grand operas: L’Opéra de quatre notes (1972), Riemannoper (1988) and Un’Opera Italiana (1991, 20062 );
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2) Three pocket operas from the Shaggy-Dog cycle (1978): “Drawer”, “Dryer”, and “Door”;
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3) Two chamber operas: Sopranos Only (1984), and La Princesse et les fFeuilles (2014).
Through this variety of configurations, Johnson’s metaoperas are leading examples of a four-decade crusade for the reinstatement of narrativity within minimalist discourse. The first step in this restoration process is for music to take over and replace the libretto as the main narrative source.
2 When Metaopera Trumps Language
Johnson’s operas offer three strategies that obliterate language as a narrative force:
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1) Language’s subordination to music through self-referentiality and the infiltration of musical procedures into the verbal medium
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2) Language’s loss of semantic power through fragmentation
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3) Language’s complete dissolution through vocalise
The first strategy in the obliteration of the verbal medium is already present in L’Opéra de quatre notes. In this unconventional piece, the theatrical action starts without warning with a quartet of soloists that give the starting signal in the manner of a choral Prologue: “Il y a trois chœurs dans cet opéra. Voici le premier. Le deuxième sera semblable à ceci. Mais un peu plus court”3 (Johnson, L’Opéra de quatre notes 2). This self-reflexive discourse continues throughout the opera. The spectator gradually realizes that language has been deflected to deal exclusively with the description of musical structures and the performers’ real-time actions.
The subjugation of words to sound in L’Opéra de quatre notes is reinforced by the application of musical procedures to the verbal medium. Repetitive strategies stemming from minimalism frequently permeate the libretto. This is the case in the “Theme and Variations Duet”, where the melodic dialogue between the soprano and the tenor follows classical variational patterns (ornamentation, augmentation, diminution), while the text is a strict reiteration of the original sentence “Ce duo est une suite de variations sur un tout petit thème”4 (Johnson, L’Opéra de quatre notes 26). A few minutes later, during the “Recitativo 8”, minimalist repetition infiltrates language once again, but is here tainted by the theme-and-variations procedure. In this scene, the soprano brings the opera to a halt in order to rest her voice before her aria di bravura. The contralto and the baritone explain the situation, engaging in endless gibble-gabble to appease the impatient spectators. The original text/theme is then subject to a series of semantical variations while the recto-tono recitativo is repeated without alteration.
Theme: “Le compositeur a placé cet air à la fin de l’opéra pour que le soprano ait tout le temps pour s’y mettre”.5
Variation 1: Elle doit reposer sa voix avant de commencer
Variation 2: Pour qu’elle ait le temps de reposer sa voix
Variation 3: Mais elle a besoin de reposer sa voix avant de s’y mettre
Variation 4: Elle doit reposer sa voix un instant
Variation 5: Pour lui donner le temps de se reposer
Variation 6: Pour qu’elle trouve un moment de repos
Variation 7: Elle a besoin d’un moment de repos
Variation 8: Afin qu’elle trouve le temps de se reposer
(based on Johnson, L’Opéra de quatre notes 115, emphasis added)
Music’s sovereignty over the verbal is corroborated in Johnson’s second grand opera: Riemannoper. Here the libretto consists exclusively of a succession of definitions taken from the Riemann Musiklexicon. The Vorspiel introduces the four vocal types played by the soloists: prima donna, prima donna assoluta, lyrical tenor, and baritone. Then, each subsequent number strictly demonstrates a traditional operatic form as described in Riemann’s encyclopedia: aria di bravura, leitmotiv, recitativo alla Gluck, etc. Language describes music which in turn instantiates and subverts language by subjecting it to the same repetitive patterns used in L’Opéra de quatre notes. However, the predominance of a definitional discourse in Riemannoper further curtails language’s diegetic power, placing the narrative responsibility entirely on the musical layer.
The second strategy in the deplacement of the verbal medium is the segmentation of language into sound units. This procedure can be exemplified by the “Long Aria” from L’Opéra de quatre notes. In this baritone number, each syllable of the text is isolated and surrounded by quarter rests. Meaning is strained because of the fragmentation of language and its reconstruction befalls entirely on the listeners’ willingness to make inferences about the next upcoming syllable that might complete each word.
Johnson takes these semantic attacks a step further in his Shaggy Dog Operas. “Drawers” offers another instance of linguistic fragmentation into phonetic units at the expense of meaning. In this monodrama, the soprano strictly doubles the piano’s melodic pattern as she gradually assembles her sentences, word by word.
Another example is “Dryer”, from the Shaggy Dog Opera for tenor, baritone and piano. Once again, language mimics the piano’s melodic evolution throughout the opera. The entire piece follows the principle of rotational melodies, where the starting point of the musical phrase shifts from one note to the next till it comes full circle. The text combines the circular logic of music with the nonsensical repetition of syllables (see Fig. 5.1).
Diagram of the rotational melody sung by the baritone in “Dryer”. (based on Johnson, “Dryer”).
The third and last strategy of linguistic obliteration that brings the verbal medium to complete dissolution does not feature in any of the above-mentioned operas. The first extensive use of vocalise as an alternative for language occurs in “Door” from the Shaggy Dog cycle. In this opera for two sopranos and piano, the fragmented sentences sang by the soloists systematically culminate in a long yawn that serves as an excuse for displaying the coloratura’s competence. But the most compelling example is Johnson’s chamber opera, Sopranos Only. The first half of this twenty-minute work is entirely devoted to vocalise and consequently free from any verbal incursion. Language unconvincingly reemerges during the middle section, but after failing to find the right arrangement between words and music, the composer goes back to vocalise. His last chamber opera, La Princesse et les feuilles, goes a step further by replacing the traditional overture with a series of vocal warm-ups.
With language out of the picture, the question remains: can music emerge as an autonomous narrative force? If so, how do Johnson’s operas circumvent the heteroreferential predicament?
3 When Music Finds Itself in the Mirror
In Johnson’s works, self-referentiality compensates for the music’s lack of representationality. Music becomes the only possible subject, and the libretto (what is left of it) points towards the realm of sound. However, some fundamental narrative strategies, such as characterization, still rely heavily on semantic specificity to summon an extraneous reality. Focusing primarily on self-reference, this section looks at the potential of Johnson’s metaoperas to achieve narrative characterization through musical means, such as tessitura and vocal technique.
Since L’Opéra de quatre notes, Johnson calls the concept of character into question from a musical point of view. His protagonists are conceived of as caricatures of the main vocal stereotypes that traditionally populate opera. Their vocal category constitutes the differentiating factor between characters. Blurring the frontier between reality and fiction, a mimetic link is invariably established between the performer’s range and the role she or he plays. In order to call attention to tessitura, L’Opéra de quatre notes devotes a solo number to each of the four protagonists: the soprano, the contralto, the tenor and the baritone. A fifth vocal type makes a furtive intrusion in the middle of the second act before disappearing without warning after a single aria: the basso profundo. The libretto of L’Opéra de quatre notes provides only indirect commentaries on each vocal type. But, as mentioned before, the Riemannoper quotes the actual encyclopedic entries from Hugo Riemann’s Musiklexicon. Here is the definition of “tenor” that serves as model for the other three vocal categories:
“Der lyrische Tenor erfordert Schönheit und Glanz der Stimme bis zum C zwei. Hugo Riemann Musiklexikon Sachteil Seite neunhundert siebenundvierzig.”6 (Johnson, Riemannoper 9–10)
While the text resorts to verbal description, music develops its own means of characterization. Johnson’s operas highlight vocal types as their main defining factor. His music calls attention to tessitura by empirically testing its limits and instigating comparisons through imitation. Singers must accept the risk of exceeding their range at the expense of vocal beauty. In L’Opéra de quatre notes, only the baritone escapes this ‘harsh’ treatment. Throughout the entire work, the tenor complains about the unsuitability of his melodies that mischievously favor the low register, while the contralto confesses to being more of a mezzo-soprano herself. Her tessitura is ultimately put to the test in the famous “Imitation Duet”, composed as a duel of vocal typologies between the soprano and the contralto. The rules are simple: every melodic pattern introduced by the contralto has to be rigorously repeated by the soprano. Johnson has given the contralto the upper hand but instead of engaging in a virtuosity contest, he concentrates on tessitura as the main subject of contention. The contralto immediately seizes the opportunity and drags the soprano into the low register, where she must go beyond her range to reach a B3 and an A3. As a result of these doublings, the listener can easily compare vocal ranges and experience vocal typology used as a tool for musical characterization.
This combative spirit is taken a step further in Sopranos Only. Here, the sense of duel is no longer confined to a single number, but the entirety of this chamber opera is conceived of as a vocal joust between six sopranos. As mentioned in the first part of this contribution, the libretto has been reduced here to a series of vocalises. Characterization no longer happens through the verbal medium which, on the contrary, favors indistinctness between roles. As the score’s preface states: “The sopranos may be adults or children, male or female, beautiful or not, or preferably some combination of the many types of people we call sopranos” (Johnson, Sopranos Only i). As all the soloists share the same vocal range, tessitura can no longer function as a distinctive criterion among roles. The musical battle shifts from vocal typology to singing technique as a means of characterization. In Sopranos Only, Johnson gathers a wide array of vocal twists and turns to encourage comparisons. Among them, we find coloratura passages, extreme pianissimo dynamics, out-of-range low notes, fast enunciation challenges and lengthy sustained notes that confront the singers with their breathing limitations.
In addition to imitation, another musical strategy to highlight vocal technique as a characterizing tool is the inclusion of perceptible errors. Johnson’s repertoire is intentionally sprinkled with fictional vocal failures that call attention to virtuosity itself. The first examples are taken from L’Opéra de quatre notes. The contralto and the baritone (pretend to) experience false starts and the soprano makes a faulty repetition during the “Imitation Duet”. The tenor is spared this whole farce of technical difficulties because, as he repeatedly points out, his part is so insignificant that he “has almost nothing to say” (Johnson, L’Opéra de quatre notes 48). In the same vein, the first solo interventions of the prima donna and the tenor in the Riemannoper are marked by premature starts.
Some challenges fall out of the fictional realm and become real. L’Opéra de quatre notes contains two telling examples of vocal trials that can effectively lead to failure. In the “Concentration Aria”, the baritone must sing twenty-four phrases of varying lengths without convenient melodic repetitions. Each sentence is preceded by a piano chord that is subjected to an arbitrary number of repetitions, fluctuating between two and fourteen. The instrumental and the vocal melodies must follow one another without interruption. The singer has no choice but to adjust to an unpredictable numeric set of twenty-four elements along with his own varied melodic patterns in order to place each entrance correctly. Memory and concentration are undeniably put to the test. But perhaps the most famous challenge in Johnson’s repertoire is the “Unaccompanied aria” from this same opera. Despite its misleading title, this contralto number features a long unaccompanied recitativo that allows a certain degree of improvisation. Alongside this interpretative freedom runs a dreadful imposition: the singer must end her solo on an impeccably tuned A as the piano will enter simultaneously on the same note. Any approximation is mercilessly exposed by the return of the musical accompaniment. Maintaining perfect pitch while singing a cappella for such a long time constitutes a real challenge, as each performance can expose the singer to conspicuous defeat.
Over the years, Johnson has reinforced associations between vocal typologies and degrees of technical mastery that result in the emergence of recurring characters throughout his repertoire. Riemannoper serves as model for his later works: the baritone is bound to buffo-inspired staccato, the contralto and the tenor are frequently restricted to slow legato arias. Despite constant criticism on her behalf, the soprano holds the monopoly on ornamentation. 73% of coloratura passages are devoted to the prima donna, followed by the baritone (19%) and the tenor (8%).
By establishing role types through tessitura and vocal technique, Johnson’s self-reflexive music effectively achieves rudimentary forms of differentiation between characters in the absence of language. Consequently, while the spectator might never be able to put into words semantically specific descriptions such as “the pure and courageous commander’s daughter”, he will resort instead to such musical depictions as “brilliant coloratura soprano with a warm medium register and a vivacious staccato”. Through their self-explanatory dimension, Johnson’s metaoperas ultimately also fulfill a pedagogical goal by engaging the audience in a spot-the-difference game of vocal range and mastery.
4 When Music Becomes the Plot
Now that the protagonists have taken shape through musical characterization, the desire to see them evolve within a storyline arises. This section addresses the last narrative aspect of Johnson’s metaoperas, namely, the restoration of sequentiality and causality within minimalist music. The answer lies in the composer’s interest in mathematically inspired logic. In the vein of John Cage and Morton Feldman, Johnson takes an objective view on music that puts an end to the decaying rule of the demiurge composer. Mathematics offers a vast array of universal truths in the form of theorems, laws and formulas that can be translated into sound in order to achieve artistic objectivity. Its inner teleology infiltrates Johnson’s minimalist idiom and brings with it the possibility for narrativity. Although repetition tends to generate circular time and consequently bans sequentiality from the musical discourse, directionality can ultimately be reinstated through Johnson’s maximalism. This concept, introduced by French musicologist Gilbert Delor, refers to the exhaustivity with which the composer explores every possible outcome of the numerical rules that underlie his works. Simple operations such as counting, permutating, adding and subtracting reinforce the linear causality of the musical discourse in a very perceptible way.
In Johnson’s compositions, minimalism and maximalism do not constitute antonymic but rather complementary approaches. Both principles are persuasively combined in the gossip chorus from Un’Opera Italiana. This scene illustrates the non-diegetic nature of Johnson’s libretto: the text consists solely of all the conjugations of the verbs chiacchierare and ciacolare (to chat) in the present tense. Music subsequently stands alone as the only vehicle for storytelling. In order to exert the narrative potential of maximalist logic, Johnson’s gossip scene deploys the complete set of permutations obtained by combining a three-note melodic motive to build a six-voice canon.
Even though the material is extremely reduced, the composer exhausts all the possibilities offered by the mathematical principle at hand. The circularity of the canon is modulated by the sequentiality of the combinatorial set, whose deliberate order preserves the melodic ascension of the original motif for as long as possible. Maximalism effectively circumscribes minimalist circularity within the linear progression of the permutation set. In this particular example, Johnson’s music mimics the directionality of gossip by recreating the gradual distortion of information that frequently occurs along the communication chain. All through the transmission process, the initial data is altered as a consequence of permutation. In the end, the deformation has come full circle: the ascending melody (F A C) has been twisted upside down (C A F), much as facts tend to be perverted by gossip.
A more rudimentary version of maximalism is already present in L’Opéra de quatre notes with the “Forty-Bar Duet”. In this number, the contralto and the baritone engage in the rigorous counting of bars, from one to forty. The inner directionality of counting rhymes also infiltrates the Shaggy Dog cycle. “Door” reverses the additive logic by enlisting in a subtractive process. The piece starts with eight knocks on the door, followed by an eight-note piano melody. The two sopranos hesitate to answer the call as they are comfortably sunbathing. A second attempt is made, but we only hear seven knocks followed by a seven-note piano melody. One by one, the number of knocks (and notes) decreases but the soloists remain in a resting position unwilling to answer the door. The static nature of the libretto is curtailed by the inexorable countdown of knocks and notes that asserts musical teleology. The listener can foresee and anticipate how the piece will end.
“Drawers” introduces another counting method. The progressive construction of the melody employs an accumulative type of addition that Johnson applies again to the antithetic melodies from Un’Opera Italiana’s love duet:
Counting techniques in “Drawers” and the love duet from Un’Opera Italiana.
While in “Drawers” additive counting accompanies the research of the soprano’s lost thimble in a series of drawers, the narrative force of mathematics is much more salient in Un’Opera Italiana’s love scene. As the soprano’s descending pattern and the tenor’s ascending motive grow, their voices intertwine until they finally blend in a circular pattern without beginning or end. The two distinct musical phrases are a subtle metaphor for love, as the characters singing them also become one (see Fig. 5.2).
“Scena VIII” from Un’Opera Italiana. (Johnson, Un’Opera Italiana 111).
Un’Opera Italiana also renews with the technique of rotational melodies already introduced in the Shaggy Dog cycle. In his “Andantino Pastorale” from scene XI, Johnson takes circularity a step further by reviving the medieval isorhythmic techniques from the Ars Nova period. This choral piece combines a short talea of eight durations with a seven-note color. The process ends when the melody comes full circle after its fifty-sixth note (8 × 7). Because of the scarcity of means and the straightforwardness of Johnson’s maximalism, the audience can foresee the evolution of musical material and its ending point.
In addition to permutations, counting techniques and rotational melodies, Johnson’s last theatrical work introduces more sophisticated forms of mathematical teleology. La Princesse et les feuilles, a chamber opera for “two sopranos with almost identical voices, accompanied by two flutists with almost identical color”,7 revives one of the first musico-mathematical models that Johnson encountered as a student at Yale: Allen Forte’s Set Theory. The composer pays homage to his teacher’s conceptualization of the z-relation, a criterion for grouping harmonic sets that share the same intervallic properties. La Princesse et les feuilles is based on the homometric sets 4-Z15 (0,1,4,6) and 4-Z29 (0,1,3,7), better known as the all-interval tetrachords because they contain all six interval classes: one minor second, one major second, one minor third, one major third, one perfect fourth and one tritone.
First two sets of La princesse et les feuilles with their intervallic components – They share three common pitches: D#, F and B. (based on Johnson, La Princesse et les feuilles).
This pair offers a wide collection of transpositions and inversion, but the composer chooses here not to exhaust all the potential solutions. He restricts instead his reservoir of pitches throughout the piece, using only eight notes out of twelve (A#, C#, E and G are excluded). His alternation of 4-Z15 and 4-Z29 transpositions favors minimal change: each set shares three common pitches with its surrounding groups, introducing one new note at a time. This is Johnson’s way of putting into sound Leibniz’s words that constitute the whole of the libretto:
Je ne crois pas que dans ce jardin se trouvent deux feuilles parfaitement semblables, il y a toujours des petites différences. Et quoi qu’il en chercha beaucoup, il fut convaincu par ses yeux qu’elles étaient différentes.8 (La Princesse et les feuilles 1)
The dialectical relationship between difference and similarity is embodied here by the two all-interval tetrachords that share the same properties but adopt a myriad of different presentations. The grouping of soloists in almost identical pairs reinforces the metaphor. Everything is the same, but not the same, like Leibniz’s foliage. And yet, the melodic counterpoint derived from the alternating process highlights differences while masking similarities. The flutists execute melodic chiasmi rather than replications, while the two sopranos privilege imitative dialogue instead of unison. Here, musical doublings no longer point to difference in vocal range or technique, as both sopranos sing in a simple syllabic style, but to discrepancies in vocal color. Differences are highlighted as this is what motivates Leibniz’s quest for two identical leaves. But since similarities intervene mainly on a structural level – one must acknowledge the z-relation between 4-Z15 and 4-Z29 to fully understand the musical metaphor – they will probably pass unnoticed under neophyte ears. Contrary to previous examples, La Princesse et les feuilles’ mathematical maximalism, while restoring causality, lacks transparency. Its intricacy consequently compromises the perceptibility of the logical processes. Music’s narrative potential ultimately becomes a matter of connoisseurs.
5 Conclusion: The Hidden Drama of Voice
After obliterating language’s narrative potential, Johnson’s self-referentiality successfully introduces new forms of musical characterization while his maximalist approach restores sequentiality and teleology within minimalism. His metaoperas clearly strive to fulfill narrative expectations, and one cannot help but wonder what kind of stories they actually tell. Self-referentiality circumscribes the intrigue to the musical sphere, and more specifically, the world of opera. Johnson’s strategies for musical characterization point towards the voice as the indisputable protagonist: from his encyclopedically descriptive librettos, to the vocal challenges, doublings and mistakes that run through his operas.
A recurrent narrative pattern seems to emerge over the years. The humorous tone of Johnson’s operas hides a drama: the death of virtuosity. This tragedy roughly follows the tripartite frame of traditional narratives: situation-disruption-resolution. In the first part of the narrative, the main characters are introduced. We witness the symbolic birth of the voice (or voices) through various musical procedures. In L’Opéra de quatre notes, the Riemannoper and Sopranos Only, singers unveil their voices one by one through solo numbers. In the Shaggy Dog cycle, the voice emerges little by little, one note at a time. In La Princesse et les feuilles, vocal warm-ups serve as presentation cards for the soloists. Then comes the disruption stage in the form of singing challenges that defy tessitura, virtuosity and ultimately question vocal beauty. Narrative resolution rarely brings a happy ending in Johnson’s operas. Few victories are granted to the voice and the hyperbolic nature of such triumphs taints them with irony. Failure is frequently inevitable due to the inclusion of intentional errors and insurmountable obstacles. L’Opéra de quatre notes leaves a tragic aftertaste as the soloists’ efforts to master vocal virtuosity are cut short in a recto-tono “Finale” where each voice has been reduced to a single note. In the Riemannoper, the battle between singers ends without victors as the initial melodies that served as presentation cards resurface but have lost all their distinctive features.
What remains of the voice, the tragic warrior, after facing these ordeals? Johnson’s last opera functions as his artistic testament. Leibniz’s maxim in La Princesse et les feuilles summarizes his aesthetic position. After the death of virtuosity, a new ideal emerges: a vocality without artifice whose inconspicuous nuances arise through comparison to reveal its unique color. Johnson’s voice becomes an emissary of universal truths, an anti-hero in the service of musical narrative.
References
Almén, Byron. A Theory of Musical Narrative: Musical Meaning and Interpretation. Kindle ed., Indiana University Press, 2017.
Delor, Gilbert. Tom Johnson ou la musique logique. L’Harmattan, 2021.
Johnson, Tom. L’Opéra de quatre notes. 1973. Translated by Henry Pillsbury, Editions 75, 1991.
Johnson, Tom. “Drawers”. Shaggy Dog Operas, Editions 75, 1978.
Johnson, Tom. “Dryer”. Shaggy Dog Operas, Editions 75, 1978.
Johnson, Tom. Riemannoper. Editions 75, 1988.
Johnson, Tom. Sopranos Only. Editions 75, 1984.
Johnson, Tom. Un’Opera Italiana. 2nd ed., Editions 75, Paris, 2006.
Johnson, Tom. La Princesse et les feuilles. Editions 75, 2014.
Ryan, Marie-Laure. “Narration in Various Media”. 2012. The Living Handbook of Narratology, edited by Peter Hühn, et al., Hamburg University, revised 2014. https://www-archiv.fdm.uni-hamburg.de/lhn/node/53.html.
Todorov, Tzvetan. Introduction to Poetics, translated by Richard Howard, University of Minnesota Press, 1981.
Wolf, Werner. “Metareference Across Media: The Concept, its Transmedial Potentials and Problems, Main Forms and Functions.” Metareference across Media: Theory and Case Studies, Studies in Intermediality, vol. 4, edited by Werner Wolf in collaboration with Katharina Bantleon and Jeff Thoss, Rodopi, 2009, pp. 1–85.
Wolf, Werner. “Preface”. Self-reference in Literature and Music, Word and Music Studies, vol. 11, edited by Walter Bernhart and Werner Wolf, Rodopi, 2010.
Since all the examples from The Four Note Opera are taken from the publication in French, I have chosen here to use its French title.
The dates refer to the world premiere of each work, with the exception of the unreleased Un’Opera Italiana. In this particular case, the years indicate the publication of the first and second editions of the score.
“There are three choruses in this opera. This is the first one. The second is quite similar. But a little shorter” (my translation).
“This duet is a little theme and variations” (my translation).
“The composer placed this aria at the end of the opera so that the soprano can get ready” (my translation).
“The lyrical tenor requires vocal beauty and brilliance up to C2. Hugo Riemann Musiklexikon, page nine-hundred-forty-seven” (my translation).
From the preface of the French edition: “deux sopranos aux voix presque jumelles, accompagnées par deux flutistes aux timbres presque jumeaux” (my translation).
“I do not think there are two perfectly similar leaves in this garden, there are always small differences between them. And although he looked for a long time, his eyes convinced him that they were different” (my translation).